Why is it that sometimes life seems to be crawling, jerking and halting – as if it were a story correctly written in its syntax, but deprived of any deeper meaning? A story, therefore, that is not only boring, but …
Tag: Traditionalism
In Defense of Snobbery
I was fired last Sunday. Good news, I know! For you see, in addition to literary excellence, I supplement my otherwise inconsistent income by wait-staff work. On that unpropitious day, while only just recuperating from an extended illness that made …
Confession of a Samurai
Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa speaks to Russian reporters on his life experience and conversion to Orthodox Christianity.
The Birth of the Modern Tragedy
In an age of nihilism, the more reflective among us will pose a fundamental question: where did Western civilization veer off course? It’s easy to blame hippies from the 1960’s or, more correctly, the Enlightenment era of revolutions, but Europe’s …
Joyful Determination
Even if Russia is a mystery to practically everyone, including Russians themselves, my recent time in Moscow left me with greater optimism regarding this nation’s future. The ongoing sanctions against the country; attempts by the West to cripple the economy; a …
The Good of Metaphysics
Metaphysics, despite what booksellers may offer in the way of do-it-yourself witchcraft manuals and stories of UFOs, is much different than any popular misconception of its meaning. For Aristotle, the starting point of Wisdom, or philosophy, was metaphysics. Modernity has …
Rene Guenon on the End
Whether the world will go with a bang or with a whimper is the great question of modernity. T.S. Eliot’s famous line on “broken jaw of our lost kingdoms” and the world as “a valley of dying stars” is a …
Classical Nihilism
It’s a common refrain among self-described conservatives and libertarians in America that both the modern bureaucratic managerial state and mass culture have veered wildly out of control, headed in an ever increasing totalitarian direction, and must some how be reined …
Ivan Ilyin on Orthodoxy
The great twentieth-century Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954) explains how the Russian nation was not only forged through warfare, but through divine love and beauty – the Orthodox Christian faith. Translated by Mark Hackard. National spiritual culture is created from …
The Soul of the East 
Faustian Dreams
In its spiritual life, the human soul is confronted with two options, to seek the realization and actualization of its divine nature, or to be overwhelmed and rendered inert by the lower, transient things of the world. The 4th century Greek theologian …
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