On Tradition door Ensio KATAJA (Finland) op PYHÄ, 2 mei 2006.
When I speak of tradition and traditionalism, someone might at first think that I refer to a kind of sterile conservatism that seeks to freeze eternal truths in lifeless forms that may have been useful at some time in history, but at present are becoming more and more obsolete. This is an erroneous assumption.
The French historian Dominique Venner wrote that "to live according to tradition is to conform to the ideal it incarnates, to cultivate excellence according to its standard, to rediscover its roots, to transmit its heritage, to be in solidarity with the people who uphold it". I think this is pretty close to what Dr. Stephen E. Flowers wrote about cultural action in his essay The Idea of Integral Culture (Tyr, Volume 1, 2002CE).
The authentic tradition creates continuity, not stasis. From this perspective, there are no separate incidents or fragementary events, but aspects of a coherent and meaningful living experience that interconnects people, their deeds and wyrd. It denotes not the "past" but that, which stands outside of and beyond time. I have given enough pointers to the works of Mircea Eliade before, so I don't go deeper into this now.
Tradition is, and should be, very intimately related to the concept of memory. When god Óðinn sends his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, mind and memory, to fly the world over and bring him knowledge, he said he fears most that Muninn doesn't come back. Gods always fall from heavens whenever their memories fail them. This means that they forget the primordial reality and their own origin. Those who do remember, are immutable. I find certain similarity between this and what my friend Tapio Kotkavuori has written and spoken about the concept of aletheia. In the present day, the whole Western world seems to be in a similar state of forgetfulness.
The authentic tradition is not against innovation, but there must be a healthy balance between the two. The occult subculture (and our present society in general) is riddled with subjectivity of a worst kind. This leads deeper into the morass of nihilism, that is the true enemy and opposite of tradition and genuine development.
According to Martin Heidegger, everything essential and everything great originates from the fact that man is rooted in a tradition. Tradition thus dicloses what is possible and what is innermost to man's being. It is quite short-sighted to think of tradition as something that belongs only to the past or is "behind us", when it is ever-present and even before us.
To bring all this closer to the initiatory questions of rune-work, I will conclude by saying that tradition must be the basis to all that we as individuals and as a collective whole can achieve in the present day. Even a tree thrives best when rooted in the soil. In the rune-work this perspective should become crystal clear to an initiate.
Ensio Kataja on PYHÄ
The French historian Dominique Venner wrote that "to live according to tradition is to conform to the ideal it incarnates, to cultivate excellence according to its standard, to rediscover its roots, to transmit its heritage, to be in solidarity with the people who uphold it". I think this is pretty close to what Dr. Stephen E. Flowers wrote about cultural action in his essay The Idea of Integral Culture (Tyr, Volume 1, 2002CE).
The authentic tradition creates continuity, not stasis. From this perspective, there are no separate incidents or fragementary events, but aspects of a coherent and meaningful living experience that interconnects people, their deeds and wyrd. It denotes not the "past" but that, which stands outside of and beyond time. I have given enough pointers to the works of Mircea Eliade before, so I don't go deeper into this now.
Tradition is, and should be, very intimately related to the concept of memory. When god Óðinn sends his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, mind and memory, to fly the world over and bring him knowledge, he said he fears most that Muninn doesn't come back. Gods always fall from heavens whenever their memories fail them. This means that they forget the primordial reality and their own origin. Those who do remember, are immutable. I find certain similarity between this and what my friend Tapio Kotkavuori has written and spoken about the concept of aletheia. In the present day, the whole Western world seems to be in a similar state of forgetfulness.
The authentic tradition is not against innovation, but there must be a healthy balance between the two. The occult subculture (and our present society in general) is riddled with subjectivity of a worst kind. This leads deeper into the morass of nihilism, that is the true enemy and opposite of tradition and genuine development.
According to Martin Heidegger, everything essential and everything great originates from the fact that man is rooted in a tradition. Tradition thus dicloses what is possible and what is innermost to man's being. It is quite short-sighted to think of tradition as something that belongs only to the past or is "behind us", when it is ever-present and even before us.
To bring all this closer to the initiatory questions of rune-work, I will conclude by saying that tradition must be the basis to all that we as individuals and as a collective whole can achieve in the present day. Even a tree thrives best when rooted in the soil. In the rune-work this perspective should become crystal clear to an initiate.
Ensio Kataja on PYHÄ
posted by Metaposos at 9:29 p.m.
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