NIETZSCHE'S OLYMPIAN SYNTHESIS

by Gwendolyn Taunton

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.
Emil Cioran

Understanding the role Tradition could or should play in the modern era is a central topic in the study of philosophy. Today, in a world where God is almost, but not quite dead, how can we translate traditional beliefs into an appropriate form suitable for the people of the present age? To answer this question we must examine the nature of spiritual experience itself and look at different approaches to the divine in antiquity. Surprisingly one of the best starting points for developing a rapport with Tradition suitable to the modern West emerges not from Traditional texts themselves, but from Nietzsche. Despite Nietzsche’s overt denunciation of Christianity and the often proclaimed consequence of the ‘Death of God,’ Nietzsche’s work penetrates very deeply into the core of religious philosophy and this area of his thought is usually misrepresented. A substantial amount of Nietzsche’s writing can be seen not as wishing to break Tradition, but instead wishing to reinvigorate it by introducing elements of what he believed was a stronger model for religious belief — a vital form of spiritual thought that would prevent cultural decay.

THE SATURNINE PRINCIPLE AND THE BACCHANALIA OF THE MODERN WEST

The Overthrow of the Apollonian Hierarchy

by Alex Fontana

“Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order: it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal.” [1]

Saturn is the most distant planet that is observable from the Earth with the naked eye. For the ancients the planet and the gods associated with it had special meaning. They considered Saturn – or Kronos, to use his Greek name – as lacking the divine ‘nous’ of spiritual illumination, that is the force associated with the Platonic light of the divine intellect.

The ninth-century Persian astrologer, Abu Ma’shar, identified Saturn as presiding over “avarice, blindness, corruption, hatred, guile and haughtiness.”[2] Saturn was also associated with the melancholic humor – hence the adjective ‘saturnine; which also has an alchemical connection to lead – the basest metal. A further association was with the Goat, as in the astrological sign Capricorn. This connected the planet to the another god, namely Dionysus.