Convergence of Catastrophes, page 28
[225] Sir James Michael ‘Jimmy’ Goldsmith (1933-1997) was a magazine publisher, financier and politician who represented France in the European Parliament between 1994 until his death. He also founded the Referendum Party in the UK. He published a book, The Trap (London: Macmillan, 1994), in which he argued that global free trade, which results in widespread competition over cheap labour in the Third World, is a threat to worldwide social stability.
[226] Jules Monnerot (1908-1995) was a French sociologist. He remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world.
[227] Faye defines heterotelia as ‘[t]he outcome and consequences of an action whose effects are radically contrary to its intended or proclaimed aim.’ From Guillaume Faye, Why We Fight, p. 157.
[228] The Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, was convened in the 1960s in an effort to bring the doctrines of the Church more in tune with the problems of modern life. Many traditionalist Catholics regard it as a surrendering of the Church to secular pressures.
[229] Louis Farrakhan (b. 1933) is the leader of the Nation of Islam, which is the most prominent Black supremacist organisation in the United States.
[230] In Chapter 18 of The Prince, Machiavelli writes: ‘A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves.’ From the translation by W. K. Marriott (London: Dent, 1911), pp. 137-138.
[231] Full text at www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1998/ing/f140598i.html.
[232] Ernstfall, one of Schmitt’s key concepts, is often translated as ‘state of exception’ or ‘emergency case’. Schmitt’s use of this concept is complex, but in brief, Schmitt regarded the rule of law in any society as always being a temporary state of affairs and that modern, liberal concepts of law in particular are insufficient when confronted with a situation that falls outside the routine situations which they were designed to regulate. As such, it is the responsibility of the leaders of a society to determine when the law must be suspended in order to deal with an exceptional situation. Schmitt regarded the National Socialists’ abrogation of the Weimar constitution as being a legitimate use of the Ernstfall. Schmitt discusses this idea at length in his book Political Theology.
[233] ‘What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence…”’ From Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 194. This is one of Nietzsche’s central ideas.
[234] Paul Valéry (1871-1945) was a prominent French poet and essayist.
[235] On 11 March 2004, a series of simultaneous commuter train bombings in Madrid killed 191 people and injured thousands, three days before the national election. The attack was blamed on Islamist terrorists.
[236] A Latin expression, meaning a time that will never come.
[237] A hecatomb is a large-scale sacrifice. In Classical Greece, it meant the sacrifice of 100 cattle to the gods.
[238] Alain Daniélou (1907-1994) was a French author who spent 20 years living in India, taking up the practice of Shaivite Hinduism while there. He wrote many books based on his experiences. Several of his books have been translated.
[239] Alain Daniélou, Le destin du monde d’après la tradition shivaïte (The Destiny of the World According to the Shaivite Tradition) (Paris: Albin Michael, 1992).
[240] The Puranas are a series of ancient Indian texts that are important to the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions alike. They relate the history of the cosmos. In Hinduism they are regarded as second in importance only to the Vedas themselves.
[241] In the Hindu caste system, the Shudras are the lowest level, consisting of servants and labourers.
[242] In the Hindu caste system, the Brahmans are at the highest level, and is the priesthood.
[243] Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a Romanian scholar of comparative religions. In 1956 he moved to the United States, where he remained as a Professor at the University of Chicago. He became one of the most prominent scholars of comparative religion of the Twentieth century.
[244] Faye is here using Tradition in the same sense as René Guénon and the traditionalists, which refers to the timeless and unchanging esoteric core which lies at the heart of all genuine spiritual paths rather than to a specific tradition.
[245] Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958).
[246] ‘The Waters and Water Symbolism’, in Patterns in Comparative Religion, p. 211.
[247] Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
[248] Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, p. 87.
[249] Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is considered one of the greatest German poets of the Romantic era.
[250] Faye is most likely referring to Hölderlin’s poem ‘Bread and Wine’. The night is used to symbolically represent our age, when the ancient gods of Greece and Christ have left the world and it is only the poets who attempt to keep their memory alive until their return. Many translations exist. Martin Heidegger discusses this poem at length in his famous essay ‘Why Poets?’, translated in Off the Beaten Path (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
[251] Sol Invictus, or ‘invincible sun’, was the Sun god of the ancient Romans.
Guillaume Faye, Convergence of Catastrophes
