Passing Moments
You don’t expect in this day and age for something significant to happen in Life and not have it blogged about right? I suppose with different generations and different mediums of expression, one will have different means of expression and venting emotions.
Things happened so fast, it almost feels unfair or disrespectful. Just a few days ago my Great Grandfather was bored at home and had asked his daughter – whom we call grandmother even though she is only 50 – that he wanted to visit one of our houses to hang out with the other old folks. So in the morning the grandmother and he went in her car. She opens the door for him and helps him sit down since he is 89 years old. She walks over to her seat and tells her father to put on his seat belt, but notices that his head his slumped as if he fell asleep. She tells him a little louder to put his seat belt on and looks closer.
Next thing I know my mom screams out at me and my cousins at the house: “Oh dear god, your people’s Great Grandfather is dying in the hospital!” All of a sudden the funeral is on the 13th. Your just left in total shock at the speed it all unfolded. Even though when it was happening it was painfully slow.
There was hardly any time to react. I was there in the room with the grandmother after that day for most of the time and his heart was beating fine, he was warm and red in color, the doctors told us that they can fix him. He was just rejecting his food which went down a tube, and they said to us all that they’ll see in 7 days if he continues to reject the food, because then they’d have to cut his throat and stomach open and he’d have to eat that way. But he should be fine they said.
That decision of cutting Great Grandpa open at that passing moment was the grandmother’s biggest trouble. She had to soon make the choice to let the doctors go ahead and cut his throat and stomach. She consulted her siblings and the entire family because she was at a loss of ideas and opinions. Because another person’s Life – her own father’s Life – was resting on her decision.
She was crying about this at my mom, when it was just her, mom, me and a few others. She was telling my mom that she doesn’t know what to do. She had asked everybody and everybody told her a different thing to do and got angry at her for not agreeing with them. In the room my mom said something that really hit me inside deep even though this had nothing to do with me. She said: “Forget about all of them. If you go to 10 different people you’ll get 10 different answers and 10 different people angry at you for not doing things their way! He’s your dad. It’s your father’s Life and yours not theirs or anybodies. Nobody besides you and your own siblings have any right to interject their opinions and judgment.”
I didn’t interpret what my mom said to be related to the actual situation though. What she said made me realize that what she said was truth in many other aspects of Life. The things that I believe, my religion, my way of life, my sexuality, my hair style, everything. I will never be able to make everyone happy and approve of me and what I do with my self and Life. Everyone in someway is going to have their stupid opinions, beliefs. And everyone is going to be asshurt in someway. Might as well focus on my own self and Life and ignore what others will say.
Letting Great Grandpa go was both easy and hard. Hard because he’s your great grandfather, and not a distant one in that one hardly sees him, because he’s a fixture in my life. He’s been in the family and in my field of awareness ever since I came into the world. This is the first time he’s gone. Letting him go was also easy, because of his age, and an understanding inside that he has lived a very long and fruitful Life, and that it was just his “Time” to go. Letting go of someone my mother’s age, or one of my cousins would be entirely different and near impossible to do without emotional and psychological trauma. Because you know inside that they haven’t lived their Life in full yet.
Death Before Dishonour
The Great Grandfather is/was not blood related to us. His wife is. My birth grandmother’s mother and his Wife were blood sisters who had the Thai background. Great Grandfather is actually not really closely related to me in English/American familial terms. He was just somebody who married the Great Grandmother. But in our culture and family, he is as close to me and as in my Life as my own grandfather who died during the revolution.
My birth grandmother hated him. My grandmother is going through her own pathei-mathos right now because of his death. And we all know it too. My grandmother disowned him for a very long time and never went to go visit him for at least 15 years. She never ever tells us why. If we ask, she gets very upset and tells us to not speak about such things any further because we have to just respect our elder’s private matters of that sort and not badger about it.
My other elders gossip a lot. And when you come from a family as big as mine, there is plenty to gossip about. I asked a grandfather once why my own grandmother did not like the Great Grandfather. And this grandfather told me that my own grandmother is not a violent person and hates anybody that hits their children. And he said that this Great Grandfather is known across the old province for being greatly violent, authoritarian, and abusive with his own children. That he is known for beating the living daylights out of them over their education and school work. Everybody was afraid of this Great Grandfather. And so all my own grandmother could do was cry for how her nieces and nephews were beat and disown the Great Grandfather.
Later I got to question Great Grandfather’s children, because they come to our house often to hang out with my aunts and uncles who are their age and generation. One of his sons, who is only about 20 years older then me, told me about his life with Great Grandfather. This grandfather – what we call him despite his young age – said that his father [Great Grandfather] has a short temper and because he worked hard in life to become the politician and statesman that he was, he became obsessed with inculcating that same level of striving in him and his siblings onto his chldren. He told me that during his high schools years the Great Grandfather would scream and beat him silly over the most smallest homework problems he got wrong. That they’d get beat until they bled.
I was thinking to myself – at that young and ignorant age – when I heard this that if that were my dad that did that to me, I’d hate him and run away or call the police and put him in jail. I wouldn’t put up with it. I won’t care if I tear the whole family apart and hurt my mother’s feeling because I put my dad in jail for abusing me. If that were me. Nobody has ever raised a voice at me in my family though.
I can be proud to say and know that my Great Grandfather passed away in the presence of all of his family and blood relations and every person he sired. Never in his 89 years of human Life has anyone of us, or his children left him or threw him away in some old folks home. Which is a little weird to me considering how he treated his own children.
Before this moment; a while back after I grew up; I went to ask Great Grandfather’s son about his feeling for his father again. This time the grandfather [his son] was in his 40′s. He was married with children of his own; and he was very successful in his profession in life. He is a lawyer.
I asked the now very grown grandfather if he still hated his father, how he felt about his father, and if he would change anything if he could go back in time. The grandfather was silent for a long moment and shook his head. And he said to me something like: The way we see things in Life as we get older changes Chloe. I felt very bad towards him when I was younger, but now that I am a father myself, I understand what was going on in my own father’s heart when he raised me. We all want the best for our children. In that, I cannot condemn my father and I do not hate him for loving me to such an extent. All I can say now in my current state of mind as a father myself is that I disagree with the methods he used with me. And that’s all. Otherwise he is my father, and he gave me Life and if it weren’t for him and he pushing me to go beyond my abilities as a boy, I would not be the person I am today. What happened in the past is over for me. It’s just our culture and way of life to pay our honour to our parents.
Great Grandpa lived his whole human Life with his children, and grandchildren, and us. He lived with them in one of their houses. Moving from one house to another one year to the next, just like how us cousins do it. Even though in the past he may have been abusive to his own children, they never abandoned him or stopped loving and honouring him. They loved him and cared for him until he finally passed.
Sitting there quietly in the hospital room I saw with my own eyes that those children of his who in their youth hated him the most and were the most abused, cried the hardest and loudest and longest. Especially his sons, who never in their Life yelled at their father or disrespected him in any way, even though he was very unkind in his method of punishment. I can only imagine right now what is going on in my own grandmother’s heart, since she now realizes that she has let so many years of silence pass by between them without forgiving him, when his own children forgave him long ago. I saw my grandmother in the hospital room the day he opened his eyes for a short while cry and ask Great Grandfather to forgive her for what distance she caused between them and the family.
I suppose I am dwelling on this honour idea because of my East and West life that I live and exist in or am aware of. In one world, it seems that Honour is so natural that it needs not even be a spoken word at all for it to be lived and expressed in our deeds, actions, thoughts, and feeling for each other. And then in the Western world I am in, it seems as if one can write out the word Honour and scream its meaning as loud as you can, and nobody seems to understand what the essence is or how to live it or what it’s good for. You can write a thousand pages about Honour, and all it would be to them is an interesting concept, perhaps worth debating for its merit at best.
It’s said that you know who your real friends are in tough times, because your drinking buddies will ditch you in your time of trial and hardship. Those that remain by your side, are those that love you truly unconditionally. And the same applies to our ideas, philosophies, religions, and politics. In such moments of sadness and darkness; such moments of emotional confusion and exhaustion, our “drinking buddy” ideas, religions, and ideologies ditches us and fails to mean anything significant. What is left by our side is our genuine thought-companions that truly are a reflection of who and what we are inside. I bring up Honour in such a moment in my own life, because at this moment I do think of the simple concept of Honour in the ONA, Reichsfolk, and the Numinous Way. The furthest thing from mind and heart right now is some satan, some god, some this path or that path. What remains with me at this passing moment are the simple concepts or principles of my own culture, which are also found in that Myattian Triad. Whatever we call it as Dreccs: Honour, Empathy, Clan. Sometimes such concepts comes natural for us in such a way that they don’t even need to be words or ideas. For others, these things are principles; axioms; beliefs, etc. Things to be debated for their merit. What merit are you talking about since as a people, you have never lived Honour or Empathy to see their fruits of merit?
Pathei-Mathos
The Greek words in the Myattian Triad according to DM means something like Learning From Suffering and Adversity and Direct Experience. I don’t think anything in life causes more suffering, and is more adversarial to life than Death and the emotional and psychological trial and tribulation the Death of a loved one brings for one to face and confront.
If death teaches us anything, it’s not the death itself. I was there looking at his face in disbelief for some days and I didn’t experience some satori or satanic gnosis. It’s like hearing a piece of music. You don’t realize its essence or how beautiful it is/was until the last note. Then you sit back and replay the music in your mind quickly again, which is when your fully realize the Essence and Beauty of what you had just heard. The same goes for poetry. It’s in that deep reflective space of Mind that the Essence Unfolds.
What simple “lessons” death teaches happens in the same way. It’s not until the very last note falls, and the drifting off into that reflective space of Mind, and the replay of past events you shared with this dying or passed person that the Gnosis Unravels for you. Not as an intellectual phenomenon; but as something beyond the function and apparatus of intelligence.
I was crying during one of those days in the hospital. Not over Great Grandfather’s condition anymore since I had cried my eyes dry over that already. I think we all did by then. But I felt very sad and bad over a guilty feeling.
Just about three weeks ago from today, I had to wake up early at dawn before the sun came up at grandma’s house with a few other cousins. Great Grandfather and his daughter – whom we call grandmother – were coming to pick us up to work on his “orchard.” I was upset that day because I had to wake up in the middle of the morning to go work out in the middle of a field out in the middle of nowhere because Great Grandpa hand picked us to go with him.
Great Grandpa spent all his money he saved during his life and he bought these many tracks of land up near Palmdale. An acre is about $5000 or so, and he bought many acres to make an orchard of different fruit trees. This land is so big it includes two little hills with huge boulders. But its all dirt. Just desert and desert shrubs. It is so out in the middle of nowhere there are no telephone poles, no electricity, no water pipes, no nothing. You have to literally drive an hour to the nearest village of 20 people and a gas station made of wood with rusty old cars for a restroom! I didn’t think such a place even existed in America; but then again I was born and raised in a big city.
That day he had put the uncles to work to build these structures that collected rain water in these giant blue bin things. So there would be water to water the plants. The aunts they were digging holes in the ground and planting the saplings. So that day he was half complaining and half dictating to us cousins that the bad wild rabbits were coming at night and nibbling all of his little saplings and there were all of these little plants that got their shoots eaten up. So he wanted us to cut up chicken coup wiring he had brought to make these little round fences around every single sapling. We did it. What can you say really. It was hot. It was in a desert. It was in the middle of nowhere. I got angry and I was thinking to myself: “Dammit Great Grampa, who makes an orchard out in the middle of a dry desert where there are wild rabbits?! I can think of so many places to be at right now, and the middle of nowhere is not one of them!” The little orange tree saplings had these thorns that were scratching my hands as I was putting those fences around them.
And we couldn’t leave until Great Grandpa was tired and ready to go home. At lunch break I was drinking water with some cousins and and the grandmother, and I looked at grandmother and jokingly said to her: “God look at him grandmother, he’s still lugging that lumber around! We’re never going home. And he’s 89 years old!” And the grandmother said back laughing: “Yes, amazing. I hope I’ll be as strong as he is when I get that old!”
Finally, after a few hours Great Grandpa he was looking around, inspecting every minor detail, to see if everything was to his liking. Then he nods in approval and said: “Okay, good. Let’s go home now.”
I was sitting with him and grandmother in the SUV we came in with a few others. I had Great Grandpa right next to me in the back seat to my left. He had already fallen asleep as he was tired and worked all day. His children drive him out to his orchard every other day to keep him busy and happy; and to keep his mind off of Great Grandmother. It’s a three hour drive, but over 4 hours if old people are driving.
His Wife – our Great Grandmother – is bed ridden. She has been like that for as long as I can remember her, which is over 15 years. Great Grandmother is blind, she can’t speak anymore or move her limbs. Before when they were living together Great Grandpa would nurse and serve our Great Grandmother all day. But he was becoming depressed from seeing her in that condition. So to help him not be depressed and healthy his children had to make the very tough decision of splitting Great Grandpa up from Great Grandma into two different houses. Strangest thing is, our Great Grandmother is 80 something years old, but she does not have a single grey hair on her head.
In the SUV on the the long and slow way home, the Great Grandpa woke up from his nap. He had been resting his head on my shoulder. I gave him some water. He finishes drinking and he says quietly to me, in English, since the other cousins were napping: “You know, Great Grandfather is very old. I think too much about my children and all of you now. I don’t want to go and see everybody fight each other for money. I love all of you. I work my whole life for all of you. So I had the idea to spend all my money to buy all that land, so when I die soon, you can share it together and be happy. Promise me you won’t fight each other and everybody will live together.”
Before, I could answer him or promise, the grandmother got upset and yelled at him saying: “Father, just stop talking and go back to sleep. I don’t want to hear about such things! You have many years to go.” And the Great Grandfather got angry and said back: “Is it not true! I’m old. I’m dying soon. I tell no lie to my Great Granddaughter. It’s human. You can’t pretend we don’t die. I want her to know what I did and what I left behind for her and everyone. So when I die, she’ll know that I lived my life for everyone and take nothing with me.” I promised him, and the other cousins gave him a massage and told him to go back to sleep, and he did. The rest of the ride home was in an awkward yet solemn silence. That was the last event me and Great Grandpa ever shared. And actually the last significant words he ever would say to me. Being as young as I am, we are busy with so many things – or so we make ourselves to be – that the family we take for granted is not as fun to be around as friends.
We all know that it’s not over. We’re all taking an emotional break for the next few rounds. This funeral needs to be planned. People need to be called. Yada yada. In the back of our minds we dread the next major fight: Great Grandmother.
I unfortunately, when I first heard that Great Grandpa was in the hospital and in grave condition, said to my mom in horror: “Oh no, that means Great Grandma is leaving too. The old people say they die in pairs.” It’s a cultural belief or something in our culture because we are around our elders and take care of them until they die. It’s said that when one of an old couple who has lived together for so long dies, the other one soon follows. My mom told grandmother about this – or reminded her of it – and a sad look came across her face and she said quietly to herself: “It’s true. So I heard also.” Now the whole family is in this pensive state. As I mentioned earlier our Great Grandmother is bed ridden, blind, can’t speak loudly anymore, and can’t move her limbs. We also separated them into two different houses. Nobody has yet told our Great Grandmother that Great Grandfather has passed away.
Nobody was really expecting him to pass away. He was perfectly fine and active only weeks ago. He wasn’t sick, he wasn’t tired, or anything. So nobody wanted to tell the Great Grandmother that her husband was in the hospital, so as not to upset her. Now all of a sudden Great Grandpa has passed, when the doctors said he was going to be okay.
I grew up seeing my aunts and uncles take care of the Great Grandmother. Then I grew up taking care of her as well. She lives in one of our houses, and we have to fully care for her in ever way. We have to cook soup and special mooshy food for her to eat, bathe her, change her clothes, massage her, and also wash her after she has gone to the restroom. It’s a literal serving and service. But she isn’t the only elder I have taken care of and this death of a loved one isn’t the first time for me, or us. In my young life of only twenty some years, I have spent a good part of it nursing three old people and I have seen them all die in front of me either at home or watched them die in the hospital. None of the elders I served, feed, bathed, changed their diapers, took care of until death in English/American terms were “family” and I didn’t get paid. Most often it also meant sleeping by their side at night to make sure they were okay during the night. But, when you are raised up inside such a culture and way of life, you are never consciously aware that it may be a wrong way of life nor question it.
I have my own birth grandmother to think about now. She is 80 years old. Still strong and walking. Incredibly my own grandmother still cooks breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her children she lives with; and for the cousins and me. She’ll get upset if you touch her kitchen and cook. She also tends her garden in the back yard and feeds her pond of koi fish. So the serving and service is mutual. She spends her whole life as a mother and grandmother serving her children and grandchildren. And we all know that in turn, we must one day return that sacred favour of serving her to a peaceful end.
I have a little 10 year old cousin I wrote about a year ago maybe who lives with her mother and our grandmother. Her mom and dad met each other during their college years. Her dad’s family had wanted to marry one of their children to one of my grandmother’s children forever. So after their college years they got married. One day my little cousins dad and his family put their elderly parents into a nursing home.
As soon as my cousin’s mom [my aunt] heard this, she called our entire side of the family to inform us. My uncles and grandmother got very upset at this aunts husband and siblings. My grandmother in a fit of rage said that they were barbaric and had the instinct of an animal and that they were not fit to be considered human to throw their parents away like that. My aunt divorced this man; and told him that he can visit their daughter, but he cannot raise herin such a inhuman culture as his, because she doesn’t want her daughter growing up like them.
My little cousin from time to time is taken by her father to see her other grandmother at the nursing home. Every time she comes back she cries her eyes out for hours. Because even though she is very young, and even though we don’t teach her our culture; she knows, sees, and feels the difference. She knows the way our grandmother lives – surrounded by us all - makes her happy. And she knows that her other grandmother is alone. She doesn’t have to be taught which way she will grow up living.
I think all of this put together is the unspoken and painful lesson of Death; for those of us unfortunate enough to be intimately exposed to it. It is the same lesson my cousin learned painfully on her own terms from Life. Nobody has to speak it to her in words to tell her that it is our culture and way to care for each other and to serve one another; each serving the other in their proper time and season.
It’s the same lesson I learn painfully. Like when I was in high school and I had to go to school, come home, do my home work, then take care of my baby cousins and my elders. Like when I was going to college balancing my mere 24 hours with my school, my home work, my friends, my family, and serving my elders. Scrounging what little time I have left for myself. It;s the same lesson I learned in that SUV hearing Great Grandpa tell me his last lesson, of how he lived for others he loved, and will die with nothing. Empty as he came.
It is a hard lesson to put into words, what Death teaches the Living. It is a simple lesson, best not even put into words. Because when you do, the ignorant can take it apart and debate it for some merit or worth or for some religious or philosophical “truth” to it. But I’ll share it anyways as best as I can in words for whatever cousin and people I know who have seen and had the sacred opportunity to watch a human they love die.
Death teaches us only to mind our actions and it casts our eyes’ gaze on what truly matters: the Living. Going through a Death of a loved one forces us to understand that what we see is our human fate. We are all going to die. And so, genuinely realizing that, our eyes are brought from its wandering state to focus on those that matter to you in Life. When our eyes have been put in its right place, we mind our actions and focus such actions and deeds to and for others. And if you truly learn that lesson, and if you divide your Time up to serve those you love, think about your blood, people, and kin, give time to your intimate friends and self; you come to understand that everything else outside that circle of love, honour, and service is trivial.
Ask me – especially now – if I give a care about politics, about immigration, about 11 million undocumented somebodies, about what some group of republicans or conservatives or nazis are doing; about how gay people in some state are whining about getting married; about gay people crying to be in the military; about what religion is the truth; etc. I don’t give a shit about those things. I’m too busy giving a shit about myself and my people. I got an entire clan I’m connected to. The young and the old. That’s were my eyes and heart is looking. But I can understand how the average individuated Westerner in America – without a functioning family – with only himself and his ego to worry about can make such a big deal about other people’s lives “out there.” To care about about what color the presidents skin in; where he was really born; how bad Muslims suck; why the hell we gotta kick 11 million Mexicans out because their presents in this country is somehow a personally issue affecting their private lives. I can understand why the common mundane can make it such a big deal what gay men do in the privacy of their own homes; what people worship and believe in the privacy of their own minds. Because if you didn’t care about such outside matters so beyond your sphere of life; what the hell do they have left to mind?
But it’s a good question though: What do we each do with our Life and Time; and ultimately for Whom in the end? You can tell if the person answering this question is a product of Magian Ethos and Magian Weltanschauung; from a person who came into existence in a living, ancient, human tradition; by the direction their eyes and mind and actions is focused. Outward or inward. Inward on Blood and Kin; or outward to random people? People who have no Connexion to and Honour for Blood, Kin, and Progeny have no real need to occupy their mundane minds with such things. There time is best spent doing what? You tell me. Who do you Serve in the end: your Blood; your religion; your political party; a corporation; or the State? Is it any wonder that in countries where people live together in big families and tight groups of friends who care for their elders and see them die and such people don’t give a shit about the same issues a mundane Westerner who shuns Death and locks it up away out of sight and mind? But like I said somewhere earlier, these things are learned painfully, if we are ever fortunate to have Death as our teacher. Death is the greatest Adversary of Life and the Living. What it teaches is simple and human: Who do we Live for?
Blood & Honour
It’s unfortunate – and revealing – that in the Western World, Blood and Honour, as a living human expression can only be found in poor neighborhoods where gang culture dominates; or in the upper strata of well bred white America. Otherwise, all of everyone in between those two extreme poles of Western social order seem to treat the concept of Blood and Honour as a disgusting disease to be absolutely avoided, lest their independence and individualism be lost. Serving and Honouring Kinfolk to these mundane barbarians is a diseaseful act; but spending your life as an individualized automaton serving an abstract State or a Corporation or some theoretical ideology to these people is the very meaning of their hubris lives.
But beyond the ailing West, many, many humans still live as they have always lived: for Blood & Honour. Which includes my own people and family. And to people like us still connected to our Humanness, our Folk, and Roots, this concept of Blood & Honour needs no words to articulate. I don’t need a doctrine or guru to tell me that my blood relations, my kinfolk, and my intimate associates are the only ones that will love me genuinely and who will care for me in time of need. I don’t need a religion or speculative dogma or theoretical ideology to tell me of the merits of Honouring my Elders, my Roots, my Folk. Like my little cousin; I learn about Blood and Honour painfully and slowly without word or teaching; where Death and the direct observance of the Death and loss of people I loved who once loved me, is my only teacher.
So that in my own family or clan everything we do and all that there is about us is fundamentally based on Blood and Honour. Or as the saying goes translated into English: “There is only one Blood in a Clan; and Honour is the only Culture and Practice.” But that saying is born from hundreds of generations of pathei-mathos of a people. A people who from one generation after the next have humanly cared for their Old Ones and seen them die with their eyes. And the people of the West who have been in armies, in battle, or in gangs and in gang wars, are the ones in the West who will best know, intuit, and understand why witnessing the Death of a close comrade, loved one wordlessly teaches us the culture of serving and living for our Blood kin and comrades, and Honour. You can’t put these lessons Death teaches into words. They will always come out goofy. But bring me a veteran of a military who has painfully seen his many comrades die and put him in the presence of my own family and culture, and he will understand in silence, intuition, in empathy and sympathy that my culture and his are the same sacred human culture, born from the same tearful lesson that Death teaches.
Regarding how everything my own family does is either based on Blood and Honour or goes back to those two things. As examples, if and when people in my family do get involved in politics it is based on Blood and Honour and not an arbitrary agreement of policies because they sound nice. Those in my own family who are into politics are strictly conservative republicans. Not because that party has great ideals and platforms. But because during the revolution the democratic party of America supported the Khmer Rouge who murdered half our family and the republican party opposed them, with Nixon later secretly bombing the area to try to exterminate the communist and Khmer Rouge. That’s why. Because it has to do with Blood and Honour, in the human sentiment and recognition that whatever these republicans are, they were there for our people and family and did what they could, and in return we support them as best as we can from generation to generation.
Another example is that our Great Grandfather will be getting a Christian funeral at his church. He, his own children and half of my own family are Christian and not Buddhist. But they are not Christian because of ideology and belief. Ask my Buddhist grandma and one of my Christian grandfathers how many gods there are and they will both tell you that there is only one god out there and it doesn’t matter how you honour it. My Great Grandfather and half my family became Christian because of Blood and Honour. Because in the 1980′s when they first came to America the Buddhist people here never reached out to help. It was the White Christian people who came to help them, teach them how to find work and function in their new country, and provide for their simple human needs in their time of need and confusion. I have a White godfather who is a Jehovah’s Witness, who is revered with a high amount of respect and honour by everyone in my family; he’s even married into the family now. Not because of his beliefs; but because he has for some odd reason devoted over 20 years of his life, since the day my grandma and her children were confused refugees till now, in genuine service to us. And at no point in time, as he ever mentioned religion or asked anyone to convert.
Everything that we do – that is about us as a folk – has to do with Blood and Honour. It all springs from those two things, and it all falls back to those two things. Such that, even when my own family looks outward into the world beyond the flow of blood and the bond of honour, that what they see, do, participate in will always have something to do with the honour of the family, the interest of the family, and the family’s culture of honour. These two things in my own culture/family/clan defines everything, even the most littlest traditional customs. For instance the little custom that no person younger than the oldest person can sit with their head higher then the oldest Elder. If your Elder is sitting on the sofa, you sit on the floor. If your Elder sits on the floor, you sit on the floor also with your head slightly lowered. Because of Blood and Honour, in that we know this Elder is our kin and folk, who has spent their whole life serving the his blood and kin and intimate associates, and therefore such Elders are given high Honour, because they have earned it rightfully.
There is no distinction in my own clan or family between blood relations and familiar intimate associates. Because you have to think about it: the people your aunts and uncles marry are not blood relations; they are associates of the blood; who become Family because of that close and intimate association. And this goes back to ancient tribal times of living in the forest. In those conditions you needed all the people you can get to help you survive. Any person who comes along to your little tribe in the jungle and wants to devote their life to help your tribe in exchange for the same is a blessing. That’s what a Folk is. It has nothing to do with ethnicity, skin color, national ancestry, religion, politics, etc. Those things are petty issues, that are shown for the pettiness they are in the face of Death. It doesn’t matter what skin color or religion or sexuality or party the person you are crying over is when they are dying before you; when such person has loved you and given much of their life in service to you.
Blood in context to Folk in this sense is an Aeonic thing. It is understood that the husband of your blood aunt is not blood, but he is because in time his child who will be your cousin is blood to you. The Folk, or Clan, or Family and its blood is like three strings tied together with a Knot in the middle. That Knot is the Folk or Clan. The strings are the different streams of blood. The Knot is the nexion, or nexus, or point of convergence of what were different streams of blood. You put your finger in this Knot and it moves down the three strings which retaining its pattern. And so with Family or Blood, it moves in Time like that Knot, such that way into the future, the Knot’s general shape and pattern as a focal point where different streams of blood and ancestry converges remains. So it can be understood that what persons of a clan or folk today that is not blood related will produce people of blood relation in the future. We call this breeding. Who we are as a living person today is the literal convergence of thousands of years of ancestral history of every person that once existed that had to exist to make you. That history and ancestry flows in our Blood. And that Blood is passed down to progeny, in such a way that seen Aeonically, this Blood is a literal flowing stream that transcends Time. It’s very telling that most oft it is the Cultured, Refined, Cultivated Breed of Humans that consider and honour their Blood and ancestry; while the peasantry are completely ignorant and disinterested in their Blood; in where it has come; and where it will go.
Numinous Transmission
With the passing of Great Grandfather, there is also the absence of a source of wisdom. Wisdom here meaning practical knowledge a person has acquired from living and experience life which when applied bares results. Wisdom here meaning what philosophy refers to as Practical Reason. As opposed to what? To it’s opposite: Speculative Reason. Ideological gibberish is Speculative Reason; what your grandpa teaches you, born from his own experiences which bore him tangible results is Practical Reason, is Traditional Wisdom, pass down from one generation to the next as a Living Tradition.
The difference may be philosophical in the West. But in a culture where the practical wisdom of Elders is continuously passed down from generation to generation; the knowing of these two types of reason is innate, intuitive, and understood. There is a living difference between theoretical gibberish written by some scholar about some subject; and the living wisdom – Sasana – of a living culture. One are ideas you toss around in our head. The other is vital for the Aeonic continuance of Blood and Culture.
And in general this is the deplorable difference between East and West. Or not East and West; between a people with Culture and a people devoid of Culture. People that are refined and cultured, who because of ancestral traditions and culture have been brought up with the culture of Honour of one’s Elders, have more respect for sasana – Practical Reason – than for speculative ideology. Whereas people who have no honour, no culture, no connection, no care for elders, no conscious connection with ancestral wisdom, deify institutions that teach speculative reason like universities and religion. That theoretical principle and that religious dogma is glorified above what is genuinely practical. You go to an average Homo Hubris in the West and what you will find is a person whose mind has been filled with all these theoretical knowledge, who spends so much time thinking of such theoretical knowledge, who even fight others over such theoretical knowledge, and you will see that such persons are devoid of living Practical Wisdom. And that lack shows in the fruit they bare in life.
I suppose to me, losing somebody like Great Grandpa perhaps gives the same feeling in a mundane Westerner when his college or church has been burned down. When the mundane Westerner stands before his burned down church he is horrified and worries about where he will go find what knowledge he was getting in that church. It’s the same feeling. The loss of an Elder is the loss of an entire stream of living wisdom that can never be replaced. And this is another simple lesson that Death teaches. Having seen Elders die, we are more mindful of spending our Time with these Elders to get as much of their Wisdom as we can before they are gone.
In living cultures, such as my family there are a number of old people who act like central data bases for the families ancestral wisdom. These people are called “Nik Prach.” Nik means “Person,” and “Prach” means to “Orate,” to “speak a whole lot about everybody and everything.” They’re usually old grandpas that collect all this gossip and information from everybody related to them, and everything they like such as their politics and religion. Just everything and at family events they just go on and on about those everythings while they drink. When there is a group of these types of grandpas at a gathering I picture in my mind a group [parliament] of Owls from Winnie the Pooh just “Praching.” Great Grandpa was a Nik Prach. He was a vast data base of not only the family’s ancestral history, but also of inside politics of nations and states since he served in public offices in the old days. It’s through these types of Elders that the new generation is Rooted and Connected to their living history, ancestry, Tradition, and culture. It’s these Elders that imparts to us their vast reservoir of practical wisdom born from their own life’s experiences and pathei-mathos. But Death blocks that flow of practical wisdom. And even worse, when a people such as a vast majority of those in the West lock their Elders away somewhere, the flow of all that living history, potential tradition, ancestry, and connection is broken.
The Buddha in the past circumvented the problem of Death cutting off the flow of living practical wisdom when he created the Sangha which is the Earth’s oldest continuous organization; 2500 years old. What he did was he gathered a bunch of Nik Prachs together, made them monks, initiated them into a Order [what the word Sangha means] and let them do their thing. With the inherent instruction that they find other Nik Prach to initiate into their Order. In this way, even though general society changes, even though generations die and come, even those Elders pass away; there is the Sangha that is a constant presence – as the Knot I allegorically spoke of earlier – in that society. That Order of monks simply goes out and “Praches” their wisdom, inseminating each new generation with the practical wisdom – Sasana – of a people. Not just teachings of a buddha; but more importantly, their own experience born wisdom and what wisdom they learned from those Elder monks who passed on in the Sangha. The closest concept to the Sangha in the West I think would be religious institutions like old traditional churches, and things like universities. But what is taught through the Sangha and through churches and colleges is different. One teaches Practical Wisdom; the others teach Theoretical Knowledge.
I brought this up – or I am thinking about this as I am writing – because Death personally has taught me to value practical wisdom over theoretical knowledge. And so, because this is my mindset, I have a much deeper appreciation for something like the ONA, and greatly so for something like The Numinous Way. Not because I can agree with its theories or principles; but because my eyes opened in a different culture and is conditioned to see and appreciate the practical wisdom therein. There is nothing to really “believe” or agree with or debate in the ONA or Numinous Way. They are simply vehicles that attempt to transmit a body or corpus of practical wisdom. Practical Wisdom is not something to think about in your head. They are things to be applied in life for results, because such things have been applied by others in the past and have yielded results. It has nothing to do with thinking or debating or agreeing. You just either apply the practical wisdom or not.
To me, I see the ONA as an “Order” as being a nucleus or kernel of what may evolve into a “sangha” of sorts that transmits practical wisdom across time from one generation to the next. It’s how I have always seen it. Which is why when I do write for the ONA, I try to use my own life and practical experiences, as opposed to just dictating a string of ideas in the form of some lecture of new knowledge. But the way that I right, is just how my Elders teach me things. They don’t lecture me doctrines and ideas. They just share their own experiences in their own life with me, then share with me what insights they may have come to realize, and leave it at that. The rest is up to me. If I resonate with my grandfathers and their wisdom, than their insights become meaningful to me inside. If I don’t resonate with what I am hearing, then, the time has not come. You must first be in the process of experiencing something that resonates with what they say or have experienced something that is like what they say for their to be an empathic connection.
It’s like my mom once told me long ago during one of our girl talks when she said: “Be careful with boys. Don’t trust them so much. Don’t be so cheap as to give everything that you are and have to them all at once. You will end up hurt very bad.” I didn’t have the experience yet at the time to resonate with what she was telling me. And what she was telling me was not Theoretical Knowledge which is to be debated for its merit and truth. It was just a bit of Practical Wisdom born from her own experiences and pathei-mathos. When the season came where I experienced what had to be experienced with boys, then what my mother once told me resonated and was clearly apprehended inside of me wordlessly. I understood what she meant only in such proper time and season. And this is the nature of practical wisdom. Because practical wisdom unfolds for a person within the causal flow of time and season; when we receive an Elder’s practical wisdom, our intuitive understanding of them also must unfold in its time and season.
Like a seed laying on a desert ground, waits patiently for the rain to come. When the ground’s condition is proper, the seed naturally takes root and germinates. In the same way, what practical wisdom we get from our Elders are only seeds, which we keep in our minds. Mindful of them, but in the understanding that they germinate in their proper time and season. They are not things to be argued or debated. Because debating them is pointless. It’s like when you mom tells you: “Don’t touch that hot iron, it’ll burn your finger.” And then you debate what she said and say: “Well, when you say hot, how many Fahrenheit degrees exactly is hot? Is it truly molecularly made of iron or a composition of other elements hmm?” And then you touch the hot iron, and your dumb finger burns. There is actually a word for that, it’s “Tah-chess!” It means something like but not exactly as “Stubborn!” It’s when your mom or grandma tell you some practical advice, and you reject it because you think you know better then them or are smarter with more experience.
It’s like if I were to give the practical advice that when you are in the living midst of experiencing the Death of a loved one: “Don’t think about what is happening, don’t intellectualize it; don’t philosophize it. Just let it happen and mindfully Be a part of it till the end.” If you have never experienced the Death of a loved one, what I said makes no real sense and has no value or meaning to you. But when the proper time and season of such experience comes, sooner or later you will intuitively understand what I said on your own in a wordless manner. It’s not something to be debated. It’s not speculative knowledge. I didn’t sit here theorizing it. It’s simply something I learned painfully in a living and practical manner. And that is all that it is and can be.
So this is what the Order of Nine Angles is to me in my eyes. It is a collection of practical wisdom, which grows to collect more such practical wisdom from each Initiate as they live their lives and learn directly from their/our experiences. What the ONA may have to impart has is to be applied not intellectually debated for merit or worth. This is something the average mundane gets confused with. There is a difference between Practical Wisdom and Theoretical Knowledge. And if you can’t tell the difference or are scratching your head when you see the words Practical Wisdom, then you know you are alien to such concepts as Blood, Tradition, and Culture. Because all that you do know is what speculative reason school has taught you. Your mind is conditioned to only process such types of information. So when you do look at something like the ONA, Buddhism, Tantrika, or some other body of Practical Wisdom; you treat it and attack it like you would a theory.
But the understanding of these things comes only with truly being human, and living a human life connected in Blood and Honour with others over long periods of Time. This Humanness or Numinous Essence of Human Life is missing in much of the West. I wish it were different. I wish the West and much of its lost people would one day quest to re-discover their lost Humanity. In this regard, I do personally see value in what is trying to be presenced through things like the Numinous Way, Reichsfolk, and the ONA. It’s just that the people it is trying to share its practical insights with are enthralled by outside things that captivate their egos. Their minds and eyes are transfixed elsewhere. All we can hope for is that what little portion of the West which is becoming more Aware of their primal Humanness and their Blood and Culture, will struggle to presence the Numen. So that gradually as the old generations pass, the New Numinous Ones will endue the West once more with Life. In this endeavour, I would say that there is nothing more illuminating which will help you find your way back to your Human Nature, other than to experience Death face to face. Challenge yourselves and care for some one close to you and watch them die. Otherwise, you will never know what Death teaches the Living.
Closing Remarks
This is a first day in a week or so of silence. There is nothing to cry over or look at anymore since the body is being prepared. Everyone is just quiet and in their reflective states of mind. Doing their own thing to cope with Great Grandfather’s passing. Preparing emotionally for the next round when Great Grandmother will follow. There is a sorrow to it all, this thing we call Human Life. But when you are fortunate enough like me to have seen and witnessed and been a living part of the full spectrum and cycle of Human Life; from the birth and caring for the little ones, to caring for the old ones and their Deaths; Life becomes Beautiful and Meaningful. As when we allow a music piece to play out till the last note falls. So when the last breath of a loved one who spent his life loving and serving you falls; the whole concert of his life can fully be appreciated as it is: a passing moment. And what seeds of practical wisdom he imparted becomes a priceless and parting Gift.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
122 yf
