Bruce Charlton's Notion Club explores Tolkien's flat earth problem

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Bruce Charlton's Notions

About Me Monday, 2 July 2018
Bruce Charlton Could the Fantasy Inklings (i.e. the Notion Club) have
Professor Bruce G Charlton. solved Tolkien's flat earth problem, and initiated the
Comments are moderated (rather Fifth Age of the world?
strictly). Anonymous comments are
seldom/ never published. Personal In what is perhaps my most ambitious (and speculative)
e-mails are welcome: bruce dotch Tolkien essay thus far - I begin with Tolkien's 'flat earth
arltonatou tlookdotc om... problem', and end with a vision of the future of modern Man;
View my complete profile via an imagined (but unlikely) collaboration of JRRT with
fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield.
Blog Archive
▼ 2018 (322)
▼ July (4) Posted by Bruce Charlton at Monday, July 02, 2018 No comments:
Could the Fantasy Inklings
(i.e. the Notion Club) ...
Christianity aims-at Christianity aims-at maximum polytheism
maximum polytheism
Why didn't a supposedly- The main point of creation is to make gods, as many as
omnipotent God make men possible; living as a loving Heavenly family, and sharing the
al... end-less work of creation.
"No tale ever told that men
would rather find was ... The lesson of Christ's incarnation is that we Men are gods in
our nature (albeit immature and flawed gods), and that God
► June (56)
(the Father: prime creator) is a Man. So there is a continuum
► May (61) between mortal Men on the one hand; and creator gods such as
► April (49) the Father (who was the one prime creator) and the Son (Jesus
Christ).
► March (51)
► February (45) The Father is unique as prime creator, including being Father-
► January (56) creator of Men (including Jesus); and Jesus is the creator of
this world (but not of the Men in it - as told and implied in the
► 2017 (544) opening of the Fourth Gospel) - so creation is not restricted to
► 2016 (644) the Father; creation has been done by both to Father and Son
► 2015 (615) (at least).
► 2014 (683)
Jesus tells us (clearly, explicitly, repeatedly in the Fourth
► 2013 (611) Gospel) that if we know Jesus, then we know the Father; they
are not the same person (else why would Jesus pray to the
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/ Page 1 of 31
► 2012 (556) Father, defer to the Father, distinguish between himself and the
father); but they are the same in nature: they are 'one' in love
► 2011 (450)
and motivation. And Jesus is a Man in his nature, therefore so
► 2010 (303) is the Father.
► 2009 (6)
► 2008 (6) Jesus is the Son of God, and tells us that we too can be Sons of
God - we can be of the same kind as Jesus, and Jesus is of the
Some of my other blogs: same kind as God.
Addicted to Distraction
All this is perfectly clear and explicit in scripture; but it is
Owen Barfield blog
obscured by the false (and wrongly-motivated) mania that
The Genius Famine Christianity 'must be' a monotheism. Yet it's a terrible and
Thought Prison destructive error to try and argue that Christianity is a
Tolkien's The Notion Club monotheism; because in a vital sense Christianity is an
Papers ultimate form of polytheism - maximum polytheism; (to
William Arkle repeat) that is the main point and purpose of Christianity.
My Blog List
Few, very few, errors have damaged Christianity as much as the
Junior Ganymede attempt to insist that it is a monotheism: this was and is a
Like a Dog to His Vomit - The
primary error with often lethal and unavoidable consequences.
young men you work with are
talking like young men. “Dogs It blocks understanding of the main purpose of mortal life. It
eat their own vomit!” “Eww” puts an evasion at the heart of Christian theology. It
and so on. “The Bible talks institutionalises incoherence.
about that,” you say. They are
sk...
We need to be clear: the Father hopes for as many as possible
Albion Awakening
A Latere Dextro - *Vidi aquam of us Men to become gods and creators, like Jesus. That is what
egredientem de templo, a latere creation is for. There is only one God (capital g), one prime
dextro, alleluia ...* *I saw water creator (albeit God may actually, factually, be - as I believe - a
coming forth from the Temple dyad of primary Father and Mother); but the plan is for there to
from the right side, alleluia ...* *
I have ... be many gods (small g), many creators.
Meeting The Masters

Rebellion Against Authority - If That's the main point of it-all.
you see the modern world as the
result of a rebellion against
authority, you are not mistaken.
First there is the rebellion
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Monday, July 02, 2018 8 comments:
against God, then against es...
From the Narrow Desert

The meaning of “I AM” - And
God said unto Moses, “I AM Why didn't a supposedly-omnipotent God make men
THAT I AM”: and he said, “Thus already-perfect and living in a perfect world?
shalt thou say unto the children
of Israel, ‘I AM hath sent me This is the knock-down question for mainstream modern
unto you.'” — Exodus 3:14
atheist-materialist people, especially when it comes to
(quo...
Christianity. And, so far as I can tell, it is the basis of a solid
argument against the Christian conception of God.
If God is indeed omnipotent - as many mainstream Christians

insist (at least when they are doing theology); then God could-
have made us and the world any way he wanted them to be. At
a stroke. Immediately. No route nor rigmarole: just straight-off
ideal.
But God didn't do this, we are not ideal and neither is the world
- instead God made things very flawed (as Men are and as this
world is) - with the idea that at some future point people and
the world should end-up the way God wants it to be.
For an omnipotent God to take this indirect and uncertain

route to how-God-wants-things-to-be seems absurd, uncertain
- and extremely unconvincing. Why on earth would an
omnipotent God choose to proceed in such a contingent
fashion, when he could simply make everything correctly, first-
time?
Of course, the problem is to do with the imputed attribute of

omnipotence: the claim that God can do anything that it is
possible to do.
The idea of an omnipotent God is not natural to humans, nor is

it spontaneous for humans to presumae that their god/s are
omnipotent; omnipotence is an abstract philosophical concept;
it is not found in any clear, explicitly or unambiguous form in
the Bible...
Presumably omnipotence was something which must have been

introduced to Christianity (from various schools of Greek and
Roman philosophy) after the period covered in the New
Testament; and somehow this alien and hostile doctrine has
worked its way into the very core of most Christian churches, at
the level of mandatory, core dogmatic assertion.
So, most Christian churches and denominations regard the

omnipotence of God as an intrinsic part of Christianity - and
are forced into elaborate (and unconvincing) ways of trying to
avoid the plain paradox of omnipotence.
Because if God is omnipotent, then there is no point or purpose

to this flawed world or our mortal lives. Ordinary people see or
sense this - and regard the theological explanations as evasions
- and they are right to do so: they are evasions.
The reality is that God is working-towards Heaven,

because that is the only route by which Heaven can be
reached. And God calls upon us to work with him.
Heaven is the future consequence of a loving alliance
of God the creator and Men who inhabit his creation.
Men cannot be created as they could and should be - as full

children of God; Men can only become children of God by
experiencing and learning; by their own choices and by God's
help. It is, as I said, an alliance - both sides (God and each
Man) are needed.
This world could not be created as the full intended state of

Heaven; it was instead created as a place of learning and
experience by which a Heavenly situation may be achieved; by
mutual consent, by mutual love.
In the end we are pushed to a stark choice. Are things the way
they are in mortal life and on earth because it is what an
omnipotent God wanted? Or is this the best method/ process/
path by which God needs to proceed to get where he wants to
be; to achieve his ultimate goals?
Since the Christian God is known to be Good, Christians are (I

feel) pretty much required to believe the latter: i.e. that things
are as they are, because this is the necessary way to get where
we want to go.
We are the world are flawed because because God could-Not

make people and the world the way he wants them to be.
And if we want a Heavenly state, we need to join-with God in

this work of making.
Heaven is not just a destination, it is a joint-achievement: we

are each called-upon to be Heaven's co-creators.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Monday, July 02, 2018 2 comments:
Sunday, 1 July 2018
"No tale ever told that men would rather find was
true"
The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe* of Man's history. The

Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of incarnation.
This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the

'inner consistency of reality'.
There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true,
and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true
on its own merits.
For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of primary

art, that is, of Creation.
To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.
From the Epilogue to On Fairy Stories by JRR Tolkien
Until a person has understood in his heart the validity of what

Tolkien wrote above with no tale ever told that men would
rather find was true; he has not understood Christianity - and
does not know what he rejects, or accepts.
*A sudden and favourable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Sunday, July 01, 2018 3 comments:
Saturday, 30 June 2018
The How and Why of Tolkien's historical and moral

framing of his work
This question has fascinated for more than forty years since I
noticed that the Prologue and several Appendices to The Lord
of the Rings adopted the 'conceit' that the book was derived
from an historical text called The Red Book of Westmarch and
Tolkien was its translater and adaptor.
This topic was vital to Tolkien, and the matter is therefore well
worth pondering, as I do at the Notion Club Papers blog.
(The unfinished novel, The Notion Club Papers, is itself a major

attempt at framing the on-going writing of The Lord of the
Rings.)
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Saturday, June 30, 2018 No comments:
Try not to wish for another place, time or personal

situation...
Your circumstances, and the world around you, are designed

for your well-being.
Perhaps they are incomprehensibly harsh?... If so, this is

because you personally need a harsh lesson, which you have
not yet learned-from.
Try to understand what it is that you need to learn that your

actual life is teaching you.
And learn it.
Mortal life nearly always will entail harshness and suffering; ultimately because it is necessary for learning.
We can't ever understand or explain all the details of everybody's suffering - that is a ridiculous, dishonest
and evasive demand. The point is to understand reality from our own perspective, our actual life; and learn
from that... that is what you are here for.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Saturday, June 30, 2018 4 comments:
Cheap, simple, brilliant design - a perforated plastic

fly swatter
Swatting flies is difficult - they have all-round vision, lightning

reflexes, and can fly rapidly and unpredictably. But, a
perforated fly swatter will kill them first swat - more often than
not.
Apparently flies are helpless against this weapon. Presumably

because the perforations prevent a wall of compressed air
interposing between the fly and the approaching swatter - as
happens with the traditional fly swatting device, the rolled-up
newspaper. Presumably, before being hit by the newspaper, the
fly is expelled sideways by the compressed air... I don't really
know, it happens too fast to see.
Kudos, then, to the perforated fly swatter - for solving a serious

problem so simply and cheaply.
PS: Mine - like the illustration above - has a line of spikes along
the distal edge, which is handy for extricating and lifting the
dead fly, for carrying it to the waste bin.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Saturday, June 30, 2018 8 comments:
Friday, 29 June 2018
England's lost mythology - and how to find it
The Tolkienian theme is discussed at Albion Awakening...
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Friday, June 29, 2018 No comments:
In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus addresses the essential

problems of mortal life
In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is offering us an explicit Answer to

some implicit Questions - but these Questions are no longer
obvious to modern people, and it is worth drawing them out
from the first half of the Fourth Gospel (chapters 1-12, up to
The Passion) - and making them clearer.
What Jesus offered, and how we are to accept it, is repeatedly

stated in the Fourth Gospel - e.g. in the first and twentieth
chapters: 1:12 - ...as many as received him, to them he gave
power to becomes the sons of God, even to them that believe on
his name.'; 20:31 - '...believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.'
That is The Answer. But what was the Question? If we consider

Jesus's main acts in the Fourth Gospel (of 'John'), the most
heavily-emphasised events, then we can infer that he was
addressing the basic, fundamental, essential problems of
human life.
Some examples are: the discussion with Nicodemus about the

need to be 'born-again'; the discussion with the Samaritan
woman at Jacob's well about the water of life; healings of the
nobleman's son at Cana, the cripple at Bethesda, and of the
blind man; the cleansing of the Temple; the feeding of the five
thousand; the woman taken in adultery; and the raising of
Lazarus.
Although these certainly not reducible in significance to single

implications; we can see that Jesus was addressing the
fundamental problems of mortal human life: birth and death;
trade and labour; family and sex; eating and drinking; disability
and disease. He did not need (in those days) to emphasise that
these were problems - everybody knew by experience.
So, briefly put; this is a message of the Gospel, in a Question

and Answer, a Problem and Solution, form - the Answer of
Jesus was to the fundamental problems of mortal life. Jesus
was 'saving' us from the otherwise-insoluble problems of living.
The Answer was wholly and permanently by resurrection to life

eternal; but also Jesus makes clear (for example in talking with
the Samaritan woman) that insofar as we believe in him and on

his name (the nature of his reality) here-and-now, we can
experience (albeit only partly and temporarily) the joy of life
everlasting even during mortal life.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Friday, June 29, 2018 No comments:
How did Good Magic become impossible - how may it

again become possible?
When it comes to magic, what is real and what is the

provenance of the real, one can only work forwards on the basis
of whatever primary thinking intuitions emerge. This is what
has emerged, so far:
I assume that real and Good magic was an 'everyday' possibility

for people in the remote past, but seems not to be at present.
Examples of real Good magic would include Ancient Egyptian
priest-magicians who accomplished supernaturally-enabled
feats of building and making, the British builders of megalithic
monuments, and most recently some reports of some tribal
shamans or medicine men.
But magic was not really 'used' in the past, not used to attain
human will; rather, men were immersed-in the divine; and
insofar as a man conformed to divine purposes, he was able
unconsciously to be a conduit or coencentartion of divine
powers. This was therefore a kind of channelling, and not of
human will manipulation nature (the human mind serving as a
channel for divine powers and purposes). I presume that
magical rituals were mostly about the mental preparation that
made this channelling possible.
As human consciousness, the autonomous, agent self, became

stronger through human history; so this magic became
impossible. Men were no longer immersed-in the spiritual but
stood apart. The spirit world was invisible, imperceptible - only
exceptionally and by more and more extreme measures (and
finally not at all - many modern people never-and-cannot
perceive the spirit aspects of reality).
From about 1500 onwards in The West, Men stood apart from
the divine; and from that time attempts at magic were attempts
of the self, of 'the ego' to coerce nature, to compel results - they
were driven by human desire and will.
And Renaissance magic was ineffective, in terms of its stated

goals. Its effects are explained by changing of human minds
(the mind of the magician, and the mind of any human
subjects) - in a kind of self/ other brainwashing, and also by evil
magic done by subordinating the self to serve demonic forces.
Good magic became impossible because Men were (due to the

evolutionary-development of human consciousness, in-line
with divine destiny) no longer immersed-in God's creation.
Men increasingly stood apart from creation, the personal self
became differentiated-from the divine; and therefore Men's
powers were derived only from Men.
That is the current situation (although it was meant to be a

brief and temporary phase - we are stuck-in-it due to wrong
human choices; we are stuck in spiritual adolescence - refusing
to move on to spiritual maturity. We are stuck because maturity
requires each person's explicit choice and wish).
Here and Now, most claims at magic are bogus - in the sense
that they are done by convincing the self or other people that
magic has-been-done: modern manipulative magic is
psychological (and any benefits are a kind of psychotherapy).
Attempts to control reality, to make reality to conform to

explicit human wishes, by magical systems such as spells and
rituals, are not effective; they do not do what they set out to do
by the mechanisms they posit. And what they do do, is not what
was intended, nor are the means correctly known.
Rare instances of real Good magic are either done

unintentionally, by accident, due to an unpredictable,
unplanned, unconscious and momentary alignment of a
person's purposes with divine purposes.
Real and evil magic can be done, in a way; but they are not done
in conformity with the magician's will; the magician is not
controlling supernatural reality, but is being-controlled-by it.
When a magician really summons a demon, and some magical
consequences ensue; the magician is being manipulated by the
demon, not vice versa.
And evil magic can do only what demons can do, what
immaterial spirits can do - which seems to be done by acting on
minds; tempting, persuading, convincing, via sins. Demons
cannot create, cannot affect divine creative activity: creation is
solely divine.
The magic of the future will happen insofaras an individual

person attains primary thinking, or Final Participation; when
someone consciously and voluntarily aligns their thinking with
the universal reality of God's thinking - which is creation-in-
action.
We may then, as individuals, participate-in the ongoing work of

creation. And that is our proper goal now (i.e. theosis) - but
especially in post-mortal resurrected life.
When we think In Reality, we must be aligned with divine

purposes. We are (or may be) doing real magic in this world,
and doing it consciously and purposively; those purposes
coming from that which is divine in us (what we inherit as
children of God) - but these purposes are not 'devised', the
purposes are emergent-from that divine mind in us. That which
makes this possible is Love - specifcially love of God (which, for
us, is Jesus Christ) and of our divine family, consisting of God's
loving children.
Thus any idea of a person 'using' magic to attain human

purposes is nonsense. We may participate-in the Good magic
that is ongoing divine creation (either unconsciously and
immersed-in, or consciously and voluntarily in primary
thinking); or we may be used-by the demonic powers in their
work of sabotaging and inverting divine creation. Ultimately
these are the only two options.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Friday, June 29, 2018 1 comment:
Thursday, 28 June 2018
Nice kids, nice parents - nowadays it isn't enough...
When society is so thoroughly corrupted (materialistic,
hedonistic, nihilistic), as it now is in The West; then niceness is

insufficient to prevent an individual child - or anyone else -
becoming corrupted. Indeed, when the major virtues (faith,
hope, love, courage) are lacking; such minor virtues as niceness,
kindness, compassion and decency will often make things
worse...
Read more at Albion Awakening...
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Thursday, June 28, 2018 No comments:
Escaping bad habits of thinking: should we aim-at

good habits, or no habits?
That modern Western Man has developed bad habits of

thinking is obvious to anyone who has tried to escape them. In
a post a couple of days ago, I excerpted a representative
analysis of this phenomenon by Owen Barfield, which he
concluded by suggesting that the only cure for bad habits was
good habits.
Here I ultimately disagree with Barfield; because the essence of

the problem is not just the badness of habits, but the
dominance by habits - so the cure of bad thinking habits is
more along the lines of reducing the habitual element in
thinking.
It has proved to be very difficult indeed for individuals to go

beyond the point of analysing this problem in their own lives, to
giving general and effective advice (or training) about what to
do next. For example, Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield
thoroughly understood the nature of the problem; but Steiner -
in my view - became sidetracked into system-building, and
movement-building; and in more than a century his
anthroposophical movement has got nowhere in achieving
Steiner's original goals for a new consciousness.
Barfield made no claims to expertise in this matter, and always

pointed to Steiner as the authoritative source of guidance - yet
Steiner's specific guidance (for example in How to Know Higher
Worlds, 1904-5) has a long track record of failure, and indeed
even in principle seems clearly insufficient and prone to
unwanted consequences.
My understanding is that the reason for this difficulty is that,

when to comes to going where we want to go (which Steiner
sometimes terms Pure Thinking, Barfield terms Final
Participation and I have called Primary Thinking) - then habits
are the enemy, and there is no such thing as a 'good' habit.
My understanding of this is rooted in the simplifying idea that

(very briefly put) what we are trying to do it to attain a
conscious version of the spontaneous and intutive state of
young children or simple hunter gatherers. That is, our goal is a
life in which the present moment is intuitively comprehended;
and therefore all a life without much in the way of
strategy, complex social systems, plans or routines.
I am aware that there is an inevitable, indeed irreducible,

element of strategy, system and plan in any life - I regard the
matter as one of polarity in which there are valid distinctions
that cannot be made into division (i.e. we can validly
distinguish between stability and change, but these are
abstractions, and in life neither can be produced in a pure form;
because life is 'developmental', and development is a process
that necessarily includes stability and change).
However, my point is that any increase in the habitual,

organised, systematised, strategic, planned elements of life will
thwart our goals. Final Participation cannot be implemented by
a flow-chart. And the attempt to organise, to drill, to
proceduralise; has been a trap into which person after person,
organisation after organisation, institution after institution has
fallen over the past couple of centuries during which the need
for a development in consciousness has been known.
If not, then what? First, we need to be careful that the form of

the question does not simply lead us back into error. The
demand for general advice, for general guidance, often contains
an implicit demand for 'a system'. When the objective is to live
from our real and divine Self, in harmony with God's creation;
then any explicit, communicable external and objective system
is going to be wrong - since it must be a simplified, partial and
distorted version of God's creation.
When we align-with and participate-in the on-going reality of

creation this is exactly-Not about implementing pre-decided
plans. It is about love as the basis for working-with God in our

family-business. Coming into this business with a set of plans
developed before we joined, when we were lesser people (as we
are now) would be harmful - and indeed simply does not
happen.
(Love makes possible creation, love sustains creativity - and the

family is the true metaphysical principle of reality.)
To join with the work of creation (which is the nature of Final

Participation, of Primary Thinking) requires that we are not of
that way of thinking - it is not that this is a test or exclusion
criterion - but that Final Participation just-is a setting aside of
the abstract models, plans and schemes, rules and protocols
that Man has developed over the past several thousand years of
'civilisation' in his state of increasingly alienated consciousness.
(That Rudolf Steiner developed a massive, complex system of

abstract distinctions and protocols, and a huge international
social organisation - with and elaborate headquarters, a
bureaucracy, multiple branches and specialities; is a measure of
how far Steiner fell-away-from the clarity and purity of his
original insights.)
When we are stuck in bad habits, based on false metaphysics;

we need to correct our metaphysics: that is vital. If we are
materialists, we need to stop; if we are not Christians, we need
to start. But this of itself will not induce the desired changes -
the nature of our situation tends to lock us into falsehood and
error... bad habits.
We may have insight and be born again as believer-in Jesus;

but for our-selves to become more divine (i.e. theosis; which is
what Final Participation is about - the divine mode of thinking)
we cannot achieve by drilling ourselves into some new habit: it
is habits-as-such that are agents of our alienation.
This is why we cannot rely on any organisation, any system,

any abstract scheme, strategy or plan of training. Why we must
take personal responsibility for our theosis. Why we need to
become attuned to the actualities of the existing situation, to
develop aware intuition as the basis of life.
The aimed-at state - as I said - is much like that of the child or
hunter gatherer, a life in which memories and aspirations all

find integrated expression in the present. However, the child is
passively immersed-in living and unconscious of it - he may be
an instrument of God, but never a co-creator.
Our aim, by contrast, is to be consciously participating with life,

with God (our Heavenly parents) and his grown-up children
(our older brothers and sisters); and this is done by-and-in our
thinking.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Thursday, June 28, 2018 1 comment:
Wednesday, 27 June 2018
Some pictures I find inspiring in times of trouble
In times of trouble, grappling with words is often beyond me -

but pictures, and particularly the memory of pictures, is
sometimes of help; sometimes sufficient to stop the descent and
even reframe things in a positive way. I presume that this has
always been the case for Christians (except those misguided
iconoclasts who have always plagued the religion).
What 'works' seems to be a very personal matter - and certainly

is is not correlative with artistic excellence as defined by secular
aesthetic criteria (effective religious art often seem kitsch or
sentimental or naive or over-obvious by such evaluations)... the
point is what gets through to you in times of trouble. Perhaps
this is why such art often is very direct.
Furthermore, evaluation of art is always influenced by non-

visual, contextual factors - for example a portrait or landscape
is affected by the beaty, or ugliness, of its subject matter; and
religoous and spiritual art by that context - and how we feel
about the particular painter and his intent, the time and place
of its production, or the artistic tradition from which it arises.
(The inevitability of non-visual factors is, paradoxically,

emphasised by the fact that 20th century attempts at
abstraction led to the most literary and theorised art of all time!
The result has been an art of near-zero self-explanatory power;
where gallery visitors read the labels more than they look at the
pictures or sculpures/ 'installations'; where modern art critics
are more concerned about politics than aesthetics - and their

catalogues are filled with words more than with illustrations.)
For the past several years I have, again and again - most
recently yesterday - found some of William Arkle's pictures
valuable for this purpose or function. I offer a few of my
proven-favourites, with explanations - on the understanding
that this is a personal choice: the point being to inspire you to
find some (presumably-different) pictures which might serve
you as well as these ones have served me.
This picture represents Jesus as Lord of this world, The Cosmic

Christ; offering his gift to us in the form of a flower.
This next one is a simple but haunting picture of an archetypal

businessman, about his business, but with an angelic being
sustaining him - and again offering a gift of a larger, greater,
truer perspective - to which he can turn and which he can
accept at any moment he chooses.
This picture is one of many that Arkle did with a large face of
divinity hovering above the mundane world - always present,
but nearly-always ignored. The small human figure in the
bottom-right is absorbed in reading a newspaper, oblivious of
the fullness of what is possible.
Another figure hovering above the mundane world - this time a

smoky industrial city; and this time the another favourite Arkle
symbol/ reality of cupped hands and enfolding arms: this is a
very real experience of many Christians with respect to God.
A similar theme, but this time God above an idyllic 'holiday'

scene - almost paradisal.In such a situation we are more likely
to be aware of the divine presence - but this may be
unconscious, and rationally-denied; whereas it ought to be
known, and accepted with joy and gratitude.
Here we see a pilgrim, alone, on the threshold and confronting

a glorious landscape - which he needed to approach through a
dark and sinister foreground.
The following picture of tea things (and several others like it)
really stuck in my mind, as showing the divine immanence -
God within the everyday objects of our lives - and that nothing
real is dead, but is indeed alive, meaningful and part of purpose
(even the supposedly inanimate).
And the same applies with landscape - although perhaps we are

more inclined to recognise this. This shows a Tolkienian theme
of the special quality of distant mountains, and how in heaven
we can visit the distant mountains without them losing this
'distant' quality - so that our poignant yearning for their
mystery (Sehnsucht) becomes a part of actual, current,
conscious experience.
And then Heaven itself - with the heavenly city is the distance;
and in this case travelling there really-will be as good as
arriving.
For more of Arkle's pictures; visit the recently made webpage,

or the (larger) Facebook compendium.
Note: In 1977 William Arkle published The Great Gift - a book of pictures and explanations (and some other
writings) which serves exactly this purpose I am talking about; and can still be obtained cheaply
secondhand. However, the colour and sharpness of the pictorial reproductions in The Great Gift is far
inferior to that of the recently scanned web versions.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Wednesday, June 27, 2018 12 comments:
What are the prospects of Albion Awakening in face

of continued mass immigration? - From William
Wildblood
Excerpted and edited from William Wildblood, writing at the

Albion Awakening blog
It seems a valid question to ask if Albion can awaken

when a large percentage of its population today has no
racial, genetic, blood, cultural (call it what you like)
relation to Albion. How can people who have no inner
links to this country, yet have made their lives here,
respond to the idea of Albion?
We cannot really define Albion but we can say that it is

linked to the soul of the country and intuited through its
landscape, its history, its poetry, legends and myths. It is
intangible but, in a way, more real to those who sense it
than the solid three-dimensional world.
The British population has been largely unchanged for

hundreds of years and during that time has created a
kind of group soul, as any other long-term concentration
of peoples will have done. When that group soul is
disrupted people tend to lose their identity, and that
makes it harder for them to connect to the inner worlds
unless they have a strong sense of religion which
performs a similar function.
When England is no longer England, what becomes of

Albion?
Albion is not dependent on England, but England can

become closer to or further away from its spiritual
counterpart, and right now it is the latter of the two that
is the case.
A country has a soul, focused in, I believe, a guardian

angel existing in higher worlds. Awakening to Albion
means becoming responsive to the spiritual influence of
this angel.
This is not something that replaces general spiritual

awakening but, if seen in that light, can add to it and lend
it a particular quality. But it could also, if responded to

wrongly, descend into nationalism.
This means that the phrase 'Albion Awakening' can be

understood in two senses. One, a spiritual awakening
which is not broadly different in one country to another.
It is a recognition that life is spiritual, that God is real
and that we have a purpose to fulfil in this world. We
have spiritual duties and responsibilities. This, of course,
is the prime need of the moment.
But there is a second sense, and it is more specific. It has

to do with the British discovering that they have a
spiritual legacy and a spiritual destiny connected to the
inner qualities of their country, its soul side.
The two ways the phrase can be understood are linked
but they are not the same. The first may or may not be
affected by the mass immigration of the last couple of
decades. The second probably will be - though it remains
to be seen whether it will be completely thwarted.
I believe that it was the destiny of the English people to

lead the world into a new spiritual understanding. Not
their destiny alone but they were to be among the leaders
of this higher understanding together with their
American cousins.
Things have not turned out as hoped. There has been a

concerted spiritual attack on these two nations both from
outside and from within their borders. Secondary truths
have been presented as primary and primary ones
subverted. Everywhere quantity is prioritised over
quality, and at the moment there seems to be little that
can be done to correct that.
But evil often overplays its hand and it is possible that it

is doing that now.
The great cause for optimism at the present time is that it

was clearly foretold by Jesus. The time of mass apostasy
was predicted; but so was the final victory for those who
kept faith.
This is all we need to know to understand that, despite

appearances, real truth and goodness will eventually
triumph. It is much better to have held fast in difficult
times then when that would have been the easy thing to
do.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Wednesday, June 27, 2018 No comments:
Tuesday, 26 June 2018
Bad habits of thinking - the self-imprisonment of

modern consciousness. (From Owen Barfield)
One of Owen Barfield's best books is a four volume collection of

public lectures published in 1979, called History, Guilt and
Habit. The following I have excerpted and edited from the
lecture entitled The Force of Habit, given in Vancouver, 1978.
**
What we perceive is inseparable from how we think - and from

this many consequences follow...
One of them is discovering how differently mankind as a whole

used to think in the remote past: the thoughts themselves were
images rather than concepts. And this entails that the world
they lived in then, was different from the world we live in
today.
They perceived images rather than thought them - what we

perceive as things, they perceived as images...
The difference between an image and a thing lies in the fact that
an image presents itself as an exterior expressing or implying
an interior, whereas a thing does not. When what begins by

being an images becomes, in the course of history, a mere
thing; we are justified on describing it as an idol. And a
collective state of mind which perceives only things, and no
images, may thus fairly be described as idolatry.
The world we perceive around us today is no longer a world of

images, no longer an exterior expressing an interior, but simply
a brittle exterior surface... which is not, however, the surface of
anything.
Thus the quality of the world we live in is determined not only

be what we perceive, but what we fail to perceive.
But this world of outsides with no insides to them, which we

perceive around us and in which we dwell, is not something
unshakably and unalterably given, but is the product of the way
we collectively and subconsciously think. It is correlative to our
mental habit.
It is this cut-offness, this imprisonment, to which many

problems of today can be traced. For instance, the growing
prevalence of mental disease, and the uneasy sense of guilt that
has come to pervade our society and - still more - our sociology.
How much of this is really prison-sickness? Of course not many

people actually think of themselves as in prison. They only feel
it.
They feel it because virtually everything that is thought and

written today - from science to literature and criticism, from
sociology to aesthetics, from theology to politics, and in politics
from extreme right to extreme left - is thought and written on
the walls of that prison.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Tuesday, June 26, 2018 1 comment:
Monday, 25 June 2018
Four possible bottom-lines for Psychology
1. Functional - social/ economic

2. Hedonic - happiness, health and lifespan
3. Evolutionary - reproductive success
4. Religious - salvation and theosis
Psychology may be, broadly, defined as the science (or more

accurately systematic-knowledge; Wissenschaft) that is related-
to behaviour - including all forms of thinking (mental activity)
as behaviours.
1. Functional - this sees psychology in terms of the perfomance

of social functions, including economic activites; and normal
everyday functions such as vision and hearing. The idea is that
human cognition and behaviour are 'for' doing the things that
people do, when they are being functional. This type of
psychology is human orientated - interested my memory,
learning etc - it was the original kind of psychology of Wilhelm
Wundt's or Pavlov's lab work, and William James's Principle of
Psychology textbook. When applied to animals, it regards the
animals everyday-functioning as the subject - and in that sense
is not really biological.
2. Hedonic - this sees psychology is a more humanistic' - way,

as being about happiness, fulfillment, misery, alienation as
immediate outcomes; and about living a long and healthy life as
a long-term outcome. It is the psychology of Freud, Jung,
Maslow, Rogers and Self-Help.
3. Evolutionary - this sees psychology as a branch of biology

(man as an animal); hence with reproductive success and
natural selection as the bottom-line. It focuses on selection
pressures, adaptations, and has a timescale of generations.
4. Religious - this sees human psychology in terms of its

interactions with outcomes such as salvation, theosis
(becoming more divine), karma, reincarnation... whatever are
the main outcomes in a particular religion; how to modify
behaviour in pursuit of desired religioous goals (such as
conversion, obedience, devoutness); and what kinds of being,
thinking, and doing that affect these kinds of outcomes.
One can see that it makes a qualitative difference how

psychology is defined in terms of its bottom-line; and there is
no reason why we should expect one kind of psychology to
map-onto, be integrable-with, another kind. They are doing
different things.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Monday, June 25, 2018 4 comments:
Sunday, 24 June 2018
Only one modern Western person (of whom I am

aware) has led a successful life
Who and how are explained at Albion Awakening.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Sunday, June 24, 2018 No comments:
Saturday, 23 June 2018
Good and evil in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
Discussed at The Notion Club Papers blog.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Saturday, June 23, 2018 No comments:
Friday, 22 June 2018
The Brompton Cocktail and the decline of medicine
morphine
cocaine
cannabis
gin
syrup
chloroform water
That rather remarkable combination of euphoriants is a recipe

for the Brompton Cocktail, which was very successfully used in
the treatment of terminal (fatal) cancer and other conditions; in
the formulation as it was published by Cecily Saunders* in 1958
- and she (and her hospice movement) were responsible for
propagating the BC into general usage. Later versions were
improved by substituting heroin (diamorphine) for the
morphine, since heroin is more powerful and less nauseating.
This was a strikingly effective, almost 'miraculous' drug
combination for many dying people who were suffering extreme

pain and dulled consciousness. The Brompton Cocktail would
often (not always - of course; no drug suits everybody) relieve
pain and breathlessness (morphine), maintain alertness
(cocaine), induce calmness and sooth fear (the other
components). But the BC was a combination that was greater
than the sum of its parts.
(It also tasted pretty good, apparently.)
Nothing like the Brompton Cocktail had been seen before - it

could, in minutes, transform the last weeks of somebody's life
from a nightmare of in-turned agony into cheery and alert
sociability.
But nobody gets the Brompton Cocktail nowadays...
Why? Are the modern substitutes more effective? No - probably

less.
The reason for replacing the Brompton Cocktail with inferior

alternatives seems mainly to be stigma, partly inconvenience -
and underlying these, the corruption of medicine by Big
Pharma.
The stigma comes from prescribing drugs associated with

abuse; the inconvenience is that the mixture needed making-up
freshly, by the pharmacy, every few days. And, because all the
ingredients are off-patent, generic - Big Pharma can't make
money from them.
The extinction of the Brompton Cocktail is representative of

many ways in which highly effective treatments have been
discarded, and indeed demonised, by modern medicine over
the past half century; and replaced by new, expensive, worse
alternatives. Other examples include diazepam (Valium) being
replaced by SSRIs and Z-drugs, the removal of the uniquely
effective barbiturate/ psychostimulant combination Dexamyl;
and the near-universal replacement of heroin by morphine
(medical use of heroin is, indeed, illegal in the USA - indeed,
probably the only place in the USA where heroin cannot be
obtained is a hospital).
Since the 1960s the pharmacopoeia (list of drugs from which

doctors can prescribe) has shrunk - from being repeatedly
purged of old, cheap and well-understood drugs (e.g. the
tranquilliser meprobamate, the psychostimulant pimozide) to
make way for new, expensive alternatives of uncertain profile,
often with inferior effects and inferior side effects.
The medical profession has been complicit in the process; going

along with the antiscientific- progressivist assumption that
newer means better/ old means worse. Looking around - this is
a general phenomenon; exacerbated by managerialist
indifference to functionality and outcomes and the
politicisation of... everything.
So, as with so many other good things, it's a case of 'down the
memory hole' for the Brompton Cocktail...
*Note: This post was prompted by today's Google Doodle for the 100th anniversary of Cecily Saunders's
birth - justly celebrating her as the pioneer of what is now called 'palliative care' medicine; but airbrushing
her development and championship of the Brompton Cocktail - for which she was perhaps most famous
among doctors. The Brompton name comes from the London specialist chest hospital, where the
combination was developed for use in lung cancer, fibrosis etc.)
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Friday, June 22, 2018 6 comments:
A (very) brief review of the Marvel Black Panther

movie (2018)
Very dull and completely unengaging, such that I couldn't care

less about what happened and was glad when it finished.
However, I didn't watch the whole thing. This was a family

rental from Amazon. I saw the first hour - in a kind of blank
inertia of waiting - then (when the hero had to undergo a
repetation of trial by combat) lumbered off into the kitchen,
and did chores for about half an hour, then returned to watch
up to the end.
I could point at problems with the script, acting, direction,

editing, CGI, pacing, preachiness... but when a movie doesn't
work, it just doesn't work. Black Panther was the only Marvel
superhero movie that I found boring, throughout.
Black Panther was a dud, hence not really fixable.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Friday, June 22, 2018 3 comments:
Thursday, 21 June 2018
The NOT-danger/ hope of Western Nationalism
When the mainstream of Western politics - both Left and so-

called Right (neither of which are Christian) - are united in
saying that there is a resurgent Western nationalism, you can
be sure that this is not really happening.
Real, original, nationalism was a tremendously powerful, grass-

roots, bottom-up kind of movement; a kind of mania or
instinctual welling of emotion and desire that was so strong
that (once the spark had been applied) it was very difficult,
often impossible, to contain.
This original nationalism, running from the middle 19th to 20th

centuries, was such a powerful motivator that men would risk
their reputations, livelihoods and lives for it. Nationalism
burned briefly, in any country it was active only for a generation
or so; but while it lasted it inspired almost (but not quite)
religious levels of motivation.
Indeed, Nationalism in Europe and among the European

diaspora was precisely a replacement for lapsed Christianity -
as was communism - nationalism was the first post-Christian
generations seeking a meaning and purpose in life.
But real, genuine, powerfully-motivating nationalism is long-

since dead... obviously! dead and gone and never to be revived.
It was a flash in the pan.
So anybody who pins their hopes of a better world, of a reversal

of Western self-hatred and strategic suicide, of an escape from
Western decline toward extinction, on a revival of nationalism
is going to be disappointed.
It won't happen.
In fact, my conviction is that all previous possibilities are

closed-off. Despite that in many ways - including just sheer
viability - the past was better than the present; I am sure that
any previous form of organisation is impossible, for all sorts of
reason - but mainly because that is not what God wants of us.
How do I know what God wants? Isn't that a claim of

extraordinary arrogance and pride? Well, I am not going to try
and persuade you; because knowing what God wants is
something that everybody needs to experience for himself. I am
merely telling you what I know - and that claim is not a reason
why you should believe it...
Yet before rejecting as sinful pride any claim to know the mind
of God on a subject, you need to consider what can be known
about this world, in light of what all Christians know of the
nature of God.
What God wants is an objective fact of being; and it is (surely?)

inconceivable that God the creator and our Father would make
things such that his wishes were hidden from his children?
(From any of his children who genuinely want to know them.)
So it is my task - your, task, every Christian's task - to discover

what God wants; in respect to everything that matters. Discover
for yourself, by all means available - including by direct insight
(true intuition, of the real self).
Because we are all Sons and Daughters of God we all 'inherit'

something of the divine, and a fully-divine potential; and it is
this inheritance that enables us to know God, to know God's
mind - and to love God as a person.
So this kind of knowledge of 'what God wants' is not something

restricted by anything other than our own limitations. In
principle, it is open to any person - at least, nobody is excluded
a priori. (The main exclusion is that people don't really want to
know.)
Those whose hopes require a resurgent Western nationalism

simply need to discover for themselves whether this is the
proper and intended divine destiny of the West...
Not by trying to infer God's mind indirectly from 'the evidence';

but know directly, by sincere and honest prayer and meditation
- and that ought to settle the matter; because the 'evidence' will
then become simply understandable, in light of that
knowledge.
Posted by Bruce Charlton at Thursday, June 21, 2018 9 comments:
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Bruce Charlton's Notion Club explores Tolkien's flat earth problem

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Bruce Charlton's Notions 03/07/2018, 1*13 PM

Higit Pa Bumuo ng Blog

Bruce Charlton's Notions

Meeting The Masters

From the Narrow Desert

If God is indeed omnipotent - as many mainstream Christians

For an omnipotent God to take this indirect and uncertain

Of course, the problem is to do with the imputed attribute of

The idea of an omnipotent God is not natural to humans, nor is

Presumably omnipotence was something which must have been

So, most Christian churches and denominations regard the

Because if God is omnipotent, then there is no point or purpose

The reality is that God is working-towards Heaven,

Men cannot be created as they could and should be - as full

This world could not be created as the full intended state of

Since the Christian God is known to be Good, Christians are (I

We are the world are flawed because because God could-Not

And if we want a Heavenly state, we need to join-with God in

Heaven is not just a destination, it is a joint-achievement: we

Posted by Bruce Charlton at Monday, July 02, 2018 2 comments:

Sunday, 1 July 2018

The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe* of Man's history. The

This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the

For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of primary

To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

From the Epilogue to On Fairy Stories by JRR Tolkien

Until a person has understood in his heart the validity of what

*A sudden and favourable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending

Posted by Bruce Charlton at Sunday, July 01, 2018 3 comments:

Saturday, 30 June 2018

The How and Why of Tolkien's historical and moral

(The unfinished novel, The Notion Club Papers, is itself a major

Posted by Bruce Charlton at Saturday, June 30, 2018 No comments:

Try not to wish for another place, time or personal

Your circumstances, and the world around you, are designed

Perhaps they are incomprehensibly harsh?... If so, this is

Try to understand what it is that you need to learn that your

And learn it.

from that... that is what you are here for.

Posted by Bruce Charlton at Saturday, June 30, 2018 4 comments:

Cheap, simple, brilliant design - a perforated plastic

Swatting flies is difficult - they have all-round vision, lightning

Apparently flies are helpless against this weapon. Presumably

Kudos, then, to the perforated fly swatter - for solving a serious

Posted by Bruce Charlton at Saturday, June 30, 2018 8 comments:

Friday, 29 June 2018

England's lost mythology - and how to find it

The Tolkienian theme is discussed at Albion Awakening...

Posted by Bruce Charlton at Friday, June 29, 2018 No comments:

In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus addresses the essential

In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is offering us an explicit Answer to

What Jesus offered, and how we are to accept it, is repeatedly

That is The Answer. But what was the Question? If we consider

Some examples are: the discussion with Nicodemus about the

Although these certainly not reducible in significance to single

So, briefly put; this is a message of the Gospel, in a Question

The Answer was wholly and permanently by resurrection to life

the Samaritan woman) that insofar as we believe in him and on

Posted by Bruce Charlton at Friday, June 29, 2018 No comments:

How did Good Magic become impossible - how may it

When it comes to magic, what is real and what is the

I assume that real and Good magic was an 'everyday' possibility

As human consciousness, the autonomous, agent self, became