Art Neo in Aristasia Pura Sunday, Feb 17 2008

Art Neo is often regarded as equivalent to Tellurian Art Deco, but it resembles only those parts
of Art Deco that are theatrical, feminine and sound. It also includes some elements of what
is usually termed Art Nouveau.
The term is also applied much
more broadly than Art Deco - for example, Trentish dance-band music is termed “Art-Neo music”.

Art Neo is considered as primarily the art of Novaria which has spread to other provinces: notably neighbouring Vintesse and Trent. Art Neo is not merely an aesthetic style but an applied aesthetic philosophy.

Art Neo in Telluria has been called a “blind aesthetic” because while it provides a counter to the aesthetics of deformism it, unlike them, has no underlying philosophy. It was a healthy aesthetic reaction against the Cult of Ugliness, but it was no more than an instinctive reflex.

In Aristasia, conversely, Art Neo is a deliberate and conscious attempt to adapt traditional aesthetic and spiritual values to the exigencies of a machine age. Art Neo, with its recurring solar motifs and uplifting quality, is a fully considered attempt to come to terms with the “problem of the machine” and bring a machine-dominated world into conformity with the eternal Principles of tradition.

This is possible because technics in Aristasia, rather than growing out of a revolutionary rationalist and anti-traditionalist movement (such as the 17th-century “Enlightenment” in Telluria) have always been seen as the legitimate, if in some respects distant, descendant of traditional Spirit-centred science.

As in Telluria, images and forms from traditional cultures play an important role in Art-Neo style. While in Telluria this is a mere “playing” with traditional forms, albeit frequently with an instinctive feeling for their remythologising depth, in Aristasia this is done with a conscious intention of maintaining and restoring links with tradition and keeping modern culture well-rooted in the sacred and nourishing Ancestral soil.

From Art Neo in the Encyclopaedia Aristasiana

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Tea and Angelic Music Thursday, Feb 14 2008

We had a nice impromptu meeting at the Embassy. The house had actually been locked up because of a security problem and nobody had a key. Fraulein Landgrebe and I were standing disconsolately outside the front door like Latchkey Kids sans latchkey (actually we weren’t disconsolate at all, we were having a lovely chat). When Miss Yatsenko popped along she had the intelligent idea (why didn’t we?) of adjourning to the lovely tea house on the roof.

Since we used to spend all our time in said tea house before the downstairs began to be furnished, I can’t imagine why I didn’t think thereof. But I then I am well known for being a well-known Chinese snack known as a Dim Shroom.

Then - joy of joys - my beloved Cousin, returned from Japan, was able to pop in and take tea with us.

Miss Yatsenko was talking fascinatingly to Fraulein Landgrebe about music. She is dreadfully expert in the mathematics of musical theory and listens to Bach with a pen and paper, analysing the creative mathematics. To a shroom who loves but cannot even read music, this was more than impressive.

Die Fraulein is a wonderful linguist and organiser, Miss Yatsenko clearly a musical sorceress, dear Yu-chei is far clever at Japanese than my poor smatterings, and so knowledgeable about Chinese as well as being an accomplished Vikhelic artist (and blonde too!) We are surrounded by such clever maidens, I feel more than ever like the family Dim Shroom.

Miss Fraulein quoted an atheist who said “There is no God, but if there were, Bach would be God”. Curiously - or perhaps not curiously - this is a wonderfully precise inversion of the truth, for “God geometrises always” as Plato said. Mathematics, as Sai Hermya taught (the very ancient one - not Hermya of Rayapurh), and as the Tellurian Pythagoreans knew, is the very basis of the universe in a way far different from that imagined by modern physics (although the mathematical approach of modern physics perhaps stands to traditional cosmology in the relation of a peasant pidgin to a high sacred language long forgotten).

I too love Bach and much other music, and though I cannot analyse it (I should love to learn) I somehow feel its relation to the Music of the Spheres. I spoke to a wise Ranya once about whether it was meet for a child of the Motherland (even in exile) so to adore the works of the Outlander, and she said “Why, my child, do you suppose it is called music? Because, where it is true and pure it is written directly by the Muse, through the hand of whomever she chooses.”

So I feel truly that in Bach I am listening not to the music of a mascul, but of the Angels.

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Love and Friendship Sunday, Jan 6 2008

The quotation is from a gentleman (the famous biographer of Dr. Johnson), but is it not the most perfect statement of Amity that one has seen in Telluria for a long time?

The word love in the post-Freudian patriarchy of the Tellurian West seems exclusively reserved for parents and children, spouses and fornicators (this confinement of love to purely biological bonds is, of course, closely connected with the popular-Darwinist “animal thesis” of the modernist mythos). The idea of friendship as being a thing so important as to reach the depth and height of love - so common to all traditional and even semi-traditional peoples - seems almost entirely lost.

Thank Dea we still have it in Aristasia.

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The Feminine Universe Monday, Sep 17 2007

The Feminine Universe by Alice Mary Trent is the first systematic exposition of the Perennial Wisdom. It is an attempt to express in the clearest possible terms and in the smallest possible space the Primordial Philosophy accepted and understood in all times and in all places before the aberrations of the modern world. It gives this philosophy in its feminine form - that being the earliest known on this earth.

Ananda Coomaraswamy described traditional societies as “unanimous societies”: that is societies not fragmented by conflicting factions and opinions, but united by a single, essential Truth. And this unanimity exists - though often unrecognised—not only within all traditional societies, from the red Indian medicine lodge to the Chinese temple, from the Siberian shaman to the Indian guru, from the Platonic West to the Confucian East, but between all traditional societies. Each one is founded upon the same essential, unchanging truths, even though they may express these truths in superficially different ways. Each one is a unique expresion of the Sophia Perennis, the primordial, changeless and eternal wisdom that is the common heritage of all humanity.

While many books have been written about this Primordial Tradition, this is the first one to expound it systematically in its salient features. That alone would make it a book of the greatest significance, but, within an extraordinarily short space, this book does much more than that. It also discusses the essentially feminine nature of the earliest traditions and shows the importance of this in the development of the historical cycle and its special relevance to the developments of the last few decades.

Writers such as René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy have expounded the Sophia Perennis in many volumes. They have done so from a purely metaphysical and Traditional perspective (which is necessarily the highest and truest). While this book certainly expounds metaphysical Truth. which is indeed its very core, it also examines the consequences and ramifications of traditional thought from a lower, more ‘human’ perspective. It takes a fresh look at post-Enlightenment culture, analysing both its faults and its virtues, and shows how, even up to the earlier 20th century, the Traditional spirit remained vital in the aesthetic and cultural life of the Western world. What is necessary is to distinguish between those ‘modern’ developments that are legitimate Final Fruits and those which are truly malignant aberrations.

In the light of this, the book examines phenomena which Guénon and Coomaraswamy did not live to see and comment on: the cultural collapse of the 1960s with its complete inversion of normal values, and most terrible of all, the destruction of femininity and the creation of an unbalanced world in which the Masculine Principle has come to dominate the culture absolutely, extirpating femininity even from the heart of woman herself. This book explains the traditional value of femininity and its essential superiority. It exposes the modern attack on femininity and the absurd doctrine that this cosmic Reality is the result of ’social conditioning’. It shows how what is being lost by the totalitarian imposition of an all-masculine culture is something of immeasurable importance to our spiritual health and our very survival.

The Feminine Universe, a 128-page paperback, can now be bought via PayPal for $19.99 (approximately £10) including postage. See The Ancient Wisdom

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What is A Fountain of Youth? Thursday, Aug 16 2007

Susan asked:

I notice Justine has just bought our Mistress of Ceremonies a Fountain of Youth. I am tempted to try one myself, but - yes, I’ll bite - what is a Fountain of Youth?

The reply came:

You cannot bite it, dear Susan, you must drink it. The Fountain of Youth owes its name to a Trentish song entitled “The Babes in the Wood”, which tells the story of two destitute blonde orphans in the wood, who were rescued and given all sorts of delightful things such as:

Too many cars, too many clothes,
Too many parties and too many beaux.

[Textual critics surmise that beau is a synonym for a brunette] until in the end:

The whole town agreed
That the last word in speed
Was the two little babes in the wood.

Well, on their way to this fate-better-than-death, the babes make an historic discovery which is crystallised for posterity in the immortal lines:

And they found that the Fountain of Youth
Was a mixture of gin and vermouth.

And so it is. The blonde versh involves equal parts of gin, vermouth and sugar syrup, ’cause blondes like them sweet. Incidentally, the text, you will note, seems to imply a rather odd pronunciation of the word vermouth. I don’t know how you pettes pronounce it, but here in Yvyanne it is generally pronounced VARm’th (with the accent on the first silly).

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Angela Brazil Wednesday, Jul 11 2007

Miss Beaumarsh wrote:

Whilst taking a gentle stroll in Elektraspace, I found references to several of Miss Angela Brazil’s wonderful school novels — with examples of their lovely covers. I hope to share more of them with you in due course, but I thought I’d start with this one, as I have an older sister of the same name, who was born, and lives in Vintesse. Pip Pip, Kitty I hope you enjoy this!

Unfortunately these marvelous stories have been out of print for quite some time, but one can occasionally find up-to-date, second-hand copies in the right shops, and also in Elektraspace- but it is worth looking around to note variations in prices, as some naughty booksellers have them at jolly unreasonable prices. Quelle swindle!

Anyway I’m sounding quite brunette with all this talk of bargaining! I’ll leave you blondes to admire the pretty cover illustration!

Later:
I thought I’d add another jolly book cover, dedicated to my younger sister Eve this time! Any of you Avendale pupils (or Mistresses!) who have had the good fortune to meet this delightful young lady (cough cough!) may see why it is appropriate! I must explain, she is a rather lively, robust brunette whom I have had some difficulty in disciplining. Perhaps I should send her back to Avendale to become reaccquainted with the venerable Misses Serelique and Wardelle.

Miss Gillian commented:

Up-to-date schoolgirl books are in some ways as near to paradisial as Telluria gets. They present an all-female world, and especially in the gentler ones (like those of Miss Angela Brazil), a very sweet, loving world motivated largely by kindness and good will.

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Duality and Vintesse Sunday, Jul 8 2007

Vintesse is the Aristasian province asssociated with jinky music, Art Neo and “Pippsies” (bright young things). Its tutelary spirit is Sai Candre, the angel of the moon.

The flag of Vintesse has a horizontally divided field, half yellow, half blue. The charge is a lunar crescent with the points upward in the colours of the field counterchanged.

The themes of this flag are clearly lunarity and duality. We have an image of the sublunary world where all things are in a state of flux and change and where things are seen with the two eyes of lunar reason rather than the single eye of Solar Intellect; thus all is divided into dark and light, yin and yang, meli and chela (”brunette” and “blonde” sexes).

In her highest aspect, Sai Candrë, the Moon is called the Great Priestess and is the ruler of earthly priestesses and the type of Our Lady as Priestess of the World; for the Moon stands between earth and Heaven, mediating Heaven to earth and Earth to Heaven. This is precisely the function shown in this image, with the Moon appearing suffused with Heaven’s golden light on the field of earth and with earth’s darkness on the field of Heaven. She is the Mediatrix who stands between Dea and maid, being both Dea and maid. She is the Bridge Who leads from earth to Heaven, and the Barque of Swift Crossing (the resemblance of the horned moon to a boat is another minor aspect of its symbolism).

Thus the flag of Vintesse speaks both of the inherent duality of the world and the resolution of that duality by the mediated Light of Heaven.

Stylistically, the counterchanged image, with its perfect line and curves, represents the quintessence of Art Neo — Vintesse being the home of Art Neo par excellence — but counterchanging is also a very traditional heraldic technique, reminding us once again that true Art Neo is simply the application of traditional form within a new milieu. Once again, the resolution of duality — in this case of the apparent duality between the “modern” and the traditional — forms the theme of the Vintesse flag; just as this very resolution is the whole purpose of Westrenne Aristasia in general and of Vintesse in particular.

From The Nine Flags of Aristasia

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Once upon a Time Monday, Jun 25 2007

Miss Victoria Mayhew commented:
Here in Vintesse, as in all Aristasia Pura, we do constantly strive for the higher realm. I think here we are closer to the realm of the Idea - logos, if some of the ladies here prefer that term - than the inhabitants of Telluria are. Having lived for a little while in Telluria
with my cousin Sarah, I cannot help but make that observation. However, I fear that we fortunate maids of Aristasia are still trapped in the cave, watching shadows dance on the wall.

In the Golden Age, we were in the realm of the Ideal, were we not? Then came the Silver Age of Heroines; what we might think of as “once upon a time.” Some parts of the Far  East are surely still thus, although I have never travelled that far and know of no maids from those reaches. My theory is that Aristasia Pura corresponds to the Age of Bronze, when things are still sound although not quite heroic…but Telluria is in the Age of Lead, and is fundamentally shaky and corrupt, in much need of a cleansing and a tearing down for rebuilding. The Wheel turns; all things pass, even the horrors of the Pit.

Miss Alice Trent answered:
Thank you, Miss Mayhew, for your very pertinent comments - as you suggest, phrases like “once upon a time” indicate that a story (normally a traditional fairy tale) is set in “that time”, or “nowever” - in the time that transcends time, but which also may for us be represented by earlier and purer Ages.

Aristasia’s Iron Age is no doubt nearer to the Bronze Age in Telluria, though such things as the development of individualism indicate that it is indeed an Iron Age. Maids in the East do have a mentality closer to that of earlier Ages and are less affected by the changes of the Iron Age which are most typified in the West, which, being the Land of the Setting Sun, will always tend to come into its own in the last Age.

Where Eastern people accept the sovereignty of the West, it is not because they believe that the ways of the West are inherently superior, but because they acknowledge that the time of the West has come and that its sovereignty is a symbolic necessity for this age - a concession more easily granted since the West in Aristasia makes no attempt to interfere with the ways of the East.

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Good Fences, Good Neighbors Thursday, Jun 21 2007

Miss Amy recommends Kadoria:
The other day, after a full morning, I enjoyed the simple luxury of reading a real magazine from Kadoria (or rather, the Tellurian Kadoria, the 1940s). If you’ve never had the pleasure of reading a real magazine, I would strongly encourage you
to make this effort. For in real magazines, one finds affirmation of goodness, order, beauty, and truth, affirmation and acceptance of these things as normal, and as virtues one should aspire to. After copying down a recipe or two and noting the latest in fashions and hairstyles, I read a touching letter to the editor. A reader had written to discuss how good fences make good neighbors: because it is over a fence that a borrowed cup of sugar passes, and it is over a fence that two friends talk about Little Suzie’s latest violin recital or how best to soothe the new baby’s colic. And it is over a fence that appreciative comments are made on each other’s gardens, and hints are shared about how to economize and make a comfortable home on a family’s limited income. If you have a deep longing for real neighbors, just as I do, I invite you to move to Kadoria and buy a little tract home right next to the one we are going to purchase. There is a perfect white picket fence that separates our houses. You can comment on my tulips just about to bloom, and I’ll compliment your lovely jonquils. When the little ones are asleep, we’ll chat about everything imaginable: how to keep our homes in spit-spot shape the most efficient way possible (have you heard about that astonishing machine that actually washes dishes!), and how to cope with the occasional tantrums of those toddlers we each have. Here, where we will live, in a loving neighborhood that respects goodness and honesty and cleanliness, life is quite lovely; quite lovely indeed. And remember, new neighbor of mine, that a well-run home does not end at the front and back doors; it shines in the face of the clean, well-mannered child living therein, and it blossoms in the heart of that Brunette Mummy, eager to return to the sanctuary of her home after working so hard at the office.

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Matriarchy, Patriarchy and Femininity Friday, Jun 1 2007

A typical comment of the modern mind upon ‘matriarchy’ is to say that it must only have been patriarchy the other way round, But such is very far from being the case… Femininity has very definite characteristics that are a part of the metaphysical nature of things. To say, for example, that if men are considered the active, forceful, even violent sex under patriarchy, women must have been considered the same way under matriarchy, is founded on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of femininity, both in its metaphysical essence and in its biological reflection on earth.

In a ‘matriarchal’ or we had rather say, a feminine society, women as the leading and most revered sex, are revered precisely for their feminine qualities, which do not change whether in feminine or masculine societies. They are always the ‘passive’ sex in the sense of being the one less oriented to outward activity, and in this, in feminine societies, they are assimilated to the Principle itself, which causes motion without itself moving. This is not to say that women did nothing, either in feminine or patriarchal societies, but that symbolically the qualities of serenity, peace and contemplation are considered superior to dynamic outward activity, Or rather, the latter is said to depend upon and be always subordinate to the former.

This, indeed, is understood even in patriarchal societies, where, for example, in the Hindu Tantrik tradition the male principle (the god or deva) is considered to be the superior and therefore the serene, unmoving principle, while his female counterpart (or shakti) is his outward activity or energy. This is rather curious according to most later patriarchal thinking about the nature of femininity, just as it was to matriarchal thinking. But the reversal was necessary in order to preserve metaphysical truth and patriarchal doctrine at the same time. In Tibet, which remains closer to the original matriarchal tradition (polyandry was until recently practised there), the position is reversed — that is to say, normal — and the serene Deity is female while her shakti or outward energy is male. Similarly, in Tibet, in the case of the complementary principles of Wisdom and Method — representing the Essential or Spiritual principle and the substantial or material respectively —Wisdom is female and Method male.

The Hindu Tantrik tradition notwithstanding, in general patriarchy has not attempted to alter the relative qualities of masculinity and femininity. Rather it has re-valued them in metaphysical terms, associating feminine serenity with the passivity of matter and male activity with the relatively ‘active’ power of the in-forming Spirit or Essence. And, insofar as patriarchy is a legitimate tradition, albeit one belonging purely to the inferior state of the Iron Age, this can be accepted as one of the permissible permutations of the expression of Truth.

Nonetheless, throughout the patriarchal period, the feminine continually shines through in its true glory, despite all ideological opposition. From the great Goddesses of various traditions, who so often overwhelm their appointed Gods in the hearts and souls of the people, to the Blessed Virgin Mary who rapidly adopts the titles of supreme Deity — Seat of Wisdom, Rose of the World, Queen of Heaven.

From The Feminine Universe

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