The Decline and Fall of Western Art

by Brendan Heard

  Everything that makes us who we are lies within these myths. Their power can transcend war and religious upheaval, sometimes altered but always serving as a guiding light (to the past and future). Traditional myths are generally mysterious, moving, unpredictable and archaic but always spellbinding. In order to feel archaic, they usually have a weirdness factor, that is there will be a paradoxical element that can almost be understood as a flaw yet in fact adds to their realness, sense of tragedy and the eerie echo of the very distant past. Myth is an expression of a race’s impulse to define the world, as is all meaningful art. It is the hidden psychic united mind floundering its way through intersecting information streams, towards the transcendent future event. By substituting race with ‘community’ to obey political correctness, you take the deep root out of the definition and render it meaningless. To each group, there is unique legend. Myth and art are the same, one intersects the other, and if we lose our myth, we lose our grounding. Egalitarianism is false and deconstructive and tribal distinctiveness is to be celebrated. Therefore to regain a healthy, living culture we must all have intimate understanding of our historic myths, be unabashedly proud of them and have belief in their core morality. The Elizabethans and Victorians, despite not being Greek or Italian, knew by rote the classical Greek and Roman mythical canon in the original languages, so strong was their understanding of its value. They were culturally and intellectually richer for it, having the pagan beliefs and ancient stories as a juxtaposed archaic influence alongside their devout Christianity. There are so many excellent varieties of myths as example, from so many different Western cultures, that I will choose to focus on one with relevance to our present situation – the legend known as the King in the mountain, or the sleeping king, or the seven sleepers.

  This tale serves as a warning, a metaphor and a prophecy that is eerily poignant for us. Variations of this sleeping hero appear as a motif in folktales that emerged from oral tradition. Later incarnations came to superimpose popular national heroes, such as King Arthur, Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa. In these stories, the legendary heroes are not dead but slumbering within a secret cave on a mountaintop, or sometimes on a remote island. The hero or king is said to be awaiting a summons to rise with his knights and defend his nation in a time of deadly peril. Christianized versions relate his return to the biblical apocalypse and the final war against Satan.

  But of course, these myths predate Christianity and originate in a more obscured primordial tradition, their roots buried in our soil and psyche. They echo through history, a wandering truth or an idea waiting to become true, through the matrix of information and synchronicity — fogged in metaphor and legend like the hero himself. They emerge in modern fairytales such as those of Tolkien and in our subconscious desire for tradition to save the future. These magical archetypes are the impetus behind a majority of tribally valuable visual art, music and literature. While ephemeral, they captivate the imagination in a way that can only be considered real.

  They are more real than anything we will find in our degenerated consumerist culture today, where a sterile facsimile or ghost of these ancient archetypes is occasionally revived to sell cinema tickets. Zombie-like consumers comprehend only a lingering superficial trace of a deeper meaningfulness — and reach for it regardless. Legends like the sleeping king insinuate antiquity itself, or even the wheel of eternity so often represented by concentric circles in ancient European art. This is the circular instruction of life, the return to greatness after the fall and the sweet spring banishing the death of winter. The legend has roots in end-of-days predictions that have been with us for thousands of years.

  Plutarch (46-120AD) spoke of a legend of an island where Cronos (Kronos, Chronos, deposed father of Zeus) is imprisoned with Briareus keeping guard over him as he sleeps, and that around him are many deities, his henchmen and attendants. Cronos has been confined by Zeus but remains lord of those islands and of the sea, which is named the Gulf of Cronos.

  “The natives have a story that in one of these (islands) Cronus has been confined by Zeus, but that he, having a son for gaoler, is left sovereign lord of these islands ... Cronus himself sleeps within a deep cave resting on a rock which looks like gold ... Birds fly in at the topmost part of the rock, and bear him ambrosia, and the whole island is pervaded by the fragrance shed from the rock.”

  – Plutarch, Moralia XII.

  There seem to be traces in Welsh and Arthurian legend derived from this myth of Cronos as a god imprisoned on a North Atlantic island. There is also relation between this Cronos as sleeping king of the blessed isles and the legend of Apollo in the land of the Hyperboreans.

  Cronos was Saturn to the Romans, after whom we have named Saturday, and he is known to us as father time, or the God of Time, with his scythe or sickle. Cronos was also known as a Wise Old Man and with the sickle he used to castrate his own deposed father Ouranus he taught the people animal husbandry and cultivation of crops (before taking his magic nap). The golden age he inaugurated once before is said to return when he reawakens.

  Northern pagan teutonic myths have their own version of this in the legend of the seven sleepers, in which Mimer’s seven sons rest in a magic sleep in the Underworld, awaiting the blast of the horn of Ragnarok. This horn hangs in a cave and turns into a dragon if anyone tries to seize it. Parochial variations can mean the myth travelled and evolved across borders, or has a mutual Indo-Aryan root before the formation of these early empires. This cross-fertilization of European myth variety indicates the influential root power of the concept – or the reality of its prediction.

  In the Scottish version, the horn hangs from the roof and when blown three times, the sleepers will rise. A shepherd discovers the cave and blows the horn twice but stops when he hears a voice say: “If the horn is blown again the world will be upset altogether.”

  He flees, leaving the warriors resting on their elbows.

  A very old version of the Gallic legend is recorded as follows:

  The Fians (sleepers) were lying in a cave, each resting on his elbow, chin upon hand, self-absorbed, not asleep.

  They heard the falling waters,

  and the storms went over them unheeded.

  Thousand of years went past.

  They were still resting there, musing,

  when one of them moved his elbow and said:

  ‘Och! Och! it’s me that’s tired’

  Thousands of years went past

  They heard the falling waters,

  and the storms went over them unheeded.

  Then a great Fian said sharply,

  ‘If you do not stop this wrangling I’ll go out,

  and leave the cave to yourselves.’

  Thousands of years went past

  They heard the falling of the waters,

  and the storms went over them unheeded.

  These ancient, unfathomable seven titans slumber as archetypal reality in our collective psyche, immortal yet (paradoxically) whimsical, human and yet predominant. Here again is a feeling of mystery that compels, this archaic feeling that captivates us in a way we can only describe as religious or spiritually heroic – keeping alive the flame of courage and concepts of divine monarchy, the idealism of nature-values. Fairytales were once as good as real, for much longer than they have been merely imagination; fantastic or exaggerated ideas of hidden world powers no less indifferent or unfathomable than those we know as tangible. Myth is the conduit of transmission for vital hereditary information from our ancient ancestors that transcends time and language, to give us wisdom. The poet was the first true exalted artist and probably should remain so today.

  In the Christian era, the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (born 1785) popularized the myth of the king in the mountain when the real Frederick Barbarossa became exalted in folk legend as the personification of the good king. The brothers tell of this tale in their early nineteenth century collection of German Legends.

  In life, Barbarossa fought for the Holy Roman
Empire against forces of social political reform. The materialist and egalitarian merchant class had risen up and attempted to re-create the Holy Emperor as a mere politician. Barbarossa destroyed them in the name of divine monarchy and was seen as a spiritual and nationalist victor for the principle of divine authority over mercantile politics, politicians being then, as now, materialistic opportunists wielding power based on coercion and devoid of higher principles. With their defeat at the hands of Barbarossa, these rebels came to be thought of as ‘against God’ and were dealt with by the avenging sword. Divine monarchy was restored... for a time.

  Monument to Frederick Barbarossa, part of the Kyffhäuserdenkmal in Germany.

  Yet according to the legend or mythical interpretation of his story, Barbarossa did not die but slumbers within Kyffhauser Mountain. His red beard has grown through the table at which he sits. His eyes are half-closed in sleep but now and then he raises his hand and sends an emissary out to see if the ravens have ceased flying. In the Grimm brothers’ version, the hero speaks with a herdsman who stumbles upon his hidden cave. The sleeping King asks: “Do the ravens still circle the mountaintop, boy?” When the herdsman tells him they do, he replies: “Then begone! My time has not yet come.” The herdsman usually emerges from the cave with his hair turned white and often dies after telling his tale.

  The legend then states that when the ravens cease to fly and Barbarossa re-appears for the final battle, he will hang his shield on a dead tree, which then comes to life: “And the dry tree will bloom again.”

  It heralds the return to nature and the abandonment of the materialist cycle. Within the European psyche, we seek ultimately both the action of the apocalypse made real and our salvation through an ancient heroism. We want to meet our fate with honour and classical tragedy. But the myth is based on reality — Barbarossa was a great king. His principles were sound and his action on the world phenomenal. His war on the merchants (whose purpose we can only barely grasp today) was a manifest testament to his courage.

  Myth evolves from such hidden pathways, it is rooted in the spirit. We are stirred especially in reminiscence of past heroism, sacrifice, struggle and adventure. When a people or a person need strength in unity, there is a tribal spirit that can be communally called upon, the rallying call of deeply felt shared history. It is the waking being and becoming of a people, who warm their souls around a flame of mystery, fighting to understand its archaic revelation and the music of its primal creativity. What are its origins? A hero long forgotten, hidden in a burial mound or mountain? His folk legend passed and exaggerated. And perhaps a new individual, yet to return to us and claim this spirit, or have its legend foisted upon him. Or the primordial giants of the Fian or the preternatural Cronos? Whatever this legend might mean, it evokes the sacred cycle.

  Heroism, chivalry and sacrifice are the paternal tradition. They are eternal concepts. Even when they are ignored or suppressed, they exist in their own realm, unchanged, unmarred, providing a man safeguards them. They exist and they are there for the grasping, so long as the courage of the people or individual is there. It was myth that began our civilization and myth is the inspiration of transcendence through struggle that gives it backbone. Though ancient legends now seem distant from us, they are only so removed as we are safe, for the moment, in an artificial luxury that modernity creates. Myth is the mechanics of art and culture.

  And so the ancient legend resonates and offers hope, the titans or the Emperor will be returning one day, for a fight at the end of the world. Such a tale nourishes the hearts of children. Heartened by purpose, an echo of ancient augury from the fertile past points our expectation to a future. Or even in the absence of that, to a glorious end, without regrets. Even now, the myth of the sleeping king is with us, disguised as historical reality or metaphysical metaphor for a real event, and the future is prophesied. Perhaps even more importantly, at the root of the evolving motif, and illustrated plainly in the true story of Barbarossa the man, is the struggle of sacred hierarchy against materialism.

  Creating for ourselves new forms of primal spirituality may be the highest function of a new art. Whatever we really are, we are pushed into this existence to improve ourselves and our surroundings. To sow and harvest beauty in the world, a job that is no small concern.

  And when we return to this work, the dry tree will bloom again.

  Spirituality and primordial tradition: Western religion & the plane of perfect reason

  As mentioned, no small part of the West’s artistic decline has been the rise of materialism, mammon-worship and the fall of variations of traditionalist spirituality. Namely, during the last century, this has chiefly involved the fall of Christianity — very gradually and painfully, and without a supplanting faith. Or, if you like, a supplanting belief in egalitarianism and atheism, which is a kind of drab belief in not having beliefs. Any thesis on the subject of art and culture requires a discussion of religion, as regardless of how you feel about it, faith and morality are the prime motivators of culture. It is my view that recognition and reverence of the sacred mysteries is vital for both individual and group survival. A broad review of the shared aspects of historic Western faiths is helpful here: how they shaped history and why it is important to have a certain sense of spirituality, whether the ascribed religious myth is strictly believed or metaphoric matters little. Speaking for myself, I advocate for Neoplatonism, a philosophy and reason-based religion that upholds ancient spirituality, that can be practiced by agnostics, Christians and pagans alike. Atheism is irrelevant to this discussion, as it is generally an overly negative petty nihilism and agent of degeneracy. Man requires a framework for his activity and where you find that focus you will find meaning, progress and true art. If you are reading this, then life is happening, it has no reason to spring out of a placid eternity of nothingness for a finite, pointless existence, then back to nothingness (by what energy and to what end?), and the self-evidence of our existence means a sacred mystery is at work, though a mystery it will perhaps remain. Traditional European faiths provide our framework, transmitting our mysteries over generations, and while for some this chain has been broken, for others it is unbreakable. If we seek tradition, we will soon find Platonic transcendentals, metaphysics, esoteric initiation and sacred hierarchy.

  “ Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, the desired of every Soul. Anyone that has seen This, knows what I intend when I say that it is beautiful. Even the desire of it is to be desired as a Good. To attain it is for those that will take the upward path, who will set all their forces towards it, who will divest themselves of all that we have put on in our descent … until, passing, on the upward way, all that is other than the God, each in the solitude of himself shall behold that solitary-dwelling Existence, the Apart, the Unmingled, the Pure, that from Which all things depend, for Which all look and live and act and know, the Source of Life and of Intellection and of Being.

  “ Beholding this Being—the Choragos of all Existence, the Self-Intent that ever gives forth and never takes—resting, rapt, in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness, growing to Its likeness, what Beauty can the soul yet lack? For This, the Beauty supreme, the absolute, and the primal, fashions Its lovers to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love.

  “ Therefore, first let each become godlike and each beautiful who cares to see God and Beauty. So, mounting, the Soul will come first to the Intellectual-Principle and survey all the beautiful Ideas in the Supreme and will avow that this is Beauty, that the Ideas are Beauty. For by their efficacy comes all Beauty else, but the offspring and essence of the Intellectual-Being. What is beyond the Intellectual-Principle we affirm to be the nature of Good radiating Beauty before it. So that, treating the Intellectual-Kosmos as one, the first is the Beautiful: if we make distinction there, the Realm of Ideas constitutes the Beauty of the Intellectual Sphere; and The Good, which lies beyond, is the Fountain at once and Principle of Beauty: the Primal Good and the Primal Beauty have the one dwel
ling-place and, thus, always, Beauty’s seat is There.”

  – Plotinus.

  1) Post-Christian materialism.

  The West might be said to still be Christian, albeit somewhat superficially, but it is more or less impossible to be classically Christian in the modern Western world. There is no arguing that our remnant morality is based on Christian values but it is like a shade whose spirit has fled, an ivy still clinging to a wall though it’s roots are severed. We uphold a morality without a wellspring and its values flit here and there at the whim of corporate marketers and uncontrollable, insane feminists. It does not matter if you are an atheist in terms of the innate values you feel. Your morality, subconsciously, is Christian. If you had spent your formative years being raised Muslim, communist, Confucianist or Hindu, you would have a different innate sense of right and wrong. People do not realize how malleable moral views can be. Your pagan Roman ancestors might have thought nothing at all of strolling past a hillside of exposed babies, for example, as they went to watch slaves being slaughtered at the colosseum. Medieval children used to flock to hangings and beheadings.