The Decline And Fall of Civilizations

Kerry Bolton

• Publisher: Black House Publishing Ltd
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781912759774
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

One of the greatest fallacies of the ‘modern world’ is the notion of ‘progress’. We imagine the entirety of history as culminating in a Darwinian march toward Western Civilisation. We think of our ‘progressive values’ of liberalism, self-indulgence, materialism, universal human rights, multiculturalism… to be uniquely ‘enlightened’. What we are going through is nothing new. Civilisations have gone through the same processes over millennia, recorded by the sages of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Arabia, Aztec America, India - the features that are most celebrated today as the epitome of ‘progress’ have been recorded throughout history as the symptoms of a terminally ill civilisation.Our ‘progressive’ academics and politicians assure us that never has there been such a civilisation as ‘enlightened’ as ours, and U.S. strategists perversely tell us that the West has reached the pinnacle of human history - a healthy blessing to be imparted to every corner of the world, whether by Hollywood or by bombs.In The Decline and Fall of Civilisations Dr. Kerry Bolton surveys the major civilisations of the past, their traditions, myths and religions, to discover how ‘races’ and ethnic groups are formed, each with their own ‘souls’ that are expressed in a myriad of ways. In addition Dr Bolton also cites their political and religious leaders, their philosophers, and sages, who at the pinnacle of material wealth, hedonism, and decadence could foresee the end of their own civilisation. Dr Bolton discards materialistic assumptions about ‘race’ and history from both ‘Left’ and Right’, but concludes that there might still exist a culture that is yet to fulfil its destiny while re-invigorating whatever remains of value in the West.

Part I - Tradition

Traditional Historical Outlook

A culture ceases to be “traditional” when it no longer feels its relationship with the Divine.1 Baron Julius Evola2 described this traditionalist outlook as the “metaphysics of history.”3

High Cultures have structural features in common, expressed in different ways because each represents a different spiritual outlook. This structural commonality transcends time, race and geography. The same broad structures of organisation in High Cultures have existed as far apart geographically and ethnically as the Germanic, Egyptian, Aztec, Japanese and Vedic-Indian. They possess castes as the basis of social order reflecting the cosmic order on Earth, hold the ruler to be literally of divine origin, a priest-king and often a God-King. They consider their own culture as part of a cosmic-divine cycle. The God-King is not only the ruler of his own civilisation, and a direct nexus between the human and the divine, he is also the “King of the World”, and his capital is the centre of the world; the axis mundi.

The Axis

Traditional societies revolve around a symbolic axial point. Each civilisation has had a holy centre, where the terrestrial and the celestial bisect. The axis might be physical or mythic. The Germanics had the World Column Irminsul, the Norse the World Tree Yggdrasil. The Gate of the Sun was the axis of the Tiahuanaco-centred civilisation in Bolivia. The Teotihuacan civilisation of Mesoamerica had the Temple of the Sun. The Hindus and Buddhists have Mount Meru; Mount Olympus for the Greek Civilisation; the Mount and Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinu for the Roman; Al Kaaba Al Musharrafah at Mecca for the Arabic; Mount Fuji for Japan; Mauna Kea for Hawaii; various mountains, rivers and legendary migratory canoes that symbolise the divine nexus for Maori tribes throughout New Zealand; Jerusalem for the Jewish, and for the Western Gothic High Culture.

The Khmer Empire, extending from Cambodia over most of Southeast Asia, and into Laos, Thailand and southern Vietnam, was founded in 802 A.D. by King Jayavarman II, who was regarded as the chakravartin, or King of the World, the God-King Deva Raja in Sanskrit. He was ritually sanctified on Mount Mahendraparvata.4

The Chinese Temple of Heaven, designated in their characters as the “altar of heaven” (天壇) was the point where emperors, embodying the nexus between heaven and earth, performed rituals and prayed for the maintenance of right order. The Chinese expressed the cosmic axis ethically as Tao. Behaviour not in accord with the standard of morality which, in Chinese, is denoted by the two characters Dao De, meaning “Tao” and “Virtue” respectively, was said “not to follow the principle of Tao.” Peasant uprisings raised banners proclaiming “achieve the Way on behalf of heaven”. Lao Zi (6th Century B.C.) credited with being the founder of Taoism, wrote:

“There is something mysterious and whole, which existed before heaven and earth. Silent, formless, complete, and never changing. Living eternally everywhere in perfection, it is the mother of all things. I do not know its name; I call it the Way. Man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Tao, and the Tao follows what is natural”.5

An emperor who failed to harmonise with heaven was said to have lost the “mandate of heaven”, his dynasty would fall, and be replaced by another “dynastic cycle”. The Tao is changeless, hence the universe is ordered. By respecting the Tao mankind also lives harmoniously. Everything in traditional Chinese culture revolved around this concept, prior to Communism.

The Wheel

The wheel is a motif in many cultures representing the cyclic nature of life, for the individual, society and entire civilisations. The spiralling motion represents the action of the cosmos itself. The wheel symbolises the axial foundation of cultures.

The Medieval world of Western High Culture had its “Wheel of Fortune”, Rota Fortunae, with eight spokes of opposites reminiscent of the Buddhist Wheel of Dharma. The Wheel of Fortune was a feature of Medieval churches, hanging from the ceiling, and used as an oracle.6 It is depicted on the 10th Major Arcana of the Tarot oracle, which is of Medieval origin.

The Greek Boethius, writing in Rome during the 6th century A.D., on the chaotic cusp between Roman ruin and Western birth, composed his Consolation of Philosophy as a Socratic dialogue between Fortunae and himself. Here the Roman goddess of good fortune is transformed into a principle of cyclic time in the service of the Christian God, who will just as likely bring collapse as favour in the unfolding of fate. Her symbol is the wheel. Her spinning of the fortune of kings and peasants alike is as inexorable as that of the seasons and the tides. She replies to Boethius:

“Or am I alone kept from exercising my right? Heaven is permitted to reveal bright days and to conceal the same with dark nights;
the year is permitted to redeem the face of the land at one time with flowers and fruits at another to confound it with clouds and frosts;
it is right for the sea at one time to charm with a level surface at another to tremble with storms and waves: is incessant human greed to bind us to a consistency alien to our morals?

“This is our power; we play this continuous game: we turn the wheel in a revolving cycle, we like to change the lowest to the highest, the highest to the lowest. Ascend if it pleases, but choose it, only if you will not think it an injury when the procedure of my game requires you to descend”.7

Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy became one of the most influential texts of the Western Medieval epoch, translated and read throughout Europe.

Carmina Burana, a corpus of poems by monks, was another text of the Western medieval epoch that included the cyclic motif as a wheel:

The wheel of Fortune turns;
I go down, demeaned;
another is carried to the height;
far too high up
sits the king at the summit -
let him beware ruin!
for under the axis we read:
Queen Hecuba.8

The Jains9 hold that time is endless, and is represented by a wheel of twelve spokes. Like the Medieval West’s Rota Fortunae and the Dharmic wheel, the Jain wheel represents polarities of life, divided into pairs of six. It is a specifically cyclic motif. One set represents a descending cycle in which good things gradually give place to bad, and the other an ascending cycle. The Jains state that the present cycle is the fifth spoke of the descending cycle.10

Apart from the Celtic Cross, a variation of the Norse Sun Wheel, the Celts had the Triskele, a curved three armed cross, radiating from an axial point; an intermediate motif between the Sun Wheel and the Swastika, representing the three cycles of life, both physical and metaphysical. The Triskele was a common motif in Celtic art particularly between 5th century B.C. and 8th century A.D. It represents with its three spiralling arms the importance of the Triad in the Celtic outlook. The Triskele represents the three cycles of life, death and rebirth within the three primary elements, Land, Sea, Sky, and also represents the interaction between the three physical spheres and the spiritual realm. As the arms spiral from an axis, we again see the traditionalist motif of life radiating from a central – cosmic-axis, which W. B. Yeats alluded to in The Second Coming, where he describes the end cycle of this Civilisation: “everything falls apart; the centre cannot hold”. The three aspects, life, death, rebirth, revolve and return to the centre, the divine or cosmic pillar or axial point, analogous to the Teutonic World Column Irminsul, the Norse Yggdrasil, and the Hindu Wheel.

Another widespread motif of the cyclical nature of life relates to the Fates weaving Time. Fate is derived from Latin fatum, meaning decrees of the Gods, which we can call destiny, both individual and collective. Traditionally even the Gods are subjected to Fate, like the Norse Gods meeting this death at Ragnarok; a necessary cyclic sacrifice.

Nemesis is the Greek Goddess of Fate who punishes those guilty of hubris or arrogance towards the Gods through their wealth or power. It is a reminder that mortals are subject to the cosmic laws of time, the relentless motion of the cosmic wheel, as destiny is spun according to those laws. Fate became represented by the Triple Goddess Moirai among the Greeks, and Parcae among the Romans. Hesiod records their names as Lotho, spinner of destiny; Lachesis, weaver of the web of chance or luck that sustains life; and Atropos, the inescapable, who cuts the thread of life.11 The Three Fates sat among the Gods, and Zeus himself was often considered to be subject to them.12

In the Germanic tradition Fate is represented again by Three, known collectively as the Norns. Like the Greek Fates, they also weave destiny at a spinning wheel. They are named Urd, past; Vervandi, present; and Skuld, future.13

The Norse World Tree Yggdrasil has its three roots fed by Urd, the past. Here again the traditional cultures are based on the belief that society is sustained by its nexus with its divine origins, which when cast asunder lead to the collapse of that cycle. It is notable that Yggdrasil is being continuously gnawed at and interfered with by a serpent, a reminder of the precarious position of a culture’s foundat...

Table of contents

• Decline and Fall of Civilisations
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I - Tradition
• Part II - Ethnos
• Part III - Rise and Fall
• Conclusion
• Bibliography