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jeff chalk's avatar

This is your best column. It is these woman that keep the Russian spirit and soul alive. This is what makes us strong. When I was a child about 2 or 3 years old. I was taken by my parents to meet my grandfather(my fathers father). He had been put in a sanatorium because he was considered an alcoholic and a madman. He had escaped Russia during the Bolshevik takeover by shooting his commanding officer while in the army. He fled to Vladivostok and sailed to San Francisco before going to New York and then to Canada.

He asked me how I liked living in Toronto and I remember telling him about my friends and how I liked living here,

He then took out a penny from his vest pocket and put it in the palm of my hand and gently engulfed his hand over mine.

He told me he was glad that I liked the country and that's why he had settled here instead of the United States. He then told me to beware of the Bolsheviks, and that one day in the far future they would come to Canada and rape and pillage the land.

I asked him he knew all this and he said " They always come to steal and destroy everything of beauty and value. That is when you will have to leave this country"

He died shortly after this but I still remember what he said and i am now in my 70's.

when I hear the lies and hatred that Trudeau spews from his mouth i know my grandfather could see the future.

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John Carter's avatar

No village is complete without a hedge witch. It's an eternal contradiction that the Church can insist on the reality of supernatural phenomena as described in scripture, but deny its existence in the tangible experience of herb wives. Your grandfather's carefree attitude towards doctrinal consistency gets closer to the truth than Churchian doctrine in that respect.

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Billy Thistle's avatar

For decades I shunned Depeche Mode like a synthetic jab to be avoided if at all possible. I shook my head in disbelief as I watched half the British Isles succumb to the musical stirrings of Globo Homo. It was only belatedly I happened upon the psychic Soviet response to the hylic hunger of DM's primitive noodling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6wl-EyhXl0

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Pete P's avatar

Fascinating and very enjoyable. In the West midwives were the hedge witches and well versed in traditional cures. Then the doctors tried to restrain them.

The battle between therapeutics versus vaccines for Covid is a similar fight. Big Pharma has its potions that don't help. Honest doctors admit they are merely guessing.

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Billy Thistle's avatar

Read this recently but found it disappointing, mainly because Dutton didn't have much to say about the contemporary witch scene. Thought he was better at delineating historical versions and I did like his general descriptor of globo homo as "spiteful mutants."

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Dave Bowman's avatar

Interesting pastiche/seance of 90s fanzine story style, something like Grand Royal crossed with Rollerderby. Back then, astral projection was not so technically feasible of course but now it’s totally changed. I think alt-science may be the only viable non-bot journalism at this juncture. The Neal Stephenson view of outcomes while entertaining was severely handicapped by a belief in progress as real. Just being a savage and an animal in the woods eating bark is always going to be more fun, on balance

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Maksim's avatar

Hey Rollo,I'm really glad I found your little blog,happened by pure accident too.It's bizzare to me how much your world view lines up with mine.I haven't really talked to anyone who sees quite the same way from politics (including conspiracies,deliberate dumbing down via food and drink as well as culture) to spirituality (right down to human machines,psychic developmen etc) so it's hard to describe how refreshing your writing is.I'm pretty sick right now (common coof) and reading your stuff helps.I actually have come to many of the same conclusion mostly through reading the same guys you did (Gurdjieff,Castaneda,Mouravieff etc).I even have a somewhat similar background being a Russian kid who grew up in the Anglosphere,being part of those white people that are forever viewed with suspicion.

This latest article just downright proves to me that we're part of the same soul group, even if we never cross paths I'm glad you're out there brother,genuinely all the best.I think I hear the horns of Hyperborea calling...

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Daniel D's avatar

Honest question, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to supernatural beliefs? There's clearly some deeper reality being described or pointed at, but there's so much unhinged bullshit out there mixed up with it that it's hard to find the good stuff. I guess there's always trial and error and just aggregating a list of practices that seem to actually work, which is a long and laborious process, so maybe I'm just being lazy and looking for a shortcut. The stuff that works ends up seeming almost random and illogical; there probably is some deeper logic or system at work, though from our human perspective it seems our knowledge of that is doomed to be indirect and incomplete. Like Paul said, "We see through a glass darkly." Are there any books you'd recommend, where any of this is tied together in some sort of practical, tangibly applicable way?

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Rurik Skywalker's avatar

Yeah just read/listen to Atkinson. Full stop.

That being said, if you're Christian and feel squeamish about it, try Benner if you're a Protestant, Mouravieff if you're an Orthodox and Eckhart if you're Catholic. You will sacrifice clarity and straight-talk, but these men quote scripture to assuage your fears that you're going to hell for taking an interest in spirituality.

I started by reading the The Way of a Pilgrim and then the Philokalia and then Gnosis before branching out into all the others stuff.

Look for synchronicity. If only one writer or tradition mentions something, treat it with skepticism. But if you see a concept coming up again and again and again, it's probably true.

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Tess's avatar

I was raised super catholic, became non-proselytizing atheist (because faith is truly a gift) while at Jesuit university, lived in Nigeria and developed an appreciation for woo-woo which led me to agnosticism, recently been reading graham hancock, rick strassman and stella o and now hope I can be a shaman when I grow up now. Appreciate your writing.

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Daniel D's avatar

Thanks! Not worried about going to hell, although sometimes I wonder if we're not already in some kind of strange purgatory to cleanse us of some spiritual evil. Myths and stories that have some mind-bending reveal that things are not, and have never been, what they seem on the surface really resonate with me. Whatever the base-level Reality is, I'm sure no orthodox religious tradition or human philosophy fully captures it. At this point, I consider myself something of a Jordan Peterson Christian -- agnostic about the historical accuracy of Bible passages, but finding the stories immensely useful and insightful -- with a dash of gnosticism, Daoism, and Stoicism thrown into the mix. Lots of questions with very few answers, but slowly building a personal ethic out of what I've found to be helpful in Life.

Thanks for the experiences and insights you share on this substack!

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cassandra's avatar

Wonderful stories. Its hard to imagine such rich traditions surviving the culture-homogenizer that is the EU today. I wonder what has happened to the travinitsi of the west, especially among the western Slavic Polish-Lithuanians.They're now probably trained at Harvard Medical School.

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