dChan
tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 6:56 p.m. No.10433088   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3090 >>3093 >>3118

The Basilisk is a mythological creature which has shown up in many bestiaries and fantasy works. Described as being hatched from the egg of a snake (or a toad) by a cockerel, it is generally portrayed with a mix of reptilian/amphibian and bird features. This makes it similar in appearance to its cousin the Cockatrice, a dragon with birdlike features which is said to be hatched from a chicken egg (sometimes a rooster egg) by a snake.

 

Whether these are two distinct creatures or whether they’re interchangeable names for the same thing is something of a Cyclic Trope.

Originally (i.e., in the Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages), the basilisk was depicted as a horribly venomous snake, while the cockatrice, which first shows up in medieval England, was a chicken-reptile chimera that turned people to stone with its gaze. Eventually, the two creatures blended into a single myth for a number of reasons, and became synonymous terms for a single monster. In more recent times, some (although not all) works of fiction (possibly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons) have come to once again set them apart. The basilisk tends to be shown as a more distinctly reptilian snakelike or lizardlike animal, and usually maintains a deadly petrifying gaze. By contrast, the cockatrice tends to be portrayed as more distinctly avian, with a largely birdlike body bearing a snake tail, bird legs, and wings capable of flight.

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 6:56 p.m. No.10433090   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3093

>>10433088

Basilisks are reputed as the king of serpents (the name comes from the Greek for "king", "basileos"), and some bestiaries depicted them with crowns, if not with crown-like features such as a cock's comb. They are often extremely venomous and can cause instant death or petrification to anyone who looks directly at them, which makes them a Brown Note Being. Weasels are its natural enemy, not unlike the mongoose and cobra, and the crowing of a rooster has a fatal Brown Note effect on it. It is also said that one can kill it by turning a mirror on it, as it is not immune to its own gaze.

 

Basilisks and cockatrices, regardless of what deadly powers they are given or whether they are treated as the same thing or different creatures, tend to be used in a fairly consistent, uniform manner — as an inherently, incredibly deadly being whose mere gaze or presence is enough to kill, and can probably turn you to stone one way or another, thus posing an unusually dangerous threat that needs to somehow be dealt with without being approached or even looked at.

 

Another thing these two creatures have in common is being fundamentally incompatible with "proper" life or ecology. They are typically depicted as killing every creature they encounter, and if the basilisk's mythological suite of powers is included this extends to killing off vegetation and poisoning the soil and water. The born-from-a-rooster's-egg origin further defines them as mistakes of nature, creatures that should not exist and that only come into being when something happens that in a proper course of events wouldn't and shouldn't — such as a rooster laying an egg, or a snake or toad brooding a bird's young.

 

See also Snakes Are Sinister, Feathered Fiend and Giant Flyer. Compare Feathered Serpent, another bird-snake hybrid monster.

 

Not to be confused with Basilisk, which is In Name Only. The real life lizard called the basilisk was named for its resemblance to the mythical beast—with its comb-like crest and habit of running on two legs, it looks not unlike a medieval depiction of a cockatrice.

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:08 p.m. No.10433261   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>10433239

>COBRA COMMANDER IS DEPENDING ON YOU

>

>TO immanentize the eschaton

The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:11 p.m. No.10433287   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>10433239

>COBRA COMMANDER IS DEPENDING ON YOU

>

>TO immanentize the eschaton

The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

At the end of the 12th century, Joachim of Fiore theorized the coming of an age of earthly bliss right before the end of time. Although not a full immanentization, Joachim has opened the way to an anticipation of the eschaton in the course of time. His ideas have influenced the thoughts on an immanentized eschaton.

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:13 p.m. No.10433311   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3320 >>3331

>>10433239

>COBRA COMMANDER IS DEPENDING ON YOU

>

>TO immanentize the eschaton

The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

At the end of the 12th century, Joachim of Fiore theorized the coming of an age of earthly bliss right before the end of time. Although not a full immanentization, Joachim has opened the way to an anticipation of the eschaton in the course of time. His ideas have influenced the thoughts on an immanentized eschaton.>>10433239

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:14 p.m. No.10433320   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3331 >>3352 >>3354

>>10433311

Political interpretations

 

In contemporary terminology this process is sometimes described as "hastening the eschaton" or "hastening the apocalypse.” In this sense it refers to a phenomenon related to millenarianism and the specific Christian form millennialism which is based on a particular reading of the Christian Bible's Book of Revelation especially popular among evangelicals in the United States.[9]

 

Some conservative critics sometimes use these terms as a pejorative reference to certain projects such as Nazism, socialism, and communism.

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:15 p.m. No.10433331   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3354

>>10433320

>Political interpretations

>

>In contemporary terminology this process is sometimes described as "hastening the eschaton" or "hastening the apocalypse.” In this sense it refers to a phenomenon related to millenarianism and the specific Christian form millennialism which is based on a particular reading of the Christian Bible's Book of Revelation especially popular among evangelicals in the United States.[9]

>

>Some conservative critics sometimes use these terms as a pejorative reference to certain projects such as Nazism, socialism, and communism.

>>10433311

>>COBRA COMMANDER IS DEPENDING ON YOU

>

>>

>

>>TO immanentize the eschaton

>

>The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

>

>At the end of the 12th century, Joachim of Fiore theorized the coming of an age of earthly bliss right before the end of time. Although not a full immanentization, Joachim has opened the way to an anticipation of the eschaton in the course of time. His ideas have influenced the thoughts on an immanentized eschaton.>>10433239

The Lutheran Confessions directly reject the idea of an immanentized eschaton, condemning the belief "that before the resurrection of the dead the godly shall take possession of the kingdom of the world, the ungodly being everywhere suppressed."[7]

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes an oblique reference to the desire to "Immanentize the Eschaton" in article 676:

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:17 p.m. No.10433354   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>10433320

>>10433331

Modern usage of the phrase started with Eric Voegelin in The New Science of Politics in 1952. Conservative spokesman William F. Buckley popularized Voegelin's phrase as "Don't immanentize the eschaton!" Buckley's version became a political slogan of Young Americans for Freedom during the 1960s and 1970s.[3]

 

Voegelin identified a number of similarities between ancient Gnosticism and the beliefs held by a number of modern political theories, particularly Communism and Nazism. He identified the root of the Gnostic impulse as belief in a lack of concord within society as a result of an inherent disorder, or even evil, of the world. He described this as having two effects:[citation needed]

 

The belief that the disorder of the world can be transcended by extraordinary insight, learning, or knowledge, called a Gnostic Speculation by Voegelin (the Gnostics themselves referred to this as gnosis).

The desire to implement a policy to actualize the speculation, or as Voegelin said, to Immanentize the Eschaton, to create a sort of heaven on earth within history. See Scientism.

 

One of the more oft-quoted passages from Voegelin's work on Gnosticism is that "The problem of an eidos in history, hence, arises only when a Christian transcendental fulfillment becomes immanentized. Such an immanentist hypostasis of the eschaton, however, is a theoretical fallacy."[4]

 

The book Fire in the Minds of Men explores the idea further.[5][6]

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:23 p.m. No.10433438   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Yes, it’s both a lame and pretentious phrase — but it’s also a useful one.

 

Eschatology is the study of end times. The eschaton is basically the final stage of human history where the lion lies with the lamb and Justin Bieber is spoken of no more. It occurs after Armageddon when the Kingdom of God gets established here on Earth. But according to philosopher Eric Voegelin, who the term comes from, only God can establish this Kingdom. Popularized by conservatives like William F. Buckley, “immanentizing the eschaton” is Voegelin’s pejorative phrase for utopians who try to take the place of God in bringing about this final stage. Buckley’s critique is that these do-gooders usually use the force of government to ram down their vision of the ideal society without respecting the natural order and traditions that cause societies to evolve on their own.

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:30 p.m. No.10433559   🗄️.is 🔗kun

At the heart of modern Western civilization’s dramatic struggle to maintain its inherited understanding of truth, Voegelin believed, were new gnostic attempts to replace traditional truths with a new formula for order that rejected any notion of divine partnership. Voegelin’s personal and professional “resistance” to the untruth he saw in modern Gnosticism—better known then as now as supposedly secular, utopian ideologies, namely Marxism and fascism—

 

some sought utopic salvation on earth through collective human political effort. For Voegelin, this involved a substitution of true ends for artificial and capricious man-made ones: This was the problem of the unreliable interpretation of the transcendent, and the essence of modern gnosticism’s danger. He defines this modern gnosticism as a belief that a particular type of supposedly master-scientific knowledge could enable an individual or society to attain salvation or deliverance from an alienated existence.

 

Voegelin’s famous command to both Christians and modern gnostics alike was, “Don’t immanentize the eschaton!” Humanity must not try to play God by forcing the end times or by seeking utopia on earth. It will only lead, he warned, as in the Tower of Babel parable in the Bible, to political disorder and senseless human suffering.

 

Voegelin saw the pendulum of order and decay as always in motion. He was therefore convinced that one day a new cosmology would arise that would be the basis for a new civilizational order. Meanwhile, the Western democracies had at a minimum worked out a way for people with profoundly divergent understandings of their place in the cosmos to live decently ordered lives in relative peace. As a realist, Voegelin appreciated that each society must chose the form of order that is both available and best suited to its reality. That is why he never advocated for a particular governmental formation; instead, he used an approach reminiscent of the via negativa to explain what does not work, suggesting that political systematizers of all kinds are to be feared.

tim ID: 27908c Aug. 26, 2020, 7:31 p.m. No.10433567   🗄️.is 🔗kun

I don't think these ideas have much currency amongst neoreactionaries. They have their "utopian" vision clearly in mind (one that begins with deathcamps). This is more the philosophy of the snarl. Articulating something at play in the collective unconscious of the conservative elements of society. A formalised statement of the truce between Christians and industrialists in the wake of Soviet gains in WW2 and the Communist triumph in China.

 

"Don’t Immanentize the Eschaton" for all it's obscurity and inpenetrability to the uninitiated is a wonderful phrase and it's discovery was a great coup for the conservative movement.

 

For starters it's a great political meme. Both prescriptive and accusatory. It tells you both what you are doing, and not to do it, in 4 words.

 

It mocks anyone with any idea or vision of how society should be organized as an idealist. As such it was a good companion to the ascendancy of analytic philosophy in the English speaking world.

 

There's not much to be said about the equating of government action with the end of the world other than to say it doesn't require much reading between the lines to see it.

 

It demands citizens do nothing and be acted upon, the complete opposite of "Immanentizing the Eschaton"

 

Once it's internalized it creates this yawing void of meaning. When half a society believes you shouldn't do anything and let things unfold as they may, then you have a significant part of the prerequisites for the conditions of post modernism.

 

It tapped into the post war zeitgeist, fascism lay in ruins, defeated by liberalism, a system that before the war had been in crisis, the great depression, falling to fascist coups, communist revolutions and discredited by it's role in creating and exacerbating the conditions that lead to WWI. Confusingly this corrupt and rotting system had defeated it's challenger on the battlefield but all the internal contradictions that had birthed fascism remained unaddressed. "Don’t Immanentize the Eschaton" is "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and here we are.