The Full Creation

Image: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84478782/f181.item It should be obvious that western civilization is declining; but it doesn't appear to be: everything is fiiiiine. It should be obvious that the way something declines is not random, but it isn't. Perhaps this is because we have flattened the understanding of sin: we like to think there are sinners and saved sinners. There are no saints, people who are further along the path of holiness than others. Thus, we think that society is always bad, always declining, and the particular sins are just the flavour of the month. This is false. Particular forms of decline do not occur randomly. The modern conception of homosexuality would *never* have occurred in the early medieval period. Playing the victim would *NEVER* have occurred in pitiless ancient Rome. And neither of these things would tend to be *salient* (meaning, they may occur, but would not capture the public imagination) in a rising culture (just think about the

People care about origins and purity for several important reasons. The former is important because it is about where you come from and what gives you your identity. That's a really important part of our humanity, since, if your identity is broken in some way, you may not know exactly who you are. If you don't know who you are, if your identity is fragmented, then you will have difficulting figuring out exactly how to act. Purity is about maintaining an identity over time, since an identity, by definition, is something that is marked out by boundaries. When formally articulated, these boundaries are rules or laws. By sticking to the rules that define you, the esse ntials that define the essence of your being, you maintain an identity from its point of origin. In a normal traditional world, this is not a problem, because traditions are deliberately about preserving identities. However, the modern world is clown world. Traditions and conventions of one kind or another are continu

 Captain Marvel recapitulates stock-standard postmodern storytelling. To understand this, let us consider that, traditionally, the centre of society is ordered and that the identity ordering it is masculine. This is the structure at the start of the film: the Kree civilisation is clearly masculine, having hyper-organised cities of light. The orderliness hints at a 666 level of organisation (for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM_kQjpAK6g) and the hexagon space portals echo this also. The main representative of the Kree civilisation we encounter is a white male. In the beginning of the film, the Kree are presented as good. Opposite this centre of ordered identity, we have the Skrull, who are shape-shifting green aliens. Typically, you expect trouble from such characters, and that is exactly how the film presents them at the beginning. But then the story turns both these ideas on their heads. It turns out that Captain Marvel has had her memory suppressed by the Kree, as she ho

It is a feature of modernity, including modern discussions of theology, to not speak of reality, but to speak of theory, of the merits of this or that hypothesis. Conversation is conducted in an artificially constructed world of platonic concepts. It is for this reason that praxis and doxa, or application and theory are separate. Drawing the line from theory to practice becomes very difficult, because the two are in different realities. Traditional theology makes no distinction between orthodoxy and orthopraxy: the traditional liturgy is both theology and practice at the same time. It is difficult to live in the geometric world of modern thought, endlessly pushing ideas around and never landing in what is truly real. Traditional Christianity breaks this shell in the incarnation of Christ: we mystically participate in Christ's body and can commune with the angelic abstract. We can finally see the abstract properly land in a body without producing a terrible utopia or a horrific mons

Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top. When the wind blows the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And down will come Baby, Cradle and all. One theory about the meaning/origin of this poem is that it is about the heir to the throne being lost (specifically James II). Symbolically, I thought this makes perfect sense: the tree as a symbol of hierarchy, the baby at the top, and the cradle is something like the royal house. Further elaborations link the wind to a revolution (the timing suggests it could be the Protestant Reformation), a change in the spirit of the times that decapitates the hierarchy. In symbolic terms, this is also an incorrect and destructive meeting of heaven and earth.

 When King David numbered the people of Israel, the consequence was a plague. In our excessively moralistic age, we think this is just an arbitrary punishment, because morals are not rooted in reality for us. However, no consequence of sin is ever arbitrary in the Bible. The move to account for all the fighting men is prideful, but specifically because it is attempting to set up a totalising system, something that totally accounts for fighting strength in Israel. Pride, in essence, is the drive for self-sufficiency apart from God. When you attempt to create a totalising system, however, you cannot explain everything. There are things that don't fit, that pose a question to your system - how do I fit in? As the system moves to accommodate these anomalies, it becomes more fragile. In addition, the pile of questions grows larger. At some point, the system has to collapse, because it can no longer handle the exceptions, resulting in social confusion. It's also worth noting that in