Uncle John's Band

The Fruits of Reformation

2022-04-30T09:27:00.002-07:00

This arts of the West post considers the implications of the Reformation on the arts & the larger cultural descent into the ontological cesspool of materialism & collapse.

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction to the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and other topics have menu pages above.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

The arts of the West posts do two things at once. They explore the path to the inversion of modern art and culture and open a window on the societal degradation that made it possible. This post looks at the Reformation as beginning the replacement of a rational balance between secular and sacred authority in the West with the fallacious conflation of the two. The functional redefinition of the metaphysical as an extension of the material and ultimately subordinate to the political. This accelerates the collapse into the secular transcendence of modern Flatland that doomed the post-Enlightenment West. Click for the first look at the Reformation,

Start with the salient fact. The Reformation splits Western Christendom

Gillis Mostaert, Scene of War and Fire, 1569, oil on panel, Louvre Museum

Flemish painter reflects on the carnage and cruelty of the European Wars of Religion.

This changes the basic nature of what it means to be a Christian in the West. What had been a yes/no question – are you a Christian? – becomes what kind of Christian are you? The Band is disinterested in refereeing conflicting claims. What matters is both Catholic and the Protestants believed theirs was the true faith. So what had been a self-definition as “Christian” now came with new adjectives.

This also meant that specific ritual details took on more definitional importance. Because differentiating different Christian flavors required attention to how observance was carried out. We mentioned the irony in the last post that the supposed greater freedom meant more restrictive worship. Until the secular transcendence, auto-idolatry, and cultural degeneracy of the post-Enlightenment era increasingly removed worship altogether.

Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Interior of St. Bavo Church in Haarlem, 1635, oil on panel, National Museum in Warsaw

What and how ritual was performed took on unprecedented importance in a world of multiple official Christianities. Unfortunately including bursts of ~~mindless atavism~~ iconoclasm associated with some branches of Protestantism - crimes against culture that would have done ISIS proud.

Harsh? There's nothing in a preference for imageless worship that mandates the destruction of a millennium of visualized Western cultural history. Not harsh enough for filth like that.

Egid Quirin Asam and painter Cosmas Damian Asam, St. Johann Nepomuk, better known as the Asam Church, 1733-1746, Munich

The Catholics double down on visual rhetoric, reaching a peak in the later Baroque. The Asam Brothers had studied in Rome before bringing a maxed-out version of the opulence of that city's churches to their native Bavaria.

The Band despises cultural destruction, but this may be a bit heavy the other way. Great comparison though.

The end result is that the Reformation transforms the material associations of the word "Christian" across Europe. And, building off the logic in the last post, the material is all we can really comment on without wandering into realms of faith.

The last post got a little lost between the axioms of the House of Lies and the introduction to the Christopher Langan project. Fair enough - those are obviously more generally interesting. But it's also a little unfortunate because we've come to realize that keeping track of how we can know - of epistemological modes - is really important when trying to discuss Christianity in a neutral manner. We are limited to assessing the observational and the logical, and things known only on faith are outside that. Things like the knowledge that the Bible is divinely true, or that a specific church structure is likewise. It’s important to recognize how knowledge claims are founded to avoid pointless category errors.

Like professing materialism while ignoring material causality. Which is up there with Poststructuralists determining linguistic indeterminacy linguistically on the retardery scale.

Abstract logic tells us the material needs extra-material causation. But beyond conforming to what we can observe and reason, the specific details of that causation's plans for us is known by faith. That is, outside the tools of the Band.

Returning to the last post, we are dealing with material manifestations based on abstract reasoning about things known by faith. What religions and churches are. So we are limiting commentary to what is logically necessary about those material manifestations.

a) Material manifestations are subject to material conditions.

Axiom #8 from the recent 12 Axioms post points out that abstract entities have no material existence in and of themselves. It’s fundamental to the nature of abstraction. If they existed materially, they wouldn't be abstract. If they have material form they become material - meaning subject to entropic forces in an temporal Fallen material world. That is ontologically different from a pure unchanging abstraction. TL,DR material realizations have to be different from abstract concepts.

Miniature representing the three Estates of medieval society (the clergy, the nobility and everyone else) in The Tree of Battles of Honorat Bovet, Paris, BnF, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. 2695 folio 6v., 15th century

Nothing in the Bible said the medieval church had to look like the top row. That's a materialization of abstract principles derived from the Bible and early Church, as we saw in the previous reformation post. Abstract principles don't look like anything until they're realized socio-materially.

The salient question is whether the material form is consistent with it’s foundational parameters.

b) Material manifestations are assessed on their consistency with the determinative parameters implicit in their founding authority.

The materialization is necessarily different from an abstract qua abstract but it will or won’t express the principles in a material way. The Bible doesn’t describe the unified medieval Church. But the idea is that whatever historical form the Church developed into would be consistent with the scriptural parameters that pertain to Christian authority and organization.

Having laid this out, we can define the Reformation as radical transformation of the nature of the materialization. It is true that the form of the Church changed and evolved over the Middle Ages, but it did so gradually and without major disruption of certain conventions. Protestantism was a total rupture with this gradual evolution and replacement with a new way of conceptualizing the relationship between the human and divine.

Heinrich Füllmaurer and workshop, Gotha winged panel altarpiece, fully opened, 1539-1541, mixed technique on fir wood, paper mache, restored above, unrestored below, Gotha, Ducal Museum

Not all Protestants were barbarous cretins. Some - like the Lutherans - even used their own images. But they were much more restrained than the effusive Catholics, and obviously reflected their own interpretation of Christianity.

The Gotha altarpiece is winged, meaning it had multiple shutter-like doors that could be opened or closed to give different views. This was an older Netherlandish format, but without trappings of medieval Christianity. No lives of saints, halos, or other signs. The amount of text draws from and celebrates Luther's translation of the Bible.

The prominence of text in the Gotha altarpiece is typical of the Protestant emphasis on the word. And the Word. From the translation and dissemination of the Bible in vernacular languages to the use of the printing press to spread the message, the importance of the word is preeminent. Even when images are used.

Heinrich Füllmaurer and workshop, Jesus teaches and heals the sick in Galilea, detail from the Gotha panel altarpiece, 1539-1541, mixed technique on fir wood, paper mache, Gotha, Ducal Museum

Close-up of a Gotha altarpiece panel. The amount of space given over to the text is what we were talking about. Note how the scenes are set in Netherlandish landscapes. Like the absorption of words, the images are supposed to help people personalize the message. Associate it with their own lives.

The Catholic reaction accentuated the synesthetic aspects of worship that developed over the Middle Ages. The differences are theological, but we're looking at how it manifests. How we can see it. The two overlap - the extensive use of art depicts the connections between the human and divine that Protestantism ruled out. Saints and relics, visions and transports, the real presence in the Host, the divine sanction for the institutions of the Church...

Peter Paul Rubens, The Triumph of the Church, around 1625, oil on panel, Museo del Prado

Rubens shows the personification of the Church riding a triumphal chariot crushing heresy while carrying a monstrance with the Eucharist and being crowned with a papal tiara. The horses are led by symbols of Faith, Hope, and Charity - the Theological Virtues - and the angel riding carries the keys of St. Peter. Rubens’ mastery of Baroque rhetoric and counter-Reformation symbolism is in full effect.

It was one of a series of designs for tapestries celebrating the Triumph of the Eucharist. The enemies of the Church beneath the wheels include the snake-haired personification of Envy. Ass-eared Ignorance and Blindness - representing Protestantism - are thrashed in the foreground. The twisting columns refer to the Temple of Solomon via Old St. Peter's and are symbols of continuity from Old Testament to New to Church.

Incompatibly different impressions of what Christianity looks like come out of the Reformation. The Rubens is about 85 years newer - when the Gotha altarpiece was painted the Reformation was still coalescing and the Wars of Religion hadn't really ramped up. The Triumph of the Eucharist appeared when the climactic Thirty Years War was already underway and the religious divide had long hardened beyond repair. All historically interesting. But the issue for the empirical-rational observer is limited to whether the materializations that shook out were scripturally consistent. Both obviously claimed to be...

From a historical perspective, the medieval Church that preceded the Reformation largely wasn't. Not on the level of official hierarchy, anyhow. We've posted on the developing imperial papacy. It wasn't getting better.

Matthias Gerung, Satire on the Sale of Indulgences, before 1536, woodcut, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The power of printing has led to the Reformation has been called the first media event in the West. In this woodcut print monks and nuns dine in the hellmouth on a feast cooked up by demons as the pope flies in by demonic transport to join them.

Obviously polemical and indicative of the viciousness of Protestant rhetorical propaganda. But peddling salvation really crystalizes the problem with corruption in the Church.

Not to say that the medieval Christianity was evil. Binary thinking is a plague and we'd like to think our readers are astute enough to avoid that idiot flypaper. The Church produced phenomenal holiness. Holiness that blows the doors of the modern version. We've looked at the monuments to the divine beauty of faith that were the Gothic cathedrals. But consider the endless procession of spiritual heroes - preachers, reformers, mystics and visionaries - that populate medieval Christendom.

Bonaventura Berlinghieri, Saint Francis of Assisi and scenes of his life, 1235, tempera on wood, Pescia, San Francesco

Take St. Francis for one example - the first purported stigmatic and a man with such a reputation for holiness that he was called another Christ. Traditionally, individuals like this emerged in times of crisis - Dominic and Catherine of Siena, the counter-Reformation saints, and countless others. If today's cesspool on the Tiber is to be rejuvenated, something similar has to happen. What's different today is that the hierarchy has put aside the hypocrisy to openly preach public immorality.

The problem wasn't medieval Christianity as much as the upper echelons. Overall religiosity ebbed and flowed and figures of Christ-like piety and apostolic zeal emerged, but the hierarchy largely blew.

And that leads to the crux of the difference between materializations of abstract divine principles gradually changing within a structure and the radical replacement of the structure. Between the historical evolution of the medieval Church and the Reformation, regardless of the degree of corruption festering in the former. By any logically and empirically discernable socio-cultural or metaphysical measure...

[Christendom in need of a flushing]

[multiple Christendoms]

The fragmentation of Christendom on a religious - rather than implicit socio-cultural - level fundamentally changes the history and identity of the West. Permanently. Religion becomes implicated in material cultural identity in new and devastating ways. Devastating because this shatters the delicate ontological balance between the foundational pillars of the West and what we can know and how we can know it. An abandonment of alignment with onto-epistemological reality that made the West unique among historical world cultures. Without which, it's just another imperator, now in the death-throes of its own materialist greed.

What seems like a peak is often already the start of a ghost run...

This may sound dramatic, but consider the following - both for the broad historical and artistic implications.

The culture of the West rests on three interrelated pillars with their relative health reflected in the health of the culture as a whole. We've posted on this at length over the last few years. The three are Christianity, the legacy of classical thought - mainly Greco-Roman speculative thought and jurisprudence. and the historical nations of Europe. What is especially interesting is how neatly the three fit with the interlocking ontology, epistemology, and deontology of the Ontological Hierarchy. It looks like this...

Christianity is faith-based knowledge of ultimate reality that provides a moral foundation. The classical heritage is the foundation of the abstract logic that define Western law, justice, philosophy, etc. And national cultures give material form that developed organically in the interaction of land and people over time.

It's astounding how well this fits. It's one of the Band's most important observations. Click for a summary post that is more or less right, though some refinements are needed.

What happens with the Reformation is that Christianity becomes folded into material culture. This was always true to an extent - it's inevitable given that we are material beings that live and communicate through material representations. But the conceptual assumption was that Christianity as representation of ultimate reality was external to the realities of material culture. When the Reformation fractures Christendom along national cultural lines, the [what type of Christian] divisions correspond to the [what nation] ones.

It doesn't take long to reach the point where nation becomes the index of the relevant church rather than incidental to it. This is cemented at the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Wars of Religion, where religious identity is implicit in national - or more accurately - nationally-labeled state character. And the emergence of the intrinsic category error called the “national church”. And yes, that greasy, slurping, pig-like noise is Fat Blasphemer’s music, but England proves to be such an important tool of satanic inversion it needs the attention of its own future post.

Jacob Jordaens, Allegory of the Peace of Westphalia, 1654, oil on canvas, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo

The modern beast narrative that the current international order is the "Westphalian System" misrepresents the Peace of Westphalia. As this good overview points out, the Thirty Years War was a ridiculous tangle of political and religious issues around the great power machinations of the Hapsburgs and others. The Dutch-Spanish war is only part of this mess.

Tl,dr - it wasn't anachronistic Hapsburg/papal totalitarianism against plucky independence-minded free nations. In fact, Dutch independence from Spain was affirmed in the Treaty of Munster earlier in 1648. What it did was freeze the official religion of each part of the Holy Roman Empire. This binds religion to state.

The Band refers to the false pretense that fundamental ontological distinctions can collapse into single material structures as secular transcendence. The condition is called Flatland. The misappropriation of "nation" and "religion" in political entities called "states" is one of the preeminent instances of this. And a preeminent category error in the founding of the failing modern West.

Obviously secular transcendence has no power to stop self-fluffing auto-idolators from blowtorching civilization with magical thinking. There may even be short-lived material benefit. Progress! But in the end, a house built on false foundations collapses. Just look at "the West" today...

The division of material and spiritual authority - at least in theory - was a unique strength of the Christian West.

Hans Bornemann, Christ in a Mandorla gives the swords of spiritual and temporal power to Pope and Emperor, illustration of the doctrine of the two swords in the Sachsenspiegel, 1442, Lüneburg Council Library Ms. Jurid. 1, f. 2v.

The medieval doctrine of the Two Swords was derived from a letter written by Pope Gelasius in 494 laying out the relations of secular and spiritual power. The idea ultimately derives from the Gospel of Luke, but was developed into a political philosophy that ordered European life to some degree or another for a thousand years.

The premise is that the material and spiritual realms are different and each has a rightful divinely sanctioned ruler. Note that all three levels of the Ontological Hierarchy are reflected - reality's gonna reality.

It's easy to overlook how unique a socio-political structure that reflected real ontological difference actually was. Consider medieval Europe's geographical and historical neighborbood. The Imperial Cult of the Roman emperor had combined spiritual and secular power in a single figure akin to the older God-Emperors of the ancient Middle East. A Christianized version carried into the figure of the Byzantine Emperor - as seen towards the end of the Ravenna mosaic post. The Muslim Caliph who emerged shortly after also combined religious and political power in one figure - in this case based on the idealized image of Mohammed.

Christ gives the swords of secular and spiritual power to the emperor and pope, Saxon and Swabian mirrors from the Schwabenspiegel, early 14th century, Heidelberg University Library, Cod. Pal. germ. 167, Bl. 18r

So conceptually, this divided arrangement was a singular acknowledgment of reality. It's also totally consistent with the Biblical charge to rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's that we posted on earlier.

The balanced powers of the Two Swords was an ideal but it was already under assault before the end of the Middle Ages. The Imperial Papacy that we've discussed in earlier posts claimed secular authority that was neither part of the spiritual sword nor consistent with the founding Biblical parameters of the office discussed in the last post.

The Medieval papacy politicized Western Christianity with creeping secular claims within the old universal structure of the Church. But what Reformation politicization does is fragment that old universal Christendom into something akin to the developing patchwork of states. From folding the secular into the sacred order to reconfiguring the sacred after the emerging secular order.

Max Andersen, Danish reformed church service led by Peder Palladius, Danish Reformation Monument, 1943, bronze, in front of Copenhagen Cathedral

According to the link, Palladius was one of the first Danish bishops and a theology who prepared a liturgy in Danish language.

The “what kind of Christian” distinction that the Reformation introduces overlays differences in material national culture. Not perfectly, but somewhat in alignment. This means we we have to think of metaphysical and cultural difference as not interchangeable but interacting. Synergistic. And the last remaining binary thinkers have left the building. Which is good, because this is bringing us around to art - how culture expresses itself - and that's no country for binary thought.

Remember the basic formula for the art of the West - itself a correspondence with the relations of the Ontological Hierarchy.

Art is hard to define concisely because it crosses levels of reality. The Logos + Techne - L+T - definition we use combines some aspect of abstract truth with material skill.

Beauty has a relationship to Truth in an abstract way, though art doesn't have to be beautiful to convey truth.

In the art of Christendom, the logos was Christianity and the techne whatever the local material culture. We saw in our medieval art posts that not all art from that period was explicitly religious - especially in the courtly refinements of the International Gothic. Religious themes are also packaged with other ideological shadings. But when talking about the Reformation and counter-Reformation and art, the subject is inherently Christian. And the ideological framing lets us see how this explicit politicization of Christianity plays out.

Harmen Steenwyck, Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life, about 1640, oil on oak, National Gallery, London

The vanitas type takes the Dutch interest in realistic observation and turns it into a metaphor for the transience of life and futility of worldly values. One that doesn't violate proscriptions on overt religious art.

This double nature – art expresses absolute values, but filtered through material subjective lenses - makes it rhetorically potent. What is considered Truth is supplemented with contextual modifiers. As the culture and its values change, so does the art. This can be deliberate propaganda, and/or more general cultural perspective, but in any case it does two things.

1. Historically, art lets us see the values of past elites.

First, consider who is calling the shots. Art reflects culture, but it is paid for by individuals in that culture. A better way to put it might be art reflects the cultural vision of the elites. Art takes resources and public art requires control over public space. The Church and aristocracy were the traditional donor classes who put up the money and chose the artists. So we see the vision that they wanted to promulgate. Sometimes the primary motivation is pure aestheticism. But there is always messaging.

Heinrich Aldegrever after Hans Holbein the Younger, Death and the Bishop, from The Power of Death (Allegory of Original Sin and Death), 1541, engraving

A print based on Protestant convert Holbein's take on the Dance of Death. The main subject is the same as the vanitas still-life above - momento mori or remember death.Worldly titles, positions, and achievements are futile since we all die, so focus on the fate of the soul.

But the choice of a bishop directs the warning to the hierarchy of the Church - the gradations of priesthood that were considered sacramental by Catholics and useless idolatry by the Protestants. Note how the skeleton's hourglass resembles the contentious Host of the Eucharist. The real presence was a massive debate between the two sides, and here it is subtly positioned as a worldly trapping and not a theophany necessary to salvation.

So basic truth about the mortality of the body and immortality of the soul supplemented with a polemical Protestant contextual frame.

Then there is the issue of the artists. A logos-facing artistic culture is competitive on quality grounds. The most celebrated artists command the highest prices and usually work for the richest clients on the most prestigious projects. Since the best artists are the most influential, the development of technique and style is linked through them to the ideology of the elites. To the point where the most esteemed artists often have access to elite culture and adopt its values themselves.

Take someone like Rubens - the preeminent painter of the Flemish counter-Reformation and one of the pioneers of the Baroque style. HIs influence on other artists came from his paintings and drawings, but the content of those also convey the values of the elites who commissioned them.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Raising of the Cross, 1610, oil on canvas, Antwerp Cathedral

Rubens' central panel from his magisterial altarpiece was a synthesis of his study of Italian art from Michelangelo's heroic anatomy to Caravaggio's light and shadow, with Venetian color and dynamism and his native Netherlandish naturalism.

The triumphalism and pathos reflects the resurgent spirit of the Church in the early 17th century, including the reaffirmation of grand Passion imagery over altars for devotional purposes.

2. Art projects elite cultural values onto the visual imagination of the time.

That's the role of the art within its own context. Art gives visual form to ideas, sometimes totally novel forms that are powerfully rhetorically compelling. A new way of visualizing something teaches people to see it in those terms. The old once seen, can't be unseen. If Raphael paints a celebrated papal miracle with the appearance of Leo X Medici, he combines a historical reference to the divine sanction of the Church hierarchy with the current pope in a single image.

Raphael, The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila, 1513-1514, fresco, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City

Technically, the date of Raphael's grand papal apartment slightly predates the onset of the Reformation, but it captures the ideology that the counter-Reformation will reaffirm. It's an early Christian miracle story that presents the meeting between the Pope Leo I and Attila the Hun in 452 as a miraculous repulsion of the invader. According to the story, Saints Peter and Paul appeared in the sky and drove off Attila's army. This brings together ideas of the divine legitimation of the papacy, the cult of the saints as intercessors, the continuity of the current Church with its early Christian origins - all ideas that will be cornerstones of counter-Reformation thought.

Now look at the 5th-century pontiff...

That's the current pope and Raphael's friend and client Pope Leo X Medici. With the contemporary papal court. The miraculous historical encounter isn't just affirmed in a papal-friendly way, it connects that long-ago event with the current pope. You are to understand Leo X as essentially the same as the sainted namesake, Leo I.

That Raphael was a close friend of Leo is indicative of the status artists could obtain and their adoption of the elite world view.

The idea that popular visual media projects elite world views onto the public hasn't really changed.

Other than the quality.

The Reformation registers artistically on a couple of levels. The traditional structures and venues of art production and display transform and elite messaging changes. The nature of the material sign and the content of those signs.

The best way to put it is that the technical execution - techne - in Christian L+T changed with circumstances, but the logos was more or less consistent. With the Reformation, the nature of the logos changes as well. Meaning that understanding art means multiple moving pieces - different national cultures and types of Christianity working together in a shifting political landscape. As art expresses culture, this is the perfect expression of the ontological Frankenstein's Monster that is the early modern nation-state.

Gerard ter Borch, The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 1648, oil on copper, Rijksmuseum

The Spanish-Dutch peace treaty that ended their 80 years of war and recognized the political independence and religious identity of the Dutch United Provinces.

Politics, ethnos, and religion all smashed into one entity is a perfect prelude to the Flatland mythologies that will shepherd in the inversions of the modern world. All that's missing are the retarderies of Enlightenment "rationalism", but that's the thing about slippery slopes into the Abyss - they're incremental until they aren't.

The confounder to taking art as cultural evidence is the rising concept of "Art" as a thing in itself - with it's own distinct theoretical identity. This is something we saw emerge in our Renaissance Italy posts that came out of humanist culture. Similar ideas begin to creep into Northern European art around 1500, starting with German polymath Albrecht Dürer. It starts with theoretical attitudes - unsurprisingly artist Dürer was attracted to the greater prestige of artists in Italian culture than his own - but spreads into formal influence too.

Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait with Fur-Trimmed Robe, 1500, oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek

The style isn't Italianate - the detail is pure Northern empirical realism. But by patterning himself after the Holy Face, Dürer makes a not-so-subtle connection between the divine Logos and the artist as creators. Likening artistic creation to Creation claims a status for artists far above the old craftsman. This elevated status is a humanistic Italian idea

Dürer actually spent time in Venice where he absorbed humanist ideas and artistic techniques. His work there included an altarpiece that combines the Venetian sacre conversazione format of Madonna and Child surrounded with saints in a landscape with northern colors and setting.

Albrecht Dürer, Feast of the Rosary, 1506, oil on panel, National Gallery, Prague

We can't go into him in more detail, but Dürer is an important figure in the development of Northern art. Not only for the transmission of Italian ideas, but his interest in empirical observation - including naturalism and perspective study - that has drawn comparisons with Leonardo.

The influence of Italian art and ideas will eventually lead into Northern "Romanism" - a movement based on incorporating these into a Northern framework. We'll touch on it a bit more at the end, but here's a good example of a French-speaking painter active in Antwerp who was an early adopter of Italian influences.

Jan Gossaert, Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, 1520, oil on panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Clearly not a Protestant theme - the legend that Luke was an artist legitimized the use of religious art and the cult of the saints as transmitted through medieval sources. The figure types and bright colors are right out of Netherlandish art, but the classical architecture is an Italian humanist import.

The decision to embrace or ignore Italian Renaissance concepts of art complicates the clear reflection of national culture and religion. A lot of overlapping factors - Northern/Protestant and Southern/Catholic art. Reformation and counter-Reformation. National subdivisions occur within that - Italian art differs from Spanish and Central European Catholic art. Dutch, German, and English all have differences. Even in the prosperous Netherlands, there’s a religious split between Protestant Dutch and Catholic Flemish art. Then the reactions to Italy.

There's no way to cover all that in a post or two, and we don't want to lose the Reformation thread that we've been talking about. So the rest of this post will look at the Netherlandish artists who follow what we looked at in the last art post. The art scene that divides into the Dutch and Flemings.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, oil on oak, National Gallery, London

Late medieval Flanders is similar to Italy at the same time - rich cities and erudite culture. This famous painting was commissioned from Van Eyck from a wealthy Lucchese merchant in Bruges. Arnolfini's presence in Flanders is typical of the links between it and Tuscany.

The art, as we saw was very different - an art of careful observation and symbolic content in oil.

One place where Tuscany wasn't like Flanders was in art. The interlocking development of theory and virtuosity over the 15th and into the 16th century in Italy doesn't really take off in the north. There is a developing humanistic culture, but it doesn't turn to art in the same way. There's no equivalent to the systematic linear perspective that idealizes the representation of the real world. And without the proximity to Rome, there isn't the same consuming interest in antiquity that is so influential on Italian art and theory.

Quinten Metsys, The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Four Angels, between 1493-1497, oil on oak wood, National Gallery

Flemish painter Metsys is still operating in that International Gothic favored idiom that we saw goes back to Van Eyck at the turn of the 16th century. The angels, figure types, Gothic throne are all examples of this.

The lack of early classical influence is most clear in sculpture. There is little development of marble and bronze sculpture – relief or in the round - in the Netherlands, or northern Europe in general. There's plenty of carving through the Middle Ages, just not the Italian concept of sculpture built on ancient premises and models. Overall, Northern Renaissance sculpture was a less significant and innovative medium than painting.

The Flight into Egypt, around 1515, oak, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Germans are more celebrated for their wood carving but the Flemings produced similar. This is typical of the many sculptures that resemble figures from paintings.

Element of a wall tabernacle, around 1520, limestone with polychrome decorations, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Netherlandish stone carving obviously existed on tombs and in churches like this one. But the willingness to paint figures and the International Gothic stylings of the figures and setting differentiate it from its Italian Renaissance counterparts.

The Madonna is a common type often called the schone or beautiful Madonna.

Northern Renaissance painting was where the main innovations took place. This was an art of oil paint – bright colors and fine detail in a mode established by Van Eyck and Van der Weyden in the previous century. If we want a general comparison with 15th-century Italy, intensely empirical vs. more theoretical works. The big distinction is idealized Italian perspective vs. Northern observation of anecdotal detail. The oil paint adds bright, jewel-like color that can be almost lurid in religious art.

The interest in observed detail - and comparable disinterest in classical idealism - means certain things appear in Netherlandish art first – genre scenes or scenes of everyday life, landscape, and still-life painting. These can have Christian content but are easily adapted to Protestant attitudes towards overt religious subject matter by shifting to allegory. These will become the types of art favored by affluent Dutch Protestants in what is known as the Golden Age of Dutch Realism (c.1600-80).

Lucas van Leyden, The Card Players, between 1494–1533, oil on panel, Mellerstain House

Genre scenes depict "everyday life" - not religious, historic, or literary subjects. They often look at lower class or dodgy behavior, sometimes for comic or voyeuristic reasons.

There is often a moralizing aspect to genre painting.

Genre scenes raise the issue of the difference between the buyers and the people depicted. This sort of non-religious, non-aristocratic art is the result of a developing new clientele in the Netherlandish cities. These are the affluent urbanites arising from the burgeoning economy who didn't have palaces or lavish chapels to decorate, but could afford paintings. The sort of people who might not be tavern gamblers but could enjoy such a scene for any number of reasons - either moral messaging and/or entertainment.

Sometimes the moralizing is overt...

Quinten Metsys, The Moneylender and his Wife, 1514, oil on panel, Louvre Museum

This genre scene delivers a direct moral message to a deeply religious society dealing with the materialist consequences of rising wealth. Note how the wife ignores her prayer book to focus on the money. Symbolic items in the background - like the apple of the Fall - clarify the message.

Marinus van Reymerswaele, The Moneychanger and His Wife, 1539, oil on panel, Museo del Prado

The Durch van Reymerswaele painted several variations on this subject of the evils of worldly obsession.

The extinguished candle in the background add a direct momenti mori message like a vanitas painting.

Peasant behavior was popular among the urban art market. The Netherlands were the most urbanized part of Europe in the 16th century, making the rural unfamiliar and interesting. There's a familiar tendency to present country people as goofy and/or immoral - either for amusement, moral instruction, feelings of smug superiority, or all of the above.

Pieter Aertsen, The Egg Dance, 1552, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum

Festive preparations for carnival and a comic look at the assumed disorderly nature of country life.

The Dutch Aertsen introduced a weird composite art type that combined elements of still-life and genre painting to moralize on prosperity. This tension between increasing material wealth and Christian values will become a recurring theme through the 17th century - at least until materialist inversion becomes the ethos of the West. There is an irony in commenting on the moral danger of wealth in painting - itself a pure luxury object that had only recently fallen into the reach of a significant percentage of the public.

The abundance of the butcher's stall is viscerally striking. But in the background, the Holy Family gives alms on their way to Egypt. The contrast between contemporary materialism and Biblical values is clear. Note how the overflowing meat overshadows Jesus and his parents.

Pieter Aertsen, A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms, 1551, oil on panel, North Carolina Museum of Art

The independent landscape is another type of painting that emerges in the 16th century before really taking off in the 17th. Landscape scenes had been primarily backgrounds prior, but in the work of the Flemish Joachim Patinir and the German Albrecht Altdorfer start to becomes their own subjects. Why isn't 100 percent certain, but it's likely another reaction to urbanization, at least in part. Early 16th-century landscapes tend to still have some ostensive mythic or religious subject matter, but overshadowed by the sweeping view that is the real subject.

Here's an early example from Patinir with a few standard features. The high foreground allows for a view of tremendous depth with a bluish hue to suggest the effects of distance on sight. It is an early form of atmospheric perspective. The vast panorama is called a "world landscape".

Joachim Patinir, Landscape with Saint Jerome, from 1516 until 1517, oil on panel, Museo del Prado

Here, the titular story is St. Jerome, but apart from the odd rocks, there's not much to suggest his desert setting. The scene is more suggestive of a fantastical Netherlandish context - presumably to appeal to and connect the story with the purchasing public. The landscape works a bit differently in this next one...

Joachim Patinir, Crossing the River Styx, between 1520 and 1524, oil on panel, Museo del Prado Blue

This subject here is drawn from classical myth - a sign of the humanistic interests in the North as well as the South. But it is Christianized to an extent - sort of like the use of Charon of Dante but configured differently. The two sides of the river correspond to the moral balance of a Last Judgment, with one side a heavenly place full of angels and the other a fiery hellscape. This turns the landscape into a momento mori by presenting the viewer with the posthumous choice that matters.

It's the ability to add a Christian, moralizing message that makes the new forms like still life and landscape appealing to Protestants opposed to religious art.

Messaging in a Northern landscape can also be more overtly political. Take a look at the most spectacular of Renaissance world landscapes by the German Altdorfer. Here, the battle between Alexander the Great and Darius is used as a metaphor for a Christian Europe under threat from the Ottoman Turks.

Albrecht Altdorfer, The Battle of Alexander at Issus, 1529, oil on lime, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

There's nothing else quite like this. The incredible detail of the armies in the foreground through the German Renaissance town behind to the cosmic landscape in the background. The armies are outfitted in 16th-century armor and kit to make the connection between the Greek-Persian and European-Ottoman conflict obvious.

Detail continues into the misty blue atmospheric perspective of the world landscape. Like these ships and harbor by a mountainous delta.

Altdorfer included this amazing floating plaque against the turbulent sky to announce the subject matter.

The artist who stands out as the pivotal creator of the Netherlandish Renaissance would have to be Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569). Nominally a Catholic, his work is unorthodox and seems more reflective of the religious turbulence of Reformation-era Netherlands. Scholars have struggled to pin down what he actually believed, and his sophisticatedly-rendered peasant scenes don't seem to correspond to any one position. Natural rhythms of life coexist with folk wisdom and demonic threat in a body of work that defies simple classification.

Take a look at the apocalyptic horror of the Triumph of Death. A momento mori without hope of salvation where skeletal armies slaughter man and vegetation alike without quarter or check.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, 1562, oil on panel, Museo del Prado

There are elements of genre and landscape - mashing up categories is typical of Bruegel - but the skeletal depravity and massacre are the preeminent theme. There are different theories for this - some link the carnage to the wars of religion that had begun to ravage the countryside. Others see it as God's vengeance on the worldly fixations of unrecondite sinners whose actions have chosen the path of destruction. The masses being herded into the giant coffin-abattoir on the right support this reading. But ultimately, the meaning - if there is one meaning - is a mystery.

It's worth noting that Hieronymus Bosch - the earlier Flemish Renaissance master who influenced Bruegel - took pessimistic views of human prospects. His Haywain triptych uses the metaphor of the cart for the human path from a Fallen Creation through worldly sin and debauchery to fiery damnation. Demons pour into the world in the Creation scene on the left even before humanity appears. Note the tiny figure of Jesus ignored at the top of the center panel and the lone angel on the wagon in prayer...

Hieronymus Bosch, The Haywain Triptych, around 1516, oil on panels, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Whether this is a direct influence on Bruegel is hard to say. But there is definitely a strain of furious eschatological pessimism visible to us through Netherlandish Renaissance art. It's inconceivable that this doesn't relate somehow to the tensions and impulses leading to and driving the Reformation.

Bruegel's main contributions to Northern art fall in several areas. Not surprising given the hybrid nature of his subjects. He is the central figure in transforming the landscape innovations of Patinir and Altdorfer into something approaching modern landscape painting. And his careful observations of everyday life treat genre subjects with the skilled seriousness of traditional high culture subjects. These set the stage for Dutch art in the 17th century. Look at The Harvesters, one of several of a group of paintings reflecting on times of year.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565, oil on wood

Peasants cut hay and break for a meal while the Dutch landscape stretches into the distance. There is nothing, comic, condescending, or moralizing - other than perhaps valuing work and community in harmony with the rhythms of the natural world. Bruegel uses what will be a standard landscape painting technique of creating the impression of a vista by combining distanced views that drop off from a high foreground. The harvesters are up front, then back and below is a middle ground with a roadway, wagon, fields, and town, then a distant view behind that. Together, these make it seem like the picture stretches back into real distance.

The same technique and mix of painting types occurs in Bruegel's most famous painting - another in the times of year group.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on oak wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum

In this winter scene, Bruegel again combines everyday life with landscape and even captures the feeling of frozen air. It's packs anecdotal details from genre scenes in a sweeping view into far distance. Compare it to The Harvesters and you can see the same basic approach to structure. High foreground with the main figures dropping down and back into further views. And in both we have pretty much straight landscape and genre - no religious or mythic story like in the Patinirs.

A glimpse at that detail with people playing winter sports and games on the frozen water.

This is that interest in observation and anecdotal detail that distinguished the Netherlandish Renaissance from the Italisn.

Here's one more Bruegel to get away from landscape and look at the serious technical treatment of what would not traditionally be considered a serious subject.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Peasant Wedding, 1566-69, oil on panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum

A humble scene with a complex perspective that carries attention around and back. The bride is in the middle in front of the green cloth.

Bruegel's impact is felt all over Northern Renaissance art. Here are a couple of obvious examples.

Gillis Mostaert, Village Feast, 1590, Gemäldegalerie

Mostaert combines the diagonally aligned feasting table from The Peasant Wedding with a deep landscape filled with anecdotal genre details.

And Gillis van Conixloo's stages his early Baroque drama with Bruegel's high foreground and staged views curving into distance. He adds a mythic story and creates a more fantastical landscape, but look past the details at the basic structure and Bruegel is easy to see.

Gillis van Coninxloo, Landscape with the Judgement of Paris, end of 16th century, oil on panel, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Even the more realistic, if poetically expressive - landacapes of the Protestant Dutch Golden Age derive from this. But that's a story for a later arts of the West post.

Jan van Goyen, Sandy Road with a Farmhouse, 1627, oil on wood

As for the Reformation itself...

Religious differences enhance the political divide of the Netherlands into Flemish and Dutch art. The Catholic Flemings continue with the traditional Catholic religious subjects.

Joos van Cleve, The Annunciation, 1525, oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The homey interior and figure styles reflect back on the early Netherlandish Renaissance of a century earlier. It's not that Protestants rejected the concept of the Annunciation, but religious art emphasizing Marian subjects wit traditional miraculous trappings were too close to the cult of the Virgin Mary.

Obviously ornate altars were not popular with the Protestants - even those not outright opposed to art in general. The bright colors and figure types carry older conventions over, but the classical details in the architecture show the influence of Renaissance humanism.

Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Adoration of the Magi triptych, 1520-1525, oil on panel, private

Pieter Pourbus was a leading mid-16th-century Flemish artist who continued painting traditional religious subjects.

Pieter Pourbus, The van Belle Tryptich (Our Lady of Sorrows) (central panel), 1556, oil on panel, St. James Church, Bruges

The focus on the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin is a Catholic devotional subject with medieval roots. There wasn't anything like this being produced for Protestant clients.

Before the Reformation, Antwerp had relpaced Bruges as the commercial and artistic center of the Netherlands. After the Reformation, the Protestant Holland will surpass Catholic Flanders economically, and the city goes into eclipse. But the last great artistic flowering of Catholic Antwerp was still to come in the person of the Flemish Rubens - the great painter of the counter-Reformation and the early Baroque courts of Europe.

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop, The Assumption of the Virgin, around 1616, oil on canvas, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

Traditional Marian subject matter in Rubens' dynamic style. Among other things, he revolutionized art production with a huge workshop that produced paintings in an almost assembly line style.

But that's for a future post...

On the Protestant side, art is curtailed overall, but more specific responses vary. We've seen how the outright rejection of religious art would spur the growth of new genres into new directions. But some Protestants - the later Luther in particular - were not completely averse to religious images. The art doesn't fill the Churches as it will in Catholic contexts, and the subjects reflect Protestant dogmas and more direct and personal relationships with Jesus. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) who knew and painted Luther and other important figures in the early Reformation is a good example of a Protestant artist.

Here's a didactic allegory that emphasizes the importance of grave through faith in salvation - and not the Law of the Jews or good works of the Catholics.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Allegory of Law and Grace, after 1529, painting on beech wood, Germanisches Nationalmuseum

On the left, the Fall. Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of Knowledge releasing sin and death to prey on mankind while God is remote in heaven. The elders with their book of Law are unable to help. On the right, the Crucifixion opens the way to salvation while the Risen Christ slays the symbolic dragon representing evil. In the background, the Annunciation to Mary indicates the Incarnation without emphasizing Marian devotion and the Paschal Lamb stands at the foot of the Cross.

Cranach was inexplicably popular in the court of Saxony court and environs, producing more humanistic themed works as well. Like this mythic scene with a lovely setting but filled with the weird lumpy ugly people that were typical in his work.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Golden Age, around 1530, oil on panel, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design

Imagine paying for this when Italy existed...

Cranach's son Lucas the Younger followed in his father's footsteps producing art for Protestant patrons, including versions of the Elder's inexplicably popular designs. This piece is an original with a lot of Protestant features - the connection between the individual and Christ's sacrifice and the setting in a contemporary context.

Lucas Cranach the Younger, Portrait of Georg Cracow and Family, 1563, Stadtkirche Wittenberg

We suppose it's more commemorative than devotional. A family portrait that captures their faith, affluence, and likenesses.

On the topic of inexplicable popularity, we should at least mention Hans Baldung - a student of Altdorfer who became a Protestant and moved from traditional into bizarre subjects. There are numerous pictures of witches in his work that we won't bother with. Here's a momento mori that reminds us life is fleeting and youthful beauty ephemeral.

Hans Baldung Grien, The Three Ages of Man and Death, between 1541 and 1544, oil on panel, Museo del Prado

The child, young woman, crone, and death are easy to interpret. Note the hourglass death holds with the circular top that resembles the Eucharist. A possible anti-Catholic slant? Can't say for sure. The owl is a strange touch with its traditional associations with the occult. Is he suggesting this also leads to death?

One thing we can say is that the German psycho-sexual fetishization of grotesque oddities isn't strictly a 20th-century thing...

The final thing that we mentioned at the beginning is the continuing influence of Italian art - either acceptance or rejection. Bruegel had been to Italy and was aware of their advanced technique, but clearly rejected Renaissance classical idealism in his works. Whether this was for personal or political reasons is impossible for us to say, but it speaks to consciousness of cultural difference.

Other artists attempted to fold Italianate influence into their work in different ways. There were some possibilities for direct exposure at home. The first Michelangelo to leave Italy was acquired by a wealthy cloth merchant from Bruges in 1504. It's a simplified version of the classicism of his famous Pieta and totally different from anything Netherlandish.

Michelangelo, Bruges Madonna, 1501–1504, marble, Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk, Bruges

Prints circulated widely. And more artists made the same sort of trip Dürer did as the fame of the High Renaissance achievements spread.

Jan van Scorel was an early example of the so-called Romanists. These artists either studied in Italy or at least brought Italian motifs and techniques to their work. Here's a three-quarter posed figure against a landscape that is based on the new arrangements of Leonardo and Raphael. The rocky setting is northern - reminiscent of Patinir. Italian influence isn't painting in an imitative style as much as degrees of influence on an existing one.

Jan van Scorel, Mary Magdalene, around 1530, oil on oak wood, Rijksmuseum

The figure type and pose looks more Italianate classical than the weird ugly Northern Renaissance version. There's no organic connection to the setting - it has the look of someone against a green screen.

Maerten van Heemskerck actually spent quite a bit of time in Rome where he fell under the spell of classical antiquity and Michelangelo. As a Dutch Catholic he had no religious objections to the artistic culture of Italy and absorbed a mix of humanistic ideas and the imaginative hypertrophic anatomy that Michelangelo introduced. These powerful figures in elaborate and creative poses were a big component of the movement known as Mannerism that we will consider in the next arts of the West post. For now, here's one example of Heemskerck's mix of Netherlandish color and observation with a classical subject and Michelangelo's posed nudes.

Maerten van Heemskerck, The Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, between circa 1536 and circa 1537, oil on oak wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Italian Mannerism was a reaction to the accomplishments of the High Renaissance covered in earlier posts. It took the idealized forms and turned them into self-conscious displays of design that exaggerated Michelangelo and Raphael into "mannered" artistic creations. As we'll see, this can become overly stylized, detached from clear meaning, even ugly. The reaction against Mannerism in Italy corresponds to the efforts to reform religious art in the counter-Reformation and leads into the wonders of the Baroque. But that's for next time.

Here's a look at some late Dutch Mannerism. Note the lack of coherent setting, complex figural poses, irrational lighting and arrangement and overall sense of contrivance.

Abraham Bloemaert, Apollo and Diana Punishing Niobe by Killing her Children, 1591, Statens Museum for Kunst

That's enough for the convoluted cultural landscape in the age of Reformation. We could go on with more examples, but the point of a post like this is to trace out the big issues. What we wanted to do was think about the relationship between art and the overlapping spheres that come into play with the fragmentation of Christendom without getting sucked into theological digressions. And they do overlap.

1. Fragmented Christianity becomes connected to cultural identity and it all gets subordinated to the Flatland political structure of the emerging nation-state. This is a fundamental category error that advances down the path towards the self-immolating materialist fantasies - and rejection of metaphysics - that doomed the modern world.

2. The interplay of politicizing religion and nationality plays out in the shape of the contemporary arts. Art visualizes culture, and as culture sinks into the flux of collapsing ontology, the art echoes that.

3. Art itself also layers on its own developing theoretical self-consciousness. This independence is what will eventually lead to modern retardery like "autonomy" and other rejections of higher purpose that cuts it off from first logos and then techne. Without that, there is no slide into the atavistic abyss of cultural destruction.

The next two posts will deal with two other ongoing themes - implications of the House of Lies and the initial dive into Christopher Langan's CTMU. Then we'll be back to the arts of the West to look at the counter-Reformation and the transformation of Italian culture.

Caravaggio, The Entombment of Christ, between 1602-1604, Vatican Museums

Approaching the Colossus

2022-04-17T07:30:00.001-07:00

We've mentioned looking into Christopher Langan’s CTMU reality theory on a few occasions. This post will introduce that project.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Image adapted from Colossus by Alex Olmedo.

There are a few things to consider before examining Christopher Langan and his CTMU (Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe) reality theory. It represents a singular challenge for us and is not something done lightly or in a single post. This will lay out those considerations - the whats and whys as well as our own relevant strengths and limitations. The Band usually avoids being explicitly personal, but that same singular challenge forces us to be more self-conscious for reasons that will be clear. After this post, there is some scheduled business to attend to before returning to Langan and the CTMU. Another installment to the arts of the West and a wrap up the recent tour of the House of Lies with some implications. But by then we should have finished enough of our long-running preparation to come back around and get into the CTMU directly.

Start with who Chris Langan is, what his reality theory is, and why the Band is interested in looking at it. The first two lead into the second – his intellectual profile as world's smartest man and the ambitious nature of his project make it a formidable challenge to the Band’s essentially Christian world view. Click for a link to the main CTMU paper that we are working from.

That relatively few people can even understand the CTMU makes this more important to address. The opacity lends a mystique to the theory that isn’t Langan’s apparent goal – in our experience he is as direct as his material allows – but exists all the same. Not being able to read it means not being able to assess it. This is apparent in the whiffing of his critics, whose dismissals reveal their own comprehension limits and will be addressed in a moment. But it also means that those not given to triggered gamma self-immolation can't determine how it relates to their own beliefs either. Awareness that someone of Langan's ability has declared a conclusive answer to the nature of reality becomes more rhetorically potent if that answer is unreadable. We propose to read it.

That gets to the challenges his thought presents for us, and how we can work around them. The CTMU is Langan's signature achievement, and that same intellectual profile that gives him his credibility eclipses our not insignificant cognitive abilities. This means our reading cannot claim to be definitive, nor can we comfortably second guess Langan's intentions. Unavoidable artifacts of being eclipsed...

But challenges also bring benefits. Engaging the CTMU forces us to push our limits and stretch our thoughts in unfamiliar ways. A recent post on parameterizing the concept of church over time would not have occurred to us without reading Langan. Likewise the addition of deontology to our Ontological Hierarchy. Before we start, we expect to further refine our ontological hierarchy as a way of visualizing basic relationships of reality as broadly conceived. Even our definition of reality emerges as something in need of clarity.

Plus it’s really interesting. The inherent challenges of the CTMU means it gets way less attention than it deserves. If we can remedy that in our small way, then we should.

Take the "conspansion" diagrams from the linked CTMU paper. This refers to how objects and events "shrink" internally through the parametric production of future states within present ones over time. So that the universe appears to expand relationally. Con-spansion - simultaneous contraction and expansion.

The mechanism of conspansion is akin to how further defining a set simultaneously increases the number of elements while attributively contracting the range of possibilities. This is an important aspect of Langan's conception of the universe as reflexively self-fashioning, and it's derivation is typical of how he melds knowledge domains.

Langan is someone we’ve mentioned on a few occasions. He's sometimes billed as the smartest man in the world, and with an IQ that may top 200, there’s no point quibbling with the provability of that claim. It’s certainly close enough to give an accurate indication of the scope of his intellect. Just reading his CTMU and contemplating it in its totality is sufficient corroboration of his cognitive profile.

The numbers may not be exact. But it puts things into perspective.

To be fair, that is a flacid definition of genius at the top. The Band defines genius as intelligence plus accomplishment. High ceiling and something memorable achieved with it.

We are not interested in debating whether the CTMU is a work of genius-level accomplishment - it may well be. But his pure cognitive firepower is overwhelming. The conceptual shifts, complexity of integrated structure, intensity of information density... The sheer scale and integrated scope of his vision - if you can see it - is awesome.

The Band realizes that the masses tend to be most impressed with mental feats, and he has plenty of those in his bio.

But Rain Man-type savants also perform amazing mental feats and no one really cares about their opinions otherwise. Let alone looking to them for theories on the nature of reality. And that raises the central problem for Langan’s public profile and the related lack of attention on the CTMU. He's too intelligent for most of his critics to even grasp what he's saying.

This is where the comprehension gap comes in – the inability to meaningfully communicate or comprehend beyond a certain difference in intelligence.

The comprehension gap problem is exacerbated for Langan by the Dunning-Kruger effect, the related currency of false authority that makes up "academic expertise", and Vox Day's socio-sexual hierarchy. The first refers to the tendency of the mildly clever to think of themselves as much smarter than they are. And since they can't meaningfully "see" past the comprehension gap, they can't perceive their own limitations. This is endemic in university where such midwits obtain mastery of some "discipline" - itself a flawed silo that at best partly represents aspects of reality - and confuse it for actual comprehensive understanding. Like physicists blathering about numerological solutions to questions of existential origins. Highly proficient within a certain disciplinary silo, but too limited to see either the intrinsic limits of themselves - or their silo - for the problem at hand.

An IQ of 130 is pretty rare. Most physicians don't have one. Neither does the average professor. It's also inadequate for the sort of theorizing that the Band does. Let alone the likes of Langan.

Vox Day's socio-sexual hierarchy is an immensely useful concept that we've posted on before. The comprehension gap problem is compounded by the extraordinary number of gammas in that midwit zone and in the appeal to "scientific authority" camp. Not only can they not perceive the difference between modern institutional scientific presuppositions and the scientific method, their entire fake self-perception of "genius" is predicated on the misperception.

When confronted with things outside their little silos that contradict their assumptions, retarded ironic defensive rage ensues. And they mentally and psychologically can't see it.

Langan's combination of incomprehensible intelligence, embrace of physicality, and complete disdain for credentialed authority is a trifecta of gamma triggers elevated to Platonic Form tier.

Here's a perfect example of a not all that bright gamma taking issue with the idea of the communication gap. Click for a link. This gamma's certainly not a 130 - probably closer to slightly above average. A 110 perhaps. Note how the headline promises a "myth" before moving into a tepid appeal to methodology as the metric of reality. It ends in a quibble, conceding to common sense that intelligence gaps impede communication "but that this always does happen once a specific difference in IQ points is reached seems doubtful”. We can't guarantee a precise magic number... is a conclusion considerably different from the impression given by the headline. And almost certainly by design since a journal knows better than most that more people skim headlines than process articles. Being well more than 2 SD north of said gamma, we'd guess the motivation is a mix of misunderstanding and butt hurt.

Imagine what Langan has to deal with...

Perhaps we can rephrase.

It is impossible for much smarter people to discuss smart things with significantly less smart people. And painful to learn through experience that they can’t.

This is neither arrogance nor insult, any more that noting a giraffe can see further than a porcupine. IQ has some inexactitude that comes with any assignment of a precise number for a multifaceted attribute. But differences in overall cognitive ability are painfully clear. If this is troubling or upsetting, that’s a measure of not being that smart. If they were smarter, it would be as obvious as sunrise. The alternative model is the midget opining emphatically on a shelf he can't see.

Drop below a certain point and metaphoric thinking isn't possible.

If that's not the case, it's easy to grasp with a visual metaphor - the big one doesn't fit in the little ones.

The two standard deviations difference in IQ, or about 30 is a rough measure, not "mythic". IQ is a general summation while individuals have aptitude peaks and valleys within that. In some areas they overperform and in others underperform. Nor does it mean that no communication is possible – the Band has shared basic information and instruction across about a 6 SD gap or ~90 points. What is means is that beyond a certain gap, unfiltered full capacity of thought isn’t meaningful communicable. The composite frame of reference, interlocking conclusions, shifting secondary implications, and conditional consequences can’t be cogently grasped. The person on the upper side of the gulf has to slow down and simplify, and this isn’t intuitive either.

Some perspective.

We aren't just blathering. At peak, the leader of the Band has tested at slightly above 4 SD over the US average of ~98.

The most generous evaluation of our absolute peak, graphically presented in maximal gamma triggering format.

Thought experiment. This is highly speculative for several reasons, but consider that an approximate range of 30-50 is applied to chimpanzees. Very approximate and not uncontroversially - species differences undermine the applicability of a human metric to a non-linguistic animal. Adding to the imprecision - the Band was a relatively late bloomer rather than a prodigy, meaning the relative gulf peaked in the later 20s. On the other hand, animals exhibit some pattern recognition, basic cause and effect logic, and reality-based learning that human FTS-2 doesn't. That skews the comparison the other way. So very generally...

If we take that as a rough marker, the gulf between us and our average classmate was at least comparable to that gulf between our average classmate and a chimp. Basic communication could be bewildering, group interests inexplicable, and over time we learned through negative reaction what and how we could say things. We also became adept at detecting thought structures and capacity in others. Fortunately, once we realized what was happening we learned quickly.

Think about that for a moment though. The need to "learn" people has nothing to do at all with psychopathic coldness. It's an illustration of how much of a factor the gap can be on interpersonal experience.

Now we instantly disengage the moment some contention or dispute reveals a limited comprehensive capacity, There's no point in continuing because it's not an issue that more information can fix. The gap also means is that someone in the middle of the bell curve becomes incapable of even recognizing extremely high intelligence. Because it falls outside their ability to process or comprehend. They can't think it, so they can't "see" it. The highly intelligent can be shocked at what registers as “smart” to the masses. That's because it has to fall within rough gap range from the average - otherwise it doesn’t register at all.

This is where mental feats come in. They seem like little bursts of mental magic totally beyond the powers of even what passes for a smart person to the masses. Ways to make the otherwise invisible register. But from our perspective, the exceptional intelligence tells are functional. Information processing speed and capacity. Working memory. Ability to combine ideas across knowledge domains to generate insights. Pattern recognition of all kinds. Logic. Learning curve and adaptability. The list goes on, but it makes the point.

Now, Chris Langan has an IQ between 2.5-3.5 SD above ours.

We had to extend the graph. And it shows. We are way outside of his gap. On the wrong side. Talking intensely with us would prove tiresome and limiting for him in significant ways. The chimp analogy starts to become uncomfortable. But the whole point of getting unusually personal and sharing out experience above was to point how widely we can see. Especially when it comes to the wide-scale associative conceptual abstraction and association we’re best at. There's tons of technical knowledge and ability that we are ignorant of, but we are not accustomed to struggling with well- presented complexity. And we can barely see what he's doing in a holistic way. Taking in his conceptual scope, intricacy and information density maxes us out in an unfamiliar ways.

No one not to the far east of the bell curve could write the CTMU.

Let alone present it as cogently as he does. We certainly couldn't have produced it. It’s all we can do to keep it in sight at times. And yes, we are aware of the charges his wording is unclear or there are too many neologisms. How else does one use language and concepts derived from disciplines to address questions that the disciplines are incapable of addressing? That's precisely what we are talking about when we bring up comprehension gaps.

Speaking of triggering...

The scope, information density, and conceptual richness are simply too much even for most smart people to hold onto. So they quibble with isolated aspects that they can grasp, while missing how those are subordinated to the larger structural logics. But “disciplines” are self-evidently insufficient on their own - otherwise they'd have answered the big ontological questions they've instead whiffed on. Most of Langan's critics can't even see the onto-epistemological limits of the disciplines they base their critiques on. That they self-actualize through. Making them incapable of the critical stance they profess to take.

Instead we hit limits of discernment and make-believe. And as any exceptionally intelligent person has experienced when "arguing" with someone who can't grasp the limitations of their frame of reference knows, the problem isn't lack of information. It's a lack of processing capacity. They can't simultaneously grasp their disciplinary silo and it's place in larger integrated infocognitive frameworks. Making a meaningful sharing of ideas impossible. If capacity limits could be surmounted, they wouldn't be... capacity limits. There's a parallel between the limits of disciplinary range and the limits of the discipline-huffers who can't see them.

But instead of recognizing limitations, beast-huffers prefer self-indicting rage over the reality that people more intellectually capable than them are aware of realities that surpass them.

A crude analogy is attempting to explain to a baby in a certain developmental stage that it doesn't become invisible when it covers its eyes. The conceptual capacity isn't there to process the necessary contextuals to grasp the why the frame of reference is inadequate.

In various interviews and other comments, Langan has expressed annoyance at being ignored by the mainstream knowledge industry. What a sham academia must be if there is no place for someone of his obvious intellect. He is correct that it is a sham, but that’s not the only issue here. He’s too smart. Consider what the Band has written about university in the beast era. Where on earth would someone 5 SD north of the professoriate even be understood? Or as the smart Bandling - the one east of us on the bell curve - pointed out, what discipline would he teach in?

This isn't the operant principle in practice that official science - Science! - actually runs on. That dances to beast narrative. Honest description or identification of what is objectively real is not at all the point.

If there is one thing Langan appears to miss about beast science, it's that the free-wheeling gonzo physics that captured his imagination in the 70s has nothing to do with academic science as an institution today. There are the odd intellectual outliers scattered hereabout. But they work in self-absorbed isolation. They certainly aren't charting the institutional course. The system itself exists to perpetuate beast narrative atop a self-evidently fake materialist onto-epistemology. It doesn't want to identify reality. So there's no place for someone who does. And the sort of self-indicting atheistic clown posturing on the internet is definitionally not one of those intellectual outliers. Meaning the [recognize the gap and disengage because it's pointless] axiom has to kick in.

The CTMU is described as a “reality theory” or theory of everything, although trying to classify it hides as much as it reveals. Most attempts at a grand theory of everything to explain the totality of reality and our existence in it start from purely materialist assumptions. This means they can never answer the question of origins in a satisfactory way and are necessarily DOA. Necessarily because the origin is the most important element. And if limited to material causality, the genesis of the material is outside the possibility of explanation.

But one miracle means no longer operating in the strictly material. And that means that the system now has to account for the role of metaphysics. Failure to do so renders the game pointless. Lucrative, and lots of titles, accolades and nice buildings, but pointless.

The pretense that a purely materialist framework can address the origins of the material makes ultimate answers impossible. Which keeps the massive institutional grift paying out until the wheels finally fall of systemically. And that means a steady market for endless flings of made-up spaghetti at the discursive wall. None of which will ever stick - because they can't - or even be remembered in a few turns of the cycle - but are good for the resume in the moment. Click for an example that is actually revealing, just of things other than claimed.

With sufficient cognitive horsepower, a pattern emerges in the materialism grift where the theorists’ primary purpose appears to be denial of human significance.

It’s a fundamentally satanic perspective where rejecting the metaphysics of Creation or the inborn sanctity of man is the goal. This invariably consists of manipulating some equations, then declaring them keys to the fundamental nature of reality. While assiduously ignoring how this structure came to be.

And believers in this mythopoeia will attack the CTMU as not being empirically verifiable or predictive...

Langan sees through this ontologically-gelded myopia instantly and set out to build the CTMU to consider the physical and the metaphysical. Including the problem of origins. But that means rejecting the entire flawed onto-epistemologial and semiotic frames that modern institutional Science! takes as starting axioms. A non-starter. And an example of being too smart for the discursive silos that make up modern academe.

Then throw in the Dunning-Kruger gammas...

The CTMU is built completely differently. It accepts certain scientific premises, but is an attempt to theorize the totality of reality by working logically from what that must entail. Given that there is a reality that we can perceive and engage in some fashion, what is necessary for that to exist? This leads him through a dizzying array of ideas and conclusions that we’ll try and break down when we engage the it directly in the posts to come.

And this gets to why we are motivated to address Langan and the CTMU. Readers of the Band know that our world view is fundamentally Christian. We do accept that there are aspects of scripture that are allegorical and limits to a fallen intellect looking at a valley of shadow through a glass darkly. But we also believe the account to be essentially True. Divinely inspired Truth, in fact. Creation, the Fall, and the necessity for redemptive sacrifice. Over the course of the Band we have reasoned to our satisfaction that what can be known logically and empirically of reality is consistent with those metaphysical aspects that are beyond our apprehension. Click for a post.

Different context but the point stands. We have no problems accepting limits of discernment and understanding. We're finite and fallen.

The CTMU acknowledges the metaphysical, but conceives of it's relationship to the material in a more continuous way that we would. It arrives at a concept of God, but with a recursive tautological account of universal self-creation that isn’t compatible with directed Christian Creation. This means that the smartest man in the world has devised a reality theory that differs from Christian dogma in significant ways but can’t be dismissed out of hand like the materialist numerology of beast Science!. A much more serious thing that it would be were it granted the academic attention Langan has mentioned. That's onto-epistemological erasure. This is much different.

Given that the Band’s motto is what can we know and how can we know it, we are almost compelled to visit such a creation. Not to try and “disprove” it – we aren’t capable of that without misrepresenting the complexity. But to ascertain how and why it differs from our Christian notion of Creation. And to see if there is anything that we can learn from the exercise.

Readers are also familiar with our Ontological Hierarchy – the graphic representation that ontology and epistemology are layered and related from a human perspective.

This is the most up-do-date version of it, with binding logos between ontological levels, the extension into self-erasure of evil, and the related epistemological and deontological tiers on the right. The need to add explicit objective morality came to us from an earlier reading of Langan. The Good, Beautiful, and True are old Platonic terms that just refer to abstract qualities of ultimate reality as it crosses into the capacity for temporally-sequenced human conceptualization.

The Ontological Hierarchy isn’t a reality theory per se because it acknowledges a noumenal or transcendent “level” that can’t be theorized beyond the necessity of its existence. Nor are the transitions between levels perfectly quantified, partly because theoretical quantification isn’t applicable to understanding all levels of reality. It’s a form of abstract epistemology that is of limited descriptive value for empirical reality and not of value at all for ultimate. This is one assumption where we diverge from Langan. Different but interrelated and tied together by Logos describes the aspects of our being-in-the-world without comprehensive theoretical unity.

We also assert that there are intrinsic limiting filters to the human ability to grasp onto-epistemological clarity.

Langan does address we're calling "the viewer’s share" – the reality that reality only exists to us in our perceptions of it. His concept of telesis implicates us in the formation of the universe as localized telic operators or telors. We would suggest that this improperly conflates representation and reality. Langan suggests the reality and representation are isomorphic to the point of conflation. More to come in later posts.

Quantum uncertainty involves a viewer’s share as well. Though there, the incompatibility between the abstract formulas and human perceptual experience suggests opposite sides of an Ontological Hierarchy divine. Or limits of discernment, where abstract quantitative reasoning fails to correspond with fallen empirical perception. Langan doesn’t differentiate between onto-epistemological levels but prioritizes logic in a single unified conception of reality. This is also something we’ll take up in detail later.

The other is something Langan doesn’t take up and yet another thing we’ll look into further. That’s the semiotic filtering – the communicative reality that our discussion of any level of reality is dependent on material signs.

Letters, numbers, and pictures. Reality may only exist to us in our perceptions, but our perceptions only exist to others in our signs. And representation is materially different from the thing represented. Even if the conceptualization that results - the mental picture - is the same.

Langan conceptualized reality in linguistic terms – not identical to human language, but an SCSPL or Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language. Where processing and configuration, syntax and content and mutually generate in total self-containment - to the point where SCSPL "linguistic" expression is perfectly homologous or identical with the reality it describes. Reality becomes infocognition - information "content" and cognitive processing "syntax" as one indivisible reciprocal reflexive self-fashioning. Where theory of reality and reality are isomorphic. What we call semiotic filtering would add that his act of theorization results in a material construct intended for readers. Is this significant?

The Ontological Hierarchy is not a reality theory because it doesn’t offer an comprehensive explicatory theoretical account of reality. It is a descriptive visualization of how reality appears to us, meaning that the viewer’s share is built in. We aren’t dependent on any philosophical model because philosophical models are inherently limiting. But if we had to find the closest analogy it would probably be phenomenological because we assume an “objective” – meaning external – reality that temporally precedes our existence in it.

Bernard Jean Corneille Pothast, A Happy Family, 20th century, oil on canvas, private

This is what we mean by “material reality”. A physical environment known empirically with apparently consistent properties that we are born into and come into consciousness in. Catch a ball, hear a noise, bump your head – all are purely material aspects of being in the material world. Infants and animals respond to physical stimuli. Before we can think, we are.

Robert Hannah, Master Isaac Newton in His Garden at Woolsthorpe, in the Autumn of 1665, 1850s, oil on canvas, The Royal Institution

Abstract thought – logic – extends thoughts beyond the purely sensorial material. This is where we hypothesize things that can’t be seen – everything from moral principles to… well… reality theory.

The Ontological Hierarchy is hierarchical because the things known abstractly that can’t be perceived directly are considered “more” true or real than the material things that can be. This is the epistemology part of onto-epistemology – the modes of knowing abstract realities are considered to be of greater truth value that the subjective and unreliable senses. Abstract reality itself is timeless and unchanging - unlike entropic, shifting material reality. This is how we get to ultimate reality as the most True and faith the most certain.

Langan recognizes that a noumenal ultimate reality in a Kantian sense is external to his logical-empirical account of reality and excluded as a result. Faith doesn’t really enter into his work.

His ultimate reality/God is the level of reality that has no ontologically or temporally prior explanation or situatedness. But he does assume that it can be adequately framed through conceptual structures of abstract human logic. And like the parameters of a set, distributes across all reality "below". Another point for closer scrutiny.

The Band perceives the levels of ontology and modes of epistemology as appropriate to their own domains. If you need to eat, material activity is more pertinent that mathematical formulas. But obviously there is overlap – mathematical formulas can lead to higher material crop yield. This means that there are continuities as well as differences along the OH. Humans themselves have aspects of all three – body, mind, spirit – despite inhabiting material space and communicating with material signs. We realize that we can be accused of a dodge - claiming not to be a reality theory lets us off the hook by leaving the connections somewhat vague. But that's also the recognition of our intrinsic limitations. We are not being clever when we sidestep ontological continuities. We aren't clever enough to fully grasp them.

Another motivation behind looking at the CTMU is to see how someone much smarter addresses some of these questions. The hope is that it may clarify and refine our own descriptive efforts.

Then there is the issue of temporality.

Empirically, time seems basically linear – we are born, days pass, we age, days pass, we die. Consciousness begins and ends. Whatever happens after is after. Temporally sequenced.

The problem emerges when we attempt do translate the experience of time into the semiotics of abstract quantification. The language of math.

Physicists can show that mathematically, time is neither constant nor theoretically linear.

Higher dimensions likewise allow for the possibility that our perception of temporal linearity is a limit of our three-dimensional existence. And yet...

Sequencing still happens. The theory postdates the theorist. The world precedes the perception of it. We don’t exist materially prior to birth. After birth, we do. We are small before we are big. And any creation is preceded by its creator. These are material facts of existence. And any string of numbers or printouts that say otherwise are a) largely irrelevant to material existence and b) things that come into existence after the person who created them.

Thought experiment.

Yahoo Serious, Young Einstein British Quad Movie poster, 1987; Salvador Dali, Profile of Time, conceived in 1977, first cast in 1984, bronze

Consider the paradoxical results of material-abstract relations with theorizing the relativity of time as an example. The physicist has to appear before the theory. Therefore time either exists objectively and prior to the physicist with extant properties awaiting discovery or the relativity of time is created - spoken into existence - by the act of theorizing because reality is created by the observer. Since the stability of the perceptual universe is an anchor of Langan's theorizing, we suspect he would lean towards the former. But in either case, the sequential arrangement of material physicist then abstract theorizing supersedes any relativistic conclusions the theory draws. Relative rates don't effect priority order. And sequencing implies some sort of temporal dimension.

See the differences between linked onto-epistemological levels? Their importance becomes clearer when we realize that theory is a semiotic artifact that appears at a moment in time.

Langan theorizes reality as a self-generating linguistic process where the syntactic operations and content are mutually recursively self-creating. His formation is actually much more complex than that– we are not doing it justice at all and will be more through in posts to come. But even with temporal recursivity in what he calls telesis – the reality-forming work of telic operators general and localized – verbs are used. Descriptive action. And that implies some sort of sequencing. Bringing us to temporality.

This is different from what the Band refers to as true a-temporality. The absence not only of time as a physical property, but of any sort of before-after sequencing at all. We associate this with ultimate reality. Before the Creation. It is something we cannot even conceive of because thought itself is sequenced. But the definition of a temporal sequence presumes the preceding a-temporal originary state from which it comes. That's what the Band calls God qua God. Not the identity of an extant reality, but the apophatic ground against which Langan's totalizing definition of reality is positively conceptualized. The latter is closer in relative ontological scale to a Neoplatonic world-mind or demiurge than true transcendence.

And if the smartest man in the world - who juggles knowledge domains like data points and acknowledges the necessity metaphysics as well as materiality reasons out an alternative to our Christian framework? That's something we have to address seriously. Because not many can.

We're not 100% sure we can. And that brings us to why this has taken so long.

We may not be smart enough.

The Band does possess certain attributes that do equip us for this sort of task. Like Langan, we see the intrinsic limits of “disciplines” and recognize the need to treat knowledge and thought as unified wholes. We are also comfortable combining disparate types of concepts to build composite structures and insights. For example, we don't care whether he uses "set theory" in orthodox ways, only the meaning of the ideas his usage expresses. But the IQ gap means he is far more capacious in what he can bring together and cognitively powerful in generating structures and insights.

In our thinking about thinking post we described how greater intelligences can pull together more information and connections and by holding more together at once, see broader and more complex patterns. Langan can encompass so much at once and manipulate vast fields of data through overlapping lenses. We get the impression that the whole CTMU exists in his head as a fluid logical totality. And that he can work on it in that totality. We can't hold the whole thing. Where he is holistic, we have to become sequential and rely on extensive notes. This means we don't see it the same way, opening up all kinds of possibilities for misunderstanding.

It is true that IQ is a general measure and that individual aptitudes within it vary.

These sorts of breakdowns always understate the interrelated aspects of intelligence. But it does a good job of pointing out how many components there are to it.

The Band is especially strong at broad abstract conceptual visualizations and pattern recognition across domains. The skills most needed to follow something like the CTMU. In these areas, we may even scrape the bottom of the gap between us and Langan. We are also inclined to think past and across disciplines and recognize the limits of materialism, making Langan's approach intuitively sensible to us. This mix of aptitude and attitude is not common - it's why we observed there are not many who can take this up. But it still may not be sufficient.

A general average means peaks come with valleys.

As the interminable typos in our work show, we are less inclined to fine detail and precise accounting. We can barely glimpse his big pictures but his information density just blows us away. At times, the CTMU seems fairly clear and at others it’s a fog of symbols.

The time has been necessary to even try and do it justice. We only have limited time for the blog. And there's never a point engaging a straw man of your own making. In addition to the CTMU paper we’ve watched an in-depth video - which is something we never do – in order to better understand. But ultimately we are on the unfamiliar ground of not being sure we haven’t misunderstood an important idea or missed a significant implication. As such we will be more cautious and less aggressive than usual.

We can't critique his logic. The nature of the CTMU is that it subsumes anything sententially real. And anything that isn't sententially real is excluded from the reality that the CTMU theorizes. Tautology - true statements in any circumstances, or statements that can't not be true - is a basis of Langan's theory.

But we can discuss some assumptions and framing. So that's where we'll be focused.

We respect Langan’s work and his self-evidently vast intellect. We even hope to learn and evolve from him. The encounter is humbling. But it’s also necessary. And we don't need to discuss ourselves any more, but please feel free to share any comments.

We hope our readers will enjoy it.

Montague Dawson, Galleon in Moonlight, 20th century, lithograph

Happy Easter!

2022-04-17T03:30:00.002-07:00

Peter Adams, The Resurrection, 2018

12 Axioms

2022-04-02T09:02:00.002-07:00

A break from the usual to share some observations from a real life exchange about the beast system and how to navigate the fake narratives that make up its House of Lies.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Ted Nasmith, The Ships of the Faithful

The Band is generally disinterested in analysis of current events. The ubiquity of lies and deception + no historical perspective from being in the middle of things + not being privy to the minds of decision-makers limits insights into the present. Time spent on news narrative is generally time wasted. And there are other observers and interpreters more suited to what value there is to be found there.

The same people who were surprised that we exclude the histrionic degeneracy of the imbicile-fest called tv from our lives...

...were later surprised by our exclusion of all mainstream social media too. We don't even have Twitter or Facebook accounts.

In other news, we are neither self-loathing nor inclined to lick the fingers of those that despise us either.

But the House of Lies is where modern life plays out. The Functionally Two Species model does comment on that life [click for the post]. And while the beast system of with it’s foundational lies of secular transcendence and Progress! was centuries in the making, the level of disconnect has recently hit terminal levels. From mass delusions around fake elections to fake plagues and toxic “vaccines” to the mind-numbing mix of gross ignorance and retardation around Ukraine – it’s an apotheosis of FTS-2 brainlessness and fruit-fly tier memory. To a point where it’s impossible to ignore. Even for those disinterested in current events.

There’s no point in dismantling the fake narratives.

The House of Lies has become so disconnected from reality that the entire world view of its idiot inhabitants is a grand unified liars’ club. There’s no there there – no anchor in fact to even start to try and build a truthful account on.

Readers know enough to ignore beast blather from a collapsing empire anyhow.

What we can do is share a few axioms drawn from observations of this rancid clown show and some attempts to explain it offline.

These don’t deal with specific lies as much as structures of the House of Lies. Because while specifics are murky and deceptive, there are identifiable patterns in how the beast system lies that let you know that a narrative isn’t even trying to get at the truth. That it’s creating a fake reality or false consciousness to serve some other end that they need to make sure you aren’t aware of. Consider that for a moment. In fact, that could be the first axiom…

1) No need for lies if the truth is beneficial

This is the general moral bellweather and should be obvious. The truth is easy in itself. No need to concoct complex tales, stage events, devise false corroborations, get everyone on the same page, etc. Just say what happened as you understand it. Gaps in knowledge will be apparent and the story will be consistent and coherent.

If something is going through the effort to build a fake reality and withhold the truth, it’s because it doesn’t want you to know what is really happening. In a personal case, this can be to make the liar look better. But on the institutional level, the preeminent reason is because you would object. The House of Lies purveys false realities so you comply with things that are not in your interests.

This is a particularly good illustration because it's meta-accurate. There's the deception of the anglerfish. Then there's Disney's use of colorful cartoon characters to lure children into the lies, degeneracy, and pedophilic grooming of the real beast system.

The vast majority of the idiot masses are so incapable of thought, devoid of memory, and dependent on external command that they can no longer even articulate their own self-interest. Where they would rather imbibe feel-good lies on the way to the abattoir than have to consider contradictions and draw conclusions. Rather rage at and cancel revealers of the lies then the filth constructing false realities to destroy their way of life and ultimately them. There is no solution to this barring some divine intervention – FTS-2 is functionally a different species for a reason. Replacing mass fruit-fly tier memories with usable capacity is as materially unlikely as teaching the actual rabbit population physics.

Before being compelled to a Christian reverence for life, the Band shared globalists’ conclusions about the necessity of culling the herd. Watching them virtue-signal mindless self-destructiveness, we can still understand the beast’s contempt. We just can’t condone it anymore.

The first axiom sets the moral compass on the self-interest level. We know lies serve evil on an abstract level because they deviate from alignment with reality and Logos. This simply makes it personal – the liar isn’t only violating God’s will by bearing false witness and placing their will over reality in a satanic inversion, they’re doing it to harm you directly. On every level, the House of Lies is objectively, morally evil and should be rejected by anyone who isn’t the same. And with that said, we can move to more specific tactics and techniques to watch out for.

2) If something changes, it’s no longer the same.

Beast narrative draws on assumptions based on a socio-cultural context that no longer exists. Referencing relations and conclusions from then and pretending they are applicable now. If you approach new scenarios with old thought patterns you are unaware of new threats and dangers.

It's the same place... Pay no mind to a few small changes...

Boomers are particularly susceptible to this because their world view is so simplistic and heavily imprinted, but it’s not limited to them. It applies to the entire West. Nothing about the current legal, political, economic, educational, demographic, moral, or cultural nature is the same as it was 40 years ago. We explained how keeping the word – the reference – while changing the reality fools those trapped in fake narratives in an earlier post.

Cut to the chase. If society is legally, politically, economically, educationally, demographically, morally, and culturally degraded from even a few decades ago, old observations don’t apply. At least not directly. Take “Russia”. Trying to see things through a lens of 1980s socio-cultural assumptions is not just retarded, it provides cover to the entities that are actively destroying our countries and culture. The Cold War West image of the West and the world fits contemporary globalism about as well as the 100 Years War. Less well, because it’s actually a full inversion of the Cold War narrative. There’s still a godless, amorphous, soulless tyranny attempting to crush national and personal self-determination. Except now it’s the globalist beast based in the US and Europe but aspiring to world hegemony.

When something is proposing outdated paradigms as relevant, they’re lying. And playing along provides cover for the actual destruction they’re planning for you.

Therefore…

3) If you don’t see the larger structure, you’re in the larger structure.

Note the widespread venom now spewed towards Russian culture and people. Not the government or policy, but culture and people. We could write poetic meditations on the beauty of the Russian soul with paintings by Shishkin, Levitan, Aivazovsky and others, but who cares? The larger question is why is acceptable within the beast system to make collective character judgments for one group and not all groups?

Roman Bozhkov, Landscape, oil on canvas, 21st century

Don't have to look at historical masters either. Contemporary Russian artists are still creating works of haunting beauty using fresh takes on old master techniques. Bozhkov's subtle lighting, atmosphere, and reflections have a poetic aura that would be at home in any era.

Now, let's generalize. Start by comparing this to the contemporary Art! that the beast offers...

Evgeny Lushpin, The Walk Home, oil on canvas, 2015

How about this guy? [Puts on Clott "never saw that one coming" Adams hat...] Could it be that the animus towards Russians is directed in part because they they favor beauty and logos over the poo-flinging trash excreted by the modern globalist "West"?

We think we're on to something! Look at the next one...

Alexander Averin, Summertime, oil on canvas, around 2000

Turns out they can paint figures too...

The Band is not claiming that collective traits don’t exist. What we are pointing out is how beast myths of equalism and tolerance vanish when it’s politically expedient for the beast agenda. Of course the idiot masses drool along in slack-jawed outrage for as long as the glowing screens command them to. But for those who aren’t functionally retarded, blatant inconsistencies from the same source indicate they’re in the world of rhetoric, not logic. And we’ve known since ancient Greece that rhetoric is not based in truth value.

So...

4) Why this now?

Because we don’t have fruit-fly tier memories, the Band recalls past events and compares them to the present. Looking for similarities and differences. At the same time!!! We see the same frame structure of [designated thing to be outraged by du jour] play out over and over.

One manufactured world moral crisis after another. The Sandinistas and contras in Central America to Apartheid to Saddam to Islamic terror, etc. One mass hysteria laser pointer after another that disappears from public consciousness -if not in reality - as soon as it exhausts its usefulness.

Ukraine would be more of the same, only now social media amplifies and reifies mass narrative formation in way it never could before.

What hasn’t changed is the question that really matters. If the outrage narrative – not the event but the collective mass reaction to it - is manufactured, what are the reasons for this narrative now? Consider the recent subjects of mass retardation from the disengaged and objective observer perspective.

Trump is a venal civic nationalist that would have been a moderate liberal a few decades ago [See #2].

Covid is a mild virus with a mortality profile similar to a bad flu at worst and then susceptible to robust natural immunity.

Ukraine is a sorry puppet state that harbors a variety of unsavory entities and has had the applicable Russian security issues clearly laid out for years.

Nothing about these things is rational grounds for an all-hands-on-deck mass freak out by every institutional platform and organization. And it’s the same platforms and organizations in each case.

This means the answer to why now is somewhere other than the nonsensical subjects of the top-down manufactured responses. All three serve the larger beast agenda - the ongoing and intentional destruction of Western economies by the neo-liberal world order under such labels as the Green New Deal, Build Back Better, or the Great Reset. Trump’s tepid civic nationalism was an obstacle and the others have used idiot fear and outrage to undermine personal and national self-determination, attack food and energy security, and curtail freedom of movement. Leading to...

5) If the reason isn’t a reason, look for the real one.

If the House of Lies – or anyone really – is offering an “explanation” for something that doesn’t actually explain it, they’re lying. There is no actual causal reason to demonize a head of state for controlling a country’s borders and strengthening the domestic economy. There is no actual causal reason to coerce and compel mass experimental genetic toxins, lockdowns, and masks for an historically insignificant viral infection. There is no actual causal reason Russia’s incursion into the Ukraine should equal $10 gas. But these self-evident lies are offered up straight-faced to justify nakedly evil globalist predation. And the idiot masses nod along.

Some "explanations" are so self-evidently untrue that no "proof" is needed. At which point, accepting and acting on them leads to our having to hypothesize that humanity is functionally two separate species.

Think a little further. There's no reason for that matter that there isn’t a North American food and energy self-sufficiency policy already implemented. Since the given reasons for these outcomes aren’t actually causes of them, the real reason is elsewhere. See #3.

6) The slippery slope is holistic. And steep.

If the socio-cultural context is changing, any meaningful reaction has to reflect that. There are two main patterns in detaching “analysis” from reality. The common one is the magical thinking that defines the whole stack of inverted secularist dogmas of the post-Enlightenment West. Pretending what is wished for can replace what is. The other is more subtle and focused – a form of binary thinking that a lot of dumb people that think they’re clever fall into. That’s forecasting something by trying to extrapolate the consequences of one changing variable while assuming everything else stays exactly the same.

Reality is complex and multi-faceted. Societal change occurs across an incalculable array of interlocking butterfly effects. Each status quo is a simply a momentary snapshot of this vast flow. Like a grain of sand in an landslide. Any credible projection needs to look at the entire trajectory of the last X years and then extrapolate. Not pretend that this special moment on the socio-cultural collapse train will remain frozen except for that one thing they’re fixating on.

It's sort of like planning how to keep the table from sliding on a sloping floor and thinking you're prepared...

The slippery slope is not only real, it’s holistic. And each individual line of degradation contributes to the overall mudslide.

7) If you can’t define it, it’s an emotional projection

This applies to using words as if they were referring to what they always did while changing what they currently refer to. Consider the outdated left-right paradigm. You hear it all the time. Now define what they mean as a set of concise coherent ideologies.

We'll wait...

Conservatism isn't a coherent political philosophy because it's inherently reactive. But "conserve" does have a coherent definition. This semantic grift is the opposite of conserving a traditional social order. It literally inverts the meaning of the attitude it claims to profess.

Once you become aware of this meaning switch, you'll see it everywhere.

What does the modern “right” stand for? How about the modern “left”? How do these align with the historical associations of the terms? The answer to the last question is simple. They don’t. So there is no point in using them apart from deceptively creating a false impression. Trying to make people think something is other than what it is. Think about it. Why would anyone speaking in good faith use terms that don’t mean what they’re being used for?

Well... the entities connected to the "left" today - the globalist oligarchs and cultural atavists in the Democrat party etc. don't give a rat's ass about "labor". So we'd suppose you can learn how to call yourself something that means the opposite of what you are, but the cuckservative "right" already has that covered.

Good golly, the "American Conservative" is a disgusting smear of feces...

If something has no consistent meaning beyond a vague positive/negative resonance, what it actually means is [thing I like/don’t like], depending on which nonsense term the user identifies with emotionally. Which is as meaningful a key to understanding reality as your dinner preferences. The two primary drivers of the late-stage American empire are globalists and neoconservatives. Their opponents would be those who value free will and personal moral accountability. Actual nationalists, coherent individualists, real Christians, etc. Left and right have become meaningless nonsense terms that can't be coherently defined. That is, shorthand for unreflective emotional reaction in lieu of hard choices about reality.

The neoconservatives are intellectual descendants of Trotsky that oozed into American “conservatism” under the guise of opposing the Soviet Union. That is, extreme genocidal atavist “left” in the early-20th century usage. And the idiot cucks that welcomed them took their hated of Stalin and desire for revenge as "loving freedom" or something equally stupid.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1568, oil on wood, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

The globalists are related in their hatred of human dignity and spiritual potential, but don’t fit any traditionally political structure. Well, beyond the literally satanic craving of centralizing power by exerting will over reality. The impulse of Babel.

In short, it’s metaphysical. See #13

8) Conceptual abstracts require real implementers

Metaphysics - or ideology for that matter – frame and inform scenarios but don't materially exist as things in themselves. They're abstracts. They operate materially through material individuals and structures. This is pure ontological hierarchy - idealized abstractions lack material forms.

Theophany of Divine Love, early 13th-century illumination in the Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 1942 edition of Hildegard of Bingen's Liber Divinorum Operum, written 1163 to 1173

Metaphysics are literally not materially extant – it’s in the name.

Ideology is either a) some things someone(s) wrote in a particular context and/or b) an abstracted description of collective belief and/or action.

None of which is capable of doing anything on it's own.

The oft-bleated “that wasn’t real Marxism” is such a retarded position because there is no real Marxism. It’s an abstraction, not a material entity. More specifically, it's a collection of poorly-written 19th-century blather that intellectually limited sociopaths apply in diverse circumstances. It has no empirically objective existence, only in the claimed motivations of actual people. That is, definitionally not true Marxism or Marxism qua Marxism. The only possible critique would be "my applicational interpretation of it is better than his is". When none of them actually are because the source texts are as idiotic as the idiots drawn to them.

Globalism is the same – a descriptor for a variety of actors who share similar power-seeking dyscivic goals. It’s an abstract construct that has to be administered and enacted by real people. And those people are sociopathic freaks who prevent organic socialization and natural social selection from doing what it always did. We are now in the later stages of dysgenic devolution akin to the old Mouse Utopia experiment. Meanwhile the freak-rulers exploit the degraded capacity and rampant appetite of the idiot masses to accrue more power.

Ultimately the only metrics to measure "true globalism" would be socio-cultural destruction and personal or institutional power accrued. Cloaking this techno-satanism as an economic ideology simply obscures how it's the same ancient anti-human, anti-beauty, anti-God evil adapted to current technological levels.

We’ve recently lost assumed rights to open speech, bodily autonomy, association, medical privacy, due process, financial security, community, etc. The Band can remember a world where people could ride in the back of a pick-up truck. Now you can be fired for a tweet. Basic self-determination doesn't just come back without some massive reckoning. Because the increasing totalitarianism is an orchestrated macro-scale movement from individual and national sovereignty to globalist control. See #6. We’ve posted on centralization – it’s the mechanism of globalist control. But it’s administered and run by actual people. The “elites” are people. And Russia is demonstrating that they’re as susceptible to a Kinzhal missile as we are.

9) There is no collective “we”, just larger stables for the masters.

Globalism is meant to sound like reassuring group harmony, but consider the mechanisms by which uncontestable rules are imposed. Does anyone poll the group before stripping "rights" and transforming organic preferred culture? Words are meaningless without actions - we can only judge morality by actions and outcomes. By the fruits. And by the fruits, globalism in all its metastases is just a new manifestation of an old will to power. Another collectivism imposed by force by centralized sociopaths adapted to current technology and social organization. Like communism, only with digital currency flows and information control rather than industry. Plus way more overt satanism. And like any totalitarianism hiding behind the fig leaf of some collective good, it’s really a just another tyranny. Albeit it way more overtly satanic.

It's why older images of demonic tyrants are always generally applicable. The faces come and go and the labels change - communism, corporatism, etc. - but the structure doesn't. A monstrous elite tier floating parasitically on a subjugated populace. It's why ignoring what is materially happening to argue over ideological made-up words is such a sign of self-erasing retardation.

It doesn't matter what they call themselves or what their stated motives are.

When demonic freaks blather about owning nothing and eating bugs, it explicitly doesn’t refer to them or their private enclaves.

Economically, the dissolution of national distinctions & barriers to capital flows - the two are intrinsically linked – is presented as an unexamined moral good. But in reality, actual people preside over this degradation of the human condition while reaping massive material rewards. Pretending human action is really some sort of demented offspring of Hegel’s inexorable spirit of history makes it easy to claim inevitability or draw up facile fake moralities. But there is no mass identity, only individual predators and prey in varying degrees of concert or opposition. Those who wish to actualize their God-given free will and those who wish to grind them under their heels. Anyone accruing personal power and privilege while blathering about the “greater good” or the “current year” is objectively a liar and probably a psychopath. Judge the deeds, not the words.

10) "Ockham’s Razor" has become a tonic for Dumb People

There is at best no correlation between the simplest explanation and the truth. At best because the correlation is likely a negative one, given the complexity of the butterfly effect interactions that make up reality.

Hiroki Sayama, Visual, organizational map of complex systems broken into seven sub-groups. 2010

Multi-component interactions across domains make up complex systems. And material reality is made up of countless interacting ones in a dizzying interplay of complexities. Dominant patterns can be detected, but monocausual linear and binary thinking are almost doomed to uselessness. Despite their "simplicity".

Take Ukraine. The liars and their lobotomized dupes have this “fighting for freedom” narrative that is definitely simplistic. It’s also so stupid that it’s actually annoying to even have to think about. Understanding the main thrust of the Ukraine situation doesn't take the number of parameters in the above chart, but it needs a heck of a lot more than slack-jawed idiocy about "freedom". Which is itself a nonsense word with a complex history of mass distortion and ontological impossibility.

Ukraine is a puppet creation of the same unaccountable unelected globalists that run the ~~puppet juntas~~ “Western democracies”. "Led" by a degenerate midget installed by globalist elites. Pedestalizing this turd as a hero is a perfect confluence of beast moral inversion and the functional mass retardation of FTS-2.

Processing complex situations with different historical roots requires a rudimentary understanding how geopolitics actually work. Some glimmer of the globalist beast system that's jacked Western society, and the role of Ukraine in their ongoing malfeasance. How narrative is engineered in the House of Lies through mass manipulation of technology, media and massive fraud. In other words, things further beyond the reach of the moral and mentally crippled masses than Tantalus' grapes.

Then there's the instant over-the-top reaction that is self-evidently orchestrated top-down. It's the mass-moron fear spell from a recent post on the functionally two species nature of modern humanity translated to faux-outrage over a country few were aware of a few months ago. Certainly not during the years of shelling civilians that ultimately helped precipitate Russian intervention.

Like the rationally inexplicably decision to illuminate degenerate cesspool San Francesco city hall. Maybe the lights look sharp glimmering off the discarded syringes and vials...

Here's a list on ongoing conflicts right now. To say nothing of the last few decades. On the surface, Ukraine should be as globally trivial as any other conflict to the fruit-fly minds of the average clod. But the absolutely hysterical reaction by every wing of the corrupt globalist narrative machine suggests otherwise. See #4, #11.

So why the orchestrated reaction? Multiple things overlapping. An existential struggle beginning between the globalist elite and the nationalist powers. Expect China to move at some point. The hysteria towards both of them – and Iran - is driven top-down by their threat to the neo-liberal world order. Russia represents the first time globalist ambition has been confronted by old-fashioned military might. Which is sufficient to explain the severity of the reaction. Governments, tech, media, etc. simply follow orders and their master is frightened. There are other things like the US bioweapon labs and so forth that add more nuance to the existential lines being drawn. To the actual globalists – see #7 & #8 - this is potentially apocalyptic. Hence the strident absurdity of the coordinated response.

Blathering about the simplest explanation guarantees getting it wrong.

1l) Public "Opinion” is Dictated

Response is coordinated. "Public reaction” is not organic. It’s orchestrated. This is far from a new observation, but recent events have made it obvious in a way it wasn't before.

Graphic from a recent post shows the process by which the fake narratives making up the House of Lies are produced by a network of narrative engineers & uptaken by a network of narrative huffers. That is, FTS-2 or the idiot masses, who then support or "stand with" their lying overseer abusers.

We were focusing on the trauma aspect of this as a hypothesis for why the masses are as emotionally and cognitively crippled as they are. But it also catches the more general process of being given "opinions" that serve the destructive ends of those giving them.

Twittter, Facebook, big media, etc. don’t reflect public opinion, they create it. And they deliver narrative content written by the same architects of the neo-liberal world order. This is where 70 years of diminishing IQ, educational degradation, and the cumulative damage of a toxic culture come in. The vast majority are so incapable of thought that they can no longer even articulate their own self-interest. There is no solution to that, and without a Christian reverence for life, there’s a dark logic to the globalist desire to cull the herd.

It's a common misconception that the idiot masses are driven by desire for the luxe life. They may daydream of extreme wealth and privilege, but raw acquisitive greed only actively motivates a relatively small percentage of the populace. What most will sell personal, familial, and cultural health for is being able to do nothing. Passive, low-grade consumerist sloth. To sit motionless before a screen and absorb processed carbs and grease. And often intoxicants of various kinds.

Pro-tip. Ignore the fake binary they want you to get caught on and consider the aggragate.

This is partly human nature but enhanced by the meaningless nihilism of modern life. People whinge about "jobs" while enjoying material ease and comfort unimagined in past eras. The problem isn't actually that it's hard - most soft modern protoplasm have never experienced work that's hard. It's that it's meaningless. There's no tangible accomplishment. No one actually gives a rat's ass about your "report". It's socio-historic contribution is actually less than nil because the time and effort wasted on it could have been used for something worthwhile. Anything.

But subordinating most of your waking hours to existentially irrelevant inanity in generally pathological social environments is inherently stressful. And once conditioned to meaningless stress as the norm, meaningless passivity becomes the tonic.

Imagine a meaningful existence of family and faith. Of truth, beauty, and goodness...

We do.

Body, mind, and soul are linked. The passive consumption of the lowest-frequency toxic junk isn't limited to the physical. The bag of suet that "lives" for hours of screen time is no better a steward of their mental or spiritual lives.

At least the turtles are moving and creating in a beautiful natural setting, though that alone in insufficient to break out of the House of Lies.

It's not just the obese and/or deconditioned majority. There's a segment that believes they "look after themselves" while still accepting the larger structures of the House of Lies.

Ever-changing "health" dicta, a conga line of "self-help" and fake spiritualists... same end result as the suet bags, just with better BMI and fewer mobility issues.

Like this cheap luciferian occultism sweetened with the false promise of low-effort self-divinization. Do what thou wilt for the sloth-addicted huffers.

Disconnecting from the screens, developing anti-fragility, and back to the land self-sufficienty won't cure a terminally ill society. But it’s still better than the narrative-huffing alternative.

12) The enemy of the enemy is better than the enemy

Putin or Xi are not on the “side” of Western nationalists. Thinking in terms of two sides is part of the problem. See #9. They are on their sides, as they should be. But they’re enemies of our enemy, and that’s significant. They’re not forcing toxic genetic “therapies” on us, or inverting human nature, or digital money and pod life in teeming failing cities ruled by psychopathic totalitarians that want us impoverished or dead. Because while material reality is a complex and multifaceted web of butterfly effects and endless agendas, abstract reality does orient around absolutes. And the one binary that matters is the moral one. Anyone opposing the beast aligns with a primal divide.

Abstract absolutes can't materially exist - see #8. They manifest more or less imperfectly through material agents. Who are themselves complex and multifaceted in ideology and motivations. Insofar as those oppose the beast, they align with our opposition to the same.

Checking the imperial designs of globalism is a net benefit, full stop. Now obviously there are many possible pathways from there in a lot of different directions. But whatever comes next will not follow the same trajectory of what was before. Because it’s also obvious that the post-War era – and perhaps the entire post-Renaissance era – of the West is ending. Best-case scenario is a lot less ease and abundance but new organic communities form. Others are less good. Who prevails in this clash of powers matters to all of us. There’s a serious difference between reality-facing groups with rival interests and satanic totalitarian atavists perched atop the food chain.

In the last of our Thomas Covenant posts, we noted how Lord Mhoram's epic clash with the forces of darkness is applicable to multi-level truths in reality. His attack is preceded by an assault on Satansfist's army by the Waynhim - an unaligned eldritch race that had no involvement in the clash up to this point. But Foul's evil is repulsive to them as well, and despite their differences from the Lords, took their shot for their own moral reasons. Mhoram seized on the unexpected distraction to sally forth and... well... look at the picture and read the post...

The point is that in the face of true evil, the non-evil, even if at cross-purposes - have common cause.

And that means...

Bonus) It’s metaphysical

Post-Enlightenment materialism is a monument to human vanity. Auto-idolatry based on the self-evident falsehood that the infinite exists within the finite and limited human minds can fully grasp the fullness of abstract absolutes. What we call secular transcendence for short. We've traced this over several years of posts showing the empirical and logical necessity of levels of reality beyond the material. We express them in the ontological hierarchy, but that’s just a graphical metaphor. The point is that the false claims of the modern world are ontologically and epistemologically false. They can’t work, which is why the system founded on them is collapsing under its own fakeness.

This also means that people who refuse to recognize the full ontological significance of the current situation are powerless to even understand it, let alone fix it.

Samson Gabriel, The Blind leading the Blind, 21st century, oil on canvas

The fiery abyss is right. But they should be wearing masks and standing with Ukraine.

The servants of the beast certainly believe it’s a metaphysical conflict. Recurring occult rituals and symbols make that painfully obvious. The secularism and “atheism” of the de-moralized, posturing, self-fluffing lackwits is a form of spiritual unilateral disarmament.

With sufficient perception and intelligence the larger patterns in the House of Lies can be somewhat puzzled out. But once the metaphysical angle is understood they snap into focus, no exceptional perception or intelligence required. And that’s the globalists’ uniquely sharp animus towards Christianity explained in sentence.

The Logic of [Church] - Art, Ontology & Reformation

2022-03-21T14:30:00.004-07:00

The next installment in the arts of the West journey looks at some consequences and implications of the Reformation. Including a novel assessment of the logic behind the dueling claims around the church with significant implications for the Band's exploration of the nature of reality.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Caspar David Friedrich, The Cathedral, 1818, oil on canvas, Museum Georg Schäfer

Arts of the West posts generally look at major trends in cultural development and degeneration through the visual arts. The last few have been unusually - almost purely - art-centric. Time to get back to the wider view and make some observations about the implications of the Reformation for the relationship between the West and reality, as well as for the arts.

The aforementioned art centric posts...

Titian, The Entombment, 1559, oil on canvas, Prado Museum, Madrid

A couple of Venice posts looked at a unique society and its distinct art of color and light. Like this late Titian. Link to part one. Link to part two.

Apse mosaics in San Vitale, around 547, Ravenna

Then a deep dive into the incredible early Christian church of San Vitale took a detour back in time to blow out the idiot notion that post-antiquity was a "Dark Age". Click for link.

And now to return to the broader track and take up where the Northern Renaissance post left off. We will also swing into a new way to think about the logic – metaphysical and material – surrounding the collapse of the pre-modern Church.

The Reformation rocked the West like an earthquake - if an earthquake had metaphysical as well as socio-cultural consequences. The only events that are even close might be the Christianization or collapse of the Roman Empire, but the first had less immediate material impact and the second had less metaphysical. And neither was as abrupt. Of course, materialist peddlers of beast historical narratives undersell it as the less interesting b-side to the Renaissance - co-vestibules to their beloved modern world.

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, around 1485, tempera on canvas, Florence, Uffizi

The Renaissance is sexier to beast narrative-huffers because of its pagan and humanist – that is, un-Christian – components. The Reformation is all about Christians – some misguided, but often zealous with staunch moral codes that are discomfiting to the huffers.

Since the Band is neither a materialist gelding nor a beast-dancer we consider the full ontological spectrum when considering civilizational trajectories. Several years of posting have made it clear that Christian metaphysics best conform with material fact and logical necessity. It should be obvious that the fragmentation of Christian unity would have enormous consequences across the fullness of reality.

Wilhelm von Kaulbach, The Age of the Reformation, 1862, Neues Museum, Berlin.

Prussian mural captures the link between the rupturing Christendom and inane ideas of Progress! and secular transcendence - that technical innovations mean finite, fallen human minds command abstract metaphysical absolutes. That "ages" have progressive "spirits" because... well... uh... Hegel. Retarded arrogance that leads to our current collapsing culture. Because a house built on lies can't last.

The Arts of the West posts are tracing a long journey from the origins of the West to the inversion and destruction of art in the modern period. And since art expresses culture, this means they also trace the inversion and degeneration of the culture of the West. On this the historical rise of secular transcendence is a canary in a coal mine – the indicator of something going seriously wrong even when surface beauty still lingers. There’s momentum to the West. Even after the wheels start to fall off, ingrained reflexive morality and technological advancements keep things looking good – even progressing – for a while. But like the dog days of summer, the days are shortening even as the temperature peaks. And eventually the reality becomes obvious. Our ghost run is winding down. The Band is tracing what happened in the hope that a future spring may avoid some obvious and disastrous errors.

We’ve chosen the Armory Show of 1913 as a destination for this journey for two reasons. It’s the symbolic splattering of modernist feces across the American cultural landscape while being early enough to avoid the impenetrable mass of lies called “the 20th Century”. Which is fine – the arrival of modernism is sufficient for big picture inversion. The rest is just accelerating consequences that can be addressed within the same degenerate framework.

Sterling Ruby, Basin Theology, 2014

Like this trash piled up in a soulless white room. Ugly, misshapen forms? Check. Stupid yet pretentious nonsense name? Check. Promotion of a degenerate hack by a converged institution? Check. The sense of a dying culture's last few circles of the bowl?...

Ladies and gentlemen... Art!

The Reformation doesn’t introduce mega-artists like the Renaissance's Titian or Raphael although there are Reformation artists to consider. But it impacts the arts of the West commensurately with its impact on culture. And because art expresses culture, we can see one through the other. So we have to deal with the Reformation indirectly – by looking at what happened to the arts and the impact on culture directly

The Reformation splits Western Christendom and transforms a societal configuration that had existed for a millennium. The Middle Ages are presided over by papacy and kings in an uneasy structure marred by encroachings and meddling but conceptually sensible. A Church for spiritual authority and a monarch for worldly authority have natural areas of conflict, but basically follow the God/Caesar split. And with clearly defined domains, it becomes easy to see improper liberties. The papal monarchy or kings meddling in ecclesiastic affairs are obvious violations of assigned place.

Jean Fouquet, Coronation of Charles VI from the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1455-1460 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, French 6465, fol. 457v.

We can instantly judge what’s wrong because the boundaries of the system are clear. The ecclesiastic authorities are clearly subordinate to royal symbols, while paying lip service to the idea that monarchy is a religious order. Neither should be the case. More on the logic of the system later.

The Reformation will tear up and reshuffle the system itself in ways that lack logical or scriptural coherence. What were legitimate criticisms of the failures of the Renaissance church became grounds for catastrophic war and cascading crises of authority.

The conventional origin story of the Reformation is well known. Luther suffered a spiritual crisis and after seeing the rabid materialism of the Roman Church nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg. The protection of the Elector of Saxony spared him the fate of earlier heretics and the mushrooming denominations and wars of religion followed. As with most official stories, much is left out, but the Band is more concerned with big patterns than minutia. Papal Rome under the Humanist opulence of Medici Pope Leo X and a court circle that included Raphael and Castiglione was a far cry from Apostolic piety.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Elector Friedrich the Wise of Saxony, after 1532, oil on panel, Liechtenstein Museum

Luther's protector was quite the looker...

Raphael, Portrait of Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi, 1518, oil on panel, Uffizi

These Medici "churchmen" ooze corruption and intrigue.

Comparing Cranach to Raphael makes it clear why it's the Italian Renaissance that was so pivotal to the arts of the West. Cranach was one of the preeminent artists of Northern Europe at the time, but next to Raphael he looks like a hack amateur.

Leo inherited his predecessor Julius II’s love of art without the grand cultural ambitions to guide it. Rome was an aesthetic and antiquarian hub – the greatest of Renaissance courts – but not much in the way of official Christianity. Great for the culture of the West, but easy to see where a devout Christian could have some real objections. Especially given all the systemic problems that had larded the late medieval Church like simony, nepotism, the sale of indulgences, etc. Remember that this was a time of mounting religious anxiety and zeal across Europe, as the pre-Reformation arts of the West post observed. An especially inopportune time for the Church to fall into venal materialism.

Reliquary Bust of St Baudime, 1150-1200, copper-gilt over wooden core, Church of Saint-Nectaire, Saint-Nectaire

Pilgrimage to venerate relics was a sign of this increasingly intense desire to connect viscerally with the divine. Relics were a medieval invention - pieces of saints believed to enhance the prayers of devotees. The development of figural reliquaries to hold the relics blurred the line between the bodily fragments and actual saints. Relics weren't meant to be worshipped in themselves, but that distinction was often lost on the masses. Golden figures like this, gleaming in candlelight on altars and promoted for veneration didn't exactly discourage idolatrous response.

Pilgrimage was a big deal economically and high-status relics important. It's why the Church turned a blind eye to improper response.

Reliquary Bust of Saint Balbina, 1520–30, South Netherlandish, oak, paint, gilt on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Reliquaries just get more realistic and better able to encourage the kind of reaction that confuses veneration of the absent saint with worship of the object. Again, this was never officially permitted, but overlooked and even tacitly encouraged - pilgrimage was the big way to earn indulgences. The Reformers simply jettison the spiritual legitimacy of the whole saint-relic-pilgrimage-indulgence apparatus as an idolatrous addendum to Biblical Christianity.

There was another problem as well. Deeper, if not given the same attention in the standard histories but well covered in our occult posts. That’s the Hermetic occultism and other non-Christian sludge that seeped into Renaissance Christian humanism. Pope Leo X was second son of Lorenzo "the Magnificent" de' Medici, legendary ruler of Renaissance Florence, founder of the first Platonic Academy, and patron of the Neoplatonic and Hermetic occultism of Marsilio Ficino and others. Leo was born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici and was educated by Lorenzo's court humanists along with his siblings and other select household youth, including the artist Michelangelo.

Marsilio Ficino’s introduction to his Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum in a manuscript dedicated to Lorenzo il Magnifico, 1491, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 21.8, fol. 3r.

Hermes Trismegistus was so important to Lorenzo that when the Corpus Hermeticum manuscript became available, he had Ficino postpone his translation of the recently recovered works of Plato to translate it.

In addition to his translation works, Ficino concocted his own philosophy - a hybrid of Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and other antique-sourced ideas derived from his humanist study. His "magnum opus", the Platonic Theology was an attempt to integrate this pagan sludge with Christian doctrine.

Leo X's papacy was an attempt to adapt a Medici-style court to Vatican. Sort of like Ficino's blending of Christianity and paganism on the page, only in real life. Ficino himself had died in 1499, but there was no shortage of new humanists to fill the void.

For example, Ficino’s pupil Francesco da Diacceto (1466-1522) was a key member of the new academy Leo established in 1515 as a continuation of his father's Platonic Academy - the Accademia Sacra dei Medici. Click for a free book on the Renaissance formation of the humanities. The Accademia Sacra dei Medici reference is on page 113. This body gets almost no mention in the usual historical surveys that we've seen. Here are a couple more references we found looking into it - reference 1, reference 2.

Michelangelo, The Dream of Human Life (Il Sogno), 1533, black chalk, The Courtauld Gallery, London.

Michelangelo grew up with Leo, and despite his conflict with the Medici family and animosity towards Raphael, belonged to the Accademia Sacra dei Medici. His enigmatic drawing "visualizes love, demonic nature or the World Soul that inspires divine goodness in waking or sleeping man". In other words, the same Christian humanist perversion of actual Christianity with the occult.

Only now in the heart of papal Rome...

So doctrinally as well as behaviorally, the Church had dropped the ball. The Band has been rightfully harsh with un-Christian papal occultism and monarchical trappings. To that end, we can sympathize with Reformist outrage. The solution, on the other hand...

Start with the underlying assumptions. Structurally, the initial Reformation process can be seen as an extension of Renaissance humanist epistemology. The way the Reformers called the legitimacy of the Church into question was to interrogate the original “source” material in the manner of literary scholars. Christian humanists had already turned their attention to early religious texts. Translations of the Bible by Cardinal Ximenes and Erasmus and renewed interest in the Patristic literature brought a new focus to the first Christian centuries.

Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine in his Study, 1480, fresco, Ognissanti Church, Florence

The eminent Florentine Renaissance painter presents the Father of the Western Church as a humanist scholar in a studiolo or aristocratic Renaissance study. It was natural that the Christian humanists of the Renaissance would consider Christian as well as pagan antiquity

The greatest legacy of the Christian humanist movement for the Reformation would be the examination of Biblical languages. The medieval Church has considered St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate to be the definitive translation since the early Christian period. But humanist linguistic scholars took up the original languages - Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic in the case of Cardinal Ximenes of Spain's massive Complutensian Polyglot project. And this publication was delayed by the publication privilege awarded the great Dutch humanist Erasmus for his Greek version.

The opening of Genesis from the Complutensian Polyglot Bible - the first printed polyglot of the whole text. Parallel passages in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic where relevant. Old Testament pages like this one put the Latin Vulgate between the Greek Septuagint and Hebrew with the Aramaic Torah - the Targum Onkelos and its Latin translation below. The New Testament combines Greek Gospels and the Latin Vulgate.

The work was completed in 1517 and published in 1520 after a brief delay.

New attention on older texts would have a massive impact on the Church - Catholic and Protestant. Medieval miracle tale and the authority of the Vulgate itself were called into question. Meanwhile, the invention of the printing press was an earthquake of its own in information technology and spread new ideas in previously unimagined ways. For the first time, the claims and literature of the Church could be cross-referenced against the original sources. On the one hand, this was a tremendous thing. But on the other, it opened the way to massive category errors that the beast historical narratives completely ignore. For obvious reasons. Hint - the absurd march of secular transcendence into modernity isn't really progress...

Humanist epistemology was built on authenticating and purifying texts. The humanists used philological analyses to assemble proof texts from different recensions and references. And not just recovery – dispelling of fakes as well.

Lorenzo Valla, Declamatio on the Donation of Constantine

15th-century humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla used linguistics and logic to claim an apex scalp when he showed the Donation of Constantine to be a forgery. Revealing credulous acceptance of medieval fakery was a big part of dismissing the Middle Ages as intellectually backwards or Dark.

But the basic premise of the Church was immune to things like bogus claims of papal kingship because its foundation wasn’t material. And bogus claims are. The Church was founded on references to "church" in the Bible – both the Gospels and Acts – and the early Christian groupings that followed. The papacy took different forms at different times, but these were all temporal manifestations of the original charge to St. Peter. The magisterium flows through material circumstance but isn’t composed of them. A bad actor could be cast out without meaningful impact on the structure. Even a huge fraud like the Donation of Constantine is still just a fraud.

Cesare Baronio, title page to the first volume of the Annales Ecclesiastici, 1588, Typographia Vaticana

The huge Annales project was a 12-volume history of the first 1200 years of the Church led by the great Oratorian historian Caesar Baronius. The intent was to counter Protestant claims that the Church deviated historically with a magisterial counter.

His philosophy of semper eadem or ever the same isn't a literal claim that everyone wears the same costumes that they did in Apostolic times. It’s that the same ethos and metaphysical truth shines through the cosmetic changes.

The argument that signifiers of ultimate reality are not subordinate to humanistic philological argument is consistent with the map of reality in the Band's Ontological Hierarchy. Ultimate reality is beyond apprehension or conception and Abstract Reality is an unchanging domain of immaterial ideals. Both are chained together by (divine) logos into a cascade of perpetual truth. Material Reality on the other hand is temporal and changing. Any manifestation of higher states within it will be as well. One can argue whether a particular claim to manifest is valid, but not that manifestations of higher states have to happen to be materially knowable. Otherwise there is no access to the super-logical, utterly transcendence of God.

If the Bible is accepted on faith as divinely inspired - and it has to be to work around the inherent limitations of material semiotics - why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit be able to align other material phenomena with timeless Truths?

Titian, Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos, 1553-1555, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art

If the Bible isn't a material manifestation of divine truth, there is no point to it. But if it is, it is necessarily different from what it represents - words instead of nous or some such. It's a representation - just one that is an account of what is True in a form we can apprehend.

Basic Reformation logic would agree on the Bible but not on most of the secondary addenda that the medieval Church claimed manifested divinity in accessible material form. These would be closer to the Pharisees castigated in the Gospels as driven by money and prestige to peddle fake – even inverted – dogmas. And if the Church had larded basic Christianity with fraudulence, what else about it is fake?

Hans Holbein, Christ as the True Light, around 1525, woodcut, British Museum

Reformation art - Holbein was a Swiss-German painter who adapted to the artistic hostility of his new Protestant circumstances as best he could. This piece centers on a flame supported by the symbols of the Evangelists representing the Gospels. On the left, Jesus points the masses to this source of truth. On the right, Church officials follow Renaissance humanist pagan darlings Plato and Aristotle into the darkness.

The contours of the problem come into view. What is the rightful authority for the manifestation of God's Truth in an entropic, fallen, limited material world?

The Church claims to be guided by the Holy Spirit or some formulation of the will of God. If that is the case, then the Church as a concept is correct and it’s the execution that is flawed. Reform becomes restoration of [Holy Spirit compliance] to realign the material manifestation with the Kingdom of Heaven it was founded to manifest.

Humanism is by definition inadequate for this task. It’s in the name. Humanistic epistemology is based on human ingenuity and not metaphysical necessity. This is painfully obvious once it sinks in that the Bible retains its referential truth despite translation. That is, despite literally being reworded in different material symbols.

Rembrandt, The Good Samaritan, after 1633, oil on panel, The Wallace Collection, London

The is a semiotic flexibility built into the Bible – there has to be based on the nature of textual understanding. To say nothing of transmission.

Then there's the reality within the Bible that Jesus himself speaks in parables – allegories that are other than what they mean literally. Like this subject by a great Protestant painter of the next century.

Image Credit: Peter Polter/ Getty Images

In ontological hierarchy terms, the absolute has to come through the material and contingent which means the representation – no matter how truthful – is fundamentally different from the message it transmits.

The valley of shadow as seen through the darkling glass.

This means ideal proof texts like one might find for Cicero aren’t applicable to a divinely True super-material message. And that's why the hierarchical part of the ontological hierarchy is so important. All texts are material representations - material objects that represent something other than what they are.

But a standard text is a material representations of the thoughts of another material being. The Band's perspective is that the human combines body, mind, and soul in alignment with the three levels of the ontological hierarchy [material, abstract, ultimate]. More or less what the ancient Greeks reasoned out some time ago. But we express our thoughts in representations, meaning we translate or reformulate them mentally into semiotic terms before producing the representation. No matter what we are discussing, it has to be expressed through a material representation. This graphic acknowledges that every ontological level is known to us representationally. Through material representional filters.

Consider. This sentence is an expression of an thought-impulse put into words mentally before being typed. There is an isomorphic relationship between the formulation of the thought in expressible form while in the mind and the representation that's produced to externally express it. Whatever nebulous form it first appeared as, it has to be put into representational form before it is usable in communication. And that representational form is a material creation - symbols, sounds, etc. that transmit materially. So a regular text is ontologically horizontal - the material record of the materialization of material human thought. And if the representational semiotics change - meaning different symbol - the meaning also changes.

A divinely inspired text is still a representation in a materially transmissible form. But it's ontologically vertical. The content being represented isn't parallel materialization of human thought. It's the necessarily imperfect materialization of a higher truth. Necessarily because timeless abstracts are not accessible to finite human minds qua themselves. They are what we can only represent. What we have to approximate in semiotic media that are definitionally incapable of the type of isomorphic semiosis that communicates our thoughts. The will of God can't be condensed into a material communicative medium because material vehicles are ontologically insufficient for the task.

Guillaume Budé, De l’institution du prince, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, gallica.bnf.fr Ms-5103, fol. 1v.

Lady Philology oversees the education of a humanist. The degree of philological precision in humanist exegesis wasn't appropriate to something of this nature.

That's not to call the Bible indeterminate - it's really determinate. It's just fundamentally allegorical in its mode of communication in a way that a manmade text can't be. Because a manmade text not transmitting across levels of reality in the same way. Which is how we can have translational leeway within a certain range. Allegory is "speaking other", not speaking unrelated.

It is obvious that this is known by faith. We can reason to a certain point from why the text must be divinely inspired, but to know that it is requires faith. Which raises an important question. On what grounds then can Luther or other Protestants alter the Biblical canon that had been in place for a millennium? The logic is here is painfully simple.

Either the Bible is divinely inspired truth from inception and therefore “above” human tinkering.

Or the Bible is subject to human revision and therefore not divinely inspired.

If the former, the philological profile of a canon known by faith to be inspired is irrelevant to its divine selection. If the latter, the texts have no more claim to truth than any other human book of tales. So it doesn't matter if you follow it because it has no authority. The same might be asked of a Church structure believed on faith to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

See the problem? Pointing out that relics are theologically preposterous or even that there is no justification for saintly intercession other than elastic scriptural readings is one thing. Declaring consubstantiation dogmatically True is another. Put more simply, where is the authority to turn criticism of the old manifestation into a new dogma?

Lucas Cranach the Younger, Luther Preaching with the Pope in the Jaws of Hell, around 1550, engraving, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

This print is highly polemical but subtle too. The contrast is between a true religion centered on salvation through faith in Jesus' sacrifice and a fake one of manmade ranks, privileges, structures, and rituals. But note how it's Luther in a pose like Jesus' in Last Judgement paintings. Right hand pointing up to salvation, left consigning to Hell. Luther may not claim to be the Divine Judge, but the material semiotics of the picture associates him with that well-known figure. The implication is that he is a Christ-like entity of moral authority.

Hans Baldung Grien, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1521, woodcut

Sometimes it's not subtle at all. This print by another leading Reformation artist shows Luther with the old symbols of holiness - a halo and light from the dove of the Holy Spirit.

The images are great because they show contemporary popular impressions beyond written records. The Protestants pretended to reject the authoritative Church while applying it's symbols to their own leadership. Rhetorically, it says to take what he's saying as divinely authoritative while ignoring the actual question of legitimate dogmatic authority.

One credible structure that Luther did offer was his Priesthood of All Believers. The idea that each seeks Jesus through the Bible and prayer with pastoral guidance is scriptural and logically defensible. But here too the visual rhetoric teases authority that can't be overtly claimed.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Passional Christi und Antichristi, 1521, woodcut, British Library, London

Cranach's illustrations for Luther's ally Melanchthon's polemical book contrast scenes of Jesus with the pope in the role of inverted Anti-Christ. Calling the pope Anti-Christ was common Reformation rhetoric and seems less a claim that the Apocalypse was happening that a way of calling the pope the opposite of the representative of Christ he claimed to be.

But in other prints, it's Luther set up opposite the wicked pope. If the pontiff is considered an inverted Antichrist, then presenting Luther as his inverse sets him up as a Christ-figure. Not exactly, but rhetoric doesn't work by logic. It works by feeling. And if early Protestants felt the pope was the opposite of what Jesus was like, then the opposite of that is literally Christ-like. Rhetorically, the feelings transfer and the real theological definitions irrelevant.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Contrasting Protestant and Catholic Christianity, around 1545, colored woodcut, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Collections of stock caricatures but the opposite natures are just as clear as in the Passional Christi und Antichristi

Then Luther begets other followers with their own metaphysically-absurd claims to be able to dictate canonicity.

Anonymous, Martin Luther and the Reformers, 1625-50

A crude painting that makes the point. They don't all agree. Do they assert that the Holy Spirit works openly through them?

Which ones?

Hans Holbein, Portrait of Henry VIII, 1540, oil on panel, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

Certainly not Fat Blasphemer. There wasn't a more risibly self-fluffing fraud than this oleaginous pig's creation of a breakaway "church" to feed his appetites. And to liquidate venerable ecclesiastic foundations to line his and his bootlickers' pockets.

If any leader of the era is in the jaws of Hell...

Religious issues quickly become inseparable from political ones as princes choose sides. Fat Blasphemer is especially egregious, but the Wars of Religion are a century and a half wallow in unnecessary brutality.

Frans Hogenberg, Spaniards Occupy Antwerp, in 1576, end of the 16th century, copper engraving, Getty Images

The ferocity of the Spanish counterattack ended any hope of a political settlement. The Dutch saw the 80 Years War as an existential war for survival.

However one feels about religious questions, the European Wars of Religion were a culture-level disaster. And while the Reformation pitched freedom from iligitimate religious authority, the result was a proliferation of different authorities. Long-term this meant subordinating the spiritual to the socio-political, another big step on the road to "secularizing" the modern West.

The direct impact on art plays out in different ways. The Church had been the preeminent source of arts funding – the only source for much of the Middle Ages and conduit for most aristocratic money. The giants of the Renaissance like Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian all work for religious patrons.

Dirk van Delen, Iconoclasts in a Church, 1630, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum

Iconoclasm was an extreme but regular expression of Protestant hostility towards images. The impact on artists is obvious.

Anonymous, Protestants Clean Ship in a Catholic Church, 1566, engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Catholics worship the seven-headed Beast and pope as Whore of Babylon while the devil flies away with crucifix and chalices. Meanwhile iconoclasts destroy images while others sweep up fragments.

Altar retable in the Jan van Arkel chapel, Utrecht Cathedral, 15th century, defaced during Beeldenstorm iconoclasm of 1566

The Dutch Beeldenstorm is the most famous Protestant iconoclasm, but most Protestant regions had one. The theological argument and rhetoric accused images and other Catholic liturgical items as idolatry. But there was a huge socio-political dimension as well.

The anger vented towards the Church was the product of deep dissatisfaction with reaction to a long-running spiritual crisis and betrayal by trusted institutions. Were mass awareness about the current church to penetrate the fruit-fly awareness of the masses, similar rage would be expected.

When Protestant sects reject or curtail religious art, they cut off the main venue for artists. Even the more moderate groups that don't reject images altogether still don't use art to the extent the Catholics do. The Reformation is as disruptive to traditional patterns of art as it is to the rest of society and culture.

Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Interior of Saint Bavo, Haarlem, 1631, oil on panel, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Whitewashed Gothic interior without sculpture, pictures, or stained glass. Religious questions aside, the cost to Western culture was incalculable.

The Reformation doesn’t end art, but it disrupts and then channels it into new directions. New clients and markets emerge for different types of art. This brings in socio-economic considerations - the devastation and drain of decade after decade of grinding religious war was not conducive to a thriving art scene. It was Protestant Holland that developed the prosperity to emerge as an art center, building off the foundations of the older Northern Netherlandish Renaissance. Only without the old religious intensity that we saw in an earlier post.

The Dutch Golden Age that rose out of the initial chaos of the 80 Years War included one of the dominant painting traditions of the 17th century.

Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, East Indiamen off a Coast, between 1600 and 1630, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum

The Golden Age of the 17th century saw the Dutch as the preeminent sea trading power in Europe. An interlude between the Venetians of the Middle Ages and Renaissance and the British Empire of early modernity.

The rising prosperity of the Dutch Golden Age was different from the European monarchies because the newly independent United Provinces lacked a powerful aristocracy or Church. Obviously new economic elites were created, but the wealth was relatively more distributed. This created a different type of consumer - something closer to an emergent middle class. A relatively large percentage of the population with disposable income. Not enough for lavish palaces and vast artistic projects, but enough to buy paintings and support a different kind of artistic economy.

Pieter de Hooch, The Courtyard of a House in Delft, 1658, oil on canvas, National Gallery

The culture of the Dutch Golden Age was urban and affluent but not aristocratic. With an emphasis on a disciplined socio-political order that walked the line between unprecedented materialism and rigorous Biblical Protestantism.

This remarkable painting captures the clean, orderly nature of Golden Age life.

Abraham van Beyeren, Banquet Still Life, 1667, oil on canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The tradition of lavish Dutch still-life painting reflects familiarity with the luxury goods made available by extensive trade and rising public affluence.

Note the presence of decaying items. This prosperity conflicted with the humility and self-sacrifice promoted by the Dutch Reformed religion. A picture like this has it both ways - pointing out that all material things are fleeting and perish Ecclesiastes-style, while also celebrating the availability and appearance of them.

Protestant art is dominated by new genres - scenes of everyday life, landscape, still life, and portraits all develop quickly. These subjects didn't have the overt religious subjects of older traditions and were suitable to a new urban client class. The next post will look more closely at the details, but it's already clear that the emergence of this new art was a directly outcome of the social changes spawned by the Reformation.

Catholic art, like Catholic society goes through a period of crisis before blasting into the affective, rhetorical, mystical triumphalism of the Baroque. This will be dealt with in a future post, but raises an important point to the Reformation.

Peter Paul Rubens, Miracle of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, 1617-1618, oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Grand altarpiece from the great Flemish painter of the counter-Reformation. Catholic art addressed Protestant attacks on several levels. The visual splendor reaffirms the legitimacy and value of religious art. And the subjects are polemical and didactic. It's confirming the legitimacy of sainthood, the new order of the Jesuits, the priesthood, and by extension the Catholic structure, and a traditional altar and Mass with chalice visible. All in a rhetorically engaging way.

Emphasis on ritual and organization give it away. A unified Christendom has to have a degree of flexibility since it has to accommodate everybody. The Middle Ages was full of borderline heterodoxy and mysticism that fell short of heresy and were tolerated. But rigid denominations require greater doctrinal homogeneity. It's not enough to be "Christian". It's what type of Christian you are.

Wenceslaus Hollar, The Augsburg Confession. State 2, 17th century, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Toronto

The Augsburg Confession was presented as a definitive statement of Lutheran dogma in 1530. Ten years later, Philipp Melanchthon wrote a revised Variata that was signed by Calvin. The two versions include significant differences in the nature of the sacrament. Which one was manifesting divine truth in material form under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and which was something a guy made up? Both can't be True. And if neither necessarily are, what makes their denominations objectively binding beyond a generic Christian fellowship?

So we're confronted by the irony of a religious freedom movement becoming grounds for greater control over belief. And that will undermine Christian objectivity as the idiot masses prove incapable of grasping the essential place of Christ and his sacrifice to any manifestation and waft into occultic unitarian assholery.

At this point it is necessary to address the logical parameters of the Reformation without weighing on specific dogmatics. We can untangle the main artistic developments in a part 2 to follow. The Band avoids issues around "denominations" because of our understanding of onto-epistemological linkage. Questions of UR are known by faith. Empirical observation or logical analysis may be consistent with faith-based knowing, but can can’t verify or refute. That’s a category error. A misapplication of epistemological mode to ontological level like using a mathematical formula to determine whether you liked dinner.

But is is obvious in the face of competing arguments that we have to lay out what can be claimed to be known and what is merely social custom.

The extended ontological hierarchy with the sub-logos descent into evil and existential negation. If interested, click for the post where we work this out.

The nature of Logos is important here - the divine extension through the levels of reality that manifests in the appropriate way on each. The Word or Jesus to logical truths, to empirical reality. All different ontologically, but all measures of truth as applicable to the appropriate domain. Rejecting truth - like the House of Lies - rejects logos for empirical falsehood and illogical assertions.

The appropriate manifestation for the level is essential. It captures the coexistence of different form and fundamental affinity. Truth known by faith is non-contradictory with truth known empirically or logically in the appropriate domains, because all three are connected by domain-specific manifestations of logos. But no set of controlled observations or logical algorithm can confirm the redemptive power of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is consistent with human survival in an entropic fallen world, but not verifiable in its terms.

Doctrine is the attempt to extrapolate logically from Biblical foundations given that the truth of the Bible is accepted on faith. We'll leave out the dogma-doctrine distinction - there is one - and stick to the more general doctrine for the sake of discussion. Like any divine expression, it tries to cross ontological levels through representation by applying abstract truths to changing material circumstances. And that opens two big interpretative issues.

1. Semiotic limitations – differences between referent & words and between how words are translated & interpreted in changing circumstances.

2. Passage of time – changing socio-cultural context or medium of manifestation that interpretations take place in and materialize through.

There is a built-in susceptibility to moral entropy and progressive deviation in this ontological make-up of a material church. One that requires constant vigilance to prevent and resist. This is only possible by continually testing the current doctrinal forms against the original legitimating authority.

Anonymous German Painter, Christ Blessing, Surrounded by a Donor Family, around 1573–82, oil and gold on oak

If the authority of the Bible and the historical roots of Christianity are accepted on faith, there is validity in Reformation critique of the Renaissance Church. But there is a greater illogic in the response. It's that inherent limitations in Christianity itself as worldly manifestation of divine will that represents a constant challenge to church integrity.

Hence the need to properly assess the logic behind the religious positions around the Reformation in a way we haven’t seen done before.

The idea comes from an unlikely place.

The Band has mentioned Christopher Langan in the past, the man with the highest recorded IQ in America and candidate for the World’s Smartest title. We are in the process of working through his immensely dense reality theory called the CTMU for the next big project after the House of Lies. We aren’t in a position to comment further except to note that like any worthwhile intellectual exercise there is inspiration and influence.

Image adapted from Colossus by Alex Olmedo. It's a good representation of how it feels to dispute Langan intellectually.

One thing that makes Langan so remarkable - and challenging - is how he combines knowledge domains as if they were data points. The result is productive and innovative but escapes classification in the standard silos.

Most modern scholars or academics are masters of disciplinary lingo, not the epistemological foundations that disciplines supposedly codify. A discipline is merely a body of knowledge around a subject, but in the midwitted hives of modern academe, disciplinary structures and jargon become ends in themselves. This means the practitioners can't assess the fundamental limits of their own disciplines. Nor can they engage directly with aspects of reality that fall outside their disciplinary frames of reference. Readers of the Band know we recognize disciplinary formations are at best perspectives on reality and pursuit of deeper truth has to go beyond them. Langan is smarter and more capacious than we are and plate spins disciplines with more information density, but his approach resonates with us. In this case, he has us considering unorthodox applications of logic and sets.

In particular how depicting logical parameters in Venn diagram form makes structural relationships between sets instantly clear and recognizable.

Consider the gist of the Reformation debate. That the Church deviated over time from its founding principles and that those need to be restored. Not how the Reformation crapped the bed subsequently, but the founding principles. Everyone could agree that Christianity began at a certain moment in time, organization quickly followed, and the faith grew and spread across the ancient world. The issue was whether what developed historically remained consistent with the founding ethos.

Masaccio, The Distribution of Alms and Death of Ananias, between 1426 and 1427, fresco, Cappella Brancacci, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence

That's where the humanist epistemology seems to fit. The dispute is historico-interpretative - the interpretation of what happened historically in light of theological reference.

This manifests as disputes over legitimate authority - sola scriptura vs. tradition - as well as how authority is to be understood. Did certain things happen, and if they did, what do they mean? The Church is supposed to align people with God's will. The problem emerges when the particulars of that will and how best to align are in dispute. Leaving out the deceivers and self-servers. Good faith disputants only, since all sides agree God does know the heart.

This means that the core problem is temporal – as in occurring in time – because it involves that abstract/material interface. How God's unchanging abstract will is to be implemented in impermanent fallen human material reality.

Abstract reality is unchanging but immaterial - timeless founding concepts and ideals. Material reality is entropic and timebound, human structures that shift and change. The Church is an ongoing attempt to realize the former in the latter. Literally to materialize the former in the latter. If it goes wrong, it explicitly manifests negative temporal outcomes. Literally changing for the worse over time. If it goes right, the changing temporal outcomes will remain consistent with the founding principles, the realization of which is the purpose of the Church in the first place.

Sir James Thornhill, Paul Preaching in the Areopagus, 1729-31, oil on canvas, Royal Academy of Arts

Set aside the question of identifying what the timeless founding principles are for the moment. Logical structure is independent of the the specific content. We can be certain that they have to exist - whatever they are specifically - because a) the material Church appears at a moment in time to b) represent an immaterial divine will.

Since God is external to time and change, His will is not mutable. Therefore the founding principles of a material manifestation of that will must also be immutable or else the manifestation doesn't remain consistent with the will over time. And then the Church is no different than any other human club or organization ontologically. And here's a link to a post on the Pope's Satanic Throne, for no reason at all.

Now cross the necessity of a starting set of of principles that must remain consistent with the idea defining parameters can be expressed as a Venn diagram-able set. Think of those [timeless founding principles] as the starting parameters of a set called [Church]. Now shift from two-dimensional to three-dimension by extending temporally - add time as the z-axis. The [Church]-set parameters extended forward in time visualize the consistent defining principles for the historical Church as it develops as a volumetric form. The diagram clearly shows that metaphysically-legitimate historical Church is the temporal extension of the starting parameters.

It’s easiest to visualize this graphically.

Start with a simple Venn structure. The initial black square corresponds to material reality as understood in terms of the temporally unfolding socio-culture formation of the West.

Within that material reality, we can define a “space” for the Church corresponding to the consistent founding principles above expressed as socio-cultural parameters.

If we want, we can add another set of socio-cultural parameters corresponding to another set of materialized timeless founding principles. Call it [Papacy] - the internal subset responsible for the authoritative guidance and oversite of [Church]. [Papacy] is “inside” [Church] because its parameters and authority are subsets of the larger entity.

Makes sense in a general way. Now consider the parameterization. Unlike the parameters of a set, a cultural space is defined by a qualitative verbal description, not quantitative parameters. “Formula” or “formulation” fits, so long as we think of it as a qualitative one. So we’ll call our [Church] or [Papacy] boundary or definition a qualitative formula or Q-Form for short.

We do have to acknowledge semiotic differences – verbal language has less precision but more connotative breadth than a mathematical one. Any lexical definition has the inherent built-in imprecision of representing with words in sentences as opposed to the quantitative accuracy of numbers in strings. It’s still a set of defining parameters, but with more interpretative room. It’s clearer with the actual examples.

The qualitative formula - Q-Form - for the parameters of [Church] is the set of Biblical references that refers to the founding and organization of the Apostolic church.

Primarily Jesus’ references to "church" in the Gospels and the accounts of the early Christian groupings in the Acts of the Apostles.

The Q-Form for [Papacy] is the Petrine Succession – Jesus’ charge to Peter that he builds his church upon his rock. The breadth includes the what we know of Peter. He isn’t a cipher to be interpreted as anyone wants, but one of the first Apostles, with all that entails.

If he is the foundation of the Church to follow, its definition can’t contradict what we know about him as an Apostle. And that has to conform to the parameters of [Church] as well.

Now the initial parameters materialize timeless principles, but this materialization exists in time. As in, time passes from the beginning point. Temporally, the qualitative formula - Q-Form - defines the consistent principles that justify the entity from the outset forward. The historical Church grows and changes as time passes. Individual popes come and go, and many of those are show terrible moral character. But the timeless principles materialized in the foundation maintain consistent standards express the uniquely divine nature of the Church. They distribute evenly across all elements included within the set. In practice and in principle. Those are what separates the Church as from a social organization or differentiates a pope from a potentiate metaphysically. And best of all, they do it on the Church's own own claims.

That’s the thing about the Q-Form – it’s the initial legitimating formation that the Church and papacy themselves put forth.

Both claim to be instantiated by Christ with the Bible as proof. Therefore that same source determines their starting parameters in the manner of a Venn Diagrammed set, just qualitatively. The Q-Forms of [Church] and [Papacy].

Since the Church is a historical phenomenon - it exists materially in historical time - the initial formation is merely the beginning of a changing, developing temporal existence. Remember that change is endemic in material reality and neither proof nor disqualification of the legitimacy of the historical church in itself. Everything material changes. The question is whether the changes remain consistent with the founding parameters which are themselves based in the not-material. Are the material "translations" accurate so to speak.

This is the crux of the Reformation debate – the Protestants accuse the historical change of deviating from Christian truth while the Catholics claim consistency. Neither proffered anything like the socio-religious formations of the early Christian era. The dispute was alignment with the initial ethos.

Lucas Cranach the Younger, The Last Supper, 1565, oil on canvas, Johanniskirche, Dessau

Reformation altarpiece with Luther, Melanchthon and other Reformers in the place of the Apostles.

Paintings like this were intended to show the connection between the initial Christian and Reformation ethoi. They also ironically call to mind the physical historical differences between the 16th and 1st centuries. The rhetoric is clear, but whether or not they're consistent with the founding parameters of the historical church - the Q-Form of [Church] is still in question.

We can look at that graphically as projection over time from the initial Q-Form by adding that time axis.

We've shown the temporal extension of [Church] as a regular cylinder for clarity. It's a visual metaphor where the unchanging parameters of the founding principles are visualized graphically as an unchanging circumference of the historical "volume".

The socio-material form actual historical church will shift and change, but remains legitimate so long as this remains "within" the extended parameterization of the founding principles.

We can extend the Q-Form [Papacy] in the same way. The founding parameters become a temporal concpetual range for legitimate historical manifestation.

Visualizing the logical legitimacy of the historical church like this makes some facts instantly apparent. We know that the defining parameters of a set are distributed over all the elements within the set, meaning anything inside them conforms to them. Or else it isn't part of the set. [Church] and [Papacy] encompass socio-cultural reality over time, so all legitimate historical manifestations claiming to be the Church or its leadership has to be consistent with the determining Q-Forms.

Now rotate the graphics to a two-dimensional profile view for clarity. And because our graphic-creation powers are limited.

All we've done is depicted the graphics on the left side-on and shaded the volume representing the initial parameters extended temporally. It shows the historical dimension but doesn't show [Church] or [Papacy] as "areas" of the socio-cultural material plane. They still are. It just doesn't show in the simplified views.

All the graphic formats are the same temporally-extended parameter set. The differences are in the information that the different views show. Here are the three views in sequence to make it clear before moving to the next manipulation.

If we take slices of the third version, what you get are socio-cultural "snapshots" - manifestations of [Church] or [Papacy] at a single moment in time. In other words, the actual historical church at that date. It looks like this...

On the two-dimensional graphic these slices look like lines bisecting the extended socio-material field at certain points in time.

The lower picture switches to the first view and represents each of the slices from "above" - as [Church] parameterized at that moment in history. Time moves forward but the founding principles perpetually manifest as the defining parameters of the legitimate historical church.

Because the defining parameters of a set distribute over all its elements, every legitimate historic manifestation of the church has to correspond to to those. Logical necessity provides a means of evaluating whether particular examples of the historical church are legitimate. A means that recognizes the ontological difference between the material manifestation and the abstract principles it manifests.

The material is time-bound and always changing. Those changing characteristics are what comprise the historical church at any point and are orthogonal to the abstract parameters. They have to be - the abstract can't be material. But it is applicable. So for the material historical elements of the church to be legitimate as per the Biblical principles, they fall in the [Church] set extended temporally. The principles distribute over the material characteristics.

Visualize the historical development of the material church as a sequence of different polygons within the consistent defining parameters. These can change as the material church does - refining ritual and doctrine, etc. But to be legitimate, always staying within the original Q-Form for [Church].

We can do the same thing with the Q-Form for [Papacy] and the historic leadership of the church.

And because [Papacy] is a subset of [Church], the defining parameters of the later are also distributed over the leadership of the historical church.

What this means is that characteristics of the historic church or its leadership that fall outside the founding principles parameterized in the Q-Forms are not legitimate.

For example, consider the Q-Form for [Papacy] - the Petrine succession - within the Q-Form for [Church] - the Biblical foundations. Remember - we're accepting the Church's own argument at this point. That upon this rock I build my Church means Peter is declared an archetypal "vicar of Christ" that begets a legalistically-defined "pontiff" atop a hierarchy. Of course, none of that is mentioned by Jesus - it's all that historical change and development that comes later in time. Which raises the logical question - is this consistent with the distributed Q-Forms that define the legitimate extension of the defining parameters?

Peter Paul Rubens, Christ's Charge to Peter, 1616, oil on oak panel, London, The Wallace Collection

The foundation of the papacy as imagined by the great Flemish counter-Reformation painter of the early Baroque. The rhetoric is pointed - Peter kisses Jesus' hand as he gives him the keys in a manner suggestive of kissing the pope's ring. The sheep allude to the role of Good Shepherd and charge to feed my sheep that the historical church authorities somewhat disingenuously claimed as a mission.

If we're taking the historic claim of legitimacy at face value, a polemical picture like this is the most favorable possible visualization. And it emphasizes that Peter is an Apostle by including some of the others.

That Peter's an Apostle is centrally important. They are the ones closest to Jesus and his mission who are empowered to carry it on after his Ascension.

Pentecost, illumination from the Syrian Rabula Gospels, 6th century, Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana, cod. Plut. I, 560, f.14v.

Depiction of the Holy Spirit bestowing the gifts of language to the Apostles as flames. The picture shows Mary in the group - combining passages from Acts 1 and 2.

Acts 1:13-14 - And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room... These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.

Acts 2:2-4 - And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Set aside later artists' efforts to elevate the explicit Biblical status of Mary - the history of Marian devotion is beyond the scope of the Band. Focus on the Biblical foundations of the institutional papacy and priesthood and what that means for the defining principles parameterized as our Q-Forms. An institutional priesthood is justified by arguments of Apostolic succession and the papacy by Petrine succession as distinct among the others. Therefore, logic holds that if papal supremacy is actually legitimate, Peter is the apostolic archetype of pope. This means Peter must be the supreme apostle. Otherwise there is nothing to differentiate the Petrine Succession from the other Apostolic successions.

Jesus specifically addresses the issue of "greatest Apostle" in the very Bible that gives the concept of Petrine Succession it's claim to authority. Making it part of the set of Biblical principles that define those starting parameters or Q-Form. In fact, it's so significant that it appears in more than one Gospel. Here are NIV versions from Matthew and Luke for the modern English. The Arts of the West group will recognize the venerable symbols of the tetramorph - the man and ox respectively.

An order of spiritual leadership based on the Biblical Apostles ranks according to degree of service in the manner of Jesus and childlike innocence. This is because the Gospels repeatedly differentiate between this world and the Kingdom of God. Caesar's and God's. Last shall be first. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal (John 12:25). And so forth. The difference between the Kingdom of God and the fallen material world is one of opposites, not representational continuity like in Neoplatonism. Logos ties levels of reality together, but that's a path out of material entanglement. The fallen, entropic, temporal world offers no pathway on its own to the eternal life Jesus offers.

This means that wealth, power claims, titles, reverence of the Reformation papacy contradicts clear Biblical statements on Apostolic greatness. It doesn't matter if the concept of "pope" can be defined through Biblical interpretation - the Q-Form of [Papacy] - if the material institution doesn't conform to the defining parameters.

The current occupant of the Vatican enthroned between golden cherubim in the manner of the Holy of Holies is well outside the parameters of [Papacy] or [Church]. One's opinion on the Petrine succession argument is irrelevant to recognizing that this is a total inversion of the ethos of the Biblical Apostles.

The Q-Form doesn't distribute onto the claimed manifestation placing it outside the set.

What the papacy did was take the Kingdom that Jesus characterized as reversing the state of this world and redefined it in the terms of this world. After explaining how the greatest of Apostles is a servant in Luke, he describes the reward to follow. You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Luke 22:28-30. The Kingdom of the Father.

Opposite, not the same. Expressed in terms of the historical West, the political ruler needs to be Christian to rule morally. And there needs to be some form of moral or doctrinal leadership within the material church that conforms to Biblical principles. But the Christian leader is not exalted with worldly privilege and luxury like a political ruler.

Consider Peter.

Guido Reni, Crucifixion of St Peter, 1604-1605, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca, Vatican

According to early church tradition Peter was crucified upside-down to differentiate himself from Jesus. Here's the account from the approximately 2nd-century apocryphal Acts of Peter 37

I beseech you the executioners, crucify me thus, with the head downward and not otherwise: and the reason wherefore, I will tell unto them that hear.

Reni's painting falls into that early Baroque idiom that emphasized counter-Reformation values. Like the primacy of Peter, the value of martyrdom, and the continuity between the early and contemporary Church.

Contrast this with a Portuguese Renaissance painting that captures the papal vision of St. Peter. Especially the Apostolic humility and service in the painting up above. Here, "Peter" has been reimagined enthroned and crowned like a Renaissance pope.

Grão Vasco, Saint Peter, 1530-1535, oil on wood panel, Viseu, Museu Grão Vasco

It's appropriate that Peter was said to have been crucified upside-down so as to not be confused with Jesus. Because these "successors" to Peter can't be confused with him either. Though for different reasons...

Neither the medieval-imperial nor the Reformation-era papacy were legitimate authorities by the logic their own distributed defining parameters. The answer to the leadership question would be an entity or entities that conformed to the Biblical principles of Apostolic greatness. Unfortunately, the Reformers were every bit as subject to the lure of worldly authority.

Reformers in conference: John Calvin presiding at the Council of Geneva in the year 1549

Running a moral community would always be a problem. But blurring the line between religious and political leadership was never the answer.

To say nothing about Fat Blasphemer...

And that's before the fragmentation of Western Christendom into dueling doctrines, then official "national" churches and the subordination to material interests, and then the inverted non-Biblical skinsuits of today.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. It's sufficient for this post to map out the basic logic of using Biblical principles to legitimate material temporal ecclesiastic structures. The next post will look at the implications of Reformation and counter-Reformation on art and culture.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Blind Leading the Blind, 1568, distemper on linen canvas, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Categories without Criteria or The Telos of Credentialism

2022-02-23T10:20:00.002-08:00

Investigating the foundations of the House of Lies brings us to some deceptively critical components. The form without content called credentialism & the fruit-fly tier memory.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

When the topic of credentialism comes up it's usually in the context of ballooning paper requirements for jobs or positions. Unnecessary resume padding that forces people into unproductive degree and certificate programs at considerable cost in time and money. This is totally legitimate and a another sign that our beast system - what we call the House of Lies - is in a terminal state. But what it misses is how big a part of the House of Lies credentialism actually is.

Click for links to recent posts on the Functionally Two Species model and the House of Lies.

Part 1 - Seeking Truth in a House of Lies - Logic, Feelings & the Strange Curse of Binary Thinking

Part 2 - Exploring the House of Lies & Introducing the Functionally Two Species Model

Part 3 - Postcards from the House of Lies

This is a legitimate problem. Inflated credentialing is a terrible way to add selectivity to a job where it isn't necessary. It's just an arms race. And as the need to push numbers through institutions goes up, the difficulty goes down. The only change is the necessity of wasted years and money on "school". This improves unemployment numbers while breeding fields of debt cows.

A full account of credentialism reveals a much deeper problem. It is actually a critically important manifestation of the reality-representation inversion we've explored in recent posts. And that's a deep structural mechanism of the fake, manipulative, centralized beast system that we currently inhabit. The House of Lies. The House of Lies absolutely requires huge numbers of denizen-perpetuators to be possible - functionally second species or FTS-2 identified in the last two posts. And FTS-2 couldn't exist the way it does without the credentialist processes.

Narrative-huffing needs narratives to huff, but it can't huff them all. That means there has to be some way to differentiate the lies they uptake as fake truth from the ones they don't. Enter the credential - an inherently meaningless chit that has the same name as something significant. A reality inverted into a false representation that curates the lies in the House of them.

Credetialism is connected to symbolism on FTS-2's glowing screens. The credentialed expert is indicated by posing in a costume while flourescently lit. It tells the huffer that this credentialed.

The Band is often critical of what we call fruit-fly tier memories. This is the wide-spread inability to remember programming accepted without logical or empirical reason in the face of new programming, also without logical or empirical reason. It’s an integral part of how the beast system operates today and the operating system of what we call the functional second species.

If we assume human behavior should reflect response to observed reality, the functional second species is opposite. It's why they're sometimes less charitably called the idiot masses. FTS-2 [Functionally two species 2] ignores sensory evidence when making choices and won’t or can’t make logical connections. They respond emotionally to inputs from designated “sources” without empirical or rational assessment. Like a puppet in a lab coat.

We've mentioned this symbolism. It's deeply programed. This unfortunate ad has the look of a poor translation, but makes the point.

This is a character, not a vocational model. And when programmed properly, FTS-2 will associate it with smartness, knowledge, and reliable truth.

Actually look at these pictures.

It's symbolic image creation. And think how reinforced this is.

The FTS-2 processing problem is temporal. Observation is cumulative and logical relations unfold over time. Both are time sequenced. Consider how a child learns by accumulating pieces of information while growing the capacity to understand what they mean. Cumulative observation and logical relations. This implies the necessity of a working memory. Unless you remember that the pretty glowing stove burnt the first time you touched it, you won’t know to stay away. And forget about building more complex social or intellectual comprehension.

The utility of reason and evidence are tied to time and memory.

Learning isn’t just temporal, it’s judgmental. Because not all the information we receive is reliable. Consider the first time we encounter a liar. Someone that presents their information as positive knowledge when it isn't.

To avoid being victimized, we have to make more complex judgments than simple information uptake. This means drawing on past lessons – observed and reasoned – and applying them to the present situation.

Pattern recognition.

And judgments based on pattern recognition require... well... recognition. Remembering previous experiences from different points in time and how they relate to one another and the present.

Judgement is the application of reason and evidence through time and memory

And that brings us to the dyscivilizational nature of the fruit-fly tier memories of FTS-2. It’s not amnesia like the guy in Momento – he actually remembers a ton of functional information about how things work, but no personal details, people, or relationships. FTS-2 remembers who people are and what their job entails. What they can’t do is remember what they believed in a way that makes it accessible for learning or judgment.

The fruit fly is an excellent metaphor. Mindlessly flocking to whatever the ~~beast media lie~~ food source is with no regard for what happened last time.

There's an unchanging quality to the behavior pattern that would be impressive were it not so societally destructive.

This is because the beliefs aren’t grounded in cumulative observation or logical assessment. They have no temporal build-up. No chain of pieces. And so there is no idea of comparative – or any other - relations across time in them. There’s nothing empirical or rational in how they’re created, so there is no empirical or rational process in how they’re appraised. The beliefs are simply given by the glowing screen atemporally. The fruit-fly tier memory sees the world as a context-less perpetual present.

It’s how the self-evidence nonsense and error of the “pandemic” was accepted by a critical mass of idiots without a moment’s reflection on the idiocy. And how when the measures did nothing to stop the spread, the idiots kept embracing not only the idiocy but the liars who continue to promote it. It seems almost impossible how for all the contradictions of previous epidemiological knowledge, fake claims, and psycho-socio-cultural destruction, the perpetrators never lost their ill-founded “credibility”.

Previous epidemiological knowledge is easy to account for. A population defined by inverted education and plummeting IQs is too stupid for technical knowledge. The Band will miss indoor plumbing.

But fake claims need to be cross-referenced with observed reality. Noting that the curve didn’t flatten after two weeks and that !vax rates don’t correspond to case numbers means having to remember what was said and applying it to what is happening.

These official Scottish numbers are aggregate not normalized rates, but the trend is diametrically opposite the liars' claims about !vax efficacy and safety. Like this bit of beast propaganda from a year ago.

Remember?

Note – we aren’t accepting the validity of “case numbers”. We are merely pointing out obvious signs within the beast’s own metrics. Like the liars' conga from it makes you immune to you're not immune but it stops transmission to it doesn't stop transmission but it minimizes symptoms... And the same liars! In reality we're hovering around [it worsens infection, outcomes, and may blow out your immune system].

Put another way...

If it's fool me once, shame on you and fool me twice, shame on me, what's fool me over and over and over?

Societal destruction is observational but needs some reasoning to make sense of the accumulated observations. Hardly anything complex – but being aware of implications of masking children during speech and social development years, paying people to not work, and vaporizing the economic base does require a rudimentary time consciousness. And if all you can do as a species is uptake atemporal snippets without any empirical or logical processing then this is impossible.

The disconnected snippets can't linger. The snippet uptake process doesn't involve any of the necessarily temporal dimensions of learning and judgment. It's atemporal - simply an ephemeral emotional impulse. Easily dispelled and forgotten when the next atemporal ephemeral impulse from the screen takes over.

This is why the Band spends so much time on the simple foundational bases of knowledge and truth. What we can know and how we can know it requires us to pay attention to observations and rational assessments over time. It's how we learn instead of unreflectively leaping at anything someone says that pushes some emotional button.

Remember the logos-pathos distinction. How you feel about something can be related to the truth or completely detached from it. They aren't intrinsically linked - beyond applying to you.

So fruit-fly tier memory is a series of disconnected emotional impressions. Disconnected meaning detached from alignment with empirical reality or any sort of logical consistency. They can have an internal emotional thematic “consistency” – all the scattershot pandemic lies play off the same basic unfounded fear foundations. But this internal consistency is simply fragments of disconnected fictional narratives that share a topic. But what they don't do is form a coherent whole like chapters in a book would. And even better, as narratives, the fragments don't conform to external reality or internal logic. Just think about that for a moment. Imagine living like that...

Fruit-fly tier memory is fragments around a theme and not just a fake narrative because narrative implies some sort of internal logic. We balk at stories that violate their own internal rules. If someone was telling the Robin Hood story and suddenly Robin wiped the Sheriff out with an air strike, the narrative would collapse under it’s own absurdity. Or if he suddenly flew and shot lasers from his eyes. Or commanded a vast army of undead warriors. They’re elements with no logical connection to what had been going on.

A flow of disconnected vignettes with no rational connection beyond FEAR! CASES! is essentially the pandemic “story”. There nary a scrap of the logical consistency of the kind you see in narratives. Or the real world that narratives apply to. Nothing that happens has any real tie to what just happened. The only consistency is rhetorical.

Being able to assess if a narrative is consistent requires temporal continuity. You need to understand what happened to assess what’s happening. It's cumulative, and cumulative implies accumulating over time. Truthful narratives have this necessarily temporal internal consistency, making it impossible to ascertain if something is true or false with a fragmented fruit-flu tier memory.

However... rhetoric doesn't require internal consistency.

The visual equivalent to the "pandemic" would be something like this. None of the elements make logical sense in a way that you can connect them together to actually be reflective of material reality. But they work around a common emotional resonance.

That's the thing about emotional triggering. Each piece is a an appeal to emotion with no inherent connection to sequence. Rhetorical claims can be true - or false - on a case by case basis, but that’s irrelevant how effective they are as rhetoric. Good rhetoric makes you feel the way the rhetorician wants, true or false. Bad rhetoric doesn’t, also true or false.

The pandemic “story” - in quotations because it doesn't actually cohere as a story - is rhetorically consistent because logically inconsistent and empirically false pieces all fall into the same basket of feelings. They don't follow in a cause-effect way that describes anything real, but each reinforces a basal fear - CASES! - and the illusion that [retarded thing X] can magically alleviate it. When it doesn’t, the next piece taps into the same fear and offers the same fake remedy. Wash rinse repeat.

This is what we mean when we say the pieces are disconnected. They aren’t describing what is really happening, and they don't follow logically. But that doesn’t matter to a fruit-fly tier memory that can’t build observational knowledge or make rational assessments across time. All that matters is an irrational, unreal “feeling” of dread and trust in the glowing screen. That is the continuity. And each new piece can be as far-fetched or contradictory to the previous one as long as it comes from the same trusted source and feeds into the fear.

The connecting theme is a false emotional impression.

The Band isn’t going to waste space on “trust the science” idiocy. That’s a category error. Science as conventionally defined is empirical and rational. It is observably and logically verifiable, making trust irrelevant. You don't have to trust you eyesight when walking through a door and not into a wall or not touching a glowing stove. You know because it's empirically and rationally verifiable. Where "trust" factors in is with the scientists.

Are they actually employing empirically, logically verifiable methods and protocols? Or are they hacks mouthing prescripted talking points from government and industry?

Neither choice has any bearing at all on the scientific method as a form of knowledge production.

Two things are happening here.

1. The meaning of “science” is inverted into something other than rationally structured empitrical assessment. We've called it Science! That’s pure beast-funded-and-generated narrative blathered by white-coated midwits who lack the cognitive ability to assess the discursive contextualization and conceptual underpinnings of their own disciplines. Useful idiots who can spin up whatever “justifications” their paymasters prefer.

It's more than just corruption. Professional science tends to attract those in the IQ danger zone - smart enough to master some specialized processes and technical vocabulary, but not smart enough to see the inherently limiting assumptions that their processes and vocabularies are founded on. This isn't something that can be explained - it's a cognitive ceiling. When the Band encounters materialists that can't understand the self-limiting nature of materialism, we write them off as someone worth discussing serious matters with. This is related to our post on thinking and will be coming up again in the next big project.

Talking to a science midwit is like talking to someone that knows every nanometer of a world in a box without being able to understand the box.

2. To the idiot masses, science is one of those terms that retains the credibility of its original definition - the Scientific Method as systematized empiricism - despite it now being inverted into the opposite. It becomes a signifier of fake “truths” that it is onto-epistemologically incapable of providing but sounds convincing to a degrading population of glowing screen watchers. In other words, more rhetorical comfort that doesn’t describe reality in an empirical or logical way.

But it makes FTS-2 feel reassured...

So there’s that.

As noted, what “trust the science” really means is "trust the scientists". Science is a verifiable process, either done well or poorly. Spokeslabcoats that don’t show their work or respond to third-party criticism are like rhetoric and truth – inherently unrelated. They may engage in the scientific method, though most don’t. They may spew lies for beast paymasters. Neither has any relevance to whether they self-identify as “scientist” or wear an inane costume. And yet, the self-identified inane costume-wearer is what the narrative-huffers are actually thinking of when "scientist" comes to mind.

One might think that that’s wrong. That a title should reflect the reality and not an arbitrary claim without external truth value. But that one would be unaware of that what is true has no place in the House of Lies. And how one of its central tentpoles is replacing reality with what started as... wait for it... a representation. That is, credentialism. Just not the credentialism you might be thinking of.

Credentialism usually refers to the increase in amount of formal education required for a position. Generally unnecessary education. As in we used to take high school grads and now we need a master's.

The problem is that is forces people into time and resource-burning programs for no actual reason.

The Band is referring to a deeper inversion beneath the proliferation of pointless years in school. The standard critique of credentialism assumes that the unnecessary educational credentials do correspond to some actual knowledge. That the problems is that you don't need a master's in administration to work reception in a hotel. The master's teaches you stuff but that stuff is superfluous for the position. Real knowledge unrelated to the activity - like an engineer driving a cab or a landscaper with a doctorate in poetry.

What is overlooked is that the credential increasingly doesn't refer to any truthful knowledge at all. Some facility with an "academic discipline", which more and more simply means politicized Progressive! materialist lies. It's not that the master's is unneeded knowledge for the desk clerk. It's that the master's is beast inversion that isn't knowledge of reality at all.

The credential was to represent a skillset, knowledge base, or achievement. It meant the holder could do something.

Now, with bloated enrollment, declining student IQs. and beast narrative service, a "college diploma" is mostly meaningless. A participation trophy in an inversion camp with little to no connection to reality. What was a representation is values as a thing in itself.

Hold on to the idea of a credential as a worthless representation pretending to hold the value of something it doesn't actually represent. Now go back to how FTS-2 uptakes their disjointed rhetorical pap. The glowing screen is the conduit for their “trusted sources”. But here's the rub. They have fruit-fly tier memories, and they can't make observational or logical assessments. So how does a source become “trusted”? The glowing screen tells them, but we know that. The question is how trust is built if you can't remember beliefs or make rational judgements?

In the beast system, a position, designation, or accolade is a credential. The "authority" doesn't come from actual, logically and empirically sound knowledge or expertise. It comes solely from the position, designation, or accolade. Whatever the chosen credential. And how do the fruit flies know to trust them? They're the ones that are identified as such on the glowing screens.

The glowing screen - t.v. or big tech - is like the meta-credential. Being on it is incontrovertible "proof" to any FTS-2 narrative huffer that the shill in question is an "expert". That they speak Truth as if in voices of fire.

We've used this meme before but it's just dead on accurate. There's really nothing to add.

It doesn't matter if what spokeslabcoats say is nonsensical or even what they actually know. If' they're on the glowing screen, the fruit-fly tier memories know to trust them.

The thing is, the hollow beast credentialed "experts" are presented as if they actually have real truthful knowledge. It's what makes this so bizarre to people who can make observations and draw logical conclusions. Those odd occasions of exposure to mainstream media are dizzying sprays of self-evident absurdity and logical incoherence. It seems unbelievable that anyone could fall for it. Yet the masses mindlessly repeat the shifting incoherent drivel like pull-string dolls.

Observation - Fruit-fly tier memory has some correlation to intelligence but intelligence level doesn't determine it.

Law of averages dictates some of them would have triple digit IQs. That's the old functional retard category - not actually mentally deficient but acting as if you are.

The role of the glowing screen as credential tells us credentialism in the House of Lies is more complex than making one supposedly representative credential into the end in itself. It's layered, with each credentialed tier building on the one before.

First up is the chit. This is the intrinsically meaningless certificate purchased from a "college" for years of productive life and an extraordinary amount of money. The chit will be emblazoned with the name of an academic discipline, but doesn't mean two things in particular.

1. That the academic discipline is known or understood in any meaningful way.

2. That the academic discipline - even if it was perfectly known - has any connection to empirical or logical reality. The exception - some technical fields that are defined by specific skills, though even these can be watered down to the point of uselessness.

Apart from a few technical specialties, the chit-holder is almost guaranteed not to be asked about their discipline when job hunting. And even there, the bulk of "coursework" won't matter at all.

It's unlikely any employer will care about their grades either. And there's no guarantee that the chit will gain employment. But without it, entire sections of the beast economy is closed.

Second is the position. Some chit-holders are hired into "positions". These come with titles that correlate to some sort of activity, but like the discipline on the chit are disconnected from empirical or logical verification. This is how we get the proliferation of criminally stupid "officials" responsible for failing real things from urban planning to public health.

Observation - "meritocracy" is a lie parroted by ignoramuses. To have a meritocracy, there have to be standards that are assessed by some form of impartial evaluation with the most meretricious being selected. And failure to maintain the standards needs to result in termination. Since neither of these have anything to do with how chit-holders are installed in positions, there is obviously no meritocracy.

Try to imagine any merit-based system where this mendacious, psychopathic midwitted freak is in charge of... anything.

Finally comes appearance on the glowing screen. There are thousands of chit-holding position holders sapping parasitically off the system who spend their lives in relative obscurity. Some even accrue considerable wealth and influence. But to be accepted by the fruit fly tier memory as trusted, they have to be featured on t.v. or big tech.

The process is sequential - like a pyramid of fakeness. The chit is needed for the position, and the position is needed to be featured on the glowing screen.

But it's a chain of inverted credentials. At no point is there a necessary link to empirical or logical truth.

Note that you can assess the actual value of each stage logically and empirically. Is the diploma-holder is actually innumerate? Is the “scientist” is making self-evidently false claims? Is the talking head is only there because they serve the narrative engineers? Is there any demonstrated truth-value in any of the purported skill or knowledge?

But assessment takes observation and reason, memory and time – that is, more than a FTS-2 fruit-fly tier memory. So vertically integrated House of Lies credentialing determines what to trust. And since there is no temporal logical judgment, the credential can say whatever it wants, whenever it wants and be taken as True! – so long as it maintains the rhetorical consistency.

Which is how a liar saying "two weeks to flatten the curve" can become record cases after two years without losing credibility in the tiny minds of the huffers. There’s no functional mnemonic capacity to log the first claim, compare it to the later one, cross-reference it to reality, and draw a conclusion.

So long as the liar has the right House of Lies chit and appears on the right House of Lies screen, each statement becomes truth.

It can only end when the trusted sources declare a new rhetorical theme to respond to...

The rise of credentialism was unnoticed by FTS-2 because it is a temporal process. Their fruit-fly tier memories can't make make connections or assess relational changes that take place at different points in time. So long as the current trusted expert calls it by the familiar name, it will be treated as the same no matter how much it changes.

Consider education, since it’s the font of chit production that replaces expertise at the most basic level in the House of Lies. Colleges and universities are bizarre when you really think about them - as in try and define what exactly it is that they are and do. What their actual purpose in society is. Everyone is familiar with the concept of "going to college", and we've all heard how they're essential to the economy and "innovation". But what are they? Try and succinctly define them. Then think about "essential" entities that lack a clear mission statement or even basic identity.

Children going to a monastery as students, illumination from the Decretum Gratiani, a mid-14th century Bolognese manuscript of canon law, UB Leipzig, Rep. II 9b (CCXLIII), fol. 200v

Modern “university” is a bizarre phenomenon – an incoherent institutional pastiche with roots going back to the Middle Ages and before. The first university in Europe appeared around 1088. Before that it was monastic and cathedral schools.

The medieval university taught the Trivium and Quadrivium - the seven Liberal Arts - and law and medicine. They were limited to a small segment of the population - the wealthy or smart - and not considered essential drivers of the economy. But the point isn't to comprehensively describe the early university. It's to note that the early university had an easy-to-define identity and purpose and wasn't an absurd drain public resources.

Simple questions are a good litmus test for beast nonsense. Again, what is the comparably succinct statement of purpose of a contemporary university? The lack of succinct answer indicates the problem. It has no clear definition because it is founded on nothing more than the lies and projected desires of countless House of Lies functionaries. Some high points…

Philosophy and the Seven Liberal Arts, illumination from Herrad of Landsberg's Hortus deliciarum, around 1180

The original universities had a limited list of subjects - the Liberal arts with medicine and law. This is the birth of the modern “discipline” – the arbitrarily defined knowledge categories that universities are built on. Faculties, departments, etc.

It's noteworthy that the split between pure or basic and applied knowledge was there from the beginning.

Each discipline develops its own methods and procedures. Almost their own cants. This is because they were originally completely different. The Quadrivium - music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy - and the Trivium - grammar, logic, and rhetoric - are based on numbers and words but don't really overlap methodologically much beyond that.

The purpose was also clearly defined from the outset. The quantitative Quadrivium was comprised of subjects believed to relate to what was believed to be the basic harmonies of the cosmos. The Trivium was a set essential knowledge for civic life. Of course this implies that universal truth and civic essentials were accepted by people at the time - a problem for the satanic inversives in the House of Lies. We assume medicine and law were subjects that were better suited to university-type teaching than in other venues.

Over time, disciplines proliferate without any sense of larger consistency...

What do Bachelors of Creative Writing, Mathematics, Social Work, History, and Finance have in common epistemologically? What vision of the world or civilization ties them together? The incoherence of the credential factory is apparent in its structure.

This has two levels - internal and external. The external is what people on the outside see. That fading canard that a chit with one of these disciplines on it represents meaningful understanding of that body of knowledge. Internally, standards are continually loosened to accommodate larger numbers of dumber students and the whole galaxy of politicized retardery that comes with government centralized control and dumber bloated faculty. How the discipline is presented - what trivial body of work is required for the chit - is not a reflection of any fixed truth. It's merely what the chit-masters are prioritizing at the time. Or just time-filler to push the cash cows through. Or both. Google some current university syllabi - the results are pretty shocking.

Doctors performing a cadaver dissection. Miniature from the Book of Properties of Things (De proprietatibus rerum) by Barthelemy the Englishman, 1475-1500.

Medieval medicine is a forerunner of the idea that university should be linked to vocational training. This gets the the main incoherence in the university today – “academic research” vs. practical value. These are inherently contradictory impulses, but both are endlessly blathered when university is discussed.

Teaching was a way for the academics to pay the bills, introducing the necessity of selling value to clients. This amped up in the Renaissance, when Humanists were competing against the Scholastic establishment by peddling the socio-cultural value of their own version of the liberal arts to the rich elites. The elite dimension is central. The historical image of the university had two factors – the presumption of intelligence and the connection to wealth and prestige. Both are forms of social currency, and related but different.

Fast forward to the 20th century and the idea that some bastard hybrid of elite finishing school and technical college should be the backbone of society. This was the era of cultural madness preceding collapse – godless de-moralization, rabid materialism, catastrophic war, mass migration, complete inversion of art and culture – the foundations of the House of Lies.

"Free speech" protests at Berkeley in "the 60s". What did these pampered assholes achieve other than blow open the fiction that university was anything other than an instrument of cultural degradation. Consider "free speech" at Berkeley today...

Twentieth-century university is a basket of incoherent impulses starting with the absurdity that everyone can partake in advanced study without diminishing quality or content. That working in hermetic academic disciplines is also somehow “advanced research” with efficient and direct socio-economic benefit. That economic incubation and pure knowledge generation aren’t contradictory imperatives. That the above-average socio-economic profile of college graduates meant passing through college will make everyone richer.

University was never the indicator of intelligence that it was thought to be, but it used to represent a floor. A college man had a minimum mix of smarts and self-discipline.

Hardly a cognitive elite, but substantially smarter than the average, with the prestige schools on the smarter side of that.

It's hard to get current numbers that aren't just repetitions of the old 110-115, but the sheer number of bodies in colleges and universities indicates that there has to be some decline. This piece is interesting. It's probably overly optimistic since it doesn't incorporate the dropping general IQs. To say nothing of the moron covid cohort coming along.

Note that the second half of the 20th century was a sustained process of removing what need for intelligence there had been. Everything from GI Bills, to draft deferments, to legacy admissions, to affirmative action, to enrolment bloat, to every other non-performance based criteria is further affirmation that being smart isn’t the primary correlate with university. It can't be. Anything other than IQ-type assessment is a necessary admission of criteria other than pure intelligence.

Yet despite this, as the population has grown commensurably larger and less capable, the chit requirements have diminished.

Graph from a good piece on rising grades. Whether "keeping people out of the war" or maintaining consumer satisfaction, is irrelevant to the larger picture. The grade isn't a metric that correlates to knowledge/performance over time.

So what is it?

It's not just the As either...

There's another number that's continually risen as well. The cost of the chit. Melting standards in a diluting talent pool are no impediment to skyrocketing costs - way beyond other expenses. Here's another graph from a few years back. Note the correlation with the GPAs. It appears that it isn't "knowledge" that university sells.

What's deceptive about much blather about educational costs is the assumption that the "education" is otherwise constant. But with bloating enrolments and cratering standards, it isn't. Grasp that cost and difficulty are both moving. In opposite directions.

The rapid decline will be astonishing even to someone educated in the later 20th century. Yet people not even all that long out of the system cling to their own experiences and standards instead of assessing what is happening right now.

Whenever the reason for or definition of something doesn't correspond to what is happening, the real reason or definition is elsewhere. The assumption is that a degree in mathematics implies some degree of advanced quantitative reasoning. A degree in history implies some information processing and communication ability. And so on. These aren’t value judgments, they’re existential qualities without which the disciplines don’t exist. Replace that with a scrip saying "History" and all you've done is demonstrate that historical expertise is irrelevant to what the scrip is cashed in for.

Exactly. But first an aside.

There are certain contextual limits to the level of degradation. Having mentioned math, there’s a degree of inherent conceptual difficulty in the material in some fields that provides a floor.

But how many math majors are there? Probably the same pool who would have been math majors 80 years ago. Probably ditto for physics and engineering. The bloat isn't taking place in intrinsically challenging areas. It's the arts, the social sciences, and the myriad of designated pre-career programs that have proliferated like mushrooms.

Relative bloat is a semiotic issue. Quantitative expression is highly cumulative, in that the upper-level operations are impossible without fully grasping the lower-level ones first. It doesn't matter what it's applied to - this cumulative nature is implicit in mathematical languages themselves. No algebra without arithmetic, no calculus without algebra, and so on. And if a level becomes incomprehensible, the journey ends. So the nature of the quantitative language itself limits watering down.

If vector analysis requires calculus, the most you can do is require simpler problems. And we're sure they do that. But the subject can't be formulated with only arithmetic. In that case, it's not vector analysis but random numbers on a page.

In other words, a canon of objective prior knowledge is needed to make sense of these functions.

Qualitative language - written and spoken words and texts - is different. Once you can read and write, the meaning-making structures are essentially constant. A sentence can be more or less complex, but the basic grammatical combinatory operations apply. You can even decipher grammatically incorrect sentences in a way that isn't possible with number strings that break mathematical rules. Because of this, there is no intrinsic standard of difficulty in a course based on words beyond basic literacy. It's not cumulative is the same necessary way.

There's no inherent curb on a literature course that maxes out with the Cat in the Hat. There's nothing inherent to stop a psychology class from being entirely Youtube videos. There's no inherent reason a social work course can't consist only of short simplistic lists that don't map onto human realities.

The premise is that a magic fairy called "disciplinary standards" was supposed to ensure that text-based fields maintained the cumulative rigor of the quantitative counterparts. But the House of Lies is built on switching representation for reality. Without an intrinsic criteria, corrupt functionaries can simply blather about "excellence" and do whatever they want. That's what no intrinsic standards means. Something like history can abolish any canon or standard and propel the bloat through with greater ease.

And the evisceration of traditional fields is outstripped by the generation of new clusters that never had any standards to eviscerate. So the chit may say “history” or "conflict studies" on it, but apart from those areas with intrinsic requirements, there is no necessary correlation to a body of knowledge or set of skills. Just that demonstration we mentioned that what it denotes isn't the the expected measure of expertise or intelligence.

What is denoted is money paid - and generally borrowed - and time put in.

Borrow the money, sink the time, get the chit...

An alien visitor would wonder how such a retarded system either came to be or is continually tolerated. The answer takes us to the next level of the integrated credentialism pyramid.

In the beast system, most positions require little skill or knowledge.

We obviously aren't talking about technical fields, but that’s different. They either need those forms of training that have intrinsic knowledge or provide it themselves. But consider most chit-requiring busywork, service industry jobs with no connection to academic disciplines, and virtually anything in the ever-growing, “public” sector.

It doesn’t matter if you know anything. There was no need for a college degree in the first place. It’s a clearing house to manage unemployment figures and a debt-creation ponzi scheme. No one cares what your degree is in. And most work requires minimal intelligence or critical thinking. It’s a clown world Idiocracy where there is no intrinsic correlation between what people do and the standard of living they enjoy.

Just consider the intellectual firepower vs. the pay of the faces on the glowing screen.

The advantage to this system goes beyond the debt and warehousing. The artificial bubble world is House of Lies finishing school, where huge numbers of immature narrative huffers can be indoctrinated into any moral inversion the beast is pushing. And while it's true that the "academic disciplinary" knowledge is irrelevant, there are opportunities to show compliance with and willingness to whore for the beast system.

The rest follows.

The integrated credentialism of the House of Lies is one meaningless representation standing in for its reality atop another. Selectivity refers to the number available positions, not requirements of intelligence or expertise. Pyramiding layers of form without content climaxing in momentary fame among the fruit-fly tier memories and their glowing screens. Otherwise, how would they know what to believe?

And like any soulless husk, form without content is short lived.

We’re watching it.

Glimpsing Heaven in Ravenna - the Mosaics of San Vitale

2022-02-03T14:11:00.001-08:00

Something different. A close look at a tremendous 6th-century monument to the good, the beautiful, and the true that lays bare the myths of progress while showing that the serpent was always in the garden..

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

One of the canaries in the coal mine for the collapse of Western civilization into the beast system and its House of Lies was the degeneration of art. The Band’s arts of the West posts have been slowly tracing this process from the ancient past – we’re in the late Renaissance now and have no idea how long the journey will take. If we could post more frequently…

Anyhow, the nature of the journey isn’t just slow. It’s also big picture, meaning we can only look at some big themes and not go into too much detail about specifics. This post is different – an in-depth look at a remarkable monument that hasn’t gotten its due. Think of it as a cross between the arts of the West and a Truth of Culture post. A focus on one noteworthy thing but something historical instead of more recent culture. That would be the incredible 6th-century church of San Vitale in Ravenna, the most impressive of that Italian city’s impressive collection of early Christian monuments. And typical of a Truth in Culture post, we can use the close look to make some larger observations.

Everything about San Vitale screams quality and care in the pursuit of beauty for the glory of God. Even the floors are works of art - like this mosaic of fine marbles and tilework.

This is what you walk on...

Here’s one larger observation – before art could be jacked and inverted it had to be isolated and cut off from culture. This is the demented “autonomy” we’ve mentioned in earlier posts.

Maurice Denis, Sunlight on the Terrace, 1890, oil on... who cares.

Consider this quote from French supper-hack Maurice Denis from 1890 - "a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered in colors arranged in a certain order."

The correct response was who? Or perhaps who cares? But the slow corrosive drip of cultural entropy rotted the entire abscess of modernism out of these humble beginnings.

The idea that art has no purpose or definition other than being art. Self-deifying morons leapt at this because it promised to free them from coercion and control of academies and elite clients like aristocracy and church. The reality was that in one swoop it wiped out the entire historical set of purposes and references that justified and supported the arts from the jump.

Look at me! I can scribble on a page and no one can say it’s not art!

Wait a minute… That do what thou wilt’s music!

Max Pechstein, Young Woman with a Red Fan, 1910

Everything about this is aggressively ugly. From the clashing garish colors to forms that look like they were cut from cheese.

Of course, autonomy was an extreme position. What happened was that into the 20th century any retarded "movement" could declare what art "should be" and scribble and splatter accordingly. Here's a decent piece written from within a beast system framework that covers the contextual range of meaning connected to autonomous art.

Two main problems.

1. “Freedom” doesn't exist.

The Band’s pick for most misunderstood concept ever. You don't have to accept Maslow as the last word to see there is no “freedom” in a world where we are dependent on things for survival. Especially not in a complex social structure involving the cooperation of countless stakeholders. Freedom is an abstract concept that can only be relative in material existence. Freedom from something.

A societal structure like “art” can’t be free because it depends on societal entities for support. So art can only be free from some faction or another. And since it can’t be what they claim… ding ding ding liars!

2. Art is a societal structure or space.

Horace Vernet, Julius II Ordering Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raphael to Build the Vatican and St. Peter's, 1827, oil, Louvre

Art has no intrinsic identity outside of man-made rules. Even stating that it exists autonomously is an act of creative definition. Someone will always be driving the making and consumption of art. The real meaning of modern autonomy meant kicking out the old arbiters of quality and replacing them with the new definers – the critics then academics of the modern beast art world.

The old authorities wanted certain things from their art – quality, meaning, etc. The modern beast system was in the early stages of tearing culture down, and so would squander resources on the opposite. It was “autonomy” that reached the peak in the idea that art has to be meaningless and not represent anything. Then that became not representing anything connected to beauty, reality, or tradition. When “postmodernism” restored the idea of meaning, the chain was broken.

The redefinition to inversion process is something we’ve covered in detail elsewhere. Click for a post.

Jeff Koons, Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Dr J Silver Series, Spalding NBA Tip-Off), 1985, Tate London

Postmodern art reacted to the absurd seriousness and autonomous claims of modernism by reconnecting with reference. Whether reference to tradition, politics or culture. But it's reference without beauty, truth, or skill. Just hackwork to launder money while further degrading the cultural fabric.

Something like this is easy to disdain. But actually think what is says when enormous financial and cultural resources are expended on pretending this is worthy of... anything. Trite appeals to the Emperor's New Clothes or the like can't scratch the surface of the civilizational suicide across all cultural and intellectual levels.

Ironically the path to redefinition-inversion of art into Art! began with the formalization of the arts in the Italian Renaissance. Ironic considering the towering genius associated with that era. But this is where the arts were first defined in critical terms instead of cultural convention or client desires. And defining the arts as a thing apart was the first step to isolating, jacking, and inverting. If art is merely a culturally-determined mode of expression, it's too broad for a sociopathic cadre of freaks to control then pervert. But turn it into a niche ghetto? It's the same process that happened across Western culture in the 20th century.

In the Renaissance, painting, sculpture, and architecture were singled out as uniquely worthy of liberal arts status as "art". This allowed them to be granted the prestigious "theoretical" designation. And that was the first step to the small cadre of critics and experts taking over.

The Mona Lisa, the David, and Brunelleschi's dome are masterpieces. But they drew arbitrary limits over Western art and tied definitions to self-declared elites.

The Band defines art as a process or relation and not as a set of universal rules or institutions. Logos + Techne or L+T. It’s connected to our understanding of the basic nature of reality, but it’s not necessary to go into that to give a working explanation [click for a post if interested in exploring further]. We've recognized that art is difficult to define because it is one of those concepts that brings together levels of reality in a composite creative act. It is skillfully crafted material but material skillfully crafted with the intention of visualizing some form of higher truth. This could be truth about people, society, or nature, but at its peak there is something of the divine. Truth with a capital T, manifested materially as beauty.

We've also recognized that art has appeared in almost every time and place. It's far too broad to bind to narrow rules of imaginatively constipated critics. L+T doesn't specify what truth or what skillful making, but leaves that up to specific artist and culture to determine. It looks like this.

Art has to have an element of technical skill and connect to truth in some manner. That’s it. It can be painting, sculpture, and architecture. It can also be tapestry, mosaic, digital art, collage, stained glass, metalwork, etc. Just Logos and techne as culturally preferred.

But that rules out almost all the official Art! produced since the dawn of modernism.

Alexander Ignatiev, Beams, oil on canvas, 21st century, private

There are still plenty of real artists today. They just work independently, and outside of the official beast system. .

The Band's L+T definition recognizes that art is human cultural activity and will take different forms in different cultures. Something like the mosaics of San Vitale don’t fit into the beast concept of Art! - the mosaics aren’t painting or sculpture, the subject matter is overtly Christian, and the whole thing gets its impact from the assembly of pieces working together. It doesn’t conform to the ‘fits in a gallery controlled by sociopaths’ model. But it does fit L+T.

The mosaic interior was the preferred form of high status decoration in early Christian Italy. It’s certainly high technical skill. And it drips logos – the pieces together place you in a dazzling experience of God’s grace. There’s even some aristocratic inversion. In short, a tour de force of aesthetics and history.

San Vitale was completed in 547, placing it at a tumultuous time in Italian history. The Western Roman Empire had fallen and the last emperor Romulus Augustus deposed by Odoacer in 476. Odoacer had in turn been deposed and executed by Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths and founder of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in northern Italy.

His capital was Ravenna – an important late imperial city and last capital of the Western Empire after Rome became unmanageable. Theodoric was a smart administrator and balanced the differnign customs and beliefs of his Arian Christian Ostrocothic and Orthodox Christian subjects. He even maintained parallel legal systems.

Arianism was a branch of early Christianity that rejected the full divinity of Christ and the concept of God as a Trinity. It was declared heretical at the Council of Nicea in 325, but lingered in some areas - especially the Germanic tribes - until as late as the seventh century. Theodoric and his Ostrogoths were mostly Arian, but the majority of his Roman subjects were Orthodox. By allowing both to flourish let him keep the peace and enjoy widespread support.

Ravenna contains monuments with Arian and Orthodox characteristics – evidence of the unusual coexistence under Theodoric.

The Baptistery of Neon or Orthodox Baptistery was built over the 5th century. The Arian Baptistry was built by Theodoric in the early 6th century.

Like Charlemagne several centuries later, Theodoric saw his people as culturally backwards compared to the Romans. He worked to “enculturate” the Ostrogoths with classical learning and impressive late antique-style architecture. Civic harmony and good relations with his Roman subjects facilitated this and made Ravenna the jewel of the West for a time.

The Mausoleum of Theoderic, built around 520, Ravenna

Theodoric was buried in a round monumental tomb after Roman custom. The style and stonework is Ostrogothic. The hybrid structure is a perfect metaphor for the way Theodoric's rule spanned two worlds.

All things come to an end, and the Ostrogothic Kingdom collapsed under Byzantine invasion and conflict with the northern Franks. The Byzantines were the main cause – the Emperor Justinian had hoped to reconquer the lost Western territories and plunged the Italian peninsula into a horrible wasting war. While ultimately victorious, the Byzantine triumph was short lived. The Lombards exploited the weakness of a ravaged Italy and invaded from the north, bringing another wave of misery and strife. This was the context that led to the founding of Venice that we discussed in an earlier post.

Ravenna was left as the jewel of early Christian architecture and art. Late Roman, Ostrogothic and Byzantine constructions coexist in the finest collection of building from this era anywhere. And of all these monuments, S. Vitale is the highlight.

Some fortuitous history is involved – Ravenna was a major center in the 5th and 6th centuries but sort of fell off the map after that. Without the steady growth and redevelopment of places like Milan or Rome, the core of late antique buildings wasn’r redeveloped.

The church itself was begun in 526 by Bishop Ecclesius under Ostrogothic rule and completed in 547 by the Byzantine Bishop Maximian. It commemorates a local saint of historically questionable origins who remained popular through the political changes. Construction was financed by a wealthy local banker so funds were no object. The long construction time probably includes delays caused by the Byzantine-Ostrogothic Wars.

Aerial view of San Vitale with the small fifth-century Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in the immediate foreground. The tower was a later addition.

San Vitale stands out for it's shape. It is centrally-planed, meaning it is designed symmetrically around a central point and not a longitudinal basilica like Old St. Peter's or the other early Christian churches in Ravenna. For contrast, the Basilica of Sant' Apollinare in Classe - another Ravenna landmark - is contemporary with San Vitale but laid out like a traditional basilica. It was started in the early 6th century and funded by the same banker - Iulianus Argentarius - and consecrated by Bishop Maximian in 549.

San Vitale is different, a two level centrally planned octagonal structure with a taller domed central area surrounded by a two-story walkway or ambulatory. Originally only the roughly 90’ diameter central dome was vaulted while the surrounding ambulatory having flat timber trussed roofs. It's easier to show than explain.

San Vitale in plan with a photo of the upper portion.

The building consists of concentric octagons - the lower being the outer ambulatory and the upper the domed core. The two are connected by columned exedra or curved spaces between the supporting piers of the dome. The apse breaks the symmetry and provides the ritual focus. A narthex is just a porch. The ambulatory vaults indicated by light dotted lines were a later addition,

The complex floorplan isn't discernable from the outside. Here, the octagonal geometry is more clear.

Looking at San Vitale today, the big flying buttresses stand out. These were added in the 12th century for extra support when the ambulatory was vaulted. Vaulted construction is heavier but channels the additional force down onto the supporting elements. This also includes lateral force vectors that push outward. The original walls weren’t designed to hold up to this so the buttresses – a Gothic building technique – provided the stabilizing counter-thrust.

View with two of the external buttresses. They push against the wall opposite the points where the lateral thrust of the roof vaults pushes out. This prevents them from toppling the wall and locks the structure together.

Early Christian exteriors are deceptive by design - hiding the inner splendor behind plain exteriors. It is true that San Vitale's polygonal shape makes it somewhat interesting from the outside, but there is no superfluous ornament. Older classical architecture was outwardly splendid because the public didn’t have access to the interior. The inside of a Greco-Roman temple held a cult statue but was restricted to the priests and privileged VIPs who administered the rituals. The public was addressed outside and experienced the temple as a god’s house. A special structure that stood out from other buildings with its classical orders and carved reliefs.

This recreation of the temple of Venus and Rome in imperial Rome shows the difference between the outward-oriented decoration of a classical temple and the plain exterior of an early Christian church like San Vitale.

A church was different from a temple because the whole congregation was active on the inside. Christianity defined itself in antiquity as set apart from the everyday world. It became prominent relatively late on the imperial scene and grew by attracting converts away from the traditional worldly focus of Roman life. A plain outside and splendid interior symbolized the personal journey to Christianity as inward focused and distinct from regular life, just as the religion prioritized salvation and the soul over worldly pleasure and fame. Entering a church meant leaving the ordinary material existence for a special place of spiritual wonder. An interior journey that visually called to mind the indescribable wonders to come in the Kingdom of God.

S. Vitale is a perfect example of this. The plain brick exterior does show the complex construction but had minimal decoration and no color. There is nothing to hint at the splendor that awaits beyond the door.

This hasn’t changed, regardless of what the narrative engineers of the House of Lies say.

S. Vitale starts with the complex plan. It’s an octagon surrounded by openings instead of straight sides or walls. Seven of the openings are exedrae - semi-circular concavities – and the eighth a rectangular sanctuary & apse. The apse extends through and past the ambulatory. It's easy to see in this aerial and cutaway view below.

This view shows the concentric octagonal shape very clearly. It's centered on the sanctuary and apse - the apse of the semi-circular projection at the bottom of the upper picture. The raised area in the outer ambulatory with the triple window behind the apse is the sanctuary.

The cut-away looks through the ambulatory into the domed central core. The inside of the apse and sanctuary are not shown but we can see one of the concave exedra curving out from the core into the ambulatory. The sanctuary cuts right across it to the central core. The gallery just refers to the upper story of the ambulatory.

Moving inside, visitors enter into the ambulatory. There is a choice - either follow it around the perimeter or pass through one of the columned exedrae into the core. Today, the ambulatory has a heavy groin vaulted ceiling - the one that required the addition of the flying buttresses on the outside. This was added around 1100 instead of what was probably a flat timber roof. The vaulting is a better match for columned interior and central dome, but the walls weren't originally designed to bear the lateral thrust. Hence the buttressing.

View of the ambulatory with the vaulted roof. Note the textured stone paneling along the walls. This was a Roman custom for high status interior decoration that carried into early Christian times.

The groin vaults in the ambulatory from below. We don't believe that they were ever decorated.

The first part of the stepping into another spiritual world experience comes from the shape of San Vitale. Using bulging columned exedrae instead of walls or even straight colonnades creates the impression of a moving indeterminate space. A spatial experience different from anything in everyday life.

The way the exedrae push into the ambulatory give flowing glimpses of the core & makes the interior seem mysterious.

The vaults may not have been decorated but the carved capitals on the columns and ornamental tile floor are originals

Columns and capitals are a central part of Classical Greco-Roman architecture, but San Vitale's also show the transition into the early Middle Ages. The giveaway is the disappearance of the standard Classical orders for newer versions.

Close-up of a Byzantine-style basket capital. Entering the Middle Ages, Classical orders - Tuscan, Doric. Ionic, Corinthian, Composite - all fall out of use. The basket capital has foliate elements but is different.

Detail of the floor mosaic. Mosaic floors were a Roman tradition that carried over. The peacock retains it’s meaning as symbol of the Resurrection.

Seven sides of the central octagon are exedrae - the eighth is the sanctuary and apse. This cuts completely across the ambulatory, making it the terminus whether you go left or right from the entrance. Of course, the break isn't a sharp wall but triple arch with columns, giving a partial view into the decorated space beyond.

It looks like this...

The whole interior experience of San Vitale is moving, shifting views hinting at something wonderful across the veil. There difference here is that you can step through and see it.

An exedra bulges towards you. Pass between the basket capitals of the curving triple arch...

... and look up past the galleries on the opposite side towards the central dome. The apse and sanctuary are directly across.

The center of San Vitale is visionary.

The painting in the dome is from the 18th century. The Baroque angels are spectacular but a little out of place in the early Christian setting.

But the curving shapes of the exedrae with their galleries & windows create a flowing, mystical space.

Step out of this world.

Photos can't do it justice, but these are pretty good. Turning the octagon’s sides into concave exedrae with curving arcades makes the interior feel less solid & material. The massive exterior brickwork seems to melt away into a mindset more conducive to sacred encounter.

The structure is simpler than the visuals would suggest. It uses Roman vaulting techniques to raise the dome on a ring of self-supporting arches. The bulging exedrae with the galleries function like buttresses to counter some of the lateral thrust from the dome. Relieving arches - vaults built into the walls to transfer forces - in the corners above each pier and between and below the upper windows contain pressure in the transitional area between the upper circle and lower octagon.

Look at the picture right above and compare it to the diagram.

Red arrows show the downward force from the dome, around the relieving arches to the gallery vaults and on to the piers. Vaulting is like a skeletal system that makes large masonry spaces possible. The purple arrows show the buttressing counter-thrust of the gallery vaults pushing in. The green line marks the surprisingly stable base on the gallery vaults to hold the dome.

Looking from the ambulatory into the center catches some of how this space seems to ebb & flow around you as you move through it. Immaterial or less material describes it - especially when compared to the impression of a heavy polygonal exterior.

The light and decoration add to the otherworldly experience. The only place where the complexity resolves into clarity is upward. Everything flows into the circular dome. Structurally, it's a natural result of the vaulting. But symbolically it marks heaven as the ultimate answer that clarifies the world's mysteries.

The sanctuary & apse are the focal point of San Vitale and where the most spectacular mosaics can be found. These mosaics are what make the church such a treasure of early Christian art. The group is extensive and well preserved so we can still appreciate and understand the meaning. And how art worked to create a message in the early Christian era.

The sanctuary breaks through the two stories of the ambulatory & stands out from the rest of the flowing, immaterial space.

Look towards the sanctuary and the flowing space of the central exedrae. The sanctuary and apse are the bright greenish opening on the left - the sanctuary the bigger two-story space and the apse the smaller one that extends off the edge of the picture to the right.

The color comes from the mosaics and brightness from the additional windows. As the location of the altar and ritual focal point of the church it is supposed to clearly stand out.

And a look straight in. There's ornamental stone paneling on the lowest level and mosaic decoration above that up to the ceiling vaults.

Enter the sanctuary through a colorful arch with fifteen mosaic roundels or circular pictures. The triple arches on either side open into the ambulatory. The side walls are divided into two levels. The lower is between the ambulatory arches and the bottom of the upper triple arched opening connecting to the gallery. The upper surrounds the gallery opening. The mosaics show scenes from the Old Testament below and the New Testament above.

The far wall is mostly the arched opening into the apse with more mosaic above that.

The appeal of mosaic comes from the vivid colors and effect of light on the reflective surfaces. A mosaic is a picture made up of individual tiles called tesserae set into mortar like pixels. It's an old technique that goes back to ancient Rome and the Near East and is very durable. To destroy a mosaic you have to destroy the wall. The tiles are mainly glazed pottery, fired at high temperatures and made shiny by the metallic glassy finish, although pieces of colored glass and semi-precious stones could be used as well. Gold mosaic tiles use real gold foil hammered extremely thin - gold maintains it's color and reflectivity at extreme thinness. This is bright, visually splendid, and luxurious.

Take a look at the mosaic of Empress Theodora from an angle. The rough texture of the tesserae is easy to see. This - along with the reflectivity of the materials - creates the flickering shimmering effect. The placement of the tesserae is also representative. Look how her halo seems to radiate outward while the rest of the gold background doesn't.

The arch between the nave and sanctuary is called the triumphal arch. As in the triumph over death through salvation that was reenacted in the ritual of the Mass that took place at the altar. Early Christian art coordinated the positions and subjects of the pictures to turn the space into a symbolic experience that you walk into.

The roundels on the triumphal arch depict the twelve Apostles with the martyred sons of St. Vitalis at the bottom and Jesus in the middle. Each has a name.

Much of the fantastic effect of San Vitale comes from all the colorful abstract decoration. Shapes, plants, animals, stars, etc. - a feast of vibrant color

A close-up of St. Gerbasius - a martyred son of St. Vitalis - shows the mosaic technique. Gold was used to make the halo shine. The artists were very skilled, carefully selecting textures and shades to create subtle light and shade effects.

The costume is associated with the Roman elite. It may be consistent for the Vitalis' sons, but doesn't fit the historical reality of the Apostles. Meaningful associations for the audience re more important than strict accuracy. The average sixth-century person isn't going to be too up on first-century fashions in the Holy Land. They will recognize late Roman styles, so showing the saints as patricians also shows their importance and nobility in a language people will understand. Heavenly aristocrats gets the idea across.

The martyr is certainly worthy of that status. What greater commitment to faith over this world is there than laying down ones life for it?

The other side of the arch. Each saint is individualized but shown in a common format that shows their group identity. The Apostles and later martyrs belong to the same sacred "family".

Putting the saints in that order around the triumphal arch isn't random. The two Roman martyrs are placed lowest and closest to the visitor - just as they are in time and culturally. The Apostles are above them - higher physically like their status and historical proximity to Jesus. Then, at the top, the most important Apostles to the Romans - Peter and Paul - flanking a roundel of Jesus.

Note the golden background and rotated orientation. The saints support the savior who looks right at you as you enter. The cross-shaped or cruciform halo was a standard Byzantine, early Christian, and medieval indicator of Jesus. The rainbow represents God's saving promise and, along with the gold background, Jesus' cosmic nature.

The choice of costume is important too. Just as the saints are shown in patrician Roman garb, Jesus wears the purple robes of an emperor. Christianity started as a religion of humility - it is an oft-stressed Biblical virtue - but things changed once Constantine converted and it became the imperial religion. There was a tradition of treating the emperor as divine, ascending to heaven after death or conflated with the sun god or Sol Invictus. The monotheistic nature of Christianity prevented claims of divinity, but the imperial cult adapted and the emperor became a sort of Neoplatonic image of Jesus. Reciprocally, Jesus became portrayed as a heavenly emperor.

This mosaic in the apse of the Roman church of Santa Pudenziana dates to ~385-415, making it one of the oldest. Note how Jesus is already in golden robes and enthroned on a jeweled throne. The Imperial Christ as emperor of heaven was well-established by San Vitale a century and a half later.

Early Christian symbolism corresponds with location in the interior - in this case on the triumphal arch. Since the arch is the transition into the more sacred space of the sanctuary, entering it means passing intercessory figures of rising status. Martyr saints, then Apostles, then Jesus himself mark the crossing.

Look back from the sanctuary, through the triumphal arch, back into the domed nave. It's a nice contrast between the spaces and a look at the symbolic transition.

Entering the sanctuary confronts us with a wealth of mosaics. The side walls are divided into two levels - scenes of Old Testament sacrifices on the bottom and New Testament Evangelists up above. Hierarchical arrangements of the Testaments were common in early Christian art because they visualized typological connections. Early Christian theologians interpreted the Old Testament as prefiguring the New - not just through prophecy, but structure and symbolism as well. Old Testament characters, events, numbers, and other signs were taken as foreshadowing things in the Gospels. Putting an Old Testament scene under a New one shows how one rests on and fulfills the other.

The sanctuary with its two-level division. Note that the ceiling is vaulted and the arched structure marked out by mosaic patterns. Knowing that early Christian art coordinates subjects and placement for symbolic purposes, we can be sure that the structural configuration will correspond with the images chosen.

The lower level of the right side wall shows Old Testament sacrifices of Abel & Melchizedek surrounded by prophets Isaiah & Moses.

Above them, Matthew & Luke along with their symbols of man & lion flank the window.

The basket capitals in the sanctuary have another level of ornateness. The vines and flowers are carved out deeply and backed with color. Up above, an pair of lambs and a cross alludes to the Christological theme of the mosaics.

It's the mosaic work that really steals the show. Look how intricate they are, even when not depicting figures or scenes. these colorful abstract patterns are complemented by the grain in the marble columns and the basket capitals to make an overall spectacular display.

The meaning is carried by the pictorial mosaics. The main lower scene on this wall is the Sacrifice of Abel & Melchizedek. It ties a lot of ideas together into an imperial Byzantine flavored interpretation of Christianity. Melchizedek was a relatively minor figure in the Genesis narrative - especially compared to Abraham - who became an important symbol because he was priest and king. This made him a typological reference or prefiguration of am imperial concept of the Messiah. Since the emperor was conceived as a Nonplatonic image of Jesus, the combined political and sacerdotal authorities of Melchizedek became a foreshadowing allegory of the same dual nature of the emperor.

The nature of the sacrifices are significant. Abel's lamb makes a typoligical reference to Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb of God to come. Abel will himself be martyred as a result. Abraham offers a disk of bread that seems to glow. It's another sacrificial typology - this time to the Eucharistic wafer and made more obvious by the presence of the chalice on the altar. Rural and royal come together with symbolic references to Jesus' sacrificial body.

Historically, the emphasis on the Eucharist shows its replacement of the older custom of agape feast was well established by thus point. The relationships are almost diagrammatic.

Symmetry is used to show basic equivalence. The Old Testament altar is turned out like a Christian one. Lamb & Host, king & victim opposite the chalice beneath the Hand of God. The rainbow as always represents the divine.

The gemmated cross is symbol of Christ’s divinity. It, the hand of God & chalice make a vertical heaven-earth axis. Mirrored angels align with Abel & Melchizedek to further emphasize their equivalence.

There are two depictions of Moses to the left of Abel. One is a direct reference to Biblical narrative, the other is more symbolic. Although placed in the same late Classical landscape setting, they are not talking place in the same time and place. The "integrity" of the image is one place where early Christian and medieval pictorial story-telling is different from modern ideas of art. Ironically, it's the modern version that follows Aristotle's unities of time and narrative by showing one single moment in per picture. The older form didn't necessarily treat the background as a unified vision and could include multiple events or the same figure multiple times.

The upper figure is Moses surrounded by fire on a hillside representing of the Burning Bush.

The lower is more typological - Moses tending to sheep foreshadowing Jesus as Good Shepherd.

Like the Apostles in the triumphal arch, Moses wears Roman attire and not what you'd consider Bronze Age Middle Eastern garb. It's the same idea - the patrician costume and hairstyle indicated him as important and a leader in a way the San Vitale audience could understand.

Here's another look at the Burning Bush scene. The whole mountain is aflame - maybe suggesting the blazing light of God. Note the hand of God at the upper left directing Moses. It makes a connection with His presence in the Abel and Melchizedek scene, complete with rainbow clouds to indicate the divine. Removing his sandal because he's on sacred ground is a nice narrative touch.

The prophet Isaiah is on the other side of the wall next to Melchizedek. He is also dressed in Roman attire but isn't involved in any identifiable activity. He stands next to a crown to show his lofty status and carries a scroll to indicate his prophecy.

The art is technically good. Isaiah is in a classically-derived pose, standing naturally and turning to look over his shoulder. The sweeping lines of his robes nicely complement the shape of the panel and the background forms.

Technical close-up of Isaiah showing his features, wrinkled robes, and mottled gold halo. The different tones enhance the glittering effect of reflected light. Note the use of color and brightness to make his beard seem three-dimensional.

The sanctuary wall mosaics put the Evangelists over the Old Testament scenes and prophets, just as the New rests on the Old spiritually. Matthew & Mark appear above the Abel & Melchizedek scene. Each of them is beneath a symbolic creature - the four beasts of the tetramorph that came to represent the four Gospels and their writers in the early Christian period. There is some variation in the relationships, but the most common connects the man to Matthew, the lion to Mark, the ox to Luke, and the eagle to John.

The Biblical foundation for the Tetramorph comes mainly from two places - the books of Ezekiel and Revelation. Here's Jesus enthroned surrounded by the four beasts of the Tetramorph from an illuminated manuscript from around the year 1000.

Jubilation over the fall of Babylon, circa 1000, Bamberg Apokalypse, Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS A. II. 42, folio 47 verso

And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself... Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures... As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle. Ezekiel 1:4-10

And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

Revelation 4:6-7

The appearance of the Tetramorph symbols in 6th-century San Vitale shows how well-established they were by this point.

Matthew & Mark sit in stylized classical like Moses and Isaiah landscapes writing their Gospels. The common setting shows the basic connection between the two while the relative position shows their different spiritual status. Mark’s Tetramorph symbol is a man - in a clever touch the man doubles as the angel bringing the divine inspiration of his Gospel.

The inclusion of symbolic birds - the stork & peacock - are allusions to the Resurrection that tie to the typological salvations below.

Close-ups of the Tetramorph symbols. The man/angel gestures towards Matthew’s head as he writes, touching his head to show inspiration. Mark’s lion is modeled in golds and browns and is very ferocious looking.

The opposite side of the San Vitale sanctuary repeats the same configuration of Old Testament scenes & prophet under two Evangelists - Luke and John to round out the four. The big idea is to surround the visitor in a sensually pleasing environment where the meaning of the pictures adds meaning to the experience of beauty. The glittering splendor also relays a message. Conversely, the beauty makes the message more appealing. This symbiosis can be described in terms of rhetorical and dialectical appeal. The beauty and splendor create an emotional response, the narratives depict a logical - literally typological - network of Biblical references, and the two reinforce each other.

On this side, scenes from the story of Abraham appears in the lunette with Jeremiah & Moses on either side.

Both sides separate the Old and New Testament levels with mirrored angels carrying a gemmated cross. The cross is a symbol of the divine nature of Christ - note the rainbow ring around it - that connects the two Testaments around the fundamental Christian mystery.

It is important to remember that San Vitale was completed after the Byzantine reconquest of Ravenna and that that had a religious aspect as well as a political one. The new Byzantine regieme was Orthodox unlike the Arian Ostrogoths, and had a different opinion on the nature of Jesus' divinity. Symbols like the gemmated cross make an Orthodox statement emphasizing Jesus' divine nature in a context where it had been denied.

Classically-inspired angels with the gemmated cross. Gemmated just means decorated to look as if it is covered in gems.

The angels increase the symmetry and match up with their counterparts on the opposite side.

The main Abraham panel combines two scenes. The left and center are taken up by the three visitors from Genesis 18 with Abraham and Sarah bringing their meal. On the right is the sacrifice of Isaac.

The story of the three visitors is interpreted as an Orthodox allegory of the Trinity and a rebuttal of Arian ideas. And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day (Genesis 18:1). Jesus can't be part of the Trinity - a hypostasis of God - if he lacks a divine nature. But there's more to the symbolism - a complex but specific typological reference to Jesus.

On the left is Sarah, who will have a divinely-inspired birth. And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind him (Genesis 18:10). The congruity with the birth of Christ is exactly the sort of thing typological prefiguration drew on.

The little structure that clearly is too small to be realistic is a carry-over from Roman art, where minimal architecture was used to suggest setting. This carries through the Middle Ages.

In the center group, the representation of God/Trinity appears with bread that resembles Eucharistic wafers. Together they form an allegory of God - or one hypostasis or the Logos - incarnating and dying for us. The link is reinforced by the circular shape of the bread-hosts & Trinity halos.

This is the same Eucharist that the real communicants at the real altar right below took part in. You see the divine meaning in your communion.

There may be a play on the word incarnatus for incarnation and the carnis Abraham offers is guests. We may be reaching, but they did speak Latin in 6th-century Ravenna. The plate is another circular offering anyhow.

In the right, the theme of sacrifice makes another connection to Abel and Melchizedek on the opposite wall. Note the familiar hand of God with rainbow clouds in the usual role of showing direct divine intervention.

The typological symbolism of early Christian art can be quite inventive. Look at the two lunettes together in relation to the real Mass on the alter between them and the Orthodox rejection of Arianism. The Incarnation and redemptive sacrifice of Jesus, contemporary ritual reenactment, and theological debate can be foreshadowed visually by carefully placed and related depictions of Old Testament stories.

Jeremiah & Moses are the prophets above the Abraham scene. They further support the typological connection to the salvation of humanity through Jesus. Matthew - the most genealogical Gospel - provides the link between Jesus & Jeremiah. Moses is receiving the Old Covenant that foreshadows and is replaced in the new.

Close-up of Jeremiah with his prophetic scroll. Probably the one ignored and burned by Jehoiakim , but it could also be a more generic reference to prophecy. The crown - like Isaiah's opposite - alludes to the ultimate triumph that he predicts. Note the enduring Roman attire. The costumes are excellent.

Moses appears on a fantastical mountain setting & looks down towards the viewer in the sanctuary below. The hand of God is shown handing him the Commandments in scroll form.

The position of the Apostles is the same as on the other side - John & Luke in Roman garb seated in a post-Classical landscape beneath doves, urns & vine scrolls. Here too, the symbolic beasts of the Tetramorph appear above them - John's is the eagle and Luke's is the ox or bull.

John is on the left with his writing table with pen & ink, Gospel, and symbolic beast. The eagle was associated with John because his Gospel is the most celestial in it’s metaphysical discussion of Logos.

Luke sits with his Gospel & basket of scrolls. His ox or bull association may come from the prominence of the Temple and its sacrifices in his Gospel. Luke’s is the one that tells of Jesus’ presentation & debate with doctors in the Temple.

The mosaics continue into the vault of S. Vitale in Ravenna is a vision of mosaic color & symbolic decoration. The Lamb of God at the center lines up with the bearded Jesus seen earlier in the rainbow at the center of the triumphal arch. Four angels surround the Lamb, one in each highly decorated quadrant. The quadrants alternate primarily green and gold hues and are separated by ornate bands. We can’t think of another ceiling quite like this.

The decorative plan features Roman-derived vine scrolls & plant motifs only cranked up to a higher pitch by with shining mosaic color. Roman art used vegetal and abstract forms to create ornate backgrounds, and this crossed into early Christianity. The difference is that the Roman versions tend to be clearly delineated even when intricate. Early Christian art is trying to create an overall experience of heavenly splendor that feels like another world. Remember the contrast with the plain undecorated exterior. At San Vitale, it's the vivid colors and shining mosaic surfaces that add this effect.

Each quadrant had an angel on a globe supporting the central roundel with the Lamb. The detail is almost lost in the shimmer on the tiles.

Lively animals fill the spaces, but balanced spacing prevents the impression of crowding.

Close-up of an angel in Roman robes standing in a version of the classical contrapposto. The bland, wide-eyed expression is typical of early Christian and Byzantine art. The globe it stands on represents the world, indicating that this is a metaphysical representation. The animals emerging from the decoration probably symbolize life and fecundity under the rule of the Lamb/Kingdom of God.

The colors are eye-catching, but note the 3D effect created by subtly blurring the edges of the forms & strategic use of white tiles.

Another good look at the detail. Life and fecundity certainly fit the decorative bands that mark the structure of the vault. The peacock was an early Christian symbol of resurrection and immortality.

Meaning corresponds to placement. The vaulting physically support and lead to the Lamb of God in the center so the decoration represents the life and salvation that the Lamb is the source of.

The Lamb of God in the center. The bright white tiles against the shadow on his forehead makes his head appear to shine in the dim light of the sanctuary. Almost like it is bedecked in stars.

The ring around the Lamb is filled with vegetation and fruits. More life.

The last group of mosaics in San Vitale are in the apse - a cosmic enthroned Jesus over panels of the emperor & empress on the side walls. The placement-subject correlation still applies but it's different. The vertical arrangement is still symbolic but not expressive of Old and New Testament typologies. Now the relationship is a metaphysical one relating earthly to heavenly power structures. It's as purely false as any other secular transcendence, but that's typical of the imperial jacking and inversion of Christianity.

Unlike the satano-globalist beast system, the lie is surrounded by Christian truths to provide a moralizing veneer. The beast system rejects this because it implies that Christianity is a moral standard. One adds a false dimention to an objective moral frame, the other rejects and inverts the frame itself. Different points on the same continuum of secular transcendent decline, but still different in the moment.

Jesus in imperial purple enthroned on the world is the Neoplatonic image of cosmic emperor. The Byzantine emperor and empress Justinian & Theodora are shown below as his earthly manifestation.

The vertical relations & similar arrangements in the pictures diagram this imperial theology.

The curve of the apse semi-dome helps it stand in as the vault of the heavens. The shape also makes it into an environment. Apse mosaics wrap around the space below, bending & drawing you into a more physically real relationship.

This photo shows how the curve of the apse makes it seem like Jesus and his entourage are bending down towards you. It doesn't show in head-on shots because the photos flatten the curve.

The apse mosaic features a beardless Jesus enthroned on a celestial globe wearing imperial purple & gold. This is the same emperor archetype seen in the roundel at the beginning of the post, but with a more youthful appearance. St. Vitalis, Bishop Ecclesius who started the construction & two angels are arranged around him like an imperial court.

The figures are set in a paradisiacal garden that is not of this world. The rainbow presence of Jesus' throne - a representation of either the world or the cosmic spheres - shows the figures are in a different place metaphysically. It is a depiction of heaven imagined as an imperial court, with Jesus as model emperor and the saints and angels as his courtiers.

The young beardless Jesus was common in early Christian art. This is a fairly late example - the bearded version in the roundel is closer to the standard look familiar to us. The cruciform halo indicates his identity without doubt.

Here he extends the martyr’s crown to St. Vitalis & holds a scroll symbolizing the word of God. The shades of blue in the sphere - reference to the world and/or the interlocking spheres of ancient cosmology are especially striking.

Close-up of Jesus’ face with his identifying cruciform halo. This was limited to Jesus. The mottled gold tesserae enhance the sparkle.

Wide staring eyes in late imperial portraits as a symbol of power and authority.

Jesus’ heavenly court gathers beneath rainbow clouds and a solid gold background. The rainbow is a sign of the divine and the gold has a couple of effects. The shining background shows that this is a mystical space of golden light and not anywhere in the material world. Without a sense of place, the figures seem to float before this radiance, suspended between divine abstraction and our reality. Combined with the forward lean, they really seem intercede between us an heaven as they do theologically. The way they are placed reinforces the meaning and effect.

On our left. St. Vitalis receives his crown of martyrdom.

Note his incredibly elaborate robe. Luxury here becomes a symbol of his spiritual status, marking his as a sort of "spiritual aristocracy".

On our right is Bishop Ecclesius who began the construction of S. Vitale, although it was Bishop Maximian that finished it.

He presents a small model of his centrally-planned church - this type of offeringwas a common way patrons of major works were shown in early Christian & Byzantine art.

A few other features of the apse wall add to the symbolic content. Above the apse are depictions of Jerusalem & Bethlehem the central cities in the Gospel story and settings for the Incarnation and Passion of Christ.

The cities are labeled - otherwise they're not recognizable. The use of small, symbolic references to places was common in early Christian art and continued through the Midle Ages.

At the center of the apse arch is a gemmated chi-rho in a divine rainbow ring. these are the Greek initials of Christ and a common symbol for him.

Among other things, S. Vitale is a treasury of early Christian symbolism.

Above the chi-rho, a pair of mirrored angels tie the wall to similar pairs on the side walls. These wear the same type of Roman garb but carry a colorful starburst pattern that picks up on the design of the initials below. Effective unity across types of imagery and areas of the interior.

This has been a long journey. The final mosaics show the Emperor and Empress and their courts as worldly expressions of Jesus's divine imperium. It’s an assertion by analogy with Justinian as Neoplatonic image on of God on earth. We already noted how the cult of the emperor was transposed onto Christianity. This is a more direct assertion of the relationship.

The Justinian fresco curves slightly with the wall. In this view, the heavenly garden in the apse mosaic under S. Vitalis is just visible around the window arch.

Note the stunning marble inlay below.

Close-up of the marble inlay in the apse. The Romans traditionally used colored stone panels on the walls of luxury buildings. This is a late but stunning example of that art. More intarsia than mosaic, the patterns complement the rest of the interior.

Justinian appears at the center of his entourage, just as Jesus does above. The group includes Bishop Maximian who finished the church and is identified by name - remember the late Bishop Ecclesius is already shown in heaven. The inclusion of secular & ecclesiastic figures around him show his dominance over both spiritual and worldly affairs. Note the imperial purple robe that associates him visually with Jesus. The red shoes are... interesting.

Imperial Christianity hijacks & inverts scripture & tradition from the early. The idea of emperor is a metaphysical icon of Christ is pure secular transcendence and an inversion of the Biblical charge to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's. The conflation of worldly and sacred authority is a forerunner of the Christian humanist blasphemies of the Renaissance.

The mosaic is stunning though.

On the left are the secular powers - the generals & soldiers, possibly including Belisarius who reconquered Italy. Their presence would be powerful given the recent conclusion of the Gothic-Byzantine wars.

Note the chi-rho shield carried by the soldiers. Christian warriors with the same initial seen in gemmated in the sky above.

On the right - bishops & deacons including Maximian with gemmated book, cross, and incense censer. Bald Maximian looks like a portrait. He became bishop near project’s end & may be a last-minute replacement for his late predecessor. Hence the label.

Secular & sacred authority. Together with the soldiers, they embody Justianian's authority across the sacred and secular domains.

Justinian occupies the center in imperial purple mantle & gold tablion with woven birds. The detail in his garments and crown is phenomenal. Like Jesus he occupies the center of his court

The basket he carries is likely for offerings.

Technique close-up of Justinian’s face. Different color tesserae model his complexion. His jeweled crown is very detailed. Note the halo with hints of cosmic rainbow to assert divine status and connect him to the scene of Christ above.

Mortal vanity has always plagued the church.

The last of our S. Vitale in Ravenna mosaics is the Empress Theodora & her entourage opposite Justinian. It’s designed as a companion piece with similar lay-out reflecting their different realities in the Byzantine court. Theodora is in imperial purple with a halo & holding an offering like her husband. The curve of the apse makes it seem as if the curtained door actually leads out of the scene.

Imperial status as worldly image of Jesus. Her advisors & ladies-in-waiting are hierarchically arranged around her. The details & colors are stunning. Like the architecture feature that covers Theodora like a canopy and fits the curve of her halo.

Empress Theodora & her entourage shows the lavish detail of San Vitale mosaics. The flatness & staring eyes show that eastern-flavored transition from classical to medieval art. But the details like the fountain & curtain are engaging.

Close-up of Theodora. Staring eyes & blank expression go back to late imperial authority portraits. The detailed crown, natural folds of her falling robe & modeled complexion are just remarkable.

The hint of rainbow in the halo shows her divine status like that of Justinian and ties her to Jesus above. Her robe shows the three Magi - high- status figures with obvious royal appeal to an imperial Christian.

Technique close-up. The pixelated picture-making is astonishing, especially to eyes accustomed to shoddy modern garbage.

Put the three together & the visual relationship is clear. The imperial couple manifest Jesus’ heavenly imperium on earth. The rainbow halos of the emperor & empress indicates this divine conduit through their exalted personages.

Too bad it was inverted nonsense.

Secular transcendence fails because material reality is time bound and changing. Metaphysical absolutes can't exist here. They can be represented, but they can't be found in and of themselves. This is a central observation that runs through the Band and the basic reason why every attempt at forging a utopian ideology of human perfection fails. An when flawed fallen humans pretend to be pure arbiters of divine Truth? The history speaks for itself.

The mosaic artists of San Vitale are brilliant. Absolute masters of their craft. Theodora seems to pulse with radiant divine light. But it's still just a picture, and what it depicts is subject to reality.

Shortly after San Vitale, the Byzantine Empire began centuries of long, slow decline. Forget image of Christ - there hasn't been a Byzantine emperor for almost 600 years. Half-assed Ottoman blathering about Third Rome doesn't count. The depiction is false.

But the beauty isn't.

San Vitale was produced in a climate where Logos was the arbiter of Truth. Where even the vain auto-idolatry of emperors took place within a frame of objective morality. And where God was the highest good. This was an environment where the good, the beautiful, and the true express the same underlying nature of reality. Perhaps not visible in itself, but representable in works of breathtaking sublimity.

People often look at the garbage culture vomited out of the beast and wonder what happened? Why can't we have spaces like San Vitale? Not necessarily the style - there are plenty of beautiful structures from other periods - but the quality? The answer is that we could. We just need to reconnect as a culture with the essential element that made expressions like this possible...

Postcards from the House of Lies

2022-01-21T11:14:00.002-08:00

The modern world is a House of Lies that creates its victim-perpetuators. We consider how it's made & how it operates with applied concepts & new insights into the participatory motivation of fake fear.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Recently we've been looking at the House of Lies and its denizens. This is our term for the current iteration of the beast system - modern socio-culture - where virtually every major institution or ideology is dishonest if not outright inverted from the truth. It's actually shocking to realize the full scope because it is fully vertically integrated and nearly universal in breadth.

Click for the first look at the House of Lies

Click for the denizens of the House of Lies - the functionally two species of modern humanity

For example, not just schools, but the subjects taught in the schools, the processes by which those materials are generated, the people generating them, the political "values" of those setting curriculum, and their overseers, the reflexive assumptions of those attending, the coordinated messaging through media, corporate and governmental cultures that the graduates move into, etc.

How FTS-2 from the last post are created. For what it's worth, the monsters constructing this psyche-destroying trauma process will have to account for their crimes before their maker. And anyone subjecting their children to this evil is complicit.

One plank in a society based almost entirely on universal institutional and ideological flight from reality. An important one, but far from unique.

Do "medicine" - the candidates, the endlessly dumbed-down and politicized training, the "scientific" knowledge production, pharmaceutical industrial complex hegemony, the financialization of every aspect as primary driver, bloated idiot "administration"...

Then there's government. Industry. Media. Finance. Churches. And so forth.

When you really look at it, every established institution or socio-cultural vector has become a plank in the modern beast system's House of Lies. Money is a big part of it - wherever you turn the corrupting, centralizing gravitational pull of asymmetric resources appears to drive corruption and inversion. But money is a facilitator and indicator - literally the currency, not the cause. The cause is a deeper impulse with metaphysical roots. Ultimately the satanic mantra to do what thou wilt - to abandon what is true for to chase naked desire in whatever form. The money is simply the means of scorekeeping. It's the exchange mechanism - the proxy for wealth - by which embracing lies is turned into material rewards - boat, mansion, whores, jet set life, etc.

Gustave Doré, Cain Slays Abel, 1866, engraving from Doré's English Bible

Elevating desire over what it true - and by extension, what is right - comes way before the invention of money.

Given a) the pervasiveness of the House of Lies and b) its perfect alignment with modern life in the beast system we could say the Band's whole project has been to examine it. Many of our most significant insights and observations involve basic building blocks that are necessary for it's existence.

Start with secular transcendence as the initial turn from reality. We've gone over that concept many times - it's the absurd premise that metaphysical absolutes a) inhere in entropic, fallen material reality and b) are accessible in their fullness to the limited discernment of temporally contingent, subjective human minds. That the part can contain the whole. Click for a explanatory post.

This self-deifying fallacy is as old as history - every metastasis of gnostic auto-idolatry and occultism is based on fallacious reversals of ontological priority order. It hits new peaks with the Enlightenment myth that our "reason" is a path to absolute Truth.

And since this is false, there is nothing to stop the ensuing powerdive into current beast system relativism. Where even reason is too demanding a standard.

All that remains is that we decide what reality is and any deranged whim is held up as someone's "truth".

Secular transcendence is the pervasive socio-cultural structural level refusal that epistemology - how we know - conforms to our factual place in reality. The relevance of this much more concrete than abstract ontological error. Because reality doesn't stop being real, but we are left with no mechanism to check systemic delusion. The inversive pattern is familiar - our base perspective on reality goes from

objective - reacting and adapting to what is real

subjective - pretending whatever we want is real.

The latter is the core premise of the Fallen world - the basal satanic inversion that puts will over reality. Click for a post.

The problem with this is metaphysical and material.

Metaphysically, this self-denies the potential for salvation through Logos. One can no more transcend finite temporal constraints by finite material means than count to infinity by ones. It's misapplied faith that from a Christian perspective is the super slide to actual Hell.

The Band realizes that this isn't compelling to those who most need to hear it, so move to the material.

Materially, desire is unbounded. Material reality isn't. Doing what thou wilt sounds great until it collides with something opposite that someone else wilt. Then the stronger will prevails and the weaker gets a bullet in the face, raped, stripped of possessions, enslaved, forced to wear a mask, etc. Tyranny isn't a perversion of total "freedom" - it's the necessary endpoint. When all are unchecked, the most powerful sociopath wins. Conversely, the moral constraint that the idiot masses are actually referring to when they bleat about muh freedom requires submitting to objective truth. And that leads ineluctably up the hierarchy to Truth.

Unlike the auto-idolators that built the beast system, the Band's reasoning also conforms to empirical reality.

We just argued that self-deifying, man-is-the-measure, top-down rationalist post-Enlightenment fake freedom is a web of lies and a precursor to tyranny. Now look around at the House of Lies and the cultural predations of the obscene, unaccountable, globalist freaks that run it.

That's what being correct on the macro-scale pattern level looks like.

Secular transcendence is at the root of this ironically inhuman tyranny. Ironic because the claim that humans are the arbiters of reality creates the condition for the demonic few to predate on the many without any moral counter. Do what thou wilt only applies to those able to force their wills on the unwilling. More in a moment.

Because secular transcendence is ontologically as false as pretending we're in Fairyland, using it as the basis of culture means our entire society is built on an imaginary false consciousness. It can work to a point - post-Enlightenment engineering was so effective because it remained committed to objective empirical truths while more abstract realities are ignored. But entropy is an inherent condition of the Fallen world, and abandonment of higher truths will necessarily trickle down to more immediate ones. It's only relatively recently that empirical objective reality has been broadly denied. So we are just seeing the signs of decline into collapse now.

Little things like mass open-air train robbery in the middle of an American city. Entropy - moral and physical - is the natural state of the Fallen world. Without active assertion of an external moral order, the higher structures of civilization degenerate into anarchic chaos. What are our "leaders" doing to preserve basic societal health and function?

Bueller?

Consider the endless parade of errors in fundamental understanding of the nature of reality from the Enlightenment to the present day. It still continues. Paradigms shift, but the shifters are never drummed out of their drivers' seats. Who is responsible for security or order in LA? Or consider the devastation of the opioid epidemic. Any changes to the medical-pharmacological arm of the beast system result? Anyone punished? Anything? Bueller?

Instead beast "authorities" keep making up whatever they want. In basic Science! - as opposed to engineering - old errors get memory holed and future errors called "discovery". The "social sciences" are obviously worth less than fiction since fiction can reflect applicable truths through mimesis of real people. But even mighty physics is reduced to peddling "cosmologies" made of 95% "dark matter". Phlogiston actually made more sense, though with less pretty math.

The problem is epistemological. Physical observation, description, and chains of logic can't solve problems of origin or ontological foundation. These are inherently meta- (or pre-) physical - by definition beyond physical assessment. Sensory or mental. There's no way to see what is outside the shoebox from inside the shoebox.

You can tell that there has to be an outside because the shoebox is temporally sequenced. The physical properties point to the necessity of a point of origin. But what that outside "is" is undefinable because it is external to time. The very nature implied by the verb "to be" is a temporally contingent state. The frame of reference needed for definition and conceptualization is limited to conditions ineluctably ontologically posterior to what we want to understand.

This is neither complex nor negotiable.

It's the difference between knowing someone had to make these - that there is a necessary origin - and claiming that you can also see his moral philosophy and sociopolitical motivations. They are material signs of a consciousness that isn't materially present.

Trying to see the abstract in the strictly material is akin to trying to conceive the transtemporal in temporal terms. The difference is that abstract and material are accessible to our minds. The transtemporal isn't. Imperfect illustration of necessity of creator vs. higher order knowledge of the creator. Just scale up metaphysically.

It's why all the "sciences" of Flatland - the state of a secular transcendent world - collapse into hopeless uncertainty or paradox. Because the state of secular transcendence means Flatland is strictly limited to material reality. All the epistemological modes - empirical observation, logical abstraction, faith about ultimate reality - are applied to a strictly materialist cosmology. We've repeatedly covered the cascading errors that result. Like misapplying faith to objective liars.

And all the metrics of measuring and classifying material phenomena are themselves material phenomena. Definitionally unable to address the extra-material precursors upon which materiality has to be predicated. No matter how far the ruler or lens is extrapolated. Because it's not a question of range or precision. It's ontological category error. Click for a post.

It even gets hard to express in material language.

It's the old what's outside or before the universe question. Mathematical semiotics express fantastical constructs with no meaningful connection to the material reality we inhabit. And no way to link them without drawings that are totally different from what they purportedly represent. The graphics actually misrepresent the mental constructs to make them seem more relatable and credible.

In other words, rhetorical figments to pretend limits of discernment - empirical and abstract - actually can be conceived in terms of materialist, secular transcendent Flatland.

What this means in practical terms is that secular transcendence - that is, the core condition that the modern world is built on - is utterly inapplicable to originary or foundational questions. By nature. It is inherently cut off from reality in its fullness as a condition of its existence. It's just presented to the masses in ways that claim it isn't, with the obvious failure hidden behind the mathematical complexity of the ontologically meaningless constructs.

It is true that material and abstract truths remain accessible. A logical syllogism holds and a ruler remains a consistent measure. But when subjectivity replaces objectivity as the the driving value, who cares? The Logos chain to Truth, to the objective moral imperative to conform to reality is rejected for will and desire. It's irrelevant if those align with what is logical or measurable if you want something other and have the means to force it. Whether directly or through lies and manipulation.

You can corrupt public information with neuro-linguistic programming. You can declare blatant falsehoods about human nature "laws" and punish those who speak out against them. You can claim a mild virus is a plague and blackmail people into injecting toxic "medicines" with loss of livelihood and freedom. You can call outrageous lies "science" and banish people from core social institutions for pointing it out.

In short, you can transform society into the House of Lies with enough coercive force and centralized media control. With the extent to which people still see through it as the measure of that power and persuasion's limits.

A common counter / question is that if our account is real and secular transcendent Flatland built on a foundation of air, why doesn't it implode right away?

If reality has been replaced with a solipsistic tyrannical house of lies, how come the collapse didn't happen ages ago?

The answer is that time exists and that the consequences unfold temporally. As in gradually. Secular transcendence isn't a switch to be thrown on or off - it's a process. One tied into another Band building block - the de-moralization process.

Gustave Doré, The Death of Ahab (1Kings 22:29-40), 1866, engraving from Doré's English Bible

Biblical wisdom from a master artist. The Book of Kings describes the gradual degredation of Judah and Israel from the time of David, and the long period before ultimate ruin results. Thinking in terms of applicability, the lesson is that the abandonment of truth and objective morality takes time to fully destroy a society. And that the higher the starting point - the more the origins were reality facing - the larger the buffer.

But entropy - moral as well as physical - is a condition of the Fallen world, and eventually the embrace of solipsism and lies will bring down even the greatest.

De-moralization refers to the removal of objective morality that comes with secular transcendence. Think of it as secular transcendence on the moral plane. It's the denial that there is an objective moral standard based in onto-epistemological Truth and the replacement with do what thou wilt subjectivity. De-moralization is an inevitable consequence of secular transcendence because objective morality and Truth require metaphysical reality above the material and secular transcendence is the pretense that the material is all there is. The pretense requires the absurdity that morality be rooted in the temporally changing material world. Since it can't and lies don't change what actually is, materialist moral claims are merely projected desire. What the person making them wants to be objectively true. And since solipsistic projection is the opposite of actual morality, Flatland has no moral direction. It is de-moralized. The solipsist most able to impose their desire determines the collective ethos until a more powerful coercion swings it in a new direction.

De-moralization also goes way back. It's a long process to completely abandon reality. Medieval aristocrats usurp the social position of the church. Renaissance humanists adulterate theology with Hermetic and Neoplatonic blasphemies. Enlightenment and Romanticism install atheistic high culture and transpose "divinity" into nonsense materialism. Modernism banishes that fake material divinity, along with beauty, art, and humanity. Postmodernism replaces that with pure subjective do what thou wilt. The current day even ignores what is empirically true. This graphic from an earlier post on the matter gets at the trajectory.

Epistemologically, objective empirical science and engineering are able to produce new technologies even as the cultural framework around them go into decline. An internal combustion engine will work regardless of the builder's belief system. Mainstream society maintains reflexive high-trust Western Christian moral attitudes as the elites crater and culture slinks towards degeneracy. It's really only in the 20th century that the social, demographic, and epistemological fabric deteriorates enough to push the three pillars of Western culture out of public consciousness.

Western culture is built of three pillars that correspond ontologically and epistemologically with what we can know and how we can know it. These are Christianity, the legacy of abstract Classical thought, and the material reality of national cultures.

This graphic from an earlier post could use a slight redesign but is correct in showing how the parts fit together.

The House of Lies rejects all of them. This is why the Band does not believe that this current beast system culture can be restored in any meaningful way. Razed and rebuilt perhaps, but not restored. De-moralization and secular transcendence are the endpoint of an over thousand year arc of degeneration.

Aspects of a degraded and hollowed-out culture can carry over the collapse into what comes next, but the culture itself is gone forever.

It's not new. Consider the Greco-Roman classicism that makes up one of the pillars of the West. Actual Classical culture degenerated until it collapsed and was replaced at the end of antiquity by completely different people and societies. The ideas became part of the West, but through adoption and adaptation by these other non-Romans and Classical Greeks.

Classical architecture like Bramante's Tempietto is a good illustration. It looks sort of Roman and follows classical principles, but belongs to a radically different culture from ancient Rome. Achievements from the post-Classical West may carry over into what rises from the collapse, but there's no going back to what was. It's why abandoning morality and objective reality is a terminal error.

The House of Lies is an end state. The pervasive instantiation of de-moralized secular transcendence as the foundation of every aspects of mainstream high and poplar cultures with no path to repair. And de-moralized secular transcendence is completely cut off from reality. Without the lingering reality-facing alternatives like empirical science or cultural Christianity that allowed earlier post-Enlightenment Flatland to shamble along, there is nothing to check the rampant, will-driven subjectivity of the beast elites. There is no stable point of resistance. No anchor of meaning. The satanic endgame of the tyranny of force and coersion over all.

The totality of the House of Lies is apparent in fact that most people trapped within it can't even perceive its existence. And not just FTS-2s. A lot of those who distrust corrupt authorities can't accept that the entire socio-cultural apparatus is a decomposing sham. Mainstream critics across the spectrum lack the frame of reference to even address what they're seeing.

Consider the bloviating functional retards that sagely analyze a "post truth" world. Then consider that a "post truth world" is literally, ontologically impossible. Truth IS, regardless of the acceptance of fleeting mortal specks. The best you can do is a "denial of truth culture". A liars' playground.

By addressing the world as somehow post-truth - apart from the liars driving it into the ground - is to accept the liars' own frame of reference. That the existence of truth can be thought of as a time period. And once you accept their master lie, it becomes impossible to even understand what is happening, let alone call it out.

The idea that the nature of time is conditional on human cultural patterns is itself an example of secular transcendent Flatland thinking. The only thing that determines periods on the standard mainstream historical timeline is the amount of collective ontological and epistemological delusion. Here's when we accepted reality. Here's when we rejected reality in aspects of culture but kept engineering. Here's when we pretended reality didn't exist altogether.

Or put graphically...

Remember, secular transcendence is based on the original satanic inversion / error of auto-idolatry. Of claiming to be your own god and elevate will over reality. It's a sin of pride at heart. The beast system standard timeline is reified pride - that our current state is a progress or evolution. The reality is descent into solipsistic delusion, flight from reality, collective retardery, and ultimately cultural collapse. And that transposition from objectivity to subjectivity is the driving force. It just takes time to fully realize.

That's why collapse doesn't happen immediately. It's a historically recent enough turn in the West that the consequences are just hitting now. Commitment to empirical science and engineering allowed for technical advances and colonial exploitation that created material expansion and papered over moral hollowing out. Enough people retained a link to cultural Christianity even as churches converged and corrupted - to maintain the appearance of moral societies. But like a decaying property, the appearance of normalcy only continues until it can't. And once objective reality on the ultimate reality-faith level is abandoned, the eventual degeneration is inevitable.

Abandoned buildings can appear relatively sound until they collapse. Rot - physical or cultural - is cumulative but shows suddenly. Healthy structures have a degree of resilience that has to be overcome before the damage really shows. But then it's quickly catastrophic.

In a Fallen world, moral and physical entropy are operant conditions. Without a steady moral compass oriented towards objective truth, this happens.

The House of Lies gains purchase, ironically enough, because truth is real. That reality is an ontological hierarchy known by observation, logic, and faith doesn't stop being true because demons and idiots ignore it. And we remain correspondingly hierarchical creatures - body, mind, soul - whether we choose to wallow in the animal secular transcendent slop instead of recognizing what being Created in the image of God means.

And this means that if deprived of our rightful guides, we will turn to false ones.

Think how much modern "faith" is in things that contradict observation and/or reason. Not knowledge that lies beyond what can be known empirically or rationally. But claims that are empirically or rationally false. Beyond != opposite. A legitimate epistemology of faith expands what can be known observationally or rationally. It doesn't require acceptance of illogic or denial of sensory data. Because in reality, ontology may be stratified but it is coherent. It's all Creation, that the Logos that manifests differently on different levels is all an extension of Truth. That which is real - on any ontological level or by any epistemological mode - is true, and that which is true is real.

But without Truth there is no anchor or measure for a continuum of truths. And no impetus to conform to it if there was. Only subjective will, and the power to impose it on those who can't resist.

Band building blocks like de-moralization and secular transcendence are abstract formations. They're processes and patterns that we can observe and describe. In order to practically apply them - turn them into a mass formation like the House of Lies - there has to be a conduit mechanism. A meta-medium able to replace reality for a sufficient percentage of the population. There is no beast system without centralization.

Centralization - like the beast system in general - is hierarchical and integrated. Layers within layers. Oblivious dwellers in the House of Lies pretend it's an option - like whether a "centralized" or "decentralized" workplace is preferable.

On the lowest level this is a viable choice. But this isn't what we are talking about.

Both use the same internet, the same tech companies, consume the same media, exist under the same governmental, social, and financial structures...

What we are referring to is mass or macro-scale societal centralization. Mass media, global logistics, centralized telecommunications, finance, education, science and technology. Databases and surveillance. The way all aspects of mainstream society are controlled by the same networked entities. How there is no meaningful competing alternatives in any of them. Or how the preferred narrative is suddenly piped through every thread in the societal fabric.

Any complex system needs some sort of structured organization. Always have. But what changed in the 20th century to make the beast system possible was technology. Ironically, the fruits of that same empirically sound engineering that countered rising secular transcendence made the House of Lies.

Earlier centralization was limited by the speed and nature of information transfer. Ancient societies were hierarchically organized for efficiency but was limited to direct human contact. How fast can a letter be transferred. Public monuments and statues could convey ideas to larger groups, but were still limited to line of sight and direct experience.

The printing press introduces the first effective technology for mass mechanical reproduction. The same body of information can be replicated and disseminated with unprecedented speed, range, and accuracy.

Not surprisingly, massive changes like the heretical Hermetic secular transcendence of the Renaissance and the fracturing of Christendom in the Reformation were powered by this new technology.

Broadcast media took it up another level with shared real-time experience. Print media was consumed on your time with time for reflection. A broadcast audience was unified and swept up in someone else's false reality.

But television was the direct precursor to the House of Lies. An immersive, audio-visual fake reality with mesmerizing properties beamed directly into the home. The "watching [aptly named] program" model has carried into the digital age.

Digital media enhanced the mesmeric effect of t.v. while extending the illusion of control. Look at all the options!

Yet all somehow disseminating the same beast narratives.

That's the centralized information control. It's not just that the bulk of information flow is controlled by the same handful of globalist players. It's that even those few players all follow the same script. All belong to the same elite networks. All serve the same head table. And all push the same toxic, globalist, reality-denying lies. This is the centralization - across media of all kinds and every other branch of mainstream society - that is needed to build a House of Lies.

Consider. Actual reality is consistent.

Therefore, fake realities need illusions of consistency to be convincing.

The vertical integration of the House of Lies makes that possible. The same falsehoods come through all the organs of the beast system and mutually reinforce each other. Fake experts from universities or "professional" boards and are used to support fake conclusions from beast courts and reality-denying laws from beast-dancing politicians. At the epistemological level, secular transcendence replaces logic and empirical observation and trickles down through every level of media.

None of this is possible without centralized governing, accrediting, and authorizing bodies. Institutions can be twisted from their original purpose with any number of fake or pernicious ideologies tacked on. Centralization prevents any competing alternative and ensures that only the one lying structure is authorized to continue.

Remember the representation-reality inversion? Having a credential instead of knowing the truth as measure of expertise is a perfect example of that. Without centralization, truthful alternatives would destroy beast lies.

About those representation and reality posts - here's some reality... Without mass centralization, representation can't replace reality in a universal way. It doesn't have the means to simulate the consistency of truth everywhere at once.

Centralization is the single most important tool in the House of Lies. Without it, there can be no beast system.

Centralization is the necessary condition for constructing a fully integrated false reality. Corporations, education, government, media, technology, etc. in lockstep, piped through glowing screens while idiot masses drool along. FTS-2 also moving in lockstep with fruit fly-tier memories instantly forgetting every past inconsistency and contradiction while embracing the latest lie. All in an Idiocracy of unearned abundance with an incalculable death toll if the power ever goes out.

Actually think for a moment what it is that the beast system peddles and what motivates the average consumerist chud.

Fear is the goad. In the last post on the functionally two species model, we noted how desire and fear combine to send the de-moralized, memoryless, FTS-2 protoplasm lurching this way and that. Reacting to whatever momentary stimulus the House of Lies prioritizes, with total disregard for the previous impulse. Without an objective anchor in faith, FTS-2 will do anything for a bit more stuff or to stave off the abyss for another minute of mindless consumption. No past or future consciousness, definitely no internal coherence in thought or worldview. Every instant a disconnected reaction to some contrived emotion.

The centralized nature of the House of Lies lets it maintain the steady drumbeat of fears through the glowing screens. Nothing that can ever be dealt with in a sensible way - just constant stress over retarded thing X. And whatever contrived activities that supposedly make the fear go away.

This is critical. The fear created by the centralized fake reality of the House of Lies is what drives ~~people~~ FTS-2 do almost anything to make it stop.

To be more clear, the centralized fake reality of the House of Lies is a false empiricism. Tt conforms to the superficial structure of an empirical relationship without the content, logical consistency, object permanence, and other qualities that real empirical observation possesses. Because what you see naturally becomes replaced by what the glowing screens and narrative engineers say. We saw in the last post that fear-driven huffers leaping mindlessly from lie to lie actually take the screens as more materially real than what they see directly.

They take transmissions from the House of Lies as if they were actual empirical data. Put it together and the whole fear-driving huffing process resembles a logical sequence stripped of truth-value. Internal or external.

Start by looking a simple logical sequence for responding to a real threat.

A real danger presents itself leading to the development of an effective response leading to support for the response and its proponents. Makes perfect sense, not much to add. Now see how the House of Lies presents the same structure to the FTS-2 huffers, only none of the steps are real as presented and none of the connections logically follow. Because the actual threat is the House of Lies itself, and the purpose of the fake fear is to induce something the huffers would be reluctant to do otherwise.

The "pandemic" is a fabulous example of a fake fear. The climate of official illogic, inconsistency, and outright lies combined with censorship makes it obvious that the official narrative is bogus. But conclusions can be drawn from larger patterns. The Band believes that there is a virus in circulation - at the very least a disease with of similar severity but with somewhat different symptoms from a bad flu. Coronaviruses are common, but this variant was probably bioengineered, likely by American- based globalist / depopulationists with aid from Chinese and other assets. More specific details are speculative and irrelevant to this post. What matters is that there is a real disease and that it is not that serious.

How does this become the reason to vaporize huge swaths of the world economy, consolidate vast resources in globalist hands, curtail basic established freedoms, and enforce dehumanizing and dangerous practices with no positive effects on entire populations? There's no logical connection between the "threat" such as it is and the demented "responses". Enter manufactured fake fear.

Start with inane but vaguely menacing graphics. Nothing says gibber like a terrified moron like a retarded sputnik cartoon.

The thing to remember is that FTS-2 dosn't just think lies on a glowing screen are more real than empirical observation and sound logic. They also have no functional memory. Oh they remember flashes and impulses - feelings mainly - but no working sequence of events or ideas that can be used to create context or make relational judgments. Only selective disconnected impressions - like the fractured consciousness of a wetbrain alcoholic. This is a critical part of the fake reality construction.

FTS-2 narrative huffers will remember how something made them feel but can't analyze or process it as part of a larger context or in relation to later events.

They just know "something is terrifying" without being able to assess if it is legitimate or even why it is. This is dangerous because if a fake trauma makes an impact, the fear will linger indefinitely regardless of what is real or what happens later.

FTS-1s will remember the absurd videos of people supposedly dropping dead in China. This was clearly fake, but the impression of sudden death impressed itself on the flaccid minds of the huffers. This bootless fear lingered despite everything that happened after. It was a huge part of why the relatively harmless "pandemic" caused the gibbering masses knuckle under dyscivic tyranny because fear.

At least the Daily Mail considered the possibility that it wasn't legit.

Pure beast shills like embarrassing propaganda rag The Guardian used this obviously staged photo to actively stoke the fear. The House of Lies in action.

So a manufactured fake fear. And a disconnected memory of a feeling that shapes all subsequent reactions to the topic. Every mention, every cartoon sputnik recalls that initial dread and the desire to do anything to make it go away. Then there's the actual fatality rate, but that requires relational appraisal of the original mindless fear. Something FTS-2 can't do.

Enter the fake relief. Fleeting illusion of safety until the next fear wave. And the realization that logical consistency had no place at all in FTS=2 world view or thought process.

The fear-driving process is structured like a logic sequence, but because none of the steps are real, nothing follows logically the way it would in an actual syllogism. But huffers uptake the lies and remember only the feelings of fear so they respond as if it did.

The result actually reverses logical response to empirically real phenomena. It's inversion, to the surprise of none of our readers.

In reality, something happens and is empirically observed. Responses are calibrated to the event. Things that are ineffective are changed, things that work are repeated. When formalized and controlled this is the Scientific Method. But it's also just life in reality. You're tired, so you go to bed. The gas gauge is low so you fill up. It's raining out, so grab an umbrella. You need a part so you look up where to find it, etc. It's so common and simple that it feels weird to spell it out.

The pattern - real event begets rational response.

Hole in the wall? Patch it. Rational response, problem solved.

But the fake empiricism in the House of Lies uses manufactured fear - fear that can linger with no actual reason for months or even years - to generate a desired response without a real event to cause it. The huffers take action because of an unreal chimera on a glowing screen. A response without a real stimulus.

This is like magic - where words or "spells" induce the dupe to create the very thing that didn't previously exist by reacting as if it is real. Acting on the unreal fear on the the glowing screen makes it effectively real.

Thought experiment.

Suppose satanic depopulationists consider the number of functionally useless FTS-2s in the world and project the consequences of their continually increasing numbers.

They decide that it would be beneficial if this population were to shoot up a new toxic brew that may check the growth by raising mortality say 40%.

Nobody will just choose to do that - even the most evacuated huffers have a desire to live and consume. You could bribe them to take the chance - but that gets awfully expensive.

But suppose you manufacture and centrally disseminate mindless fear over a trivial viral infection through every channel of the House of Lies. Lather the FTS-2s into gibbering idiocy - even by their standards.

You've now got the fake reality to serve as the stimulus.

Then tell them the toxic brew will "save" them. It won't but that doesn't matter because they have fruit-fly tier memories and you can keep changing the claims. You'll be immune can become you'll protect others can become you'll stay out of the hospital etc.

The details don't matter because they're functionally retarded. All you need to do is maintain the fear pressure and keep repeating that the brew will save them because reasons.

Then support - not only will they shoot up raise those mortality rates up like you originally wanted. They'll apply pressure to get smarter people to take the same toxin. Because it will ~~save them~~ provide a temporary respite from the fear.

The fact that the fear was nothing to be afraid of and the fix less than useless is irrelevant. Because it has nothing to do with epidemiology or public health. It never did. It's about long-term mortality rates and population control. And using the fake reality of the House of Lies to construct a fake logic chain to impel the huffers to do something they would otherwise balk at for reasons that don't actually exist.

It's not a new concept. False claims to impel people to do something counterproductive is the basis of any number of scams. What differentiates the fake empirical sequence is the use of mass fake formations pumped through the mainstream "information" pathways of the house of lies.

But there's more. To make the fear really take hold, the huffers have to bring it off the glowing screens and make it part of their real empirical reality. Getting shot up with toxic brew is too much of a one-off to really become habitual in a daily behavior modifying way. There's boosting, but repeated exposure will make the auto-immune harm obvious. It's too drastic. The Band suspects another assault on bodily autonomy and long-term health in response to another nonsense fake fear will come.

We're talking about internalizing the fake fear by making it part of everyday life. Because to get the huffers to the point where they'll commit to - even defend - playing Russian roulette with their hearts and immune systems, it helps if the fake threat is more than dancing lights on a glowing screen. It has to be part of their unthinking, unexamined physical existence. Like a tedious commute to a busywork job or consumption of nutritionally empty processed food.

That is, real kinetic engagement. Where people change their daily behavior in ways that "respond" to the fake fear. It doesn't matter that it's irrelevant - the whole thing is fake. What matters is that the huffers act differently or do different things that make it seem as if the fake fear is a constant looming threat that they have to hold at bay. Read that again. By modifying their being-in-the-world, the huffers create the circumstances that make it feel as if the fake fear is real.

Consider.

We're all familiar with the particular brand of retardery known as "duck and cover". When school children were supposedly sheltering from atomic blasts by sitting under their desks. The Band is much too young to have engaged in this ourselves, but we - like most - have heard of it. And when we did, we - also like most - mentally cross-referenced sitting under a desk with the specs of an atomic blast and...

It's beyond useless. Beyond stupid. The younger Band just chalked it up to the ubiquitous collective idiocy in society that fueled our youthful cynicism and alienation. But our mistake was judging it according to its defensive potential in the event of a nuclear war.

It's a common mistake to confuse lies and malevolence with stupidity or incompetence. There is a profound difference - one group can learn or improve and the other does evil on purpose. Bringing things to their attention is pointless because they want the negative outcome.

The level of stupidity needed to propose duck and cover rules it out as an explanation. Huffers will mindlessly drool along, but the planners wouldn't be where they were if they were that objectively dumb.

The House of Lies is build on empty words. Talking heads on glowing screens. Bleating shills in written media online or in print. Saying things with no relation to objective reality but passively assumed to be more or less true. Realizing that the deception is constant and all narratives suspect didn't even occur to people who assumed their systems were more or less decent. Given the amount of background noise we filter out on a daily basis it's easy to go along with the "experts". The Band did until it became too obvious to even passively ignore. So we - and we assume most people - took the claims that duck and cover is a defensive maneuver at face value. There are even some useful dupes who will try and smart boy out spurious reasons why it might be worthwhile. We'll explain why this sort of superficial beast-huffing "analysis" misses the point.

But the only logical truth is that it has nothing to do with keeping children safe. The purpose is that real bodily investment we mentioned. Kinetic engagement.

If an A-Bomb Falls, 1951, distributed by the State of Delaware’s Department of Civil Defense

Now the Band isn't claiming that Cold War fears were necessarily fake, although there are questions that any thinking person should wonder about. Like why did the constant drumbeat of 'how to survive in a nuclear fireball' stuff just vanish when there are still thousands of warheads in the world in the hands of even more countries today? How come the atomic fear porn stopped even though the atomic arsenals didn't?

We suspect that the fear porn may have referenced real anger, but consider the ability of the individual to do anything about it. And the uselessness of the "advice". The only rational purpose is to inculcate a vague, constant, sense of helpless fear in the minds of the masses. Remember the last post - compliant, functionally mindless FTS-2 is created by a kind of public diffused trauma based mind control. And here's some trauma.

The alternative is to believe If an A-Bomb Falls, and expect cities to be suddenly annihilated, but hiding under a newspaper to save you...

Duck and cover has the same degree of real world credibility. The purpose is participation - kinetic bodily engagement - in an abnormal ritual that makes a state of fear or anxiety part of lived experience. And the lesson isn't "this will keep you safe". It's that you live under constant threat of annihilation but trust the government and do the ritual and you'll be "safe". What has proven to be fake fear + absolutely fake relief = support for demons.

Taking part in it becomes participatory internalization. Something you do that makes the absurd fake logic sequence part of your lived reality.

And it is idiotic. The Duck and Cover protocol was promoted by an inane "public service" short featuring a turtle avoiding a firecracker...

Duck and Cover, 1952

The House of Lies required mass centralization. The brainwash & trauma factory called "public school" did yeoman's work in forging FTS-2

This is what a mass-centralized fake fear-fake remedy-fake logic sequence looks like in application.

There's literally no logical way to proceed from this, to hiding under desks, to mass survival of thermonuclear war. Plant an existential fear, propose a nonsense reaction, trust the beast.

So a basic false relation in two parts. The fear - be constantly afraid of a looming apocalypse that can just disappear despite no nuclear disarmament. And the fix that would be utterly impotently pointless were the feared thing to happen - obeying government institutions and protocols, no matter how self-evidently idiotic. Trauma and misplaced trust-based malleability and compliance from an inability to think outside the centralized House of Lies.

But it's the acting it out as a collective group - the physical, kinetic group participation in the objectively useless ritual - that makes it stick. That makes it part of the psycho-social make-up.

The collective part is important. One person doing it is a lone weirdo. Mass participation normalizes it. It must be real - it's part of how we live! The dumbass "teacher" on left doesn't have a desk and is doomed to be vaporized. They did call them useful idiots.

Not that 'everybody's doin' it' makes it effective for safety. It's utterly useless as protection, but safety isn't the point. It makes it real to to the group. Something you all do. Something that you become bodily invested in. Something you're part of. And the assumption is that things everyone does - like brush their teeth or obey stop lights - has a purpose. Sanity and forthrightness as normative assumptions. The beast exploits this through the pattern we just mapped out.

Impressing it on schoolchildren is particularly insidious. Consider that school is an alienating and dehumanizing environment that strips children from nurturing family structures and subjects them to government indoctrination at the hands of too-frequently psychopathic strangers. The discursive relationship is entirely one way - whether you accept unquestionable authority determines punishment or receipt of hollow accolades. Artificial age-stratified socialization further isolates from organic social forces. The perfect crucible to instill any number of dyscivic - even self-destructive - perspectives.

Of course adults aren't immune to the retardery. The power of the House of Lies comes from it's comprehensive integration. When narrative-huffing FTS-2 zombies reinforce the inverted authority and beast rituals of institutions outside the home, the conditioning is even more powerful. To the point where a functionally different species in terms of relation to reality is created.

The Band possesses unusual mental gifts and it took us a long time collectively to see through out conditioning.

Conditioning is nothing new. The point we are making here is that the House of Lies enhances conditioning through physically acting a fake scenario into your objective reality. The abnormal states of being afraid and looking to a monstrous inhuman bureaucracy to save you become part of your everyday lived experience.

These fake rituals psychologically scarred an entire generation permanently.

Sing-alongs are a valuable tool in any group programming arsenal. Like this but of compulsory self-owning from 1951. We've discussed music in earlier posts - how it is a formless mode of communication that instills pure emotion. Lyrics piggyback the message on to this rhetorical vehicle in a way that lasts.

Apparently having "Leo" in your first name was an important component of this,

Now think of masks. We initially wondered why the push for an utterly useless "protection" that not only has no impact on the spread of a disease that doesn't appear to transmit through aerial droplets, but is also uncomfortable and a potential breeding ground for harmful bacteria. Since there is no epidemiological or public health benefit, the reason for this dehumanizing discomfort ritual has to lie elsewhere. Our initial assumption was compliance training, but there is more than that. Masks create and maintain a stressful altered state that the wearer physically participates in.

What happens is an inversion - the opposite of what is claims. What's created in reality is not a remedy to a threat but the real cause of a traumatic altered state. This reinforces the fake plague by making things look and feel weird and different. And by taking part, the wearer sacrifices their own comfort, humanity, and potentially their health for fake safety from a fake peril.

Thought experiment.

Suppose satanic depopulationists consider the number of functionally useless FTS-2s in the world and project the consequences of their continually increasing numbers...

The unnecessary and less than useless discomfort is projected into "sacrificing" for personal safety. There's even an inverted religious impulse where inverted sacrifice - self-immolation for no purpose other than to fuel a monstrous lie - creates feelings of virtue.

Or that exquisite psycho-sexual humiliation that drives the cuck...

Think of the pattern. The masking ritual with its the discomfort and dehumanization is the participation - kinetic bodily engagement - in an abnormal ritual that makes a state of fear or anxiety part of lived experience.

Consider how despite almost two years of a supposed "pandemic" there are no noticeable signs of widespread illness other than on the glowing screens. How fake videos from China and misleading media accounts drive the fear that should come from... well... actual sick people.

Michel Serre, Great Plague of Marseille, 1721, oil on canvas, Musée Atger

FTS-1 looks around, notes no plague, and wants to get on with life. It would be infinitely harder to sell this flu-level virus as an enduring global threat even to FTS-2 were it not for armies of fear-crazed zombies shambling around and panting through useless masks. And without the fake fear of global threat, the mortality rate adjusting brew is a vastly harder sell. Without Christian virtue, it's not hard to see why the elites are hankering for a mass cull.

The power of the House of Lies then is more than one way transmissions through corrupt institutions and lying media. Though that is part of it. The full power comes from mass participation - from making it's preposterous untruths part of personal lived reality with hollow public rituals. The rituals are sold as a tonic to fear, which they aren't, and the result is both the fear and the false sense of salvation become tangible through doing. Huffers can't look away from social media. So how are they going to resist endemic lies that they are themselves actively taking part in making their reality?

They aren't.

There is a reason why the Band is not optimistic about things "getting better".

Massimiliano Alioto, Decadence, 2011, oil on canvas, private

Enter the House of Lies.

Merry Christmas!

2021-12-25T05:37:00.000-08:00

Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, The Nativity, 1665–70

The Morality, Ontology & De-Moralization of Christmas

2021-12-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts around Christmas – the season of miracle where satanists & cultural corrosion flock from every angle like inverted swallows of Capistrano.
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If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction to the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and other topics have menu pages above.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Anton Raphael Mengs, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1770, oil on oak, Prado

Clarify the point of this post. We aren't trying to diagram the constant assault on the central Christian miracle. That’s obvious with a glance back even a few decades. It’s not a history piece, so we won’t break down the top-down push towards “happy holidays”. Or how lies about a corporate logo anagrammatically named for Satan became the symbol of the festival of the Incarnation. Or the escalating and absurdly stressful orgy of commercialism.

Coca Cola Santa Claus, 1952 Christmas Poster

It's common to scan the current day beast system, then look back wistfully a few decades. The thing is, the inversive patterns were already in place. It's impossible to consider the central role of pedophilia and exploiting children in the moral inversion of society and look at an image like this as anything other than a red flag in plain sight.

The reality is that moral inversion is a continuum - a slippery slope. Or as we call it, the slippy slide into the abyss. Because it took generations to corrode basic Western Christian morality, looking back a little always looks better. But the seeds for the naked evil rampant today were planted a long time ago. That's why the masses never see it coming.

A far less meaningful but equally annoying tendency are the retards that blather on about Christmas “really” being a pagan holiday. As if pagan theology wasn’t extinguished in antiquity and reimagined in early modernity to add make-believe resonance to folklore. It's worse in modern times when idiots and grifters pretend ontologically-incoherent fantasy roleplay is "spiritual". One can pretend they're evoking long-extinct oral nonsense dogma, but that's intrinsically projected personal desire based at best on observable natural patterns. Literally no one knows what the belief structures entailed after the oral transmission chains were rightfully buried. And the everchanging variants of folklore != ancient belief systems for obvious reasons. Of course, reality is no obstacle to the fever dreams of the retarded.

For example, this version of the old spray of symbols. That's the occult pattern where a bunch of symbols of fake self-deification and inversion are plastered together in the asinine hope that more lies somehow approach truth. The spread-legged twink symbolizes that aberrant sexuality never really goes away.

There's no meaningful connection to truth, virtue, or the cultural history of the ancient West. But there might be something there for a winter game of D&D.

The problem with tackling the history and inversion of the celebration of the Incarnation in the West is that it is both too vast and too obvious. It’s too big to summarize the steps and examples but so self-evident that summarization shouldn’t be needed. Anyone who can’t see it are either too stupid to waste time on or complicit for some reason or other. But undermining and inverting Christmas is part of what we call de-moralization [click for a post where we introduce the idea]. Not the loss of morale - but not unrelated to that. The loss of morality. It’s why we hyphenate it to distinguish the two. It refers to a process that we’ve considered in other posts where objective morality is sequentially removed and then inverted in culture. And de-moralization gets to the point of this short post.

Start by reviewing how reality works. The motto of the Band is what can we know and how can we know it. Running through the posts are attempts to work out fundamental ways to understand the reality that we find ourselves in. This has led to structures like the ontological hierarchy that lay out how epistemology and ontology are integrated [click for a post].

Secular transcendence is another important one, where modern inversives pretend there is no coherent ontological or epistemological distinctions [click for a post].

Secular transcendence replaces the truthful representation of reality in the ontological hierarchy with what we call Flatland. This is a fake existential structure that underpins all the auto-idolatrous, self-deifying lies of modernism by pretending that all forms of knowledge - despite inherent contradictions and situational incoherence - are magically...

a) all applicable to an entropic temporal material reality
b) accessible in their fullness to limited human consciousnesses with their intrinsic limits of discernment
c) all expressed through representational process that can be totally subjective or totally transparent depending on what benefits the liars at the moment.

This post will make a few observations about Christmas through the lens of what we can know and how we can know it. Because de-moralization is a consequence of secular transcendence. Flattening out realities of ontology and epistemology is what blocks recognition of abstract realities and establishes the lie that the material is all there is. But ontology is hierarchical. Ultimate reality is beyond any form of knowledge other than faith. And that is the foundation of Truth and moral objectivity as we can conceive it.

Carl Bloch, The Shepherds and the Angel, 1879, oil on copper

The pretense that morality is subjective – that truth is subjective – requires secular transcendence. Denial of anything beyond our material existence. And that's why Christmas so triggering to the modern House of Lies? The Incarnation – the materialization of the Logos – is the essential thread that ties the ontological hierarchy together.

It definitionally affirms that this isn't Flatland and that de-moralization is a secular transcendent lie.

This makes the Incarnation - the ostensive point of the Christmas festival - the essential hinge in the entire structure.

It is true that necessity of a hierarchical ontology was reasoned out by the pre-Christian Greeks. But the operant mechanism that connects the ultimate/God to the material/human was unknowable without faith. And faith is unknowable by logic or observation – it can only be consistent or inconsistent with those but not confirmed. Christian Logos is uniquely consistent with onto-epistemological necessity as it is accessible to us.

So Christmas through the lens of the Bands ideas. There is one more point to bring up – a critical one for assessing human response to higher truths.

More specifically, inward or outward driven forms of moral direction [click for one of several posts]. Is morality based on internal intentions and beliefs, or on what other people think? Christianity uniquely prioritizes the former. What is in the heart and knowable to God trumps appearances. Obviously this overstates the binary distinction and inwardly-moral people generally appear outwardly so as well. But the drivers and intentions matter when considering social ritual participation.

Laying out the groundwork makes Christmas fairly simple. Start by considering it through linked ontological strata and representational processing.

The subject of Christmas – the Christ in the name – is the Incarnation.

Nazarene School, The Adoration of the Infant Jesus, 19th century

The paradoxical entry of God or ultimate reality into man or material reality.

The details are known by faith and by representation.

The faith can’t be “proven” observationally or logically, but it is consistent. The world is observably and logically fallen and subject to both passive and active evil natures. Logic also dictates that without a higher countervailing force, we would already be extinguished. There is no way to see empirically or even clearly conceptualize the appearance or nature of the Logos/Word that is and was with God and was the instrument of Creation. It’s beyond our limits of discernment. But it perfectly conforms to our survival in the objectively fallen world that we can perceive.

By representation we simply mean how we know anything [click for a post].

None of us were present before time when the Logos was and was with God. None of us were in the manger either. What understanding we have is through scriptural and other narratives, images, thought-pictures, etc. We know through faith that these representations conform to the things they represent, but that doesn’t change that their representational nature.

We might even call the Incarnation something similar to a representational act.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities, between 1675 and 1682, oil on canvas, National Gallery

The divine hypostasis of the Logos isn’t materially localized or visible. In human form it is. How divinity and humanity conjoin is beyond discernment. But the reality of a physically knowable version of Logos isn’t. Through the Incarnation God acquires aspects of temporal visibility.

The representational idea is also limited. If we think of Jesus as representation, we also have remain aware that he also really is divine essence he represents. Where it applies is in creating something accessible that previously wasn’t.

"Christmas" doesn't have the divine essence that the actual Incarnation does - it's purely representational. Whether the Biblical narratives or any subsequent celebration. This doesn't mean they are equally accurate - we accept on faith that the former are. We're also looking at the inversion of the latter. The point is that Christmas is an inherently representational phenomenon and what it does is represent - well or poorly - is the birth of Jesus with celebration. The ultimate reality and material reality ends of the ontological hierarchy linking through the incarnate Logos. Not collapsing like secular transcendence, but connecting in a way that offers a way around the Fall. That offers a connection to our Creator. This is the reason for the light of the world, the joy, etc.

The shepherds and Magi represent opposite ends of the socio-economic status hierarchy. Salvation is open to all. Note that the most lowly are the first to come - and are told directly by angels instead of having to follow sky signs.

The gifts and reverence represent God's ultimate gift and ultimate charity. Literally ultimate - actual ultimate reality manifested directly.

Note how de-moralized beast entertainment endlessly blathers on about a "spirit of Christmas" without any reason for it other than a vague appeal to custom. That there's supposed to be some objective joy, magic of the season, etc. without the supernatural miracle that invested the representation with its meaning in the first place.

In this 1950 film, there is a claymation version of the Nativity, but it accompanies the utterly secular "Night Before Christmas". De-moralization starts with the fake secular alternative as a supplement. This establishes a representational connection by association. Once totally non-Incarnate Logos related magic becomes "the spirit of Christmas", the Truth can be slowly phased out.

So any truthful representational quality of Christmas is rooted in the Incarnation and its meaning. This is known because it can be extrapolated logically through abstract processes. The universal processes of acceptance that open salvation to all. But how this manifests materially is... well... material.

Now recall the ontological hierarchy. In deontological terms, the abstract gives us moral reasoning. Applying ultimate Truths known by faith to our subjective, changing material realities in legitimate ways.

Because material reality is subjective, conditional, contingent experience. And that includes what we think of as "culture". Modes of living in the social physical world that develop organically over time. Material reality is fallen and had no intrinsic moral direction other than nature. For us to navigate this, higher forms of knowledge are needed. The application of those ultimate truths through that abstract reasoning.

That’s how we assess cultural values. How do they conform to moral truths that are literally super-natural? We alone have the power to transcend the impulses of fallen nature through spiritual discernment and higher reasoning. Which is why we are subject to moral judgment in ways the rocks and beasts are not. Though even they have a natural logos.

It will take different forms in different places and times. It may not be celebrated at all. It is not mandated Biblically, though Christians commemorating the Incarnation is hardly a difficult concept to grasp. So not required - a material, culturally determined practice that is not a direct extension of ultimate reality. This makes it subject to abstract assessment according to the Truths laid down by ultimate reality. The question is whether it's morally acceptable or not. In short...

Whether or not the celebration is moral is deontological. Does it conform to or contradict the morally reasoned applicability of ultimate Truth?

We know the angels sing and the magi bring gifts. A cultural expression based around charitable giving and joyous celebration is deontologically sound. It doesn't manifest a commandment because it is merely a commemorative representation of Truth. This also takes care of idiot obsession over the "actual date". Representations are by definition arbitrary in form, so what matters is the significance. Does the expression inherently contradict the salvific gift of the Incarnation or not?

The issue is the focus. Remember how Christian morality is interiorized. What is the motivation? It is an arbitrary cultural indicator that draws meaning from the material manifestation of Logos? Or is it a festival of greed and gluttony - material excess as an end in itself? The two are not the same.

John Conrad Berkey, Christmas Morning, later 20th century, acrylic on board

Quick... where's the Incarnation?

The embodiment of this secular transcendent de-moralization of the celebration of the Incarnation into orgy of materialism is "Santa". This is a tough one for a lot of people because of their own fond memories. But the supernatural foundation of the celebration is the Logos entering the world and offering the possibility of redemption. And the joy and charitability are participatory material-level expressions of that miracle - like artists creating in the image of the Creator. Think then for a moment on the creation and top-down pushing of an unchristian sorcerer with intense corporate promotion to replace God with worldly magic. A magic based on lies, that turns Christian fellowship around the ultimate revelation into a theater of deception.

Fun lies the beast says, but "fun" as a moral barometer has a poor track record...

Kate Greenaway, Christmas Eve, a visit from Father Christmas, 19th century, watercolor, private

Jesus doesn't sneak into the bedroom.

De-moralization is insidious. It is peddled to people who unconsciously feel the loss of Truth, but have no path back to it. The missing emotional appeal of the Good News and attendant virtues becomes the vector for inverted fake replacements.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a cultural generosity mascot. The problem is when that mascot becomes the central figure in what is ostensibly the celebration of the Incarnation. Their magics are ontologically incompatible. Contradictory. You have to choose, and as with everything in this Fallen world mindlessly pretending there is no difference is a choice. Perhaps not a mortal one, but certainly a chosen path.

Yes, the Band is familiar with Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters.

Anyone who actually read the book and somehow confused this expression of the master's literary fictional myth-making to the modern Santa is disingenuous. Nor did Tolkien run an atheist household. In fact, we are certain that his implicit grasp of the ontological is at least a match for our own. Material-level culture with real moral applicability.

There's the floor.

Pauline Baynes, illustration from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 1991.

Likewise Father Christmas in C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - an explicit Christian allegory written for mid-20th-century English children set in a joyless place described as always winter and never Christmas. Within the allegory he symbolizes the bounty of Christmas and gives the Pevensies gifts connected to adult responsibility. He's a material expression of Christianity allegorized by Aslan, not the replacement. “I've come at last,” said he. “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch's magic is weakening.”

These literary creations have virtually nothing to do with modern Santa in the House of Lies.

It's not that you can't create a celebretory figure within a deontologically sound framework. It's that that isn't what happened.

The de-moralization of the celebration of the Incarnation was effective because of cultural inertia. There was a lingering veneer of popular Christianity of a sort well into the culture of the 20th century. This was slowly eroded through the integrated glamours of inverted mass beast culture - what we've been calling the House of Lies in recent posts. That makes it more obvious now, but the process was well underway over a century ago.

Consider the oft-quoted "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" by the ironically-named Francis Pharcellus Church published in a long-dead beast rag of 1897. In it a slippery rhetorician argues that Santa is a personification of our best virtues, without which there would be "no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence". Pure inversion - there's no way he was too stupid to not realize these things predate their supposed cause. An attempt to replace the divine source of the wonder of Creation with a fake wizard. Diametric opposite to Lewis. Now consider Church next to another Promethean appeal...

George Bellows, Hail to Peace, Christmas, New Society Dinner-Card, 1918, lithograph on wove paper, Hail to Peace

Church frames the peace with an ontological appeal - "In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him" - and then distils the wonder of the divine into a de-moralized marketing totem. Literally from the sublime to the ridiculous.

"Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!" But fairies aren't real either - just another Victorian fad looking to push occult replacements for Christian wonder. And note the complete lack of reference to the Incarnation anywhere.

We don't believe in Prometheus either.

See how early stage de-moralization works? Identify something miraculous like the manifestation of the Logos into Creation and the ontological transformation that that engenders. Reduce it to unfounded material human impulses. Then create a fake idol to account for the actual Truth that's being obscured. The real answer was no, Virginia, there isn't. But there is the the infinitely more magical and wondrous unearned gift of grace that brought light into a Fallen world. You can celebrate that with joy, thanksgiving, and charity of your own.

How about the Christmas tree? That's a sperg-tard magnet.

Jervis McEntee, Christmas in the Catskills, 1867, oil on canvas, private

It obviously isn’t an Asherah pole and one hardly has to be a polished exegete to realize Jeremiah 10:3-4 refers to the carving of idols. The shaping with a chisel part is a tell. This brings us back to inward vs outward morality again. Why do you put up a tree? Is it it replacing the Incarnation at the focal point of the holiday? If so, it’s an idol. Otherwise it’s a joyous expression through the lens of an arbitrary material culture.

The lights are fine. Most every culture had a solstice holiday around the lengthening of days. It's not a bad representation of the True Light of the Incarnation so long as one is not confused with the other.

Likewise the decorations. What do they represent? Are they hung in a spirit of joyous reverence for the savior? Or do they celebrate something else? Are the open to the ontological hierarchy or part of the secular transcendent Flatland that denies the reality of heaven?

Mary Fairchild MacMonnies, Christmas Eve in the Studio, 1911, oil on canvas, private

That's the thing about inward-driven morality - it's not always superficially obvious. This is a joyous celebration of family and beauty. Is it in a spirit of reverence? There's nothing obvious that rules it out, so only the participants know for sure.

But that determines whether it's consistent with the meaning of the Incarnation or just a material display. And that determines the nature of the moral content.

Does the joy come from the light cutting through a dark world or from gluttony and stuff?

Marc Swanson, Untitled, Sequined Antler, Peter Norton Family Christmas Project, 2009, mixed-media, private

It's really not that difficult.

The gifts are all right, so long as they don’t descend into the orgy of commercialism that replaced any other aspect of the holiday.

Does the moral charge to charity come from reverent gratitude for God’s infinitely greater gift? Or because a freakish godless demon threatens you?

Christianity is based on one moral judge that knows the heart, and true repentance of a Fallen sinful nature bringing forgiveness.

Replacing this with occult spies is just another example of the de-moralization we've been observing. With intrinsic Christian morality, there's no need for fake judges. Though they do condition acceptance of a state of constant non-divine surveillance.

The inward-driven morality of is Christianity crystalized in the Incarnation. Because we each have the choice to follow or turn back into the darknesss. This is a problem for many because it also comes with responsibility. Responsibility to sometime have to decline material pleasures on moral grounds. So the nature of Christmas the material expression is up to the person celebrating it. The ultimate truth of the Incarnation doesn’t change, but whether that manifests socio-culturally sure does.

What does “Christmas” the modern holiday mean? That’s up to you.

Choose.

La Serenissima Part Two - Venice, Art & Organic Community in the Renaissance

2021-12-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

Venice - the Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia - is a small but long-lived entity with oversized influence on the Arts of the West. And some truths for organic culture as well. Here's the second part of our look - Venice in the Renaissance.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Titian, Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin, between 1516 and 1518, oil on panel, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

Finishing the next Arts of the West post on Renaissance Venice. Part One [click for the post] looked at the development of a unique and wealthy culture in an unlikely place. Part Two will look at the emergence of a brilliant school of painting even as the wealth and power went into irreversible decline.

The Venetian economy - the pride of medieval Europe - was founded on foreign trade. Venice was the conduit between Europe and the Eastern world, making them the richest and most cosmopolitan city probably in the world. At the same time, they had a complex system of republican government that did become corrupted by wealthy interests but maintained rule by Venetians.

The size of the small Venetian empire peaked in the early 15th century, but the clouds of decline were on the horizon. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks introduced a powerful threat to the East that brought intermittent warfare and the loss of many trade routes.

While Venice did ultimately play an important role in checking Ottoman expansion, they were unable to recapture former glory. Not for lack of trying - their extensive economic relations and shrewd diplomacy created possibilities that were unique in Christendom. An anti-Ottoman alliance with Persia ultimately proved ineffective and the decisive defeat of the Safavid Persians at Chaldiran in 1514 put an end to that prospect. The Ottoman conquest of the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate - a major Venetian trading partner - closed off any other avenue of assistance from the Muslim world.

Panel of velvet, early 16th century, woven silk and metal thread, possibly Venetian, but in a style common in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Egypt as well.

Extensive trade contacts in the east gave Venice much closer cultural connections with the Muslim world than the rest of Europe. Luxury goods like this metallic textile weren't just purchased by the Venetians, they also developed high-end artisan workshops to produce them. To the point where it can be difficult to pinpoint place of origin.

The famous Venetian Murano glass works are an example of these eastern cultural contacts. Egypt and Syria inherited Roman glass production after antiquity and became centers of advanced medieval glassmaking. The Venetians adopted these techniques and concentrated their own glassworks on the island of Murano in the 13th century. By the Renaissance, Venice had become preeminent makers of luxury glass.

Sanctuary lamp (Cesendello), late 15th or early 16th century, enameled and gilt Murano glass from Venice

Here's an example of a Venetian version of a glass type popular there and in the Muslim world. The use of enamel painting and gilding for decoration goes back centuries. These pieces were kiln fired like pottery to fuse the colors to the glass.

This piece depicts the Annunciation indicating it is Christian in origin.

Close-up of the enamel painted and gilded angel Gabriel in the Annunciation.

Note the cloth of gold robe - textile with metallic wrapped threads woven into the fabric. It is quite similar to the panel velvet viewed up above.

The Venetians did manage a critical victory against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto - along with the Siege of Malta a critical check on Turkish Mediterranean advancement. But there was no recovering the lost eastern trade routes from their now implacable enemies and post-Renaissance Venetian history is one of slow decline.

Paolo Veronese, Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto, 1571, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

The Virgin Mary and a cluster of saints including Peter and Venetian patron Mark the Evangelist preside over the victory. The Venetians were allied with Spanish, Papal, and other ships, but made up the largest share of the fleet.

Meanwhile, troubles to the West mounted as well. Larger European powers - first Portugal and Spain, then the Netherlands and England - usurped Venetian trade supremacy. The colonial era brought new and more lucrative sources of wealth and power.

Vasco da Gama's voyage around Africa to India was the harbinger of a new era of eastern trade.

And closer to home, wars with European powers were continually draining. The War of the League of Cambrai is a good example of the switching alliances and pointless objectives of the moronic "Italian Wars". Venice was able to maintain its small mainland "empire" that allowed for some dry land commerce and artistic activity. For example, the famous architect Palladio came from Vicenza, a mainland city where he got his start.

The mainland territories were called the Veneto. This provided some agricultural economic activity to offset the loss of trade income, but not at anywhere near the same level. It did lead to the development of a sort of landed elite or gentry.

Palladio, Villa Emo, late 1550s-1561, Vedelago

Bringing up Palladio also brings up the villa culture he's most associated with. His influential harmonious simple classicism was developed on designs for rural villas or estates for landed elites.

This example combined noble living and functional spaces. The two wings housed storage and equipment for the agricultural activity that took place on the extensive land holdings.

But through all of this change and turmoil, the unique Venetian culture and its government rolled serenely along. And artistically, the 15th and 16th centuries hit magnificent heights. Names like Bellini, Titian, and Palladio rank among the most influential creators in Western history and remain popular today.

This post will look at the highlights, main points, and important influence of the Venetian Renaissance. As usual we will also consider larger cultural lessons for the West coming out of this. In the last post we noted some essential points about systems of social order that reflect, express, and support organic culture. As we turn to cultural flowering and economic decline, we expect to see some insight into the difference between wealth and "empire" and creativity.

We ended last time with the Bellini family and the arrival of oil paint on the Venetian art scene.

Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in Ecstasy, c. 1480, oil on panel, Frick Collection, New York

Oil paint let Bellini build paintings up in semi-translucent layers or glazes of pigment. This picture combines natural and divine light with a real luminosity that seems to come from within.

Landscape is another interest the early Venetian Renaissance didn't share with the rest of Italy.

We actually wrapped up with Antonello da Messina, an itinerant artist of little fame that may have introduced oil to Bellini. Or at least made him aware of its potential. Whether that's really the case, his paintings point to some of the main things Venetian art will be known for.

The Virgin Annunciate is an original take on the popular Annunciation subject that puts you in the position of the archangel Gabriel. Mary looks up from her prayer book and gestures towards us with mild surprise. This kind of interactive realism is unusual in any era, but Venetian artists work to build more personal connections between viewers and paintings. It's part of the old artistic fascination with emotional effects - light, color, and spectacle - that we looked at in the last post.

Antonello da Messina, The Virgin Annunciate, 1476, oil on wood, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo

Antonello's oil paint accounts for the realistic texture of Mary's skin and the light falling on her. Light projected by the angel in our place. The luminosity is similar to the Bellini painting up above and a huge advantage of oil over tempera.

Venetian art had always prioritized light. Oil paint simply replaced glittering mosaic and livid color with saturated tones and almost supernatural luminosity.

The standard narrative contrasts the art of the Renaissance Venice with Florence on emotion vs. logic grounds. This isn't entirely accurate - all art communicates at least in part through emotional resonances. Where it is true is in the emphasis - while the Florentines are working out linear perspective and using repetitive drawing techniques to copy statues and classical details, the Venetians are developing captivating color and interactivity. It's not that Venetian painting isn't an intellectual exercise either. It's highly technical. But the technique uses light and color to max out the emotional engagement.

The distinct culture of Venice - at once insular and cosmopolitan - made for a unique connection to the humanist ideas that were sweeping Italy. We've looked at that in a number of posts from art to history to the occult. Here are a pair of early posts looking at the link between Renaissance humanism and satanic globalist inversion [click for the first and the second]. Venice didn't have an antique history or ruins to inspire the obsession with ancient culture, and the literary classicism of Florence was slower to arrive. It eventually does, but Venetian classicism and humanism takes its own unique form like everything else.

Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1474, oil on lime, National Gallery

Antonello again - here capturing the great early Christian theologian in a fantastical humanistic study. But artistically it's more an exercise in interactive engagement than pure rationalism. There is perspective, but arranged to make it seem like a magic window opened to you. The symbolic birds and bowl on the shelf enhance the illusion.

Also, what is this place? The saint is like a sacred display in sharp oil colors. Humanist scholarly ideal, but different from the linear rationalism of contemporary Florence.

You can see it in the late arrival of classically inspired architecture in Venice towards the end of the 15th century. Remember the Renaissance architecture posts - early Renaissance Florentines like Brunelleschi introduced a mathematically precise idiom with basic geometries and Greco-Roman detailing [click for a post]. Fifty years later, a Venetian like Pietro Lombardo is consciously using classical details but without the geometric precision or any effort to evoke theoretical principles of antiquity. It's classicism of motif but not in a rationalistic way. Once again, more about aesthetic emotional reaction to visual stimulus than founding art on higher logic.

Pietro Lombardo, S. Maria dei Miracoli, 1481 Venice

Good example of this kind of classical motif based Venetian Renaissance architecture. It's covered with Roman arches, pilasters and capitals, simplified forms etc., but no resemblance to ancient buildings or simplifying governing logic.

Also note the color, texture, and busy ornamental patterns. More Venetian love of emotion-based art. Not a black/white contrast with central Italy but tendencies.

Eventually a more conventional centralized classicism does make it to Renaissance Venice in the 16th century. Jacopo Sansovino came from Rome and brought a central Italian classicism with him. But even Sansovino's more conventionalized Renaissance classicism is on the heavy ornamental side. His masterpiece - the Marciana Library - uses the classical orders in stacked arcades, but maxes out the layers of decoration. Different levels of depth with columns projecting, lots of sculpture, different colors - classical architecture adapted to the Venetian love of visual stimulus and emotional response.

Jacopo Sansovino, Marciana Library, 1537–1588

Close-up of Sansovino's ornamental Venetian classicism. This will have an influence on the aristocratic building of Europe in the future.

The color effects come from contrasting light and shade from the deep windows and projecting marble elements.

Lesson 1 - Organic culture absorbs influences on its terms while the beast system has top-down authorities imposing fake rules.

An organic culture absorbs influences but adapts them in ways that remain true to the basic principles of the culture. As seen in earlier Renaissance posts, the path to Art! begins with establishing a central discourse that supplants the Band's definition of art as Logos plus techne.

Art is one of those things that crosses levels of reality in Ontological Hierarchy terms. It's why it's so hard to define in the purely material terms of the metaphysically gelded Flatland that makes up the risible foundation of modern "thought". Subjective material preferences in technical skill and objective immaterial truth.

That which we can see directly expresses that which we can't. One is variable, one isn't.

But once the definition has been transposed from [culturally-determined making in truth] to [something someone said] there is a central node of control that can be jacked and inverted. For the whole beast network of institutions, critics, gatekeepers, "theories", etc. to develop, there has to be the assumption that art is a singular identifiable thing that can be gatekept. The immaterial truth has to be removed as an ultimate standard because it exists outside human control. We express it in material terms, but it isn't subject to them. It's the expression that is ultimately subject to the judgment of whether or not is expresses logos.

When the arts of the West gets jacked by top-down aristocratic theorizers, the differences will be folded together into a set of "rules". Then the rules become the replacement for the logos that they were supposed to represent. Representation-reality inversion that we covered extensively in a series of posts [five posts on centralization near the bottom of this page].

On a larger scale, Western culture is itself an interplay of larger shared values and localized national expressions. Here's a graphic from an earlier post.

Superimpose the three ingredients of Western culture onto the interwoven ontology and epistemology of the ontological hierarchy. This makes it clear how common abstractions express in different material forms. Click for a long post.

Lesson 2 - the Arts of the West are built on regional cultural tastes within broader concepts of art.

And this is consistent with organic cultural formation. Everything keeps coming back to bottom up vs. top down. In the Renaissance, when beast centralization was just forming, there are still strong differences between local traditions. It's why Venetian and Florentine-Roman painting is so different. Linear and coloristic or logical and emotional are just imperfect shorthand ways of referring to two different value-expectation sets.

The Venetian cultural love of light and color is transposed away from gleaming gold and glittering mosaics to the effects of oil paint. From there, the sensuous qualities of the medium join in with the luminosity and chromatic intensity into a general classification of emotion. Compare the soft texture and overt eroticism of Titian's Danae to the classical monumentality and linear qualities of Michelangelo's Delphic Sibyl. Different contexts, but the point comes through.

Different priorities. The art of organic cultures within a common Western framework. The rest of this post will take us from Bellini's light to the unleashed painterly emotionalism to come.

Why is this relevant to the journey to modern inversion? Because classifying Florentine and Venetian art was an early stage in building the centralized beast narrative that would eventually replace L+T as the definition of art. And the emphasis on medium - oil paint - and emotional response rather than the truth of message laid the foundations for the idiocy of modern "autonomy". The retarded notion that art - the preeminent means of human cultural expression - referred only to its own making. A sort of auto-idolatry that ironically expressed the satanic do what thou wilt ideology of modern culture in general.

But that lies in the future. To a Renaissance Venetian, the idea that art wouldn't express something would be greeted with the puzzlement and disdain it deserves. Theirs was an art of oil paint intended to move the viewer in one way or another. Illusions of light and color.

Giovanni Bellini, Transfiguration of Christ, 1487, oil on panel, National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples

Bellini's treatment of this Biblical miracle is a good representative of his approach. Good colors and a clear supernatural light that seems to suffuse the entire scene. Emotionally, the painting is restrained. Jesus' divinity is conveyed by his white robes and subtle lighting instead of dramatic expressions or gestures. Even the falling Apostles don't move too violently. The sober serenity connects Bellini to 15th century painting elsewhere, but the magic light is uniquely his. There is a mystical quiet to his work that seems almost like a transfiguration of the material through art.

The figures are set in a large landscape - the Venetian interest in landscape seems connected both to their own limited mainland space and the influence of Flemish painting. The same northern art that introduced oil paint and unvarnished realism of detail.

Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan, from 1501 until 1502, oil on panel, National Gallery

Speaking of realism, Bellini's portrait of this Venetian doge is a marvel of technique. The glistening of his eye, the play of light on the skin, even the slight five o'clock shadow on his lower face, are shockingly realistic. Especially compared to the standards of the time. Then there's the texture of the robe - the luxurious textile that was a sign of Venetian wealth and trade.

That Bellini internal light makes it seem as if the doge is glowing with the status and spirit of a literal luminary.

It's in his magnificent altarpieces where Bellini's talent and innovation really shine forth. His San Giobbe Altarpiece is his first that takes the real lighting conditions of its church setting into account to create an illusion of real space. The light in the painting lines up with the light from the windows to make it seem like the two are connected. At the same time, the figures seem elevated to a higher spiritual level by their appearance. Heaven and earth combine through the magic of oil paint.

Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe Altarpiece, around 1487-1493, iol on canvas, oil on panel, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

The arrangement of the painting - Madonna and child surrounded by saints - is called a sacra conversazione, or sacred conversation. No one actually talks or even acknowledges each other. The "conversation" takes place on a higher spiritual plane. More like a communion. The presence of St. Sebastian in the front right indicates that it was a reaction to the cessation of a plague. He was the saint most often invoked against disease.

Note the sumptuous textures and colors. The figures, marble panels, and gold mosaic throwback to San Marco and Venetian history,

The San Giobbe Altarpiece was damaged when Napoleon had it stolen during the looting of Venice after its surrender to the French. When it was returned to Italy it went to the Accademia, a major Venetian art museum. Some of the illusion is lost in the new setting. This recreation of its original placement in the church of San Giobbe shows how carefully Bellini aligned his painting with the real interior.

Note the classically-themed architecture as Renaissance humanism takes hold in Venice.

Photographic reconstruction of San Giobbe Altarpiece in original frame

The actual frame is still in the church. Note how Bellini's painted pilasters and arched ceiling seem to extend the real frame back into space like a chapel. The lighting catches the real light from the opposite windows.

This is different from a Florentine perspective "window" on a rationally composed scene taking place elsewhere. Here, Venetian light fuels engagement with something that seems present but isn't. More of an emotional response than a rational one, but perfect for religious rhetoric.

The San Zaccaria Altarpiece was painted later but follows a fimilar formula and is still in its original location. It's easy to see how the painting seems to extend the real frame back into an imaginary chapel space. The contrast with the wall paintings on either side makes the contrast clearer.

Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria Altarpiece, 1505, oil on panel, San Zaccaria, Venice

It's another sacre conversazione with highly saturated colors and evocative lighting. By this point Bellini was nearing the end of his long career, and his handling of light and color were at their most refined. Note how the saints all exist in quiet reflection, but are elevated to a higher level by their noble appearance and how they are lit. The musician angel makes the connection between the moving power of beautiful music and the similar effect of Bellini's visual "music".

Bellini's long career and innovative talent dominated Venetian painting and set the course for the future. A slightly younger painter like Marco Basaiti is unimaginable without Bellini's example. Basaiti's altarpieces aren't as direct in creating the illusion of a real space but they do complicate the barrier between art and reality in engaging ways. The Agony in the Garden sets up two levels of fictional reality - the Gospel scene and the later saints in sacre conversazione-type communion. Sts. Louis and Dominic look out to facilitate our connection with the painting.

Marco Basaiti, Agony in the Garden with Saints Louis of Toulouse, Francis, Dominic, and Mark, 1510 or 1516, oil on panel, Gallerie dell'Accademia

This is a really fascinating painting by a little-known artist. Venetian landscape and lighting are in full effect in the "rear" scene as Jesus contemplates his fate. A clear distinction is made with the tiled floor the saints stand on and the dangling Cesendello lamp like the one we saw earlier in the post.

The saints are "closer" to us - in the extended space of the real church like Bellini's groups. The Biblical scene is a more fundamental truth we all share. But Jesus is still located at the top of a triangle with the saints like the sacre conversationes in Bellini's paintings. Art and reality get blurred into one continuum of faith running from Jesus through the saints, to us

Note how Francis' inward expression of contemplation seems to align with Jesus' praying form. The arrangement of the painting simultaneously makes distinctions in time and space then overcomes them with visual connections. Francis' own meditation casts his faithful devotion back to the source and brings it into his present. When it comes to Christian truth, time and distance are irrelevant. The same holds for us by extension.

Light, color, and emotional engagement - not for slack-jawed lies about autonomy, but to visualize truths about faith that can't be seen directly. It's not hard to see the same relationships represented in the ontological hierarchy realized far more artfully here. That's the thing about the truth. It's true consistently despite the form of representation.

These Venetian altarpieces are wonders in their own right. Here's a shot from the Accademia with three of them in a row that does justice to the spatial illusions and light. Bellini's San Giobbe Altarpiece and Basaiti's Agony in the Garden are the two on the right. They're big paintings - nearly life-sized. This makes their engaging illusionism that much more compelling.

Bellini's age and death opened a space at the top of the Venetian food chain. The painter that first looked like his successor was Giorgione - a somewhat mysterious figure who died quite young. What is known of him comes mainly through Vasari, the 16th-century father of art history who pretty much established the humanist Dark Age-Renaissance model of cultural history for art. One thing that is clear is his impact on Venetian art. He transformed the style of Bellini into a more fluid and sensuous idiom for the sixteenth century.

Giorgione

According to Vasari Giorgione met Leonardo during Leonardo's visit to Venice after the fall of Milan to the French and before he returned to Florence. It does appear that Giorgione absorbed some of Leonardo's advanced ideas about light and realism and incorporated them into what he learned from Bellini. Mature Venetian colore - an emotional art based on rich textural oil was born. As always, it's easier to see than describe.

Giorgione, Madonna and Child Between St. Francis and St. Nicasius, 1503/04, oil on panel, Duomo of Castelfranco Veneto

Giorgione's Castelfranco Altarpiece is another take on a sacre conversazione. Look at the richness of texture - in the atmospheric landscape, the Madonna's robes, the fine imported carpet beneath her, and the gleaming armor.

It's so visually engaging that you almost don't notice how weird it is. Where are they? It's like Basaiti's two levels of reality combined with Bellini's enthroned Madonna.

A close-up of St. Nicasius shows Giorgione's control of light and texture. The same dispassionate expression as a Bellini figure but with greater surface realism.

St. Nicasius of Sicily was a 12th-century Knight of St John martyred in the Holy Land. Hence the martial attire.

There are only a few paintings known to be by Giorgione, and those are enigmatic. The best known is his Tempest - an evocative outdoor scene of unknown subject matter. Seriously, no one knows what it depicts. Even the name is a 19th century description of what's going on. But the treatment of the landscape and especially the sky is marvelous.

Giorgione, The Tempest, around 1508, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

The nursing woman and either shepherd or soldier in a stormy landscape doesn't refer to any recognizable story or symbolism. There are a bunch of theories but none conclusive. The name just refers to the depiction of the weather.

It's Giorgione's rich, velvety paint that steals the show - lush vegetation and a sky that feels almost damp. The paint and the overall poetic feel.

Poetic is probably the best way to describe The Tempest. It is often described as a "poesia" or visual poetry, as opposed to the more straightforward history paintings of Florence. This means is it intended to create an impression or feeling rather than deliver a clear message, though some link it to the menace of impending war. Even if that's true, it's an indirect, evocative reference and not a direct address. Like a poetic allegory. The sumptuous texture and turbulent sky also convey a sort of poetic aesthetic in line with the Arcadian poetic style popular among Venetian humanists. This is intended to evoke the "lyrical and musical qualities of verse, and resembles visual poetry meant to generate multi-layered responses".

Here's a close-up of Giorgione's stormy sky.

Giorgione's sensuousness and emotional response peaks in another new genre - the reclining nude. This will become one of the most common subjects in the history of Western art because it combines pin-up eroticism with the classical mythological erudition. Adam and Eve had been the preeminent nude subjects through the Middle Ages, but in the poetic humanist culture of Venice Venus took the stage.

It's not as if there hadn't been nude Venuses before Giorgione.

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1485-1486, tempera on canvas, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Botticelli's Birth of Venus is among the most famous paintings of all time.

And collectors had been acquiring antique nude sculpture for some years. But there had been nothing like the luxe texture and overt sexuality of Giorgione's Sleeping Venus laid out for viewing pleasure with her hand provocatively placed over her vagina. Compare this figure to Botticelli's linear grace.

Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, around 1510, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Unfinished at the time of Giorgione's death, it was completed by the younger Titian.

The early death of Giorgione reopened the vacuum at the top of Venetian art. There were a few next generation artists vying for top spot, but it was Titian who won out. This artist was from Cadore - a mainland village north of Venice - who spent time training with the Bellinis and Giorgione. That's how he wound up finishing the Sleeping Venus. During his long life, Titian would dominate Venetian art like none other.

Titian

It's impossible to overestimate the importance of Titian to Renaissance Venetian painting. His influence is akin to Michelangelo and Raphael in Florence and Rome - the inventor and disseminator of the High Renaissance style. But Raphael died young and Michelangelo worked in multiple artforms. Titian was strictly a painter, and during his seven decade career went through different stylistic changes. His fluid handling of oil paint didn't just define Venetian art - Rubens and Rembrandt in the 17th century, the Rococo in the eighteenth, Turner and the Impressionists in the nineteenth are all descendants of his technique. There's no way to cover him comprehensively in a post. We'll have to settle for a few highlights and representative pieces of his different styles.

Titian, Noli me Tangere, about 1514, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

Early maturity. Giorgione's sensuous texture and color but already more fluid in his handling of paint. The Magdalene's vivid red robe uses color to enhance visual excitement. Jesus' flesh seems soft, but note the lack of interest in perfect anatomy as seen in Raphael and Michelangelo. More emotional Venetian color as opposed to rational Florentine design.

Note the sky. Expressive, luminous, atmospheric skies become a Titian trademark.

An early example of a mythic poesia like Giorgione, but look at the textures and color. Sacred and Profane Love may be a bit easier to interpret than The Tempest but just as reliant on mood and poetic allusion. The subject is probably two types of love - the title first turns up in a late 17th century catalog but the it matches the symbolism. The precise identification is illusive - worldly and heavenly love or the Neoplatonic idea of earthly and celestial Venus have been proposed. The two women appear to be the same person in different attire, with idealized features. Whatever the meaning, the style is a perfect illustration of Titian's take on emotion driven Venetian oil painting. Compare to our High Renaissance posts on Raphael and Michelangelo.

Titian, Sacred and Profane Love, 1514, oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome

Despite the nudity, the figure on the right appears to be celestial love and the one on the left her earthly counterpart. This lends support to the two Venuses idea. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the model may have been one of Venice's celebrated courtesans. Whoever she is, her appearance and fantastic drapery is intended to be sensually attractive. Less of a stark moral contrast between opposites than complementary manifestations of different aspects.

Earthly love is dressed in opulent silks and has a castle in the background. The rabbits suggest sexual desire [click for an occult post on rabbit symbolism].

The overall assemblage denotes the good life and worldly pleasures

Celestial love wears livid red silk - the most visually striking passage in the picture. Her nudity is less incongruous to Renaissance humanists, who depicted Truth as nude. Literally the naked truth. She holds a lamp upward and in the background there is a church instead of a castle. The rabbits are hunted as well - all signs of turning away from worldly pleasure towards more spiritual things.

Modest religious paintings and cultured poesia were common Venetian subjects, but altarpieces were more lofty projects. Titian announced his artistic supremacy with his huge Assumption of the Virgin or Assunta - a massive tour de force of light and energy. At almost 22' high, it was unlike anything prior in Venetian painting and is really Titian's coming out party.

Mary rises through bright clouds into a golden heaven, where radiant oil paint surpasses the old gold mosaic of the past. Angels coalesce in the golden light while an incredible foreshortened God awaits. Down below, the astonished Apostles react in wonder, their chiaroscuro light and shadow and chaotic poses contrasting with the vision above.

Titian, Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin, between 1516 and 1518, oil on panel, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

There's really nothing else like it. In the Raphael post, we suggested that this may have been the inspiration for that genius' growing interest in light effects. The chiaroscuro and radiance on two levels in his magisterial Transfiguration definitely supports that idea. But the Transfiguration is absorbing evocative light into a substructure of rational - supreme - design. No one drew or composed like Raphael anywhere ever.

What Titian lacked in Raphael's drafting and compositional skills, he made up in pure luminous and chromatic energy. Once more, Venetian emotion and color, Florentine logic and design. Tendencies not absolute polarities, but not hard to see.

Raphael, The Transfiguration, 1518-20, oil on wood, Pinacoteca, Vatican

Another change that comes in is a turn away from the calm reflective expressions of Bellini and Georgione. The emotionalism implicit in an art of light and color becomes explicit in Titian's newly expressive figures.

A vision of the Assunta in the cavernous Gothic interior of the Venetian church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Its nearly 22' seems almost small in the bright apse, bridging the scale with the human-sized altar. This may be the apotheosis of Venetian light and color in creating emotional engagement with the setting and viewers.

After the Assunta there was no question of Titian's position atop the Venetian art hierarchy. Over the next 60 years he would continually evolve while working for the most prestigious patrons in Venice, then Europe. Like the Emperor Charles V, ruler of the largest empire in Europe since Charlemagne, and vast New World territories. This included reestablishing the old imperial convention of the equestrian portrait as a symbol of authority. This stunning 11' painting commemorated Charles' victory over the Protestants at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1548. The Reformation is in the air.

Note the lush textures, shining armor, and luminous sky. As time passes, Titian's style becomes more fluid and painterly - much less solid than Giorgione or even his own earlier figures.

Titian, Equestrian Portrait of Charles V, 1548, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The emperor rides resolutely from the darkened wood into the rising sun of Catholic victory. Renaissance humanism is slowly shifting to the religious conflict and intensity of Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

Titian's incredible success will lead to him being knighted by the emperor and wind up living in a castle.

Titian's luxe, emotional style proved ideal for the growing Renaissance interest in mythological scenes. Venetian humanism had a poetic quality - perhaps related to Venice's role as the center of Italian publishing. We just saw his and Giorgione's poesia - the same lyrical evocation applied to straightforward mythic scenes as well.

Lesson 3 - Art reflects changes in organic culture but also creates new ways to visualize the changes.

Note how earlier Venetian art stuck to religious subjects With the arrival of humanist ideas secular themes and nudity crash into the art. Sensuous aesthetic appeal is a vector.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1522–23, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

One of Titian's most famous early mythologies captures the frozen moment when Bacchus and his wild entourage encounters the abandoned Ariadne. A clinic of colors and textures, lush vegetation and real flesh. Bacchus' blazing robe is a great example of Titian's use of vivid color to ramp up the emotional response to his scene. Ariadne is momentarily fearful, but the crown of stars above her head reveals her future divination. Light, color, energy, and emotion may be more important than the story. And the figures faces and expressions carry this emotional charge.

This leads into Titian's more erotic mythic scenes - mythological scenes whose main purpose is the sexual titillation of aristocratic patrons. These were for private collections, but extremely influential over the subsequent centuries. Consider the prevalence of nude bodies in the fine arts. Ultimately the hypocrisy will provide an attack vector for satanic modernists which is a lesson in itself. But this is an important development in the arts of the West.

The Venus of Urbino is Titian's development of the Giorgione nude he finished and one of the most influential paintings in history.

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, oil on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

There is really nothing mythological in this painting other than the title. A high-end courtesan reclines on a velvet bed in a luxurious Venetian interior while her attendants make preparations. The sensuous texture of the skin and falling golden hair epitomize Titian's erotic emotionalism. But the really provocative development is her direct expression. Unlike the Sleeping Venus, this figure looks right at us suggestively. Whether pre- or post-coital, the implicit sex is obvious.

Close-up of the expression. The flushed cheeks, tilt of the head, and cast of the features have nothing to do with "humanist culture".

Towards the end of his career - Titian dies in 1576 - Titian's art keeps getting more and more painterly. Painterly meaning fluid streaks of paint on the canvas rather than delineated forms. This is the dimension of his art that we mentioned earlier that leads to streaky, brushstroke art like Impressionism.

Another eroticized scene - this one a mythic rape for moral piece of work, the king of Spain. The swirling colors show his abstracting mastery of oil paint - look at the sky and distant landscape. Eurpoa herself is all dramatic energy and the vivid fabric does the usual intensification of the scene. What makes it disturbing - and opens the path to critical attacks - is the eroticizing of rape. Consistent with Greek myth, but a problem for Christians.

Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1560-1562, oil on canvas, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Titian's portraits make a similar move from luxe saturated color and texture to painterly applications of oil paint. Consider this figure from around the same era as the Venus of Urbino and may be an idealized woman rather than a real person. There's no way to tell without documentation. The damask dress with velvet trim and gold embroidery shows that sumptuous mastery of oil.

Titian, La Bella, 1536, oil on canvas, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Her face isn't provocative like the Venus of Urbino but conforms to the same Renaissance standards of beauty. Along with the textures, the deep colors are perfectly chosen and balanced.

Titian, Philip II in Armor, 1550s, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Jump forward a couple of decades to this portrait of the King of Spain and erotic rape painting aficionado. Portraiture always has to resemble the subject so there is less freedom to dissolve into swirling painted colors.

But even here the figure is less solid and more painterly than the woman above. The light shimmering off the armor is dazzling, but the sumptuous detail is less - not exactly sharp but less materially present.

It's in his religious painting where Titian's late development from lush colored illusion to dramatic application of painted streaks of color is most visible. In terms of technique, he paints ever faster and looser, moving more into feeling and away from visual reality. As we've said a few times, this emphasis on artistic medium, materials, and technique - art - over the representation of truth is a major landmark on the road to modernism. See where "autonomy" can fit in?

Take a look at this late altarpiece...

Titian, The Martyrdom of St Lawrence, between 1557 and 1559, oil on canvas, I Gesuiti, Venice

Martyrdom scenes become more popular with the advent of the Counter-Reformation and growing religious conflict between Protestant and Catholic. Because the Protestants reject Catholic tradition - and art in many cases - Catholic art focuses in on those things. Like the cult of the saints and the early martyrs that provide a historical link to the continuity and devotion of the Roman Church.

Here. St. Lawrence's martyrdom on a grill is a lurid vision holy light breaking into a world of darkness of violence. Strategic color and light with extreme chiaroscuro makes for a more dramatic and emotional - if less clearly realistic - scene.

Titian remained active into the last decade of his life, working in his workshop in his castle home. His style and technique become surprisingly modern. Forms emerging from swirling paint and dark background to impose emotionally and fire emotional response. In some ways, Titian's late paintings are the most intense of his religious images.

Titian, St. Jerome, 1570-1575, oil on canvas, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Another Counter-Reformation image of an important Catholic saint - a Father of the Church and translator of the Latin Vulgate. The Bible rejected by Protestant reformers. Note how he venerates a crucifix - veneration of religious art was another Catholic practice opposed by the Reformation.

Look where Titian's evocative backgrounds wind up. But that red robe still enhances the emotional kick - this time the supernatural spiritual intensity embodied by the saint.

Titian, Crowning with Thorns, 1572-1576, oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

One more to show how the light and texture are still visible within the flurry of paint and dark shadows in Titian's final decade. Mass and volume flatten out as detail blurs in a foreshadowing of modernism to come.

But that lies ahead. In Titian's own time, the lion in winter was celebrated for distilling moving subjects to their essence and presenting them a technique that matched their raw emotional immediacy. Self-consciously artistic and perfectly in step with the Counter-Reformation desire for moving images.

Late Titian brings us to a very different religious and aesthetic environment than when we started. The suave, sumptuous aspects of Venetian color in the humanist first half of the century give way to the raw intensity of the age of religious renewal and war. In some ways Titian's titanic stature held him above current trends - much like the aged Michelangelo in Rome. But that same status made him a trendsetter, and the next generation adopted his dark shadows, swirling paint, and theatrical emotional intensity.

The post is getting long, so just a brief sample of the biggest two names that dominate Venetian art after Titian. But first, one more lesson...

Lesson 4 - Organic culture is alive and changing.

Titian isn't following "rules" - just the Venetian preference for light, color, oil paint, and emotional appeal. He develops this on his own into a new idiom. That later theorists will turn this organic development into "theory" is how art becomes Art! But that's the inversion of bottom-up creative reality into top-down tyranny of representation. An arbitrary description of something taking the place of the actual thing it describes.

Tintoretto

The first of the successors is darker, rougher, and more theatrical than Titian - a prolific artist whose speed is visible in his frenzied works.

Tintoretto, The Marriage at Cana, 1561, oil on canvas, Santa Maria della Salute

Tintoretto's dramatic contrasting light and dark conceals his original arrangement. Jesus is at the back of the table, but the telescoping perspective and light draw attention to him. The rest of the scene is filled with anecdotal detail - servants and hosts putting on the banquet - while glimpses of blue sky pull attention to the back of the picture and tie the whole thing together.

A more intimate scene brings Jesus to the front and ties a dramatic group together against dark shadows. There's nothing to interrupt an emotional connection, and the body is held so that we become almost participants at the event.

Jacopo Tintoretto, The Deposition of Christ, around 1562, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Bright light creates the foci and vivid colors amp up the emotional content.

Tintoretto's greatest project is another glimpse into Venetian society. In 1564 he was tasked with providing paintings for the Scuola Grande de San Rocco, a Christian lay organization established 1478. A Scuola - plural Scuole - was a a group of prominent Venetians who met for religious and civic purposes. Similar to a confraternity, but with a more central place in Venetian society, the Scuole took care of charitable works, civic projects, festivals, and other duties. The Scuole Grande - major scuole - used the wealth of their membership to compete in public service and in splendid headquarters. Tintoretto was a member of the Scuola and over 20 years, filled the building with the largest collection of work by a single artist in one place.

Scuola Grande de San Rocco, started 1515 by Bartolomeo Bon and finished in 1560

The building was constructed over several decades. Tintoretto's painting started four years later.

Venetian interiors weren't painted in fresco like Rome or Florence. The walls were covered in oil paintings on canvas that were mounted in frames. The result was an intense visual experience, especially when the artist was a master of chiaroscuro and vivid emotionalism like Tintoretto. He painted several rooms between 1564 and 1587 - the Sala dell'Albergo of 1564-1567 may be the finest.

Tintoretto, Christ before Pilate, 1566-1567, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice

The darkness transforms the grand setting into an intimate focused encounter. There's a velvet feel to Tintoretto's darkness that combines with the direct light to add a mystical aura. You can feel the spiritual intensity in a painting that was intended to stimulate religious devotion.

Looking closer, Tintoretto uses color to differentiate figures in the dark so he doesn't have to rely on as much light. This lets the lighting be used strategically to create supernatural qualities. Jesus' white robe makes him the clear center of attention in another sharp perspective.

Tintoretto, The Ascent to Calvary, 1565-1567, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice

Another scene from the Sala dell'Albergo. Tintoretto continues with the inventive perspectives and arrangements. Here the diagonal switchback fills a grim picture with the impression of dramatic energy. It's more colorful than the above, but still shrouded in the impression of darkness.

Note how Jesus stands out against the light part of the sky while the upper gloom balances the lower darkness. This makes the scene feel more intimate and personal.

The descriptions of Tintoretto's paintings don't do justice to their spiritual intensity. The influence of Titian is easy to see, but the wild diagonals, colorful darkness, and powerful grouping are unique.

The largest painting in the Scuola di San Rocca is the epic Crucifixion - at 37' across, the biggest oil on canvas painting ever.

Tintoretto, Crucifixion, 1565, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice

The crucified Christ is the "sun" over a vast spectacle that's organized around him like a flat circle. There's structure and symmetry here beneath the dramatic light and shadow and swirling paint that can be easy to miss. It's more like Florentine-Roman design than pure Venetian color. Similar to the the muscular figure of Jesus - Tintoretto is clearly a master of Venetian emotionalism but open to other influences.

Close-up of Jesus and the central grouping. Movement and energy, flashes of color and suggestive light. Tintoretto is unique in his own way.

Tintoretto resembles Titian in that his late style loosens up, but he doesn't become as formless or impressionistic. Here's one more Scuole Grande di San Rocco picture from the last wave of the project - the Sala Inferiore painted from 1583-1587. He was so prolific that one will have to do, but it's enough to show some tendencies. It's flatter an rougher with even less polish and background. Vivid patches of color still bring an emotional boost but the setting is less resolved. The impression is even less real and more mystical.

Tintoretto, The Annunciation, between 1583 and 1587, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco

The angel is stunningly rendered and the dove feels supernaturally divine. The perspective is slightly skewed an the landscape unresolved. The focus is on the spiritual moment.

Tintoretto's contemporary and rival is the other big name of the late Venetian Renaissance and our last painter for this post. While Tintoretto mastered mystical darkness and lurid drama, Veronese plugged into the engaging spectacle and luxe textures.

Veronese

Paolo Veronese offers a different take on late Venetian light, color, and engagement. His early work in the church of San Sebastiano shows his relatively bold and solid forms and saturated colors. It also shows his illusionism - how he integrates his designs with our viewpoint to make it seem like the painting extends our real space. This will be very influential for the Baroque style of the next century.

Inside S. Sebastiano. Veronese's paintings are typical Venetian mounted oils. Note the oval from the story of Esther in the center of the ceiling. It looks like it opens upward.

Paolo Veronese, The Triumph of Mordecai, 1556, oil on canvas, San Sebastiano, Venice

And that central oval from right below. See how it is designed to make the most sense from the viewpoint of someone walking towards it and not from square on like a picture on a wall. That's the illusionism.

The style is textural and energetic like the younger Titian and without Tintoretto's deep chiaroscuro. Lots of energy in the figures though.

Veronese's splendor comes through best in his huge banquet scenes - compare this Wedding at Cana to Tintoretto's up above. It's a Gospel scene, but painted like a Venetian aristocratic feast with a classical setting and dynamic crowd. Jesus is centered and looks right at us, but is almost - not quite - lost in the spectacle of bright color and movement. The whole thing is topped off by an atmospheric Venetian sky. It's not quite as big as Tintoretto's Crucifixion, but at 35.5' across is no slouch.

Veronese, The Wedding at Cana, 1563, Paris, Louvre Museum.

This bright, rich, energetic style was perfect for the sort of mythological scenes popular with rich patrons in the later 16th century. Here's Veronese's take on the damsel in distress, complete with dynamic hero and strategic eroticism. A successor to Titian's old role - Tintoretto's non-religious output was minimal and his dark style poorly suited to these subjects.

Paolo Veronese, Perseus Freeing Andromeda, 16th century, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes

Andromeda's nude body is highlighted by the contrast with her vivid robe. She and Perseus are bound together visually in an arc that foreshadows their union.

Veronese's religious scenes have a similar qualities - velvet textures and clever diagonal arrangements that never cross into Tintoretto levels of dramatic energy. He seems to be more connected to the Venetian color and emotion of the earlier Titian as opposed to the later one, but doesn't look retro or old fashioned. Organic movement along a different pathway.

Look at the shimmering robes that the figures wear in this scene. But the mystical light falling on the Christ Child isn't part of an overall reality-distorting chiaroscuro. It's an addition to a coherent but luxuriant visual spectacle.

Veronese, The Adoration of the Magi, 1573, oil on canvas, London, National Gallery .

The lesson?

Lesson 5 - Organic culture follows organic pathways

Venetian color and emotion aren't "rules" imposed by some fake asshole poseur "authority". They're cultural preferences and tendencies that develop naturally. This makes them more flexible and fluid, able to accommodate the success of late Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese at the same time. Which is better? It doesn't matter, so long as all of them are operating in ways that resonate with the culture that they belong to. They're all highly proficient and light up different corners of those cultural tendencies. Compare this to the mono-retardery of modernism. Venice was infinitely culturally richer as a result.

Here's one more luxe Veronese. The saturated color and fine texture almost resembles an embroidery.

Paolo Veronese, The Finding of Moses, 1570-1575, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art

Rich landscape distance, incredible Venetian sky, lively movement, luxe textiles - it's all here. Venetian oil color at the end of the Renaissance and foredawn of a new era.

One final figure before we wrap - this one a move away from painting into the world of architecture. But perhaps the most influential of them all, with the possible exception of Titian.

Palladio

No architect came to define Renaissance classicism like Palladio, a provincial from the Veneto who wound up in Venice. Unlike the other big names of Renaissance architecture like Alberti and Bramante, he didn't live in Rome. He did spent quite a bit of time visiting the Eternal City, but never as a resident. It seems that his relatively peripheral position gave him the outsider perspective to adapt the classical legacy into something new.

We noted at the beginning that Venice wasn't a hotbed of the sort of humanism that would lead to the early development of Renaissance classicism. This city of light and spectacle preferred ornate Gothic designs well after Florence was exclusively huffing antiquity.

Bartolomeo Bon, Ca' d'Oro, 1422-1440, Venice

The "house of gold" is an exceptional example of the canal palaces built by Venice's merchant elite. Note the date and elaborate Gothic decoration.

When Renaissance classicism did come, it came in the form of Roman expat Jacopo Sansovino. Classical elements had been turning up in the late 15th century, but he was the first to bring a coherent grasp of the classical architectural principles worked out in Rome. He appealed to to Venetian taste with heavily decorated buildings that replaced Gothic finery with classical. But the layering of forms, ornamental sculpture and play of surface and shadow carried over.

Jacopo Sansovino, Palazzo Corner della Ca' Granda, after 1532, Venice

Sansovino's version of a grand canal house. It's more symmetrical and neatly divided by classical columns an entablatures. But it appeals to wealthy Venetian desire for spectacle in a similar way.

Palladio's designs were different. He took the basic forms and ideals of classical architecture and distilled them down into harmonious simplicity. Instead of heavy decoration, he relied on the purity of his clear basic proportions to shine forth. This was consistent with humanist ideas about the fundamental nature of simple rations seen in earlier architecture posts. But no one had designed building in such a way. We don't have a canal house to show, but here's a palace from his native Vicenza. It's easy to miss how innovative this is because Palladio was so influential. The entire history of subsequent Western classicism followed his lead to some extent.

Palladio, Palazzo Chiericati, begun 1550, Vicenza

It doesn't follow any ancient prototype, but is based on rigorous, simple mathematical ratios. There are classical elements used for decoration - the patron did want a palace - but they are more restrained that Sansovino and not layered. The deep recesses on the front create an engaging chiaroscuro effect with the basic colonnades and without need for intricate details. Quite different on the surface from the contemporary painters. But Venice didn't impose the rule that all arts must follow the same patterns, and so architecture and painting could follow their own development paths.

Palladio is most famous for his villas - mainland estates that served either as agricultural hubs or just suburban showpieces. And the most famous of these - one of the most historically influential buildings of all time - is his Villa Rotonda.

Palladio, Villa Rotonda, 1567-1570, Capra Valmarana

This perfectly proportioned perfectly symmetrical building is a perfect statement of Palladian classicism and inspired imitators as far as Jefferson's Monticello. It's loosely based on Roman antiquity but is utterly unique in its appearance. Ideally situated in its landscape, it marries clear lucid design, ancient architecture, and environmental awareness in an unprecedented way.

A proportioned temple front greets you on all four sides.

Despite the rigorous symmetry, it somehow looks great on its site from any angle.

Palladio also designed church architecture - these are different from his palaces and villas but apply the same ideas. Antique-inspired forms distilled to a pure harmonious classical ideal of Palladio's invention, with enough ornament for grandeur, but no more. Palladio is similar to Titian in that his innovations will be perverted into modernist inversion. In Titian's case, it's elevating smearing oil paint as a technique to the "essence" of art by excluding the essential activity of making a picture and moving an audience. In Palladio's it's taking the simplicity and geometry, rejecting the beauty and grandeur and making ugly abstract boxes that hate humanity. But again, that comes with future perverts.

Palladian classicism harnessed to the glory of God looks like this...

Palladio, Il Redentore or Santissimo Redentore, begun 1577, Venice

Again, ignore the familiarity. Palladio is like the original Star Wars - so influential that the original seems derivative because you've seen so many derivations. To truly appreciate it, you have to consider that these are the prototypes of future archetypes. Victims of their own success.

The facade is simplified classical grandeur. Note the harmony - every angle is the same, and consistent proportions determine the arrangement of the whole.

Palladio brought the big central nave and low side chapels into unity by imagining a facade of two overlapping pedimented temple fronts. They're so flawlessly integrated that they seem natural, not disjointed.

The interior carries the same motifs and proportions into a brightly lit experience of grand simplicity. We'll let this be the last word, since with Palladio, Veronese, and Tintoretto, the Venetian Renaissance wound down.

Recap the lessons.

Organic culture absorbs influences on its terms not authorities imposing fake rules. The Arts of the West are built on regional cultural tastes within broader concepts of art. Those arts reflects changes in organic culture and new ways to visualize the changes. Because organic culture is alive and changing.

alond organic pathways.

Then continue our journey through the arts of the West.

Exploring the House of Lies & Introducing the Functionally Two Species Model

2021-12-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

We recently identified the fundamentally dishonest nature of the modern world. Time to look more closely at that House of Lies & how it creates its own denizens - the same victims that perpetuate its sinister agenda.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

The last post took up something that we're calling The House of Lies. It's a catchy term for life in the late-stage beast system that we find ourselves mired in today. Basically how everything is fake and dishonest - every institution, official, media outlet, even public discourse is based on things that are objectively untrue. Since then, we've been thinking more about the nature of the House of Lies. Not so much how it came to be - we've been reflecting on that pretty much since the Band started. The posts on the glamour, demoralization, even the inversions of postmodernism are all stages on the replacement of being-in-reality with the beast system. The Arts of the West posts are tracing the roots all the way back to the Middle Ages.

The core is the Band concept of secular transcendence - the false premise that abstract absolutes knowable by faith or logic inhere in the material world. It's based on our ontological hierarchy - the realization that different "levels" of reality are only knowable by different appropriate means.

The truth is that ultimate reality is the only possible ontological basis for everything - everything that follows is contingent on that.

Yet post-Enlightenment "secularism" promulgated the myth that we are arbiters of reality and that our finite, limited minds and experiences can access absolute truths. Or Truth.

Simple logic indicates that we can't, but driven by vanity, we've moved ever further from acceptance of our place in an objective universe. And since we're sailing through lies and self-deception, there is no objective check. Until we reach the present day, where even the idea that there is an objective truth is offensive to beast overlords. And we've become fully encased in the House of Lies.

Recently philosopher Bruce Charleton has made a compelling case that the orchestrators of this multi-century decline from logos aren't human. The Band is inclined to agree, though the precise nature and identity of such entities are beyond our capacity to analyze. Suffice it to say that the directionality is overtly evil, and bleating about the stupidity or ignorance of those pulling the strings wildly misses the point. And logic dictates that the only response to metaphysical evil is metaphysical good, or the Good. Jesus as Incarnate God. See the last Thomas Covenant post for the ineluctable reasoning.

But evil conductors are of little account if no one plays their tunes. The builders of the House of Lies are evil, but the denizens are stupid. We often say IRL that the beast system is the confluence of the evil and the stupid.

But stupidity doesn't seem sufficient to explain the trust the science, system accepting, metaphysically gelded creation ex nihilio secularist, materialist protoplasm found everywhere. Many are measurably more capable than any technical definition of stupidity. We use functional retard for those who aren't retarded but act as if they are, but it's more than that even.

So for this post we want to start considering who inhabits the House of Lies. Who embraces and even defends its self-evident falsehoods despite their self-evidence. And that brings us to a loosely-formed idea we've been kicking around that we call the Functionally Two Species model or FTS.

Except even harder to tell apart by sight.

The functionally two-species model or FTS is a working concept that we haven't systematically fleshed out or even really stress tested. But it is based on observation and appears to conform to empirical reality. FTS is the rough division of the general population into two groups that posses human physical traits but behave as if completely different species.

This means that the FTS model is behavioral, not physical, though we do suspect that there are physical and physiognomic trait differences between the populations. To be clear, we are not talking about traditional definitions of race or ethnicity or anything so visibly obvious. Just two distinct categories that people of any background can fall into. Nor have we examined different racial groups to offer much in the way of preponderance breakdown. Likewise things like age or sex.

The closest analogy is the common NPC distinction used for people who seem incapable of independent thought, but a bit different. NPCs mindlessly spout drivel from the beast media hub – social or mass – without any engagement at all.

Questions and counter-arguments don't compute and quickly trigger cognitive dissonance and usually anger.

The degenerative group in the FTS model - call them FTS-2 - is capable of something closer to independent thought. Not exactly as we will see, but at least some feeble rationalizations that let them front as "smarter". Even "thoughtful". It’s a provisional model, but the NPC can be thought of as a western end of the bell curve denizen of FTS-1

The point is that there is more mental activity than the pure NPC-level moron.

While the NPC might just mindlessly repeat "trust the science", the FTS-2 might drop a few poorly-contextualized buzzwords or a CNN reported study. It's equally detached from empirical reality, but offers the surface illusion of substance. It may be even more triggering to question.

There's a lot of gamma in FTS-2 but they aren't the same.

The distinction between the two species - FTS-1 and FTS-2 - extends out of the ability to process information and react to reality. The connection to reality or being-in-the-world from the Heidegger post is why FTS is relevant to truth. Because not being able to process information and react to reality makes truth almost impossible to identify. And since what is true is what is real, FTS-2 is unable to ascertain reality and can't make true-false judgments. It's fair to say that FTS-2 exists in a state independent of truth. Making them the perfect denizens of the House of Lies.

You can identify FTS-2 by the lack of workable memory in their beliefs and interactions with the world. Do they learn from things that happened and course correct? Do they hold liars accountable for their lies? It's the fundamental disconnect from objective truth where they have the most in common with NPCs. What we call narrative huffing - substituting logically and empirically false and internally inconsistent beast system lies for what is observably real and what follows logically.

“The narrative” is as difficult to sum up as "the system" because it's so comprehensive and amorphous. All of the media glamour, social "conventions", institutional ideology, Overton window frames, etc.

Layers of representation from every "mainstream" organization & entity that somehow coalesce into the same anti-traditional, anti-nation, anti-reality slippy slide into the abyss.

Alternatively, do you assess what narrative organs transmit against what you can perceive as true? Do you identify when the narrative contradicts what is observably real or logically consistent and choose the truth and logic over the false and fake? When you realize narrative-conditioned assumptions are empirically and rationally untrue, do you adjust those priorities, beliefs, and expectations? FTS-1 treats the narrative like any unverified account - something someone said that may or may not have merit. Furthermore, FTS-1 operates with an actionable memory and calibrates that likelihood of merit with record of accuracy over time.

Starting distinction that opened the FTS model...

Sidney Paget, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in The Strand Magazine, December 1892

One group evaluates, adjusts, corrects, stress tests, and changes course as appropriate...

The other... doesn’t.

And truth is a central element of this distinction - along with memory and reason. So let's start with the relationship between FTS-2 and truth.

The general pattern is when the system – conventional wisdom, the mainstream, etc. – contradicts what is observably or logically true, FTS-2 disregards the truth and clings to the false assertion. Clings to “the narrative”. And the narrative can take many forms but stay simple for now. In the terms of the ontological hierarchy, the narrative becomes treated as an epistemology of faith despite faith not being epistemologically applicable to sense or logic-based knowledge.

Obviously the reliability of the senses is something like an act of faith. Subjective perceptual differences exist.

Rob Gonsalves, Optical illusion

But the Band does not claim sense data gives pure knowledge of things in themselves in a philosophical sense – things qua things or Kant’s nouminal. We can’t even see abstractions like the formula for acceleration or the Pythagorean Theorem – how are we going to “see” ontological foundations? The senses provide empirical knowledge of the material level of reality. Other modes of knowing apply to other levels of reality. Accepting empirically false claims about material reality or logically false explanations or conclusions are fundamental epistemological category errors. They aren't just wrong, they're impossible.

So given subjectivities of perception, how do we ascertain the truth? The answer brings in working memory as well.

The test of the veracity of any knowledge form is consistency over time.

That which is true remains true and when it changes, the reasons are logically coherent. In other words, they're predictive.

Truthful statements and conclusions are sound, meaning they are consistently repeatable and predictive. Because they apply to realities external to ourselves. This makes subjective differences in perception irrelevant because we aren't referring to subjective perceptions. We're referring to the interaction of our perceptions and the world around us. Consider - can I ever walk through a solid mass? Can others ever walk through their perception of the solid mass? It doesn't matter if they see the same way as I do - we all walk around the mass or through the opening regardless of how it appears to us individually. Likewise, if an alarm is sounding, it gets louder for everyone who's not deaf as they approach it. Regardless of how it sounds to them.

It doesn’t matter if we see or hear “the same thing” - meaning generate the same internal mental images. The Band suspects we do, but that's irrelevant. What matters is that we all have sensory knowledge and that that sensory knowledge yields the same actionable experience of the world. We all walk through the same open doorway and all move to the same clock to turn off the alarm.

This is so consistent that someone unable to engage consistently with the same external reality is immediately recognizable. To the point where we have standard names for the disability. And in some cases can use other senses to approximate the same knowledge of the world as the compromised one.

Anyone who reads Braille gets the same actionable information from the same dot configurations - regardless of whether each dot feels the same to every one.

It's actually sort of irritating to have to break down such simple self-evident facts, but such is life in the House of Lies.

Perceptions are subjective meaning dependent on the subject. The reality they subjectively perceive is objective.

That's worth reading again. Subjective doesn't mean "made up" or emotional projection. It means dependent on the specificities of the subject in question. You may not like a painting that we do, or you may be color-blind and have it look different. We can all point to where the painting is.

FTS-2 doesn't make up their own reality, although it can seem like that if you're cursed to have to talk to them. That's psychosis.

What FTS-2 does is substitute objectively false external "sources" for their direct experience of external reality. That is, the narrative discussed above. Anything from a nonsensical "theorist" in a beast university to the latest lies from CNN.

It's an old joke - cliche level even.

But it's literally how FTS-2 relates to the narrative content of the House of Lies.

Lies usually appear on the interpretative level although there are plenty of liars that will attempt to deny clear sense data. The latter represents the extreme of deception/control because the knowledge being denied is so basal. More often the liar is reporting falsehoods that the victim can't see or verify. Media is expert as simply stating untrue things as "news". Trying to convince someone that their direct perceptions are false requires some sort of psychological or physical violation to induce a sort of artificial psychosis. Gaslighting is the term for progressively leading someone to believe their truthful perceptions are madness or tricks of the mind.

Trauma-induced mind control is blunter. It damages the victim - essentially breaking them so that sense perceptions no longer function correctly. Material reality doesn't change, but actual mental illness is induced instead of a gaslighting trick.

The famous four lights is a common pop culture example of trauma-based mind control.

The effect is akin to inflicting disability through trauma, chemical alteration, or some other means. So that the cognitive processing link to the sensory inputs is functionally disabled.

On the surface, FTS-2 doesn't fit here. We aren’t talking about clinical mental illness, whether innate or induced through trauma. It's an observation that applies to the putatively healthy, although the dysfunctional nature of life in the beast system does raise questions about what constitutes "health". And FTS-2 can be characterized as people self-sabotaging their sensory information-gathering and processing abilities. Which does sound a bit like induced mental illness. On second thought, let's hold on to trauma & chemicals – they may be relevant later.

The interpretative level is where we ascertain what the sense data means.

You hear the dog bark and see him waiting by the door so so you conclude he needs to go to the bathroom - assuming no other obvious lure like squirrels in the yard or someone knocking.

You assess the meaning of this action from among the multiple possibilities through experience. It is consistent and predictive, but not a direct perception like where the dog is.

A sudden drop in temperature and dark heavy clouds rolling in means a storm is likely.

Consistent and predictive, though not directly perceived until the storm actually hits.

In Ontological Hierarchy terms, these are logical processes. Second-order associations made out of raw sense data. What doesn't change is how we know them to be true. The validity of the conclusions - like the validity of direct perceptions - are also based on consistency. Repeated and predictive. For ourselves as well as others. When sense-based conclusions consistently relate to subsequent events and outcomes they become truthful knowledge.

Of course these can change or be subsequently disproven by previously unknown phenomena. This is the basis of the classic scientific method – that empirical observation and logical conclusion work together in a growing, self-correcting understanding of the world around us. But the empirical observations have to be accurate, the logic rigorous, and the self-corrections self-correcting. Otherwise the knowledge has no truth claim.

The modern corruption of science is partly based on fraudulent data reporting and coercive narrative control. Claiming something happened that didn’t in order to force a narrative and silencing attempts to counter.

A big part of the House of Lies is feeding FTS-2s fake claims under the title of "science" while actually inverting the Scientific Method. The Band referred to this as Science! before addressing it as one small plank in a vaster beast system of deception.

When all have access to the same empirical information, the lie shifts to the interpretative level. Acknoweldging something is materially real but claiming it means something it doesn’t. Like adverse drug effects indicating efficacy. Or pretending that the obvious physical and mental differences between individual people has no bearing on their fundamental “equality”. This often involves using words in a composite deceptive way.

Composite because there are two meaning paths happening at once. Deceptive because the two meanings are deliberately used to deceive.

Calling something "safe" that significantly elevates risk of fatal outcomes uses the word “safe” to mean something completely different from it’s standard range of accepted meanings. Safe doesn't conventionally mean massive invasive spike protein infestations of the whole body with potentially lasting effects, elevated risk of prion disease, elevated all-cause deaths,... just read the summary.

Modern science.

This is actually an inverted meaning. And inversion is – here's an experience-based conclusion – is a reliable indicator of evil. It’s using “safe” to mean “more likely to harm or kill you”. That’s the first meaning path in the composite deception.

The second meaning path is what the word usually means. The non-deceptive component of the composite that gives the deception its pull.

In the case of safe it means something that has no harmful effects. This is what the listener ascribes to the first inverted meaning instead of what that inversion is actually saying.

Composite deception is using a word in place of its opposite, but having the listener – consciously or subconsciously – react as if the conventional meaning is applicable. The meaning of safe is applied to the deadly inverse and the empirical data is ignored.

Equality is another one. Calling things equal that are qualitatively and quantitatively different is using “equal” to mean the inverse of what it conventionally does. It’s using “equal” to mean “unalike”. That’s the first meaning path. The second meaning path – the conventional meaning – is what the idiot listener applies in spite of empirical sense evidence to the contrary.

How does someone become so mentally crippled?

In the last house of lies post we ran into desire – people will believe even total opposites because they want to for any number of reasons.

Their personal value systems depend on the empirically true not being.

Enter the narrative.

The modern beast system is a full-spectrum replacement for reality based on media, institutions, and other forms of societal manipulation and control. It includes complete status, reward, and value networks.

And as representation it is completely disconnected from reality on the necessity level. Beyond the means of production and delivery. The glamour of the glamour posts extrapolated to the nth degree.

And every bit of this false reality conditions victims to internalize it in place of the real one.

This is where people miss the scope. It’s not a matter of “blowing up the t.v.” or getting off Facebook. What we simplistically call “the narrative” is the entirety of mediated social existence. What’s acceptable to discuss at the hair salon. What is implied in HR policy. The basic assumptions in schools. The parameters of “polite society”. The ideological make-up of every form of “acceptable” medium. What defines “acceptable”… It goes on and on. Media and institutions have a huge part in shaping it but it’s internalized by the masses. What opinions are “inappropriate”?

It’s what the `postmodernists called “discourse” – but with their usual deception. PM claimed the totally overarching artificial structures of discourse were effectively reality. That there is no truthful reality apart from discourse. This is so stupid that it’s painful, as anyone caught in the rain can attest. But the best lie has a kernel of truth and in this case, that’s how fake socio-media structures functionally replace material reality for the idiot masses. The wicked and stupid exist in perpetual unholy symbiosis.

Think of what we call "the narrative" as what "discourse" really is – a fake system of networked delusion that replaces actual reality for those within it.

The beast system is multivalent but interlocking. One branch references the other references the other to instruct entire false worlds. It's a vertically integrated network of deception. The publishers, schools, tech, media, etc. reference the same lies in different forms to create the illusion of corroboration. Of course with sufficient attention an memory the cracks and arbitrary changes in time are easily perceptible. But there’s a reason why we use the term idiot masses. Most can’t or won’t track changes or pull threads. And many that could don’t want to. The beast system doesn’t just exploit human stupidity. It plays on greed and pride as well. Ego is tied up in the fake knowledge. Careers depend on it. Recognizing the delusion means admitting being deluded.

It’s how a stunted sociopathic freak with a midwit at best IQ is an “expert”.

That’s the House of Lies. The sheer comprehensive scale of it is its defense. Most people shut down when they realize that rejecting one aspect of the narrative means the whole fake edifice – the whole interlocking structures of the modern world – has to go too. And that’s a bridge too far. They can’t all be lying – the toxic brew must be safe and the tiny freak an expert…

It’s the inability to process the deceptions and extrapolate from them that led to the FTS model. Perhaps readers have had the experience of explaining some beast lie to someone, seen them follow along and seem to get it. Only to glitch out and reset to their old acceptance like a faulty machine rebooting. It doesn’t even seem intentional. More of an innate defense mechanism that protects the “integrity” of the House of Lies. Then on the other hand, we have people like our readers. Hence the two species.

If we categorize by behavioral traits, there is a fundamental distinction between being able to and not being able to process and act on direct real experience.

Then there’s the issue of memory.

Reality facers - FTS-1s - remember things and judge new experiences against them. When someone lies and it doesn’t come true, they remember and then correctly identify the liar for what they are.

FTS-2 narrative huffers flit from one lie to the next with no continuing internal awareness to note the inconsistency. It’s partially intelligence related, but not entirely because it’s more mnemonic function than capacity. Just as the huffer believes third-party claims over objective reality, they also exist in a narrow sliver of time. This makes them incapable of learning or growth.

Even when you point out contradictory things that they used to adamantly “believe”, there is little impact. The evidence of memory is no more compelling than the evidence of the senses.

So they move around and appear like sentient beings at first, but act like automatons.

In lockstep with whatever the current narrative is.

FTS-2 might even quote pearls of wisdom that they claim to live by. What they "stand for". Yet these have no more pull in the face of the new narrative than memories of the past or experience in the present. Why is this? Hold on.

Then there’s reason - or absence of same. Beyond brute sense data or inverted adjectives comes explaining. That scientific method we mentioned. This is where the House of Lies’ bread and butter, well, lies. This consists of giving false reasons, explanations, and conclusions for observable things. For example, virtually every piece of “progressive” social engineering. The tell is that the promised outcomes aren’t what they claim they'll be.

Consider – things like government welfare or public “education” were sold as ways to better society. Both of them were introduced at a point in time but both have now become unquestioned assumptions about “how things are” among the idiot masses. To the point where getting rid of them is beyond comprehension.

But consider how we identify what is true. Consistency and predictability. Since implementation of government payments for doing nothing, social dysfunction has grown apace. To the point where millions today live off a dole. It clearly hasn’t worked as stated. The claim was a lie. But rather than cease this failed social engineering or consider an alternative, the government extortion and incentivized dysfunction has only grown.

Likewise, since the establishment of public education, the masses have grown continually dumber and more ignorant. Any number of increasingly fantastical political agendas, abuses, and trauma have been inflicted. By no index has the original stated outcome happened – the opposite had been the case. But the only reaction is to double down on useless corrupt bureaucracy and throw more money.

In both cases a social material good is defined and a solution proposed that fails to bring about the good. And yet not only are the failed programs not ended, the narrative continues to claim that they remain the only pathway to the goal that they failed to advance. Vast resources and countless lives sacrificed – continue to be sacrificed – for a lie.

But FTS-2 can’t process this let alone address it. Questioning the systems leads to the glitch and reset to narrative.

And these are just two examples. But when you think about it’s endemic to every aspect of the beast system. Health care that doesn’t heal. Economic policy that doesn’t enrich the nation. Defense that doesn’t protect. Schools that don’t teach. Churches that aren’t Biblical. And so on and so on.

Consider the so-called “conservatives” who are really conserve-nothings – or as we prefer, cucks. Note how they blather about government bloat or social decay but actually do nothing about it. When has a dyscivic “social program” or institution ever been rolled back or slashed? It’s never even debated.

Then there’s believing mutually contradictory positions. Put aside words – we can claim to be Queens of Sheba – for… wait for it… objective reality.

You can’t care about the environment or emissions or climate and believe moving people from low-resource needing areas to higher ones is a good thing.

You can claim to, but we can claim to be the Queen of Sheba. The reality – what it is that you are actually doing – indicate that one or the other doesn’t matter to you. By the fruits. One precludes the other. Population growth necessitates – it proves – that the environment can't be a concern. Saying otherwise makes you a liar and most likely a moron. But definitely a liar.

How does that fly? Let's recap. FTS-2 can’t process reality, is incapable of using memory productively, and is unable to reason. The memory bank purges after each beast system assertion. There’s no interconnection and no analysis - just whatever the approved beast organs are promulgating at the moment. And since the beast lies, there’s no end to the retarded garbage these husks will bleat.

The memory is a major factor in claiming to believe contradictory things. Before you can assess two things you have to be able to think of both of them together. And when they're time-sequenced, that means remembering the earlier one so it can be compared to the present. Memory. Whether or not the FTS-2 is capable of making a comparison is intelligence related. But even a powerful computer can't analyze things that aren't accessible to it.

Many denizens of the House of Lies that are mentally capable of mnemonic processes don't engage in them. The end result is the same as not being able to. Once again, mass idiocy bolsters FTS-2, but isn't the sole cause of it.

The response to the inherent contradictions of explanatory lies - when there is one - is to rationalize. To throw out some other spurious, vaguely truthy-sounding “reason” or argument that proves just as incapable of accounting for empirical reality or sound logic. But the other FTS-2s nod along keeping the House of Lies intact. Because there’s no ability to process empirical reality, respond to actual experience, or to remember what they claimed to think before anything promised didn’t actually happen.

How does it happen? There aren't really two species by the standard definition of the term. We use “functionally” because it plays out in reality as if there were. FTS-2 is what makes the House of Lies possible. Mass rejection of narratives that contradict empirical observation, don't follow logically, or self-contradict over time would bring the House down tomorrow.

The House of Lies isn't inevitable - the existence of FTS-1 proves that many people do see through it despite the pressure to conform.

But what seems like the large majority don't.

This means FTS-2 aren't just the denizens of the House of Lies - the victims. They are integral to it's promulgation. Its life-cycle.

Consider. There are two large groups that drive the narratives that the House of Lies runs on. Let's call them the Narrative Engineers and the Narrative Huffers. Rough groupings, not definitive - it's not hard to further subdivide. The Huffers are more or less FTS-2.

The Engineers fabricate and disseminate the lies through all institutional vectors of the House of Lies - the media, government, globalist business, centralized education, etc.

The Huffers embrace them, life them, and further spread them through informal channels - social groupings and "popular opinon"

There is overlap between the two. A "teacher" pushing epidemiologically useless, bacteria trapping, psyche destroying masks on hapless child victims is pushing the beast narrative. But they may also believe it. Likewise the monstrous parents sacrificing their innocent children to this demonic ritual. But they don't create the narrative. They huff it and disseminate it further. The best way to visualize the relationship is a symbiotic cycle.

The Engineers create the false narratives of the House of Lies that filter through levels of Huffers. This layered huffing-disseminating structure makes it hard to disrupt.

But the Huffers provide empowering feedback back to the Engineers. They act the lies into reality and by believing support the liars. They even enforce the fake orthodoxies that the Engineers make up.

FTS-2 - the Huffers - are the batteries that power their own entanglement in the lies that are destroying them and their civilization.

It looks like this...

Remove the strata of FTS-2 Huffers for clarity's sake - none of them create the narrative anyhow. That leaves the House of Lies symbiosis - the Engineers send the narrative down to the Huffers and the Huffers fetch water, vote, and scurry around in fear or consooming for the Engineers. Empowering the agents that trap them in lies.

It's hard for FTS-1 to fathom the appeal of a narrative that contradicts the evidence of the senses, memory and logic. It looks like the glamour of our earlier media posts blown out into an entire ersatz “reality” transposed over the entirety of life. A full false collective consciousness. Social pressure plays a part and there's an entire galaxy of reward systems – material and social - to condition compliance. Human self-deception and ego are factors – the beast system weaponizes human psychology against human interest. Centralization of… everything to unprecedented levels historically make it possible by amplifying narrative channels and empowering psychopathic gatekeepers.

And then there’s trauma.

Trauma-based mind control comes closer to our occult posts – the psychedelic occult and the white rabbit [click for a link]. But modern society is traumatizing and getting worse. It’s a a factory for broken people stripped of agency and easily programmed.

Is mind control extreme? Consider Mr. F. T. S. Huff - a composite figure based on people that the Band has actually met. Mr. Huff knows masks are ineffectual for arresting viral spread. He can explain why with actual facts and studies. Yet he still dons the mask at times when he isn't compelled to - say to enter a private business. This indicates that he chooses to engage in behavior he knows to be useless, uncomfortable, bacteria-trapping, and sociologically damaging instead of what he knows to be true and healthy. Either because conforming to the faces on the glowing screen or the opinions of moronic strangers trumps reality on his hierarchy of priorities.

Doing what your told despite knowing it's a lie is the definition of mind control.

Reality no longer guides actions.

Generalize - mindlessly accepting "doctors" whose accrediting bodies considers choosing the most competent as something negative. Why are these malevolent liars tolerated by the bleating cucks that accept their hegemony? Part of it is fear over livelihood, though that would quickly evaporate with group action. The larger reason is conditioned obedience to the fake authorities of the beast system over the evidence of objective reality.

Doing what's told despite knowing it's a lie isn't really the same as direct external control of the body because there's an intermediary. Cut to the chase...

It's external control of the minds governing the bodies.

Mind control.

And medicine is just one of countless examples, although a timely one. Think how many FTS-2 automatons mindlessly send kids to school rather than taking responsibility for their formation and well-being, despite knowing how pathological public "education" is. Consume toxic media despite knowing it's unhealthy. Support lying political structures that they can see do nothing to promote their culture an heritage. Tolerate sclerotic government agencies that intrude into every aspect of life while grumbling over the uselessness and imposition. Need we go on? Then consider how many actually buy into the dysfunction and go along willingly. The aware just serve as the indicator of the disconnect. The willing huffers are vast in number.

Modern life in the beast system is an endless parade of doing toxic things.

That's it. That's where FTS-2, the huffers & NPCs, the whole populace of the House of Lies comes from. Modern society - life in the beast system - is inherently traumatic. And the trauma of living in it creates the dissociated condition that makes mind control possible.

It's just less dramatic than being overtly tortured.

But that's why it's more subtle and vastly more pervasive. Less directed but ubiquitous.

Consider the nature of life in an organic society of the kind that predominated throughout human history prior to early modernity.

The Dunbar Number -named for a British anthropologist - sets the perfect community size at 150 people. This is based on various organic groupings and the practical magnitude of reciprocal personal networks. This may even be an upper limit considering evidence that smaller groups are optimal.

Hans Andersen Brendekilde, Three Little Girls Picking Blackberries, 1885, oil on canvas, private

Whatever the exact number, it's clear we naturally suited to stable organic groups small enough for us to know who everyone is.

Modern atomized urbanism means constantly being surrounded by countless strangers and waves of transients. We can become numb to it consciously, but unconsciously it is profoundly unnatural and dissociative.

The constant pressure of fighting crowds of anonymous people while stressed about being late for something ultimately irrelevant. The cortisol spike when there's an accident on the crowded freeway or the train breaks down.

That's without the hassles of parking, costs, panhandlers, and creeps.

Modernity brought a state of constant low-grade anxiety and threat awareness exacerbated by the real knowledge that anonymous masses are agar for terrible crimes. Even worse, modern life involves frequent moving - ripping people out of what stable sociability they have acquired and plunging them into another faceless crowd.

At no point in history had this been a living arrangement that people opted for - until it was imposed top-down. There is a mechanistic efficiency to the arrangement. But the logic of the machine is the opposite of human.

Then there's the psycho-social atrocity that is modern institutional schooling. Where children are torn from family bonds and placed among crowds of strangers to "socialize". All under the care of a disproportionate number of pedos, sociopaths, burnouts, and dogmatic morons. Not tthat there aren't some good or caring teachers, but the system itself is so inhumane, unnatural, and dehumanizing that it doesn't matter. Endless irrelevant busywork, pointless adherence to the most rigid of schedules, and alternating boredom and anxiety leavened by beast inversion, degeneracy, and occasional abuse.

At best family bonds are broken, conflicting authorities introduced, and socially counter-productive age-based stratification enforced. And that's just the beginning. There are posts worth of material on the dycivic abusive failure that modern "education" devolved into. We'll just say that using the pathological to care for the innocent was a poor choice.

School opens the dissociative unnatural traumatic process of modern "socialization", but it builds from there. Modern "work" becomes a misnomer when we consider what is actually being done and why. In one of the Dazed and Confused posts we likened it to Mouse Utopia - where existentially meaningless tasks trigger reward structures with no relation to actual value [click for a link].

The idiot busywork comes with its own constant stressors and traumas.

Irrational bureaucracy, arbitrary hiring and advancement, sociopathic coworkers or supervisors that can't be avoided, disappearance of jobs or entire job categories for reasons totally outside individual control.

Like school there is minimal organic community while institutional overseers exert ever more control over thought and behavior.

Meanwhile, spending hours at a desk in front of a screen degrades health and overall quality of life.

Running through all of this is modern "sexuality" - the dance of hypergamy and polygamy we looked at in our SSH post. In an organic scaled community matches form within a stable social configuration. Not always the stuff of fairytales, but way less likely to end in nightmare. Compare this to modern life - an endless parade of strangers bringing temptation for some and continual unrequited sexual frustration for more.

When non-sequitur meets social inversion.

Everyday life applies stresses to healthy pair-bonding and family structure that is totally alien to the vast majority to the history of human sociability.

All the while, life in this huge dysfunctional trauma-machine is continually marinated in fake beast messaging from any number of media and social media vehicles. A constant drumbeat of fear, dissatisfaction, unfulfilled & unfulfillable desires, false promises that it's better "out there", de-moralization, immorality & degeneracy. In multiple stacked symbiotic vectors.

All that was organic replaced with unnatural, dysfunctional lies and dancing lights projecting fear, dissatifaction, and moral inversion.

The modern beast system is built of dissociation from organic culture and constant bombardment of fake toxic reality. It is inherently traumatic before anyone deliberately does anything to hurt anyone. Why do so many simply do as they're told despite knowing it's not true as if they're mind controlled? Because they are. Life in the beast system creates the trauma that effective mind control requires. The continuous unnatural state the masses are subjected to plus the endless hectoring messaging is a form of diffused, generalized trauma-based mind control. FTS-2 is the result.

FTS-2 aren't just the denizens of the House of Lies. They're the products.

The narrative produces its own slaves.

Go back to our simple diagram.

The Engineer's narrative breaks into two components. The conscious content that you are aware of - the overt messaging.

But there's also the unconscious trauma arising from the endless stream of fear, unrequited desire, degeneracy, and inorganic inhuman societal assumptions.

It simultaneously broadcasts the controlling message that the Huffers dance to and establishes the psychological dysfunction that makes them dance.

Now consider that the entire beast system - all its vectors and institutions - runs on the narrative...

The Functionally Two Species was a way of describing the inability of many to process and act on clear observation, logic, or memory in the face of obvious lies. It seems baffling... right up until it becomes apparent that the same web of lies that they can't see through creates them.

And FTS-1?

There are many who are spared the worst of the trauma, either by circumstance or personality. Living in an organic community, having a strong family, exposure to real Logos all are factors. Plus it's well-known that mind control is just much less effective on certain people. So the reality facers are stuck with the reality that the whole collapsing wheezing monstrosity of the beast system and its huffers are thrashing and flailing around them.

Finally there are the programmers. The Engineers in the graphic. What orchestrates such an inhuman state of affairs? Part of the problem is the Fallen nature of the world - what we've described as physical and moral entropy [click for a link]. That which isn't actively seeking health and virtue is degenerating. But there's also the problem of Active Evil. The historical trajectory of the beast system is too uniformly toxic for too long to be accidental. Even entropically accidental.

Active evil is the term we introduced for the overtly malevolent nature of the Fallen world [click for the post]. It is demonic and corresponds to Satan in Christian terms. This is metaphysical in nature and fundamentally opposes the Good - understood as the order of Creation - as a condition of its existence.

These are the entities discussed by Bruce Charleton that we mentioned earlier. Their power grows as the House of Lies becomes more pervasive and ultimate collapse approaches.

So why the House of Lies? Truth of any kind is an extension of Logos. The Truth. The fundamental operant principle of creation that is the foundation of any logical operation. In the ontological hierarchy, Logos is the axis that connects ultimate reality through abstract reality to our material reality. It corresponds to the Biblical Jesus but is evident in the predictive consistency of empirical and rational truth.

When we extend the ontological hierarchy towards the opposite pole below the material - towards existential negation - logos doesn't continue. Click for the post where we work through this.

There is no pathway towards truth, only an endless spiral towards self-erasure and oblivion. Truth requires logos. Logic essentially is logos. By rejecting these, the beast system necessarily defines itself by the opposite of logos. By empirical falsehood and illogical assertions. Insofar as it has any structure at all, it can be nothing other than a House of Lies.

Remember the fundamental binary that ended the last post and choose wisely.

La Serenissima Part One - Venice, its Painting & Organic Community before the Renaissance

2021-11-03T11:07:00.009-07:00

Venice - the Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia - is a small but long-lived entity with oversized influence on the Arts of the West. And some truths for organic community as well. Let's take a look.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Jacopo Bellini, The Annunciation, 1444, tempera on panel, Sant'Alessandro, Brescia

Venice is a unique entity - really an historical anomaly for it's longeviety, stability, small size, and underrated cultural influence. It's part of Italy but with a distinct history and culture that impacts artistic developments all over Europe. The Band hasn’t looked at Venice in the historical posts because it’s not that big a place. Nor does it steer major currents of events. But we can't approach the Renaissance in northern Europe or the art of post-Renaissance Italy without it. Plus it's super interesting. Perfect for an Arts of the West post to keep us moving towards that 1913 target..

Start with some distinguishing starting features, then trace the art. We'll note some lessons for organic community along the way.

Unique geography

Venice was founded on islands in a lagoon on the coast of the Adriatic Sea for safety. It was resource poor and never had much arable territory, but was secure in turbulent times. Eventually there was a small empire and some mainland territories, but relatively minor compared to it's powerful rivals. The wealth and influence that made Venice a cultural powerhouse came from maritime trade - the one natural advantage given the location.

"Modern" Venice developed slowly - we use that adjective most broadly given the length of the Venetian Republic. We mean that the Rialto Islands that make up the heart of the city today were not the same as the initial 6th-century settlements. The coastal area includes considerable swampy wetlands with limited options for building and high risk of disease. But over several centuries, the linked island city developed.

The Venetia ~840 AD

The ringed dot is where modern Venice is located. Note the neighborhood - between the rising power of the Carolingians and the declining Byzantine Empire. This gets worse when the Ottomans replace the Byzantines.

The unique geography made a maritime focus inevitable if Venice was to survive and prosper. A strong navy was needed to defend the city since the inaccessible location made it quite secure from the landward side. Economic growth was also directed seaward. Without much land to use, foreign trade was the logical outcome. This made it an integral link between Europe and Byzantium, the Muslim world, and the Spice & Silk routes beyond. Tremendous wealth and a variety of outside influences followed. Isolated location plus foreign trade made the Venetians the most insular and most cosmopolitan people in Europe and the Middle East at the same time.

You can see it in their treasures. This and other pieces from the San Marco Treasury were taken from this informative catalog. If interested, it's free online and packed with information.

Rock Crystal Cruet, 10th century Fatimid stonework, 13th century Venetian metalwork, rock crystal, silver gilt, niello, Treasury of San Marco, Venice

Medieval Muslim crystal carving was widely valued. Here's a piece of rock crystal cut like glass from the Fatimid Dynasty of around the 10th century with fine Venetian goldwork added in around the 13th. Venetian trade and foreign adventures brought access to things not seen in the rest of Italy.

The carved crystal is worth a closer look. We don't know how these were made, but it was probably similar to the glassworks the Muslims developed out of their ancient Roman heritage. Only instead of blowing a vessel and then carving and grinding it, they must have carved the whole thing from a large piece of crystal. Considering how brittle crystal is, sanding and grinding were probably the main techniques.

This unique location gave the city it’s most famous feature – the canals that run through it. Amsterdam and St. Petersburg may have more miles, but there is no more famous a canal city as Venice. The proximity to water on every level seems connected to the taste for light and bright color that dominates Venetian art and aesthetics.

Unique history

The unique geography is connected to the unique history of a wealthy, marine city-state. Although Venice stands out for it's long history, it's pretty new by ancient Italian standards. The city was founded in the aftermath of the end of the Classical world - possibly the site of a 5th-century trading post, with significant settlement starting in the 6th century. One of the most important aspects for our Arts of the West posts is the lack of classical heritage compared to the rest of Italy. There were no grand classical ruins or sculptures being dug out of the ground to inspire builders and artists. There weren't even majestic early Christian / late Classical monuments like in Milan or Ravenna.

Most are familiar with the first waves of barbarian invasions like the Huns and Goths that first overrun the Western Empire and sack Rome. Theodoric the Great even founded an early 6th-century Ostrogothic kingdom that tries to fuse Classical and Gothic culture. After it was destroyed in wars with the Franks and especially the Byzantines, a less-famous second Germanic invasion occurred.

These later-arriving Lombards defeat the drained Byzantines and further ravage the peninsula. It was this that drove the founding refugees of Venice to establish their first secure settlements.

The inaccessible lagoon location offered protection from the destruction of the Byzantine-Lombard wars. More complex social structures developed organically. Over the 6th-7th centuries, the individual lagoon communities came together for mutual defense and this evolved into unified administrative structures. In the early 8th century, the first doge or "duke" was elected beginning over 1000 years of Venetian government. Circumstances improved somewhat - the Lombards were eventually smashed by the Franks, and after surviving a brief siege from the Carolingian king Pepin, Venice independence was established.

Over the 8th and 9th centuries, Venice expanded seaward with bridges, canals, fortifications, and other stone buildings. It was at this time that the Rivo Alto or Rialto island group - the heart of modern Venice - was settled.

Antonio da Ponte, Rialto Bridge, 1588-91

The famous 16th-century Rialto bridge continues the long process of living across linked islands and waterways.

With the Franks imposing a period of relative order, Venice thrived as a Byzantine-friendly outpost with a Catholic faith that could play ball politically. It was always unique. But it also offers food for thought for those considering organic communities in another era of looming collapse. We are not at the same point of upheaval, but one hardly needs to be Nostradamus to see a future where continued conflict between opportunistic factions and ravaged countryside is the norm. What made Venice so successful and long-lasting?

1. Security

The site was chosen because it was not just easy to defend. It was hard to attack in the first place.

Pepin likely died of a fever he contracted campaigning in the pestilent swamps on the edge of the lagoon. Lack of material value made sustained assault not worth the cost.

2. Faith

The Venetians shared a strong Christian faith that become woven into their cultural life. Civic rituals like the marriage to the sea were done under the watchful eyes of the Virgin Mary and St. Mark.

Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore

Over time wealth would prove corrupting, but shared faith was the foundation to build an insanely patriotic and united community and culture from less than ideal starting materials.

3. Economic rationality

Venice didn't have mineral or land wealth, but embracing a maritime identity brought the means of long-term survival. Set aside the immense wealth - that was good fortune. Any viable community needs a foundation to provide for itself.

Anonymous, Marco Polo leaves Venice on his travels to China, painted c. 1400, Illumination on parchment

One of the massive failures of the beast system was failing to do so - soulless suburbs and beleaguered towns stripped of the ability to provide for future generations. Fishing and trade worked for Venice. Any organic community will have to find comparable.

4. Organic culture follows organic community

The cultures the refugee founders came with were replaced by their new Venetian identity. Because the circumstances driving the culture changed. Clinging to the corpse of what was is "conservative" idiocy. Organic community builds off the past but it builds. It creates and moves forward. Meaning it responds to the reality it occupies and not sterile beast media and dancing lights. A secure, faith-based, viable organic community will generate organic culture over time.

What does building the new off the values of the past mean? Not trashing heritage and lying about year zeros and blank slates. Here's Venice again. Consider the body of St. Mark

Jacopo Tintoretto, Finding of the Body of St Mark, 1562–1566, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

According to legend, the remains of the Apostle Mark were smuggled out of Muslim Alexandria by Venetian merchants and brought to Venice in 828.

It was common to want to tie a site to a major Biblical figure. Rome had Peter and Paul. Milan claimed to be founded by Bartholomew, and Ravenna said St. Apollinaris was a disciple of Peter. Mark gave Venice a high-end patron of their own.

The story of St. Mark's body brings together the old and the new. The authority and prestige of Mark goes back to the Bible for Christians. There really are no other figures who outweigh him in the traditional value system. But the protagonists being seafaring merchants, the transport coming by boat from a foreign trading partner, and the establishment of a new center well after antiquity are all connected to the Venetian experience. They build a divinely blessed identity off the ancient foundations of Christendom that reflect and legitimize their distinct culture. To repeat...

Between 998 and 1000 the Venetians defeat and suppress the pirates operating off the Dalmatian coast for good. This gives them primacy over the Adriatic and begins their economic ascendance. There are ups and downs - defeat of the Byzantines, rivalry with Genoa, the threat of the Ottomans, new powers like Holland and England. Venice slowly declines as modernity approaches until Napoleon brings their independence to and end in 1797. In 1866 the city became part of the new state of Italy - better perhaps than a French Empire, but less favorable than their old Republic.

This unique history meant it was further removed from the Roman material legacy than other parts of Europe. It wasn’t an ancient center, so Classical influences weren’t present in the same way as Milan, Pisa, Naples and other cities. More accurate to say it trickled through Byzantine filters...

Book cover with Christ, late10th-early11th century, silver-gilt on wood, gold, enamel, stones, pearls, Treasury of San Marco

Venetian machinations around the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade brought a trove of loot to the city. But there were plenty of other Byzantine goods available as well. Note how Jesus is derived from Classical contrapposto but flattened and stylized in a Byzantine way. Different from the first-hand knowledge.

...and the occasional surviving luxury object.

Glass situla with Dionysiac scene, 4th century?, glass, silvered bronze, Treasury of San Marco

Some late Roman glass work with mythic sculpture was the sort of thing that was available. Indicative of Classical myth and art but hardly the basis of a Classically-inspired culture.

When it comes to the humanist culture that drove the Renaissance, Venice is somewhere between the North and the rest of Italy. Italian language and geography meant that late medieval humanism did find uptake before it did in Germany, France or the Netherlandish world. But like those places it was consciously imported and grafted onto an already vital local culture. Like everything Venetian, Venetian classicism – and the Venetian Renaissance – was unique.

Unique politics and socio-economics

Venice was known for its stable government - it's where the Serenissima nickname came from. Things did change and evolve gradually, but the rulership of the Doge and various representative elite councils remained the same. Family ties mattered for power, but the Doge and other positions were elected by select stakeholders. Hence the Republic title, but broad oligarchy is probably more accurate. When the Council of Ten rose to prominence in the later Renaissance, it was more oligarchic in the typical sense.

The Doge's Palace or Palazzo Ducale, begun 1340, Venice

The Doge was a quasi-mythic figure who embodied the city in some ways. He was elected for life and had tremendous power, but was also limited in specific ways and subject to law. The first doges were elected by the clergy in the 8th century, then more formal structures developed.

The 26th doge, Pietro II Orseolo (991–1009) defeated the Dalmatian pirates on Ascension Day in 998, and two years later a new tradition began. Starting in 1000, the doge and local bishop would bless the Venetian navy, and this developed into the ritual called the Sposalizio del Mar (Wedding of the Sea). This became a sort of marriage ceremony between Venice - represented by the doge - and the all-important sea. The doge would sail out in a golden gondola called the Bucintoro and throw a ring with the Latin inscription Desponsamus te, mare (We wed thee, sea) into the water.

Canaletto, The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day, around 1745, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Later depiction of the Sposalizio preliminaries in front of the Doge's Palace.

The Doge held his title for life, but this was not considered a grant of divine right or heredity. His legitimacy was rooted in the trust of the people, and it was from the prominent families that the supporting and restricting system of government developed. This eventually becomes a complex network of governing bodies intended to maintain checks and balances. By 1300, the Great Council was made up of 1,000 men drawn from a list of 180 noble families.

Joseph Heintz the Younger, The interior of the Sala Maggior Consiglio, The Doge's Palace, Venice with patricians voting on a bulletin for the election of new magistrates, 1648-1650, oil on canvas, private collection

18th-century painting of the Great Council meeting in the splendid Sala Maggior in the Doge's Palace.

And the Sala Maggior today. The decorations are oil paintings on canvas set into gilded frames instead of the typical Italian frescos. Renaissance Venice was famous for its oil painting and the damp climate made frescoed plaster impractical. The painting at the far back wall is Tinteretto's Crucifixion, the widest painted canvas ever.

Venice got away with it's openness to foreign commercial interests by strictly limiting participation in government to a list of established Venetian names. If you didn't belong ot the 180 or so families you could trade in Venice - even stay there - but you had no vote and couldn't serve on the councils. And the Great Council elected the Doge, Senate, Quarantia, Council of Three, and other ruling bodies. In 1323 the book of names was closed meaning no new families could ever be added. This ensured that Venice could only be ruled by longstanding Venetian patricians. Those with the most skin in the game.

Here's another rule for organic community...

5. Rule by your Own.

Venetian government moves into oligarchy with the ascent of the Council of Ten. This body was formed out of the Grand Council in 1310 and was - with the Doge - the main power by the turn of the 17th century. But the closed book of families ensured all these individuals were old Venetian. And that brought connection to the city, its history, culture, and traditions that is far beyond the globalist rent seekers of the modern beast system.

Domenico Tintoretto, Doge Giovanni Bembo kneeling before the personification of the City of Venice, 16th century, oil on panel, Doge's Palace

The central idea in this celebration of the Venetianness of the doge. It isn't rhetoric - he was required to come from old Venetian stock by law.

Venice may not have fit the modern notion of republic with universal sufferage, but it was Venetian. You can have individual greed or self-interest, but it avoided the wholesale turning against the people for outside interests. This image of self-directed "republican" city-state inspired other commune governments in Italy, like late medieval Milan, Siena, and Florence. The Band would argue that enforced local rule with at least an ideology of popular support gave Venice the confidence in its legitimacy and self-interest to defy powerful outsiders. Including the papacy.

Along with unique government came a uniquely trade-centric economy. The Venetians had little to offer of their own, but brokered and transported large flows of goods.

Map of medieval Venetian trade routes at the peak. These came with outposts and warehouses in different regions.

The Ottoman's takeover of eastern routes was almost as much a threat to Venetian prosperity as direct attack.

The Venetians benefited from a number of Byzantine privileges starting with the10th-century Grisobolus or Golden Bull. This freed Venetian traders from Byzantine taxation, including taxes forced on Byzantines. Liberties continue up until the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, when Venice essentially ended the empire as a rival. Not only did they gain access to Byzantine trade and treasure, weakening the empire while sparing it's Muslim enemies of a costly attack was a long-term nail in the coffin. The onlly people who benefited more from the Fourth Crusade that the Venetians were the Muslim powers in the Middle East.

Chalice of the Emperor Romanos II, stonework from 3ed-4th century, metalwork from 959-963, sardonyx, silver-gilt, gold, enamel, and pearls, Treasury of San Marco, Venice

Another treasure looted from Constantinople. It wasn't uncommon to add precious metalwork to older vessels - like the rock crystal cruet above. This one was a late antique sardonyx cup with enamel saints and angels from the 10th century for imperial use.

In hindsight it was probably better it wound up in Venice than destroyed by the Ottomans in the 15th century. Though had the Fourth Crusade actually crusaded... their lack of cohesion and professionalism probably would have gotten them smoked by the Seljuks. But that gets into alternative histories.

Venice was known to the wider world in ways that its Italian rival states were not. It's ships and merchants were familiar sights in far-off ports and it could afford to be an open trade hub because of its strict local rule. Even enemies did business with the island city. Profit is something of a universal currency

Piri Reis, Map of Venice in the Kitab al-Bahriye (Book of Navigation), 16th century

Here's a map of the city from a Turkish volume on navigation from the Renaissance era. The Turks fought with the Venetians but also did extensive business with them. Venetian traders could be found in Istanbul and other Ottoman ports.

In the 12th-century, the Venetians started what would be the first mercantile exchange business to broker goods and capital. They also founded the Venetian Arsenal - an innovative shipyard that built vessels along a proto-assembly line instead of one at a time. The Arsenal obviously wasn't mechanized, but the sequence of specialized constructions allowed them to produce ships at a far faster rate. This was the secret to a small place with limited space and manpower maintaining such an outside marine presence. The Arsenal process cranked out production at the speed of a much bigger state.

The gate to the Arsenal today. It was a walled area that occupied the eastern seaward part of the main islands. Access was carefully guarded to prevent rivals from learning the process.

6. Security is Viable in an Organic Community

The Venetians were well aware that people who weren't Venetian didn't have the same care for Venetian prosperity and security that Venetians did. There were always large foreign factions in the city, but just as they couldn't rule, they couldn't access the Arsenal either. And yes, this means that wages may have been a bit higher than rock bottom. On the other hand, the Arsenal remained a unique advantage for centuries. The modern plague of divided loyalities - rule by "dual citizen" would have been inconceivable to medieval or Renaissance Italians.

Map of the Arsenal process from an interesting website. Vessels moved along the channel and built in installments at each station. It was many times faster than standard construction.

In many cases, their self-directed, self-serving focus made the Venetians disliked by neighbors and rivals. But relentlessly pursuing its own interests is what the rulership of an organic community is supposed to do. It's not like other powers were considering what was best for Venice. Whether this meant over a century of clashes with Genoa that ended in 1381 or a negotiating a trade treaty with the ascendant Mongol Empire in 1241, Venetian interests worked for the good of Venice. They didn't always make the right moves and could put themselves as individuals first on occasion. But consider the alternative...

The defining unity of faith, distinct government, and relation to the see is visible in the layout of Venice itself. Consider the symbolic heart of the city.

The Doge's Palace was built next to San Marco, the main cathedral. The cathedral plaza - the Piazza San Marco - extended from the front of the church, but note the smaller Piazzetta at right angles. It was where justice was administered and bounded by Palace, San Marco, the main Library, and the sea.

You can see it here in the Piazzetta San Marco from both ends. The square is bounded by the symbols of Venetian authority and identity with the sea being one of them.

It's all right here to be taken in at a glance - the unique history and culture written in the cityscape.

That's Venice coming into the Renaissance - a small, rich, fiercely independent seafaring nation that grew out of humble origins in an inhospitable place. There are lots of lessons there for organic community in the future as we head into another post-imperial aftermath. Ultimately the system was eclipsed by the rise of the European nation-state and the mass-scale advantages of early modernity. But consider the difference between that world and its post-antique founding. We'd say their experiment was quite the success.

With money to burn and a unique culture, no wonder Venetian art follows its own distinct path. The rest of this post will trace some key developments in the art of Venice with an eye to the impact on the Arts of the West.

Byzantine Influences

The art of Byzantium had a much greater effect on Italy then the rest of Europe due to historic ties and geographic proximity. This was much greater in Venice then elsewhere.

Icon of the Archangel Michael, 10th century, enamel and gemstones, Treasury of San Marco

Masterpiece of middle Byzantine gold and gem craft in icon form. Icons had a specific status in the Eastern Chruch that they didn't have to Western Catholics, but the panel picture form was influential. Panel paintings weren't common in the early medieval West compared to wall art like fresco and earlier mosaic. Byzantine icons inspired Italian painting in the later Middle Ages.

Venetian art went further in adopting Byzantine taste for shining gold and gems and rich full colors. The aesthetics of the St. Michael icon - glittering light, intense, saturated hues - perfectly captures the main characteristics of medieval Venetian art.

There's nowhere where this Venetian taste for color and light comes through more than the cathedral of San Marco. The current church was started in 1063 to replace an outdated older structure and symbolize Venetian wealth and importance. The showcase cathedral was another innovation that would catch on around Italy like the republican government. Siena, Pisa, Florence, and Milan are just a few of the city-states that would announce their significance with spectacular civic cathedrals from the 12th-14th centuries. San Marco was unique for it's Byzantine-derived plan.

San Marco wasn't exactly the same as a Middle Byzantine Greek cross-shaped plan because the nave was a little bit longer than the other arms. It's visible on the plan. This was to provide space for ritual processions important to the Venetian church.

But the inspiration in the Greek cross with five domes shape is also obvious. Especially the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.

San Marco with the Doge's palace and Piazzetta San Marco. The cathedral was essentially the Doge's palace chapel for most of its existence and he was granted certain ecclesiastic privileges despite his lay status. In 1251 Pope Innocent IV entitled him to wear a mitre and ring and to carry a crosier for certain events.

The tall bell tower is an early 20th-century replacement of the 10th-century original. It's typical of Italian bell towers or campanile for being separate from its church.

San Marco was dedicated to the city's patron Apostle and housed his relics that were stolen from Alexandria. It's religious significance, location, and splendor made it the spiritual symbol of Venetian identity. Discussion of their artistic preference for bright color, gleaming flickering light, and visual impact starts here.

San Marco really is like nothing else...

The interior is covered in gold mosaic spanning centuries. The earliest started shortly after construction was finished and continuing into the 19th century. The effect of the light pouring in and glittering off the golden tiles is breathtaking. The bold colors of the images stand out - almost floating against the gilded radiance. Mosaic was an antique art form that came into it's own in the early Christian period and was the preferred medium for Byzantine church decoration. But there's nothing surviving from any era - maybe nothing from any era period - like the mosaic splendor of San Marco.

Take a look...

Great photo of the play of light on the shining surface of the interior walls and vaults. It's impossible to do it justice in photos, but this at least gives an idea.

If the sunlight glittering on the water is the first "source" for the Venetian love of light and color in art, having San Marco as the city symbol is the second.

Here's another view of the upper arches below the nave dome. It doesn't matter where you look - it's all gleaming surfaces covered in gold and bright colored pictures.

Mosaics were added until the 19th century. Venice never adopted the fresco painting that dominates pre-modern Italian painting. Their own Murano glass industry ensured a source of high-quality tesserae and San Marco offered a steady customer in turn.

7. Organic community makes economic decisions that most benefit the community

Imagine if this had been standard in the West. No massive dislocations. No outsourcing. No policies that undermined the greater good for the benefit of a few. We don't know how to fix it now, but any viable community has to maximize the internal value of transactions.

Because of the continues addition and replacement, only about one-third of the mosaics are original. Some of the earliest in large quantities are in the narthex - the porch on the entrance side before entering the nave. These start from around 1070 and are pretty Byzantine in style. Most likely due to a lack of skilled Venetian artists to tap at home. Here's a look at it with the intricate tiled floor. The floor is a work of colorful art in its own right.

The Byzantine influence slowly disappears over the 12th century. This is likely due to the Venetians developing their own skilled artists. By the end of the 13th century, the first wave of interior decoration was finished. Here are some old testament scenes including the creation in a narthex dome from the first decades of the 13th century - around 1210

And a look at the Noah scenes just visible in the arch at the top of the above picture.

The drowning crowd is pretty blunt.

The main church is also covered in stories - we can possibly give an overview of the number and eras represented. Here's one 13th-century example showing the martyrdom of the titular saint Mark. The style of the pictures is slightly different but the impression of gleaming gold and bold colors is the same.

The architecture is more symbolic than real - no sense of space beyond enough to set the scene. Mark is celebrating Mass from the altar setting and liturgical elements shown. His hands are in the old orans prayer position.

Note how even these simple elements are covered in colorful decoration. The splendor sort of undermines the horror of the scene.

Nothing concentrates the light, color and splendor of the San Marco experience like the Pala d'Oro. This was the retable - composite altarpiece - behind the high altar in gold, precious stones, and enamels. It dates to around 976 and was expanded in 1105, probably because the original was a bit small inside the new San Marco that started in 1063. In 1345 it got it's final form with the addition of a Gothic-style frame and more stones and gems. The influence of European Gothic would shift Venetian art away from Byzantine models without touching the love of light and color. Here, the different period styles coexist in a single visionary masterpiece.

The Pala d'Oro is almost 10 feet wide and 6.5 feet tall and covered in gold and silver. There are 187 enamel plaques and 1,927 gems. The top enamels include a Life of Christ and date to 1209. The Life of St. Mark below was made in Constantinople in 1105 in Constantinople

Here's the front view of the Pala d'Oro with Christ at center and a ton of saints. Scenes from his life and an image of the Archangel Michael are along the top row.

The central image of Christ surrounded by the Four Evangelists, all in enamel and highlighted with gems.

Below is the Virgin Mary and two other saints. The gold lines on their robes are a Byzantine technique called chrysography. It's not all that realistic, but makes the figures glow in reflected light.

The impact of the Byzantine icon on medieval Italian art was big enough that the term "Italo-byzantine" is used for the style. The Pala d'Oro and San Marco mosaics have some Italo-byzantine qualities but it mainly refers to the icon-like panel paintings that started appearing in 13th-century Italy. They weren't icons in the Orthodox theological sense, but were devotional works of the Madonna or saints that were painted on wood like icons. This appears the be the beginnings of what would grow into Renaissance art after a few centuries.

Not surprisingly, the Venetians had the largest collection of Byzantine icon painting and were especially receptive to the golden backgrounds and saturated colors. Here's an example of an early 13th-century icon from Venice.

Nicopeia Madonna, probably early 12th century, tempera on wood, San Marco, Venice

Icon of the hodegetria - pointing the way - type looted in the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Icons were considered to possess metaphysical properties and fell into very formal categories. The Italians didn't see them this way. To them, they were an appealing form of representation.

Note the symbolic relationships - Mary envelops Jesus because she brings him into the world and points to him. He resembles a tiny emperor in a carry-over from early Christian convention. Faces are very linear and stylized.

The Italo-Byzantine style that derived from icons like this flourished all over Italy. It's especially well-known in Tuscany, where Florence and Siena developed flourishing art scenes out of the new panel painting idea. The proto-Renaissance art of the 13th century, before the influx of Gothic influence was the result. Painters like Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto took the Italo-byzantine template without the Eastern reverence for the traditional icon forms. This freed them from the need to copy faithfully and opened the way to experimentation and innovation. Their interests were more purely artistic - devotional art that worked through aesthetic appeal rather than belief in sacred formulas. The result was rapid growth of realism and emotional appeal. When Gothic influences started arriving, there was already a foundation that would slowly involve into the Renaissance. Earlier Arts of the West posts look at this.

Here's an example of a major proto-Renaissance piece by the Florentine Cimabue that derived from Italo-byzantine roots.

Cimabue, Maestà, around 1280, tempera on panel, Louvre, Paris

This huge altarpiece is almost 14 feet high and dwarfs any Byzantine icon. But the altarpiece type seems to be a Tuscan invention derived from Italo-byzantine roots. Put aside differences in size and usage between an altarpiece and icon and the similarities can still be seen. The stylized figures over a gold background, the tiny emperor version of Christ, the facial types, the tempera on wood technique.

Newer developments in realism and emotional appeal are also visible. Note how all the figures make eye contact and the impression of 3D depth in the figure placement around the throne.

When the Italo-byzantine derived painting comes to Venice shortly after Tuscany, it comes with that same amped up Venetian light and color. Paolo Veneziano is the first proto-Renaissance "name" associated with painting in Venice starting in the early 14th century. His name just means Paul of Venice or Paul the Venetian, so it's hard to say much about his family origins. His art is quite distinct though and really striking.

Paolo Veneziano, Coronation of the Virgin, 1324, Panel, Washington, National Gallery of Art

Compared to the Cimabue, Paolo's painting is flatter spatially and more vivid in its use of color. The chrysography - the gold lines on the robes - linger long after they disappear in Tuscany as unrealistic. They are more radiant, and it seems the Venetian taste for dazzling light and color keeps them around longer. Also note how much gilded 3D texture there is on the surface. The overall impression is not that different from the glittering interior of San Marco.

Another Paolo shows the architectural splendor of large-scale early Venetian painting. This is a type of painting known as a polyptych - multiple pictures in one frame. They were common throughout late medieval Italy, but the Venetian ones are especially extensive and ornate. Again, note the overall impression of San Marco-esque gleaming gold, bright colors, and overall splendor that overrides the appreciation of any one particular scene. Once again, the Coronation of the Virgin is the titular subject, but the real message is light and color.

Paolo Veneziano, Coronation of the Virgin Polyptych, tempera on wood, 1333-1349, Accademia Venice

Gothic influence comes to Venice from northern Europe as it does elsewhere in Italy. Here it is facilitated by trading relations. Here's a smaller panel from Paolo - likely from a polyptych - combining that heightened Gothic emotion we saw in earlier posts with the Venetian taste for color and light. It's unfortunate that polyptychs were generally cut up in later centuries to better serve the art collector market. The big assemblages were altarpieces and meant to stay in one place where the public culd view them. Collectors wanted smaller, portable pieces that better fit the concept of an individual work of art. We are historically poorer for elite greed. How often can we say that.

Paolo Veneziano, The Crucifixion, ~1340, tempera on panel, National Gallery, Washington

Vivid color and light meet Gothic emotion in Paolo's late work. Note the angels catching the holy Eucharistic blood. Remember, the Gothic was driven by a desire to get viscerally closer to God.

Lorenzo Veneziano was the dominant Venetian painter in the second half of the 1300s and may have trained under Paolo. They probably weren't related - his name means Lawrence from Venice, not a surname. Although late medieval Venetian art was dominated by family workshops, so who knows. In any case, Lorenzo worked in other centers as well and brings more Gothic influence into his art. We can see some of the naturalism associated with earlier 14th-century Italian painters like Duccio and Giotto. What doesn't change is the intense decorative richness of the light and color.

Here's one of Loranzo's finest polyptychs. The figure of God the Father in the center is a later replacement for the lost original.

Lorenzo Veneziano, Polyptych of the Annunciation (Lion Polyptych), 1357, tempera on wood, Accademia, Venice

Note the distinct pointed arches of the kind we saw in the Gothic Arts of the West posts on architecture. Here's the central panel up close. The difference from Paolo is more visible here. The tiny figure kneeling on the right of Mary is the donor Domenico Lion - the Venetian aristocrat who paid for the piece.

Note how Mary has more realistic facial features and a body that seems more solidly three-dimensional. There's some early International Gothic gracefulness in her pose and how she and Gabriel interact.

What doesn't change is the splendor of the glittering gold and full colors. If anything, her golden starburst robe is even more splendid than Paolo's chruysography. More realistic too.

Sts. Anthony Abbot, John the Baptist, Paul, and Peter beneath assorted prophets on the left of the Lion Polyptych. It's a good look at the Gothic architecture. The figures are less Byzantine and more Italian Gothic in type.

Around the turn of the 15th century, the Gothic influences in Venetian painting become more pronounced. Niccolò di Pietro is a good example of the increasing ties to other northern Italian tendencies in art as well as northern European International Gothic. The figure types - especially the warm smiling faces in this Madonna resemble contemporary painting in Bohemia. The Christ Child is still

Nicolo di Pietro, Belgarzone Madonna, tempera on wood, 1394, Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice

It's a gradual progression, but easy to see when aware. The 3d qualities of the throne assembly are more spatially coherent. The figures look and interact a little more like real people. Jesus is unnaturally mature - pointing to a text - but looks more like a baby than before. The warm expressions bring the human appeal of the emotional side of the aristocratic International Gothic. It's a similar progression seen in other parts of Italy, but with that Venetian emphasis on bright color and splendor.

Apparently Nicolo's interest in fine luxurious fabrics like Mary's dress can be linked to Venetian trade with the textile centers of the Islamic world.

Jacobello del Fiore was an influential painter around the turn and first few decades of the 15th century. His work combines elements of the earlier style of Lorenzo with some late-stage International Gothic like that of Gentile da Fabriano in Florence. Considering that this was when that remarkable first stage Florentine Renaissance was taking off, it's easy to see why that city was considered so artistically innovative. Not that Jacobello is a bad painter - these paintings show he was actually very good. Just not cutting edge. The Venetian taste for light, color, and splendor is pretty set. The radical shift comes later in the century, and even then stays true to those basics.

Jacobello da Fiore, Crucifixion, 1395-1400, tempera and gold on panel, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

Compare this to Paolo's Crucifixion scene above. The figures are more realistic and organized in a spatially coherent way. There's still more emphasis on vibrant colors than narrative realism, but the sense of physical space is developing.

This little devotional panel by Jacobello is a throwback to the simple icon type - Madonna and Child against an undifferentiated gold background intended for pious reflection and meditation. But note the graceful International Gothic realism instead of a schematic Byzantine style. Mary's robes hang in sweeping curves, but fall naturally compared to Paolo's linear folds. The rich fabric indicates Venetian wealth and textile trade with color and pattern and not gold. Jesus is splendidly dressed but looks and sleeps like an baby and not a tiny adult. Venetian art is slowly evolving.

Jacobello del Fiore, Virgin and Child, around 1410, tempera on wood, Museo Correr, Venice

The emotion in the faces is another sign of natural appeal coming from Gothic sources. There is tenderness is how she hold her child. But note the pensive expression. According to tradition, Mary foresaw her son's destiny and her joy in motherhood was balanced by the awareness of his suffering to come.

It's in rough shape, but this is an excellent picture.

One more Jacobello because we'd never heard of him and his art is strange and wonderful. Well worth another look. This big triptych is a later piece - he dies in 1439 - with an unusual subject. It's an allegory of Justice flanked by a pair of archangels. The piece was recently restored and expresses a complex message of Venetian self-importance and identity.

It was painted for the Doge’s Palace in 1421, likely in celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the legendary founding of Venice in 421. Justice was one of the principle virtues that the Venetians claimed as a state ethos.

Jacobello del Fiore, Justice between the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, 1421, tempera on panel, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

The allegory is complex. The figure of Justice in the center has aspects of a personification of Venice as well. According to Venetian folklore, the city fulfilled God's promise at the Annunciation of political salvation to the Christian world after the fall of the Roman Empire. Like Mary, the unconquered Venice was never violated. Gabriel was the angel of the Annunciation and represents peace.

Close-up of Michael on the left with his scales of justice striking down a dragon representing evil. Note the incredible richness of the golden armor and halo.

Michael is connected to the concept of justice because of his role at the Last Judgement. Together the two angels connect Venice, justice, peace, and the legacy of the Virgin Mary.

If there is one artist connected to the transition to an actual Venetian Renaissance style, it would be Jacopo Bellini. He is probably most significant for his family dynasty of painters. His son Giovanni was the famous one who dominated Venetian art in the second half of the 15th century. His other son Gentile was a major artist in his own right and his son-in-law Andrea Mantegna became the influential court painter of Mantua, a Renaissance culture hub. But Jacopo was their teacher and a major break from the Byzantine and Gothic dominated currents we've been looking at.

Here's a Jacopo Bellini piece with familiar golden Gothic ornamental opulence. But there are important differences...

Jacopo Bellini, The Annunciation, 1444, tempera on panel, Sant'Alessandro, Brescia

This piece was recently cleaned, bringing out those vivid Venetian colors. The golden robes worn by Gabriel and Mary are as shiny and splendid as anything that came before. But look at the attitude towards space in the picture. There s a coherent room imagined behind the Gothic arched like something from Florence. Look closer...

Close-up with vivid color. The ceiling and floor tiles recede in a manner that suggests awareness of the new Florentine perspective. Hard to be sure because the vanishing point is behind the central column, but it's not like anything we've seen before. Mary's prayer stand recedes too.

The color is still intense, but made part of an actual environment. The bright background is a hanging tapestry rather than the old gold back. The figures still have Gothic grace, but also a little more solid presence.

Transitional.

The small predella scenes at the bottom show more of this new Renaissance quality. The Dormition of the Virgin is a common scene showing Mary's passing with the Apostles in attendance. But now it's in a deep, perspectival space without even the vivid decoration or costume of the main Annunciation. The colors are rich, but more realistic.

Or The Visitation - when Mary meets Elizabeth when both are pregnant with Jesus and John the Baptist. Here the scene takes place in a landscape. This is another new development towards interest in the real world. Venice would lead the way in Renaissance Italian landscape painting.

There aren't a lot of Jacopo Bellini paintings surviving, but a couple of Madonnas should really make his innovative position clear. What will happen in the Renaissance is that the Venetian taste for light and color will redirect from shiny golden splendor to artistic effects. It's already sort of visible with the full saturated colors in more realistic settings in the Jacopo Bellini Annunciation scenes. But it really takes off after the adoption of oil paint - heightened luminosity, forms built out of color, and powerful contrasts of light and dark called chiaroscuro. Venetian painting becomes more emotionally driven than its Roman and Florentine counterparts, and light and color are the main factors. Jacopo isn't there yet, but look at the contrast in this familiar type...

Jacopo Bellini, Madonna and Child, 1450, tempera on wood, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

It looks like it needs a cleaning, so it is likely that the colors were much brighter than they appear now. The Annunciation above was so dark before cleaning that it looks like a different picture (click on the linked picture for a close-up). Years of oil lamp and candle smoke were bad enough - often well-meaning "restorers" would apply animal varnishes for protection that really darken over time. So ignore the colors - look at the contrast between the figures and dark background. They come forward from the shadows like real people. Light and color in a more artistic sense.

Compare it to the Hodegetria icon that started this trip through history. It's the same basic composition. Mary Queen of Heaven holds the tiny imperial Jesus with a cruciform halo. Her hand is more natural, but still isn't far from pointing. The realism is obviously radically different - Jacopo is the transition to the Renaissance interest in humanistic art. And look at the contrast through light and color. The dark Madonna floating against heavenly gold is replaced by the bright Madonna moving out of a shadowy niche. One more supernatural, one more natural. But both are signs of an enduring Venetian fascination with light and color. Just filtered through changing conceptions of what art is and does.

This comparison brings us to one more point about organic community...

8. Organic culture can adapt to outside innovation on its own terms without losing its identity.

The kernel of truth in the "cultural appropriation" nonsense is that when cultures LARP as something else they don't do anyone any good. Themselves included. Likewise the retarded cultural inferiority complex like the one certain Americans appeared historically to have towards Europe. Collective rejection of ones own culture for any reason is pathological - and unlikely to be a problem with an actual healthy logos-facing culture. Inspiration and new innovations are different. Not least because they don't involve LARPing or rejection. They're adaptive - new ideas but filtered through meaningful cultural structures.

Like the transformative adoption of oil paint...

Jacopo Bellini, The Madonna of Humility adored by Leonello d'Este (or one of his brothers), 1450, oil on panel, Louvre, Paris

There's a lot going on here. Note the appearance of a landscape background. The proportions are off, but the notion that Mary and Jesus are located in a real setting comes through. Jesus is also proportioned even more like a real baby, if unnaturally mature. The identity of the kneeling donor isn't 100% certain, but his cloth of gold marks his noble status. Mary's robes also have delicate golden trim.

The other big change is the use of oil paint. We saw that this had become standard in Netherlandish art in the last Arts of the West post and Venice was the first Italian city to really adopt it.

Jacopo could point to the future, but was too old, limited, and of his time to launch an artistic revolution. That would fall to his followers, especially his gifted son Giovanni - the father of the Venetian Renaissance. We'll tackle him in part two along with the masters of the Venetian High Renaissance. Especially the lordly Titian and a whole new way of painting - light and color's answer to the designs and compositions of Raphael and Michelangelo to the south.

But as revolutionary as he was, Giovanni Bellini didn't do it alone. Remember, Venice was a hub of merchants and travelers, and Bellini worked briefly with a Sicilian painter from 1475-1476 named Antonello da Messina. The itinerant Antonello seems to have absorbed much of the essence of Netherlandish painting without any documented trips out of Italy. It was this flair for oil paint and expression - far beyond anything currently in Venice - that he passed on to Giovanni. Next time...

Antonello da Messina, Virgin Annunciate, early 1470s, oil on panel, Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo

Seeking Truth in a House of Lies - Logic, Feelings & the Strange Curse of Binary Thinking

2021-10-23T08:33:00.006-07:00

More & more it seems that everything around us is lies. Call it the beast system, de-moralization, looming systemic collapse, globalist tyranny, the climax of secular transcendence, whatever. Why does the truth seem so elusive?

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Take a different tack on the inevitable collapse of the post-Enlightenment legacy of secular transcendence [click for an explanitory post] and the false idols of modernity that it spawned. One of the most visible signs of this is the epidemic of dishonesty. How seemingly every institution has betrayed it's stated purpose, no government works for the nation it claims to represent, and everything is corrupted to the service of unaccountable globalist entities. When nothing is what it is meant or claims to be, we are in a house of lies. And that raises the question of what is the truth? More immediately, why does it seem so elusive - on pretty much every level - in this late stage of beast system collapse?

Check the lexicons before speculating.

The OED is the granddaddy and comes with a huge amount of material. Here are some expurgated salient definitions.

Basically conformity with what is factually real. And here's the first insight into the house of lies - ignoring the existence of objective reality removes the basic standard for truthful judgments.

Here’s what Webster’s has to say – they’re the American standard. The wealth of historical etymology and usage isn’t there, but the main definitions are pretty similar.

Face and reality presume objective external existence.

Always fun to check 1828 Websters to identify the degradation of the language. Not that different this time.

This actually doesn't help that much. We all live as if reality is objective - not walking into doors, expecting the light switch to work, and so forth. If the truth is this straightforward and consistent, why is it so elusive?

Quick aside – the Band grew up hearing things like “politicians all lie” as a breezy commonplace. A truism not worth a second thought. This troubled our young minds, since the same “wise” adults told us that electing politicians was how we were governed. How it ensured that the "will of the people" was respected, unlike the bad countries. But if we choose leaders on the basis of promises and they all lie, the truth is that the will of the people expressly isn’t respected. It is willfully ignored.

To the surprise of no readers, no one cared. Just another childhood milestone in the lifetime of alienation that led us here.

But it’s worth a moment’s consideration. Why do we cheerfully accede to the predations of liars? And why pretend that a system predicated on lies expresses some “democratic values” that it self-evidently doesn’t? And it’s getting worse, not better. Prosperity, security, culture, are systematically destroyed in the name of facts that aren’t factual, values we don’t hold, and reasoning that doesn’t follow. The logical outcome of generations of cheerfully acceding to the predations of liars. But why?

Part of it is mass stupidity.

MPAI – most people are idiots – isn’t only a statement of cognitive potential. Although it’s true that the complexity of the societal garden we're boxed into far exceeds the comprehension powers of most of its aphids.

It’s that most exhibit gross cognitive deficiencies regardless of innate intelligence. MPAI joins the natural idiots with the functional ones – those who act the part despite having the ability to be believe and do not moronic things.

Thinking itself comes with inherent limits. An earlier post on thinking about thinking mapped out different levels of complexity. And it's an unfortunate reality that the ability to process complex mental structures goes up, the number capable of doing it goes down. Likewise the number of people that more complex thought structures can even be communicated to.

But the limits of thought are deeper. Thinking itself – no matter how complex – is woefully inadequate to capture the fullness of reality and it’s countless interactions. It is inherently representational and limited to human scope.

Representational on several levels. Our thoughts are not the same as their subjects. They’re mental representations of external reality and limited by the scope of our minds.

Even when these representations are truthful, they make up a tiny fraction of what is. They’re abstracted and isolated patterns from reality that are then subject to mental operations.

This means that assessing truth is a judgement of fit between a thought or expression and the subject of it which is different. Any discussion of truthfulness has to address how mental processes and operations correspond to external reality.

Point 1 – Simply recognizing that thought and expression are representations starts building the framework to distinguish truth and falsehood.

Representational patterns make hierarchical dependence or priority order obvious. If you think about something, the something precedes the thought. Even a novel creation is made of pre-existing ingredients like "concepts" and "words".

David Day, illustration from his The Illustrated World of Tolkien

Even an creator as original as Tolkien finds inspiration from previous things. It's inevitable because everything - language, belief structures, cultural resonances, etc. - come from experience.

Something with no connection to anything meaningful would mean nothing to the audience. Even the closest thing to meaningless trash like modern art or "literature" has to be part of an existing discourse - the art world or "literature" - to be recognized.

You may be picking up and building on other thoughts or concepts rather than concrete objects – that’s the "discourse" retarded postmodernists like to pretend precedes reality. There might be something there if you’re incapable of conceptualizing anything beyond yourself – there is a reason PM is psychopathic. But even a chimp can grasp rudimentary time sequencing, and any sequence of ideas started with someone. Someone reflecting on something prior.

Getting on a train midway along the line means your station isn't the beginning. You're getting into something ongoing.

It doesn’t mean that the train didn’t start somewhere.

It doesn't even matter what you believe about origins - every belief system has an origin of communication or language. The Bible begins with Adam conversing with God. Purely secular history identifies the development of written language in ancient Sumer. Spoken language develops somewhere in the peleolithic era. In either case, everyone subsequent is forming representations and expressions out of something that came before the representation.

Priority order. Regardless of beliefs.

But it’s even more personal as well.

Warren F. Neary, Story Time, oil on canvas

Any language or sign system that you use had to be learned at some point.

Meaning you predate your usage.

Read that again. It's not just a matter of the means of representation - language, picture-making techniques - preceding you. You also precede your understanding of the means of representation that you use.

Priority order.

This isn’t debatable. It’s necessary sequencing because time exists as an experiential human condition. It’s so brutally obvious that it should instantly dispel any of the postmodern, word-magic, be your own god idiocy that reverses representation and reality. Instantly and without need for even a second’s reflection. It’s that simple.

So why doesn’t it? Why is simple truth so elusive?

Try something more timrly.

Recently we are told by “authorities” that brand new genetic therapies are “safe” long-term...

...despite their newness rendering conclusions about long-term safety literally impossible.

That's another one to read again. We aren't even saying they might not be safe, though it seems increasingly unlikely. That's the point - they're new. The claim can’t be made. We can model likely outcomes, but we can't know the long-term outcomes. The basis of the claim can’t exist. Any more than we can claim to know the exact temperature of a given day a decade from now. Or what you’ll have for lunch next year. It can’t be known because the knowledge doesn’t exist yet. It's so obvious that we feel stupid spelling it out so emphatically. Yet masses of ninnies nod along. Why is the truth so elusive?

Impossible truth claims are slightly different that the claiming an effect comes before a cause or the promise-breaking and other lies of the political class. It’s a bit more abstract.

The others are objectively and evidently wrong – like calling a red apple blue. It doesn't require any conscious thought beyond basic linguistic processing.

The impossible safety claim is unverifiable. That's why it's impossible. It's not known true or false when made. It's not knowable period. This complicates the acceptance of the lie because the statement itself may or may not be untrue. It's a second-order lie. One that needs a modicum of interpretation beyond the thing being discussed in the present. What is necessarily objectively false is in the claim to know something that isn't knowable.

We can’t know the effects of the chemical long-term until sufficient time has passed. So the lie is the claim that we do. This makes it easier to obscure and misdirect by dithering over the accuracy of predictive methods.

But a lie all the same. And still not hard to pick up. So why does it seem so hard to pick up?

Acceptance of lies or insistence on truth points to how people are motivated. Motivated because we’ve noted that something can be known, even believed, without impacting how someone reacts. Like recognizing politicians are liars and nothing changes for the better and still willingly participating in the process regardless. Or grasping that future outcomes are not knowable, but acting as if a brand new experimental substance can be declared safe long-term regardless. This is the functional idiocy – mentally capable of understanding the difference between true and false, yet acting as if too stupid to do so.

Like the a-holes and morons that blather about "trusting Science" as if it were a thing and not a methodology with verifiable performance and accuracy metrics.

This bit of functional retardation comes from several places.

Poor educations. How many can even define what "science" is? Dunning-Kruger effects. Consider the average university scientist has a piffling IQ in the ~130 range and the average trust science moron is at least an SD below that. They aren't smart enough to even perceive systematic limitations in world view, let alone correct them. Atheistic external morality. Endemic lack of personal integrity beyond getting promotions in an epistemologically-gelded system is an incentive to dishonesty.

The motivation to believe in a totem that doesn't exist as a monolithic thing and doesn't offer that level of assurance by it's own definition is a mix of laziness, arrogance, and existential fear. It's more desirable to make up a fake priesthood to outsource truth to than to have to face the uncertain realities and limits of being in reality.

And motivation brings us to the old Aristotelian distinction between rhetoric and dialectic. The universal scope of this can be easy to miss because of the somewhat technical-sounding names They are easier to assess in relation to broad-based motivation patterns if we think of them as feelings and logic or reason.

Aristotle offered them as modes of argument or persuasion – appeal to the emotions and appeal to logic or intellect. We aren’t substantively changing this – just rephrasing them more broadly.

Motivated by logical processes?

Or by feelings?

The catch is that only one of these is related to the truth. That's logic. Emotional motivations have nothing to do with whether or not something is factual. Only how we feel about it. Feelings may align with what is true, but they don’t have to. They’re independent variables. This is why so many people are driven to actions that are self-destructive - positive feelings about something that is actually negative motivates in the wrong direction. Just as importantly - only one of these is related to desire. That's feeling. Just like emotion and truthfulness, logic and personal preference are independent. Something truthful may be distasteful, while lies can be pleasing.

Logic is based on internally-consistent truth claims. Consider the most elementary forms – a basic syllogism or simple math sentence. These are verifiable as true or false independent of the sign system used...

2 + 2 = 4

II + II = IV

two and two are four

If you speak the language or recognize the signs, you can ascertain whether the claim is true. It is even applicational. If there are two cars in the lot and two more pull in, there will be four cars there. Internally, verifiably true.

We qualify with “internally” because the conditions can be false, yielding a false conclusion.

Maybe there weren’t two cars arriving, in which case, there won’t be four in the end. The number sentence doesn't apply.

But if the reported conditions are accurate, the relationship is truthful, every time. Internally, verifiably true.

Now, see the problem?

Point 2 – Even simple logical facts are dependent on external conditions in practical situations.

Nothing around us exists in a vacuum. Material reality is an endless network of temporally sequenced butterfly effects of unknowable interactive processes. This obviously presents a problem for the depressing prevalence of linear and binary thinking. Even when people know this there is a tendency for oversimplifications. More on that later.

So if there conditions are factual – two cars and two cars – the conclusion is truthful – four cars.

Bringing us to evidentiary standards. If logical conclusions depend on factual conditions, how do we know that the conditions are factual? That part's easy. Empirical observation. Count the cars, observe the actions, identify the colors, etc.

In terms of the ontological hierarchy – objective observation is material level epistemology. Brute empiricism. The evidence of the senses. The most simple being in the world.

From there mental processing kicks in. Logical operations move into the abstract level of reality by recognizing patterns and relations that are not directly and immediately visible. The two flow together seamlessly for the non-dishonest and non-idiotic, but they are separate epistemological processes involving different levels of reality.

This sort of mental housekeeping is one of the real practical values of the ontological hierarchy.

There’s a reason why the Band keeps returning to the ontological hierarchy. It doesn’t just map out what we can know and how we can know it and avoid category errors. It clarifies the nature of truth and lies in a more comprehensive way than adjudicating simple statements of false facts.

The ontological hierarchy points to surrounding realities beyond brute material existence. It’s essential given the representation/reality issues we’ve examined in recent posts. Because the reality is that reality isn’t homogeneous. Nor are modes of knowledge. We can see that when we compare a mathematical theorem to actual measurements.

In the past we've used the Pythagorean Theorem as a simple example of abstract reality. Abstract concepts have internal, perfect truth value that cannot manifest in the material we inhabit.

Every measurement has minute material differences and uncertainties. The abstract, immaterial mathematical relations have absolute perfection with no variance or uncertainty at all.

Nor can we know them the same way. No material construct that you can see corresponds to the 0.0000 repeating perfection of a logical mathematical construction.

But you can’t see the Pythagorian Theorem in itself as a mterial physical entity. One is perceived empirically, one perceived logically.

So two different kinds of reality known in different ways. Not different “truths”. Different things that are true and true in different ways. But the true is… well… true. Just different things that are truthful in their limited frames of reference.

This helps account for some of the insane prevalence of lies in today's society by separating truth claims into two different levels.

Level 1 - Basic observations

These are first order lies and in theory the easiest to see through. Like the apple is blue. It obviously isn’t, and no logical reflection beyond the necessary linguistic processing is needed. That doesn't stop people from falling for them - the foundations of "leftist' retardary is denying plain empirical observation for convoluted blather and a bizarre obsession with impossible wishes. Much of this would vanish if the idiot masses weren't hypnotized by television and had memories surpassing those of fruit flies

Like listening to the same liars dithering over variants in arctic sea ice when they terrorized the same idiot masses with risibly false predictions.

Level 2 - Logical conclusion

Second order lies – like asserting this brand new thing is safe long-term – doesn’t confront you with an obvious empirical falsehood. To see through them, rudimentary assessments of the logic is needed. Ruling out a big swath of the idiot masses from the jump. Even before getting into questions of motivation.

Putting the lie at one remove – from empirical observation to logical conclusion – makes it easier for those who want to believe the falsehood not to “notice”. Not being so blatant makes room for feelings to induce willful blindness. This covers false starting conditions - GIGO like building a "green energy" strategy by starting with basic lies about the viability of pathetically inadequate "renewables". Or creating false syllogisms like "climate change" projections.

Empirical or logical deceptions - two levels of lies aligning with two levels of reality.

The thing is, both require some effort to check, but if the information is available, they are verifiable. Either observing the facts for yourself or breaking down the reasoning. Time consuming, but doable. The problem comes in when the information isn’t available. Like long-term data from a new invention. We face worlds of things where information is incomplete.

Consider historical studies, where we have to theorize about past circumstances where next to nothing is known. Like building Stonehenge. We can reverse engineer the structure using the technology of the time. But this method being historically likely isn't absolute mathematical certainty.

In these cases, even the soundest logic gives provisional conclusions. These also can be evaluated for false claims – conclusions that the available conditions can’t support, like powered cranes at Stonehenge. But we often find people prefer to believe impossibilities just because they are pleasing to them.

Bringing us to rhetoric.

The appeal of emotion or feeling is a much more profound problem vis a vis mass acceptance of lies because whether or not the motivation is verifiable is irrelevant.

Feeling is independent of logic. Not parallel or “opposite” – completely detached and unrelated. The two are often presented as a pair of opposing motivating patterns, but they are not a closed binary relationship. They are completely different motivators that coexist to varying degrees in almost everyone.

It's not entirely the fault of the idiot masses because simplistic logic vs. emotion binaries are repeated like mantras. As if abstract concept distinctions define lived experience.

It's a sharp graphic for those times feelings pull in a direction that is illogical.

What about when they don't?

Logic and feeling are in harmony open the pathway to great art and profound achievements. Like the refined techniques and careful structure in the stunning sublimity of a Hudson River School painting. Or a Beethoven symphony. Or a Gothic cathedral...

Albert Bierstadt, Mount Corcoran 1876-1877, oil on canvas, National Gallery, Washington

This shouldn’t be hard to grasp, but forced binary thinking is the idiot default and a major reason for the plague of lies that is modern life. Besides, if you didn't force inane "left and right brain" binaries as oppositions, you couldn't praise illogical morons as "creative". Remember, in the de-moralized fake beast system, there is no place for the painting up above. And "science" is oracular truth pronounced by lab-coated narrative-huffers.

Something like this - where thought patterns are reimagined as opposing personality types so low-wattage cattle can feel better about vacuity.

Can't see it? Picture your favorite discoveries, artworks, insights, etc. Then try and imagine how their make-ups correspond to a division of characteristics like this.

Logic and emotion are tendencies that may or may not clash. Feelings can be perfectly logical reactions to truthful perceptions of reality. Like the feeling of well-being from healthy living or exercise. Love for a mate or a child. Awe in the face of the Lord. Fear that steers you away from peril. Pleasure when surrounded by natural beauty. All powerful feelings that are perfectly logical responses as well.

Feelings can also be illogical impulses leading to self-destruction or worse. The rush of addiction to porn or meth. Unfounded greed, jealousy, and hatred. Stalking someone who is disinterested. Hedonism without regard for costs.

It's not that they're intrinsically opposed.

It's if they are opposed or in alignment.

Where logic and feelings do oppose each other is in their relationship to the truth. There is no intrinsic truth-value in feelings beyond the fact that you truly feel them. No intrinsic value of any kind beyond your subjective assessment - and that by definition is of your inner psychic reality, not objective external reality.

How feelings relate to reality – the degree to which they align with the truth – can only be determined logically or empirically. Neither their existence nor their intensity has any necessary connection to external reality.

Is what is felt to be also objectively factual?

And if not directly observable, does it follow logically from things that are? Like the ironically appropriate author's name, for example...

Here’s why this matters. Objectively, thinking is representational and representation implies hierarchy order. [Truthful] reality precedes your thoughts about reality. Your sign-systems precede you. But feelings are not bound by truth and don’t have to accept the necessary priorities of reality.

The empirical reality is that most people are motivated by feelings first. To the extent that they will accept any number of lies and inversions to maintain or protect how they feel. Consider the difficulty so many seem to have seeing through the massive lies that surround us. Take "freedom" – to choose a big one. In what way are we “free”? Think about it. Can you say whatever you want? Go wherever you want? Choose to keep all your pay or not? Raise livestock? Opt out of government programs? Operate a business without a license? Etc? In what way are you “free”? Put another way, what definition of “free” actually corresponds with contemporary life?

Now explain to a boomercon that “freedom” as a value is inimical to “society”. Atomization vs. collectivation.

The irony... it burns!

And that any value that inverts what it is used to "support" when followed through isn’t really a foundational value for that expression. It may be conditional, but it's not fundamental.

A functioning polity requires submitting to certain realities. Either basic facts about human nature, cooperative effort and being in the world. Or the current tyranny of lies. Blathering self-evident falsehoods like freedom as a foundational value is simply choosing the latter.

E. W. Potter, Frontiersman, 1955

These guys lived free. Not cushy mouse utopia, but free.

It’s painfully obvious when we think about it, yet it doesn't prevent recurring asinine rhetoric that better suits the reality of a 19th-century frontier woodsman. They’re lying. Perhaps not intentionally, but consider the "political" filth that promotes this sort of deceit as an ideology. Anyone doubt it's to create a false impression, curry support, or train compliance? Something other than the best interests of actual people in actual conditions.

So why does “land of the free” nonsense persevere in some circles? Because it’s too vague a lie to trigger the narrow simplistic frame of reference that most de-moralized, de-cultured, mindless media-huffing consumers exist in. If you’re in a tiny box and someone says a red ball is blue, you detect it. If the shoebox itself is a lie, it’s hard to see from the inside.

And most people - even those who consider themselves moral or right - would rather cling to a self-evident falsehood than jeopardize treasured feelings. Consider another abject idiocy - that the Christian God would “bless” a secularist, materialist, fame-whoring, aborting, imperialist monstrosity like the modern US. Either the Bible is lying or America is closer to the whore of Babylon from Revelation. Yet self-described moral people still mouth it like a fact and not a request.

William Tylee Ranney, Boone's First View of Kentucky, oil on canvas, 1847, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa

Consider the difference in freedom between yourself and a frontier woodsman. Why do the liars who claim to stand for “your freedoms” never address their complete evisceration? Why do they never restore swaths of personal responsibility? Or even shift the debate in that direction? Ever?

By the fruits. They don’t want to. And by accepting their terms, you contribute to your own slow, progressive enslavement. Even destruction.

A world view where “Republican” battle “Democrats” over “freedom” a false perception of reality. A vision of life as a shoebox made of lies. It is a bunch of representations – a representational complex as we call it – but one that doesn’t correspond to material or even abstract reality on any level.

Not how decisions are made or the country run. Not how power is wielded. Not even what the puppets you see on t.v. really think and act. But if you believe it – if you act as if it is a truthful reflection of how things are – you become complicit in the destruction of culture, society, history that it is designed to obscure.

Most don't even realize how power structures even work. And many become angered if you try and explain.

Why is it so difficult for so many to penetrate these lies? Why is it that even when you walk them through the above step by step - so they agree with each one – they reset back to idiot acceptance at the end? We’ve called it a glamour. But why can some see through it while others can’t?

What makes it so destructive is something we’ve raised in posts on mass glamours and word magic. Acting as if reality was different from what it is. Meaning they will do things to preserve the feelings that are actually harmful in actuality. Like sending money to a party that is actually tearing apart their way of life. Or attacking someone trying to defend their own nation with made-up words from liars that hate them. Or accepting mass therapies on terms that can’t be true.

Why is truth so elusive? Because in the inverted, narrative-huffing, grasping materialist, de-moralized hellscape of the late stage beast system, lies usually feel better.

Read that again.

Maybe de-moralized materialism isn't the human telos...

Consider - a huge IQ is hardly needed to see through the objectively pathetic deceptions that ensorcel the idiot masses. Why are they so impenetrable?

Why do they reset to idiot mode even when the can see the errors in the lies?

Because they want to believe. Because they are motivated by desire, and only feelings – not logic – are intrinsically connected to that.

Part of it is masturbatory. The dopamine that soulless husks feel from some more material crap, a titillating program, or the devolutionary animal gluttony of a mouse in a maze hammering the food button.

Lile this braindead nonsense. It's preferable to lie and face inevitable mobility, cardio-respiratory, and countless other avoidable health crises before an early death than face bio-medical reality. And basic physics.

On a personal level it's basic Darwinian self-selection. Broadcast through beast media is another plank in the house of lies.

Even more of it is fear.

Fear is a motivator of primal power because it connects to self-preservation. Reflexively leaping out of the way of an accident. Not entering the ominous location. Rushing outside at the smell of smoke. It goes on and on. Powerful, even preconscious, motivating feelings that spare us injury or death. But in these cases, the danger is real and the self-preserving feelings – the rhetorical motivator – does align with truth.

But remember – the truth-value of feelings is not intrinsic to them. It is circumstantial and can be misdirected or mistaken. What if we are made to fear something harmless or even beneficial? The same overwhelmingly powerful motivating mechanism will kick in but now it’s detrimental. Not leaping away from danger but into it.

A vast portion of modern falsehood is based on media-generated fake fears that don’t align with reality. It's rooted in factual or logical errors and lies through vehicles that the idiot masses put unearned faith in.

This is a product of the glamour that we’ve discussed in other posts. The centralized fake reality / de-moralization / mouse utopia that the beast system offers in place of authentic experience, organic community, and logos. Only the fear side rather than greed-driven dopamine hits.

“Brainwashing” is too simplistic. Programming fits, but we need to be specific. What is programmed are feelings, independent of external logical observational reality. Primal emotional drivers. And once established, bloody hard to break or even modify.

And the beast doesn't try to alleviate the fears. It creates and stokes them. Because the fake fear allows for endless creeping power grabs. Think of all the government intrusions into private life in the name of "safety" from fake threats. Things that aren't really dangerous or problems. The retarded legal system is part of this as well.

Fake fear makes people complicit in their own enslavement.

Everybody dies. But beast media creates the illusion that death is unnatural and immanent unless we give it powers to keep us "safe". It can't. All it does is create false feelings that it then exploits with false solutions.

But it's all lies. Top to bottom False claims about observable reality. False claims about the involved parties. And false logical conclusions about the solutions.

Beast media - t.v., big tech, globalist print - is a synergistic false reality. The house of lies that traps modern society. And it is so powerful for two reasons - it is totally immersive and based entire on manipulation of feelings. Fears, lusts, excitements, flattering reassurances and corrosive undermining of confidence. A constellation of fake emotions that insidiously take the place of reality in de-moralized mouse utopia.

The house of lies is so pernicious because although a fake experience - virtual is merely a nice way of saying fake - it still registers as experience. It is representation instead of reality, but it is processed through the same representational processes of thought in the same way. It's audio-visual experience like any other. What it lacks in other sensory inputs is made up in tailored psychological appeal. Like any powerful vision, once the things it shows are seen, they can’t be unseen. Even with conscious awareness of the unreality they mark the subconscious. And when most don't maintain that constant conscious awareness, the fake reality becomes confused with - or replaces - awareness of the real.

Why centralized media with audio-visual immediacy and beast control is so pernicious. It conditions fake understandings - conscious or subconscious - and implants thoughts and concepts that would never be found naturally. The psycho-sexual degeneracy of porn is a great example and is demonstrably toxic on every level from the personal to the civilizational. But for all that, it's one tiny piece. There are false impressions about human nature and interpersonal relationships. Dissatisfaction and scorn for normal organic behavior. Grasping envy. Fake normatives. Even the endless myth that life should be "heroic" in some extraordinary way – that "out there" is better. Vicarious entrancing lies. All of them.

This is the argument against tolerating evil in public discourse. “Free speech” is another feel-good but embarrassingly idiotic objective lie that collapses and inverts the moral society it is claimed to be a foundation for.

Consider for a moment how retarded you have to be to breezily assert that "free speech" is a "right" and some speech is not allowed at the same time. It's mind-boggling to a non-moron. A right is or isn't, and if you can't say anything, there objectively isn't a right to free speech. At which point, the only debate is what the rules are. Christians - not satanic inverted churchians - would have been wise to assert the same rejection of blasphemy that the beast imposes on whatever fake transgression best suits it's sorathic, dyscivilizational goals at the moment.

So how does one break through the house of lies if truth is irrelevant to rhetorical emotional motivators?

Find stronger feelings that supersede beast dancing lights that aren't empirically and logically false. Looking back at the ontologically hierarchy, that means going to higher truth of more real reality through faith. We are not given a spirit of fear. And the other fake implanted feelings can be countered as well.

Either that or hope logic will somehow start to override primal animal limbic reactions. Good luck with the last one.

One of the biggest lies in the house of them is that "secular" morality is viable and that Christianity can be evolved past. And once that bit of empirical observation and logical conclusion - multi-spectrum truth - penetrates the web of deceit, the only possible alternative becomes objectively and dialectically obvious. Whether one can accept that becomes the index of their entrapment in the feel-good world of rhetorical lies.

Logical, truth-based arguments fail because people who can see the logic won’t apply them. What chance do the idiot masses have?

Truth-value isn’t part of the calculus of feelings-based motivation at any point. It is utterly independent of whether or not it corresponds to reality. It is built out of ignoring objective observation and dialectical conclusions. In fact, those measures of truth don’t even signify to it’s operant processes.

So what possible value can there be in reiterating things that were never part of the equation? That don’t even show up on the radar? Unless presented in some novel way that creates a countervailing feeling, it’s just repeating what already failed. And persuasion directed to creating counter feelings is… rhetoric.

Ironically, trying to counter emotional motivation with observation and logic is observationally and logically retarded.

Might as well be the Charlie Brown teacher.

Now consider this before we even raise the inherent limitations of thinking as a representational process. Brute observation and rudimentary reasoning as fact-based motivators is already beyond most.

Now consider those for whom it shouldn't be. As we already explained, logic and emotion aren’t a binary opposition. They coexist to varying degrees in everyone. It's the interplay between [has the ability for logical thought] and [reacts on emotion anyway] that undergirds the idea of functional idiocy. If thought is an abstracted and simplified representational activity, what determines the nature of the representation?

In the thinking about thinking post we considered the cognitive thresholds for different types of thinking. Rudimentary binary thought, the need to be this tall for multi-variable thought. All the way to full non-linear thought, where the cognition mirrors the fluid and protean nature of reality itself.

It goes a long way to explaining things like the 2 standard deviations of IQ communication gap.

But this is hardware. Inherent capacity based on general intelligence. The faulty reasoning of functional idiocy – the semblance of logic but with self-serving errors and oversights – is usually emotion-driven. Asinine assumptions and blatant oversights to create the illusion – the lie – that what feels good is logical. Is factually correct even though is clearly isn’t.

This is rationalizing, not reasoning.

So if all thinking is an inherently distorting representational process and linear thought patterns especially so why does binary thinking stand out as a curse? Outside of naked emotion, oversimplifying causal relations and possible outcomes might be the biggest structural reason for the plague of lies. Because it is a type of theoretically logical thought that is woefully insufficient. And the more oversimplified, the less likely to capture the truth in most cases. The appeal is obvious. What is simpler than this or that? Anyone can grasp either/or.

And it’s natural. We appear have bilateral symmetry [the fact that we really don't on close examination indicates the problem being referred to here]. We see from two eyes. Computers run on binary code. Life is filled with up-down, in-out relations. We reproduce through binary pairs.

But in many cases, what we think of are binary opposites are actually extracted from more complex relationships. Or artifacts of linguistic abstraction. For example, there is no inherent “night” and “day” as consistent phenomena, let alone absolute existential opposites. They’re qualitative terms applied to relative levels of lighting or points on a clock.

Even Genesis links them to qualitative distinctions and immediately complicated their binary opposition with other periods like evening and morning.

They’re "binary opposites" because we’ve labeled them that way for practical purposes. This isn’t wrong, but they don’t determine or construct the nature of reality. They don’t even capture the gradients of diurnal light cycles.

William Bradford, Ice Floes under the Midnight Sun, 1869, oil on canvas, private collection

To say nothing of the midnight sun...

Presenting complex things as simple binaries and pretending that they are determinative is a major way liars manipulate the thoughtless. Wrap by returning to a consideration of left and right – the political terms, not the opposed sides of the body which actually are a binary opposition. A main manifestation of fake "freedom" discussed earlier.

Left and right are presented as diametric ideological poles embodied by "parties". But observation and logic indicate that we are ruled by a uniparty elite that only moves in one globalist sorathic, civilization-destroying direction. People act as if this false choice was meaningful and throw their support behind one or the other tentacle of the same beast.

Note how nothing ever happens to meaningfully roll back the scope of government power or legislate in a way that prioritizes the interests of the American people. It would be easy to pass laws deporting criminal aliens, punishing offshoring, imposing rigorous standards, reforming the justice system, etc. Yet it's never even debated. And virtually no one voted for the system we live under.

And yet...

It's not just support for the fake tentacles of the beast. Often times people emotionally invest in these bogus totems to a degree appropriate to an actual existential clash. Although this does mercifully seem to be abating as the sheer corrupt dishonesty of the oligarchic freaks gets harder to hide. Nevertheless, for a long time - and still to a degree - the idiot masses committed to "parties" despite the empirical and logical obviousness that they were not what they professed to be. Feelings over truth.

Creating fake binaries hides dyscivilizational evil behind pablum-level rhetorical "sides" to impel cooperation in self-destruction.

In reality, there is only one real absolute binary – Good and Evil. What we’ve defined elsewhere as alignment with or rejection of the primordial forces of creation and the objective reality that it generates.

For those too limited to perceive the ontological hierarchy, think of it as True and False. Functionally accepting and aligned with objective prior reality or not. The latter being the whole asinine do what thou wilt, be your own god, representation over reality, secularist cesspool.

Carl Bloch, Jesus Tempted, 19th century, oil on canvas, Frederiksborg Palace, Copenhagen

Note how despite all the false binaries the beast creates, this fundamental one is the one that is unacceptable. Undermining objective morality has been its premiere goal from the jump. It’s how you know it’s narrative huffers are liars.

All the rationalizations, word magic, and pretense that goes into avoiding it just places them in the latter box. False pointing to Evil.

Bringing us to a concluding irony.

On a strictly material level, binary thinking is an obfuscatory plague intended to misrepresent complex reality for disastrous ends

AND

Any truth-based system that recognizes complex materiality must be based on a founding ontological binary.

It’s complex...

Representation, Reality & the Arts of the West on the Eve of Reformation

2021-10-11T14:27:00.003-07:00

Back to the Arts of the West with a dive into the so-called Northern Renaissance. Spoiler alert - it's not. But the recent posts on representation on art and religion let us better understand what was going on. How it relates to late medieval piety in the prelude to the Reformation.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Rogier van der Weyden, central panel of The Last Judgment, between 1446 and 1452, oil on panel, Hospices de Beaune

Posting has been sporadic so it’s a good time to get back to the Arts of the West journey. It’s not just an issue of life getting in the way – there is also the need to consider future directions. Lately we’ve become preoccupied with the centrality of representation – broadly defined – in pretty much everything.

And how that allows representation to become the vector for the broad inversion we see today.

It's a long reflection. Here are the links if interested - they're not needed to follow this post.

Building the Beast System - Renaissance Centralization in Art & Faith Part 1

Change vs. Meaningful Change - Renaissance Centralization in Art & Faith Part 2

Representation and Inversion - Centralization in Art & Faith Part 3

Compatibility vs. Necessity - Centralization in Art & Faith Part 4

The Case of Christianity - Wrapping up Centralization in Art & Faith... for Now

The problem with something this fundamental is that it can be hard to see. People notice the meaning of words being twisted for nefarious ends. Values inverted and culture hollowed out. Religions violating core precepts and the pretense that opinion means… anything at all, really, in the face of reality. All these and more only scratch the surface of the wholesale collapse of modern society. Together the scope is dizzying, even demoralizing. But the underlying commonality is singular – the misuse of representation to functionally replace the thing the representation was created to represent.

Not the most elegant phrasing, but generalities have to be general.

John Smith, The world turn'd upside down, 1646

This print was a reaction to a parliamentary decision to ban festive Christmas celebrations. Intolerable to the English of the day - almost quaint in light of the degradation and inversions of the modern beast system. The picture captures the sentiment though.

Consider this. Everything we can think, know, communicate, believe is filtered through and expressed representationally. This isn’t insightful – it’s obvious in our early posts on Pierce and signs. What isn’t obvious are the implications. It’s one thing to summarize some esoterica like the Kantian noumenal and conclude that reality qua reality is not directly accessible without some sort of conceptual filter.

It’s another to really consider what it means to have everything mediated somehow.

Even perceptions are mediated by internal neurological processes.

We perceive external reality, but the perceptions themselves are mental images. That is, mediated representations. This is not some bong-fueled dorm room philosophizing that nothing's real man. It's simple acknowledgment that representation is an inherent part of human being-in-the-world. Something we have to work with.

We could distinguish between “natural” representation – sensory activity taking place before we are conscious of what we are seeing, and manmade representational systems like pictures and languages. But there is no way to “prove” that there is no interdependence between them, or to what extent if there is. What matters is that the reality we inhabit - regardless of it’s qualities – is accessed, accommodated, understood, interacted with, etc. through expressions that aren’t the reality itself. That aren't reality qua reality in philosophical… representation.

This means that all our reactions to reality are an endless dialog of representations.

Words, thoughts, symbols, actions in response to words, thoughts, symbols, actions in an endless dance through time. Now consider this. The representation we respond to doesn’t have to be truthful in order for us to respond to it. A false impression triggers the same patterned response as if it were true.

False alarms and their attendant costs are one example. False flags to impel destructive action are another. But any con or scam falls into this pattern - even honest errors.

Because we access reality through representations, representations that are detached from reality generate the same response as when they're truthful.

Theoretically, natural sense impressions correlate to reality through experiential feedback. The color and radiant heat of a red-orange burner indicates not to touch. The sight and sound of falling rain reminds us to grab an umbrella. But even these can deceive in the right circumstances – optical illusions, for instance.

Or a mirage...

We are interested in are the manmade representations. All the languages, semiotics, structures, behaviors, etc. through which we think, feel, and act. In theory, these begin by expressing basic realities then grow in complexity to more abstract topics. In the last few posts, we were looking at the large representational complexes that make up our concepts of art and religion, and how those were historicaly inverted.

The same process is universal. From the last post...

Expand the diagram

1. Representation makes reality qua reality knowable to human minds

2. Representation gets taken for reality - replacing it in human minds

3. Representation inverts reality & reality is treated as if it were the false representation.

The now-disconnected and inverted representation is still presented as standing for the Truth it disconnected from and inverted. In the case of "the Church", Jesus' message becomes whatever the narrative engineers want it to be.

And as long as people react to the now-false representation as if it were true, it might as well be magic. Consider - magic is bending real outcomes through will. A lie that changes real outcomes is doing just that. There isn't the transformation in the underlying reality, but the end result is comparable. In the false alarm example, whether magically creating a fire that triggers an alarm and makes first responders come or pulling a false alarm, the firefighters act the same. At least until the deception is uncovered. In the religion example, magically compelling people to sin and tricking them that sinning is "really Christian" deprives them of their path to salvation either way.

Any lie or scam that makes you respond as you would if reality were different.

From the deceiver's perspective, all that matters is that the truth isn't uncovered until the desired outcome has already occurred.

Politics is based on this - and not one "side" either. SJWs imagining fake utopias or “conservatives” blathering on about impossible “freedom” both impel reactions to reality that are empirically false. And in both cases, proceeding as if they are real has dyscivilizational outcomes. Literally the evisceration of organic community and socialization. The problem is that actual reality is elastic and can tolerate a certain amount of inversion before collapse becomes inevitable. The gradual diminution of social cohesion and quality of life.

It's not like we weren't warned...

Note how retards like to misrepresent this passage on the consequences of idolatry and turning away from righteousness. No, God doesn't "punish the innocent". What it means is that inversion has consequences. Damage that reverberates across generations. How the societal cancers induced by the greed-driven, hedonsitic, self-righteous materialism of the 50's and 60s have only recently become visibly crippling.

Reality didn't change. But the idiot collective collectively pretended it did. Now, where did rational, moral, prosperous, stable society go?

This kind of "magic" is not actually speaking reality into existence. It’s acting as if false representations were reality during the lag time between acceptance of the lies and their fruits. Of course, if anyone can foresee the toxic outcomes, the moral culpability of the self-pleasuring followers is that much greater.

We can frame the arts of the West posts in representational terms. Because the posts slowly trace how a complex set of representations called art – techniques, theories, social placements, users, expectations, symbolism, etc. – came to...

...1. define our basic formula of Logos+Techne - itself a representation, but a truthful one

Adriaen van Ostade, The Painter in his Studio, 1663, oil on wood, 38 × 35.5 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

The artist uses his mastery of refined techniques to visualize truths.

...2. Took the place of L+T - representation-reality inversion

Felicien Myrbach-Rheinfeld, Candidates for Admission to the Paris Salon, late 19th century, pen and brush on paper, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The institution claims the power to decide what art is. There's still techne but doesn't have to be.

...3. Then projected the opposite of L+T – what we call Art!

James R. Huntsberger, 1913 Armory Show, 2014, print

Enter modernism. The institution ditches any pretense of logos or techne. This degrades a once-noble expression of culture into degenerate trash.

The last couple of posts noted the same process in religion. A complex set of representations called Church or Christianity came to

...1. Define our understanding of Christ’s saving message

Figure holding chalice in an Agape Feast, 4th century, Catacomb of Saints Pietro e Marcellino, Rome

The Agape feast preceded the Mass / Eucharist in the early church.

...2. Took the place of Christ’s saving message

Arnolfo di Cambio, Pope Boniface VIII, around 1298, Opera del Duomo Museum, Florence

Medieval popes attempted to build imperial power, living in palaces and nonsensically claiming to deprive Christian salvation over political disputes. Boniface took it to an extreme, claiming absolute authority over everything. The French king dealt with him like any second-rate monarchical wannabe.

...3. Then inverted into the opposite of Christ’s message.

...

Anyhow.

At which point it became easy to see how this rough process happened in almost every area of human activity.

Consider our subtitle – dismantling Postmodernism. That whole rancid ball of lies is based on the fiction that reality is “discursively constructed”. Remember ~~Prof. X~~ Foucault and the ersatz “philosophy” of pretending representations are the objective reality that they were historically created to represent?

Consider our motto – what can we know and how can we know it? Representations that don’t correspond to anything real allow us to know nothing. The only "knowledge" they offer are the valueless opinions of ontologically inconsequential randos. That is, nothing.

Anyone who claims that meaning is just representation - discourse, or whatever - but expects you to accept it as meaningful is a confessed liar, likely a psychopath, and should be avoided. That’s simple logic. Expecting something to be taken as true when you deny the possibility of true is psychotic. Or evidence of just how stupid “the average person” is. Upon further reflection, embrace the power of and.

Obviously the primordial nature of representation is something we will be returning to. Consider that the Bible presents Logos in Creation as a foundational speech-act. And it’s just as obvious that the ontological hierarchy itself is a complex representation.

A better take on semiotics is needed – one that doesn’t assume fake beast materialist Flatland instead of metaphysical fullness. This isn’t something we can dash off in a post, but needs to be carefully thought through. Otherwise, the how can we know it part of the motto will be stuck in the dark.

Returning to the Arts of the West, a fuller take on representation is clarifying. Works of art – painting and statues – are obviously representations of various things. But “art” itself an idea or set of cultural practices and/or institutions is also a representation. A more complex one - or what we call a representational complex. The medieval art posts noted how our fine or visual arts didn’t really exist as a distinct concept. There were picture makers, but not “artists” as a distinct, privileged form of creator.

The Renaissance posts considered how genius artists and humanistic ideology combined into a new set of definitions and associations. This is not our insight – even the beast narrative recognizes this as the birthplace of a formal concept of art in the West.

The Sistine Chapel with it's paintings by Michelangelo and other masters is a landmark of Renaissance art. Defined values, venerated names, defined progress, and theoretical presumptions are all parts of this new art.

What is our insight is how this overlaps with a humanistic inversion in the Church at the same time. Our occult posts looked closely at satanic inversions like Hermeticism, alchemy, Freemasonry, Prometheanism, and so forth and how these were slipped into institutional Christian thought. Like feces in the holy water. Our most recent occult post considered how the idolatrous fraud impostor “Pope Francis” is still following this inversive pattern.

With this post we are picking up the thread in Northern Europe, where we saw a different artistic tradition forming than the Italian one. We looked at the International Gothic as a form of the beauty of holiness and the rise of aristocratic power jacking religious truth. We also looked at the more visceral and horrifying side of the Gothic as something striving to meet the changing religious demands of the public. Click for link.

Rogier van der Weyden and workshop, The Exhumation of Saint Hubert, late 1430s, oil with egg tempera on oak, National Gallery, London

The saint being translated was the 8th-century Bishop of Maastricht and Liège, who died in 727 and moved in 825. But note the date of the painting and the 15th century costume of the figures. There was no painting like this in the 9th century.

The intense desire to see the uncorrupted body of the saint is a sign of this newer, viscerally personal religious impulse. We think is also drove the development of "Northern Renaissance" art.

The idea that the public were craving an increasingly tangible, physical, sanguinary tie to God meant representational complexes were changing. Both the visual arts like van der Weyden's painting and popular forms of religion. Put this way, the old representational complex of religion – a complex created to connect finite material humanity to the inexpressible qua itself revealed Truth of ultimate reality – was failing. Failing meaning it was not meeting collective spiritual needs. This meant people were reaching for more and more powerful or satisfying representations to assuage their anxieties and fears.

Consider the Besloten hofje - enclosed garden or hortus conclusus. It's a Reformation-era kind of altarpiece consisting of a wooden box packed with figures and devotional objects and organized like a garden. The hortus conclusus was a medieval convention based on the Song of Songs and a metaphor for virginity. Note the fence with closed gate at the bottom to show the private nature.

Mechelen, Besloten Hofje with Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Ursula, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1513–24(?), painted wood, silk, paper, bone, wax, wire, and other materials in a wood case, Musea & Erfgoed Mechelen

This one is pretty typical, with the central box filled with items that demand attention. Handmade flowers made of fabric, wire, clay, and other things join relics and medallions surrounding sculpture. The density of the stuff is ironic considering the idea of a gated closed garden. Something this eye-catching hardly screams keep out.

Close-up of the central box and its dense collection of items. Note the craft in the handmade flora. The painted saints are typical of smiling courtly International Gothic figures. They complement the idea of the sacred garden by representing the ideal inhabitants. If you are meditating on the piece, it leads to connections between the saints, the beauty of holiness, and the symbolism of the garden.

Other items connect the Besloten hofje to other signs of this visceral, tangible late medieval piety. The bone relic from the legendary 11,000 virgin martyrs of St. Ursula fits with the intense cult of relics of the era. This adds spiritual "reality" to the purely representational statues and real sanctity to the fictive garden.

The wax medallion of the Resurrection is dated 1513 and adds another devotional link. These were tokens of pilgrimage or similar participatory activity - often directed towards relics like the bone.

Taken together, the Besloten hofje is a great overview of that intense religious devotion in the build-up to the Reformation. The cult of the saints and its relics, pilgrimage, emotionally-engaging statues, in a setting designed to get you looking closely. And slowing down and lingering moves you into a mindset conducive to pious reflection. If devotional art is intended to aid prayer, this is like a demonstration.

Here's another one, just because these things are pretty far out.

Besloten Hofje with Calvary, the Virgin, and John the Baptist; panels of the patrons with St. Peter and St. Cornelius, around 1525, Museum Hof van Busleyden Mechelen

One thing the so-called Northern and Italian Renaissances share is a relatively high level of literacy. The difference is that in the 14th and 15th century, northern Europeans really don't show that early humanistic interest in classical texts. Their bestsellers are more medieval tales – some of which are based on ancient ones – and religious literature. This is a generalization, but a sound one for the purposes of this post. The popular texts complement the emphasis on seeing and feeling that we see in the art.

The Modern Devotion or Devotio Moderna of Geert Groote and Florens Radewijns was a late 14th-century attempt to “reform” Christianity. The idea was to focus on the humanity of Christ in an immediate, rhetorical way. As opposed to the abstract divinity of Scholastic theology – the “old” devotion. Simplified rhetoric rather than complex dialectic.

Excerpt from a Middle Dutch book of hours from Brabant, translated by Geert Groote, 1475, University Library, Ghent

Translating prayer books into the vernacular was part of this broad humanizing appeal. It also foreshadows vernacular Bibles in the Reformation.

The Devotio Moderna stressed meditating intensely on the Passion, Eucharist, Four Last Things (Death, Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell) and other moving subjects. Not hard to see the similarity with the increasingly vivid and emotional art we're looking at. Thomas à Kempis’s incredible popular and influential The Imitation of Christ - completed in manuscript in1427 and first printed in 1472 - built on this approach. It’s impossible not to see the meditative, imaginative patterning after the human Christ in the art of the day.

Note the wings from our Besloten hofje. The patrons are shown reading prayer books and meditating while protected by Saints James the Greater and Margaret of Antioch. They show the devotional connection between prayer and reading and the visual experience of the artworks.

Patrons and their saints meditating in parallel to art wasn't limited to things like the Besloten hofje. They're ubiquitous in Northern painting of all kinds.

This diptych is a good example. A diptych is a pair of related pictures - like the wings, but with no main central image. The two work like a visual conversation. This lets us see the 15th and 16th century desire to the sacred. On the right Margaret is visualizing the Madonna. So when she looks at her picture she is seeing herself imagining the thing she is praying about. Visions of visions is a vain effort to get closer to the divine.

Anonymous, Diptych with Margaret of Austria Worshipping, 1500-10, oil on panel, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent

Other popular medieval texts like the Pseudo-Bonaventura’s Meditations on the Life of Christ, Ludolphus of Saxony’s Life of Christ, or Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend – a collection of saint’s lives – also encouraged meditation and inward private devotion. Historians call this “affective piety”. With paintings like the diptych above, we can’t prove the artists were illustrating specific texts.

Other times we can.

Master of Jacques de Besançon, illustration from Ludolf of Saxony's Vita Christi (Life of Christ), 1474, University of Glasgow Library

Ludolf's book encouraged meditating on Jesus' life in an intense visual way. Imagining the events so as to participate virtually. This illumination shows Ludopf in prayer with a text but focusing his imagination on the Crucifixion - as if it were taking place in his actual room. Note the other instruments of the Passion as well.

Also note how his books are present, but closed. They are important, but only as a vehicle. once the mind is directed to the right place - the life and sufferings of Jesus - their work is over and they can be put aside. This picture is a perfect illustration of how this imaginative, visceral devotion worked. And how art could visualize it in turn.

These are just a few examples, but they all point to the same thing. In each case, art and devotional literature reflect the same religious culture. One that kept trying to get closer human contact to holy personages. And this endless, unrequited drive to get closer tells us that the old representations failed and the new ones weren’t getting it done either. Chasing the spiritual dragon until Reformation.

This means the representational complexes of Christianity in the late Middle Ages were failing from two directions. The papacy with dreams of empire and Hermetic blasphemies from the top down. And a more grass-roots spiritual emptiness in the flailing, failing formulas that make up the representational complex. These probably aren't unrelated. Broad-based spiritual crisis and an inversive, un-Christian hierarchy are symbiotic.

Pinturicchio and assistants, Hermes Trismegistus with the Zodiac, 1493, fresco, Room of the Sibyls, Borgia Apartments, Vatican Palace

There is a slim chance this magus isn't Hermes, though that what most sources appear to call him. That it's in the "Room of the Sibyls" in the pope's private apartments is just the cherry-shaped turd atop the blasphemous sundae.

Raphael and workshop, detail of the Coronation of Charlemagne, 1514-15, fresco, Vatican Museum

Hedonist and art lover Leo X Medici was pope when Luther posted his 95 Theses - the symbolic kick-off of the Reformation in 1517. Two years earlier, Leo was reliving early medieval power games in a grand fresco of Leo III crowning Charlemagne - a gesture interpreted as showing the pope was a superior authority to the emperor. Leo III is a portrait of Leo X and Charlemagne is Francis I of France.

Apparently the "vicar" of Christ was busy wallowing in material pleasure during the "render unto Caesar" bits.

Woodcut of indulgence selling, title page of On Aplas von Rom kan man wol selig werden (One Can Be Saved Without the Indulgence of Rome), Augsburg, 1521

Indulgence peddling - selling absolution for sins - was one of the more egregious offenses that triggered the reformers. To be fair, indulgences had been connected to acts of piety - cash sale was a later development. And the peddlers often promised things not in the "official" theology. At the same time, "as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs" was a popular saying.

Leo's plenary indulgence of 1515 - to fund the new St. Peter's project -"covered" almost any sin, including adultery.

Pauquet engraving after P. N. Bergeret, The deathbed of Raphael Sanzio: Pope Leo X scatters flowers on his dead body, 1822, Wellcome Collection, London

Two years after the 95 Theses. Perhaps if Leo had shown the same concern for Christianity that he did his favorite artists and construction projects...

Representational failure from above and below. And since art and religion march together, we can see the consequences in both. Northern European art continues to produce different forms than the contemporary Renaissance Italians. And the Church fragments into the Reformation.

There are problems with “the North” from the Band's overview of the Arts of the West perspective. It’s a much larger and less culturally unified area than Italy. Big kingdoms are forming and the Empire is a constant presence. Then there’s the lead-up to the Reformation (duh) which engulfs much of the region but not all of it. We don't see quite the same kind of religious dissatisfaction in Italy. Spain is involved in reconquering the peninsula until almost 1500. England is a world unto itself. To say nothing of Eastern Europe.

Books and timelines certainly try and define it as a distinctive thing. These are pulled from quick image scans for "Northern Renaissance art" and "Northern Renaissance art book". The prevalence of Van Eyck and van der Weyden in the 15th century and Holbein and Bruegel in the 16th points to a pre and post-Reformation split.

The 15th century version is really geographically and culturally limited. Instead of "Northern" Renaissance, Flemish or Netherlandish makes more sense. Perhaps Burgundian. It's as if a tiny pocket of northern Europe is treated as a proxy for everything north of the Alps.

Could it be... discourse?..

Why yes it is.

Dividing the art of Europe into the Italian and "Northern" Renaissances is more a consequence of beast narrative than historical reality.

What we are really looking at is an outgrowth of the International Gothic that was influential because of the network of noble courts. This centered on the Netherlands - Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, parts northern France ruled by the Valois dukes of Burgundy from 1369-1477. This was a cadet branch of the French royal line that presided over a bizarre but extremely prosperous and artistically influential court. A blend of retardaire faux chivalry in ducal circles and cutting-edge mercantile prosperity in the bustling Netherlandish cities.

Northern Renaissance works better as Burgundian Renaissance. But Burgundy goes poof as the artistic innovations spread to neighboring areas. France and "Germany" or the Empire in particular. Also missing is any notion of cultural "rebirth". That is, Renaissance.

So neither broadly "Northern" - other than in relation to Italy, nor "Renaissance" at all - other than being contemporary to the Italian Renaissance. There are similarities between the Burgundian court and prospering Netherlandish cities and the contemporary city-states of Renaissance Italy. We already mentioned high literacy. Wealth and heavy official support for art and culture account for the innovative arts of both regions.

But there are big differences too. Noble courts all over Europe amused themselves with chivalric LARPing - we've mentioned this in an earlier post. This at a time when warfare had made the old medieval knight obsolete on the battlefield.

Tournament combat from Le pas des armes de Sandricourt, 1493, parchement, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. MS 3958, f.11v, Bibliothèque nationale de France

The Dukes of Burgundy were especially given to this. It's an odd counterpoint to the modern bustling economies of the Netherlandish cities that they ruled over. The wealth this economic activity generated allowed for the courtly games, but it's still an odd combination of old and new.

The pas des armes or "no weapons" was a 15th-century version of the joust where participants role played - literally LARPed - Arthurian or other medieval scenarios with mock combat. Basically theatrical play-fighting in knightly costumes.

The big high-culture difference between Italy and the Burgundian world is the relationship with classical antiquity. The North was geographically and historically removed from the immediate legacy of Greco-Roman civilization. This meant virtually no visual influences in the art. It is true that ancient authors were well-known through textual sources. The reality is that antique learning was present throughout the Middle Ages - just adapted into contemporary culture. And not with the humanistic obsession with "purity".

The Four Evangelists from the Aachen Gospels, around 820, miniature on parchment, Aachen, Cathedral Treasury Gospels, f.13r

The court of the Frankish king Charlemagne launched the first "revival" of ancient culture. Hence the common name Carolingian Renaissance. The reality is more the emperor's conscious effort to enculturate his Frankish and other Germanic subject along Roman lines.

The Evangelists are self-consciously classicizing in costume and pose. Likewise the landscape and four beasts of the tetramorph - early Christian symbols of the Gospels. The style clearly isn't ancient, but derivative enough to see the connection.

There are different points in the Middle Ages where classical influence bubbles up. The 12th century is another well-known example. But on the whole, these are not the visual norm - it's why there has been a tendency to call these periods "renaissances". But on the whole, that humanist interest in ancient culture on its own terms is not the same kind of factor north of the Alps until into the 16th century.

Consider this illumination from a mid-15th-century manuscript of the Alexander Romance - an Old French romance based on a fictionalized life of Alexander the Great.

Sanson of Ailly delivers his message to Nicolas King of Armenia, from Jean (Jehan) Wauquelin's Le Roman d'Alexandre, vol. 1, 1447, BnF Français 9342, f.16v.

No interest in historical accuracy at all. It's a French chivalric tournament. This is what we mean by virtually no visual influences. And it's contemporary with Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden in painting.

The same holds for actual ancient authors and not just medieval fan fiction. Here's an illumination from an anthology of ancient Roman authors compiled by a French writer in the middle of the 15th century. It's described as a history as a history of Rome from the founding to Constantine, abridged from Livy, Lucan, Orosius, Suetonius and others

Caesar crosses the Rubicon from Jean Mansel's La Fleur des histoires, vol. 2, 1454, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 5088, f.192v, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Note the similarity in date and style between these last three illuminations. The same retro-medieval chivalric type of depiction whether a contemporary event, a medieval legend, or an ancient history.

Without the same tie to antiquity, there was no comparable significant early humanism movement either. Certainly nothing like the one sparked by Petrarch. Classical humanism does spread north – the Reformation is essentially a Christian humanism movement. Consider the basis in the original textual sources. It just lacks the overlays of imperial papacy and Hermetic Neoplatonism found in the Italian version. But it comes later, and as the relative lack of Neoplatonism and Hermes suggests, is far less obsessed with ancient Rome and Greece.

The art is therefore not really “Renaissance” in that there is no ideology of “rebirth” involved.

Hans Memling, The Last Judgment, between 1466 and 1473, oil on panel, National Museum, Gdańsk

So why Northern "Renaissance"?

It appears that 15th-century Netherlandish art gets that name because it was contemporary with the Italian Renaissance. That's it. When the official modern art narrative was expanded from Italy to the rest of Europe in the 20th century, the name got transferred because of the time period and prestige.

Seriously.

Pioneering historians of art Erwin Panofsky and Max Friedländer simply called it early Netherlandish painting.

Panofsky's influential book of that name introduced the subject to English world in two volumes in 1953. Friedländer's more extensive 14-volume study appeared in German between 1924 and 1937, but was only translated into English between 1967-1976. Neither saw fit to use the term Renaissance.

So why all those Northern Renaissance books?

What seems to have happened is that within beast academic circles, narrative huffers were butt hurt that Italian art was “privileged” over Netherlandish “primitives”. So the word Renaissance was misapplied to counteract this perceived terrible value judgment. In other news, “academics” have always been infantile to the point where deliberate falsehood is preferable to hurt feelings. Still wonder how “higher education” became such a cesspool of beast nonsense and idiot word magic?

There is visible change in the leading artistic circles of the Bergundian domains. It just isn’t steeped in Classical ideology. It's coming from a different place initially.

Rogier van der Weyden, The Altar of Our Lady (Miraflores Altar), around 1440, oil on wood, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

What is does bring is lurid oil color and attention to detail - enhanced realism and emotionalism. Intensified elements we've already seen in the Gothic. There's even some International Gothic luxury. Oil paint debuted in a serious way in the north, and that allowed for bright and subtle color and fine detail.

Close-up of Jesus' appearance to his mother. The vivid colors and bright landscape are typical of 15th-century Flemish oils. Note how Jesus stands in a way to show the wounds - to show that he is risen but also to let people empathize with his suffering and triumph.

Also note the Gothic - not Classical - architectural details in the room and around the perimeter.

Pointing out the emphasis on surface realism in the North as different from Italian idealism is another commonplace. There is truth to it, but it's hard to look at the painting right above without wondering where the hyperrealism is. That's the problem with making up forced binary definitions - non-universal distinctions are presented as universal. Where the "northern realism" does come up is mainly in the work of Van Eyck initially, then in the development of particular genres. Landscape, still-life, and portraits are all non-Italian developments that connect painting to subjects from more prosaic life.

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man (Self-portrait?), 1433, oil on panel, National Gallery, London

This painting is most often shown as an example of Van Eyck's realism. Two things stand out - other than the idea that Putin is centuries old. The attempt to capture a real likeness "warts and all" as distinct from Classical portrait idealism. And the detailed rendering of real fabric in the red turban.

The caveat is that there is a reason this portrait is often shown - it's the most shockingly realistic of Van Eyck's people. We also see the Italians painting "warts and all" within a half-century. The point still stands - just not as the universal rule internet lists present.

Still-life is another Flemish invention that is built on everyday reality. As a portrait is a careful depiction of a person, a still-life carefully depicts an inanimate object. This painting by Memling - a dominant artist of the post-Van Eyck and van der Weyden generation - is the earliest we've found. It is certainly attentive to realistic detail. But look closely before reading on. Can you spot something less prosaically "real"?

Hans Memling, Flowers in a Jug, around 1485, oil on panel, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

It's the symbolism. According to the museum website, the maiolica jug has Christ’s monogram and the flowers refer to Mary. Lilies refer to her purity, irises to her as Queen of Heaven and mater dolorosa during the Passion, and aquilegias are associated with the Holy Spirit. This ties into the nature symbolism common throughout the Middle Ages, where plants, animals, gems, etc. were credited with abstract meanings.

The maiolica and the Eastern carpet are signs of commercial wealth. This is an intrinsic internal contradiction to the spiritual message that will become more and more significant.

The museum site also notes that how this painting was originally presented is a mystery. Was it the wing of a triptych like some shown above or part of a diptych? The problem is that these multi-part paintings were later broken up for sale to collectors after the culture changes and the art market picked up. It's improbable that it was free standing. Especially considering that there is a portrait painting on the opposite side. Triptych wings and diptychs were painted on both sides so they showed a picture whether opened or closed.

Here's what Memling's Last Judgment from earlier looks like closed. It's very different from the phantasmagoric open Last Judgment with it's colorful angel and vivid afterlives. Keep in mind that the wings were usually closed.

Hans Memling, The Last Judgment Triptych (closed), between 1466 and 1473, oil on wood, National Museum

Some important features...

The patrons or customers are shown in prayer with family symbols. Worldly status matched by piety.

The Madonna and Child and St. Michael are shown as monochrome statues. When the doors are closed, they show how real people in the world know holy figures - through representations of the kind found in churches. Less real than the flesh and blood worshippers.

When the wings are open, the spiritual reality that the statues and devotions represent are "shown". It's obviously all representation, but there are levels that correspond to metaphysical relationships.

Hans Memling, Portrait of a Young Man praying, around 1485, oil on panel, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

This is on the other side of Memling's Flowers in an Jug. Remember - the museum says the original configuration is unknown but it certainly looks like one wing of a triptych or half a diptych. If so, there would be a scene opposite showing what Mr. Supercuts is visualizing. If so, the vase would be shown when the painting is closed. A symbolic real-world thing that points to the sacred mysteries inside. Maybe.

The point isn't an impossible recreation. It's that clear distinctions like real or idealized don't really hold up.

That's worth repeating - clear distinctions like real or idealized don't really hold up in this climate. This is the world of the Devotio Moderna and Besloten hofje. A world there the sacred and secular intermingle and people desperately try and get closer to the former. Which helps us get a handle on a painting like this one by Van Eyck again.

The items on the self and the fabrics that the Madonna sits on are taken as signs of his realism. Likewise the natural mother and child act of nursing. But look how big she is in the crowded space. What kind of room is this? Where are they? Note the symbolic animals on the throne, and how the arched shelves and window balance. It feels real in detail, but very artificial overall.

Jan van Eyck, Lucca Madonna, 1437, oil on panel, Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Does the closed space relate to the idea of the closed garden at all? What do the objects mean? They seem ordinary, but are rendered with great care and prominently placed. How about the oranges on the window ledge?

We don't know the answers and couldn't find an easy explanation online. But it is obvious that "realism" is only part of the story. If anything, the realistic detailing only makes it harder to separate the "real" and the "supernatural".

So instead of realism, realizing may be a better choice of term. At least for the way the spiritual is made tangible and allegory blends with the natural. The same holds for the supernatural sides of the Gothic legacy - whether the beautiful or horrifying.

Take a look at Van Eyck's small but insanely detailed version of the Crucufixion and Last Judgment diptych. Each panel is less than two feet high!

Jan van Eyck, Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, 1440 –41, oil on canvas, transferred from wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art

It's small, but look at all everything that's in there. Start with the Crucufixion side.

The tormented, suffering body of Christ intended to create empathic connections. Note the scrawny body, anguished face and gushing blood. The thief isn't doing so well either. Quite unlike what you'd expect to see in mid-15th century Italy.

Hard to reconcile with a universal tendency to realism like the portrait in the turban. More vivid than "real".

The hideous mocking figures are another bit of painted rhetoric - things intended to trigger emotional response. Looking at them is supposed to create loathing. For them and for their sinful natures.

This also appears more "Gothic" than "Renaissance" if we go by the standard narrative.

For a contrast, here's the same subject from almost exactly the same time from the top painter in Florence. It's not without emotion - the subject is inherently emotional. Plus it was painted for a Dominican convent where the friars were expected to use it as an aid for their own devotions. But there is a respectful decorum for the body that blunts the raw visceral power of Van Eyck's. Not stylistically classical, but with a classical humanist spirit. Note the overall sence of balance and relative static nature of the figures - even the mourning ones.

The difference is hard to pin down in words, but easier to see. We suspect that this is the obstacle for the narrative attempts to make simple binary distinctions. The answer is to not make simple binary distinctions.

Fra Angelico, Crucifixion with Saints, 1441, fresco, Museum of San Marco, Florence

Back to Van Eyck, the vision of death and the damned in Hell is pure Gothic horror. A visceral fusion of Biblical language contrasting eternal life in Christ to death and medieval visions of hellish torment. It is true that the Bible mentions the everlasting fire on a number of occasions. Matthew 25:41 is a fine example - "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels".

But over the Middle Ages, terrifying descriptions of Hell as a fiery, demonic place of torment become an increasingly significant part of "Christianity" as representational complex.

The winged, skeletal death figure as the divider between the resurrecting dead on earth and Hell below is a uniquely effective way to show this. The abundant torments of the damned work like any devotional image - repetitive variations of eternal horror to meditate on.

Unfortunately Christ the Judge and the heavenly group appear to have been painted by workshop assistants. The quality is obviously much lower. But the colorful archangel is a phantasmic vision that foreshadows Memling's last Judgment up above.

Where's that superficial "realism"?

Lurid, vivid, but not real like the details around Van Eyck's Lucca Madonna. Or some of his devotional pictures where the idea clearly is to break down that division between human worshippers and spiritual realities.

Jan Van Eyck, The Madonna with Canon Van der Paele, 1436, oil on canvas, Groeningemuseum, Bruges

This is superficial realistic by medieval standards, but we are not to believe these figures are all physically together. It's that the subject of his devotion are close - as if right there.

So to be fair, there is a "realistic" dimension to Netherlandish art relative to Italy. But not the representation of material reality in modern terms as a priority. What it all shares is the desire to make spiritual truths as vivid as the world before our faces. It's sensory impact as a metaphor - a means of "realizing" higher realities that are not directly accessible to our senses.

Put in terms of the ontological hierarchy, it's a way to represent abstract or ultimate reality in materially perceptible ways.

The ontological hierarchy is the Band's representation of the relative natures and interactions between levels of reality. It was worked out over a number of posts and represents the what we can know and how we can know it. Onto-epistemological hierarchy is more accurate, but too awkward and obnoxious in an academic jargon-sounding way to be effective.

It's a rough outline, but invaluable for avoiding the endemic category errors in knowledge claims that have plagued a lot of "thought" and led directly to modern and postmodern inversion.

The states beyond empirical discernment can't be empirically discerned. The Netherlandish painters are putting them in forms that can, with maximum rhetorical impact.

And it better accounts for Van Eyck's younger contemporary van der Weyden - the other big name usually connected to the "Northern Renaissance". We've seen enough of his paintings to note that Van Eyck's surface realism doesn't apply in the same way. But we do get the lurid color and intense emotion that make religious subjects seem immediate.

This painting is a really good example of bringing the material and spiritual together and making you confront it. Remember that late medieval drive to get closer to the representational complex that made up contemporary Christianity. Here the Seven Sacraments - themselves a medieval representation - are depicted inside a Gothic church surrounding a Crucifixion scene.

Rogier van der Weyden, The Seven Sacraments, 1440-1445, oil on panel, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp

Now, consider the actual history of the seven sacraments.

Sacrament simply means mystery - at least according to Oxford Languages. Before the 12th century, Christian writers identified various numbers of rituals under this name [click for a link]. It was Peter Lombard - a prominent 12th-century theologian who appears to have been the first to definitively declare seven in number.

The Catholic attitude towards dogma is often misrepresented - it's more accurate to say dogmatizing something formalizes existing ritual practice - tradition - instead of willing it into existence. This doesn't change the fundamentally representational nature of the action, but does recognize tradition as the source when claiming abstract reality inheres in material things. Obviously an article of faith, but not as arbitrary or incoherent as opponents often claim. We aren't sure how the early Christian concept of sacred mysteries codifies into seven sacraments, nor do we care enough to search deeply. The 13th-century Fourth Lateran Council formalized Transubstantiation - immensely important for late medieval piety. The 16th-century Council of Trent provides a clear confirmation of the official seven sacraments.

Back to Rogier...

Here's the Eucharist - positioned as the central sacrament of the seven and placed next to the Crucifix - the body of Christ - that it becomes. Note the elaborate sculpted altarpiece behind the priest. The figure of the baby Jesus makes another direct connection between the corpus and the host.

The premise that the Eucharist manifested Christ's actual body and blood made it a theophany - and the most visible sacrament in late medieval devotion. Consider - if the driving force was getting closer to the sacred, a transubstantiated host would be the best option. The late Middle Ages are full of Corpus Christi processions, stories of bleeding hosts and other miracles, host venerations, more and more compelling tabernacles to hold it, etc.

It's easy to see Rogier's altarpiece - sort of a meta-altarpiece given the Eucharist at the altar within it - as strengthening the connection between the ritual and the believers. Consider that the formal notion of seven distinct sacraments was relatively recent. And that people were already fixating on them as ways to bring the sacred into their lives in a more immediate way. Then there's the interior - exactly the sort of church setting that would be familiar to 15th century Netherlandish Christians in the most urbanized part of medieval Europe. Together you have the imaginative devotional presence of the Crucifixion, the ritual presence of the sacraments, and the interior presence of everyday churchgoing, filled with people in 15th-century clothing. The abstract-spiritual and material realities combined in a way that's accessible to the senses.

How is this kind of painting any different from the visceral desire to get closer to the sacred in prayer and other expressions of piety? From devotional activity built on touching, seeing, visiting, and visualizing?

It isn't.

The blend of visceral rhetoric and and religious allegory in the 15th century can be hard to tell apart. That's the point. It's depicting a unified world view where the sacred and material are one. If we want a brief contrast with Renaissance Italy, that works better than "realism" defined as proto-modern materialism. So long as we limit it to the Netherlandish holdings of Burgundy at first. So spiritual realism vs. humanistic classicism as a rough starting distinction. Well, that and the weird ugly figures.

Much like Renaissance Florence, Netherlandish art innovations spread to neighboring places. Bright colorful detail, intense personality religiosity, and weird ugly figures.

Simon Marmion, The Lamentation of Christ, around 1467, oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Like this French painter who actually worked for the Dukes of Burgundy among other patrons. Note how Jesus' body is positioned in a way that is totally unrealistic as a physical event, but perfectly displayed for the viewer to meditate and reflect on.

He's not as polished as the Flemish painters like Rogier, Van Eyck, or Memling, but working in exactly the same idiom.

Konrad Witz, Annunciation, 1437-40, Germanisches National Museum, Nuremberg

Or an ugly German take on the Annunciation in a contemporary interior, likewise without the polish. The idea being to make a Biblical event identifiable to 15th-century people.

The clothes look like they could have been painted by Rogier's less talented brother.

When we do see signs of Italian Renaissance influenced classical features they're oddly grafted on to a Flemish substructure. It's a mercifully short-lived phase, but easy to see in comparison to the paintings we've been looking at. Jan Gossaert stands out for this, but there were others. The gravitational pull of the High Renaissance was undeniable, especially as classical humanism spread north in other areas of culture.

Jan Gossaert, Adam and Eve, around 1507-1508, oil on panel, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Note Gossaert's interest in classical nudity. Eve is more attractive than the usual ugly Netherlandish women and in the pose of a classical Venus. ~~Ripped Bob Ross~~ Adam is a muscular contrapposto figure of the kind we haven't seen here. Hardly something you'd swap a Raphael for and lacking even the mystic appeal of Van Eyck, but a good demonstration of change.

Probably Bernard van Orly, formerly attributed to Jan Gossaert, The Virgin of Louvain, around 1520, oil on panel, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Another sign is the replacement of Gothic architectural settings with fantastical classicism. The mediocre composition of this painting does a good job of showing the contrived, imported nature of the new aesthetic within an established stylistic idiom. Note the realistic detail of the flowers at the front and the symbolic animals - as much a sign of the Netherlandish tradition as the poor grasp of Classical form and proportion.

When the Reformation hits, the cultural landscape changes radically. Luther’s theses spawn a rapid proliferation of sects that transform European religious practice before the continent plunges into a century of war and strife. As with any huge historic shift, the causes are multiple and interrelated. The obvious corruption and inversion of the Church that we've considered earlier in this post and in the previous few was an important immediate one.

Interpretation of Bramante's 1510s plan for new St. Peter's basilica

Indulgence-peddling was particularly egregious. Especially given the purposes for intensification – building a massive Babel-like temple the new St. Peter’s in Renaissance style atop the ruins of Constantine’s basilica.

As megalomaniacal as Julius was, the argument could be made that his rabid materialism was a misguided attempt to glorify the Church. His successor – and Luther’s counterpart – the aforementioned Medici Leo X could make no such claim. He was pure court hedonist and son of the famous Lorenzo the Magnificent – the same aristocrat who drove Ficino to translate Hermes in our occult posts. In fact, the young Leo was educated by Lorenzo’s court humanists, including Ficino and others. Probably arch-synchronist Pico della Mirandola and Agnolo Poliziano.

Leo ran the Vatican like a princely court. While Julius was personally parsimonious, Leo was profligate. Given to feasting, courtly hunts and games, and art collecting among other pursuits. When Luther took his ill-fated pilgrimage to Rome, it was the Rome of Leo that he saw. This was the climax of materialism and corruption that triggered his decision that the papacy was irredeemable.

It’s not a far-out decision. A late medieval history of imperial aspirations, self-idolatry, schism, then renewed megalomaniacal materialism sum up the preceding couple of centuries. Even a cursory reading of scripture indicates the inversive and often outright evil nature of this representational complex. But identifying a problem and determining the correct solutions are not the same thing.

Plastering the Sistine Chapel with naked men because "classical" probably didn't help.

Other factors are more subtle. The same schism we just mentioned was driven by monarchical politics. In particular the machinations of the King of France. It’s no coincidence that the papacy relocated to Avignon, and that the Avignon popes refused to cede power once Rome was restored. Treating the papacy as a political football was a direct consequence of the developments covered in our earlier render unto Caesar posts.

Blurring the lines between Church and monarchy was a dagger blow to spiritual authority.

Unknown artist, after Holbein, The Family of Henry VIII, around 1543-1547, Hampton Court Palace

This becomes apparent in a Reformation context when blasphemous obscenity Henry VIII declared himself a spiritual authority.

Here's a familiar pose, only instead of a gentle Madonna on the luxurious carpet, it's an obese serial murderer.

Then there is that larger social direction. That unrequited desire for an ever-more personal Christianity that was a subtext of this post.

And what’s the personal but solipsism?

On the one hand, it is easy to see how the late medieval system could lead to spiritual insecurity. Luther’s simple method of justification by faith cut through the complex web of ritual and priestly corruption with a reassuring message of salvation. One built on Jesus’ own words in scripture and not towers of spurious medieval addenda. While bypassing the increasingly intense drive for visceral devotion that clearly wasn't meeting the public's spiritual longing.

Arm Reliquary, around 1230 from the Meuse Valley, South Netherlands, silver, gilded silver, niello, and gems; wood core, Metropolitan Museum of Art

A reliquary was a case for the display of relics - this one has windows to see the saint's bones. The blessing gesture allowed the priest to hold it up as if the actual saint was blessing the adoring crowd. It's designed to blur the divide between material and spiritual, representational and real - like an even more visceral version of a Netherlandish painting.

A lot of pilgrimage was idolatrous. Many relics were fake, as Chaucer noted. Snake oil was abundant. In terms of sociological history, the Reformation is a logical outcome of the Modern Devotion and other forms of personal, affective piety.

This is where representation comes in - not just art, but Christianity itself as a representational complex.

Consider Luther’s famous “priesthood of all believers” and the idea of sola scriptura. The idea is to put the Bible into Christian hands and allow them to apply what is there directly to their lives. Sounds good. Then where does the authority of self-idolators like Calvin - let alone Henry VIII - to blend and usurp God's and Caesar's come from? The Bible tells us that we judge by the fruits. While the Reformation deserves credit for spreading the Gospel, it also became a vector for self-declared spiritual authorities to claim absolute power.

Lucas Cranach the Younger, The Last Supper, 1565, oil on canvas, Johanniskirche, Dessau

Where does the authority come from? The self-idolatrous "authorities" claim it for themselves.

In this "Reformation" altarpiece, leading reformers usurp the roles of the Apostles at the Last Supper. That is, precisely what they weren't.

And when the “leaders” directly contradict sola scriptura, should there be a shock when the flock does as well?

What was positioned as a return to founding values gradually morphed into a license to do as thou wilt. So long as you have a "church". This isn't interpretation - a cursory glance at the leading Protestant denominations today is enough to indicate that it's what happened. Of course there are exceptions. There always are. But that gate is narrow. And the core problem - apart from the fallen nature of man and the world - has proven consistent with Christianity of any denomination. Onto-epistemological category error.

Either the Bible is accepted on faith as divinely inspired, or it isn’t.

If it isn’t, what authority does it have?

If it is, on what grounds does one claim the right to pick and choose which parts to follow and which to disregard?

It's not complicated. It's just not a ticket to worldly power. The next Arts of the West post will look at the aftermath of Reformation – and Renaissance – in the later 16th century.

Until then, here's another look at that visceral spirituality designed to connect directly and emotionally. The direct face-to-face appeal is especially powerful. It didn't get the job done, but is an important chapter in the Arts of the West.

Unknown, Christ Carrying the Cross and The Crucifixion, 1494, oil on panel, Atlanta, The High Museum of Art

The Case of Christianity - Wrapping up Centralization in Art & Faith... for Now

2021-09-20T08:05:00.001-07:00

Centralization and representation are Christian necessities. They're also inherent vulnerabilities. Here's what went sideways and what to consider for future restoration. In faith and culture.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Time to wrap up the centralization in art and faith detour. It was important because we are looking for the historical roots of the dumpster fire that is “official” modern culture. We’re looking at art because you can… well… look at it.

Art expresses culture. It represents ideas and values that surround it then transmits them to future onlookers. Including us. It’s more complex – the values tend to be the elite, not the masses. But the elite have been driving this clown car. Figuring out how they went from

Carl Albert von Lespilliez, Ballroom, 1765-1770, Schaezlerpalais, Augsburg

Kengo Kuma & Associates, Aix en Provence Conservatory of Music, 2013

is worthwhile.

It’s been a long journey just to get here. But the Renaissance – meaning the time period, not the beast “historical construct” proved a major inflection point. And in looking at how art began the road to centralization, we realized some things about the representational nature of societal constructs.

The whole arts of the West journey is heading to an arbitrary target – the Armory Show of 1913. This was the symbolic arrival of European Modernism in America. We suspect the official story won’t be any truer that previous official stories we’ve looked at. But it is an influential thing that happened at a point that nicely prequels into the World War One posts and closes this circle of posts. We’re not willing to tackle the 20th century systematically at this point. There is too much wizardry and obfuscation around the historical record for even the limited depth we go into.

Consider what the Band does and...

Come on.

Anyhow.

In order to invert, art has to be centralized – that is, defined as a “thing” distinct from the rest of culture. It needs rules other than the raw ontological formulation of logos + techne. It’s in the Renaissance where genius artists and humanist theories concoct the foundations of this stand-apart art theory. That's what makes it such a huge step in the degeneration process - despite the quality and beauty of some of the art. Wait until we get to "Mannerism". The point is you have now established a secular transcendence as the basis of cultural expression through beauty. A set of man-made subjective desires impossibly masquadering as “objective” theoretical rules. It's false, but effective if people accept and act as if the rules were objective truth.

This is unnoticed for a while. Until it isn’t.

This is the graphic visualizing what appears to be gradual change along a continuum "suddenly" becoming the inverse of what it started as.

This is a critically important process to understand to grasp how subversion becomes full inversion.

Then we realized that the formula - [complex material representation of an immaterial abstract] replacing [the abstract] wasn’t limited to art. It's a ubiquitous reality of the perversion of bottom-up organic culture formation into the centralized oppression of the beast system. One more time for emphasis. It's that important.

A representational complex created to connect people with something intangible gets treated as if it was the original intangible referent

Since the representation is now taken as an end in itself, it is no longer bound to the terms or qualities of the thing it was originally created to represent. And once the representation - an arbitrary man-made creation - is decoupled from any external objective truth, it can be turned into anything anything. It's claims have become recursive and solipsistic - ie. false. But that doesn't matter if people continue to accept it as if it still were a truthful expression of what it no longer expresses. Art goes from Logos+Techne to whatever the Art! narrative engineers say it is. "Health care" becomes whatever corrupt, bought-and-paid-for administrative flacks need to push for their overlords. And Christianity becomes the inversions of Bible-rejecting luciferian materialists.

Michelangelo's Delphic Sibyl on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Bible doesn't explicitly state "don't paint pagan seers and nudes on church ceilings" so some moral reasoning is required.

It's not whether some sibyline prophecy came true. Fortune cookie messages sometimes are accurate. It's that the Sistine Chapel images construct a Christian history of Creation from Genesis to the Last Judgment. Adding pagan extras to a scriptural history that rejects them and their source of "insight" alters Christian metaphysics to include things that aren't Christian. Pretending pagan witches share the same divine sanction as Biblical prophets opens the path of making up whatever they want and calling it Christianity. Because once the representation is no longer restricted to Jesus' message, it's begun to replace that holy referent with do what thou wilt.

They don't stop a faithful Christian from being saved. But they show the formation of a "church" where salvation happens in spite of official positions. Which is a problem...

Consider how modern Christianity is as inverted as !Art– churchianity is also a form putting the representation before the referent. It’s another secular transcendence, even if the idolaters don’t recognize it. So inversive processes in the church is a relevant topic for understanding the inversion of the West today. It isn't the same as art, but it’s the same ontological pattern.

The Band defines the arts of the West as Logos+Techne. Truth and technical skill. The truth in art can be many things – including the highest level is ultimate reality. It's why the Church was a major promotor of the arts of the West. Art was a vehicle for representing immaterial Truths to a wide audience. That makes religious art a good indicator of degenerative trends in the contemporary church.

Upper Rhenish Manuscript Illumination with the Annunciation in an Initial R, from a Gradual, around 1300, tempera, ink and gold on parchment, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Take the Annunciation for example. It's always been a popular theme in religious art because the Incarnation is the central element in the Christian metaphysics of redemption. It's a joyful subject, and ties into the growing importance of Mary in the medieval Church. A major part in any life of Jesus or Mary cycle [click for a good piece on Annunciation symbolism in the Middle Ages].

Here's one from Switzerland with the basics. Gabriel announces to Mary while something - usually a dove - represents the arrival of the Son.

Fra Angelico, Annunciation, 1426, tempera on panel, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Here's one from a Florentine Renaissance master. There's International Gothic beauty and it's a bigger and more complex scene. There main elements are all clearly present. The changes only enhance the presentation.

Philippe de Champaigne, The Annunciation, 1644, oil on canvas,

The French Classical master adds a little baroque light and drama - it is the 1600s after all. The style keeps changing with the taste of the day. But the message is consistent. As is the formula - art = Logos+Techne.

Carl Heinrich Bloch, The Annunciation, 1880s, oil on canvas, Frederiksborg Palace, Copenhagen

Bloch is a Danish artist that missed the Modernism memo. He's added some Romantic luminosity and made Mary more awestruck. It's a different interpretation of the scene, but fully consistent with the meaning of the event. Logos and techne.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation, 1898, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art

American Tanner painted his after a trip to the Holy Land and went for a realist approach to Mary. He maxed out the contrast be presenting Gabriel as a beam of light. The supernatural symbols aren't there, but it's a faithful and respectful telling.

Now in between Bloch and Tanner we get a different variation on the Annunciation. Heading down that modern road of de-moralization and inversion.

Arthur Hacker, The Annunciation, 1892, oil on canvas,

Making celebratory religious themes weirdly inappropriate or disturbing is one entry to inversion. Like depicting Mary as an ugly anorexic Ferengi with an eroticized Gabriel in some bizarre opium garden.

An essential thing to keep in mind with inversion is why do it this way? Why in the history of joyous Annunciations would you make it off-putting and uncomfortable? Inversion doesn't happen in one shot. There is still considerable techne here. But the logos is gone...

Angelo Biancini, The Annunciation, 20th century, laquered trash, Museum of Modern Religious Art, Vatican Museum

Modernism comes with the jettisoning of techne too. Just some crappy modern "religious art" from the Vatican Museum.

It's always jarring when you look at modern Art! after seeing other things.

Now - of all these artists and styles, guess which one has his own dedicated room in the Vatican Museum...

A good indicator of degenerative trends in the contemporary church.

Both art and church decline for the same reasons – representation replaces referent. The problem is that representations – no matter how well intentioned – are just material signs. Their link to higher realities is referential not existential. If the Church or art replace what they were created to represent, then they’re ontologically empty husks. ![Christ’s saving message] or ![Logos and culture] reference only themselves. Christianity or art reduced to nothing more than the cluster of material signs.

And the material world is entropic, Fallen, and invariably ends in death.

The historical developments of art and church are totally different. Different timelines, socio-cultural positions, purposes, etc. But consider the pattern at the general level. Art as a designated area of culture production and the church as a designated vehicle for Christianity are extensive, complex, socio-cultural creations that represent the immaterial in accessible, practical material form. Things that weren’t visible or obvious become so. Despite their myriad differences, both are representations in the broadest sense.

The word art came from ars and carries connotations of knowledge - of objective truth.

Sandro Botticelli, A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts, around 1484, fresco, Louvre Museum

The Band's formation – Logos+Techne or L+T – is the skillful material expression of an immaterial abstraction. The skill in distinguished art from mere symbols. These can overlap – works of art can be symbols. And the nature of the skilled making can vary. Preferences in materials, techniques, media, etc. are culturally determined and depend on time and place.

Church comes from ekklesia and means Christian gathering.

The reference here is much loftier than the broad truths of art. Because the church represents knowledge of ultimate reality via Christ’s message – the ontologically highest and most remote level.

Artworks can also represent ultimate reality – it’s why the church uses art. The point isn’t to define these as mutually exclusive. They’re too unalike in structure and socio-cultural place for that. It’s to recognize both as representational complexes that were intended to make the immaterial or otherworldly accessible. Yes, we can read an authoritative representation of Christ’s message and ministry in the Bible. But the church transforms it into a lived, historically contextualized and relatable form. It also provides the venue for collective activities like baptism and fellowship that the Bible calls for but require more than one reader.

The differences go beyond the nature of the referent – they’re historical and formal too. Art only begins to appear as a distinct cultural area in the later Middle Ages. And it doesn’t start getting theoretically formalized until the Renaissance – when organic picture-making is jacked by secular transcendence-huffing humanists.

Jean-Baptiste Martin, L'Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, 1712-1721, oil on canvas, Louvre

Once theoretical apparatus comes into existence, the extended representation develops – places, people, rules, etc. The Logos and then the techne are completely replaced in Modernism.

The church begins organizing right away. The Book of Acts and the following Epistles picks up in the immediate aftermath of the Ascension and shares a lot about the earliest efforts to spread the Word. The following epistles address practical applications of Jesus' message. There's obviously more to them, but it's clear that Christian organization was a necessary consequence of growth in ways that it wasn't for art. As the Gospel spreads into new contexts, the time since Jesus lengthens, and external pressures come to bear, message consistency is imperative.

Sir James Thornhill, Paul Preaching in the Areopagus, 1729-31, oil on canvas, Royal Academy, London

Jesus’ message is fixed and specific in ways that the more flexible logos of art is not. And the stakes are infinitely higher – existentially high. Hence message consistency and order, dispute resolution and teaching. All things that don’t apply to picture-making in the same way.

This means that dogmatic materialism is a threat to the church from the jump, while it only poisons the arts of the West much later.

Dogmatic materialism meaning a subset of secular transcendence that refers to representations, not a "philosophical school". The Band doesn't care at all if a Philosopher's Name & some arbitrary jabbering have been appended to a noun. If secular transcendence is the false pretense that timeless abstractions inhere in temporal reality, dogmatic materialism refers to the false pretense that timeless abstractions inhere in material representations. Specifically man-made things, rather than material reality in general. With art, it was 'what the theories say' rather than L+T, and that took a while.

With the church it was clearly a concern from the start.

Anonymous, Paul in Athens, oil on canvas, 19th century, private

When Christianity spread into the Greco-Roman world, it encountered an image culture that was unique in antiquity. Not even the Persians or Egyptians had adapted painted, sculpted, carved, drawn, mosaic, and what ever other kind of image into every aspect of life.

The establishment of the new religion in this image-centric environment is the most likely explanation for the appearance of Christian art by the end of the 2nd century.

The point is not to imply church and art are “the same”. One is an existential necessity, the other a visual form of cultural expression and communication. What is the same is the ontological pattern – complex representation of something abstract and timeless. And since the representation is necessarily made out of fallen, entropic, ever-changing material reality, it is under continual pressure to corrupt. Because fallen nature is corrupted, despite the unchanging nature of the referent.

This brings in another observation – moral entropy. This is what we call the inherent Fallen human tendency to degrade morally over time without continual effort to the contrary. It’s basically the slippery slope applied to personal moral positions. Yesterday’s transgressive becomes today’s norm. We already considered it in the avant-garde-counterculture pattern – where what was the cutting edge of edgy becomes the new baseline.

Juni Ba, Chasing the Dragon, digital art

Chasing the dragon, diminishing returns, familiarity breeds contempt, when the thrill is gone - lots of words for it. It's the inversion of positive improvement traits like natural resistance or strength and conditioning.

But it's even more basic across generations. Your parents' hard-won "liberties" are your boring norm. Unless ~~liberties~~ tearing down norms aren't elevated to "principles". Like cultural traditions as a counter for moral emtropy.

Moral entropy is one of the empirically observable symptoms of the Fall. A physical pattern in the material world of human behavior that we can see.

Cultures always have transgressors – it’s an equilibrium between moral structures and the morally entropic human tendency to push against them. It’s only recently that the idea of moral structure altogether was removed and replaced with pure relativism. Do what thou wilt. The rapid degeneration since the second half of the 20th century – when compared to past eras – is a result of replacing the equilibrium of rules and self-will with pure self-will. With no corrective standard, the beast system is in a death spiral. What follows? A return to moral strictures or authoritarian tyranny. But “freedom” is a fake construct that unchecked must end in anarchy and a new order. Or an extinction event.

You can see the parallel with physical entropy – both physically and spiritually, the Fallen world points only to dissolution and death.

Moral entropy ensures that moral message consistency is neither a neutral state or naturally occurring. The natural state is an active tendency towards corruption. Like physical entropy

If standards aren’t actively upheld, degeneration is inevitable until something again forces order.

Jesus’ message is a radical rejection of entropic, fallen worldly blandishments for the abstract and timeless Kingdom of the Father. The render unto Caesar-render unto God division of the worldly and heavenly authority is only the political part of it. He excoriates “religious authorities” that put gesture and ritual over the will of God until they plot his death. There is nothing of metaphysical substance in material stuff. Neither the prestige-chasing of the Pharisees or Paul's statues and temples "made with hands". All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again (Ecclesiastes 3:20).

Band readers know from the Ontological Hierarchy that the Law alone is will fail.

Gustave Doré, Moses Breaks the Tables of the Law (Ex. 32:19), 1866, engraving from Doré's English Bible

The Old Covenant was based on fallen, subjective, entropic people maintaining an abstract, timeless, unchanging standard. On the one hand, they “chose” not to live up to it. On the other, the inherent impossibility of secular transcendence - of absolutes inhering in finite material - means they couldn't succeed if they wanted to. The Old Testament represents that the Fallen nature of man precludes measuring up to absolute standards on our own.

Paolo Veronese, Baptism of Christ, around 1580, oil on canvas, Pitti Palace, Florence

Jesus reaffirms the Law, but the mechanism of grace – repentance and forgiveness of sins – compensates for fallen material limits. True intent becomes all important – only God can know the heart, so only God knows if repentance and belief are sincere.

This is the opposite of pubic gestures that are purported representations of an inner state. Because we know representation can lie.

The New Covenant puts your salvation in your hands. Believe and repent when you fall short or don’t. No magic words, no magic rituals – either faith or not. Which is great until socio-cultural representations need to be made to ensure message consistency and guide Christian life.

The core issues were worked out over the last few posts.

Centralization is the inevitable consequence of any broad social complex once it grows past a certain size. Simple effectiveness needs some structural organization for execution and oversight. But this is also inevitably corrupting because centralized structures place many under the command of one or few. It’s much easy to subvert, jack, and invert a small command node then persuade or coerce everyone individually.

Centralized systems also reinforce the commanding authority by group conformity and the pressures and coercion that comes with that.

When full centralized autocracy reaches a point of full inversion there is no path within the system to assert truth or oppose evil and lies.

Representation and Inversion looked at what is involved in translating immaterial objective truth into entropic material form. Representation is referentially similar to and ontologically different from the reference at the same time. This makes it complicated.

Referential similarity is what makes communication possible. How we can know anything outside of direct experience and “understand” anything at all. This means representations have to have some degree of familiarity. They need to be recognizable to be meaningful – from numbers to socialized behavior. Variations in the familiar express novel ideas or events.

To describe this orange implies knowledge of concepts like the orange color, a circle, and pebbled texture.

To recognize the picture means being able to associate a two-dimensional likeness with a 3d object.

That's representation - neither the all the same nor completely disconnected from the referent.

When you think about it, communicative and representational processes are way more fundamental, fluid, complex, and amazing than theorists of any kind recognize. Whether they're pretending there's nothing to reality but representations or that representations can be taken as totally interchangeable with represented reality. And it's one thing when the both are material things - at least a picture of an orange and an orange look somewhat alike. It's even more acute when the referent is immaterial - like Christian Truth. Substituting the material representation for the immaterial referent in the mind of the perceiver opens the door to secular transcendence.

It's clearer when you can see it.

The target of devotion is Jesus who I know through the church

becomes

The target of devotion is the church - or something in it like a picture or rite

Diego Velázquez, detail of Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

An artist combines techne and Logos to make beauty

becomes

Thomas Hoepker, Willem De Kooning in his East Hampton studio, 1997, archival pigment print, Galeria de Babel

An artist follows theorist’s rules to degrade culture.

And because they’re not the same, the representation doesn’t have to be referentially accurate. Representations can lie. They can claim to be expressing one thing while actually expressing something else. This is what makes mistaking representational complexes for their referents so deadly – it can point you directly away from the thing you think it’s communicating.

The lesson...

Centralized inversion needs representational complexes

to control and invert.

Like the PST. Invert the central control and the body has a hard time not following. Most of it anyhow.

If artists organically work out ways to express logos through techne that appeals to their communities, there is no way to invert them all. If artists serve a theoretical complex called Art! that imposes top-down rules and controls the purse strings, then you have a representation that doesn’t have to express logos or anything else. It’s centralized representation. And if the overseers direct it towards degenerative ugliness and lies, representation becomes inversion. Actual art is untouched in the abstract, but new venues will be needed.

Change vs. Meaningful Change looked at how the centralized inversion of representational complexes happens. All secular transecendence is based on the self-idolizing lie – knowingly or not – that abstract absolutes can inhere qua themselves in temporal entropic matter or fallen subjective human minds. Centralized representational complexes being taken for their referents then perverted into dyscivic inversions.

Expand the diagram

1. Truth is represented

It can't be perceived directly so signs or sign complexes are necessary

2. The representation is taken for the truth

Because it's the representation - and not the immaterial truth - that people see, they think of the representation as the

3. The representation is inverted

Once the external referent has been gotten rid of, there is nothing to stop the representation from becoming whatever the controller says it is.

The catch is that the now-disconnected and inverted representation is still presented as standing for the Truth it disconnected from and inverted. In the case of "the Church", Jesus' message becomes whatever the narrative engineers want it to be.

The core lie in this process is material timelessness - an aspect of secular transcendence or the fallacy that infinite things can inhere in finite materiality. It's not just religion - consider how often you hear things like endless love, forever and ever, happily ever after, etc. In most cases, professing a human thing is fundamentally changeless is just metaphorical. No one expected Romeo and Juliette to literally live forever, even if they managed to successfully elope and start a new life elsewhere. But when it comes to religion, too many liars suggest magic words and talismans have real metaphysical power on their own.

The thing is, we know the material world is temporal and constantly changing on every level.

Consider a person – over the course of life we never stop changing.

There is continuity of consciousness, but beliefs and opinions, perceptions of the world, and appearance change. Sometimes totally. We go places and do things that we can't remember and others that we would change if we could. We are the same in terms of biological continuity - genetic makeup, etc. But we are in constant flux by any other metric.

There can’t be “timeless” material representations. But what there can be is message consistency through the changes. Look at these scenes - one from the oldest discovered house church, the other from the 19th-century Russian master of water.

Jesus and Peter walk on water from the Dura-Europos house church, between 233-256, fresco, Yale University Art Gallery; Ivan Aivazovsky, Jesus Walking on Water, 1888, oil on canvas, private

The two are completely different in style, materials, and organization. But they depict the same thing in ways that don't contradict the Biblical miracle. If you accept the legitimacy of non-idolatrous Christian art, both of these are acceptable representations of the story. Despite looking totally different. The issue isn’t whether things change – they have to. What matters is whether the core message – the referent – continues to be conveyed or is inverted into something else. That is, whether the change is meaningful or not.

The same holds for art.

The Annunciation from a Book of Hours in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum, around 1460, private; Albert Bierstadt, El Capitan, Yosemite, 19th century, oil on canvas, private

The International Gothic and American Sublime are both historic efforts to visualize metaphysical glory. Both require refined skill in well-defined stylistic areas. This means both are examples of Logos+techne - the Band's definition of the arts of the West. They're art. But they don't look the same.

Things are always changing - what matters is message consistency.

And in a material reality defined by continual flux and change, Band readers know how to avoid lies and reject inversion. Moral reasoning.

By the fruits.

Compatibility vs. necessity – making representations, managing changes, and maintaining message consistency lead here. That is, distinguishing what is essential to the referent from what is incidental. Remember the critical point that seems perpetually forgotten - representation and referent are ontologically different. Reference means understanding something through something else that is not the same.

This means that the inevitable differences can’t pertain to the core meaning or nature of the referent. They have to be incidental and not contradict key points. Take a Biblical text example - a snippet from Matthew 7:21. First the NIV and KJV versions side-by-side

does the will of my Father

doeth the will of my Father

Already we can see two different representations - two character strings that don't look the same - that mean the same thing. Then consider the Greek - with a literal translation provided.

ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Πατρός μου

doing the will the Father of me

A string of completely different characters and another different looking English version. Not one is the same representation as another, and the Greek is utterly distinct. But they're all consistent with Christ’s message. The representations are different or changing but in ways that stay compatible with the necessities of the referent.

Christ heals a possessed man in the synagogue of Capernaum, 11th century, Romanesque fresco in Lambach Abbey, Austia; The Sermon on the Mount from the Holkham Bible Picture Book, 1327-1335, British Library Additional 47682 f.23

It doesn't matter if the message is delivered indoors or in a field. Nor would it matter if Jesus were wearing a sweater or a jacket rather than his robes.

Changes in representations that stay compatible with the necessities of the referent are incidental.

"It’s ok to venerate idols" or "you can expect to be saved without believing in the Son of Man" contradict aspects of Christ’s message. Believe in me and obey the Commandments. Representations that assert such things change in ways that are incompatible with the necessities of the referent. They’ve become representations of something else. And if you expect church to be a conduit to the salvation promised by Christ’s message, you’re in existential trouble.

Centralization, Representation and Inversion, Change vs. Meaningful Change, and Compatibility vs. Necessity are a chain of topics that form a template and argument for moral reasoning.

Su Blackwell, book sculpture

In a fallen world of constant change, representations of truths do not share the inherent truthfulness of the truths they claim to represent. They might be compatible, or they might lie. Jesus told us to judge by the fruits – whether the messenger is consistent with what they are supposed to be messaging.

Being clear on the dangers of centralization, the difference between representation and reality, and the relationship between change and necessity are how you can do that.

Church refers to a vast complex of designated people and things founded on unchanging and immaterial authority. The seeds of trouble are there from the beginning. Jesus message is a radical rejection of worldly blandishments and status. Again and again he castigates authorities that that put religious representation – public prayer and gesture, hierarchy, etc. above God’s Law.

The End of Herod, 11th century, Romanesque fresco in Lambach Abbey, Austria

Consider what finally kills Herod after all his monstrous crimes.

And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost. Acts 12:21-23

But on the other hand, authority is inherently necessary also - especially as the socio-material representational complex grows. Ananias and Simon Magus are struck down for violating the principles of the developing faith. The apostles spread the Good News around the ancient world. Hence the need for representational message consistency grows alongside Christianity itself.

Guido di Graziano, Fall of Simon Magus, between 1278-1302, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena

Caesar on the left, rightful Christian authority on the right, and false spiritual power plunging to its death.

So it isn't a question of leadership or not, but the correct leadership. And how do we assess this? The way Jesus tells us to - by the fruits.

As Christianity spreads through Greece and into Rome it encounters totally different cultures from the Biblical roots. Peter and Paul weren’t Roman, but their church was. This means the changing representation “church” forms in the assumptions and structures of Imperial Rome. It’s hard to overstate the differences between the later empire and the world of the Old Testament.

Roberto Bompiani, A Roman Feast, late 19th century, oil on canvas, Getty Center

And not just the alien politics and morals of divine emperors & the moldering carcass of Romanitas. The Greco-Roman tradition had developed an entire culture around the making and use of images. There are Arts of the West post that looked at some of that, but those barely scratched the surface. Think of Greek myth with bronze men and Medusa's literally petrifying face. The invention of theater arts and painting figures and scenes on most anything. The Roman ancestor busts and depictions of gods in every house. Public statues, painting, mosaics everywhere. Artists getting famous and winning prizes, whole branches of writing devoted to art and artists... It's crazy. when you really think about it. Images were woven into every part of life.

From imperial altars like the Augustan Ara Pacis to private homes like the Aldobrabdini Wedding - ancient Roman culture was steeped in images. Early Roman Christians quickly start figuring out visual symbolism for their new religion.

The image culture that had developed around religion by the first century was more extensive than anything in the ancient Biblical Middle East. Religion was statue-based, from the cult idols of the gods to the ubiquitous images of the divine emperor. Hard to get much further in spirit from the Second Commandment.

Roman cult statuette of Kybele, 1st–2nd century AD, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Small-scale version of the main cult image of a Anatolian goddess that became popular in the Greco-Roman world. Many of these copies exist and were used by individual worshippers. It was believed that the invisible essence of a god could temporarily occupy a cult statue, making them available to hear prayers.

Emperor Augustus as Jupiter, 1st century AD, marble, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersberg, Pharaoh Senwosret III, 1836-1818 BC, granite, Brooklyn Museum

The Roman cult of the divine emperor fits into this image-based religion. The idea that the king becomes a god and is accessible by statues is an older - it goes back to Egypt. The Romans brought it into the origins of the West like many Egyptian ideas. Different style, same concept.

Antinous as Osiris from Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, 130 AD, Louvre Museum

Don't take our word for it. Here's Hadrian's "divinized" rent boy in the guise of ~~Val Kilmer~~ an Egyptian god. Roman image culture, Egyptomania, and degeneracy in one image.

Not hard to see why a strict early Christian apologist like Tertullian (155-220 AD) would emphasize the importance of not worshipping images.

Quote from Tertullian, Against Marcion, Book II, Ch. 22; Johann König, The Brazen Serpent, between 1601 and 1642, oil on canvas, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Tertullian is sometimes positioned as an iconoclast, when is position is better described as anti-idolatry. The Band suspects that imagery was too endemic in late imperial society to reject it altogether. What was necessary was to rule out misuse. That is, the worship of cult statues, depictions of divine emperors, and other idols. Purely semiotic or representational images were acceptable. They have to be - all communication or understanding is representational.

As previously noted, the idea of a scriptural canon in predicated on faith. There is no other way to confer abstract truth on a textual representation that came into the world through human hands at a knowable point in time. Likewise, there has to be a means of differentiating the true message from misleading contemporaries. Again, don't take our word for it - here are Paul's epistles from the New Testament.

Joseph-Benoît Suvée, The Predication of Saint Paul, 1779, oil on canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Just three examples of the message consistency that is a recurring theme in his letters. Of course, one doesn't have to listen to Paul, but if they claim to be a Christian, they need to present an argument as to why their personal judgment supersedes scriptural canon in authority. That is, how they are not the seducing spirits following their own lusts that he cautions about. And if they can exert editorial authority over scriptural canon, which books are truthful? Obvious nonsense is obvious. And yes, we are aware of Luther engaging in this editorial retardery in his Bible translations.

It's simple objective observation that the Christian accepts certain texts as divinely-inspired truth. Scriptural canon is a hard border. There is no shortage of ostensive early Christian works that are roughly contemporary with the Bible but were left out for varying reasons. One is free to treat these as all historical sources, but then they aren't Christian dogma.

Many such works are included among the famous Dead Sea Scrolls (seen on the left) or the Nag Hammadi Library. These are historically interesting, but their exclusion from scriptural canon fundamentally distinguishes them from the Bible.

At some point, the faith-based epistemology of ultimate reality has to rest on something accessible to material minds. For Christians, that is canonical scripture.

The later epistles in the New Testament describe the activities of the apostles in the formation of early Christian communities. Paul refers to "church" as meaning both local Christian groups - Thessalonians, Philippians, etc. - and the universal body of Christ. One is geographical and cultural, the other theological. This is the reason "church" predates formalized scripture. But the Christian communities Paul describes are so different from the Constantine and the imperial church as to be almost unrecognizable.

It's how we get Jesus in Imperial purple enthroned on the world in a 6th-century mosaic from San Vitale in Ravenna. He is king of heaven, but the inclusion of the courts of Emperor Justinian and Theodora in the lower corners as "parallels" is a satanic inversion that contradicts the Biblical distinction between heaven and earth. Or God's and Caesar's in an earlier post.

And Paul continually warns about false disciples muddying the waters with bogus dogmas. Message consistency was a problem before the Bible canon was formed!

We don't have names for these deceivers, but there is plenty of variety - and heresy - in the writings of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The intellectual culture of late antique Alexandrea has come up in occult and regular posts as a hive of synchrony. Even before Christianity, Philo of Alexandria was trying to marry Neoplatonism with Judaism. Later it became a hub of Hermetic and Neoplatonic thought. Check out the occult post link at the top of the site for more.

It wasn't all bad - typological exegesis was and remains a useful way to relate the two testaments. But even this sort of allegorical reading will be corrupted by applying it to extra-Biblical sources. And not just Hermes Trismegistus, the Sibylline Oracles and the rest. The blasphemous installation of the emperor as "image of Christ" is a Neoplatonic perversion.

Vasily Sazonov, Saints Constantine and Helena present the Holy Cross, before 1870

The good news is none of this necessarily contradicts the message of the Gospels. If the ruler simply maintains a moral social order and protects the church - the body of believers - then his grandiose claims don't interfere with individual salvation.

All societies have ways of organizing and doing things. The problem is when men begin to impose on the relationships Jesus laid out in ways that don't just add social obligations, but alter the thrust of scriptural canon and the early works of the apostles.

It's during the Renaissance that a lot of early Christian heterodoxy is reinserted back into the Church. The central factor is the humanist fallacy that old = true. This fueled the raw idiocy that "classical antiquity" was epistemologically purer than the Christian Middle Ages that they invented as a period. And this ultimately led to the idea of a "first theology" that would unify Christian thought with paganism. We've gone over this enough times in earlier posts. What matters here is that b.s. early Christian texts also became "authoritative" on account of being old. Any onto-epistemologically coherent Christian metaphysics would greet quotations from imperial sycophants like Lactantius with a resounding "who cares".

Antonio Federighi, Eritrean Sibyl, 1456, marble, Orvieto cathedral

You know it's the Renaissance when pagan witches start turning up in houses of Christian worship. But to the Renaissance ~~proto-luciferians~~ humanists, these were "sources" to raise ~~demonic priestesses~~ sibyls to the status of Old Testament prophets! Thus "proving" "Christian" truth is not exclusively Biblical. Not tradition-based either. But rather something open to arbitrary revision by random sinners.

“We’re not idolators and pagans – Lactantius said it’s ok!” [click for link]. And Lactantius can’t be a blaspheming liar, imperial flack shill, or reeking pile of feces because he’s “early Christian”! So we get to have paganism in the church!

The only reason to recessitate long forgotten self-pleasurers and liars is subversion. To muddy the legitimate scriptural waters with “other old dudes that said different”. There is literally nothing inherent in the date of writing that correlates ontologically with truth. The Renaissance aim was an early example of the ongoing satanic attempt to pervert Christian truth with a fake universalism that is contradictory by definition. All the unitarianisms and ecumenicisms that follow walk in the same brimstone-reeking hoofprints.

It hasn't stopped. Including the sulferous reek.

The error is an epistemological one. Christianity doesn’t make age of message a metric of truth value. Both the Law and Grace are radical reversals of the old order – the truth is the new. Greco-Roman historiography was based on steady decline, but without a Fall. Steady moral entropy within a constant universe and not an ontological rupture. Thus connecting truth and other moral indices to age in a way that’s opposite Christianity.

The reality is that the litmus test remains the same for all deceivers, regardless of century.

Whenever frauds impose meaningful change on fixed Christian truth, the broad agenda is always the same. Remember - all we have are representations. No one can see God or His will qua God. Limits of discernment are absolute, and anything above the material can only be accommodated materially. We have semiotic references accepted as truthfully referencing the absolute on faith. And since Christ's physical mission ended at a fixed point in time, there is no capacity for addenda. Some religions like Mormonism or Islam claim further revelations, but these make them metaphysically incompatible with Christianity. They are irreconcilably different.

The frauds who push metaphysical alterations or new "mandates" are invariably trying to change existing representation for some personal, subjective, worldly preference for something that isn’t the referent.

Portrait of Alexander VI Borgia, 1490, marble, Bode Museum

Note how Paul describes his suffering and humility in the service of Christ while medieval and Renaissance popes - like the shockingly corrupt Alexander VI Borgia - dwelt in palaces and wore cloth of gold.

This happens when fake “sources” and "authorities supplement or alter the original representations while calling themselves the same thing. External objective referent - representation of Christ and his message - is subverted into subjective internal desire. Whether Neoplatonic image-emperors or Imperial popes. The new representations pay lip service to the truth, but do what thou wilt. Meaningful change ensues.

Which is how you wind up with things like the 4th-century invention of clerical celibacy in direct contradiction of the Bible (1Timothy 1-13).

Either the Bible is divinely-inspired Truth or it's just another book. Both are faith-based beliefs, and are mutually exclusive.

The problem for the modern West is that representation has largely supplanted referent in institutional Christianity of all stripes. The contemporary Catholic hierarchy is an abomination. The only path forward is the Sedeprivationist one, though it still requires metaphysical faith in human material activities that are a) historically identifiable as acts of human agents and b) changes from either scripture or the first Christian centuries. This isn't "opinion", it's objective historical observation.

Pierre Subleyras, Benedictus XIV, 1741, oil on canvas, Palace of Versailles

If a 18th-century pope can transform the terms of canonization, then the nature of the relationship between man and God is mutable. Don't take our word for it - the Vatican describes how something can become different and still be the same. This is an admission that the church traffics in representations, not the essence of God qua God. That is timeless and eternal. The form of representation called "saint" changes as representations do.

What matters is that the new representation represents the same thing it did before.

The essential point is that idolatry refers putting something man-made ahead of God rather than representing something of God truthfully. Shifting the sort of figure officially singled out as an example of ultimate holiness doesn't contradict Jesus' message - so long as the standard remains legitimate holiness. There is no formal canonization in the Bible, so saints accommodate - represent - "exemplary piety" in material terms. And the material is constant change. What matters is that the changing material representation remains compatible and with the spiritual referent. That is remains Christian.

The Sedeprivationist position is that recent changes in the Church do meaningfully turn away from scriptural and / or traditional Truth. They are not Christian. They are heretical, and promulgating them costs the perpetrators their positions. The institutional "seats" of authority are empty because the impostors claiming them have no right to do so.

The Sedeprivationist - and Sedevacantist - position is tiny and marginal within the fallen and corrupted official "church". A good sign for the remnant, but damning for the lost followers of the demonic occupiers. The Band assumes that those of legitimate faith may be saved by Jesus' words in the Bible, but we have no authority to speak on that.

Protestantism was supposed to solve the problem of human will imposing on Jesus' message by hewing closely to scriptural canon. Of course Luther kicked that off by altering canon - hardly an auspicious start. Nor did it take long for a "priesthood of all believers" to morph into dueling cults of personality around sociopathic control freaks in pulpits. Today it is difficult to find a Protestant denomination that promotes anything like strict Biblical - or Apostolic - Christianity.

It's as if ditching an indulgence-peddling idolatrous potentiate became carte blanche to do as thou wilt. To the point where the deviations from scripture exceed those offences that triggered the Reformation in the first place.

The inconvenient truth is that Christianity requires representations. There is no other way to transmit Christ's saving message and bridge the ontological gap between ultimate and material reality. And those representations will be temporally and culturally flavored because all representations are. It's inherent in the man-made nature of representation. The challenge is to ensure message consistency - the same referent - while costumes and styles come and go. It's symbiotic, but moral reasoning - the abstract interface between trans-temporal ultimate reality and time-bound material reality - has to be.

The need for message consistency means that some form of centralization is necessary if you want to have functioning Christian institutions. "aFunctioning" meaning truthfully conveying the expressed will of God to the faithful. Even if it opens the possibility for corruption and inversion.

The vault of the 5th-century Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna is a vertical representation of the situation. Individual Christian saints - in the Roman costume of their time - surround a squared dome. In the corners, the structural supports contain symbols of the four Gospels. And at the top, an abstract symbol of the salvation offered by God's universal rule. It's hierarchical, truthful representation. God's will, through scripture, and into Christian life.

Here it is from another angle. Note the solemn appeal of the message consistency that echoes through the ages. Despite differences in architectural and artistic styles and the dress of the Christians.

So the situation is not totally bleak. It never is. The basic charge to believe and keep the commandments doesn't change. The Band has no way of confirming this, but if the Bible is a truthful representation, individual Christians are saved by believing and keeping the commandments. Paul's epistles provide more instruction on the outlines of moral life. Returning to the monarchical medieval Church, we suspect that the faithful were saved in spite of their corrupt and self-worshipping leadership. And since the Truth doesn't actually change, the same is likely true today. Far from ideal, but far better than the institutional alternatives. And something that preserves the possibility that honest representations will rise again.

Idols in the Church Part I - Meanings

2021-07-30T06:30:00.001-07:00

Not long ago Amazonian images were warmly received by "Pope Francis", leading to charges of idolatry. But what makes something an idol? And is the pattern occult?

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog that needs updating. Occult posts like this one - posts on the history and meaning of occult images - have their own menu page above. All posts are in the archive on the right.
Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry.

Raphael, The Sibyls, 1514, fresco, Santa Maria della Pace; Pachamama idol recently used as a monstrance in a Mexican church

Time for an occult post. It’s been a while because the Band is occupied with some fundamentally important philosophical issues that don’t fit the occult post profile. And so much of what the beast system tries to peddle as “factual" knowledge is inverted - ultimately satanic - lies. When entire domains like science, medicine, and sociology dance to fake narratives, it’s hard to distinguish "the occult" from "transparent deception the media expects us to believe".

This makes it difficult to single out symbols like obelisks and red shoes. But it does point to larger occult patterns that could be collectively identified and avoided. Here’s the first in a small series of occult posts looking something that may not seem to be of tremendous general interest. But it involves broad issues that reveal internalized occultism in out crumbling society.

There was some uproar a while back around “Pope Francis” and his reverential treatment of small statues of a fake Amazonian “deity”. This old news now – to us, it just looks like one link in a long un-Christian chain of events surrounding him. But it does raise important questions for understanding the occult. What is an “idol”? Why do they have negative reputations? How can different classes of ritual or “religious” images have completely opposite meanings? And most important, how does detect images & other symbols that point to lies and moral inversion?

The offical obfuscation and evasion around the veneration of these skeezy little idols is enough to indicate something is off.

Anyone with a modicum of familiarity with Catholic or occult practices can see that this isn't random respect-paying to environmental stability or some sort of indigenous insight into societal improvement.

The beast needs you to distrust objective, empirical observation. And it can spin hollow words forever. Ignore the words. Look. Is this a reverential presentation of a non-Christian figure in a church or not?

Remember, when dealing with the occult, we are dealing with master liars. They do seem to have to signal what they are doing, but will never come out and clearly explain. So look for discrepancies in the information patterns. Does the "explanation" not really fit what is happening? Is something clearly noteworthy inexplicably overlooked? That's when you look more closely at what is really going on.

Like a shaman performing a syncretic, non-Christian religious ritual, complete with genuflecting participants - including frauds in habits - and "papal" oversight.

It's easy to get sucked into endless dithering over what it "really means". Until you consider all the alternatives that could have been chosen that didn't involve inverted priestesses and demonic idols.

The correct question is not whether a "justification" can be lawyered up after the fact.

Ask why they chose to do this in the first place...

That's the part that often goes overlooked when beast-dancers try to pass off perverting a sacred charge. Why choose to do something that requires lies and evasion at all? If really the custodian of something as existentially all-important as God's saving grace on earth, it seems demented to even want to push the envelope. Why would you? We know the answer, but too many accept deliberate wickedness as if a random occurrence then try and parse the incoherent justifications. This becomes very different when you remind yourself that the entire thing was intentionally chosen out of the infinite number of alternative possibilities.

It worth repeating - when you see something iffy, ignore the justifications why it's really ok.

Whatever it is that is going on, it was by design. Right down to the inability to clearly and openly explain it within the rules and traditions of the Church.

Inversion is always a choice.

This round of papal idolatry isn't as shockingly egregious as the PST (pope’s satanic throne) because it was smaller scale and quickly over. But it is as profoundly inverted - with the same weird obfuscation and lack of in-depth analysis or explanation. In both cases, it is true that the Church has a deep and extensive culture of art and image use going back to the first Christian centuries. But this – as you may imagine – has been carefully argued and worked out over a long time. And at no point in the centuries-old history of Christian art has there ever been an argument for alien gods to be honored in churches.

And yet, non-Christian figures have a long history of popping up in unlikely places.

Like the inlaid marble mosaic floor of the Siena Cathedral in Italy. This was installed between the 14th and 16th centuries, and consists of 56 panels by around 40 artists. It's a uniquely extensive project of this type. There are scenes from the Old Testament and allegories of virtue, as well as more questionable subjects. Click for an overview.

The famous mosaic of Hermes Trismegistus by Giovanni di Stefano in 1488. We saw the nonsensical "founder of human wisdom" in a series of occult posts looking into this long-running hstorical fake.

Even if he was real - especially if he was real - what is a pagan sage with attributed beliefs that contradict Christian metaphysics doing in a freakin' cathedral?!!?

Hermes isn't alone though. He's accompanied by "the sibyls" - fake antique prophetesses that "Christians" used to adulterate Biblical teachings for centuries. The Libyan Sibyl shown here was by Guidoccio Cozzarelli shortly prior - between 1482-1483.

What's going on here? The short answer is that the Sibylline Oracles were popular among pagans. Early Christians - including legitimate ones like Augustine and frauds like Lactantius and Clement were attempting to appropriate pagan "intellectual credibility" to the Bible. Click for a link to a book that discusses in detail. There is also evidence ancient Jews and Christians made up fake "oracular" texts to disseminate their own ideas.

It's one thing when someone like Augustine addresses the sibyls to understand how they could be demonic and at times correct. As historians we have to understand that early Christianity was defending itself against popular and entrenched religious and philosophical schools. Contextually, late antique Augustine was writing to a late antique audience in late antique terms. But it can become a problem if "early Christian writers" are granted spiritual authority on faith just because of their age. In the wrong hands, all kinds of syncretic crap written by a crypto-pagan flacks like Lactantius can be spun into convenient "sources". And while definitely not mainstream, there was a push in early Christianity - and again in the Renaissance - to get Greco-Roman paganism into the Church.

Times change, but the impulse to pervert the Church with idolatrous fake gods lingers. What changes is the "broader wisdom" currently in fashion.

In the Renaissance it was Greco-Roman Humanism that drove the violation of Christian metaphysics. That's not the cool new learning anymore. The new hotness is a new-agey "environmental" occultism. Sow now it's Amazonian deities. Literally worship of this world. And yes, that's the prince of this world's music.

What is new is honoring the false gods in churches with popes presiding.

As usual, what you think about idols comes around to what you believe. We’ve written an earlier post on how your reaction to the occult will depend on your beliefs. Materialists are as blind to metaphysics as rabbits are to physics. To them, what’s the difference? They’re all just statues religious people use for superstitious reasons – none of which are real. This makes their opinions on the occult worthless - they can’t understand critical differences in meaning because they can’t even see them. Like asking the rabbit to troubleshoot calculations.

The Bible is explicit - Old and New Testaments - that there is only one God. Jesus makes it explicit that belief in him is the only path to salvation. Not only is there no external "wisdom" needed, pretending there is deprives its peddlers of the necessary exclusivity of the Christian message.

From a Christian perspective, Pope Francis' idols aren't looking so good. But there's more to it.

Believers in and haters of idols both recognize the supernatural. Or at least that the idol refers to something supernatural in a sincere way. So we have to take the claims at face value – see how they work or don’t by on their own terms. Do they make sense or are they inverted deception? It seems cut and dried from a Christian perspective – religious pictures depict religious subjects to teach or motivate. Idols depict demonic false gods and may even house their spirits.

The reality is more complicated because it brings in huge subjects. First of which is what exactly is an idol?

David A. Trampier, cover of the 1st edition AD&D Player’s Handbook

This chestnut sums up the sort of thing that comes to mind when someone mentions "idol worship". That or a tiki.

But what an idol is is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider all these...

1. The role of religious images – in theory and in practice and in and out of Christianity.

2. Mythology &what “gods” are.

3. Modern false assumptions about the nature of reality

4. Limited understanding of distant history.

5. What "worship" is.

There's no way to explore all of these – even if we link a few posts. We can make asides if needed – the different type seems to work well for readers to keep them straight. For now, just understand that it's actually a complex topic. The problem with that is that people want simple answers.

The "cursed idols" from The Brady Bunch and Scrubs.

The small idols in pop culture are statuettes or fetishes with magic powers of some kind. A curse, or an evil spirit, etc.

Unfortunately, sometimes complex things can't be simplified. Leading to the final problem – making it easy to fool the simple-minded with snake oil. But complex doesn't have to be hard to understand. It just needs to be broken down into it's component parts.

W could start from any number of places – the benefit of a complex topic is lots of options. For occult purposes start with what idols and/or idolatry are.

Pietro da Cortona, Constantine Ordering the Destruction of Pagan Idols, 1636, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

This painting captures the complexity of the idol as a concept. Here Constantine is shown trampling a broken pagan idol-statue while a statue of Jesus is erected in its place. Early Christians didn't put statues of Jesus on altars. But Pietro is painting in the 1600s and reflects the attitudes of that time. He is trying - with limited success - to make a categorical distinction between legit Christian statues and idols.

This touches on big topic #1. The role of religious images – in theory and in practice and in and out of Christianity.

This painting perfectly captures one of the things that makes idolatry and Christian image use complex. The idol and legitimate image are materially the same - physical representations of figures. But what they mean and how they are understood to be used are utterly different. This explains why it is so easy to confuse or misrepresent the two. And ultimately raises two big issues - what makes an image an idol, and what does it mean to worship or venerate something?

The basis of Christian opposition to idolatry - Abrahamic opposition in general - is rooted in the Second Commandment. Here's the text of it in full with a dramatic image from Gustave Doré's 1866 set of Bible engravings

This is a clear proscription - no exceptions are mentioned. The differences in interpretation all involve what the terms mean, because it can't be a reference to all likenesses - despite the clear wording. God is non-contradictory and before the end of Exodus has provided instructions for making... likenesses. That means there is a contextual distinction at work. It's complicated.

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Moses and Joshua in the Tabernacle, between 1896-1902, gouache on board, The Jewish Museum, New York

Exodus includes instructions for making the Ark of the Covenant. This includes sculptures of two cherubim on the lid. One may distinguish between "graven" and "molten" images in the Bible. But regardless, it is a likeness.

Contextualize. The people of the Bible were surrounded with image-based worship. The worship of multiple gods with statues was standard from the Middle East of the Old Testament to Early Christian Rome. One problem is determining what worship means in reference to specific beliefs or ideas. Some ancient religious imagery was used representationally - as a signifier of something else and not itself supernatural. This is similar to Christian arguments for religious images. Not all Christians agree on imagery, but the ones that accept it absolutely forbid treating it as anything other than a depiction.

Crediting statues with actual supernatural properties was commonplace though. Variations on the cult statue - where the statue is a material body for the spirit of a god to act through.

El, the Canaanite creator deity, Late Bronze Age, 1400-1200 BC, bronze with gold leaf - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago

Archaeologists have found hundreds of small statues of deities covering every period of Ancient Middle Eastern history. These are the kind of things the Old Testament was referring to. The exact theology is unclear because it hasn't survived in the historical record. It's assumed some form of spirit enters the figure when an activating ritual or prayer happens. This localizes the god in a physical body so the worshipper can get it's attention or interact somehow.

Different civilizations seem to have used cult images in different ways. But they share the idea the image isn't only a reference to an immaterial being - like a word.

It has some supernatural essence or property within it.

Praying to this kind of idol also brings in big topic #5. What "worship" is. If we understand an idol as having some sort of supernatural property or even temporary presence, prayers, requests, etc. are addressed to it. Not to an absent god that it only makes you think of. The idolater doesn't have to think the statue is itself a god. But they do have to believe that there is some sort of power in the statue. In Egyptian and Greek cult statues, the spirit of the deity manifests briefly in it. Even there, the priest or worshipper is talking to the statue. A Christian image is never supposed to be prayed to in this way. It is inert and without supernatural properties. In theory.

Prayer is also contextual. The bowing and kneeling in the Tissot painting above describes ancient Near Eastern devotional practice. The commandment is referring to taking worshipful attitudes to religious images. But the form of "worship" can vary.

Another matter is the transcendence of God.

Michelangelo, The Creation of the Sun and the Moon detail, 1511-1512, Sistine Chapel

If we thing of the likeness as the likeness of a god, God has no "likeness". Until Christ, but that's a later complication. Any picture of a transcendent God is inherently false.

The defense of something this is that it's purely metaphorical. No one could think they're actually depicting what God "looks like".

Some Christians avoid the complexities and pitfalls around idols and just ban religious imagery altogether. To them, any religious picture is at least potentially idolatrous and has no place in worship. This is the sentiment behind iconoclasm and is more or less the Muslim take.

With this much variation, a single consensus Christian position is impossible. But what they do all share is rejecting images - or worldly things in general - as the object of worship. Don't put an image between you and God.

In a modern context, idols are more than little statues. The satanic inversion - do what thou wilt - is the idolatry of being your own god.

We are now squarely in the occult pattern of thinking.

Getting back to "Pope Francis" - the questions are whether his statues are idols and if what he had done with them can be called idolatry. Some apologists have claimed that the statues are referential. They are representations of Pachamama - more on that in a moment - not cult statue or magic object. Since "Pope Francis" called them Pachamamas, that's what they are. "Good afternoon, I would like to say a word about the pachamama statues that were removed from the Church at Traspontina, which were there without idolatrous intentions and were thrown into the Tiber."

Since Pachamama is some sort of divine pantheistic earth spirit, we are running into another Commandment - the First.

Nowhere in the history of Christian exegesis or interpretation are other gods allowed to have a place. Even the Renaissance inverters didn't suggest venerating their beloved Greek myths. The sibyls and Hermes were inspired humans. When the gods turn up, they're used as allegories - like rivers or planets.

This is new.

Is it a representation or an "idol"? And in either case, does it represent a divinity other than the Christian God? It's still complex. Consider big topic #2. Mythology &what “gods” are.

This brings up syncretism - the mixing of religions together.

Remember the spray of symbols? It's like that, but with established religions, not random lies from individual hucksters. This is obviously absolutely forbidden in any Christian form, though there are occultic frauds like "Gnostics" that incorporate some Christian truths into their spray.

Incorporating an Amazonian whatever into Catholicism certainly leans into syncretic blasphemy.

Aphrodite/Astarte, Cypriote Terracotta, 6th Century BC, private | Astarte-Aphrodite from a mirror or lamp, probably Roman Syria, 4th-6th century AD, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City

Syncretism was common in late antiquity. Successive Hellenistic and Roman empires jumbled multiple belief systems together. Astarte was an ancient Middle Eastern goddess that was syncretized with Greek Aphrodite and later, Roman Venus. Astarte is also the Biblical Ashtoreth and has connections to Babylonian Ishtar. She had associations with fertility and war, but in late antiquity, her warlike character was played down for a more eroticized representation.

Syncretism was easy with polytheism. The gods are entities within creation that you try and sway with offerings and prayers. Adding or changing one has no effect on the larger system. Likewise claiming that new gods were just different names or versions of old ones. This was really common in late antiquity, when civilizations were jumbling together. We see the same impulse in late antique philosophy - Neoplatonism and Hermeticism are syncretic syntheses of older ideas.

Syncretism relates to Christianity in different ways. It's not so much adding gods to Christianity - one supreme transcendent God is the norm. Even balance-huffers tend to see the balance as a pathway to a higher unitary state. No one said they were good at math. When Christianity is syncretized, it's the basics of the ultimate Christian referent - Jesus' message of salvation - that gets changed. The difference between local customs that are incidental to the message and addenda that contradict it.

Vito di Marco, Phrygian Sibyl, 15th century, mosaic, Siena Cathedral

The sibyls and Hermes are typical of the mild version. Adding things that are incompatible with a scriptural world view. That they might be right - as Augustine noted. But it doesn't make them Christian.

The easiest way to sneak these types in is in an "unofficial" supporting role. Like in the pavement on a floor. The sibyls are here as supplementary prophets. Or they can be symbols - like Osiris for Jesus. What they share is some clear motive. The Renaissance was obsessed with Greco-Roman antiquity. So they wanted to get it into the church and raise it's status to metaphysical levels.

The more extreme form of Christian syncretism deviates enough to not even be ambiguously Christian. These are non-Christian occult movements that incorporate some Christian metaphysics into their own inverted systems. Things we've seen in past occult posts like Gnosticism and Hermeticism - ultimately monotheistic but set in a totally different conception of reality. What matters is that they're hybrids of Christian and other ideas.

Johfra Bosschart, The Vision of Hermes Trismegistus, 1985

Painting from a Dutch a-hole that demonstrates a Hermetic spray of symbols. It's noteworthy that the inverted filth uses the upward gesture that occult freaks appropriated from Christian painters. "Balance" somehow leading to ascent. It's as ontologically retarded as they are. As if "civilization" is "opposite" the "nature" it came from. If you aren't stupid, you understand mystery words like "continuity".

Note the sun and moon. Stupid people like pairing unalike material accidents and pretending they're supernaturally insightful.

This captures the difference between Christianity and occult idiocy. The Band may use harsh words, but we detest morons and liars that profess incoherent lies solely because they really want to believe them. Or deceive others. We've spent as much time as we have looking for consistencies in patterns across levels of reality because we are sick of the "we want this to be real" school of thought. Christianity requires it's claims about ultimate reality be accepted on faith, but the rest follows logically from that. It is internally consistent because it is based on external standards. This occult garbage isn't because it's subjective fantasy made up by limited chuds.

Pachamama and other colonial Christian-flavored occultisms like Voodoo fall into this group. Syncretic mash-ups of Christian and other beliefs.

New Orleans Voodoo openly mashes up Catholic and non-Christian religious elements. It's based on one supreme God, but an indifferent one like in Gnosticism or Hermeticism. Supernatural operations are carried out through spirits.

These non-Christian Christian syncretisms are basically monotheistic. The relationship to God varies and other spiritual entities are added, but there's one supreme being. Only the metaphysics are either not worked out very well or are clearly different from Christian ones. There will be some things that are superficially familiar - one way people can be easily sucked in. But the overall experience is very different, and any close logical analysis of how the parts fit will soon crash into fundamental incompatibilities long before the need to accept ultimate reality on faith.

Syncretic ritual is often unsettling to the non-inverted because of the fusion of incompatible belief systems.

If you are personally willing to rewrite the metaphysics of a religion, by definition you don't believe in - or belong to - that religion.

Another scrap of irrelevance that seems to fascinate stupid people is pointing out that Christians use symbols with non-Christian roots. Like Easter decorations, or the date of Christmas. This isn't an insult, but an objective observation. You have to be stupid to think communal patterns of celebration are metaphysically relevant unless they promote immorality. But globalists and materialists are functionally retarded because believe in magic words and objects. No one cares what the origins of a holiday were - so long as it doesn't require accepting or promoting false metaphysics. But that's a different problem - one that takes moral reasoning.

Neither the date nor lights have any bearing on the sincerity of an annual celebration of the Incarnation.

The inversion is the orgy of commercialism and gluttony.

Know what else has “pre-Christian roots”? Words! People always express new ideas in familiar forms. You have to – symbolic communication can't succeed if the symbols are totally unfamiliar. Every new idea you’ve ever had has to be articulated in the same tired old sets of letters and grammar.

Pictures make meaning differently, but same end result. Understanding something novel by understanding a new organization of familiar things. They communicate because they’re familiar.

Santa Maria Antiqua Sarcophagus, around 275 AD, marble, found under the floor of Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome

Like using the Classical figure of Endymion to represent the idea of immortality through "sleep" in the story of Jonah. Likewise the Good Shepherd for Christ. This isn't syncretism because the characters don't carry over. This isn't the mythic "Endymion".

Another litmus test - grasping the difference between using a classical figure to represent a Christian one and claiming the classical entity - in this case, Endymion, is Christian.

It's obvious if you've been to another country and seen churches there. Things look a little different. Same as pictures of old churches. The clothing, architecture, language, pictures if any, etc. Religion deals with inherently immaterial things. But it has to express them in material forms for people to see and participate. And since we don’t live in 1st-century Galilee, familiar expressions of the immaterial are necessary. They're what people know, can recognize, and learn from. But it also means that we have to exercise judgment when assessing the adaptation of old symbols. It is a reference to something Christian, or an attempt to insert non-Christian entities into Christianity?

Consider - churches formed in history. They are established by historical people in knowable places and times. In the West, Rome was the big cultural center, so it formed along late Roman lines. Even the “divine” emperor tried to position himself as a Christ on earth.

St. Paul's outside the Walls, original 4th century AD, nave rebuilt starting 1823.

That's why the big Early Christian churches starting in the 4th century are patterned after Roman basilicas. When emperors starting with Constantine began supporting Christianity, they funded huge new constructions. Basilicas were legal and administrative building associated with imperial power - so the connection between Christ and emperor was baked into the very form. This is what we mean by actually having to research into meanings. The syncretic conflation of Roman cult of divine emperor and Christianity was is screamingly, obviously implicit to an 4th-century viewer, but is lost to most visitors today.

On the other hand, usage transformed the basilica into a Christian symbol over time. A devout Christian worshipping there now isn't "secretly" venerating the emperor. But there was a syncretic symbolic meaning that has changed. Both are true.

Coin featuring Constantine and Sol Invictus, 316 AD, British Museum, London

Constantine's own religious position had stirred copious amounts of writing. Eusebius records he converted before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, but he continued using non-Christian symbolism for some time after. Like this coin showing him superimposed with the Sol Invictus from a few years after.

Religion was moving in a more monothestic direction in the late Empire - philosophical schools and foreign cults like Mithraism introduced notions of a supreme being. Prior to Christianity, Constantine seemed most committed to the Roman cult of Sol Invictus - the unconquered sun single. This combined attributes of older solar deities like Apollo, Helios and Mithra into a concept of Sol as symbol of an all-powerful divinity. Emperors depicted themselves as earthly representatives of this Sol Invictus.

From here, it was an easy shift to earthly representative of Jesus.

Ultimately the Western Church wound up with a pope at the head of a legalistic hierarchical bureaucracy. A sort of spiritual imperial court that no longer accepted emperors as religious authorities, but kept an absolutist structure. In fact, as the Middle Ages progress, the popes will make increasing claims to worldly authority. Something Jesus himself overtly declined to do. This isn't a representation of Biblical Christ. It's the syncretic imperial authority that asserted itself in the 4th century. The emperor as divine image absorbed into the Petrine succession - Christ's Biblical charge to Peter - that justify the imperial medieval papacy.

Niccolo di Giacomo da Bologna, Pope John XXII surrounded by clergy and doctors, 14th century, Madrid. National Library

The model is imperial hierarchy, not the Biblical last shall be first. It was inevitable that a Christian structure had to form. The Band has no objection to the necessity of order. The point is that the order that did form adapted what was familiar. Imperial hierarchy.

What this convoluted earlby history means is that meaning matters. The Church distinguished between legit religious images and idols. It's a generous interpretation of the Bible - and an adaption to image-rich Roman culture. But it's the interpretation they went with. So if we are to take them at face value - on their own terms - we have to take this seriously in our assessment. Because taking things on their own terms is how their inherent problems become visible and where the big topics come in.

When applied to historical idolatry "on their own terms" can be hard to determine. Theoretically it's a simple process. Religion represents metaphysical relations, so check the rituals and symbols against that referent.

Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus 359, Vatican Museum

The youthful beardless Christ on this Early Christian masterpiece is typical of the period. The close-up shows the Traditio Legis - Christ enthroned and handing law and authority to Peter and Paul. This wouldn't be considered idolatrous because there is no devotion or worship directed to it and it doesn't contradict scripture. Christ does charge the Apostles with spreading the Word and Peter and Paul are the founding figures of the Church in Rome. It's not a "scene" that happened, but a symbolic representation of Roman Christian order.

The treatment of Jesus is a little close to emperor for our liking, but it's different from putting the emperor in there.

In practice, religions are complex assemblies of people in different times and places that involve a wealth of activities and beliefs. There are differences between specific practices and doctrines, even between the opinions of different participants. Some are ignorant, others dishonest. For our purposes, we will stick to the most basic tenets.

We've already mentioned the biggest distinction between Christianity and its neighbors - monotheism vs. polytheism - one God vs. many. This pulls in big topic #2. Mythology &what “gods” are, because it's not just a matter of headcount. The Christian God is ultimate reality - the alpha and omega, Creator of everything, and ultimately transcending even time and space. He enters the world through the Incarnation as a singular event.

Paganism is an idiotic name - we are referring to ancient polytheism. It's various gods exist within the universe and aren't tied to primordial Creation in the same way. The famous Greek gods are mostly third generation, with some second thrown in. They're powerful, but finite and temporal.

The closest thing to God in pre-Christian antiquity would be the ultimate reality of the philosophers - the Prime Mover of Aristotle or the One of Plotinus. The problem is that these are ambivalent to Creation - in human terms, they simply are. But it's why the thought structures can seem quite compatible with Christianity in certain ways. The ancient gods, if accepted as more than just allegories, are demons.

This is a hard distinction. There is no way to combine the exclusiveness of Christian monotheism with any other divinity. There are no demiurges between God and Creation, no other "emissaries" than Jesus, no independent, actually existing and not symbolic divine beings like "Mother Earth", or alternative sources of divine wisdom.

1919 Ford Motor Car and Truck operating manual

There's plenty of knowledge to be found in the world. The Bible doesn't tell you how to change the oil in your car.

But it's knowledge of material things. It isn't divine wisdom.

The "Amazon Synod" where "Pope Francis" broke out the idols supposedly represented some kind of Christian environmental protection movement. Were that sincere, there would be some sort of focus on... well... improving environmental stewardship. But that's ecology, not metaphysics.

There is a vast difference between a Christian considering environmental preservation and paying homage to an entity that considered a spiritual manifestation of a metaphysical nature god. One is technical and natural, one is pantheistic and supernatural.

One is just knowledge, the other a violation of the fundamental nature of God.

It's the difference between figuring out effective water management practices and lighting devotional candles to a "divine" spirit.

Oh wait...

Litergy, ritual, hierarchy, language, costume, setting - material expressions of Christianity - have all changed over time. Because there are no magic words, these don't actually matter in themselves. Any more than getting your name wrong fundamentally changes what you are. It's just a reference to someone that isn't you. Likewise, fake churches don't alter the nature of Christianity - they just refer to something that isn't Christian.

What matters is the message they transmit.

Bringing in other gods violates both the Commandments and the basic parameters of Christianity. Hence the charges that "Pope Francis" is heretical. The counter-argument is that the skeezy little idols weren't actually "worshipped". That is, big topic #5. What "worship" is.

Or even gods. #2. Mythology &what “gods” are. But that's for part 2...

Compatibility vs. necessity - Centralization in Art & Faith Part 4

2021-07-20T12:52:00.001-07:00

Any practical metaphysics has to be accessible. That means representable. But representations can deceive...

What's necessary, compatible & none of the above.

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and reflections on reality and knowledge have menu pages above.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Pope John XXII receiving the rejection by the Greek church of his claims to supremacy, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, 1400–1424, British Library.

This post continues the ongoing look into processes of representation, centralization, and inversion have revealed themselves to be a major source of de-moralization in the West. We've been tracing the arts of the West to figure out how something that appears to be variations on Logos+Techne transformed into the soulless garbage of modernism. What we found were inversive precursors that are much older than the onset of modernity. Older even than the Enlightenment prolog to modernism, where secular transcendence replaced reality as "official" learned culture. And this older process extends well beyond art. This is why we've been spending so much time on centralization and representation.

We have to represent abstractions materially and temporally in order to conceive, communicate, or act on them. But representation goes way beyond semiotic systems to entire networks of socio-cultural complexes like art... or religion.

Pinturicchio, Homage to Pope Eugenius IV in the Name of Emperor Frederick III, fresco, Piccolomini Library, Duomo, Siena

Click for the posts leading up to this one if interested. They can sort of stand alone, but they trace this theme from the historical appearance of art theory in the Renaissance through patterns of centralization, representation, and inversion.

1. Renaissance Centralization & the Art of Unintended Consequences

2. Building the Beast System - Renaissance Centralization in Art & Faith Part 1

3. Change vs. Meaningful Change - Renaissance Centralization in Art & Faith Part 2

4. Representation and Inversion - Centralization in Art & Faith Part 3

To sum up - the Renaissance as defined in materialist beast History! is when we see the first glimmerings of secular transcendence. That's our term for the false presumption that fallen, subjective, temporally contingent limited human minds can grasp the the fullness of absolute abstract transcendence. It's ontologically impossible, but pretending it isn't is empowering to the vain [click for a summary post if interested]. The inherent retardation is covered over by the gradualness of the shift. Renaissance "thinkers" don't outright reject Logos - that comes later. The camel's nose enters the tent by adding fake man-made authorities to ontological necessity.

Conrad Laib, St. Primus and Hermes Trismegistus, around 1449, tempera on wood, Salzburg Museum

The fakeness of the extra-Biblical sources of "truth" is only the superficial problem. Structurally, it is total ontological inversion to proclaim old dudes - whether really extant or not - arbiters of metaphysical reality.

The foundation of Creation - of all that can and can't "exist" - is ultimate reality. It it not temporal - temporality is posterior - and so can't be known directly through time-sequences representation. It is ultimately beyond us. This means we can only know it by faith.

This means that there is no way to meaningfully change understanding of ultimate reality without changing what one knows by faith. That is, create a new belief system. The problem is that the onlological hierarchy is connected. A legitimate account of ultimate reality is consistent with abstract reasoning and empirical existence - it extends them. Just as abstract reasoning can extend understanding beyond things perceived directly.

The ontological hierarchy with the three pillars of the West fitted in.

This is one of the Band's most important insights. Click for a summary post that is more or less right, though some refinements have become needed.

Representation is necessary because we are so ontologically limited. We have to construct material systems out of necessity to accommodate things that don't materially exist. Representations can't be "the same" as their referents, but they have to be accurate accommodations within the limits of material signification. They have to be truthful representations. The problem is that because representations are not referents, they can lie. They can claim to represent something while actually referencing something completely different. This is where the centralization comes in. When a representational complex comes under centralized control, there is nothing to stop the controllers from malevolently changing the message to whatever pleases them.

Then the switch - somehow the representation has replaced what it was supposed to represent. And the fraud changeling is treated as if it's new message is the original referent.

Just pausing for a refreshing break with a degenerate idol.

It's hard to find a representation that points further from it's supposed referent than "Pope Francis". Appropriate, since the idol isn't art.

In art, this happens when frauds declare ontologically-binding rules in place of material representations of logos. "Art" as representational material complex becomes a make-believe thing in itself controlled by sociopaths called Art! At which point moral entropy takes over. Renaissance art needs the fake, man-made, sociopathic "rules" to expand the meaning - in the case of the arts of the West, that's express logos in material form [there are a lot of posts on this]. By the time we get to modernity the logos is long gone. Leaving only the fake, sociopathic inversion of a carcass. Which is why there can be no "restoring art" within the beast institutions. There's no art there to restore.

Erik Koeppel The Catskill Creek, 2016, oil on panel, private

The good news is that "art" appears whenever logos is expressed with techne. The representative structures can deviate as much as they want - they just don't represent art anymore.

It is the Band's opinion that the structures are too degraded to recover. That means restoration comes from outside the beast. Like a contemporary painter inspired by the Hudson River School. His pieces are very small - a consequence of operating independently with saleable work. Big-scale achievement like the arts of the West need a degree of elite-level resource support.

Looking at the beginnings of the representation-reality reversal problem in Renaissance art drew attention to the Church that was sponsoring it. What we saw looked like a similar process - where a material representation of abstract truth was centralized and then corrupted the referent. The incorporation of hermetic and neoplatonic authorities into Christian metaphysics is obscene in Christian terms.

Several occult posts first turned this up for us - there's a lot on Hermeticism, Prometheus, obelisks, and other occultic nonsense in the Renaissance.

Sandro Botticelli, St. Augustine in his Study, 1480, fresco, Church of Ognissanti, Florence

We are not referring to neoplatonic structures in theological explanations. Thinking about relations between levels of reality is on Platonic ground. Take Augustine - his Earthly and Heavenly Cities were analogous in a somewhat Platonic way to metaphysical states. But he was describing a connection predicated on Christ as the enabling conduit. This is completely different from replacing the radical separation of heaven and earth wrought by the Fall with intrinsic ontological continuity.

And like art, once the integrity of the abstract truth is compromised, there is nothing to stop the accumulation of human whims. Until you reach obscenities like toe-sucking fakes in costumes claim to Jesus was wrong when he declared himself the only path to salvation. Christianity is known representationally, but the representations represent something. Christ's message of salvation known on faith through the early sources. One can't arbitrarily change key pillars without declaring faith in something different. At which point the representation ceases to be Christian.

The Band is uninterested in "denominational" disputes within Christianity - the nature of the darkling glass is that differences in material interpretation are inevitable. Like "Pope Francis" and his statue of Martin Luther. The Band would classify his representation here as "not-Catholic", but not overtly "not-Christian". Jesus simply asks for belief and to keep the commandments - how best to do that is at least partly dependent on the believer's circumstances.

We are talking about frauds proclaiming things that contradict the foundational representations of Christianity. That is, knowledge of Jesus' message known through faith. "Pope Francis" does that too, but that's a different story.

This post will lay out the onto-epistemological issues around the Band's reflection on representation and how it pertains to the accessibility of Truth. The next will wrap up with the historical centralization, degeneration, and inversion in the church.

Even the most lightly historically educated can't miss that the institutional structure that develops over the Middle Ages has little in common with the lives of Jesus or the Apostles. Plus it's constantly changing. New ritual developments, rules, dogmas - all added by historical people, at historically identifiable times, for historically identifiable reasons.

Spinello Aretino, Frederick Barbarossa submits to the authority of Pope Alexander III, late 14th century, fresco, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

The Band is aware of the dogma that theology unfolds or flowers over time. The details are a matter of faith, but the premise isn't inherently flawed. There does have to be material accommodation of Christ's message that is that is relatable to the people of that time - that's just hermeneutic reality. So there is nothing that necessarily precludes a particular hierarchical formation - so long as it truthfully expresses the truth of salvation. The problem is when the not-precluded gets presented as the necessary.

Depiction of the medieval papacy in Lambertus de Sancto Audomaro, Liber Floridus, 1250-1275, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 8865 f.99r

The drive for imperial power in the medieval papacy is almost a point-by-point contradiction of the Sermon on the Mount. Consider threatening political enemies with "excommunication" - itself a "power" claimed in direct contravention of the universal applicability of salvation vouchsafed by Christ.

You can twist scriptural passages into inverted allegories. But when the ethos changes, so does the message.

Pope Leo III, crowning Charlemagne from Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, vol. 1, second quarter of 14th century.

The Imperial papacy is applied inversion. Here's a simple historical overview. But well before that, we see popes try and claim secular authority that Christ himself rejected. This scene took place in the yoar 800. Render unto Caesar or become him?

The hive of luxury and paganism presided over by Alexander VI obviously doesn’t remotely resemble Apostolic faith. But what is interesting is that it doesn’t remotely resemble the early Christian centuries in Rome either. Or the sudden "theology" of papal emperor-making in the 9th century. It is neither Biblical, nor an organic expression of collective Christian communal spirit. It's an inverted pagan-huffing wannabe tyranny in the historic heart of Christendom.

Pinturicchio, Osiris teaches fruticulture, 1493, fresco, Vatican Palace

Remember Alexander? He gave us Osiris in the reverse of Jesus' traditional colors on the ceiling of the papal apartment. It is an inversion, but the idea is to draw a connection. Osiris as prefiguration or "type" of Christ.

Plugging pagan demons into Christian theology while "nephew" Cesare attempts to conquer an empire with Uncle's blessing...

When taking up the inversion in the medieval Church it is important to be clear what we are not doing. We are not taking up theological debates between factions of faithful Christians. Alexander is pre-Reformation, and it's not like any of the main "denominations" nowadays are hewing to a strict Biblical line. As usual, we are interested in historical processes of inversion and what can be seen of the reality that they hide. Churches haven't stopped being representational necessities. But neither has the necessity that they represent Christ's message. Otherwise they aren't churches. Regardless of the words on the sign out front.

What we are doing is considering ontological priority and the representation/reality confusion problem in human affairs. Here's the sequence from the last post. Note that we make no claims about the truth of the representations or the ontological nature of the referents - the things represented. It is simply a reminder that a representation can't replace the thing it was created to represent.

This becomes a problem when a domain becomes so centralized that the representations are controlled by an unanswerable authority. This means they can change the representation, claim it's "the same" and there is no avenue to assess or dispute the claim. When this happens, the entire representational domain is corrupted.'

Here's the process in a different graphic form.

1, Material representations are created to express certain immaterial truths that can't be seen directly.

This can be simple as a word or shape or complex as olf socio-political constructs. Anything that materially represents immaterial things.

2. Material representations gradually transform into representations of completely different things than the original referent.

In complex cases, this happens gradually. Early art theory really did try and systemize Logos + Techne before degenerating into Art!

3. The new, different, inverted message claims to be "the same" because it kept an old name.

Like art, democracy, or Christianity.

4. The referent doesn't change. The representation just doesn't represent it any more.

You're just mislabeling something. Like a square. Or a church.

The last post considered the representation/reality confusion problem more broadly. Instead of limiting “representation” to semiotic systems like letters or symbols, we thought about the process. Process meaning how any entity or group of entities comes to stand in for something that isn’t itself. Represents something that isn’t itself. And this brought us to entire networks of institutions, players, ideologies, theories, social practices, etc. that developed to service, curate, disseminate, and protect abstract realities that don’t materially exist.

Specifically the mechanisms by which metaphysics are experienced physically.

This presents the distinction as cleaner than it is since everything we think and know is processed representationally. So on this level, the entire spread of the ontological hierarchy is just representation. We conceptualize “God”, “suspicion” and “a sandwich” through the same webs of words and mental pictures. Which is why liars find it easy to sow confusion.

In material reality - the only lived human experience we can know directly - our relationship to reality is brokered through sign systems.

We went through this in detail in some how things mean posts. Click for links to How Words Mean and How Pictures Mean. We mashed up Kant's account of ontology and Peirce's semiotics then connected the results to the ontological hierarchy.

Replace Kant's formation with the ontological hierarchy - a superior representation of reality - and generalize Peirce's semiotics.

That was the take-away. Visualize ontology as "vertical" and representation becomes horizontal. Both are necessary, but we relate to them differently. One is the res that we are born in medias. The other is the mechanism by which we know. You can see how all the desire over reality delusionists - occultists, postmodernists, civnats, modernists, etc. - operate. Because representations don't have to be truthful, they alter the representation and claim it means the same thing. If you believe them, you react as if it were true, so it might as well be. But the mis-labled reality on the other side of the representational veil still exists. And if your fake representation deviates too far, the gap becomes impossible to wish away.

But truthful or not, the representation can’t be the thing it represents.

Whether a word or something as extensive as the full socio-cultural apparatus behind Art!.

From the last post. representation has a two-sided connection to its referent - the thing it represents.

Representation is referentially connected to the referent and is subject to judgments of truth.

Representation is existentially different from the referent and can be dishonest

Where this becomes a major inversion is when that referent is immaterial. Because it isn't something easily checked - like a weather forecast.

There's a problem in the ontological interface between the Logos and it's material representations. Consider.

Abstract realities cannot be empirically discerned directly. And ultimate reality cannot even be conceived qua itself. Material realities can be, but they're antithetical to abstract constancy. There is literally no Truth here.

The capital-T truth is on the other side of what we can see. We are required to assess the representation since it has no inherent truth-value qua itself. And that's where the ability to distort comes in.

When representing unchanging things in material terms, we create the illusion that material terms apply to the unchanging things. Because they apply to the representation. And the the whole representation-reality problem is based on pretending they're the same.

Consider Science! The original Scientific Method was a triple weave of observation, induction, and deduction that remained endlessly open-ended and self-correcting. In theory.

Then a huge representational apparatus developed to perform and oversee the Scientific Method. Then that started pumping out beast propaganda that contradicted observation or induction for narrative service. A formula for systematic fact-finding became a giant, bloated loudspeaker of beast lies.

Hence the beast system. It's a logical extension of what we call the onto-epistemological Flatland of post-Enlightenment self-idolatry. Where ontological distinctions are simultaneously claimed not to exist, but incoherent inversions of faith and reason are applied to whatever lie the beast-huffers happen to be pushing. In Flatland, representation and referent are interchangeable. And since there are no ontological distinctions, abstractions and ultimate reality are whatever I represent them as.

The ultimate authorities are will and desire, not truth and falsehood. When desires clash, material power is the arbitrator. Reality remains indifferent.

It’s why modernity is fundamentally satanic. Do what thou wilt, then death, then oblivion.

But representation-reality confusion is only one Flatland building block – centralization is the one we were considering more recently. There is no beast system without centralized nodes of control and the ZAXSmassive, asymmetric, resource concentrations that come with it. The seemingly endless money is how the integrated beast system corrupts and controls most everything. The last post looked at Art! and Democracy! as instances of the representation-reality switch. We just mentioned Science! They’re different kinds of material-abstract interface apparatuses but follow the same inversion pattern. Money! has become another. Likewise Law! and Justice!

This post will follow up the last one and continue with the inversion of the medieval Church. How something created organically to disseminate and promote Jesus’ message became a self-proclaimed authority with the power to alter or invert it. Consider the fruits, not hollow words.

Titian, The Descent of the Holy Ghost, around 1545, oil on canvas, Santa Maria della Salute

Three steps...

1. Take something intended to accommodate the abstract and metaphysical in a fallen, entropic, changing material world.

2. Reject the premise that representation represents something external to it for making the representation the end it itself.

3. Gradually introduce man-made arbitrary whims - for specific, identifiable historical reasons - as "necessary" addenda to the Incarnation.

Necessary is the key word here. The question is whether the material representation truthfully reflects abstract Truth. Are its dogmas explicitly necessitated? Or do they change with the fashions? That is the measure of it's representational fitness. Material superficialities - what Aristotle would call accidents - that don't contradict the core message are metaphysically irrelevant material distinctions like national traditions. They matter to the people as peoples, not to God. They are to be judged by their fruits.

This raises a distinction of fundamental importance for understanding material expressions of abstract things.

Necessity vs. compatibility

Things which are required by the referent of a representational system

vs.

Things that are external to it, but don’t contradict its terms.

Clarify. All representations are open to variations in precise meaning because comprehension involves translating to and from symbolic registers. But the degree of variation is not open-ended or communication fails. Words have ranges of meaning, and connotative variance != randomness. The more complicated the message the more room for interpretation, but this is a characteristic of representation, not failure.

Keep it simple. And note how even that requires assumptions.

“Never go through that gate” contains no avenue for debate - assuming the references are understood. The only way to blur or “misunderstand” is to change the references or add conditionals that clearly aren’t part of the statement as stated. And changing references and adding conditionals - changing or adding anything, really - isn’t a variant meaning. They're literally different symbolic communication from the original. The simplicity makes it clear - there is no room for exceptions to the stated meaning. Never go through that gate is absolutely not the same as Never go through that gate unless... They aren't the same string of symbols and don't represent the same meaning.

So, necessity vs. compatibility. Necessary means required by the terms of the representation. That is, what must be done or not done in order to follow the message conveyed.

Failing to do what is necessitated violates or disobeys what the representation plainly states. If you want to go north on 75, you must choose the right turn. You don't have to, but then you won't be going north on 75.

In our example - what the representation necessitates is to never pass through the gate. And since the statement includes no places or opening for clauses or conditionals, that necessary meaning is fixed. No matter how many additional words are piled on, entering through the gate rejects what the representation represents. Like not turning right for 75 north. If you make up exceptions, you create a new representation that represents something different.

Now suppose there was a reason for the original necessity.

Consequences - something like entering the gate will strike you dead. Some new representation of something totally different that you made up isn't going to save you.

Compatibility refers to something external to the representational content - not included in the representation - that doesn’t violate its necessities. Staying with the example, never go through that gate only necessitates not going through the gate. It doesn't say anything about anything else - so long as it doesn't wind up with going through the gate. Pitching a camp right outside the threshold, holding court in your camp, slowly turning it into a settlement – none of these have anything to do with the original representation. They aren’t necessitated positively or negatively. But doing them doesn’t contradict the necessity either.

You can choose to do them while still conforming to the represented necessity. And if the encampment on the threshold makes it easier to stop others from entering, it actually serves the necessity.

You could consider it helpful, even positive. Compatible things can be net goods. But they aren’t necessary.

Now Scripture – or "The Church" and the messages they represent - are a bit more complex than a simple statement about a gate. But this doesn’t change the fact that it uses a representational system that includes plainly-stated necessities. Early Christians already understood that clear Biblical denotative language was more direct in meaning than allegorical readings. It has to be, or else it collapses into meaninglessness. Of course, applying super-simple models to complex situations without accounting for the differences is a common liar’s tell. And the Church is exceptionally complex. We simply needed to clarify the necessary-compatible distinction before getting into the weeds.

This is especially important here because Christianity as a human practice is ongoing and temporal while Jesus' message is fixed. This means Christians are continually adapting something long ago and far away to their current situation. What is necessary, and what are compatible and incompatible become essential.

Jean Colombe, Pope Urban II preaching at the Council of Clermont, from Passages d'outremer de Sébastien Mamerot, 1474, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Like representing the 11th century Council as taking place in a late Gothic interior.

To be clear, it's the metaphysical claims of the medieval Church that we are taking at face value. Any practical critique is a wipe-out. Few popes’ fruits live up to the kindest reading of the Sermon on the Mount, let alone Vicar of Christ. the men who made up the medieval Church included an extraordinary number of venal, self-idolizing sinners. Nothing mystical there, so look past them to the institution. An ordering that was formed to represent - but somehow came to displace - the mystical communion of faithful Christians.

A claim to instantiate the abstract in the material can only be made on faith. Like the existence of the immortal soul or the divinity of Christ. It requires something higher than either to cojoin incompatible states. That means ultimate reality - God.

Hence faith as a the only epistemological access.

The complexity of the Church as a representation comes from being built of layers of transmission and development through time. Jesus’ message, the codification of the Gospels, the emergence of Christian communities and leadership structures, the development of doctrine through councils, the imperialized corruption of Christian authority…

It is also ontologically inevitable for painfully obvious reasons. How does one hear the Word if they weren’t around in Jesus’ time? Start with the basics.

Readers may find it jarring to see Biblical references juxtaposed with Band terms like the ontological hierarchy. They shouldn’t.

Part of understanding how representation works is grasping that the sign or the representation isn’t what is important. Fetishizing signs over what they point to is the inverted retardation behind occultism and postmodernism. Like saying “I read the instructions… why isn’t the shelf self-assembling?” Band readers are WAY smarter than that.

Granting the Bible divinely-inspired truthfulness that other representations lack only comments on the value of the representation. It doesn’t make the represention into whatever it represents. And if it is a truthful representation, then it will accurately represent its ontological subject. And if it does that, it will align with other accurate representations. Even ones that aren’t divinely inspired, but happen to be correct anyhow.

Move past the different representational forms, and the ontological hierarchy is shockingly compatible with the metaphysical implications of the Bible.

The Fallen material world is objectively entropic and temporal. Change is constant and everything dies. We are born into pre-existing structures and perception and logic have clear limits. There is no capacity for timeless truths – timeless anythings – qua themselves in this context.

Man and Logos. In the Bible, Jesus has material human form and can address people in human terms. But he clearly articulates the ontological dead end of worldly fixation. Worldly ties in general.

His message is one of utterly radical rejection of material reality for the kingdom of God or Heaven.

And note how he frames it.

In ontological hierarchy terms, the Law is a timeless abstract absolute. It is literally handed down from ultimate reality in material representational form. But fallen, entropic, temporal creatures are categorically unable to live up to its unvarying standards.

So the Logos provides a real metaphysical conduit that isn’t just representation. That real pathway lets us achieve what our own efforts can’t. Choice becomes possible.

Note how the epistemologies work. Ultimate reality is trans-temporal. It precedes and exists outside of time. Since human thought is dependent on time-sequenced representational patterns, it is literally outside comprehension. Outside the capacity for comprehension. Anything pertaining to the nature of Ultimate reality – other than the logical necessity of its “existence” - can only be known by faith. Hence the source of the Logos and the message-conduit it provides is also only knowable by faith.

The fallen, entropic, ephemeral nature of the material world is more obvious.

We see it and live it every day.

And applying one to the other requires abstract moral reasoning.

Obviously the internal structure and narrative mechanics of the Bible are unique. In the Band’s experience, there is no other text that reads like it. And it's totally different in appearance from the ontological hierarchy. The ontological hierarchy can’t tell you how it works or what you have to do. It’s simply observation and logical necessity. A representation of relationships. But relationships that are consistent with the world described in the Bible. The real world.

The Bible does tell you what to do. It offers faith-based knowledge about ultimate reality and our relation to it. Because if it is to represents the universal ontological bridging activity of the Logos - Jesus' message - it has to have a higher-than-material truth value. And it needs to convey the same message content that Jesus did. Admittedly not as potent a delivery mechanism, but it also tells us that observers were deaf to Jesus himself. The truth of the message – and human self-absorption – are external to the form of transmission.

Matthew 10:17-11:5 page in the Codex Sinaiticus (The Sinai Bible), 330-360 AD, Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula

And as a representation - whether truthful or not - the Bible is made at a fixed point in time. The precise details of the Gospel originals is unclear, but we can speak of a time before the Bible was written and after. Those after have access to a representation that those before did not.

The Biblical message - the referent of the representation - is abstract and timeless, but the depiction is not. We can speak of a time before the Bible was written, speculate how it came together, and ascribe authors. Like any representation, it is ontologically posterior to the message it represents. Temporally speaking.

The graphic from the last post captures the ontological and temporal priority order in representation.

A thing exists in some condition, someone perceives and wants to share it, and a representation is made. None of this should require reiteration except that representation-reality confusion is so weirdly powerful. We assume it's a combination of fallen solipsism and the conditioning of generations of endemic cultural inversion and lies. The list of red bold things that aren't what they represent from above. But whatever the reason, even smart people are often bamboozled by representations masquerading as referents.

The Bible doesn't create the metaphysical conditions for salvation through ontological ascent. The sacrifice and message of Christ represented by the Bible does.

Faith as a form of knowledge doesn’t mean believing whatever you want. Beast-huffers think so, but embracing obvious falsehoods isn't knowledge. Knowledge implies knowing something, and willful belief in falsehood isn't that. The Band identifies two types of “faith”. One is typical of the beast system and involves believing things that are logically and empirically false. A benefit of the integrated ontological hierarchy is that it smokes out these groundless claims by placing faith on an epistemological continuum with observation and logic.

The other - call it honest faith - is consistent with and extends logic and observation. Christian metaphysics are known by faith but align with observable entropy, human nature, and limits of discernment as well as the logical necessity of causal origins. Legitimate faith imposes the same sort of responsibility on the knower as any legitimate epistemology. Namely, it applies to knowledge that logic or observation do not. That's the other thing about the ontological hierarchy - it avoids epistemological category error. And applying faith to things that are logically or observationally known is just that.

Merry-Joseph Blondel, The Fall of Icarus, 1819, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum

Just making up whatever is as dishonest in faith as it is observationally. And calling desire for the material or logically impossible "faith" is mindless solipsism, retardary, and/or beast huffing.

Fra Bartolomeo, Christ with the Four Evangelists, 1516, oil on canvas, Pitti Palace, Florence

The structure of the Bible itself reflects that honest faith is an extension of and not subject to verification by reason and observation. The four Gospels tell the same story with slight variations as one would expect from multiple witness testimonies. We see as through a glass darkly, and abstract Truths have to be accommodated to our limits of discernment.

Faith != making stuff up imposes limits and consistencies on the precepts. Consider - we turn to the epistemology of faith when empirical and abstract modes are insufficient for the domain. This means the domain is not knowable - or even accessible - by observation or reasoning. How, then, could we use either of those to modify something that can only be reached by faith? If we could, the domain is subject to logic or observation and isn't epistemologically subject to faith in the first place. Accepting something on faith means it isn't knowable in any other way. When someone attempts to qualify a point of faith with other forms of knowledge, they are intrinsically wrong. Likely either ontologically gelded or a liar,.

What this means for Christianity is simple. If you accept that the Bible conveys a divinely-vouched true representation, then you have to accept all of it. The source – ultimate reality – is logically and empirically beyond us. There is no mechanism by which we can assess the relative value of individual parts. Any picking and choosing is necessarily projected desire onto something that can’t be assessed directly. A claim to have ontologically prior knowledge of ultimate reality to that of the Logos.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Fall of the Damned, 1620, oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Alternatively, one can believe that the integrity of the Biblical message is subject to momentary human whim. But then it can't be divine truth known by faith. Jesus himself is quite clear on whether the message is discretionary. Take Matthew 7:21-23...

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Divine revelation and human observation and reasoning are inherently, definitionally, existentially mutually exclusive. Observation and reasoning can follow from the revelation. But the revelation is ontologically prior. So accept the whole package on faith in divine authority or do what thou wilt. We’re still waiting for anyone to provide the third alternative.

If we do accept the truth of the Bible on faith, then we have to understand, accommodate, and implement the entire message in our individual material lives.

And this brings us to the Church.

A church - or The Church - consists of interlocking complexes of material entities that together represent the immaterial truth of Christ’s message. Theoretically, it provides Christian leadership and guidance and sociability. Fellowship and activities. Remember - effective metaphysics have to be accessible. The church material human entity that makes Christ's message accessible and livable to the general public in a given time and place. That is, a representation.

The church ideally represents same immaterial referent represented as the Bible - only in a different form. Interlocking complexes that you take part in rather than a book you reflect on. So one could make a claim on faith that it – like the Bible – is divinely inspired truth.

At which point the faith claim is subject to the same test of ontological consistency as the Bible. The Band will go out on a limb and propose that the message Jesus delivered as Incarnate Logos to the people of the Holy Land didn't include the terms of salvation being alterable at will 2000 years later. Nor is a human claim to control ultimate reality an extension of the ontological uniqueness of Jesus.

The church is different from the Bible because it's a composite of people, writings, places. ideas, etc., not a fixed book. This is inevitable, since the church exists to express - to represent - abstract Truth in material, accessible terms. This means that elements of the representation is constantly changing – as all continuities do. Even the strictest, because the people keep changing. The task of the church is to maintain message consistency despite the flow of history. Remember the recent change vs. meaningful change post. The material world is constantly changing. What the church has to do is to be sure that those changes aren't meaningful ones.

And that means that the initial truth of the representation is not sufficient. Apostolic foundation means that an institution started as truthful representation. But that has no bearing on what people claiming that name are doing centuries later. The Bible is set in a way the church can't be. We have to assess its ongoing nature.

Claudio de Arciniega, and others, Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, 1573-1813

Colonial cathedrals.

The message conveyed by this one...

Rafael Moneo, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, completed 2002, Los Angeles, California

...is not the same as this one. You might even call it... an inversion. Given that beauty is a sensible attribute of Logos, the message expressed by this architectural bit of church is different from the Mexico City one.

Remember - the last post walked through how representations can gradually change in a way that looks like continuity but becomes inversion.

Anything made up of and by people is always changing because it exists in temporal material reality. The question is whether the representation continues to represent the same thing in the new terms.

The term "church" as used by Jesus refers to Christian assembly - ekklesia - either in one place or all Christians universally. Much of the New Testament after the Gospels is made up of writings from the Apostles to nascent Christian communities. Historically, Christianity became more organized and structured as it grew and spread. The Good News traveled by preaching and other word of mouth while the Scriptures were codified. Material necessity demands some means of message consistency, especially as the faith moves further from its original context.

The issue is what happens when the material accommodations of the church change so they no longer accord with the Bible?

Annibale Carracci. Domine, quo vadis? 1601–02, oil on panel, National Gallery, London

Further - like to Rome.

From a site looking at the 2nd-century church: movement towards standardization in Christian leadership and ritual practice is evident from around the second century. Rituals themselves - like fasting, baptism, communion - were developing in the first century. There are still inconsistencies in leadership structure by the end of the second. Persecutions remained a problem in the third.

The historical development is organic. Contextual agents evolving positions in light of current events. As the number of Christians spread and grew, some sort of leadership was necessary. There are very early references to "bishops" and "deacons". Dispute between elected and charismatic leadership. But centralization was inevitable - especially as the time from Jesus lengthened and external pressures came to bear.

The Bible and the Church are both representational forms, but with critical differences. Both emerge in the first century to express Christ's message of salvation, but once the Bible is written - even beast huffers date the 27 books of the New Testament to the late 1st century - that account is pretty much fixed. The events are historical, but the metaphysical meaning remains constant, even as daily reality in a fallen, entropic world changes. Hence the need for accommodation.

Samson Routing the Philistines, 4th century AD, Cubicle of Samson, Catacombs of the Via Latina, Rome

Samson didn't dress like a Roman patrician. It's unlikely that the temples of the Philistines resembled the hybrid Greek-Etruscan temples of the Romans either.

Baal, right arm raised, 14th-12th centuries BC, bronze, Louvre; Seated goddess, 14th–13th century BC, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Samson lived ~1200-1000 BC. The ancient Hebrews didn't make statues, but this is what contemporary Canaanite art looked like. Note that the Roman catacomb painter shows zero interest in "historical accuracy". The goal is to make the story - and the meaning - accessible & relatable. That way it can deliver the message. That is, the referent, or the thing the representation was made to convey.

These two pictures capture the difference between Bible and church as representational types. The story of Samson doesn't really change. But how material, temporal, constantly changing people picture it does. And the church has to maintain Christ's message consistently in those constantly shifting and changing human conditions. To say it's generally failed is beyond obvious.

Agape Feast. Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome, 4th century

The forerunner of the Eucharist, depicted in an early Christian catacomb. Agape feasts date back to the first century. They aren't the same as a 14th-century Mass. Does that mean one group is damned? Or are representational details unimportant to the fate of the soul?

Both can't be true.

Daily changes in a fallen, entropic, temporal world simply aren't relevant to the abstract referent. Biblical people wore robes, togas, loincloths, and other first-century garb. The Band wears shirts & pants that came from stores. Neither is the least bit relevant to recognizing Logos, confessing Jesus lord and savior, or keeping the commandments.

We don't even use the same gestures to represent prayer...

Orant, Catacomb of Priscilla, between 200-400 AD, Rome; Francisco De Zurbarán, St. Francis in Meditation, 1635-39, oil on canvas. National Gallery, London; Roberto Ferruzzi, Praying Girl, late 19th century, M. Kroshitsky Art Museum, Sevastopol

The referent - Christ's message - is unchanging. Material reality is constantly changing. The Bible is a relatively fixed representation of the former that needs moral reasoning to apply in the latter. The church is of the constantly changing material world, but is charged to maintain moral message consistency. The Bible is part of church formation, but not the same as it. It's the referent that must be the same.

The point is that we routinely face scenarios that aren't clearly spelled out Biblically but contain moral peril. Christian leadership has to apply one to the other. And thinking about the organic formation of Christian leadership brings us back to the necessity-compatibility distinction. Because some sort of Christian leadership may be necessitated, but no particular form is spelled out.

Time now for "what words mean".

The necessary is what you are required to do. The not ruled out is compatible - not specified one way or the other, so not relevant to the larger message. Keep it simple. Consider deciding to plant radishes in the garden. The Bible doesn't mention radishes, meaning a more abstract application is needed. Examples and allegories with growing and agriculture are all over the book, so it's safe to assume gardening itself is morally unproblematic. And since radishes aren't explicitly referred to or unclean or unhealthy categorically, it's safe to go ahead and plant them. Note the key point -

The Bible doesn't tell you to plant radishes. It just doesn't preclude them. It's a metaphysically-insignificant material choice that is up to you.

If you steal the seeds or greedily horde them there are problems. But those are violations of other moral proscriptions independent of choice of crop. So not necessary, but not incompatible either. Not required, but not ruled out.

Now take "bishops". The Bible doesn't specifically mandate the juridical and administrative ecclesiastic structural hierarchy favored by the medieval Church. There are no cardinals, abbots, or monastic foundations there either. Nor are there soothsayers, archmandrites, firekeepers, or ministers. Neither the cut nor color of costume, or the requirement to wear any costume at all, are specified. Ditto hats.

Doesn't rule them out, but doesn't require them either. If the Bible accurately represents Christ's message, these worldly geegaws are on no consequence at all. Conversely, if the Bible doesn't truthfully represent Christ's message, then there is no reason to pay attention to it at all.

Jehan Georges Vibert, The Preening Peacock, 19th century, oil on canvas, private

A particular historical formation might not contradict scripture, but isn't mandated either. It's a representation of an absent abstract. Other configurations are imaginable that represent the ideals of collective prayer - even a special role for Peter - better.

Since a legalistic sacerdotal bureaucracy isn't even mentioned, it's a metaphysically-insignificant material choice. Like eating vs. planting radishes. And as an arbitrary material representation, all thar matters is whether or not it fulfils or violates those things that are specifically called for. Compatible or incompatible.

By the fruits.

The medieval form of the church may be compatible and non-contradictory. But it is not necessitated in any particular material format or configuration in any early Christian source. Scripture or other early Christian activity. And clearly ritual can change. Were first century Christians damned without the formal Eucharist? Were 14th-century Christians damned without an agape feast? Considering that Jesus' message included neither explicitly, the answer has to be no.

So the only metaphysically-relevant question is whether or not it's complementary to Christ's message. If its form and operations are material expressions of the timeless Truth or not. Does it make it more accessible or less?

Excommunication of Emperor Frederick II by Pope Innocent IV, Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 632, f.45r

Structure and organization were inevitable. But nothing said or done to Peter suggests it was God's manifest will 1200 years later that salvation be used to blackmail opponents into accepting papal political power.

The question is how many are even aware of the political history of the medieval Church? If you are, the inversion of the message of Christ and the Apostles is staggering. It has to be - Jesus commanded us to judge religious leaders by their fruits. Hewing to this would have ruled out the Imperial Papacy and led to very different institutional ethos.

The history of the development Church is a sequence of retroactive post-facto justifications. Something is temporally desirable to a self-policing hierarchy of men, so a Biblical "argument" justifying it is constructed. At worst it's Pharisitical nonsense or outright heresy. At best it's a material construct that is compatible with the message Christ Incarnated to deliver. This is why the "not ruled out" is so critical to material representation - it governs the changing historical incidentals that weren't on the 1st-century radar.

There is nothing in the scriptural connotation of ἐκκλησίᾳ [ekklēsia] or the formation of the early church that mandates the imperial papacy of the Middle Ages. It is a noun derived from ek and kaleo - a "calling out" with specific reference to a religious gathering. There is nothing even to mandate any complex hierarchy, let alone one specific model. Or building type. Or costume. Or the name for magic incantations that were written centuries after the Ascension.

Raphael, St. Paul Preaching in Athens, 1515, tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Consider Paul's words before the Areopagus in Athens as recorded in the Book of Acts.

There is nothing here to necessitate the subsequent development of "Holy Ground" or institutional gate keepers. Quite the opposite - Paul speaks to a common human mandate to seek the Creator outside constraints of man-made things. He doesn't say that an organization or gathering place is forbidden. Just not that any one particular configuration possesses the power to compel God's grace.

Likewise, there is nothing in the ways Peter is singled out among the Apostles by Jesus that necessitates the caesaropapist policies of the medieval popes. Their details are superfluous to the necessity of the Christ's message because they're social and material. Specific procedural formulations like Gelasian political theory and Petrine succession aren't explicitly precluded by Christ's charge to Peter because they hadn't yet been formed. But they aren't necessitated by it either. They develop historically, through readable sources in knowable conditions. Organic representations that claim to accommodate Jesus' message in understandable, contextually-determined terms. Any further assumptions rely on unverifiable faith.

Jesus says to judge by the fruits. What do they do? The contrast between external forms and internal faith in religious leadership is a recurring theme in all the Gospels. His constant condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees - religious leadership in his era - is hypocrisy. That they observe forms while willfully violating the meaning. It's pure representation-reality problem, just Biblically represented. So start with the purpose.

Jacob Jordaens, Christ among the Pharisees, 1600s, oil on canvas, private

Christianity as a set of developed practices is intended as an expression of God's will for us. That's what differentiates it from ontologically-confused occultisms or secular transcendence.

It's done by the individual, but it's not about the individual. It's about accepting a place in external reality and the Providential order that entails. That's only known internally. The emphasis on the heart reinforces the essential nature of inner belief. Faith.

The purpose of Christianity is to preserve the integrity of the message and create a holistic representation that makes it broadly accessible. Bringing people into alignment with external realities instead of pretending magic talismans and incantations grant power over them. Ways of integrating universal dictates like the Beatitudes and allegories of the Sermon on the Mount into contemporary living. Whenever that contemporary happens to be.

Gustave Dore, The Sermon on the Mount, 19th century, oil on canvas

So where does a man claiming the power to block the redemptive power of Christ's death and resurrection over a political dispute fit into this? To ask is to answer.

Either organzed Christianity is a fluid, temporally contingent manifestion of abstract truth or it's just another hollow human social organization. If the former, they’re judged according to how well they accommodate that standard. Consider it a test of the cognitive floor needed to grasp secular transcendence and the epistemological consequences of ontology. If historical creation that appears in identifiable points in time with centuries after Christ are necessary addenda to salvation, there are only two possibilities. Either those prior to the "discovery" of the new "necessity" were all damned, or Jesus' instructions can be overridden by human whim and magic words.

Look closer and be attentive.

Cornelis Springer, View of the Little Church in Zalt Bommel, 19th century, oil on canvas, private

The reality is religion - like any social order - is a material expression of organic community or arbitrary external hegemony. The modern notion of denominational plurality within one community is the opposite.

How can agreement on the metaphysical nature of reality be less important to social cohesion than system of government? It can't be. It's the foundation of morality and other foundational aspects of culture.

Consider these much later representations of the Council of Nicea - where the first serious attempt at a consensus Christian creed was formulated in 325. Of course that same creed was substantially changed at the Council of Constantinople before the end of the century. Meaning the precise wording is irrelevant to the efficacy of the representation, over 50 years of Christians are damned, or Christ's message of salvation is alterable by subsequent Fallen humans. That logic is obvious. But pay attention to how the gathering is depicted.

Cesare Nebbia, Opening of the Council of Nicaea (325) by Emperor Constantine I, around 1585-1589, fresco, Vatican Library; The First Ecumenical Council, 1700, mural, St. Sophia of Kyiv

Some structure or organization was necessary to codify and disseminate the message. It becomes an article of faith that the Nicaean Creed is a truthful semiotic representation of God's will. Likewise the Ecumenical Council where it was formulated.

Material-level difference. The Roman painting shows the pope presiding in modern attire and the emperor opening in period costume. The Orthodox one shows a decidedly Christ-like emperor presiding with prelates arranged like a heavenly host. This is irrelevant to the truth of the Creed.

Constantine called the Council in an imperial appropriation of Christian authority. Jesus makes it clear that worldly power is incompatible with the Kingdom of God - Constantine's actions are pure inversion of the message. The counter would be that he merely called the council to preserve socio-political peace. In which case one might wonder why he is given pride of place - and a halo - among actual Christian leaders?

If one were looking for an inversive moment in church centralization, the deification of the Roman Emperor would be a fine start. Consider that it was the paganisms of Alexander VI and "Pope Francis" that got us thinking about centralization and inversion. Rendering God's to Caesar and Christianizing the Imperial cult of the emperor because ~~reasons~~ second-rate Neoplatonism is likely the inflection point. The actual inversion will take another post.

First Council of Constantinople (AD 381), from the Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Paris Gregory), between 879 and 883, BnF Grec 510 f.355r.

9th-century Byzantine manuscript illustration of the council where the first Nicene Creed was rewritten by a group of people. Note that the Gospel Book is given the place of honor, but the emperor is the only figure worthy of a halo. The artist may well have been Christian. The idea of a divine emperor is an ancient Middle Eastern pagan inversion that predates the Persian Empire.

We have render unto God and Caesar. Turns out Jesus should have added "render unto Babylon"...

First Ecumenical Council of Nikea 325 AD, undated icon from the Mégalo Metéoron Monastery in Greece, with the condemned Arius in the bottom of the icon.

Doesn't take long. An emperor LARPing as an image of Jesus is a blasphemous inversion of Jesus' message. Sort of like "never go through that gate". It doesn't matter who stated the alternative if it overtly contradicts what the original representation necessitated.

It seems straightforward enough. An organic culture will have a consensus perspective on the metaphysical. Just as it will have common language and customs. The West is complicated by its composite structure - multiple distinct nationalities within a common Christian framework developing over time. It stands to reason that there would be local expressions of that faith as well.

The issue is what material variance is ancillary and what corrupts the message. Whether it is meaningful. The costume a pastor wears is ancillary. An emperor interposing himself between you and Logos is not.

Our 6th-century Justinian propaganda from the last post. Bishop Maximian is the bald man with his name included to the right of the emperor in the lower panel. That he wears a dress but no hat is irrelevant to the quality of his pastoral effectiveness.

Pretending that a material order made by men centuries after Christ that claims the fallen material world is perfectly commensurate to ultimate reality is manifestly, objectively, utterly impossible unless you deliberately alter Christ's message. That is, represent something other than the Kingdom of God.

Change vs. meaningful change. By the fruits.

Prince Edward, Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, detail of The Family of Henry VIII, 1545, oil on canvas, Hampton Court Palace

Of course blasphemous skidmarks lying about God for lust and greed isn't limited to late Roman emperors. Like this bloated greasy turd shown here with the whore that replaced the wife he murdered. His "church" is as inverted as he is.

Christianity is explicit about it's ontological intermediacy. The notion of being in the world but not of it. In the West, the church developed into a regionalized late-imperial Roman organization that gradually extended throughout Europe and elsewhere. This meant for the most part, the spread of Christianity and the evolution of the church as a man-made set of institutional choices moved together. Note that there is nothing inherently wrong with ordering material Christian life after socio-cultural patterns. That's how we order everything. And the Bible doesn't specify through what representational venue communal prayer happens - just that privileging this world over the next will keep you out of the Kingdom. But it's especially easy historically to conflate the representation and the referent.

What matters metaphysically is if whatever configuration is chosen hews to the meaning of the message and is effective in ministering to the people. In other words, not looking good for Constantine. Or Henry.

Consider the material forms of early Christianity.

Another Agape feast, late 3rd century, Catacombs of Ss. Pietro e Marcellino, Rome

Why catacombs? That's where early Christians could meet and bury their dead without interference from hostile authorities.

Giovanni Bellini, St. Jerome in the Desert, 1505, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Why desert eremites? That's what the wilderness looked like.

And why does the desert look like Italy here? That's what wilderness looked like to Bellini. The setting is irrelevant to Jerome's value as model of logos.

St. Paul's Outside the Walls, Rome

Constantinian basilica expanded by Theodosius and completed in the mid 5th century that burned in 1823 and was rebuilt to the Theodosian specs over the 19th century. It's the most accurate representation of an early Christian imperial basilica that we have.

Why imperial basilicas? Because the Roman Emperor attempted to tie his office to the Church

Cima da Conegliano, St. Peter Enthroned with St. John the Baptist and St. Paul, 1515-1516, oil on panel, Pinacoteca Brera, Milan

Why the Imperial Papacy? Because the Bishop of Rome liked the analogy.

Depicting the Apostle Peter as a late-medieval potentiate 1500 years after his death puts him in accessible contemporary terms. But this has little to do with the historical Peter. Read scripture, then use reason to ascertain whether he seems the sort to be into thrones...

These representational aspects of the early and medieval churches - there is enough change to differentiate their man-made forms - may be compatible with scripture or the the first Christian century. But their historical forms are not necessary. So it should be a simple matter - at least in theory - to measure man-made alterations in church rules against scripture. Except for one problem. They're both representations - not the message itself. And Christian organization began to form before the Bible was written.

Nicolas Bernard Lépicié, Conversion of St. Paul, 1767, oil on canvas

If we work from conventional dating, the missions of the Apostles launch well before the Gospels are written. Assuming Paul and Peter are martyred during the Neronian persecutions of ~66 AD, their work is done before any of the Gospels are finalized.

This means that if "the church" refers to material Christian ordering as anaccessible representation of Christ's message, it can't be based only on the Bible. The Bible wasn't available when the representational ordering started!

This is the basis of the magisterium of the church. It sounds like majestic in English, but actually translates to teaching. This refers to the chain of knowledge from Jesus to the Apostles to their chosen successor bishops, etc. There is biblical corroboration in the instances where Jesus is referenced telling the Apostles things that aren't included in the text. Correct interpretations and so forth. And it's never really been disputed going back to the earliest writings.

Jean II Restout, Pentecost, 1732, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum

The exact same knowledge by faith applies to the truth-value of the early organizational formation of the church as it does do the Bible. That metaphysical truth - the united mystical body of all Christians mentioned in the Bible with Christ at the head - is accurately reflected in the material representation. Whether changes are non-meaningful and compatible and if the necessities are observed.

If we extend the representational priority sequence to the formation of the church, it looks like this.

The material ordering of the church coalesces over a couple of centuries, starting with exposure to Jesus directly and the first wave of Christians. The "early Christians" - say up to the 4th century - gradually turn these inputs into the religion with all its components. This then floats through time, maintaining the necessary truths of the message as the appearance of life changes around it. On this level, the ritual order of things or choice of music doesn't matter. Whatever best delivers the message without meaningfully changing it.

The ontological problem is that representations don't have to be truthful. Obtain material power over the signs and one can claim to make substantive changes. How else can formal notions of Purgatory, indulgences, etc. be "discovered" then written up with a juridical precision that Christ himself doesn't claim?

Stigmatization of Saint Francis, 1297-1300, fresco, 270 x 230 cm, Church of St. Francis, Assisi

The obvious answer if we take church claims at face value is visionary prophetic revelation of some sort. Visionary knowledge is interesting. It is empirical and objective to the recipient, but everyone else has to accept it on faith. This is the most ontologically direct form of Christian truth, but the least practical for maintaining a consistent representational church.

Once again, onto-epistemological responsibility clarifies things. The magisterium - whatever one's belief regarding it - is abstract. The offices of the church - regardless of "denomination" - are material. One is timeless and unchanging. One is a representation and subject to evaluation. By the fruits.

The Bible tells us we see truth as through a glass darkly, not with precise legalistic clarity. It is necessary to maintain consistent order - hence "canon law" - but literally can't be metaphysical. It is a subsequent addendum to Christ's message. It must be consistent with the message as initially presented, and effective at maintaining consistency. That's the best fallen, entropic, material reality can offer.

Symbols of the Four Evangelists, Book of Kells, 800, Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I

Consider - All Four Gospels are different. John especially, but the synoptic ones aren't exactly carbon copies.

The Apostles and other early Christians assembling the first-century Gospel books rejected claims to absolute clarity in spiritual matters. It will take human frauds to introduce magic words and sigils centuries later. Jesus asks who you think he is and passes on declaring a "greatest" Apostle. There's no ontological path from here to pretenses of worldly authority.

That left the medievals with no alternative to donning weird headgear and using coercive force.

What this means should be reassuring to Christians in an era where institutional churches have corrupted away from truthful representation. It means that the metaphysical church is beyond harm from beast-huffers because it is abstract and unchanging. Degenerating material churches simply changes the representation to a reference to something else. It's a major problem for anyone hoping to benefit from the saving power of Christ's message because that message isn't getting through. Restore the truthfulness and the representation functions again.

The Band's take on denominations it that they are all man-made accommodations of an originary Truth to be judged by the fruits. Jesus is explicit about how to be saved. We have no way of knowing this for certain, but we suspect individuals who follow his message are and those who don't aren't, regardless of denomination. It is a narrow gate, after all.

Is the accommodation effective and do the followers obey his teaching? The rest is human tribalism. Or so it seems to us.

The problem with the medieval church was that by the Renaissance, the papacy had become too heretical and corrupt to maintain the illusion of spiritual leadership. The Church had grown too worldly to generate another Francis. So it ruptured.

The next post will wrap this inquiry by looking at the historical process of centralization and inversion that runs from divine emperors through Osiris and beyond.

Jean-Paul Laurens, detail of Pope Formosus and Stephen VI - The Cadaver Synod of 897, 1870, oil on canvas, Nantes Museum of Arts

Representation and Inversion - Centralization in Art & Faith Part 3

2021-06-21T14:10:02.811-07:00

Representation is how art and faith centralize and invert. Material institutions and offices meant to promote them come to stand in for them. And once cut off from the external Truth they were created to represent, they're easily corrupted. Part three in a look at centralization and secular transcendence in art and faith.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

The previous post took up the issue of centralized authority in the arts of the West [click for a link]. The foundations were laid in the Renaissance, making it a pivotal period - just not for the reasons the beast narrative lies about. In the big picture, the Renaissance begins the inversion of Western Christendom into the beast system we are trapped in today. We worked through this in earlier posts.

It's a metaphysical flattening. The only viable formula for the arts of the West that conforms to history and ontology - and isn't just a fancy word for picture - is the material realization of immaterial logos through human techne. Technical skill to realize some element of truth. We're keeping it general to accommodate the diversity of the West - distinct nationalities within a common spiritual and philosophical frame. Here's the graphic.

The important thing to note is the proper ontological placement. The artist's "logos" is their techne -culturally-specific craft skills they develop and perfect. These are applicable to any work they undertake - they aren't connected to content.

The truth of the image is external to the artist. They have to accommodate it to their comprehension, but they don't "make it up". It's an obective standard that they adhere to, and their success is subject to the eternal judgment of clients.

Put it another way, more directly. Because correctly classifying interactions across ontological gaps is a real obstacle for de-moralized victims of the beast system. Even smart ones.

Truth is externally & objectively preexisting

Representation is arbitrary and culturally determined

To generalize, the Renaissance began the process of inversion.

The earliest known image of the Madonna and Child other than some Adoration of the Magi scenes, Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome, early 3rd century.

Mary is shown nursing while a prophet - probably Balaam - points to a star in reference to Numbers 24:17.

I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.

Catacomb imagery is very symbolic, and the techne level isn't always the highest. It's hard to tell here because it's badly worn too. But a lot of truth is packed into this simple image, without made-up, post-facto embellishment. The human aspect of Jesus, the typological connection between Old and New Testaments, and the emphasis on Mary as vehicle are all here. What we don't have are obscene priests LARPing as emperors and claiming powers the Apostles didn't, pagan gods and entities as "symbols" of Christian doctrine, or erotica.

The arts of the West follow a loosely Platonic formula where the artist tries to realize materially a sense of truth in his mind. And since art is made for someone(s), the success of the representation depends on how it is received. The style and composition are arbitrary. The Truth is not. And the efficacy of the Art is the phronesis. How effectively they synergize to give you an impression of something you can't see directly.

Miniature Altarpiece with the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Crucifixion and Moses with the Brazen Serpent, early 16th century, wood, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thirteen hundred years later, the art looks pretty different. But the typological message - the Incarnation and salvation of man - is the same. Here it's narratives instead of people - two Old Testament scenes that foretell the Crucifixion.

Different time and place, different techne but the same consistent Logos.

The inversion is that the truth to be represented is also arbitrary and man-made. This is a theoretical difference, since all abstracts are humanly known through material or mental representations. How do we know if it's external truth or arbitrary fiction?

The answer is another poser for beast huffers. Moral reasoning. We have to judge. In an entropic, subjective material reality that appears to us as a valley of shadow seen through a glass darkly. We judge imperfectly by the fruits - by the outcomes. Look at some more modern work.

Norton Bush, South American Landscape, 1879, oil on canvas, private

It isn't overtly religious, but is full of truth. It's a realistic portrayal of the topography with the feeling of a bright humid tropical day. The techne is excellent - the light colors in the water and hazy glare are skillful. And behind it all, the beauty of Creation shines through.

Henri Matisse, Landscape at Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, MoMA

Conversely, there's no truth or techne. Just a mentally ill man splattering paint and an atavistic beast system that weaponizes it against Truth and Beauty.

Two landscapes, neither overtly religious. But one draws our mind to supernal things, the other spirals downward into mindless solipsism. Remember - the ontological hierarchy includes the possibility of degenerating below the material level. When not clouded by beast nonsense, it’s easy to see.

What we see take place in the Renaissance doesn't require subtle moral reasoning to spot the problem. Like popes hiring artists to link Jesus to Osiris and aggrandize the family name. Or claim sibyls were granted Christian revelation...

Pinturicchio and assistants, Io/Isis with Moses and Hermes Trismegistus, 1493, fresco, Sala dei Santi, Appartamento Borgia, Vatican Palace

Or Mary and Isis, with fraud Hermes elevated to the same level as Moses - the Old Testament prophet and type for Christ. Confusing the Greek Io and Egyptian Isis - or the Greek god Hermes and the late antique fake sage - is typical of the blasphemous nature of the late medieval "Church".

Pinturicchio and assistants, Hermes Trismegistus with the Zodiac, 1493, fresco, Sala delle Sibille, Appartamento Borgia, Vatican Palace, Rome

Hermes gets his own little panel too. It's easy to pretend he's a source of cosmic wisdom because he didn't exist. Like any imaginary friend, he has no character of his own. He can be whatever you pretend.

It's amusing that Christians rightfully condemn the idolatry and anti-Christian satanic inversions of "Pope Francis" without noting that costumed sinners have always tried to impose pagan idols on the righteous. And Christians have always risked life and limb to reject them. What changed over the last couple of millennia were the title and costume.

Masolino, St. Catherine Refusing to Worship Idols, 1425-31, fresco, San Clemente, Rome

Domenichino, St. Cecilia before the Judge, between 1612-15, fresco, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

Paintings of early Christians being martyred for refusing to worship idols were common. Here are two from fresco cycles on either side chronologically of the Pinturicchio paintings for Alexander VI.

The justifications for Christian art may or may not convince. But the issue is whether they qualify as idols if their subjects are accurate and they aren't venerated or worshipped. No one legitimate ever defended honoring pagan gods in Christian holy places.

Pictures condemning idolatry can seem ironic unless taken at face value. So let's do that - put aside internal theological debates between Christian factions and assume a distinction between Christian art and venerating idols. This would fall into two big areas - the subjects of the pictures and how they are used. In both of the above, a clear didactic message distinguishes visual communication from veneration or worship. From any active role in Christian ritual at all. An altarpiece gives the Mass a visual backdrop, but it plays no role in the proceedings. The doctrine of transubstantiation is not dependent on the adjacent decor.

Now Alexander. We don't know what he did with the images, so we can't say if he was committing formal idolatry as understood by the Church of his day. But the content is actively evil - a subversion of Christian Truth that undermines the message of salvation.

This is what makes the Hermetic inversion in the papal apartments so egregious. The images include Isis gathering the parts of Osiris' body so he can be brought back to life - the main reason deceivers try and confuse him and Jesus. The style makes it easy to overlook. All the figures have that 'more luxurious version of Perugino' quality that Pinturicchio has. But the feeling of wrongness comes through all the same.

Then there's the pyramid on the altar. It's not a condemnation scene like the pictures right above. It's an effort to assert compatibility between two things as utterly opposed morally and spiritually as the Heaven or Hell they lead into.

When "Pope Francis" and his cabal of satanic priests ensconce pagan idols in St. Peter's it's arguably worse than Alexander because it's in an actual church. There is clearly interaction of a ritual nature - both from the pose and configuration of the figures and their absurd costumes. Note the inclusion of the small priestess. By the fruits, it appears one can get around female clergy by recruiting pagan witches.

To be fair, Alexander was much more explicit in conflating demons with Jesus. A detailed series of pictures spells it out without plausible deniability.

Ethically, the two are akin in diametrically opposing even the most lenient legitimate Christian take on imagery. The difference seems to be whether the culture is debased enough to bring the demonology into the open.

So both the late medieval papacy and the "Pope Francis" junta are cut from the same blasphemous cloth in their rejections of the scriptural Christian account of Logos. Furthermore, they deny their own doctrinal history. Either popes can simply incorporate pagan gods into Catholic ontology however they want. Or the "popes" in question are inversive frauds. By the fruits.

Art is complicated by incorporating different levels in a single image that signifies like reality. The old saying "a picture is worth 1000 words" sells it short. One-dimensional modern atrocities like the Pope's Satanic Throne don't happen overnight. Pinturicchio's work for Alexander is good painting. Historically it's the final form of that 15th-century style epitomized by the Sistine Chapel walls that the High Renaissance replaced.

Pinturicchio, Resurrection with Alexander VI, 1492-1493, Borgia Apartments, Vatican Museums

For what it's worth, Alexander appeared to be Christian. Here he's worshipping the resurrected Christ. The Band isn't equating degree of wickedness - just the putting man-made fantasy over the message they were charged with.

This is what makes art so potentially subversive - you can still have a thread of truth and beauty but use secondary connotations to slip in lies. Look at the most famous of the Pinturicchio frescos - a big panel showing St. Catherine of Alexandria. Only here, the focus is decidedly not on idolatry. Not in the same way, anyhow. The nominal subject is Catherine's defeat of the pagan emperor's philosophers and her martyrdom. There is a persistent rumor that Catherine and the turbaned man behind her are Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia.

Pinturicchio, St. Catherine's Disputation, 1492, Hall of the Saints, Borgia Apartments, Vatican

Note the Roman triumphal arch in the background. It follows the Sistine Chapel walls in showing early Christian or Biblical history taking place in Rome. This makes a visual tie between the papacy as a Roman institution and the Christian past.

What's different here is the golden ~~calf~~ bull on top - a combined symbol of Alexander and Osiris in the paintings. Yes, it can be "explained". It's still totally inverted as a symbol of Christian authority. Given the historical and traditional meaning of those symbols in that context.

That's the thing deceivers always gloss over. Art is neither "autonomous" not "natural". It's a representation. And like any representation, it uses conventionalized references. Symbolic elements will have primary and secondary associations. These will mix and match differently for different viewers. Some will go unnoticed by most. The point is that it is a contrived statement - as much as any text. This isn't like a photo that captures things as they appeared. This is historical fiction - a totally imaginary take on a past event "written" for present-day ideological reasons.

The logos is in the subject - the virtue and sanctity of Catherine of Alexandria. The techne is in Pinturicchio.

Pinturicchio, Adoration of the Christ Child, around 1490, oil on wood, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

Pinturicchio is a fine painter - especially if you like that earlier Renaissance style. Here he uses that more elegant version of Perugino and some ancient Roman inspired decoration around the arch.

Note the Italian town in the background. Situating Biblical scenes in familiar surroundings was a common way to help people connect the stories to their own existence. On this level, the triumphal arch in the Borgia apartments was normal. Easy to explain away. The golden bull is the twist.

Alexander's component is the not-Christian part...

Art is an excellent Trojan Horse because it can slip inverted messages in with truth and beauty. Like a little bit of urine in the wine, it may pass unnoticed at first, but the drink is impure. Keep adding more and it will become foul. Remember the change vs. meaningful change distinction.

Extrapolate forward - the centralized authority is inverted, then there is nothing to prevent the thread of truth from being phased out completely.

This is the full inversion. The possibility of beauty is lost then as well.

Redefining "art" as an arbitrary, rule-based discourse was a necessary precondition of the Trojan Horse. It's not subjective techne chasing objective truth - even in theory. Not that abstracts can manifest materially qua abstracts - art as phronesis was derived from Aristotle, so a hylomorphic formation is not surprising. But logos as the content ideal allows truth and beauty to serve as external measures. If the techne and the content are just arbitrary theory - if the logos part is just the theory de jour - then it isn't art in any meaningful sense.

Art as arbitrary, rule-based techne or form to represent

objective truth or content.

becomes

Art as an arbitrary rule-based discourse that

determines form and content.

In declaring "art" theoretically objective on a material level it becomes secular transcendence. It may be inadvertently truthful - lingering cultural momentum, an individually moral artist, etc. But there is nothing to stop it from not being. So Osiris or whatever.

The logical next question is why the self-proclaimed arbitrator between man and Logos is visualizing false doctrines in the institutional heart of Christendom?

Joseph Marie Vien, Pope St. Gregory the Great, 1766, oil on canvas Fabre Museum

This is a different debate from extra-Biblical dogmas that are accepted as articles of faith and don't overtly contradict scriptural metaphysics. The office of "pope" as institutionally defined is a post-Biblical development that is at least compatible with how Jesus singles Peter out in scripture. One can argue if the exact form of the position as it evolved was biblically necessitated. But it isn't ruled out by it either.

Contrast legitimating a man-made position with Matthew 16:16 to justifying one with appeals to Osiris or Pachamama. One is a dispute over Christian interpretation, the other is an overt satanic inversion.

The centralization and corruption of the medieval Church follows the same broad pattern as the arts of the West. The specifics are obviously completely different. Historical development and structures and metaphysical implications are nothing alike. But on a pattern level, both express the same dangerous impossible necessity – the need to embody ontological abstraction in material expression.

Impossible because metaphysical abstractions by definition transcend entropic temporality.

We are born into pre-existing Creation and learn progressively. We can discover abstract relations inductively, but there's an inexorable ontological priority order.

In reality, the subset cannot subsume the superset. Only representations can entertain self-generating images and temporal or ontological Mobius loops. And representations are themselves post-facto reactions to reality. Writing that out might make it sound tricky. Here's what it looks like...

Gerrit Dou, Man Writing by an Wasel, c. 1631-1632, oil on panel, private; Page with a diagram of the sun, moon, earth and planets from Bede's De temporibus, around 1244, British Museum, Egerton MS 3088 f. 17v

So we don't encounter actual timeless abstractions within our material reality, because they are ontologically incompatible with entropic temporal existence. What we do encounter are material references to them that aren't them.

But representation is also necessary because as fallen entropic material creatures, we have no direct perception of abstract reality. All that we can know must be expressible through materially-derived, time sequenced, material reference.

François Lemoyne, Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, 1737, oil on canvas, Wallace Collection, London

The premise behind this allegory is that the truth comes out in time - literally the naked truth. This is not necessarily the case, but that doesn't matter. These are material representations of abstract things used to assert a relation that may or may not conform to the thing represented - the subject.

The necessity - how would you communicate about truth, time, lies, etc. without word, pictures, or something else that isn't the abstract absolutes in themselves? You can't even define them.

The critical implication is that we can conceptualize things that don't or can’t materially exist. This isn't a new revelation - it's implicit in the nature of Logos that ties the ontological hierarchy together. Logic abstracts from empirical observation, and faith rises above that. Historically, this was presented as the composite nature of the soul, with animal material and intellectual abstract aspects in one. Of course, animals exhibit basic inferential reasoning as well - though not to the same degree. The gradients and distinctions are more complex than simple categories assume.

Is “consciousness” supernatural?

Who cares. All we can know must be expressible through materially-derived time sequencing. What happens afterward is temporally subsequent.

Dangerous because it’s a short fall into claiming the material representation is the same as the subject. This is an inherent limitation of the dependence of consciousness on representation for input. The problem is that representations are creations that reference something else and independent things with their own properties. They start by denoting or standing for things that are materially real then quickly spread to things that aren't. In our truth painting, the symbolic elements are all based on real forms but the message is intangible and not necessarily correct.

Being able to think or represent something is insufficient to determine whether it is materially real or not.

Consider - all representations express something that the representation isn't. Numbers, words, pictures all refer to an absent subject. So all representation is linked in some way to what it represents. But they are also things-in-themselves. Even if only marks on a page. In order to work - to represent - they develop their own internal systematic logics and consistencies. The rules that allow them to make sense as meanings. But the rules and internal logic are of the representation - they're totally independent of the subjects that the representations are representing.

This means representation qua representation can't have the same properties as the thing represented qua the thing represented.

They're related but different and function differently.

This is the representation vs. reality problem that even the smartest historical figures can just fly over.

Historically, there have been two forms of binary idiocy around representation. That it's completely transparent and can be treated conceptually as the same as the thing represented. Or completely opaque and can be treated conceptually as entirely different from the thing represented. Absolute transparent equivalence or Postmodern retard inversion where the mediation masquerades as the reference. Put plainly, it should surprise no one with even a thimble full of IQ points that both are true and must be accounted for.

Representation is a filter – like the glass in through a glass darkly or the shadow in the valley of shadow. Imperfect accommodation of something else that nevertheless offers the possibility of understanding.

It's complex - this simple parable is a spoken allegorical representation of the nature of the Kingdom put into written words in the Bible then reprinted and visualized in many forms. None of which are the actual metaphysical content of the meaning.

This is what made Pierce so useful to our earlier posts. His model identified the role of the perceiver in navigating this interplay of same and different. Because the perceiver is the one who decodes the message based on their understanding of the signs being used. Meaning forms when they can identify the difference between representation and subject and call to mind the latter. Whether they are correct raises further complications, but we're sticking to basic mechanisms here. Click for a link to the post this from.

Occultists, postmodernists, liars, and other filth of that nature claim representation controls reality. These deceptions build of the interplay of sameness and difference in any representation but in a way that inverts reality.

"Okay, I'm a bat, too. Abracadabra!"

Representations refer to something other than themselves. Referential links are needed to posit a connection between sign and signified in the first place. If there is no tie between them, there can be no connection for one to control the other. It's a funny bit, but both forms conform to the representational denotations of the word "bat".

Ben Garrison cartoon, 22nd June 2021

But the representations also have to be different from the reality they claim to represent or there is no capacity for independent manipulation of the sign. The liar has to be able to make claims with the representation that are not properties of the subject so the recipient - you - react as if the lies were real & not the truth.

The point is that representations can convey information that is false or even completely disconnected from reality. Hence the danger - that which we use to communicate truthful information has no internal mechanism to prevent fabrication and deception. So impossible, necessary, and dangerous. And as with everything in this fallen world, the truth-value - the moral value - depends on the character of the individual using it. By the fruits.

The next thing to deal with is the role of representation in human existence. It is omnipresent.

We think of representation as semiotics or organized sign systems. Letters, numbers, symbols, art conventions, video – media used to record and transmit information.

But the representational process is much more fundamental. Anything that materially expresses or is meaningfully associated with – connotatively or denotatively – something else is operating representatively.

This one is harder to spot because there isn’t a single identifiable medium at work. It’s a mess of things – buildings, institutions, theories, stakeholders, media of all kinds. Whatever network of socio-cultural entities becomes associated with the abstract concepts it services in some way.

They’re all different – but what they have in common is the broad representation coming to take the place of the thing it represents.

Like the Met as a nice place to display art becoming synonymous with or exerting control over art as a concept. The Met doesn't embody, define, or have any necessary ontological link to the marriage of Logos + Techne. It's a storehouse.

If it promotes Logos + Techne, then it's promoting art. If it doesn't, it isn't. By the fruits.

This more general sort of representation necessarily falls into inversion when it becomes wrongfully treated as synonymous with its subject. This isn't rhetoric - it's ontological priority order. That is, the basic layout of reality. Mistaking the representational networks for the thing they were to represent pretends a contingent material expression is the antecedent abstract it was created to express.

It's ubiquitous.

Here's a familiar non-art example.

The apparatus of representational government was created to express the interests and desires of a polity.

But it became a self-perpetuating tyrannical oligarchy that imposes its own interests and desires on a polity.

It’s just another way to phrase the old Philosophical Bait and Switch. And you can easily see how the connection and difference inherent in any representation comes into play.

Start with a representation of what "the arts of the West" is.

Art expresses Logos through visual applications of techne.

Logos + Techne for short.

Now consider the development of representational networks - first to service this, then replacing it.

Over time, socio-cultural formations develop to

analyze, teach, and disseminate Logos + Techne.

becomes

Over time, socio-cultural formations declare

themselves “art” and replace Logos + Techne

Ontologically, this is impossible. A material “representation” that accommodates a metaphysical abstract can’t be the abstraction. But semiotically, it’s easy. A representation doesn’t have to be truthful. There is nothing inherent to stop it from stating whatever it wants. But then it is no longer representing what it was created to and still professes represent. It’s why we use Art! to distinguish the lies of the beast system from Logos + techne. That is, art.

Centralization is necessary for this.

Peder Mørk Mønsted, Spring, early 20th century, oil on canvas, private; Maurice Vlaminck, Banks of the Seine at Chatou, 1905-6, oil on canvas, Musée d’art moderne de Paris)

While the mental defectives called "Fauves" were splattering paint for gibbering atavists, artists were making art. They just weren't doing it in the old places because the old places were expressing something else.

Without centralization, some of the old places might still be promoting Logos + Techne. Imagine if the idiot masses who accept institutions in lieu of real things were given choices within their little mental shoeboxes?

You only get the totally preposterous inverted lies - like demented smears as art or genetic toxins as "medicine" - when effective alternatives within the broad representational network are turned off. That's centralization. At which point, the intelligent and perceptive abandon the network to seek the thing it no longer represents.

Centralization doesn’t even have to have a legally binding structure, though it can. Art! is more based on money, gatekeeping, and informal ties. Democracy! has full control of the judiciary and organized use of force. But official, unofficial, or both, centralized networks of institutions and entities that manage to take over for what they were intended to represent enforce rigid ideological orthodoxy.

Take Frank Gehry's Bilbao eyesore - erected at the cost of close to $100 million in 1990s dollars. The cost, endless promotion, and bizarre appearance make it impossible to ignore. It's clearly presented as a material representation of "what art is today". It's even tied into Basque identity politics as a tourist attraction and "proof" of some sort of cultural something.

The building is eye-catching, but ugly and without lasting appeal after the initial impact. Not aging so well, either.

The pile of alien rubble has no organic connection to its natural setting, community, or local culture. What sort of message does this representation represent?

The impression is some sort of invasive mutate or salient, depending if taken as biological or man-made. From first glance it's fake definition of art is the inverse of any form of logos or culturally-meaningful techne. It's a perfect representation of what Art! is. The utter irrelevance to art is equally clear. Atavistic garbage like this will be acclaimed for its salvage value in the world to come.

Interior scenes with accumulated junk by Eduardo Chillida (top) and Richard Serra's Snake of 2005 (bottom).

Degenerate trash is collected on the interior as well, but in a more orderly arrangement. And one of Serra's ugly hulks of rusting metal brought indoors rather than fouling a public space.

No art, but a form of engagement that soul-dead materialists can take as an "experience". Stupid people are engaged by simple contrasts and brutish, dark-colored lumps stand out against the smooth, white backdrops.

That's it.

The rigid ideological orthodoxy represented here? Anything but logos or techne. Full inversion as the outcome of the dangerous, impossible necessity of embodying abstract truths in material representations. Here's a not-rhetorical question - if you care about your art or culture, why would you set foot in this charnel house?

Ontological priority order gets so easily confused because the representation is what evokes the subject in the mind. It's how we think of it. You can't see "Logos+Techne" or "the will of a people" without a material expression. But you can see museums and art books or a government building. So one becomes interchangeable with the other in the mind's eye. But one is a representation and one exists. They aren't the same. They don't even have to have anything in common.

And remember - representations can represent things that are unreal or don't exist. Just as our imaginations can picture falsehoods and out logical faculties grasp immaterial abstractions.

Material reality is irrelevant to whether or not a subject can be represented - internally or externally.

The ability to conceive of things that are unreal or real but immaterial is a two edged sword. It is the source of our incredible creativity, our highest values, our connection with God. It also makes us susceptible to lies, delusions, and terrible decisions. This has been long known - the ancients saw phantasia as having psychological and metaphysical aspects. Aristotle's capacity for imaginative thought between sensation and mind and part of an immaterial soul within a material body.

Louis Janmot, Poem of the Soul, The Angel and the Mother, 1854, oil on canvas, Musee des Beaux Arts Lyon

Different but connected levels of reality within us – however defined.

From a Christian sense, it’s how we can align with Logos

The occult relies on our ability to conceptualize the not materially real when it inverts ontological priority. Anterior representations as constitutive of what they represent because that's how we thing and communicate. Pure projected solipsism. There's never a credible argument because there can be none. Any illusion of metaphysical “power” has nothing to do with magic words and everything to do with the metaphysical forces that surround us. The servants of the prince of this world and whatever unclean spirits are cluttering the aether.

Things that may have an abstract origin, but can offer no path out of this reality.

Luis Ricardo Falero, Faust’s Vision (detail), 1880, oil on canvas, private

Not that the Father of Lies is likely to come clean...

Just know that if what you think you are doing is ontologically impossible, it isn’t really what you’re doing.

Conversely, Jesus is never presented as something we can all aspire to be. Imitate, emulate, learn from, try to live up to, call upon... there are all kinds of real connections between him and humanity. It's just that neither "Son of Man" nor "Son of God" are applicable to anyone else. Nor can anyone else do all the things he does. The Transfiguration alone marks him as singular.

Carl Bloch, Transfiguration of Jesus, around 1865, oil on canvas

Back at the beginning, the Band has mentioned the unique nature of Jesus as a religious figure. He isn’t a “representation” – even in the broadly defined sense of this post – because he is what he references. Son of God and Son of Man in one figure. Physical and metaphysical natures conjoined.

The human aspect makes him personally relatable to us. We can attempt to emulate his manner and conduct, and through that access the metaphysical aspects of the Logos. But only he can connect us to those metaphysical aspects

There's the distinction - he is what he represents. Jesus is utterly unique in that he doesn't just evoke or call to mind an absent transcendent abstraction with a material form. In his singular case, the ontological prior actually is instantiated in a temporally-contingent physical body. That this is materially "impossible" is irrelevant to the ultimate Creator that set these rules in the first place. Why do it this way? Who knows? The purely ontologically prior isn't determined by the reasoning processes of temporal, fallen, antecedent subjectivities. Our thought-pictures are inadequate to account for ultimate reality. If there is something we don't understand, the limitation is with us.

We call them limits of discernment, but those are just representations. It's the content that matters.

Antonio da Correggio, Noli me tangere, 1525, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The nature of Christ is known by faith, although the implications are compatible with logical and empirical analysis. So once his nature is accepted, the rest of Christian metaphysics and morality follow. It’s how we can judge by the fruits. Jesus lays out a consistent alternative vision to the fallen world that once initially accepted, becomes universally applicable.

The occult inversion would have us be our own gods - to "ascend" or whatever through our own powers and knowledge. Plus some crappy old woodcut prints and published secret magic words. No need for the Logos as a singular conduit between the fallen world and God if we impel our own ascents. Jesus is at most a template that we fully realize in self-divinizing. Of course, if what you think you are doing is ontologically impossible, it isn’t really what you’re doing.

Contrast Jesus' prayer at he end of Matthew 26:39 and a well-known satanic mantra. We generally dislike Bible snippits, but brevity makes sense here for the sake of comparison.

Heinrich Hofmann, Christ in Gethsemane, 1886, oil on canvas, Riverside Church, New York

...not as I will, but as thou wilt

vs.

Do what thou wilt

The first recognizes the ontological constraints on temporal material creations. Regardless of the precise nature of Jesus' divinity, he is also human. And as such, also subject to the consequences of ontic existence. The second isn't really going where they think it does...

This is where the ability to combine and remember multiple complex things comes in. Consider the following...

Reality is complex and multi-level.

Everything we know is filtered through material representations.

Complex things can't be simplified past a point or they become something else.

Any practical metaphysics has to be widely accessible to be useful.

Representations don't have to be truthful.

Stay basic. Any viable notion of Christianity - whatever the individual variations in interpretation - has to make Christ's Good News available to people who weren't there. That's the starting point. If we are to judge by the fruits, how well it facilitates getting and implementing the message of salvation is the crop. To the point where a "church" that impedes the message is definitionally "not Christian".

God Creates Sun, Moon and Stars, 1180s, Byzantine mosaic in Monreale Cathedral, Sicily

Reality is complex and multi-level. Since Christianity addresses faith-based knowledge of ultimate reality, this means Christian metaphysics are also complex and multi-level.

Consider the role of logos in binding together the ontological hierarchy. Manifesting in the appropriate continuous-yet-divided form on each level. Knowable through ancient scripture of uncanny alignment with reality as we perceive it.

Everything we know is filtered through material representations. It has to be since we can’t access abstract realities directly. This makes Christianity the belief system and all its socio-cultural manifestations representations of the message of salvation through the New Covenant proclaimed and taught by Jesus. If we accept his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection as the price of the Fall, then his teaching is the path to the Kingdom. The Bible is accepted on faith as having a divine truth value. Churches grow and develop to unite believers in communion and protect the integrity of the message.

Christian metaphysics are conceptually difficult. But have to be widely accessible to be practically useful. This means they have to be presentable in formulas that are simplified without losing the meaning.

Sir James Thornhill, Paul Preaching in the Areopagus (after Raphael), 1729-31, oil on canvas, Royal Academy of Arts, London

This is the core purpose of a church - to present Christian truth in a way that is accurate and understandable.

The representation/reality problem comes in on two levels. The first is when the dim treat the simplified representational formulas as magic spells and not guides to behavior and attitude. That's churchianity - the replacement of Jesus with the church as primary focus. It's a subset of the replacement of a subject by its representation that this post has been addressing. In this case, the organization that turns from serving the immaterial purpose it was created to represent materially to becoming the end in itself. Defining its mission by whatever arbitrary and subjective priorities it favors at the time.

One might counter by saying it's that's not significant. The representative institution was created to realize abstract values - however it plans its mission, it will be representing those in some way. Except... Representations don't have to be truthful.

Art is a good process analogy because it exists to bridge material and abstract realities but falls victim to material centralization and inversion. Material reference of immaterial truth becomes Material object that claims to be its own truth. The distinction between sign and signified or subjectivity and objectivity magically vanishes. Because representations don't have to be truthful. Since our material existence is defined by our subjectivities, we can cheerfully tell ourselves that whims and desires are objective truth. And we traipse into Flatland, where ontological distinctions are wished away. Unfortunately this doesn’t change reality. It only leaves us trapped in self-erasing error.

Why reiterate this? Because we want to be crystal clear on the pattern whereby practical changes within material accommodation of abstraction becomes inversion. Where claimed ontological continuity becomes deception.

Art is Logos + Techne [L+T] but somehow becomes the monstrous inversion Art! [click for a post on what makes inversion satanic]. Despite claiming smooth continuity it morphs into it’s opposite.

The systemic “representational” discourse no longer channels L+T, but the exact opposite.

So Art! and L+T are complete opposites despite occupying the same socio-political representational apparatus – theories, schools, critics, institutions, etc. It's actually easy to see when you know what to look for. L+T is a practice – a whole set of methods for visualizing truths with technical skills. Where and by who are irrelevant to that.

Art isn’t defined by a person or place, it’s defined by what it is. The fruits.

Conversely, where and who is all Art! is. Without any truth or skill, there is no measure other than the temporal, arbitrary, fallen subjectivities that make up the material representations broadly defined. The mummers in their gilded tombs that no longer deliver the abstract message they were built to. Their names and appearances can still delude the vain, foolish, or those evacuated NPCs no longer able to recognize truth or beauty. But it is utterly irrelevant to L+T as a process. And consequently has nothing to do with art.

The good news is that modernism doesn’t “destroy art”.

Clyde Aspevig, Point Lobos Seascape, 21st century, oil on linen

It literally can’t.

But it does mean that anyone who serves the truth or faces reality has to let go of the imprimaturs and fake authorities - the representations - that modernism created or corrupted. And we need to be aware that the inversive process of replacing reality with representation isn't only a modern thing. It's been going on since the first venal manipulator met the first representational structure.

The one thing all manifestations of secular transcendence share – besides being inherently false – are clear historical motivations. False ontologies always stink of whatever contemporary myopia was mumming as "timeless" at the time.

Consider the apse of the famous early Byzantine church of S. Vitale in Ravenna.

S. Vitale was started in 526 when Ravenna was under Ostrogothic rule but completed in 547 after the Byzantine reconquest. Note the depiction of Christ and the emperor below and on the left.

Jesus is dressed in imperial purple and sits on the world like an emperor. The saints and angels surround him like a court in a heavenly garden.

Justinian likewise appears in imperial purple, surrounded his court. While Jesus wears a jeweled cruciform halo, Justinian wears a jeweled crown inside a halo. The attempt to make a visual connection between Christ as "emperor" of heaven and Justinian as his Neoplatonic counterpart on earth is clear.

The centralization to inversion process began in the medieval Church before the Middle Ages were really even underway. In the Gospels, Jesus delineates a clear distinction between political orders and the kingdom of heaven. Committing to the material world is diametrically opposite to commitment to God. One makes entanglement in this world something to detangle and escape, the other makes it an end in itself. The Band has already considered the fundamental diversion expressed in the famous "Render unto Caesar" passages, but the ontological opposition of worldly pand divine runs throughout the Gospels.

Over and over Jesus pitches his message as a radical rejection of the current order in favor of God's. He affirms the Law of the prophets, but castigates those who claim to uphold it - the material representations of the intangible subject - but don't. What does he judge? Actions and intentions - fruits and heart. Without those, organizational status is irrelevant and pursuit of worldly power satanic.

The satanic inversion of the Pharisees - the institutional "religious" authority of Jesus' time - is their placement of worldly things above heavenly ones. Going through man-made motions and concocting clever phrasings are irrelevant. This is obvious with a logically coherent look at ontology and it's explicitly stated here - to be taken on faith. Replacing the metaphysical reality with the representation simply severs the representation from whatever it was supposed to mean and converts it to projected dishonest vanity.

But we don't have to rely on extrapolating the render unto Caesar passage alone. Consider Jesus' opponents when he rejects the hollow rules of men for the actual will of God...

The Pharisees claim religious authority for their self-serving Godless regime. The Herodians claim political authority for their self-serving Godless regime. The two camps oppose each other because both are struggling for the same worldly prize. And the one thing that can make them allies of convenience is God's actual message to disregard all the lying worldly potentiates.

Of course, the exact opposite happened in late antiquity, when "Christian" emperors actively promoted the idea that their worldly tyranny was a really a manifestation of God/Jesus' place in heaven. That is, a total inversion of political ontology in the Bible for personal gain.

Barberini Ivory, early 6th-century diptych with a triumphant emperor, likely Justinian, ivory Louvre

It's a high-level ivory, possibly half of a diptych. Four of the original five pieces survive. The lower panels contain standard propaganda of imperial power. But the addition of the beardless Christ between angels that imitate Roman victory allegories transforms the message into a self-deifying inversion of the Kingdom that Christ described in the Gospels.

It's a skillful carving - Justinian was a major patron of the arts. The secondary figures communicate the message. On the left, a defeated barbarian accepts Justinian's rule. On the upper right, an angel or winged victory crowns him. On the lower left, Tellus - the Roman earth goddess - caresses his foot to show his domination of the earth.

The hybrid angel-victories are signs of imperial appropriation of Christian imagery to invert Jesus' message and legitimate their rule. Flanking Christ with these victory-angels completely reverses the scriptural message that worldly power is incompatible with salvation. In this blasphemous inversion, Caesar and Christ are the same thing on different ontological levels!

The perverse misrepresentation of Jesus is complemented by the tribute-bearing barbarian captives from east and west bearing tribute below. Spoils, captives, and obedient tribute are more old Roman symbols of imperial conquest. Combined the message is that Caesar is really the divine image of Christ who conquers and slaughters his way to earthly power and rule as Jesus commanded...

Here's the simplified form. There is obviously nothing Biblically Christian about this at all. It's actually the total inversion of Jesus' teachings about the kingdom.

The underlying problem is the fallen nature of man. Greed, lust, venality, wrath, pride - the list goes on - are all aspects of worldly attachment. And when "the Church" was jacked by emperors and their lust for domination, the structure claimed representational status, but falsely. Just as the lying filth on the imperial throne pretends to represent the opposite of what he actually is.

Obviously a king can be a Christian. And Constantine's transformation of the status of Christianity in the empire freed Christians from persecution by the wicked and facilitated the spread the good news. Society needs some sort of ruling order to function. Likewise, Christianity had to develop some central organizing structures to preserve message integrity - especially after Jesus' Ascension.

This is not the same as plugging Christ into the old fake roman

ideology of "divinized emperors"

Jean Fouquet, Coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III from the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1455-1460, Paris, BnF Français 6465, fol. 89v

So when the imperial papacy was feuding with the emperor over who was the real arbiter over the divine right of kingship, the answer was none of them.

There is no "divine right of kingship" because there is only one divine "King".

Worldly, power-drunk, centralizing freaks have sought to use representations associated with Jesus' message to subvert it almost from the beginning. Jesus himself foretold this and provided a means to separate the liars from Christian leadership.

When you actually look at the inverters in context, their fake ontological claims always serve naked contemporary interest. That is the value of studying history for metaphysical critique. Historical texts can deceive - all representations can. But there is always a confluence of interests – physical or metaphysical – between inverters and their inversions that you aren’t supposed to notice. Simply consider how every medieval papal claim enhanced papal power and wealth.

The next post will look at the fruits of the imperial medieval Church and whether the organic development of these material representative structures reach the point where they invert the Gospel message. Osiris, Pachamama, and the Sibyls aren't in the New Testament or the communion of believers, so we have to account for them somehow.

School of Raphael, The Donation of Constantine, 1520–1524, fresco, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City

Change vs. Meaningful Change - Renaissance Centralization in Art & Faith Part 2

2021-06-13T07:38:00.002-07:00

The arts of the West hit a turning point in the Renaissance. But inversion in the arts is part of a much larger failure. Part two in a look at centralization and secular transcendence in art and faith.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Coming out of the Renaissance has left a lot of threads that need to be detangled. The last post brought a few of them together, so we need to continue from there, but more systematically. The core problem is epistemological - different types of knowledge are mashed together without any care for compatibility. This is a symptom of the larger intellectual failure of modernism, but manifests slightly differently in each instance. Art and religion centralize and invert, but the interplay of theory and practice aren't the same. And neither really map onto the historiographic models that posit "the Renaissance" as a moment of total transformation. We need to be attentive to specifics and the general pattern.

Lay out the main issues before flying off into speculation.

The Renaissance as a "period" is defined by sociocultural continuities and isolated changes and not overnight "rebirth" of anything. In order to get illusion of total change it is necessary to extend "the Renaissance" almost 300 years.

Cimabue, Madonna di Santa Maria dei Servi, 1280, tempera on panel, Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi, Bologna; Bronzino, The Deposition of Christ, oil on canvas, 1553, Palazzo Vecchio Museum

Cimabue and Bronzino look different. They're also over a quarter millennium apart. Bronzino looks different from the art of the late 1800s too.

Carl Bloch, The Sheperds and the Angel, 1879, oil on copper

Bronzino doesn't look much like Bloch either. But we don't try and pretend that Bronzino to Bloch represents single moment of historic change. That would be pointless. So why is the Renaissance so stretched out? The short answer is that academics wanted their area to get some Renaissance prestige. Some narrative rub always trumps logic and observed facts in the beast system. If the narrative serves the beast at the moment. It can change fast.

The idea of the Renaissance as a change between two periods in an artifact of academic history and not historical reality. Look over those centuries and find some influential novelties and long-term continuities. Plus the changes happen in different areas at different times. The reality is that change in the material world is continuous - there is no actual total "consistency". What matters is whether we determine change meaningful or not.

Change vs. consistency isn't a real, objective choice. It's a subjective judgment of relative importance.

Art as it emerges from the Middle Ages is driven by the elites, but also expresses differences in regional and national cultures. It reflects the West that spawned it - local differences with a common religious and historical legacy. It's why we see similar subjects in what we called Northern and Southern Renaissance art but different styles and concerns.

We already used it to show differences in popular religiosity that ultimately bring the Reformation.

Hans Memling, The Man of Sorrows in the arms of the Virgin, 1475 or 1479, oil on wood, National Gallery of Victoria

Memling's Man of Sorrows is tame compared to some, but the emphasis on simulated proximity & visceral emotional response is clear. The vivid red blood, the weepy Madonna presenting the corpus like an offering, the faces acting out the Passion drama. All the devotional visualization we saw emphasized in the Northern art of the last post.

Pietro Perugino, Man of Sorrows from the Decemviri Altarpiece, 1495, oil on canvas, Vatican Museum

Compare with a contemporary Italian. You can see the similarity in theme, but the handling is so different. The emphasis on a visual connection is there, but the body is remarkably pristine & bloodless. The emotion is gentle, almost sleepy. The resurrected perfection of the human body is more the emphasis then identifying with suffering.

Cultural differences with a common frame. Art that develops alongside its community to express how they see the world. Imported "rules" are pointless because they reflect the perspectives of someone else. That is, not them. And since "abstract rules of art" are fake projected constructs, believing that they are superior won't help. It's volunteering to have your own heritage and identity conquered and destroyed by a hateful invader. Hateful, because the act of cultural replacement manifests the same psychopathic malevolence as any act of democide.

Richard Morris Hunt, The Breakers, 1893-1895, Newport, RI

The Vanderbilt's famous summer home.

Consider the Gilded Age obsession with European ostentation. Then consider that these frauds' power and influence were products of political and economic malfeasance and manipulation. In hindsight their satanic legacy is apparent - the country and the world would have been vastly better off without them. Any surprise that they announced their ascension with a war on the organic culture of their victims?

Why did they hate American culture? They weren't "American" by any meaningful measure. Oh, there were pieces of paper that said American, but these are ontologically meaningless. They could purchase paper with any country name on it. Nature isn't something declared, it's shown. By the fruits. And the fruits of the early Modern "elite" is pure soulless globalist filth. Nice house though, if you're a hollow demon LARPing a cultural identity you can't hope to understand.

Modernity is based on erasing natural refinements and distinctions for fake "standards" that aren't. Look at the modernist endpoint - undifferentiated ugliness without skill or reference to anything other than beast myths. To get there, you have to establish the lie that "art" is an abstract timeless entity that exists in ideal form independent of human activity. That art was like mathematical relationships - intrinsically & theoretically true whether anyone is aware of them or not.

It's so fundamentally retarded that it's irritating to have to explain it. Like much of the 20th century mythology we were parasitized by, it's humiliatingly stupid to boot. The devil has a cruel sense of humor.

The pure ontological inanity of claiming existential autonomy for a socio-historical construct comes through loud and clear in this description.

If it wasn't all atavistic fakery, the first question would have been how a creation can be ontologically prior to a creator. But they're not that bright either, judging from the screeds. So, how can you - or anyone - set the terms - or even speak at all - for something conceptually self-contained and autonomous? There is no answer because there was no sincerity.

Tl;dr - we want to put a toilet in your halls of culture. Words, words, words... we're putting a toilet in your hall of culture.

Obviously Art! can't be ontologically autonomous or have a "sake" apart from people making and viewing it. But this just means that if you go along, you're agreeing to ignore reality and do whatever they decide in the moment. Like the lights, it's the abandonment of intellectual free will. And with no reality as a check, they can force cultural suicide if the victims are dull, de-moralized, and insecure enough to take the gas pipe.

Giorgio De Chirico, Mystery And Melancholy Of A Street, 1914, oil on canvas, private

It's a harsh analogy, but looking into the characters of the "heroes" of Modernism makes it unavoidable. Modern art was like hiring people who are excited by raping your children to oversee your culture.

The arts of the West are not only expressions of existing cultural perspectives. They're forms of communication. Art doesn't just reflect ideas, it promotes, disseminates, and normalizes them. It shapes how people think by "showing" them what things mean. This is no different today - other than the vastly more pervasive media-surveillance panopticon that inundates us with visuals. Far fewer images meant each one had way more of an impact. And a mass-produced image could define the sacred and our relation to it.

Michael Ostendorfer, The Pilgrimage to the Fair Virgin in Regensburg, between 1519-1522, engraving

The pilgrim souvenir print from the last post. The idea was to commemorate and promote - pictures weren't common so if you got a print, most everyone you know would eventually see it. But it doesn't just encourage you to go visit the statue. It shows you how to react when you get there. It defines what the experience means and is to those who see it.

Debasing or inverting art does rob a culture of witnesses to its highest beauty and virtue. And it also teaches and shapes the upcoming generations to see their culture as something degenerate, ugly, and depressing. It would have been more effective if people didn't tune art out - but that's what 20th-century media was for...

There's a natural dialog between reflecting tradition and creating new expressions in a healthy culture. The altarpiece is a great example - it's an established subject in a new place that changes how people perceive the Mass. But it isn't the same as an iconostasis in an Orthodox church, decorations in a Protestant one, or the satanic throne favored by "Pope Francis". Each draws on tradition to express present values. Centralizing art removes that dialog. It removes the ability to reflect organic difference. This leaves only the shaping part - the degenerate atavism of the narrative engineers.

We've all enjoyed a chuckle at these sort of encounters. But here's a twist -

Think about the message the picture is transmitting about the "culture" you belong to...

Centralization replaces art with a one-way propaganda tool for whatever occupies the center. And it removes an old and powerful vector for cultural transmission and renewal.

The question of who occupies the center is more complicated. The point of the arts of the West posts is to see what happened - at least according to the official history. Plus any light we might shed on the real history. It isn't so much one person calling all the shots as a shifting critical-institutional consensus. But a continuous one - at least in theory. "Art for Art's Sake" was only possible because art had been a self-defining space for so long. The Renaissance introduces the theoretical self-awareness.

Horace Vernet, Pope Julius II Ordering Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raphael to Build the Vatican and Saint Peter's, 1827, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum

It was a murderer's row of talent - Julius had Michelangelo and Raphael painting down the hall from each other for three years. But it's also mythologized. Other than part of tradition, why is the Renaissance relevant to the early 19th century?

It's the same pattern of top-down lies that we see in beast tyranny overall. Start with an organic accommodation of the inherent disconnect between fallen entropic material and abstract absolutes. Then claim there are top-down rules that must govern practice. These are invariably the usual man as absolute measure, be your own god, Flatland nonsense at the root of all satanic inversion. Once this is established, increasingly degenerate overseers move further and further from any-level logos. On a macro scale, think moral entropy.

Summing up...

Beast centralization in art isn't the only thing that came up during our look into the art of the Renaissance. The Renaissance papacy was harnessing humanism and art to a vision of the Church that was drifting away from Christian precepts. And like art, this also needed the imposition of man-made centralization on an organic accommodation of higher abstract reality.

The art-Church-Renaissance connection is sort of indirect. Medieval art was primarily religious - whether paid for by the Church and its subsidiaries, or by aristocrats. Secular subjects existed but become more prominent in the Renaissance as "art" is better established as elite socio-culture. And secular themes increasingly invade religious subjects.

Michelangelo, The Deluge with surrounding Nudes, 1508-1512, fresco, Sistine Chapel

Why was the Sistine Chapel filled with nudes? Artistically, they're brilliant. Michelangelo absorbing the heroic proportions of ancient sculpture into his already-peerless anatomical art. But they have no obvious role in the symbolism and present major decorum issues.

So the Renaissance is pointing to two separate impulses - the centralization and secular transcendence of the Church, and the replacement of Christianity in culture. Religious, historical, and theoretical dimensions are all distinct but connected. Start with the basics. Here's one...

The nature of change in the physical world

We know that abstract absolutes can’t materially exist in our fallen, finite, temporal material reality.

The difference between the material and abstract is the most obvious necessity of the ontological hierarchy. It's a cognitive litmus test - if you are able to see it, it changes everything. If not - someone has to greet the multidimensional visitors to Flatland...

If unfamiliar with the ontological hierarchy, it's a graphic metaphor for the relationship between levels of reality, epistemological access to them, and the moral consequences. It's objectively true, so it maps perfectly onto other truths - like the pillars of the West on the left, or the arts of the West. Click for a link for more explanation.

This includes the ability of our fallen, finite, temporal minds to grasp abstract absolutes in their fullness. It's easier to see with examples.

We can conceptualize vague facsimiles of abstract absolute things, but these are descriptions, not the things in themselves. The difference between the infinity symbol or the phrase “sequence without end” and a literally endless sequence is as great as that between an angel and a pebble. Radically, totally, utterly, ontologically unalike and incommensurable.

Annunciation from the Black Hours, 1470 Bruges, Belgium

We can represent things that we can't materially remake in themselves - it's one of the reasons why we have representations. It shouldn't be necessary to have to point out this distinction, but pretending representation is interchangeable with the thing being represented is depressingly common. If your words don't correspond to reality, it's your representations that are wrong and need replacement. Likewise, "logic" is utterly useless if the sign system where the logical operations are taking place is faulty. A thought experiment perhaps, but nothing that makes a whit of difference in your existence. Remember this next time someone is claiming God's nature is knowable by our words and concepts on any grounds other than faith. They're either cognitively limited or dishonest, and in either case, best avoided.

None of our "laws of physics" - themselves strings of marks on surfaces - have anything to say about what existence is like outside temporal sequencing. They are as ontologically useless for defining God qua God as "what I can picture" is for defining the totality of the space-time continuum.

Unconvinced? Start with a rough measure of God's size - mass or volume. What about how fast He is? Heck, we'll even settle for the correct units...

The absolute difference between material and the abstract realities is clearest in the nature of temporality, finitude, and change. All three are related. Consider -

Change in temporally-determined entropic materiality is omnipresent, constant, and inexorable.

There is no escaping or stopping it. In the process of typing this one sentence, the Band had changed irrevocably. Cells died and divided, and the overall system aged a few seconds closer to it’s terminus. We literally aren’t the same as when we started it. And yet, we are the same person.

See the problem?

Kiril Katsarov, The Writer and his Destiny, 2016, oil on canvas

Some changes are drastic. But the ones we are describing are imperceptible to us in the moment. There is even continuity of thought and action – completing the same sentence that we started.

In reality - in absolute terms - we literally aren't "the same" as we were a few minutes ago. But if asked, our feeling is that "nothing changed". That feeling is factually wrong - the truth is that we didn't perceive any change that mattered. Bringing us to the difference between change and meaningful change. Meaningful change is subjective, change is objective. It isn’t that nothing changed while writing the sentence - it’s that from our perspective, nothing meaningful changed. There was no perception of meaningful change despite obviously changing physiologically.

Clarify. What if one of those small changes triggered a catastrophic health incident. Or sparked a life-altering new idea like an epiphany? Suddenly, the changes of those few seconds seem very meaningful indeed. At least, they mean a lot to us. We notice those changes. We register them as “change”.

The Late Railway Accident, at Chester, engraved by Hare for The Illustrated London News, 12 June 1847, p. 380 i

The Dee Bridge disaster of May 1847 was caused by repeated flexing as wrought iron trusses failed to support the cast iron bridge. Each flex "changed" the strength of the iron beam, but no one noticed until the changes became meaningful.

The choice isn't really whether or not things are "the same as before". They aren't. It's materially impossible that they could be. Atomic decay and so forth. The choice - the judgment - is whether or not this segment of the inexorable change matters. Is it meaningless or meaningful to the person(s) considering it?

This is important when you consider the sheer number of human entities that profess absolute constancy despite that being literally intrinsically impossible. The first thing this means is that the claims are false. Whether the claimant is lying knowingly is a different matter. But the absence of material change in temporal reality is as impossible being in two locations at the same time. It isn't a technical impossibility. It's inherent in our material natures.

The medieval Church is ludicrous in it's claims of continuity.

Moving the papacy to Avignon after making metaphysical claims about Rome is a change. Either it isn't meaningful and Rome is irrelevant as a special place, or it is and claims of being unchanging are false.

The Church was obviously continually changing in absolute terms. Augustine put the timeless, metaphysical City of God outside of this material world. What doesn't change is the Truth - the message. The measure of the Church is how well it adheres to that - how well it accommodated the immaterial abstract in a flawed, entropic material world. Regarding Avignon, the onlly question is whether they were lying about the significance of Roman holy sites or chose to deprive Christendom of access to the sacred by replacing the fixed church with a fake French facsimile.

The Band's read is that the location really doesn't matter. It's the continuity and accuracy of the message. It's the plenary indulgences and "holy sites" that are the idolatrous addenda to Logos. Literally secular transcendence - pretending that the metaphysical inheres in the physical. Alternatively, one could make a theological argument that Christ linked salvation to genuflecting in designated spaces.

Antiquorum habet fida relatio, Bull of Pope Boniface VIII on the Jubilee of1300, 22th February, 1300

In which case, it's on the Church to explain how in 1300 it suddenly wiped your sins out to visit some buildings that didn't exist during the life of Christ. During an specially numbered year in a calendar that didn't exist then either.

The "argument" - centennial years have magic power and some old fool said he thought his father got his sins wiped a hundred years earlier. Oh - he made up some historical nonsense too. Seriously. Also, the date can be changed to whenever it's politically prudent. And this then theologically binding in forever after.

The problem with the medieval Church is ontological flattening. The popes want their spiritual custodianship - preserving the integrity of the message - to translate to worldly power. So their authority is based on metaphysical continuity, but then misapplied to worldly structures. Whether pretending material conditions are necessary addenda to salvation or claiming control over worldly things. Secular transcendence.

Virgin and Child on a Crescent Moon from Nuremberg, around 1480, limewood with paint, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This is a fine example of late medieval German wood carving. The page on the Met website gives different info from this Met article about medieval statues. Praying before this image - with confession and penitence - got an indulgence.

If we look at this objectively, it is a form of organic folk belief being leveraged by the Church to incentivize virtuous behavior. The confession and penitence being arbitrary, institutionally mandated ways to repent and strengthen faith. Not specifically spelled out as necessary in this format in the Bible, but acceptable as material-level accommodation of abstract necessity. The inclusion of a statue and transactional reduction of sin are medieval fabrications.

Once you have to differentiate between metaphysical consistency and retarded secular transcendences like jubilee plenary indulgences & magic statues, the moral peril is extreme. Same with stuff that was objectively made up and implemented at a point in historical time for clear political reasons. Like celibate clergy. Either the previous married clergy are retroactive blasphemers and their ministrations void, or you've admitted that the terms of the sacrament of ordination are man-made and ontologically posterior to human whim.

The City of God, from the works of St. Augustine translated by Raoul de Presles, 1469-73, colors on vellum, Bibliotheque Nationale Ms Fr 18 Fol.3v

Without ignorance or lies, claims of not changing is nothing of the sort. The Church may be metaphysically consistent in aligning with Augustine's invisible City of God. But its material existence is nothing but change. And as fallen material phenomena, those changes are subject to judgments of moral reasoning. Whether or not they remain in alignment with the metaphysical constancy.

One is fixed. One can spin like a wheel. This International Gothic artist got the difference.

What any claim of material changelessness really is is a claim that the perpetual changes occurring every nanosecond aren't personally meaningful to the claimant. Personalized - material reality is perpetual change, but it only matters when I notice personally. Ladies and gentlemen, the subjectivity of the fallen condition.

More seriously, this is a necessary consequence of our finitude. We are so vastly smaller than the world around us that we have to filter the overwhelming amount of raw sensory information. But it also means that there can be no consistent material world systems if the material world itself is perpetual change. The only question is whether we mark the perpetual inconstancy as significant.

Any system of thought based on the necessity of an absolute, unchanging material state can be dismissed outright as inherently nonsensical.

All that we need to consider is what changes are considered meaningful, and which are ignored.

Abstract reality is where we find the unchanging. And every higher human purpose – from religion, to art, to morality – has to apply unchanging abstract ideals to perpetually-changing material conditions. It's how we ensure that the inexorable changes aren't meaningful in the ways that matter to us.

The abstract provides a measure - to the extent that we can grasp it - to assess the meaningfulness of change. Otherwise we fall into old nemesis relativism. Because meaningful means meaningful to us. To the things we care about. Since we're born in medias res there's no way to morally reason without external standards. And any standard external to material reality is necessarily abstract.

Of course, we used to take that as obvious.

The only thing resembling progress that we can control is personal and moral – whether we come into sufficient alignment with Logos to fulfil the requirements. Large-scale events here may be relatively good or bad for our standard of living – but they are not inherently relevant to the personal progress that matters.

The beast system is a Flatland joint. It's based on secular transcendence - the deranged fantasy that supernatural phenomena inhere in material reality because the supernatural "doesn't exist". The pattern is the Philosophical Bait and Switch - offering up a contingent material things as an abstract absolutes. Progress! was the big one for modernism, but there are others. The whole "churchian" inversion of Christianity is another.

What is falsely presented as progress is centralization. Here's how it looks with money as a proxy.

Graph source

It’s also not teleological in any way other than the fallen corruptibility of human nature making the lust for power inevitable. If anything, centralization is typical of a lot of beast patterns where both paths lead to disaster.

Unknown Flemish Miniaturist, The Month of June from the Grimani Breviary, f7v, 1490-1510, illumination on parchment, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

We need to group together to accomplish much - we're at our most effective when organized

but

Too much centralization becomes anti-human tyranny

This is hardly insightful - Aristotle's Golden Mean addressed this very problem some 2400 years ago. It's just much less abstract than most readers of Aristotle take him to be. It's material.

The simple truth is we centralize to accomplish things. We can achieve more per capita in concert than as individuals. Group efforts require coordination and organization. Motivation too. Leadership. And once there are organizers, there is centralization. It’s not complex in theory. But it is purpose-driven, bottom-up, organic, and empirical. People banding together for identifiable benefit. Stay super basic.

This is not an abstract “value” or Good. It is situational and empirically verifiable. Centralization is only beneficial and moral to the extent that it betters our lot. If is doesn’t, then the objective moral and empirical imperative is to do away with that structure.

Abel Grimmer, The Tower of Babel, 1595, oil on wood, private

From an ultimate reality perspective, scripture appears after we were already in settled patterns. It takes collective sociability and worship as given. Beyond that, what is Caesar’s should be accommodated within reason for social peace, but is irrelevant metaphysically.

Then there's the beast notion of “the greater good” - more projected Flatland inversion. Lying about the moral requirement to kneel to a fake collective is merely a means of conditioning compliance. The only reason to compromise with a collective that doesn’t reciprocate benefit is if it has the power to compel by force. And that’s the opposite of a moral case.

Centralization isn’t inherently right or wrong. It’s relative, and like all relative judgments is evaluated empirically.

By the fruits. But readers don't need to be reminded of that anymore.

So how to tell when there is too much centralization? That one's easy. When the centralized structures become independent of the ostensive purpose they were set up for.

Consider the time requirements for longitudinal studies. There is no legitimate empirical scientific ground for this. Yet scientific and health agencies pushed a literally impossible claim in lockstep for political purposes. It's contrary to sound science in health. Yet the institutions lumber on. The central structure is all that remains.

Staying by the fruits. Does centralization optimize the the initial goal or some other outcome? This can be anything else. From enriching the overseers to increasing unaccountability. Then does it reach full inversion? Democracy that puts oligarchic tyranny over popular will. Education that grooms and brainwashes rather than presents logic and observation. Science that perpetuates oligarchic lies and hides actual inquiry. In each case, the centralized structure has gone way beyond a means to a collective end and become more important than the original purpose.

The test for this – are there organizational consequences for failing to deliver? Or does it just conga on?

Now consider art – the premise was to make pictures that were visually appealing and aligned with logos. To do this, centralization and organization are needed. First, there is skill development and resources. It takes time to get good at art making – time when you aren’t doing something that contributed directly to survival. Like working, or hunter-gathering, or child rearing. This means other people have to provide for you while learning to paint or carve. Then they need to have the surplus resources to trade necessities for pictures.

Lascaux Cave painting, around 15,000 BC

Look at prehistoric art. The only places where there are high levels of techne are when people could stay still for a while and others could feed and supply them.

Consider this deal. A society or segment of society will trade resources for works of art that they find appealing for some reason. Presumably, if the pictures are unappealing, or fail to meet their ritual purpose, support for the artist stops. We are oversimplifying. There were always control structures and people vying for leadership. It would have been a chief or council of elders making the decision. But the chief or elders belong to the same culture that they rule - likewise the artists they appoint.

The Guilded Age elite era of hating your culture and importing a different "better" foreign one is more of a inversion.

We saw in earlier art posts that Imperial Roman elites went all in on hedonistic Hellenistic Greek culture once exposed to it. There are current parallels with rulers that pay lip service to obsolete "civic values" that no one - least of all them - really believes in or wants to be personally bound by.

Roman villas developed from working country farms into lavish private elite resorts. Here, all the extravagances of Hellenistic culture could be enjoyed out of the public eye. But with their peers - then as now, entertaining was a major part of these show homes.

Architecture inspired by Greek sanctuaries, gymnasia, and palaces. Paintings from Greek myth and literature covering everything from erotica to philosophy. Seaside grounds landscaped with terraces, peristyles, wooded parks, and stunning views for dining, hunting, strolling, and sightseeing.

Any society that depends on it's elite keeping a higher moral standard than the general public is already dead.

Roman elites claimed old Republican values of prudent austere conservatism publicly, but chose Hellenistic opulence in private. Now judge this by the fruits. Other than the optics, there was no perception of personal value in the "values". Otherwise, they'd have intrinsic appeal and people would choose them even when no one is watching [click for a post on intrinsic and extrinsic morality].

Dionysian scenes from a Roman villa near Cologne Cathedral, Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne

This is a pretty tame scene - no need to share the erotica in the name of criticizing the morality. They're easy enough to find online. Not much staunch Republican virtue here.

The subjects are a mix of that Hellenistic Greek arcana with Egyptian and Middle Eastern admixture.

This is precisely the same as the modern elite pattern. And in both cases, they were able to degrade the culture to the point where lip service to traditional values was no longer needed. If Rome is a template, once basic logos - even pagan cultural forms - is collectively dismissed, it doesn't come back. The inverted clown world congas on until the economic base degrades to the point where it can't provide the luxury. Or aggressive invaders wipe the whole thing away.

Barring a mass revival of Logos, it's a matter of time. It always is,

There is inherently nothing moral in this resource-for-art exchange beyond the moral fiber of the leadership making the deal. If you want to toss in a bushel of wheat so someone can paint the temple or make a statue for the center of the village, that’s up to you. The moral judgment falls on the nature and message of the finished work. And whether the contribution is coerced.

For his part, the artist produces things that his employers like or they find someone else.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends, 1868, oil on canvas, Birmingham Museums Trust

To be fair, the idea that the center of the arts of the West would hate the Good, the Beautiful, and the True - however they're expressed at time - would not have been believed. Not in Phidias' Greece, the International Gothic, the Renaissance, or the Academies. Never. The fact it's accepted today is a sign that current society is already dead. The West may revive, but it won't be this systemic iteration.

So somewhere along the way organic cooperation became an oppressive degeneration and death machine. All while keeping the same words. Note how “support the arts” propaganda favors pictures of old good art or those odd contemporary works that are at least interesting to look at. The fact most people avoid art institutions works in their favor. It’s the illusion that you can “not pay to support this crap” by avoiding an admission. They don’t need your admissions.

Anicka Yi, Biologizing the Machine (tentacular trouble), 2019, in the Arsenale, Venice Bianale, 2019

Admissions are high - the beast won't pass a free dollar. But ticket prices aren't paying for this. Not in any way relatable to a small business.

This is the Arsenal in Venice.

So how does it happen?

Taking a wide view, the fatal flaw in centralization is the enhanced resources. Consider - the whole point of centralizing is to increase per capita output. Ten guys in tandem do more per hour than ten guys solo, so at the end of the day there’s more to divide up. Forget about share allocation, incentives, etc. Stay abstract – because if it collapses on the abstract level, there’s no need to parse endless failed material world attempts.

But the problem is inherent. In order to get the group efficiency, there has to be coordination. The central in centralization. And there has to be some sort of coercive mechanism to ensure everyone coordinates because otherwise willful people won’t stay with the plan. Then the efficiency is gone you’re ten individual guys again. This means that the overseer necessarily has a greater degree of control. Over the activities of the group and the allocation of resources.

The overseer in our example – in the capacity of overseer – by necessity directs the wealth and power of ten. Set aside practical morality and other particulars like selection, accountability, etc. Stick to pure pure necessity. For good or ill, centralizing means one or relatively few enjoy the fruits of many.

Alfred Elmore, The Emperor Charles V at the Convent of Yuste, 1856, oil on canvas

The target for corruption is inherent.

In a just system, the necessary controller also bears higher responsibility. Then assuming you want the best – or at least an excellent – guy in the driver’s seat, he needs to be compensated for the responsibility. That’s just empirical human nature or motivation. Fairness also means that if he bears the heaviest punishment for failure, he gains the biggest reward for success. And now we are in the world of executive compensation.

In theory, overseer responsibility and skill are compensated out of the surplus made possible by centralizing. If that's our team of ten, they all end up with more than a solo dude and the elite a couple or few more shares than that.

But if it’s 100,000 dudes - the pooled resources to direct and individual reward becomes enormous. 100 million... As centralization grows, central power keeps expanding. Resources are take over education, information, entertainment, law, medicine - pretty much now.

Increasingly asymmetric central power through surplus acquisition and resource direction is inevitable as centralization expands. Fluffing rolls of old paper can’t alter basic logical realities. Centralization starts as collectively beneficial - hence the illusion of Progress! But growth increases central power at a vastly greater rate than individual standard of living. The elite - whatever they are - enjoy ever greater control and lifestyle and luxury that separates them from the public. Not just "better off" but existing in resource bubble that has nothing in common with how "ordinary" people live.

This is the formula for degenerative tyranny. The only way to counter the cycle of necessity is bottom-up, inward-driven morality. Logos-facing society. Collective will to ruthlessly judge by the fruits.

William Bell Scott, The Eve of the Deluge, 1865, oil on canvas, Tate London

And this only moves from personal to societal ethos with environmental pressure and prioritizing K-selection. Note Noah's family eliciting sarcastic waves as they enter the ark.

Centralization in the arts is a variation on this theme. Art is especially susceptible because its existence depends on allocating surplus resources to non-subsistence cultural activity. From the start is is based on the ability to collectively support artists, then compete for them as civilization matures. The questions become who the elites controlling the resources are and what they want. The answers will determine how dyscivic and inverted the results are.

Art is a measure of the asymmetric central control of resources that inherently dooms centralization.

Christian elites with some connection to the territory they rule will support art that expresses the same. Ditto for the degree of importance for beauty.

The Limbourg Brothers, The Trinity; The Duchess in Prayer, The Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, f.91v, 1405–1408/1409, tempera, gold, and ink on vellum

Like a lavish International Gothic prayer book. It's filled with aristocratic symbolism and court aesthetics.

Earlier posts looked at the formation of "art" as a class of pictures with certain features within later medieval elite circles. While this is the beginning of artistic centralization, the inversion was a long way off. The main characteristics here are current standards of unironic beauty and Christian piety.

In contrast, the modern church offers up literal piles of disfigured trash with words of praise that describe something very different. Start with the quote. Read the words for their literal meaning. Form an impression before looking at what he is describing. Then try and connect the two without concluding that the writer is a lying smear of filth.

A degenerate cretin praises a hive of inversion. The Jesuit affiliation suggests he's no more Christian than the cultural debasement he champions.

But before we compare his description to the actual terrifying beauty he describes, consider the comparables he tries to pass off.

John Martin, Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still, around 1840, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art

"Beauty and terror" pretty much describes the sublime.

Procession of Las Palmas, organized by the Brotherhood of the Entrance of Jesus in Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday in Astorga, León, Spain

Here's a 21st-century Spanish paso - underlined in green. The tradition of carrying these processional floats goes back to the Middle Ages. The idea has always been to bring the Biblical into the present day. Floats can be melodramatic, but they're usually well-made.

Anonymous Sienese diptych with tabernacle frames, around 1400–1410, tempera on carved, gilt poplar, Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Iconito" - underlined in yellow - appears to be a made-up nonsense word. Small paintings from Siena and other Tuscan places look like this. The Cimabue Madonna at the start of the post is an older, simpler version.

People have a hard time with lies. It seems as if the idea that someone would simply state blatant falsehoods triggers a sort of cognitive dissonance. So even if the false words directly contradict observed reality, the inversion doesn't register. That's why we underlined clear statements and took time to look at the specific things referred to. Now look at what he's applying these words to.

Michael Tracy, Cruz for Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador, 1980-1981, piled trash, Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, St. Louis

Here is is. Beauty and terror. Pasos and Sienese devotional painting.

You've read the words. You've seen the pictures.

He's a liar.

It was a false premise - reassuring while it lasted - that there is magic virtue in man-made institutions. All that matters is the intrinsic morality of the people making them up. A vain medieval aristocrat brought about tremendous beauty while a fake priest lies about it. Neither "the Church" nor any other collection of historically-traceable prideful bloviating is worth a mote of dust without Christian faith. That implies truthfulness. As in let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No. And judge by the fruits.

The modern centralization of art is systemic. There's nothing inherently wrong with a Museum of Contemporary Christian Art - it's the dishonest promulgation of inversion. Of Art! instead of the beauty and inspiration that by its own self-definitions is the point of Christian art. And you don't get from Leonardo and Vasari to this degree of linguistic pollution overnight.

Art centralization starts with the theorizing of the Renaissance. Abstract rules for techne is the founding category error.

Giorgio Vasari, Six Tuscan Poets, 1569, oil on panel, Minneapolis Institute of Art

Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti - some of these things are not like the others.

It's the construction of a theoretical "discipline" out of a bunch of disparate writers.

Art centralization continues with Academies. Fake theoretical "disciplines" need institutions to teach and enforce them.

Henry Singleton, The Royal Academicians in General Assembly, 1795, oil on canvas, Royal Academy, London

Note the primacy of the now roughly 2000 year old Laocoon. Not that there's anything wrong with tradition. But standards needs justification.

Art centralization peaks with the institutional apparatus of Modernism. Conflating "art" and "institutional setting" cuts off organic creativity and puts the resources and control in the hands of a few. And if their intrinsic moral direction is askew...

And the Royal Academy in 2016.

The degeneration of basic ability, insight, depth of thought would be humiliating were this real.

Note how the one constant is that somehow "the arts" keep becoming bigger and more centralized ideologically. Despite the art being as awful as it is and never getting better. It’s how you know that perpetual systemic growth is the primary end. By the fruits. If the beast apparatus keeps expanding and the art is self-evidently infantile trash next to a historical legacy that looks like a gift of the elves in comparison...

Although we refer to institutions for convenience, what we are talking about is less concrete. The general perception of “art” in society. This is not the same as the beast institutions, but they are sympatico. It’s the avant-garde process we discussed in earlier posts. Cultural “anti-heroes” make dyscivics “cool” then the establishment legitimizes the “radical” changes. It filters into the wider perception with help from the entire beast media-industrial complex. That’s really it – the rest is window dressing. Sort of depressing. Move on.

Classic boardgame of art collecting, auctioning, and forgery. First appeared in 1970 with subsequent reissues. Not commenting on gameplay - see the reviews on the linked page. Just consider the cards representing the masterpieces in question. Lots of hideous modern crap.

The game reflects what was considered important by experts and ~~useful for beast money laundering~~ valuable. It's following the mainstream - like thinking CDC "information" will improve your health and quality of life. Just another example where modern inversion is normalized in popular culture. Although Parker was also pushing Ouija at the time, so lets leave their inadvertence an open question...

Edgar Degas' Dancers in the Wings card from the Masterpiece game.

Just one example. Impressionist Edgar Degas is famous among beast dancers for his young ballerinas. Seriously. To the tune of "approximately 1,500 paintings, monotypes, and drawings". That's not a motif, it's obsessive fetishization. Consider that the Paris ballet had become a front for channeling low-income girls into the bustling Parisian sex trade and...

But there's a long string praise for Degas' light and color and quirky descriptions of his "solitary personality" that would never render hundreds of images of adolescent prostitutes - often alone in studio - for any reason other than "the art". Enough. These apologist freaks are as morally culpable as the abuser since they create the conditions that make it happen. Next time you read one of these wet-lipped apologists, just do what we've been saying to do. Look at the pictures and listen to the words.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, this is purely an artistic exercise.

The importance that Degas attached to the composition is evident in the preparatory drawings that he made for almost every figure, from the dancer scratching her back in the foreground to the woman yawning next to the stage flat.

Now the picture. Pay particular note to the "gentlemen" on the right.

Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage, 1874, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Right. It would be amusing that fools think beast shills and their already-dead NPCs care about "hypocrisy" if it weren't so retarded and destructive. They don't. "Abuse" is something they fantasize about while using selective accusations to destroy reputations among people who do care. But when it comes to their own, pedophiles like Polanski and Degas are held up for extra accolades. Endless extra miles of defense. By the fruits - child rape with impunity enhances your appealing to secular globalism. It has to - the sexualized destruction of innocence is the Holy Grail of the beast system.

Centralizing of the arts turns out to be the same as any centralizing culture.

Pablo Picasso, Sylvette (Portrait of Mlle. D.), 1954 as Masterpiece card

Start with replacing bottom-up organic development with top-down theory and fake standards. Genius artists became “timeless” models. And gradually whatever it was that art was invented to do became replaced by a web of contexts and associations. The conceptual centralization that gives us Art! Once that stage is reached, whatever links to money and influence dominate set the terms. No matter how inverted into ugliness and evil.

And even "masterpiece" will signify the opposite.

And the root problem is the same as centralization in general - massive, distorting concentrations of wealth. It is of no consequence whether the sums are “public”, “private”, or some twisted bastard of the two. What matters is that whoever is overseeing the resources - whoever controls the central power of the centralized system - has access to streams of capital beyond reckoning. Limitless essentially.

It's how over $450 million can be spent on this. Not adjusted for inflation. It's a fine painting and historically very important. The Band has made it clear that Leonardo is underrated in cultural importance.

In this case the huge glut of unaccountable capital did go to something of value. Zero connection to the West, its nations and people, or it's culture, mind you - the piece was for the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2017 and not publicly shown since.

Looking closer...

According to the Guardian, there are questions about the authenticity. Grain of salt - the Guardian has always been low-IQ beast propaganda under hollow claims of "legitimacy". But that makes any shade they throw on the beast worth a look.

Apparently the painting was stripped down to the original layer of paint - presumably Leonardo's contribution - before the current restoration. Note the two thumbs - the kind of correction artists do when figuring something out. This supports the idea that Leonardo did it - unfinished pieces are standard issue for him. But it calls the "restoration", purchase price, and lack of public appearances into question. Hardly the A-list attraction for a new museum with the Louvre name and Gulf State money.

It was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The museum has been up and running for a while. The "Leonardo" has not been seen in public since its purchase. Current whereabouts are unknown. It was on Mohammed bin Salman's superyacht for a while. This means it's likely further damaged by dampness and other changing conditions.

The whole story screams of chicanery. Of course, "restoration" is itself a scam intended to transform paintings to better fit current tastes and market conditions.

Putting aside whether Leonardo or his workshop painted it, this is as much the work of the 21st-century restorers.

The Salvator Mundi sits in limbo because the Louvre is no longer confident in their attribution and Prince Salman won't show a half-billion "investment" without that certainty. The value comes from the name - a workshop piece with minimal direct involvement from Leonardo starts knocking zeros off the value. If it was made under his supervision by assistants, it may be worth a couple of million. If less connected than that, the price may drop below $100,000. The name is everything in the art market.

Note how none of this has anything to do with the truth, beauty, or techne in the picture. When judging the quality of a statement, who cares about the name of the author? Well apart from already-dead protoplasm shambling around in search of someone to think for them. And this only happens when Art! dances for elites with so many asymmetric resources that they can drop half a bil on a fake.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Study of the Figure of Christ, 1648-56, oil on panel, Louvre Abu Dhabi

It's not like the museum is ill-suited to handle rare art treasures. It's a first-rate operation technically. The problem is that of all newer museums - most of the names are already locked down. Even a small Rembrandt like this is a coup.

The only reason for Salman to keep the painting out of the museum is concern over public viewing. Because it will draw crowds.

Want new masters so you aren't dependent on finding tiny Rembrandts and fake Leonardos for millions? Culture has to prioritize real art. There has to be value in it to incentivize lifetimes spent developing genius. And there is two ways this can go.

1. People purchase art they like - in galleries, off the internet, at sales, wherever.

"Supporting the arts" by giving money to beast institutions and foundations is retarded. Might as well donate directly to NAMBLA and the Church of Satan. But supporting the arts by buying things from artists that you can afford and like is the complete opposite. When Leonardo painted a picture, a person bought it. No one was torching good money to support degenerate bureaucracies that hate them and beauty.

Brent Cotton, Early Spring on the Bitterroot, 21st century

That's how you find real art today. Like this painter - click for his site. The modern version of patronizing an artist.

The one thing about this path is that you may make a good living, but you'll never get the beast accolades that come from being within Art! That's because it's decentralized. Individual buyers don't wield the level of asymmetric resources - institutional or private - that the the system does.

2. The elites return to shoveling resources into developing the same caliber in contemporary art as the old masters they spew millions for.

This won't happen because - as noted - they aren't into the old masters for the techne or logos. It's the movement of money that matters to the buyers.

Not quite as much for the museums. They are complicit in the attribution-value game of course. But it's all from the same place for them. They like old masters for the name recognition that gets turnstiles spinning.

Having the Mona Lisa lets the Louvre do a Leonardo show like no one else. Just without the ones that might be fake. Even the ones that they won't come out and say are probably fake because the owner is a big-time donor, and the Abu Dhabi branch spent a lot of time cultivating the relationship, and...

Note how there is no talk in the reports about reversing the sale. The priority is the asset value and innuendo doesn't matter when the value comes from an Art! name. The Band has no idea if the painting is real. We've never seen it and wouldn't know what to look for if we had. The way a Renaissance workshop worked is one big confounder. Students, assistants, and the master were all painting for different reasons. Students learning, shop work for paying clients, big contracts for the master - and all under the master's supervision.

Philips Galle engraving after Jan van der Straet, Artist's Workshop, around 1580-1605, British Museum

The master would assist students, add highlights to shop work - his hand would be all over the output. Assistants were prized for the ability to simulate the master's style. So the question is always how much of the master's hand?

If the Salvator Mundi is a shop piece, it looks like a good one in the pictures. There is certainly some Leonardo there. The other problem is the restoration. It changes the look to seem more "profound". Like a Leonardo.

Take a look.

It wasn't finished, but Leonardos usually aren't. What's there is pretty intense. The hand is really good. There's nothing that would make us question expert consensus on this one either way.

The point is how centralization and asymmetric resources define Art! The piece is what is is. Is there truth in the techne? As a devotional piece - which it would have been - does it foster a pious mood? These are the factors that made the artist's name. The modern inversion is that the name is more important that the factors.

But we know this.

That's a Leonardo. The situation becomes more nakedly preposterous with modern sales. A Japanese billionaire paying over $110 million for a Basquiat has nothing to do with the arts of the West. It's something different. We've been using Art! but that describes the nonsense cultural apparatus. The intersection with large sums of capital moves into investments and banking. The vastly larger and more pervasive beast financial system. That is, the asymmetric resources that are necessitated by centralization writ large.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1982, private

That it's no longer the highest price for an American piece just further proves the point. It's not really about the art.

From a narrative perspective it's an important piece. Basquiat was brought over from street art in a transparently vampiric attempt at appropriating edginess. This was the breakout piece. The price comes from narrative consideration, not artistic ones.

That's centralization. To fridge it you have to define it, and for art, that starts in the Renaissance. The problem is that without some centralization, there's no art to corrupt. But any centralization points to increasingly asymmetric power and potential for corruption. It's like our condition is fallen, with moral entropy driven by subjective solipsism and inherent limits of discernment...

Bring up the next question – how is it to be avoided? The drive to centralize is historical and inevitable. As is the potential for corruption. The answer - as in all cases of necessary fallen moral entropy - is external to systems. It's the intrinsic morality of those who make the systems up. Alignment with Logos. The Christian West vs. the beast system.

Adam and Eve hiding from God; the Expulsion; Adam and Eve laboring, from an Old English Hexateuch, around 1000 AD, British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv, f.7v

Live in reality or "be your own God all the way down to ontological self-erasure.

Same as it ever was.

But Renaissance centralization raises the question of who the asymmetric central powers were. For the imposition of a theoretical definition to begin centralization, there has to be some authority - soft or hard - to make it stick. The situation was symbiotic - theorists react to what the artists are doing, then make up rules that piggyback onto the appeal of the art. But the elite class allocating the resources to art production as well as the artists have to embrace them. If Vasari was told to pound sand or Alberti had it made clear his fixation on pagan immorality intolerable, there likely isn't a "theoretical revolution". Instead they and their ilk were feted by the elites and still presented as "primary source material" today.

So who were the elites that were so driven to impose these degenerative inversions on what was already centuries-old tradition? Not the weird Northern attempts to touch the holy figures, but the pollution of Logos with pagan lies and eroticism? Two main groups have turned up.

Giovanni Mannozzi, Lorenzo de Medici Surrounded by Artists, Admiring Michelangelos Faun, 1620s-1630s, fresco, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

We've mostly considered the aristocratic banking families of Florence and the Church. The families getting the attention since the birth of international finance is pretty important for the beast system.

But what about the Church? The Renaissance Church is a moral blemish on Christendom and one of the biggest single drivers of the Reformation. Consider one example.

In the 1490s Pope Alexander VI of the Borgia family hired the Pinturicchio - the eminent student of Perugino - to fresco his private apartment within the Vatican palace. they get less attention than they deserve - Pinturriccio would be overshadowed by Michelangelo and especially Raphael within a decade. And Julius II's hatred for Alexander made sure the rooms followed suit. He refused to live in the same suite and moved one floor up. The apartments Raphael painted for him were the replacement quarters.

Pinturicchio, The Room of Sibyls, 1492-1495, Borgia Apartments, Vatican Museum

Sibylline prophesizing of the Virgin birth and other Christian truths were noted since the early Middle Ages. But they only become recurring themes in major art projects with the rise of Renaissance humanism as elite intellectual culture. Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel is the most famous example, but Pinturicchio's room is an important Vatican forerunner.

Pinturicchio, Micah and the Tiburtine Sibyl, 1492-95, fresco, Room of the Sibyls, Borgia Apartments

The subtle favoritism for the prophets comes through in their placement on the right hand side in each pairing. Otherwise, there is no obvious value to Biblical rather than non-Biblical prophecy.

The argument that God bestowed equal prophetic insight beyond his Covenant people shatters the exclusivity and unity of the Christian message and renders the Old Covenant unnecessary. And why? Because the elites think paganism is cool and want to make it part of the Church.

It's not only paintings of sibyls - they're just the most obvious examples. Take a look at Pinturicchio's Room of the Saints - the most elaborate of the apartments. The martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria introduces an Egyptian theme that Alexander uses as a springboard into a weird humanistic fantasy. This combines Hermetic misreading of Egyptian intellectual history, the beyond-retarded claim Osiris also typologically foreshadows Christ, and the motif of the bull as symbol of the resurrected Osiris and the Borgia. It goes much deeper, but the blend of heresy, stupidity, and vanity is pretty obvious from a thumbnail description.

Pinturicchio, The Hall of the Saints, 1492-95, fresco, Borgia Apartments

The room has a three-bay ceiling where Osiris and the Apis Bull as Christian-Borgia-Papal allegory plays out.

The large scene shows St. Catherine disputing the Emperor's philosophers prior to her martyrdom. Pinturicchio follows the walls of the Sistine Chapel by adding Roman architectural features to early Christian scenes. A triumphal arch topped by the Borgia bull connects late antique Alexandria to Alexander's papacy. The name provides another "typological" link.

Here's one of the bays. Note the tiny pyramids and the symbolic bull. Pinturicchio's pyramids are taller proportionally than Egyptian ones because he was unfamiliar with actual Egyptian material culture. His model was probably the Roman Pyramid of Cestius - a first-century BC tomb inspired by the wave of Egyptomania following Augustus' conquest of Egypt.

Pyramid of Cestius, around 12 BC, Rome

Not the Night Land - the steep monument that probably inspired Pinturicchio's versions.

The occult posts on Hermes untangle some of the ways distorted impressions of Egypt were folded into imperial Roman culture even before the birth of Jesus. This meant that there was already layers of historical nonsense in humanist "source material" from the beginning. Neither this pyramid nor Pinturicchio and Alexander knew a thing about Egyptian history and culture. They don't appear to have known much about Christianity either.

Alexander VI, like the visceral Northern devotional images in the last post are pre-Reformation. Utterly and incompatibly different visions of our relationship to God and reality, but still appearing under the same nominal "Church". Both perspectives can't be truthful. Arguably neither are. Then we consider that the medieval Church claimed authority on the Petrine succession - the claim that Jesus' scriptural charge to Peter necessitates the exact structural hierarchy of the institutional Church and removes it from criticism. Including "dogmas" made up in historically-identifiable political contexts centuries later.

Now we know that worldly changelessness is ontologically impossible. The question is whether the changes are meaningful. In the case of the Church, meaningful means consistent with the thrust of scripture - and not claiming powers and rules that Jesus himself does not. Costumes may change, render unto God and judge by the fruits don't. When we consider that the only centralized hierarchies in the Bible are superseded by the New Covenant, it is obvious the establishment of any legalistic system is a material-level interpretation of abstract truth. It can't be metaphysical. So changing the apostolic mission into a centralized self-defining order is meaningful - the question is what it means. That's for the next post.

Roman coin with Constantine I and the Sol Invictus, struck 309-310 AD at the Lugdunum mint; Roman Imperial repoussé silver disc of Sol Invictus, 3rd century, British Museum

Building the Beast System - Renaissance Centralization in Art & Faith Part 1

2021-05-30T11:05:00.002-07:00

The arts of the West hit a turning point in the Renaissance. But inversion in the arts is part of a much larger failure. Part one in a look at centralization and secular transcendence in art and faith.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Baccio Bandinelli and Vincenzo de' Rossi, Pope Leo X Medici, 1540s, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

The last post looked over the impact of the Renaissance on the arts of the West and the descent to Modernism. After sifting through a wave of genius artists and innovations, we found the biggest single problem in the inversion of the arts is centralization.

This isn't surprising. It’s inherent in the ontology. But it gets even more serious. Because the sort of centralization that lets the arts get jacked doesn't happen without a more profound centralization in Christianity itself.

Giovanni Caccini, Clement VII Medici Crowning Charles V, 1594, Palazzo Vecchio

No, it isn't a conservative homing in on a copy of the constitution. It's the other Medici pope - the one that presided over the devastating Sack of Rome in 1527 - crowning the emperor whose troops did the sacking.

There is literally nothing in scripture that either calls for or predicts this specific arrangement. And whether it fits the arbitrary definition of a made-up word like "caesaropapism is beyond irrelevant. Ladies and gentlemen, the "vicars of Christ"...

This post has to pull a few things together. Centralization in the arts was the working topic, but looking at the later Middle Ages outside of Italy made us realize we need to consider the medieval papacy more closely. And that raised massive category errors in the nature of medieval Christianity. Because while the man-made institutional "Church" may promote a Christian message, there is nothing in Jesus' teachings that necessitate this structure. And if the structure isn't ontologically necessary for salvation...

Start with a glance at "Northern Renaissance" art. It looks very different from the contemporary Italians and reflects different cultural concerns. Put aside sub-regional differences for now - just a broad north-south distinction is enough to drive home that this is a different tradition. And why is that? Because art traditionally developed organically in the West. Bottom-up, out of socio-cultural inputs. "Northern" painters reflect their cultural concerns, just like the Italians. The paintings look different because the artists and audience are.

Dieric Bouts, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1455-1460, oil on panel, Louvre Museum

Ugly malformed-looking characters - even for the Holy Family - are typical. No idea why - but it makes even the most sincere devotional picture unpleasant to have to look at. Presumably the melodrama is appealing? The landscape is nice, but if you were looking to drive people from Christianity, these creatures would be a good start.

Regardless of our assessment, this is a very different cultural projection from the ideals of beauty in Donatello or Botticelli.

Hieronymous Bosch, Ecce Homo,1480-1490. oil on panel, Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum

Here, ugly characters correspond with their ethical bent - physical ugliness as moral ugliness.

Two important consideration - the enhanced emotion is a sign of religious disquiet and anxiety that will lead to the Reformation. The late medieval Church had lost the ability to attend to collective spiritual needs.

The other is the focus on the local environment. Bosch included a nice Netherlandish setting for a Gospel scene. This facilitates identification.

Joachim Patinir, The Flight into Egypt, 1516-1517, oil on panel, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

This emphasis on contemporary life carries into new genres of painting. Landscape and still-life develop in the north before they do in Italy.

Pretty easy to see that these artists are operating in a different frame of reference. The media are close enough - northern oil paint will predominate in Italy too. And the subjects are Christian in both. But one major factor is the lack of the classical humanist tradition in northern art.

Italian Renaissance art looks to harmonize Classical humanism and Christianity in various ways. It comes from the old Greco-Roman idealization that was more of a presence in Italy - even before the humanists are actively digging it up. This means that the Italians wind up putting value on human material beauty that the Northerners don't. This humanistic aesthetic is obviously different from the ethereal International Gothic beauty that still lingered in the North. Northers art shows a starker contrast between the fallen world and divine beauty. There's no room for the metaphysics of microcosm like the Pythagorean harmonies of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man. Man not only isn't "the measure", his creation in God's image is lost in the degeneracy of the fall.

Hans Memling, The Last Judgment, 1466-1473, oil on panel, National Museum

The figures are eye-bleach ugly but the cosmic setting is glorious. Phantasmagoric even. The discrepency between our abasement and the glory of Creation - not the continuity - is what comes through.

The people have the presence of invertebrate tube worms - all the best to show the diametric ontological opposition between fallen humanity and the glory of God. Note the Gothic grace in the angel, but complete lack of Classical contrapposto. Even the elect look weak and ugly. And look how relative few are on the saved side. Anti-humanism but Christian realism.

Note that the ugliness isn't lack of talent. This is a very technically accomplished painting. It's the metaphysics.

Memling's techne comes through in the two wings showing Heaven and Hell. Handling of space and architecture match his color. The lack of the humanistic is easier to see when it doesn't seem like the artist's limitations. So much of this "Northern Renaissance" is just ugly hack-work - it's important to be attentive to the quality.

And if we aren't distracted by crappy artists, the positive qualities shine. Note how extreme the difference in options is. And how much larger a percentage are Hell-bound. This in a society where the vast vast majority were nominally Christian.

Stick to competent Northern artists like Memling for simplicity. What comes through is a stark awareness of the fallen nature of humanity and the pointlessness of trying to rectify it ourselves. Even with a really really good version of Cicero.

This vision not compatable with classical idealism of the human form. Worldly perfection - even as a potential - is utterly alien. The bleakness comes from the graphic realization of a narrow gate - even in a nominally Christian culture. Attention to the social history of religion indicates that the melodrama - the emotional intensity and fear - is the sign of a larger cultural anxiety over damnation.

Dieric Bouts, Mater Dolorosa/Ecce Homo (diptych), after 1450

These are supposed to be Mary and Jesus, not mutant cosplayers. The exaggerated red eyes signify "weeping" and not a viral infection.

Imagine staring mindlessly at this in lieu of Logos then wondering why God seems to bring no consolation.

The sourthern church corrupted by turning to classical pagan humanism. The Northern church corrupted by confusing representation and reality then sinking into idolatry instead of faith. Anyone surprised that all the gory pictures, fake relics, statue worship, and the rest didn't fill the void?

Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Man of sorrows, 1485-1495, oil on wood panel, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht

How about a psycho-sexual exploration of homoerotic sado-masochism claiming to be "Christian"? Guess what? This mosntrosity didn't set religious anxieties to rest. How could it? There's no Logos here.

As always, organic art expresses culture and the art of the Northern Renaissance shows steady, mounting religious anxiety and disorder. An overwhelming need to figuratively touch. A sign that the existing religious structures no longer satified spiritual needs. Sounds familiar - will get back to it.

The first point to address though is the art. Before getting into the failure of the medieval Church, just consider the difference in appearance. Northern and Southern art look so different because they reflect the very different environments. Since they are organic expressions of culture, they don't show the same things in the same ways. You can see the cultural differences.

Hans Memling, Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, 1485, oil on wood panel, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg

Consider this mysterious piece from Memling. Six panels that had once been organized in back-to-back pairs in an eschatological allegory.

The problem is that they were divided up sometime before the 20th century. Now no one knows exactly how they were configured, the exact purpose, or even if there were more pieces to it. And not knowing how these were assembled prevents us from looking at complex interactions between them. But the picture types are all common in the late medieval North. And the general gist is easy enough to grasp from the subjects.

First the vivid eschatological poles. Color and form ramp up the emotional impact. There isn't anything so lurid in the Italian mainstream.

Satan's ribbon reads "there is no redemption in Hell".

Cautionary panels share similar arrangements. This may be intentional to make a connection between sin and death. Note the prominent genitalia. The sin looks like Vanity. Death's ribbon reads "This is the end of Man; I am like mud clay and I return to dust and ashes".

A momento mori and a coat-of-arms. The text around the skull reads "for I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Job 19: 25-26. The unknown family's motto - "no good without effort".

These are obvious enough as symbols that we can get the point without the exact order. The bottom ones encourages the client to keep working and remember that death is coming. The middle two caution against vanity and remind again that death is coming. The top two are the outcomes - why it matters. Intense, visceral - and totally unclassical. Even the nude isn't a Classical Venus type. And neither she nor Death are in contrapposto.

A few years later this Florentine master painted his only Roman frescos. According to Infogalactic, the Medici introduced Lippi to the client - a Cardinal from another powerful aristocratic family. This shows Lippi was connected and employed at the highest levels. But he was of that Botticelli and Perugino generation that got insta-eclipsed by Raphael & Co. The point - Italian contemporary of Memling of comparable status in the Roman-Florentine axis.

Filippino Lippi, Carafa Chapel, around 1488-1493, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome

Compare to the Memling. Other than being Christian paintings...

The emphasis on Classical architecture stands out. Roman arch and decorations.

The Annunciation is framed with Classical columns to mark off an altarpiece. The desire to "see" the holy subject is there - Cardinal Carafa is included. He prays and looks on with St. Dominic as a guide.

The style so different though. Even with Carafa there, the classicism and graceful figures are less luridly visceral than Memling. More "artful".

Memling had no concern for the classical histories of Alberti and the Roman humanists. Just as Lippi didn't try and max out the confusion between image and subject. You watch Carafa visualize - you aren't figuratively there. The aesthetic gets in the way. The Northern works look to break that distance and make the relationship with the painting as immediate and emotional as possible. So that you respond as if the Jesus or Mary were really present.

This ties into Medieval visualization practices. Keep in mind that we are limited to what survives in the historical record, but it does seem that medieval devotion gets more image-centric. Or more vision-centric, since it isn't limited to physical images. The term that gets used is "affective piety". Here's the Infogalactic definition - it's sound, but the article includes lots of academic nonsense projection . Take a look at the link if interested and see if you can spot the onto-epistemological poverty.

Affective piety - highly emotional devotion to the humanity of Jesus, particularly in his infancy and his death, and to the joys and sorrows of the Virgin Mary. It was a major influence on many varieties of devotional literature in late-medieval Europe... This practice of prayer, reading, and meditation was often cultivated through visualization and concentration on vivid images of scenes from the Bible, Saints' Lives, Virgin Mary, Christ and religious symbols, feeling from the result. These images could be either conjured up in people's minds when they read or heard poetry and other pieces of religious literature, or they could gaze on manuscript illuminations and other pieces of art as they prayed and meditated on the scenes depicted. In either case, this style of affective meditation asked the "viewer" to engage with the scene as if she or he were physically present and to stir up feelings of love, fear, grief, and/or repentance"

Here's 14th-century Englihs mystic Richard Rolle in his Meditation on the Passion from the same article.

Ah, Lord, your sorrow--why was it not my death? Now they lead you forth as naked as a worm, with torturers around you and armed knights. The press of the crowd was incredibly intense as they threw things and harried you so shamefully, kicking at you as if you had been a dog. I see in my soul how ruefully you walk, your body so bloody, so raw and blistered. The crown on your head is so sharp, and your hair, blown in the wind, is all matted with blood. Your lovely face is so pale and swollen with the blows and the beatings, and covered with spittle and phlegm. And down runs your blood; it horrifies me to see it.

The first problem is obvious. Rolle isn't "seeing" the Passion. He's picturing a subjective impression of an impossibly distant historical event shaped by his experiences in 14th-century England. It is projection by definition. Is it wrong to pray this way? Who knows? But what is dangerous is elevating subjective emotion to the subject of prayer. Devotion is affective and moving by nature. But that is a consequence of connecting with Logos, not the point. So not inherently wrong, but removing obstacles to replacing objective Truth with personal appeal. The path opens to the self-deifying inversion of placing man-made structure ontologically prior to Jesus. The actual Christian Logos.

Richard the Hermit (Richard Rolle) and The Desert of Religion, 1425, ink and pigments on vellum, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VI

According to the link above, The Desert of Religion' is a anonymous northern English poem that uses a forest as an allegory of virtue and vice. This version pairs devotional figures and verses with. Here's Richard the Hermit (Richard Rolle) with the initials of Jesus angels.

Richard was a 14th-century English Cistercian mystic who was wildly popular in the Middle Ages.

Richard's subjective material focus isn't inherently inverted. Like any material thing it is looking through the darkling glass at the valley of shadow. That is, proceeding empirically in an entropic world defined by limits of discernment. The application depends on the applier - are reader and culture Logos-facing, or is do what thou wilt more the game?

Again - it isn't that affective piety is necessarily evil. It's that pedestalizing subjective imagination displaces objective Truth as devotional front and center. Once the dopamine is involved, spiritual fulfillment becomes like chasing the dragon. And without an objective focus, this can go sideways in a hurry.

Rohan Hours, Lamentation of the Virgin, 1435, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, M.S. Latin 9471, f. 135

It's apparent in this borderline blasphemous filth. Whatever these demons are, the relationship to "Christianity" is tangential. And personifying God the Father as a drippy cuck actually is idolatrous by any measure. No wonder iconoclasm happened.

The "Church" clearly wasn't satisfying the people. But the answer was to double down on the "affective piety". It's a medieval version of a religion based on muh feels. The people were sincere in their Christian faith. But Muhfeelsianity doesn't have anything to stop the subjective dragon-chasing from inverting.

Medieval religious visualization is a far-out subject that most moderns know little about. As the Infogalactic link shows, the "academic" version is littered with Philosopher's Names and postmodern projection. Click for a comparatively non-masturbatory example. The pretense seems to be that quote-mining random medieval sources for "visuality" - an unnecessary jargon word that means assumptions about sight - proves "seeing" had a different meaning in the Middle Ages...

...

The reality is that medievals weren't ontologically gelded, so most everything they did was more profound. They recognized that the world reflected ontological foundations - like how we noted that entropic physical processes materially trace the metaphysical damage of the Fall. Secularist midwits live in Flatland, so they prefer one-dimensional projections off random quotations. And puzzling why no one gives two fucks about the modern "humanities". It's not a question of medieval "Christianity". It's the modern beast system.

Without Logos, theorizing about medieval sight can only matter to career-advancement in a mouse utopia. Think about it from a spiritual discernment and a cognitive scope perspective.

More bluntly, what sort of confessional it it to burn six figures for the privilege of hearing these guys lie about Logos? How can a secularist midwit even grasp the breadth of field?

Student loan dollars at work.

The reality isn't that "sight changed". That's bio-physical processing. What changed is the degree of inversion in the storytelling level of history - where lies and projection bear sterile fruit. It's not the problem with the sources - texts and pictures are what they are. It's that in post-enlightenment nonsense world, self-fluffing replaced metaphysical discernment.

What was happening is that Christians were expressing the connection to Logos differently. In increasingly vivid and sometimes weird ways. This is the dissatisfaction with conventional religion mentioned earlier. With a visceral desire to get closer to - to touch - the humanity of Jesus and Mary. On top of that, the propensity for allegory and figurative thinking piles up extra significance.

The Boucicaut Master, Arma Christi, from the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut, 1405-1408

The Arma Christi is a form of shorthand to help with visualization in Passion meditations. Like a mnemonic stations of the cross. The reader can systematically tick through each affront.

Note the disembodied side wound at the bottom. The wounds of Christ - source of the precious Holy Blood - is ground zero for affective devotion and visualization. Retards note the resemblance to female genitalia because they know less about artistic conventions and devotional literature than a tapeworm.

Full-page grisaille miniature of the Five Wounds of Christ from a 15th-century Dutch Book of Hours. Walters Art Museum Ms. W.165, fol. 110v.

For non-retards who are interested, here's a roughly contemporary devotional image of all five wounds. It's from Holland not France, but late Gothic stylistic similarities are visible in both. When you're stupid, you project fables from one picture. Better to keep until you've acquired some breadth of knowledge.

This one puts the wounds in the positions that they appear on the crucified corpus.

The disembodied wounds are bizarre to modern eyes - even ones with more ontological perspicacity than fruit flies. But they are perfectly consistent with the intensification of focused visualization. We can find plenty of evidence that Jesus' wounds and blood were expected to be subjects of adoration and devotion. Things like abstracting them from the picture is how we know what the changing religious attitudes were.

Go back earlier in the Middle Ages...

Manuscript Leaf with the Crucifixion, from a Parisian Missal, around 1270–80, tempera and gold on parchment

Easy to make out the earlier Gothic style from the 15th-century versions. The Crucifixion with Mary and John the Evangelist on either side was a formation going back to earlier Christianity. So is the tiny Golgotha beneath the Cross - usually with a skull to represent triumph over death. This one has a tiny Adam collecting the blood in a chalice like the kind used for the Eucharist.

The Feast of the Corpus Christi was made up in the 13th century - prior to that it wasn't a necessary addendum to salvation. This is part of an overall explosion of interest in the Host.

Nicolò da Bologna, Single Leaf from a Missal: The Crucifixion, around 1390, ink, tempera, and gold on vellum, Cleveland Museum of Art

In this Italian version from about a century later angels gather the blood in chalices and the Magdalene appears to kiss the wounds while embracing the Cross. What she is doing in the picture is what affective piety strives to reprodice in the imagination.

The mounting obsession with the Eucharist isn't surprising. The idea of the Real Presence was almost too good to be true for a society fixated on getting as close as possible to the sacred.

The Bleeding Host of Dijon, from the Hours of Ogier Bénigne, around 1470-1480, MS. W.291, f.17v, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

The doctrine of transubstantiation is as old as Christianity. The word was only coined in the 12th century, but unlike later inventions like "papal infallibility", this one goes back to Paul - “for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:26-27).

What changed in the later Middle Ages was the prominence in art, writing, and devotion. The feast of the Corpus Christi is an indicator - so are the endless processions of Host miracles that suddenly begin appearing. It's as if after 1000 years of obliviousness Christians woke up to what was on their altars. What changed wasn't the Host. It was the attitude towards and interest in it.

Vision of St Bernard, 14th century, ink and colored washes on paper. Museum Schnütgen, Cologne

The medieval legend that St. Bernard was embraced by a Crucifix is itself part of that visualization approach. But the rain of blood is pure late medieval visceral corporeal devotion.

You can tell it isn't literal because the saint and him nun companion have no blood on them. It's an internal process of "seeing" and embracing.

This selection from the late 15th-century Antidotarius animae by Nicolaus Salicetus pirports to repeat Bernard's devotions on the five wounds.

Wounds of blood-red ruby droplets,

Driven deep-set as in goblets:

These inscribe upon my heartbeat,

Make my joining to you replete

At every moment loving you.

Whoso comes to you to drink deep

And embraces these your pierced feet,

Healed of want, departs from this source

Granted grace of lasting recourse;

With kisses wets your feet anew.”

Meanwhile, here's the Bernard visualization with a different saint a century later.

Anonymous, The Crucifixion with St Bridget in Adoration 1495-1510, The British Museum

This one includes the Golgotha skull. Note once again that the blood does not touch or stain the saint physically. The idea is deep inward empathy.

The permutations of the sacred blood are only one part of this late medieval move towards visual, corporeal piety. What we call a desire to get closer to sacred things. It's common in devotional literature - like Rolle, or 14th-15th century English mystic Margery Kempe. Here's her reaction to a Palm Sunday service - from her autobiographical Book of Margery Kempe, Book I, part II, lines 4368-4377

Many yerys on Palme Sonday, as this creatur was at the processyon wyth other

good pepyl in the chirch yerd and beheld how the preystys dedyn her observawnce,

how thei knelyd to the sacrament and the pepil also, it semyd to hir gostly sygth as thei

sche had ben that tyme in Jerusalem and seen owr Lord in hys manhod receyvyd of

the pepil as he was whil he went her in erth. Than had sche so meche swetnes and

devocyon that sche myth not beryn it, but cryid, wept, and sobbyd ful boistowsly.

Sche had many an holy thowt of owr Lordys passyon and beheld hym in hir gostly

syght as verily as he had ben aforn hir in hir bodily syght. Therfor myth sche not

wythstondyn wepyng and sobbyng, but sche must nedys wepyn, cryin, and sobbyn

whan sche beheld hir Savyowr suffyr so gret peynys for hir lofe.

Pilgrimage also gains intensity in later Middle Ages - it ties into the cults of the Virgin and other saints and relics. We've come across it in the Romanesque architecture post - as a way for information to travel. But it also corresponds with this same mounting desire for visceral religious contact. The idea of visiting sacred sites is as old as Christianity - older if we consider other traditions. The purpose is to intensify religious commitment. A voyage breaks the patterns and distraction of regular life and puts full attention on faith. Planning and a degree of sacrifice are needed - especially for a long one. Traveling as a group strengthens bonds. It was a big part of medieval Christian society. It was even good for the economy. But things change towards the end of the era...

Michael Ostendorfer, The Pilgrimage to the "Fair Virgin" in Regensburg, around 1520, woodcut print, Coburg Fortress

Check the date - Reformation era. Once the Reformation happened, everyone doubled down on their arbitrary doctrinal interpretations of scripture. The medieval Church had some flexibility - it had to to accommodate everyone. But once Christendom split how you did your Christianity mattered like never before.

This print shows ecstatic pilgrims genuflecting to a miracle-working statue of a "Fair Virgin" - a type of Marian image. Copies of this image were sold as souvenirs. It was good for the economy. But not so good in other ways. Protestant iconoclasm is usually discussed in terms of dueling scriptures. But dryly parsing out if non-idolatrous images are theologically possible is totally different from peasant response to the "magic statue". This has nothing to do with fine distinctions of veneration. This is confusion between the image and the subject - idolatry by any definition. Iconoclasm was radical surgery.

The problem was that the Church had become so corrupt and drunk on worldly glory that this kind of confusion was actively encouraged. We mentioned that the print was sold as a souvenir to the same idolators rolling around on the ground. Not that this matters at all, but the Band sides with Basil of Nyssa and Gregory the Great on images - ok if used for education and inspiration. But not only was no one teaching this, they were cashing in on the abuse.

Albrecht Altdorfer, The Beautiful Virgin of Regensburg, 1519-1520, woodcut printed from six blocks in red, green, blue, light orange, brown, and black, National Gallery of Art

Altdorfer was a major German artist. He was on city council and designed tokens and souvenirs for pilgrims. This is a higher end one.

It gets better. Regensburg really took off when a papal indulgence was offered for undertaking the pilgrimage. Historically, indulgences are exhibit A for medieval secular transcendence. The Early Christian root concept had to do with reducing penance for apostasy and other transgressions. Worldly repentance. But sometime in the 11th century, this switched to remission of sin after death. Then once the term "Purgatory" was invented and a system-chart made up, the two were linked. The indulgence is time off Purgatory. Of course no one is saying "worship the statue". It's all predicated on the popular theology. But the manic group response was known. It's a double game between saying and what's happening that is familiar among the political class today.

Regensburg indulgence, 1465, ink on parchment, Kislak Center for Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Ms. Oversize 28

Indulgence issued on behalf of a group of cardinals to visitors to the church of the Virgin Mary and Saint Catherine in Fronberg in the Bavarian diocese of Regensburg.

Indulgences were typical of the medieval Church's creeping secular power grab. Things like the "treasury of merits" are not so much contradictory to scripture but external.

The problem is a form of bogus argumentation that is endemic in the beast system. Call it the post-facto justification. This is when Biblical passages - or any other isolated data point - are cherry-picked and "interpreted" to justify a pre-existing desire. Suddenly the Church just happens to discover the thing most useful for the current agenda. None of this is Biblical or Patristic for that matter. More importantly, none of this is necessitated by scripture of the Fathers. It was fabricated after the fact to justify something that may or may not be viable morally.

Then there's the abuse.

Israhel van Meckenem, The Mass of Saint Gregory, 1490s, engraving

Van Meckenem was the most prolific engraver of the 15th century, but his life remains mysterious. That's not why we're sharing the print.

This one has an unauthorized indulgence of 20,000 years off Purgatory - each time certain prayers were said before the image. Firstly, the Church did not offer indulgences of that length. Or for praying in front of prints. The whole absurd notion of converting the afterlife into a quantifiable economy probably corresponds with the rise of international banking. But who knows. The point is that a spurious and historically-tracable alteration in the Church opened the door for widespread corruption. Not to mention a massive and legitimate target for Protestant critics that had little to do with core dogma.

The statue that the "pilgrims" are genuflecting to is a Fair Virgin type. Christian sculpture reappeared on altars late in the first millennium - first crucifixes then Madonnas. Smaller ones coulld be processed as well, like this 14th century alabaster in the British Museum

Carrying these around was a way to get people fired up. The statue brought the subjects a little closer. But they also created more opportunities for identity confusion. When miracles are credited to the statues, the simple can confuse them even more easily.

Then there are the reliquaries. The original idea was to give the saintly fragments more impressive containers. But the appearance of body part reliquaries muddies the issue. Pilgrims and other worshippers venerated relics as material connections to the departed saints. The theology of intercession was another medieval invention that tied into the economy of pilgrimage and indulgence. Venerating a relic in a gold box is easy to distinguish. Venerating a statue with a relic in it is a little different.

Reliquary Bust of St. Baudime, 1146-78, copper-gilt over walnut core, ivory, and horn, Mairie de Saint-Nectaire, France; Arm Reliquary of the Apostles, 1180, Gilt silver, champlevé enamel, oak, Cleveland Museum of Art

Having these glowing on the alter and holding the sacred relics that the pilgrims are venerating brings the sacred "closer". It also opens the path to identity confusion. Note how the face tries to create a link.

It's not like they get less potentially idolatrous.

Reliquary bust of a companion of Saint Ursula, 1520–30, oak, polychromed and gilt on plaster ground; glass opening for relic, Metropolitan Museum of Art

So related impulses - visualization of the sacred and the visceral desire to get close to it - reveal the extra-doctrinal excess of late medieval Christianity. It was a major factor in the appeal of the Reformation as a sluicing of the stables. Of course, being fallen, the solution created more problems than it solved, but that comes later.

From the perspective of the arts of the West, religious anxiety and affective piety shape the oil painting revolution in late medieval Flemish art. The visceral realism and lurid phantasmagorias help cross historical distance and fire up the emotions.

Jan van Eyck, Madonna in the Church, around 1438, oil on oak wood, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Take a moment with this unusual picture. Van Eyck's oil detail and realism hide how strange the arrangement is. First of all, look at the size of the Madonna. She'd be about 12-15' tall relative to the architecture. Plus the Assumption was over 1000 years before the invention of Gothic architecture. And why is she wearing a giant jeweled golden crown of the sort favored by early medieval Germanic kings and emperors?

Despite the surface realism, this scene is nor understood to be material real. It's visionary. A visualization. Picture the Madonna in a contemporary church with the stature and accoutrements that a late medieval person would recognize as status markers.

Details provide more information. Note the angels singing behind the choirs screen. It's the visionary qualities that make Flemish art ambiguous. There is no way to determine conclusively if Mary and the angels are visualized in a terrestrial church or if a Gothic church building is being used as a metaphor to visualize Heaven.

The premise that a church is an image of heavenly splendor is a medieval commonplace. Remember Abbot Suger?

A hanging crucifix of the kind that was ubiquitous by the 1400s. Note how the stained glass over the window echoes Mary's crown. Subtle connection between Infancy of Jesus and the Passion - the proleptic passion theme seen before.

The overlap of literal and figurative meanings makes late medieval Flemish painting impossible to conclusively resolve.

There's the crown. Note the inclusion of a Madonna and Child statue of the Madonna in the background. The same sort of statue that we mentioned in relation to pilgrimage.

The statue is supposed to call the actual Madonna and Child to mind. The vivid imaginative participation that makes it easy to confuse representations and reality.

It is an enigmatic picture. Many think it was part of a diptych - a patched pair of paintings that work together on a larger message. No companion piece by Van Eyck survives, but there are copies with the prayerful donor or purchaser of the picture included. The problem is that the Madonna in the Church copies are relatively close, the donors are configured very differently. This makes it intreguing but not conclusive.

Jan Gossaert, Madonna in the Church, St. Anthony with a Donor, around 1510, oil painting, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome

Here's one of the copies. It includes the donor and patron saint in adoration. In which case the visionary Madonna is in his - or maybe their depending on the status of the saint - imaginations.

How about the Holy Face of St. Veronica fame? Before the Shroud of Turin first registered on popular consciousness in the 14th century, the Veil of Veronica or Sudarium was the most prominent miraculous image of Christ's visage. The legend held that the likeness was mystically transferred when the saint wiped the suffering Jesus' face on the way to Calvary. Unlike the Shroud, the Veil has not survived intact, so there is no way to see if the same materially inexplicable characteristics apply to it as well. But because it was known much earlier, it has an impact on the medieval mindset that the Shroud couldn't.

Lucas van Leyden, Bearing of the Cross with St. Veronica, 1510s, oil on panel, National Museum in Warsaw

It wasn't the only miraculous likeness - a number of icons claimed divine origin. We'll stick the the Veil as an example - just remember it's not unique in medieval imaginations.

And like anything that brings God physically closer, the Veronica became more and more popular.

It turns up in manuscripts

Dirc van Delf, The Veil of Veronica, Walters manuscript W.171, between 1400 and 1404, ink and pigments on parchment, Walters Art Museum

Master of Guillebert de Mets, Saint Veronica Displaying the Sudarium, about 1450 - 1455, tempera colors, gold leaf, and ink on parchment, Getty Center

Four Veronica pilgrim badges in a Cistercian psalter, 1465, Ms. Thott 117, 8, f.1v, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen

The Veronica was kept in Rome and was a popular pilgrim attraction. Here are some printed tokens of the kind that would be given. Proof of indulgence perhaps. It is all connected.

Alexander Bening, Master of the First Prayerbook of Maximillian, and others, Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain f.184r, 1500, ink, tempera, and gold on vellum, Cleveland Museum of Art

It all comes together right here. An illumination from a royal prayer book covered in pilgrim tokens. Including a small Vera Icon.

The intense desire to see God was present in Italy as well - the Vera Icon was there after all. Likewise other miraculous images like the old Lateran Palace image in the Sancta Sanctorum. According to legend, the Apostle Luke was a painter, so a number of images were credited to him. This one was said to be completed by angels making it an acheiropoieta - image not made by man. The Vera Icon is obviously one as well.

Acheiropoieta lateranensis, repainted face on silk and silver casing from the 12th century, Sancta Sanctorum, Rome

Only traces of the original pigment remain and the body is totally covered in silver. It was carried in procession from at least the time of Pope Sergius I (687–701).

It was customary to process it to meet the Salus Populi Romani - a Madonna also connected to Luke - on the Feast of the Assumption. More confusion between representation and reality.

The difference - at least in what we can actually see - is in the overall intensity. The ultra-realistic depictions, lurid settings, gouts of blood, burning desire to get close, see, touch God. The art shows that this is like a pressure cooker building through the late Middle Ages. What this "means" is another matter and a tad beyond a post. Christian art is always iffy. The question hinges on the definitions of idolatry and graven imagery. The medieval Church took the position that they were just visual texts - for teaching and encouragement, not worship. The more self-consciously arty, the easier this is to maintain. The classical and humanist traditions in Italy may have player a role. Or maybe the historical record we've consulted is skewed. More later.

Fra Angelico, Christ Crowned with Thorns, 1450s, Duomo (Livorno)

Fra Angelico was a leading Florentine painter from the generation after Masaccio. This doesn't look Northers, but it isn't Classical either and is clearly trying for maximum emotional impact. The unnatural use of red adds a bloody cast and stimulates emotional response.

One obvious conclusion is that the religious structure was out of alignment with the religious needs of the people. We need a statue, then a more realistic statue, then one that moves among us, then one that works miracles and bleeds, and so on. This isn't a theological judgment, because there were multiple pathways out. But the need for any pathway indicates that the status quo was failing.

For now we're dealing with centralization in the arts. This has less to do with what they look like than with what they are. The Northern pictures here do look really different from the Italian ones we've examined. That's because healthy art expresses organic culture. The Christian cultures of north and south were different so the art was too. It was even different between sub-regions.

If the arts are de-centralized, one set of liars

can't monopolize all the traditions.

The arts of the West combine technical skill and logos in a material form. If we’re ontological rigorous, this means something super-material via the material. The abstract rules apply to the former - the material part is organic tradition. Rules, but with no pretense of universality. But ontological distinctions are beyond most people, so they confuse them together and blunder along. Only ignoring reality doesn't mean it changes - it's why culture keeps degrading. The problem is that you only notice the black mold when the house is wrote off.

Maarten van Heemskerck, The Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, around 1536-1537, oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Pure post-Renaissance Mannerism from a Dutch admirer of Michelangelo. The body types and landscape show the Northern roots but the nudity and Classical poses are pure centralized theory. And an answer to whether ugly Northern figures stay ugly with an Italian gloss...

Time for some hard truth. We are fallen material creatures looking through a glass darkly from a valley of death. Biblical metaphors - if you prefer the de-moralized synonyms try limits of discernment and entropy. We are intrinsically incapable of grasping what scripture signifies qua itself. So it's past time

to ditch the mental training wheels, stop mistaking signifiers for things, and start internalizing reality.

Every word is heard differently because every hearer has a unique set of connotative references. No two readers have the same experience - even with exactly the same text. It's like a qualitative version of quantitative uncertainty in lab work - every reckoning is slightly off. That's before we get into translations...

Talisman cross, Merovingian, 6th-7th century, niello silver, with magical signs and incantation very close to "Abracadabra"

Magic words only matter if you are a sorcerer. They're the definition of idolatry. Of worshipping a figuration.

Our natural state of subjective, finite indeterminacy means we can never get it "right" - not as far as perfecting ourselves. If we could, grace is unnecessary. So a degree of uncertainty is ontologically necessary. Like a qualitative version of uncertainty in measurement. Concepts, remember. Not signifiers. Every human is different - if God demanded abstract-level perfect certainty, only Jesus would be saved.

The natures of human perception and cognition make it a process of refinement. Of orientation towards logos and the fruits that affirm it. Imperfectly measured growth is still growth. Are you honestly doing your best? If you have a sinful nature, is every day a little better? Forget about doctrinal specifics for the moment - we are told God knows our hearts. And He clearly knows our fallen imperfect natures because He puts such weight on repentance. That IS the self-improvement process. Hold on to this idea - there are implications.

The important thing historically is that conscious ontological savvy wasn't necessary in the traditional West. We started the post by observing that that is a high floor and salvation is offered to all. The three traditional pillars of the West took care of it. They are complementary and Logos-facing. Default basic life set more or less on the right ontological path. It was up to the individual to follow, but that's not new.

This graphic shows how the three pillars align with the ontological hierarchy. Click for the post where this was worked out with an earlier version of the graphic.

This fit was one of the things that made us aware our earliest observations were on the right path. The nations of the West are material, historical things. The Classical heritage is the foundation of the abstract reasoning needed for morality, law, science – any inductive or deductive process. And Christianity offers an account of the ultimate reality in an applicable form for our limited intellects. Since salvation is what really matters, the faith part is sufficient if church dogma is sound.

But when the Modern West de-moralized, the default ontology no longer pointed the right way. The default path would be secular transcendence, materialism, death. Inverted "churches" - "churchianity" to borrow an excellent coinage again - are a major part of the problem.

There is nothing "Christian" about this demonology. Great haircuts though...

Start with something obvious.

Any “church” is an attempt to solve an ontological puzzle. How does the timeless actually manifest in the temporal? This isn't a rhetorical question. We know material reality is uncertain and too limited for abstractions. Historical time keeps changing. With each year the Gospels are more distant.

The Healing of a Bleeding Woman, Rome, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, early 4th century

This depiction of Jesus as a Roman patrician conveyed his leadership to a contemporary audience. Look how different he looks compared to the pictures we are used to seeing.

Here's the reality - Jesus didn't dress like this either.

Even the most staunch literalists don't dress in the robes, togas, and loincloths that were common dress in Biblical times. There's absolutely nothing intrinsically "Biblical" about dressing like 19th-century European farmers either - modesty and lack of ostentation, but no closer to Jesus' wardrobe than a priest's alb.

It's a costume. A uniform. A human social identity that signifies belonging to a community with a set of religious beliefs. There is no Scriptural necessity for costuming. Modesty and virtue? Yes. But still waiting on the commandment to wear Lamont Cranston's hat.

See how easy it is to confuse the arbitrary signifier with the metaphysical meaning?

Material reality adapts and we are material and temporally determined. But those changes must remain compatible with the higher Truth. How to do that is the moral reasoning and tradition part. The Amish costume isn't scripturally necessary, but it isn't immoral either. It's compatible. A material-level social custom that dosen't challenge or even problematize alignment with Logos.

The problem is when the material-level conventions abandon moral reasoning for purely human concerns. The Amish could dress like medieval peasants or Mao's Red Guards and be equally sympatico with Christian modesty and morality on a purely abstract level. They couldn't switch to bikinis and ass-less chaps. Or garments made by slave labor. This is how the material aligns with the abstract - compatibility. Like Tolkien's applicability that we often use in interpretative posts. Not the same, but in alignment with Truth. It's something the binary-thinking of postmodernism totally missed...

Uh-oh. It seems that that much ballyhooed postmodern reveal that symbols are arbitrary is completely and utterly irrelevant to whether the sentiment is more or less truthful. In fact, using the arbitrariness of the sign to comment on veracity of meaning is like thinking a lightbulb manufacturer determines the properties of light.

There is a kind of NPC thinking that lives on the corner of appeal to authority and limited cognition. You can sum it up like this. Accepting the terms of the beast system is an intelligence test among other things. You need to have no functioning memory or the ability to recognize self-contradiction in real time but enough synaptic activity to connect costumed figures on a glowing screen with the concept of reliable knowledge production. Not a substantive connection - just an association. Flack in white labcoat means "Truth" just as red octagon means "stop".

Like this openly mendacious, corrupt midget freak. The only "truth" in his disgusting slimetrail of a career is the correlation between internal and external hideousness. The only catch is that his believers are worse. Your visceral reaction to this creature is a litmus test of moral and intellectual health.

A society worthy of existing would have done away with the entire NIH-related resource-squandering fake narrative generation machine. Obviously health matters. But this fraudulent abomination was unfit for purpose from the jump. The Orwellian fiction is just the mature form.

The terminal problem - the sign of the Fall - is the number of people who lack even the discernment to see through something this self-evidently evil and dishonest. It's like a boat full of chud automatons that insist on drilling holes in the hull. That which can't continue won't.

The collective suicide around "health" is the most obvious manifestation, but stupid people fellating liars because "status" is a critical inversion of modernity in general. Consider "publication" and other hubs of beast fiction production. Liars put other liars in books and stupid people accept the content a priori. Even better if an affected midwit can poorly summarize it from a lectern. So long as the books are products of beast corporations. When the reality is that the globalist publication means the books are a priori false - at least in come capacity.

Liars will say things as patently false as words not being able to express transcendence means truth is relative. Other liars will disseminate it.

The moral burden falls on you to recognize the truth and reject the liars. Or follow them to their ultimate fate.

If you aren't gullible, it's easy to see why relativism is popular while being so self-evidently wrong. There are two main components. It does contain an element of truth, but framed in a way to make the conclusions false. The problem isn't that human activity is subjective - it is. The problem is how this subjectivity is interpreted ontologically. The other component - the false conclusions are built on earlier lies that also exploited greed and stupidity to replace reality. It's a form of pre-selection for mental deficiency.

"The arbitrariness of the sign" is only noteworthy if you were stupid enough to have believed the alternative.

And once you get jumping from one simplistic fake worldview to the next, you've abandoned that which distinguishes us from beasts or demons. It's all arbitrary in material reality. That is true. Languages, customs, symbols - the forms are organic cultural expressions that then change over time. They're complicated because they also condition the thoughts and beliefs of those raised in them. But it's still arbitrary - just a more complex organic process of communication and identity-formation than any of the "models" recognize..

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The Virgin Adoring the Host, 1852, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ingres doesn't "have to" paint in the manner of Raphael. It's an arbitrary model that does not impact what truth-value his message has. But he learns to paint this way organically. It's how he was trained in the environment he came out of.

Arbitrary and naturally taken up. See why the liar-huffing binary-thinking idiot masses are befuddled?

There is no ur-language. Maybe Adamic speech before the Fall, but nothing postlapsarian. It's impossible. And since we are culturally determined and think in inherited arbitrary systems, there is no "natural" consciousness. Even the environment we are born into is arbitrary. Meaning natural as in without arbitrary elements - not natural as organic processes. Like truth-value, the arbitrariness of the sign is orthogonal to organic growth and development processes.

Consider the same sentence in different number systems.

All four express exactly the same quantity relation. But the numerals are completely different. They are arbitrary and true.

If any were written as equaling four, it would be false. Regardless of the symbolic vocabulary. Arbitrary and false.

These are the sort of things that are obvious when you think about them, but the beast effectively clouds the mind with wave after wave of false premises.

What is natural is organic engagement with the culture where we're born in medias res [click for a post that deals with this and a lot more on cognitive processes]. Arbitrary and naturally-occurring aspects alike. We can assess the honesty of arbitrary signifiers.

Which is why it was so important for the beast system to declare that referential meaning was impossible. Whether idiotic "structuralism" in language or "art for art's sake in painting". Lies, but lies may as well be true if the institutions of culture insist on imposing them. And if you pretend words and pictures don't mean things, the arbitrariness is the point. The end in itself.

That was the point...

Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, oil on canvas, Manchester Art Gallery; Attributed to Georges Braque, Abstract Painting of Woman, early 20th century, oil on canvas, private

Neither of these are actual women. They're oil paint on canvas - equally un-living depictions. Both feature nude bodies, so propriety is comparable.

Yet no one has any trouble telling which better reflects the power of female beauty. Equally "arbitrary" fabrications. And diametrically opposed relations to the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Your reaction is indicative of your own psycho-moral health.

And enter moral relativism. A beast system ur-lie that can't happen without claiming arbitrariness and truth-value are somehow connected. Like believing that your musical choices control the weather. Because one is arbitrary and one is objective. The only relationship they can have is based in how well one reflects the other.

Materially it is all relative. All representational systems are arbitrary human creations with discreet moments when they appeared in time. But ontologically, all representational systems are also relative to something. And that can be assessed, at least in theory. But the lie has one big advantage - if there is no Truth - only subjective impulses - you can do what you want. Consider these statements...

There is no human expression that captures Truth fully. Human expressions are arbitrary. Therefore all arbitrary traditions are equally meaningless.

There is no human expression that captures Truth fully. Human expressions are arbitrary. Therefore some arbitrary traditions do it better than others.

Hence the moral reasoning we go on about. It's the only way to align arbitrary human behaviors with objective Logos-based morality. Enter the Church. More later.

Art can't withstand de-moralization - the removal of Logos and the flawed search for the truth - because it is Logos-facing by definition. It could stagger on past the removal of Christianity with abstract beauties and sensory allure. But these wither on the vine without the objective foundation.

Georges Braque, Woman Carrying a Basket of Fruit, around 1923, oil on canvas, private

More hideousness from Picasso's rent boy. It's amazing how fast degenerative evil takes hold when Logos is removed. A nd note that it isn't the nudity that's the problem. It's the beauty of the nude forms.

Remember that the fallen world has active and passive elements. The passive tendency towards entropy and decay can take some time. Active evil bundles human tendencies towards greed, vanity, lust, and the other sins hiding under the obsecene mantra of do what thou wilt to destroy truth and beauty for Sorathic sludge. Taste in art is a more potent indicator of moral and psychic health than even physiognomy. Two reliable objective indicators that trigger the beast into a frenzy of denial.

The process of centralization that begins in the Renaissance confuses the abstract and the material. Be ontologically rigorous. The material part is culturally conditioned - it is subjective. The abstract part is the logos - it's objective. The arts of the West express abstract truths in material form. It's the coexistence of opposites that make this hard for the idiot masses to grasp and easy for liars to distort.

Here's the graphic - it's clearer in when visualized.

In terms of the ontological hierarchy, art is connecting levels of reality. Abstract content with material execution. Without the logos - it's alluring at best, with Braque-level monstrousness as the floor. Without the technical skill, it's a philosophy statement.

But it gets more complicated because the different levels of ontology mean different modes of epistemology to understand them.

That is the core problem – vertical Logos makes it clear that epistemology changes with ontology. The Band tends to overstate the ontological part – we even call it "ontological hierarchy" not onto-epistemological hierarchy – for the sake of concision. But it is an essential point of the hierarchy that the two move in step. This is the sourve of the endemic category errors with secular transcencdence - because ontological distinctions are compressed into Flatland, epistemological approaches are routinely applied to things they don't apply to. The "knowledge" being as useful as checking your tire pressure with an anatomy textbook.

The "objectivity" in art is abstract. That means not material. Which means not present directly to the senses. We can’t see logos qua itself – if we could there is no need for the art.

James Thomas Linnell, A May Morning, 19th century, oil on canvas, private

Non-famous painting from an English artist shows a moment in history. There are techniques worked out by generations of masters, including the royal academies of Europe. The woman and child resemble a classical Madonna and child in pose and stature despite their humble attire.

But the primacy of family, the connection between organic culture and ancestral lands, the bounty that is available to us, and the unified beauty of Creation are all truths that align with objective Truth. They are how reality is. Style and circumstance are material - they vary with time and place. But the underlying logos is constant.

All legitimate works of art – no matter how different – share objective truth value. That’s what distinguishes them from other pictures. What we see – the material part – is material. It can take as many shapes and forms as there are peoples. There needs to be skill, but the terms are culturally dependent. There are no “rules” to techne beyond basic aesthetic responses. General preference for harmony, symmetry – the usual Renaissance stuff. But that shows up beyond the West too. It’s a human thing.

The Renaissance begins the dance of material “rules”. That there is a timeless, objective way to organize paint streaks on a piece of cloth.

Sassoferrato, Madonna In Prayer, 1638-1652, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria

Note how closely this artist follows Raphael. Despite being almost a century and a half later. Then consider that Raphael never imitated artists from the 1350s. What changed? Imitating canonical masters as some sort of rule stifles organic cultural churn.

This isn't a criticism of Sassoferrato. It's obvious that his rule-following didn't impede his ability to create beauty. Because he is still subordinating his arbitrary human rules to higher Logos. But it moves the idea of higher truth from the abstract where it belongs into secular transcendent Flatland.

There are only two possibilities - though they can coexist in unknown percentages.

It is a lovely picture...

Secular transcendence infected art the same way it did everything else. The general pattern is that the world is fallen. More specifically, there are two tendencies that we see again and again. They aren't mutually exclusive - they usually overlap. But they are different enough in the core to make a distinction.

Functional retardation. This is when some cocktail of animal fear, animal greed, de-moralization, total immersion in beast media, and self-fellating faith in the self-evident falsehoods of secular transcendence cripple ostensibly sane people mentally. Belief in endless Progress! in a finite setting is one. But the cloud of obscene, anti-human, dyscivilizational crime around the "pandemic" is a more recent desire. A heartfelt prayer that every single ambulatory cadaver that volunteered for poison injections receive the full measure of Judgment that they have coming.

John Martin, The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, 1852, oil on canvas, Laing Art Gallery

Self-deifying lies. Many hell-bound materialists sincerely believe the contradictory lies of the beast system because they're "empowering". They realize that their parasitism and illogic have long-term consequences, but don't care since "they won't be here". Their only motivation - "do what thou wilt". Their only "logic" - flip-flopping sophistry and selective memory to avoid criticism and possibly guilt for their degeneracy. The problem here is that this garbage provides the necessary cover for beast predation. They are accessories.

The downstream consequences of genetic alterations are unpredictable in specific but well-known in general. Cancers, sterility, shortened life span, susceptibility to variant illnesses... the list goes on. A fair price for the venal cowardice and complicity in obvious evil to anyone not enslaved by beastial impulse.

Here's the cartoonist's site. We don't link to Facebook.

The two overlap. The self-defiers include the actively wicked and the more passively venal. The former group hates and attacks God. The latter pretends He isn't real, as long as they can dodge hard ontological questions. So the second group are self-deifying liars who are also functionally retarded. It's where idiot assholery crosses into evil.

Simply note the lack of consistency in the official story. That's also a proxy intelligence test. You have to remember what you believed two weeks ago - a high bar for much of the shambling pre-deceased with their degrading genomes and petrie-dish masks.

How does this fit art? Start with the structural category error. The top-down misapplication of abstract claims to bottom-up empirical practices. To believe the designated ~~freaks~~ experts in lieu of empirical observation and logic means internalizing ontological inversion. Replacing your relationship to reality with magical thinking. In the case of non-"vaccines", it's inverting the relationship between the mouthpiece and the empirical data. It's how you get proxy intelligence tests like hearing "medical authorities" making unqualified and untested claims about the long-term safety of untested mutagens. The thing is, we've seen this before. And we're seeing it again.

Unlike the "trust science!" morons, the Band actually reads primary sources. It lets us cross-check the liars. And while it's true most published science isn't replicable, it does cut out the middle men. Here's the latest from establishment shill The Lancet on not-vaccine efficacy. It's what you'd expect...

If you're too stupid and lazy to read, keep your piehole shut.

There's no getting to this point without centralization. There has to be a self-declared "authority"" with a monopoly - or near-monopoly - on the public dialog. In Medicine! it's the psycho-sexual fetishization of lazy poseurs in white coats. In Art! the fraudulent beast puppets were "critics" and other theorists. But this is a modern pathology. The degenerate corrupt structures had to develop over time to get to a point where they could replace reason and observation. And for this, mass communication tech was necessary.

The preliminary work - the creation of "disciplines" or "fields" under central control - came much sooner. The beast centralization in art was the mix of aristocratic monopoly on resources and the rise of the humanist-critic.

Title page to the first edition of Vasari's Lives (Le vite e piu eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550.

Alberti is the first real Renaissance treatise writer, but Vasari is the author who charts the future course. We've mentioned him a lot - this is the first version of his Lives. The expanded version came out 18 years later.

The Florentine patriotism and Medici sycophancy are front and center. There's a dedication to Duke Cosimo I de'Medici on the inside. You can actually see it - the marriage of the aristocratic monopoly on resources and the rise of the humanist-critic

The next time you're stuck listening to a fraud spew lies across a communication channel - whatever the subject - recognize that it isn't new or isolated. It's the centralization and inversion pattern that defines modernity.

This is what we needed to identity in the Renaissance for our arts of the West journey – we are ready to move on again. But before we can, there is a larger contextual issue coming out of the Renaissance and late Middle Ages that has to be addressed. A fundamental conflict in the founding of the West that comes to a head in the Renaissance Papacy and Reformation.

The Church.

Manno di Bandino, Boniface VIII around 1300 Embossed copper, bronze, height 235 cm Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna

Just one of the vicar of Christ's idols prior to declaring himself supreme ruler of everything, being attacked and beaten by French forces, and dying not much later. Shortly after that, the Holy See just moved to Avignon for a while.

We will avoid the tiresome Protestant-Catholic squabbling by considering the pre-Reformation Church as a historical and political entity. Because that it what it is. We are well aware that all churches create written products called "theology". These are meditations on the nature of God that are written in particular times and reflect the shading of contemporary ideology but pretend to reveal ultimate reality. Retroactive backforming extraordinaire.

This is a topic we haven't really delved into, but the Rome of Alexander VI and Julius II makes it unavoidable. No way to make sense of the Sistine Chapel or the Raphael Rooms unless we lay out the difference between Christianity and "Church".

To be continued.

Gianfrancesco Penni or Giulio Romano, The Donation of Constantine, 1520–1524, fresco, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City

Renaissance Centralization & the Art of Unintended Consequences

2021-05-16T08:26:00.005-07:00

What’s up with the Renaissance? How did such artistic power open so much inversion?

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

We've taken a few looks at the Renaissance now. It started in our first go round with secular transcendence - when we were looking at globalism and architecture. And a lot of appearances in the occult posts. Pretty much anything sinister and inverted that passed through from ancient times came through it. Most recently, we’ve been taking a close look at Renaissance art.

Right now we’re on a large journey through the arts of the West to Modernism. It’s taking forever because we’re doing a lot at once. The idea is to break up the tunnels of discourse and look at how culture is interconnected. But the downside is that we aren’t going very fast.

Marco Battaglini, The Future is in Your Hands, 2010s, airbrush on canvas

What we’re doing. First is the arts of the West. It’s become obvious to the Band and a few of similar perspicacity that our culture got jacked and inverted. And some have begun taking steps to preserve and restore organic growth to it. We’ve promoted everything here from living artists to comic books. We noticed that the fine arts – painting, sculpture, prints, etc. – got jacked so hard that they were extinguished on an official level. Tortured into complete inversion and left to rot like carrion in once-proud halls.

Francis Bacon, Figure with Meat, 1954, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago

If art is a projection of cultural health...

But one thing about inversion is that there is a logic to the process. Things that get it this bad must be proportionately important to healthy culture. Otherwise there wouldn’t be demonic orgies on the blasted scree of once-hallowed ground. Figuratively speaking. In Minecraft.

That makes it something worth looking into. And that’s been endlessly fascinating and frustrating. So the first thing is to rough map what the arts of the West actually are. Despite the terminal state of the institutions, there are a lot of good resources out there. The other part – when we get there – is to think about a real arts of the West instead of Modernism. The road not taken, with an eye to organic culture in the future.

Hieronymus Hess, The Fool from the Dance of Death, 1834, lithograph

The second is to use the art to trace cultural degeneration. We identified early on that art was linked to elite power and money. It has to be - the first professional artist appeared when someone had surplus resources to hire him. Only the elite offered wages and possibly wealth, lodgings in great homes, sometimes even titles and manors of their own. And he who pays the piper…

The point is that art is what official culture looks like in a sense. It definitely transmits the views and values of the elite client class. The arts of the West also means who, where, and why – the road to modern art is the road to modern culture. It’s a different kind of inquiry from our speculative pieces – less ontological and more historical. But the material world is a lazy river – it doesn’t fit into spiffy thought diagrams.

We wouldn’t be surprised to find that the general pattern fits neatly with de-generation and moral entropy. It’s become clear that the ontological hierarchy is an accurate account of reality. And the Renaissance - for all the awesome talent of the artists - starts the path from Logos.

Jeremiah Humphries, The Last Redoubt

Turns out that all those metaphysically gelded, world fizzling out stories are right. If your world is metaphysically gelded.

The Band is metaphysically whole. So we realized modern culture was on the beast track of entropy and inevitable death, we set out for the alternative. Call it... Awake in the Light.

It started quick enough – we looked at ancient Greece and Rome and found a Logos-compatible working definition of art.

It's just adapted phronesis - the meeting of techne and episteme or technical skill and logos. It doesn't tell you what art forms are the "right" ones or what styles are best. Those are material cultural consideration and depend on historical preference. What matters is that it requires skill and is not false.

Max Kalish, Eternal Springtime, 20th century, private

Logos isn't restrictive - other than being true. There's beauty in the human form and in human love. It's not lewd or voyeuristic. It also may not be for everyone. Material logos comes in cultural flavors. The central question is the relationship to truth.

The Middle Ages showed us how art, aristocracy, and states grew together. Gradually the elites form a parallel, more international culture within their developing nations. This is where something we can recognize as art appears.

So from the start, there is tension within art that should be attended to. Because it takes resources, art is connected to the wealthy. So the health of your art is directly connected to the health of your elites. Look around - it definitely checks out today.

Master of the Dominican Effigies, Christ and the Virgin Enthroned with Forty Saints, leaf from a Laudario, miniature on vellum, around 1340, National Gallery, Washington

Tally it all up. The cost of the hides for a vellum book, the colors - especially the blue and gold, the hours of labor from highly-trained artists, scribes, binders, etc. And the better the artist, the higher the price.

The arts of the West are connected to whatever the "aristocracy" is. They can be fixated on logos and beauty...

Darryn George, The Women of Jerusalem Weep for Jesus, 2008, oil on canvas, private.

Back in 2011, this was estimated at around $6,000-7,000. Also the sort of thing that prices out all but the better off. Like the wider aristocracy in the Middle Ages.

About the cultural Progress! of the elites... At least it's a religious theme?..

Once art becomes a defined activity in Western culture, it starts developing its customs and practices. At first this is unofficial - workshop practices and client tastes by region. Consistencies grow with the international nature of the aristocracy and movement of people within the West. The regional variations and historical phases under a common umbrella is what organic development looks like. There is material logos in the process.

The Renaissance is where this formalizes and where the rules come in. Art goes from "high-end craft that everyone's into" to a Liberal Art. It's a huge change.

Attributed to the Master of Saint Veronica, Enthroned Virgin and Child, with Saints Paul, Peter, Clare of Assisi, Mary Magdalene, Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Agnes, Cecilia, Margaret of Antioch, and George, 1400-1410, oil and gold on panel, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Art starts as something that develops between artists and clients fumbles towards a general sense of Beauty. Bottom-up finite material pursuit of an abstraction that can't materially exist in itself.

There's a Gothic look to a painting like this, but not Gothic laws or rules. It's the feeling of the artist figuring it out, the joy of bringing beauty into the world - even for money. Everyone has to eat - what you do to earn that matters.

It's this bottom-up pursuit of beauty that registered to later observers as naivety or lack of self-consciousness. That's crazy to think of - a painter like this was very conscious of his art and its effects. What they were picking up on was lack of "Art" as they understood it. Some set of cultural rules and judgments other than what makes a picture beautiful. The "it's a nice picture, but is it art" retardery that gives people who want you erased authority over your values.

The problem was the earlier secular transcendence of Academic Art. Precursor to Art! Where "society" pretended cultural authority arising a set of beliefs was still authoritative if the beliefs were flushed. What happened is that the official arts were linked to official everything in 19th-century Europe and swept away by modernism.

Unidentified (British?) artist, A Life Class, early 19th century?, oil on canvas, Royal Academy of Arts

Art class at the Cincinnati Art Academy, around 1900, photo, Cincinnati Art Museum

A lot of questions around this one - the RA site said it was thought to have been by the 18th-century master Hogarth but is now believed to be later. The artist is unknown and the style deliberately old-fashioned. Basic life drawing didn't change for over a century.

Academy artists were very well-trained technically. But institutional rigidity severely limited the ability to connect this to reality.

The strength of Academy training was the techne. But they had legitimately become a problem. The thing about Academies is that they are misrepresented by the beast narrative, but not totally so. Academies and modernism is kind of like the last czar - not a dream leader, but abstract-level infinity times better than the replacement.

We will get to the Age of the Academies - we don't want to get sidetracked here. Also we aren't far enough in our rethinking to jump ahead. Proceeding methodically through history seems the best way to avoid secular transcendence or rash emotion-driven conclusions. So a couple of things to keep in mind for now.

In the beast narrative, "the Academy" is sort of like "the Man" in the 60s. A vague reference to traditional cultural authority and the institutions associated with it.

No one can really define it - just that it is linked to institutions and hates "freedom".

The way the story usually works starts with finding a particularly egregious example of stilted academism. This can be removed from any context and held up for scrutiny and rificule. More dishonestly, is is misrepresented as something "all artists were forced to do".

Like a "classical history" whose sole purpose is to titilate with exotic sexuality and perversion. They called it "Orientalism". Elite culture for the nation.

Alexandre Cabanel, Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners, 1887, oil on canvas, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

Alexandre-Auguste Hirsch, Night, 1875, oil on canvas, private

Hugues Merle, L'Abandonnée, 1872, oil on canvas, private

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Holy Family, 1863, oil on canvas, private

Weird sexuality permeates late academic art. Myth, social issues, even the Holy Family could be eroticized in ways running from creepy voyeurism to blasphemous pedophilia. These are relatively mild. But modern eyes are have been trained with graphic horrors - consider the messaging...

Now look at the dates and think of beast cultural manipulation.

The moral emptiness of Academic art gave it nothing to oppose Modernism with. Because they couldn't admit that it was nothing more than dopamine without blowing the whole game. So the beast-huffers conga-ed on, only now sensual allure is bad. And even the art that wasn't compromised like a "family values" preacher with a taste for gay hookers was stilted and out of touch. Easy prey for cunning liars.

History painting was the top of the Academic heap. The idea was to promote the endless supremacy of Greco-Roman culture while teaching "timeless" values.

Lionel Royer, Germanicus Before the Remains of the Legions of Varus, 1896, oil on canvas

It's a good painting and packed full of possible lessons. But it was easily pilloried as out of touch. That's the late French Academy - clearly past its sell-by date, but hardly a case for cultural destruction. So "the Academy" is a straw boogieman of the type globalist "historians" always drum up. A way to cover Satanic rebellion and Sorathic atavism.

This is the high art version of the low culture de-moralization and inversion we saw in the t.v. era. They aren't exactly the same because they had different targets and places. But it's the same pattern. A cheap and logos-less but appealing husk of secular transcendence masquerades as actual culture. It is then turned into a straw man and blowtorched for its legit failings. Only the replacement is utterly abhorrent in comparison.

Quick aside on Sorathic evil.

In the last speculative post we considered Sorathic evil as an abstract endpoint opposite the Good. Absolute zero and true infinity. If one extends from the energies of Creation, the other necessarily opposes them. Sorath or pure Evil qua Evil seeks to undo the fundamental Created order.

Each act of moral or cultural atavism - each rejection of the objective order implicit in the causality of Creation - inclines towards Sorath. It is as pure and utter evil as can be imagined. No matter how "certain" the moron of their cause.

In reality - Academies begin in 1600s from even older roots. The 17th century French Academies are the most famous since they were the first. And they were culturally oppressive because they were part of Louis XIV and Colbert's system of Absolutism. But this goes with Louis. The reality is that the Academies are always tied to official high society, but change with time.

Claude Lefèbvre, Allegory of Louis XIV, protector of the Arts and Sciences, 1670-1672, oil on canvas, Versailles

Academies were are government sanctioned and funded and so reflect the government line more or less. But all the different movements in 18th and early 19th-century Western art manage to take place within them. And different national academies have different flavors even at the same time. The problems were that the model was formulaic and connected to nonsense aristocratic ideologies.

Consider that we just spent multiple posts on a complete transformation of the arts of the West in a way that unified the Classical and Christian pillars. Without academies.

Academic techne was high-level, but the most stunning and creative painting of the 19th century wasn't coming out of the French freakin' Academy. It was in the wealth of regional schools and styles that made up the arts of the West before the Modern flood of effluent. Things like the Romantic sublime of the Dusseldorf School and all its offshoots. The American versions of the Hudson River School. Russian geniuses like Shishkin. English picturesque and magical realism. The wonders of Scandinavian painting... It goes on and on.

Many of these artists belonged to their national academies. Other bodies like the Dusseldorf school applied Academy-level techne with different visions of what art could be. Others like the Hudson River School formed loose alliances for individual growth under a shared umbrella. At no point had Western art ever been as wide ranging in style and subject. And improving photography was making it available to people like never before.

Herman Herzog, A Shepherd With his Flock, 19th century, oil on canvas, private

Take a painter like Herzog. A German member of the Dusseldorf School who painted breathtaking scenes of his native countryside and traditional life.

He eventually moved to America where he joined the Hudson River School. Whittridge, Church and others had studied in Dusseldorf so there was a connection. His style definitely fit.

Hermann Herzog, View of Niagara Falls in Moonlight, 1872, oil on canvas

One of his Hudson River School period paintings. He improved his handling of light and atmosphere and his range of subjects.

The Hudson River School wasn't a school you studied at, but a group of professionals that shared values and encouraged and pushed each other. Hersog kept growing because he doesn't assume one perpetual artistic truth. Other than Truth.

Ever heard of Herzog?

Now consider this. We are immersed in a-holes who would dismiss Herzog whether they like him or not. Because a liar they've never met told them to and other liars agreed. Self-styled "smart" NPCs are the worst - lips adhered to the beast teat as they multiply lies to critical mass. Where does this impulse come from - is collective mental flight from reality a symptom of materialist mouse utopia?

We've known for years that beast media in it's full range is controlled by a small handful of colluding globalists. It is not an end in itself at all - let alone one that seeks to inform. It is a talon on a massive claw that integrates corporate, financial, and government power. And when you act on it's genocidal mendacity, you are complicit in the erasure of your own place in reality.

But, but, the glowing screen offers "different" points of view. And social media allows each of us to control our information feeds...

Superficial differences over a common structure will bamboozle stupid people. But if there is a synapse or two firing, it's obvious from the structure that media is a complex fiction crafted by the handful of colluding elites to further the aims that actually occupy the bulk of their focus.

Beast narrative creation is multi-stage. Whatever orchestrates the clown show - the inner circle, the beast, the high table, Satan - sets the overall direction. One world order and depopulation have been overtly stated elite goals for several generations. Then "content" is produced for the platforms that name drops real things while narrating a false world view. Other tentacles - corrupted science, medicine, academia, policy institutes - suddenly reinforce the new false message in a broad-spectrum blitz. And it's all integrated - the media reports the fake experts, the fake experts get cover and subconscious signal boosting from the media.

Question - does magic thinking actually transform the physical nature of the universe if enough voices mouth the words? Think about it. What is your understanding of the nature of reality?

The problem is that it doesn't even have to be everyone. Critical mass is enough to sway the herd and the outliers become helpless spectators in the tide. The Academies did not equal art before Modernism. The academies dominance was limited in their own countries. In fact, ambient social change had already sent the retarded antiquity obsession to a well-earned place in the dustbin. So why, if you do the most basic googling of Modernism do you keep getting the moronic Academy-as waxed-moustache-straw-man?

The truthiness of the Modernist lie needs the

Academy to be a repressive force.

Otherwise, it's harder to bury questions about why "embracing the modern world" meant degenerating into technical infantilism.

Kazimir Malevich, Black Circle, motive 1915 / painted 1924, oil on canvas, Russian Museum

It's easy to look at a limited hack like Malevich and understand why he jumped at the opportunity to cash in without skill. In any normal world, clown-frauds like this remain obscure. But his talentless atavism had value for the beast - with what we know, it's just as easy to see why Art! would fluff scum like this.

Now consider this quote from Malevich on his "movement" - from Infogalactic.

Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.

This solipsistic clod and his idiot-babble screamed for someone to say "who cares". Demented ravings describing something other than what art is. Ravings that by his own admission has nothing to offer. But this was the consequence of Art! - that despite millennia of logos and techne, of the good, the beautiful, and the true, of expressing hears and soul of peoples - was now playground for sociopaths and narcissists. Click for a beast narrative summary.

The thing is, Simple google searches show the variety of 19th-cenury art. And why the beast hates it.

Alfred Guillou, Arriving at the Pardon of Saint Anne de Fouesnant at Concarneau, 1887, oil on canvas, private

Art that reflects culture also records culture. The beauty of Breton faith as as something to aspire to. Note how modernism denigrates tradition. That is only possible when you can't see the alternative for yourself.

Antoine Chintreuil, The Sun Drinks the Dew, 1873, oil on canvas

Stay French, since that's Modernism ground zero. How about sunrise awakening Creation in color, while nature looks on? The profundity here is of a different kind. As is the beauty.

Pierre-Auguste Cot, Springtime, 1873, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Art captures more primal human realities too. Like the electrifying overlap of love and attraction in a beautiful girl.

Can art compensate for lack of social success? Obviously not, but knowing what generative love and beauty look like helps smoke out the degenerative inverse.

Albert Lorieux, Solitude, 1898, oil on canvas,

Maybe something more suited to deep thoughts or religious meditations? Art can create an environment or set a mood when the real version isn't available.

A tranquil seascape?

Jean-Léon Gérôme, A View of the Gulf of Aqaba, oil on canvas

We could go on, but you get the point. Note that these all do things like explore form and color that Modernism claimed was necessary. But they are also beautiful in ways that tie us to logos. Basic truths about man, nature, and spirit in visuallly pleasing forms. Logos plus techne. Art.

So how does a historical parody of the original 17th-century French Academy become a stand-in for art in the 19th?

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Easy. It's a simplistic myth promulgated by functional retards. Foucault made up some things about perception and interspersed them with random mentions of Velazquez. If you want to see the marriage of pathological narcissism and missing the point, it starts on page three.

Art! cut art off from society and corrupted the places that served it. Wicked institutional leadership purged what truth-facing rank and file there were. It's not hard - push inversion and they leave on their own. The masses had their "low-brow" culture that didn't seem to change as much - that could be coopted more slowly once the top was rotted out. And how were Ma and Pa Kent going to oppose proclamations of "world-renowned" critics, curators, scholars, reviewers, etc.? Just consider how good people you know are at resisting beast lies.

Pompeo Batoni, Aeneas fleeing from Troy, 1753, oil on canvas, Sabauda Gallery

At this point, best to gather what you need and get you and your as out of the way as possible because it's not going to be a soft landing.

So "The Academy".

In theory, academism could maintain uniform standards of excellence and morality in the arts. The technical training was certainly high - competitive and easy to wash out. In reality, it had inherent problems - centralization and periods of creative sterility.

The centralization is the main one and will be dealt with by the rest of this post. The sterility took different paths. For one, training to skewed to rote and sucked the life and energy out of the art. Stagy expressions and stock poses where the models could only be more obvious if the sheets they posed on were added in. Techne is more than mastering pencil exercises. In includes the ability to move the viewer emotionally and involuntarily.

Bernard Picart, Male Nude with a Lamp (Diogenes), 1724, red chalk on laid paper,30.9 x 45.7 cm, National Gallery of Art

Is he looking for an honest man, or flexing like a poseur in a nightclub?

The problem the Academy had was that it bought into the earlier secular transcendent lie. That art was an abstract entity that existed in ideal form external to the humans that defined and made it. Retardation to the point where it becomes annoying to even mention it. And the motivations were appropriately immoral. Promoting the beyond self-evidently moronic lie that art is independent of human agency allowed the Academy absolute authority in that imaginary world. Still enjoying the bottom-feeders hand-outs from the power-elite. But pretending to be Olympian arbiters of culture.

Henri Adrien Tanoux, The Next Commission, 1898, oil on canvas

It's the same story with vanity and greed-driven cucks everywhere. In their hurry to sell out for short-term rewards, they have nothing to stand on when the demons come for them.

The irony was that earlier 19th-century attacks on the Academies linked them to Modernism. The Gothic Revival, the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts Movements, the Nazerene painters - all looked to the past for with a mix of social and art reform. The Industrial Revolution had already begun the destruction of organic community and atomization that the beast system is built on. These retro Utopianisms were supposed to point back to organic culture.

James Archer, The Death of King Arthur, around 1860, oil on canvas

Scottish painter influenced by the Pre-Raphalites shared their interest in non-Classical themes and the less "arty" approached of the time before Raphael.

The Archer is a nice painting. The long-haired girl is exceptionally pretty and the whole scene works. And it doesn't look like French Academy painting. But you can already see the problem all these movements have...

They weren't organic.

Franz Pforr, Rudolf of Habsburg and the Priest, 1810, oil on canvas, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.

The Nazarenes pictures were consciously archaic. Deliberately copying early Italian Renaissance styles with no logical, cultural, or historical connection to them.

"Primitives" seemed like an alternative to a de-moralized and de-humanized Industrial Revolution hellscape. But it didn't mean anything. These Germans were tourists and historical dilettantes. LARPing the Renaissance with zero meaningful connection. And equally little to offer the 19th-century German people. Cowardly flight into sterile retro. Might as well try and reboot Western culture by dressing Auntie John like Guinevere. The transformation of an angel into a coddled harlot would be appropriate.

And this brings us to the bigger problem that has only gotten worse. Centralization.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View along the Via del Corso of the Palazzo dell'Accademia, established by Louis XIV, King of France for French students of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture..., engraving from Vedute di Roma, part I, around 1750–78

The Academic system is based on central control of cultural production and taste. It sets the styles and subjects and trains the artists to make them at the same time. It sets the permitted materials, models, symbols, canons - all the crap that non-producing ~~parasites~~ critics have been "proclaiming" essential since the first one wasted his first breath.

It is structural.

The Academic Age sets the idea that the thing called "art"

is definable by government institutions.

Bringing us to old friend the Philosophical Bait and Switch - when something contingent, temporary, and circumstantial is falsely passed off as timeless. It's an expression of secular transcendence - the fake timelessness is secular transcendence - the Bait and Switch is the particular lie. The act of passing the secular off as transcendent.

Hubert Robert, Development Project for the Grand Galerie du Louvre, 1806, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum

Academic painter who managed to take over the Louvre Museum conversion for the Revolutionary Government.

Somehow the "Royal" Academy kept on trucking without the royals...

There's nothing "timeless" about Academic Art. We know all the players - the founders, funders, influencers, artists - the whole historical fiction. And all the timeless change. When the Roman satellite was founded to create new links to timelessness. When the Revolution replaced timeless royal values with timeless Republican ones. When Napoleon and restored monarchy brought the royal ones back. And then modernity. A timeless history of constant change. And evidently a breeding pen for mental deficients.

Lay down the marker. The original artistic authority of the Academy was based on "the Renaissance". The same Renaissance we just explored and the concept of the Renaissance as perfect art. Put it against the definition of art.

Quick reminder - the technical skill is material-level logos. There are practical methods and formulas that are difficult to master but deliver material-level beauty. What these are depend on material-level details. It's how we have cultural preference. Don't forget to differentiate allure from beauty too. We're fallen creatures with animal drives - there are all kinds of things that can be pleasing to look at that aren't tapped in to Beauty.

Hans Dahl, The Geiranger Fjord, Norway, 19th century, oil on canvas, private; Belle-Verrière Window, Chartres

Logos - alignment to Truth - is how a stained glass window and landscape can look nothing alike but be recognizable as "artworks". It's in the name - works. A verb. Technical skill and logos coming together to give something truthful artful form. Form that strikes the heart and soul as well as mind.

Art doesn't have to be overtly "religious". But it does have to offer some artful truth. Skill and logos. The Academy starts off with the commitment to technical skill. A formula based on masters of the Renaissance and the following century. But there was no capital-L logos. The artists were the "logos", then this is replaced by theorists. All the while claiming the changing tastes were the same timeless art. The Academies went the same way as "The Liberal Arts Education", "The Great Books", "Manifest Destiny", and every other house of beast tissue paper self-fluffers have used to justify self-fluffing.

It's why all the bastions of timelessness folded faster than origami ninjas.

The claim of fake objectivity allowed centralized control of something organic. At first it meant training artists in formulaic ways. But ultimately the institution itself could be erased once Art! truly had an undead "life" of its own. And if there's no logos, what need for techne? And that's the part of Art! that hasn't changed. It's still centralized. Go try and get some foundation money or try and show your work somewhere as a random person.

The beast system has to be centralized because what it offers is so hideous. No one would choose it if given other options. First it subverts, then it inverts, and to do that, it needs a system that it can assume control of. And then artists have to play the game if they want to rise. The alternative is what actual artists have to do - cultivate clienteles and sell around the beast.

Brent Cotton, Power and Light, 2015, oil on canvas, private

This artist is immensely talented - blending traditional beauty with an original style. If you're good enough, you can make a living this way. But there'll be no recognition from any beast orifice. Unless a ticket is offered.

The Art! Philosophical Bait and Switch worked like this. A set of evolved organic cultural practices had became known as art. This gets folded into the larger secular transcendences of post-Enlightenment inversion. And the idea that culturally-contingent artistic practice could be a timeless idea? That comes from the Renaissance. There's no "meritocracy" - that's a term used by dupes who confuse beast propaganda with beast reality. The upper levels require ticket-taking. Like any other beast hierarchy.

The process is like abstraction - pull observations out of what is really happening and make a simplified account out of them. It will map onto reality, but omit all the details that you don't want. You've now "defined" art based on real art, but in the terms you think it should reflect. Anything you don't like gets written out. It's the same process we broke down in the history as telling stories posts. Real facts as the foundation for a story that may not be factual at all [click for link]. Here's the graphic

Gerrit Dou, A Scholar Sharpening his Quill, 1633, 25.5 x 20.5 cm, The Leiden Collection
What you're getting isn't what happened, but it isn't exactly fiction either. You can already see the room for abuse.

Continuing from that post - history can be easily falsified because of the storytelling level. The narrative. We can look at Paleolithic stone structure, project modern helplessness and ineptitude on it, and pretend "aliens" had to build it. Or we can reverse engineer techniques that used known Paleolithic tech levels to explain how to do it. One employs retard fantasies to as a crutch for personal weakness. The other proceeds empirically as humans always do when deriving real solutions.

This is why "sticking to the facts" does sweet eff all for historical accuracy. The most dangerous lies are crafted at the story level anyhow.

Now pretending a bunch of period customs are eternal truths takes more than just a story. Especially on the level of the official apparatus of the arts of the West. You needed something exceptional - epochal even - to serve as the Timeless! bait.

That's where the Renaissance masters come in. Their whole world view was based on the pretense that they were ~~making the world a better place~~ improving culture. It was a comical claim overall, but in some areas it was an easier sell. Consider the artists...

The Donatello and Brunelleschi generation brought new levels of techne. But they also brought that humanist secular transcendence.

If you were going to pitch the idea that Florence was the bleeding edge of a new era, the art was probably your best argument.

Botticelli, The Birth of Venus

Verrocchio, Equestrian Statue of Colleoni, 1481-95, gilded bronze, Venice

The next generation consolidate and advance the new vision. Botticelli's is one of the most famous paintings ever. Verrocchio puts Donatello's living figures into motion.

And then the High Renaissance guys blow the lid off that.

There's never been a collection of this many apex talents in one place before or since. Historical anomaly - has to be a peak in any historical distribution. Like "% future Hall of Famers" on DiMaggio's Yankees or Russell's Celtics. Raphael is probably the greatest painter to ever live. Several others are in the all-time pantheon tier of world artists. Leonardo invents Western painting. Michelangelo defines the idea of tormented genius. Titian and the Venetian painters use paint like never before. A wave of organic innovations in art that still echo. Progress and genius. Just circumstantial.

This was seen then too. People were well-aware that they were living in a time of extraordinary creativity. It's how 16th-century "thinkers" like Giorgio Vasari could claim that art had been "perfected". And once there was a written template to go with the genius artworks, there was a linked package of art and ideology. Rules and examples in a tight formula.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The Virgin Adoring the Host, 1852, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ingres was the greatest 19th-century French champion of Raphael in the Academy. He's an excellent technician. But note how his porcelain figures lack the life and vital energy of Raphael's. It's the difference between an organic vital art creating a new vision and self-conscious application of retro formulas.

One has a future.

Not picking on Ingres - he's a heck of a painter and a lot of his work is really good. Nothing wrong with historical homage to a giant of the tradition. The problem is that honoring the past has to come with creating for the future or else it gets sterile. Ironically, that's what really stood out in the Raphael post. How he could draw so effectively on his influences while always creating new directions. Academic art fails because it cripples the future by overrating the past. Then Modernism fails because it underrates it. And both happen because of the self-evidently-false-in-every-way myth that abstract perfection is possible in a Fallen world of entropic change. Either fake "timeless" standards or fake future "perfection".

And once you've misplaced objectivity into secular transcendence, inversion is already underway. The degeneration is mathematical at that point. Hence the importance of Logos.

The giants of the Renaissance - for all their failings and faults - truly believed. Their artiness is real, but also organic. Their craving for fame is real, but also their visual praise to God. Even their talents were considered divine gifts.

Raphael was a charming, handsome genius who flashed across papal Rome rewriting the arts of the West. It is true he took advantage of this to satisfy a lustful nature. But his alignment with Beauty and Logos is undeniable. It's visible. He never spirals into debauchery and dies with heart and mind on Jesus. Did he sin? Of course. He's fallen.

Michelangelo restored by Tiberio Calgagni, The Deposition (The Florentine Pietà), 1545-1555, marble, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

Michelangelo lived in tormented chastity for maybe all of his existence. Whether he died a virgin or tried something appears to be a question among some historians. It's irrelevant. He's fallen. What matters is that he doesn't sink into debauchery either.

This was intended for his own tomb before he decided it ruined and tried to destroy it. A student of his fixed it as best he could. Michelangelo carved his own face on Nicodemus as a sign of love and prayer for salvation.

The irony is that the Renaissance artists who are soon held up as ideals didn't have human idols. They were looking up.

This is what makes the Renaissance such a two-edged sword. We got side-tracked into the big names because their organic creativity is incredible. Some time ago we compared them to the Noldor - now you can see why.

Any future arts of the West has to take them and their accomplishments seriously. And there's so much available - we could gather and post stuff for ages. Obviously we can’t - so just remember this -

It was the workshop tradition that produced all the Renaissance guys. And Academic Realism never produced another.

Yes, there are other giants. There are members of the Pantheon from every era but Modernism.

John Atkinson Grimshaw, Silver Moonlight, 1886, oil on canvas, private

They just weren't Academic realists.

Now we need to collect the important observations High Renaissance guys and move on. Bringing us back to the beast system tentpole – centralization.

Organic culture is bottom up. Customary ways form, but through a sort of natural selection. If not fetishized into secular transcendence, it's sort of how the free market works. The constant churn of ideas and solutions keeps culture moving.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-1523, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

Even in the Renaissance, Titian and the Venetians' textural oil paints and velvet surfaces were a very different alternative to Raphael and the Romans.

Organic cultures create options. People still prefer one or the other.

Bottom-up organic culture means that if something sucks, you pick something else. And the idea of an artist who insults his clientele is suicidal. Obviously images always have some kind of slant - artists are people. It different from actively reviling basic beauty and morality.

To force beast hideousness, you need top-down control. Taking away any alternative has splattered the walls of once-lofty institutions with effluent. The result is as expected - the general public is cut off from the entire historical traditions of the arts of the West. Associations are made between "art" and degeneracy and pretension. People don't look deeper because why would they? All the big museums, culture ministries, universities, foundations, etc. say the same thing.

Quick aside

The Band has come to view all the metastases of secular transcendence as variations on the same death drive. Like some sort of existential virus created by sustained turning from logos. The metaphysics are simple enough - straight out of the last post on the opposition between the Good and Sorathic evil.

If Evil is definitionally the opposition of God's objective Good as manifest in Creation,

and lower-case g good and beauty the fallen material echoes of these...

Then opposition to lower-case good, beauty, and truth as moral directions in the material world is by definition evil.

We see this in the gray goo endpoint, but consider the modern globalist left. Every major position or policy they advocate is literally collectively suicidal in come way. As in, if implemented, terminally alters the existing culture or society.

Unilateral disarmament has to be exhibit A. A polity is dead when its own citizenry votes to die.

Presumably the argument would be that the old must die to remake the new. Put aside ideologies. With a voracious enemy at the gates, you have no say in the new. Hence death-drive.

If we had to guess, it comes from a mix of mouse utopia's unearned largess and loss of logos. Without higher Good as a guide, the fallen world inverts human nature into self-destruction. Need to think more on this.

The materialist death-drive in Art! followed the same pattern we see in the Renaissance - just aimed in the opposite metaphysical direction. Look at recent works, abstract out some generalities that support whatever point you want to make, and declare it History. The fake Conclusions! may or may not align with reality - that's up to the morality of the generalizer. That's something central to history - the narrative level around the facts.

Inversion takes time - so when we look back into history, we look for trailways. Pathways that will make inversion possible. Try not to get dazzled by the details and lose sight of the big picture. We got a little lost in the weeds with the Renaissance painters - it was worth it if it doesn't get too frequent. Here's the pathway.

Nardo di Cione, Madonna and Child, with Saints Peter and John the Evangelist, and Man of Sorrows, 1360, tempera on wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Click to the site where this came from if interested in medieval Italian paintings.

Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child, 1455, tempera on panel, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Raphael, Madonna of Foligno, 1511, oil on wood, transferred to canvas, Vatican Museums

The Renaissance cherry-picked certain aesthetic achievements that tell the story of a certain kind of artistic progress. You might prefer Nardo or Lippi - the Gothic Revivalists and Pre-Raphaelites did respectively. And that's the point. It's not that there isn't a progression in effect. It's that progression based on cherry-picked details becomes definitive of "how art works". And once you've created the practical reality that art is a string of cherry-picked plot points...

Modernism cherry-picked the inverse.

Édouard Manet, The Old Musician, 1862, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art

Manet lacked the skill to succeed as an Academy painter so peddled hackwork to "progressives". His de-moralization and crude technique are narrative building blocks. He flushed any heritage for banal "modernity" and his crap techne became "resisting" Academy norms.

Charles Laval, Going to Market, Brittany, 1888, oil on canvas, Indianapolis Museum of Art

Relative nobody with ties to bigger "Post-Impressionist" names shows degeneration along Manet's path.

For a fun exercise, compare this to Guillou's image of Breton piety from up above. Consider the dates, and who got written into the narrative.

Wassily Kandinsky, Cossacks, 1910-1911, oil on canvas, Tate London

And another giant of Modernism. The date here brings us to the Armory Show of 1913.

This is obviously a totally different story from the Renaissance Progress! one. But it's written the same way. A destination is chosen that suits the current agenda and the stepping stones are laid to get there. The morality of the storyteller becomes obvious. But what we are interested in is the centralization of "art" that makes stories even possible.

The Beast loves Cezanne. His made his weird smudge paintings with an obsessive-compulsive monomania - like most Modernist heroes, he exhibits signs of mental ill-health. That's fine in and of itself - who cares if someone wants to obsess over smudges? It's only a problem when the smudge-obsessed is presented in virtually every venue as an indispensable trailblazer of art. And all other alternatives are memory-holed under retard words like "sentimental" and "representative".

It's a lot clearer when you can see what was erased to make atavism "genius"...

Peter Mork Mönsted, Evening View of a Stream with Two Anglers, 1897, oil on canvas, private; Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibemus Quarry, 1897, oil on canvas, Baltimore Museum of Art

In 1897, Danish genius Mönsted was using simplified brushwork to create real presence - like evolved Impressionism, if art stayed organic. Recombinating the optics back into beauty.

Was this intentional? Who knows. Mönsted isn't in the books - no theory or serious bio easily available. The beast needed space for some smudge work. Or "grandiose force" according the site we got it from.

This stuff happens so fast too. The Renaissance posts show a wholly new set of ideas created and imposed between art and people in a few generations. Because it is an organic local development - artists make the splash, the crowd responds, and the next wave builds. And the critics worm their way in from the outer dark.

Consider how centralization works. We often picture totalitarian governance structures, which is part of it. But in the arts, there isn’t a sudden conquest or overthrow like a political régime. Well, there is in a way, but it isn’t sudden and does come from natural roots. Humanistic sycophants and partisans praise progressive advancement by real genius - the natural roots. But they set up the pretense that "art" is something outside the people making it.

Horace Vernet, Pope Julius II Ordering Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raphael to Build the Vatican and Saint Peter's, 1827, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum

It's no coincidence these clowns hover around the Medici and popes in the Renaissance. Or the King of France and the French Academy in the 1600s. And somehow the theory goes from commentary to calling the shots.

This kind of jacking is only possible if the system is centralized. And in the Renaissance, the very idea of art writing and criticism is brand new. Anyone that follows necessarily follows in their footsteps. One of those places where accepting their terms means accepting their terms. Other regions could have told the Italians to pound sand. But they didn't, because their culturati wanted to be "up to date".

Again - it isn't an overnight switch. The workshop system survives into the early 1700s - much longer for artists that don't become names.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Descent from the Cross central panel, 1612–1614, oil on panel, Antwerp Cathedral

Curiously, Rubens didn't study at an academy or follow the blatherings of critics. Neither did his best student Van Dyck. Or any other of the myriad successful artists to come out of his shop.

Renaissance art shows the initial intellectual and cultural transition from Logos to secular transcendence. Popes sponsoring "Christian" humanisms and painting pagan sibyls in the holiest chapel in papal Christendom. Leading armies into direct combat with monarchs. And appropriating the symbolism of secular empire.

Until the Reformation changed perspectives a little...

Michelangelo, Last Judgment, 1536-41, fresco, Sistine Chapel