The True “Evolution” of Language Tuesday, May 15 2007

One can scarcely open a book on the subject of any human activity without being immediately confronted by the dogma of ‘progress’. The first clothes ‘must have been’ animal skins which ‘primitive man’ draped around ‘him’self. The first drum ‘must have been’ made by primitive man’ slapping ‘his’ fat belly (no joke - we have actually read this one in a serious music book!). The first language ‘must have been’ half-animal squeaks and grunts. There has never been a scrap of evidence for any of this. It is all conjecture based on one simple dogma which has been dinned into every modern child by the age of ten — the dogma of ‘progress’.

Now let us look a little more closely at this last example of language. The popular books, of course, happily rattle out the predictable party-line; but, as in many cases, the more serious studies are faced with a more serious problem. The simple fact is that throughout the whole of the known period, language has not progressed, but degenerated. The earliest known languages are by far the most complex, subtle and phiosophical. The later ones, like Latin and Greek, are much simpler, but still complex compared to modern language, which is a crude instrument, better suited to describing physical events than subtle philosophical concepts (this, of course, is perfectly in accord with the crudity of modern philosophy and the disproportionate emphasis placed upon the physical sciences).

In order to explain this fact, modern linguists have postulated that language developed in a manner resembling Curve A in the diagram - a slow, painful ‘evolution’ (of course), followed by a relatively slight decline over the last few thousand years.

But this theory ran into another difficulty. Out of countless studies made of the languages of ‘primitive’ peoples — American Indians, Africans, Polynesians etc., not one language was found to be in a ‘primitive’ state, and few were so ‘primitive’ as modern western speech. So linguists were forced to adopt Curve B - a slow evolution many thousands of years ago, followed by a sudden huge ‘jump’, and then a long period of decline. Now this is an absurdity even from the evolutionist point of view, but when one will cling to a dogma in the teeth of all the evidence, one is frequently led into absurdity.

Actually, of course, there is no evidence for anything except the last part of the curve. The rest is pure conjecture, like the belly-slapping. If we stick to the actual known facts, we can only postulate Curve C. This is naturally unthinkable to the modern mind, but it fits in very well with the words of Scriptures:

“What is your language of the earth, My children, what are the words of your speech? Are they not fallen from the first, the mother language? Are they not brok­en and impaired?”

The Scripture is telling us that language was created not by maid, but by God. She gave us the pure and perfect language spoken by the Angels, and we have gradually allowed it to degenerate as we have turned away from Her.

Students of Aristasian philosophy will often have seen how, time after time, the analysis of the etymology and origins of a word can be used to elucidate the metaphysical significance of the concept which it expresses. This is a whole science in itself — the science of hermeneutics; and it is possible only because language is not a mere set of conventional tokens, like road signs. It is a structure as perfectly ordered and organised as the human body — for it was ordered by the same Intelligence. Nothing in it is merely accidental or arbitrary; every word has a metaphysical reason for being what it is. That is why the analysis of words will always lead us back to the same metaphysical truths.

Language developed not upward from squeaks and grunts, but downward from pure Truth. We have abused and misused it, chopped it into a thousand different tongues, twisted it to fit false philosophies and worldly sentiments; but still we have only to look clearly and closely at our language, and it will quickly lead us back to pure Truth.

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Sai Candre and the Moon Friday, May 4 2007

Sai Raya, the Sun, is the Great Luminary. Sai Candre, the Moon, is the Lesser Luminary. At her highest level, the moon is seen as the great Daughter Principle, just as the Sun is the great Mother Principle. The Lunar realm is the realm of imagination and also of mental activity. The word “mind” comes from the same root as “moon”. While the pure Intellect which sees Truth directly is by nature Solar, the reflected Intellectual light which is our earthly reason is lunar (mental or moon-like), as also is our imagination.

As the Sun is the embodiment of the Spirit, so the moon rules the world of the soul. The sphere of Sai Candre is that most immediately “above” (that is to say, more subtle than) our mundane plane of being. It is the psychic domain. What Theosophists and New Agers call the “astral plane” really refers (insofar as it refers to anything) to the Lunar Realm.

The psychic domain is governed by Sai Candre, as is the mana-maya kosa, that subtle body which is the repository of impulses, feelings and thoughts (mana is etymologically connected with both moon and mind). The image-sphere is also in the domain of Sai Candre.

Since Sai Candre governs earthly reason, the Latin mens — the basis for both mind and month — also gives us words for measurement, such as mensuration. The word reason itself comes from ratio: to measure. Modern materialistic “rationalism” holds that our only sources of information are the impressions conveyed to us by the five senses plus the operations upon them of the reason. However, the very axioms of thought — beginning with the intuition that our thought-processes correspond to any objective reality outside themselves (which rationalist philosophy illogically takes for granted while denying the solar Intellect) and proceeding to such intuitions as those of mathematics and logic — for example the axiom that a thing cannot both be and not be — derive from the Solar Intellect. This is natural, for the light of the Moon is the reflected light of the Sun. Without Sunlight (pure Intellect) there is no Moonlight (earthly reason).

In Filianic thealogy, the Moon is seen as a type of the Daughter, who reflects the light of the Solar Mother (who is “too bright for us to look upon”) in a gentle form adapted to our fallen sight. She is the Mediatrix between the Solar Spirit and the fallen world. Thus Sai Candre is also seen as the archetypal Priestess.

Sai Candre is also the Janya of purity and of wild creatures.

See also
The Seven Great Janyati

Sai Raya and the Sun

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A New Poem by Sappho Monday, Apr 30 2007

Sappho was arguably the greatest poet of the Classical period. Plato hailed her as the Tenth Muse. She instituted a poetry of human emotions and introspection when hitherto, Greek poetry had concentrated on the deeds of the gods and of mythic heroes. In so doing, she may be said to be the founder of modern Western poetry and the first Rajasic poet of the Kali Yuga.

She was the head of a female academy, and wrote with great affection of the young girl-scholars who surrounded her, and particularly her intimate inner circle. Her house was known as a house of moisopoloi, or “servants of the Muses”.

It is a fascinating thought that the individualistic, romantic, lyric verse, which in the West is what is most commonly understood by the term “poetry” was, in fact, originally female in orientation, born in an all-female setting and centred on the theme of divine affection between maid and maid.

Very little of Sappho’s work now survives, largely owing to the arson attack made on the great library at Alexandria by members of a militant sect known as Christians. Many of the literary treasures of the ancient world were lost forever in the great fire that ensued, including most of the works of Sappho.

Only three complete poems remained to the world, and even they had to be conjecturally reconstructed in parts.

In the year twenty-oh-five, that number increased to four, owing to the discovery, in an ancient Egyptian tomb of the earliest manuscript of her work so far known. It was copied early in the third century B.C., a little over 300 years after she wrote. This manuscript contained three of her poems, all in fragmentary states, as is usually the case. However one of them had been known since 1922 from an Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the third century A.D., and by combining the two fragmentary texts, the complete poem could be reconstructed.

The poem was written in Sappho’s old age. She watches her young scholars, her moisopoloi, dancing and singing, and recalls the days of her own youth and gracefulness. She laments her lot, and then speaks of the folly of lamenting, recalling the legend of Tithonus, who, beloved of Eos, goddess of the dawn, was carried off by her. The goddess asked Zeus for the boon of eternal life for her mortal spouse, which was granted; but she forgot to ask for eternal youth, and so Tithonus grew older and older without ever dying, until finally he was confined to his room, chattering endlessly but unable to move.

The parallel with Sappho, whose young protégées, to whom she has devoted her life and given her deepest affections, are eternally young, because new girls continually arrive at her academy, while time relentlessly drains her strength and beauty, is deeply poignant.

The original poem is in six couplets and is very economically written. Classical Greek grammar, being older and purer than that of our modern languages, is more tightly structured and complex. Consequently, like other ancient languages, it is capable of expressing more in fewer words. It also makes references that have little or no immediate emotional resonance with a modern reader unless they are expanded. For this reason we have elaborated the verse slightly, adopting the romantic, rather than the terse, “modernist”, style.

We have, however, interpolated very little and have stayed very close to the text. Our aim has been to present the poem in a translation that will have the same emotional effect upon a modern hearer as the original poem would have had upon its earliest audiences.

We have used the familiar iambic pentameter to represent Sappho’s meter.

The Poetess Laments her Old Age

O, maidens, tend and guard those precious gifts
Granted ye by the fragrant-blossomed muses
And the sweet music of the pure-toned lyre.

My sometime-tender body now declines,
Seized by old age; my raven-hair is whitened.

My heart is weighted down; my supple knees,
Once nimble for the dance as woodland fawns,
Will scarcely bear me as I walk a pace.

And often I give tongue to my complaint
That all my youthful joy should end in this.
But wherefore murmur? I am but a maid.
Can one avoid the fate of all our kind?

Tithonus, so the tale has long been told,
Was carried to the edges of the world
In the caress of rosy-armèd Dawn,
That goddess being overcome with love.

Comely he was and young upon that day;
Yet time wore on and grizzled age o’ertook
The mortal husband of immortal wife.

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Fates of the Janyatic Adjectives in Telluria Sunday, Apr 15 2007

Sai Thame, the Janya, or angel, rules both royalty and authority, and also music. It is interesting to compare the traditional meaning of the word “jovial” (belonging to Jupiter). Today it is trivialised into meaning simply “merry” or “jocular”, but originally it had more to do with the joy of pomp and ceremony and high festivals and royal occasions.

____

Following the remarks on the word “jovial”, one might make a further observation.

In modern Tellurian language, the adjectives of Janyatic (or planetary) qualities have had the following fates:

“Jovial” (Jupiter) has been trivialised, as mentioned above. “Mercurial” (Mercury) is also trivialised, referring only to the lower “playful” element of Sai Mati, not to her wisdom. “Saturnine” (Saturn) is scarcely recognised by most modern people. “Venereal” (Venus) now has highly distasteful connotations, being almost exclusively associated with disease. However “martial” (Mars) still retains nearly all its original character and connotation.

Is this not precisely what one might expect of the late-patriarchal Age of Iron? Most janyatic qualities are lost or trivialised owing to the metaphysical ignorance of the age. Sai Sushuri (Venus) the principle of concord and femininity is vilified. Only the quality of Mars, the principle of discord and (in Telluria) masculinity continues to be understood and correctly referred to.

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Aristasia, Japan, Language and Culture Wednesday, Apr 4 2007

Sushuri Madonna asked:

I want to ask a question that is potentially a very big one. All sorts of thoughts have been chasing about in my mind concerning language and culture, and while some of the questions may initially sound Tellurian, it is really from the perspective of our developing Aristasian understanding that I am asking them.

It is all so convoluted that it is hard to know where to begin, but let me try this question:

In a very knowledgeable book about Japan, I have read that when Japanese people have studied English sufficiently to become fully fluent and conversant, they have already changed from being the typical Japanese person. Language and culture are so deeply intertwined that ingesting English involves ingesting Western culture to the extent that they are, to some extent at least, transformed.

You can probably see already that this raises various thoughts concerning Aristasian culture and the language in which it is expressed. But let me stay with the Tellurian starting-point for the moment and ask the question that immediately came to my mind. It is a very simple question, and it is this:

Does it happen the other way round?

In other words, when English speakers are exposed to the Japanese language, and thereby to its underlying cultural assumptions, are they transformed into something somewhat different from the typical Westerner?

My guess is: sometimes they are, but only if they have a particular cultural sympathy: but generally, not nearly as often and not nearly as deeply.

Why not? I think the Tellurian Western answer - and to a large extent the Japanese answer too - would be that Japanese culture is very specific and definite, while Western culture is “wide open”. Having exposed a person from a closed culture to the “outside world” it is hard for her to go back.

This of course raises the further question of whether the late-Tellurian West, with its very specific attitudes and ideologies - which are so unlike anything that has gone before them in any part of the world - is really less closed and definite than Japanese culture.

Clearly it sees itself as such and clearly most of the world sees it as it sees itself. The rest of the world does not necessarily value it as it values itself, but it accepts it for what it purports to be - that is a vast, transparent world rather than a closed system.

And so a Japanese person exposed to Western Culture feels that she has been exposed to “the outside world” and is affected by what she sees as a “wider reality”: while, say, an American exposed to an Asian culture feels she has been exposed to a little closed system, interesting in itself and perhaps attractive, but not “reality” to any but its inhabitants.

Why is this? In the first place because the whole world has adopted not only the technical and economic systems of the West but has accepted that they and their strengths are predicated upon their underlying Western ,rationalist ideology.

In the second place because the West currently has a monopoly of prestige - using that word in the special sense that Aristasian analysts use it - of a sort of hypnotic influence that comes with wealth and power, making the holder of it seem culturally right and eminently to be imitated. This prestige of the West has been such a huge factor in Asian thought for the past century and a half that if it should dissipate with the dissipation of Western military and economic dominance, the results would be unpredictable and vast. But that is quite another question.

Also, given the bonding of culture and language: clearly our Puran mistresses deployed Aristasia in the English-speaking world for a reason. At one time we believed that English and Westrenne were near-identical (which they may be). Is Aristasian culture nearer to that expressed by English or that expressed by Japanese, or something else again?

Has anyone any comments on any of these vague and tumbling thoughts?

Lady Aquila commented:

Vague and tumbling thoughts indeed, dear blonde - but so bursting with ideas and suggestions that it is hard to know where to start. Brilliancy firing off in all directions at once. How very chelanalan (blonde-like)!

Well, a few equally random thoughts from a brunette.

English-language deployment of Aristasia-in-Telluria likely came about because:

1. English is the nearest thing to an Universal Language in current Telluria.

2. English-speaking countries, being by far the most deracinated, have the most need of Aristasia.

3. Exile Aristasians coming to a culture with so little remaining rootedness or identity are much more able to preserve their own Aristasian inheritance.

4. Adoptive Aristasians have a much less rooted culture for their new alignment to clash with.

I am guessing, and there may be more, but all these reasons make sense.

All these but the first might well indicate that, while there are obvious reasons for choosing English-speaking culture, the inbuilt cultural values of the language, certainly in its current state, are not well-disposed to Aristasian culture.

On the other hand, English is the Rajasic West-Tellurian language par excellence and therefore certainly bears a parallel relationship to the Aristasian Rajasic lingua Franca, Westrenne: so much so that many believe the two to be near-identical.

Nonetheless contemporary English does contain assumptions of the rationalist-revolutionary mentality that has shaped it since the 17th century, and Aristasian speakers in English need quite a large additional vocabulary just to express specifically Aristasian concepts or Aristasian perspectives on things we find in Telluria. These include:

English words used in a special Aristasian sense, like blonde and brunette.

Raihiralan (Aristasian) words like chelana or Raihiralan itself.

Words from other Tellurian languages used to express concepts not found in English, like Rajasic or Hestia.

English phrases used to express Aristasian perspectives on Tellurian phenomena, such as Rationalist Revolution for “the Enlightenment”.

As you will notice, these additions to the language are so necessary to Aristasian discourse that examples of each type have already appeared in this post, and one never hears a conversation between Aristasians without encountering many of them.

Conversely, there are many English words and expressions that Aristasians do not use.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that many Aristasians in Telluria refer to the language they use as Westrenne, since even if it is not identical to Herthelan Westrenne (the Westrenne of Aristasia Pura), it is a language which begins by being a close parallel to it and has been further adapted into a Westrenne for Aristasian use.

On the question “Is Aristasian culture nearer to that expressed by English or that expressed by Japanese, or something else again?” an easy answer is to say that while English is somewhat parallel to Westrenne, Japanese is somewhat parallel to the non-Westrenne Raihiralan dialect of Novaria. However ther are many caveats one must add.

Raihiralan, and Estrenne language and culture, has much more influence on Westrenne culture than is the case with their Tellurian equivalents, and it is respected in the West as being “the Mother-Culture”. So the relationship between East and West, both historically and currently, is quite different.

Japanese is a language rich in protocol, respect and formality. English was much more so before the 20th century. Current Westrenne in, say, the Trentish Home Counties, falls between 19th-century English and modern (but not very untraditional) Japanese in terms of protocol, while the the “wild” Westrenne of the North (northern Quirinelle, Northern Vintesse and the northern tip of Trent) is more like the informal English of the first half of the 20th century, although the return to protocol is automatic on even slightly formal occasions.

For a girl brought up on late-Tellurian English, learning some Japanese or Chinese can be a very important cultural lesson, because it helps her to ingest some of the atmosphere of a more recently traditionally-based culture.

Interestingly, for an Aristasian girl in Telluria, it can have an effect rather similar to that of learning English upon a Japanese person. In other words it can help to loosen the apparent “universality” of the current West-Tellurian Weltanschauung and free her from the “box” of Pit thinking. It will not turn her into a Japanese girl, but it will release her from some of the mental constraints of her this-birth cultural conditioning and make it easier for her to be an Aristasian.

Sarah Newchurch commented:

It is, I think, true that language — being highly symbolic — profoundly affects one’s idea about reality and how one behaves in the world.

Language is not merely a set of phonetic utterances evolved from random vocalisations — despite such a claim by Darwinists — but is what binds the Maid to Dea, the physical to the spiritual.

Miss A L Trent writes in The Feminine Universe, “Modern people are apt to say that something is ‘only symbolic’ as if…it was devoid of power. In fact, symbols are the most potent effective forces in the world.” (p.111)

Sushuri Madonna responded:

I was discussing this very subject recently with dear Miss Lily.

Every Aristasian linguistics teacher in Telluria begins by explaining that there is a fundamental difference between the Tellurian Rationalist-Revolutionary and the Aristasian views of what language actually is.

The Tellurian “modernist” believes language to derive from the gradual elaboration of animal grunts and squeaks, while the Aristasian believes it to be the essence of the Primordial Word, which was first elaborated into the Tongue of Angels, then into the Primordial Human Language and gradually splintered and degenerated into the many languages we see today. Many would argue that one has only to compare the language of today with that of a hundred years ago to see that degeneration continues at a faster pace than ever before in history.

We were speaking of the curious changes in vowel-sounds that took place in similar ways in many European languages just about the time the societies were changing from Sattwic to Rajasic in orientation (during the 15th and 16th centuries). That these changes proceeded according to certain predictable laws has been known since the 19th century, but why this happened no Tellurian scholar has been able to determine.

An Aristasian, understanding that sounds and words are not mere arbitrary “signs” that could as well have been any others, will immediately see that sounds are intimately linked to the state of the soul (which is why sound figures so prominently in creation stories, and why the chanting of the Divine Names is so efficacious). Therefore when the group-soul undergoes profound changes in spiritual orientation, the sounds with which it expresses itself may also be expected to change suddenly.

It may be interesting here to note that British “Raihiralan” speech underwent the most radical sound-changes as a result of the Eclipse, and while on the surface these are easily explainable by the cult of proletarianisation, there is likely to be a deeper underlying cause.

Perhaps the use of pre-Eclipse British English by so many Aristasians has in itself a symbolic value which also played a role in the decision to deploy the first Exile Aristasians within the ambit of this language.

In any case there is an interesting piece about the Origins of Language
here. It has not been much mentioned, I think, so you may like to take a look.

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