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Age of Truth: Satya Yuga, in the Sanskrit scriptures. (Devi's note) The lengths of the Satya (="Truth"), Treta, Dvapara, and Kali yugas are 4, 3, 2, and 1 times an interval of 432,000 years. Within these immense periods of time the human life span decreases from 100,000 years in the Satya-yuga to 10,000 years in the Treta-yuga, 1,000 years in the Dvapara-yuga, and finally 100 years in the Kali-yuga. Kronos (Saturn): the youngest son of Uranus and Gaea. Ra: the Egyptian Sun god. Both are associated with Golden Ages, roughly the pagan equivalents of Eden before the Fall.
body: Cf. Nietzsche: "Soul is only the name of something in the body" (Thus Spake Zarathustra — external link). A rejection of Christian mind-body dualism could be considered an essential feature of all NS philosophy. Just as man must be "translated back into nature," as Nietzsche said elsewhere, so the "soul" or "spirit" must be translated back into the body, where (Devi would argue) it properly belongs. The consequence she describes therefore follows logically, if the initial premise is granted: The quality of the "spirit" is biological in origin.
sadhana: Spiritual discipline or practice.
"gallant allies": Devi is alluding ironically to the Soviet campaign of terror and systematic rape inflicted on Germany in the immediate aftermath of her catastrophic defeat. See K.A. Strom's account of this suppressed war crime, undoubtedly the greatest mass rape in history.
"appalling logic": "Cette logique effroyable" was the expression used by Monsieur R. Grassot, of the French Information Bureau in Baden-Baden, in his conversation with me on the 9th of October, 1948. (Devi's note)
"Mahakala": lit. "great time," one of the destructive aspects of Shiva in Indo-Aryan mythology.
"ascetics": etymologically ="training, discipline" (from Greek askesis).
"Bhagavad-Gita": "Song of the Lord," Hinduism's most revered scripture. A Sanskrit poem, perhaps composed as early as the fifth century BC, the Gita is a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna ("the fighter for a just cause") and the incarnate god Krishna, himself an avatar of Vishnu, the Preserver. In the poem Arjuna is reluctant to participate in an impending battle that will inevitably result in the deaths of friends and kinsmen on the opposing side. Krishna overcomes his reluctance by instructing him in the essentials of Hinduism, notably the doctrine of reincarnation, the immortality of a person's soul or true self (atman), its identity with the supreme godhead (Brahman), and the ethical obligation to perform righteous acts that maintain social order. At the time of the Gita the Indo-Aryans were still predominantly White, as the name Arjuna ("shiny, white") suggests.
"kshatriya": warrior class among the Indo-Aryans. The other classes were brahmins (priests), vaishyas (cultivators), and shudras (menials), the latter being descendants of the non-White aborigines whom the Indo-Aryans had subjugated. Only the first three castes (varna; lit. "color") were considered dvija ("twice born") — i.e. born of two Aryan parents, hence part of the Indo-Aryan ethnic group. Below these categories were the pariahs or outcasts ("Untouchables"), members of the native races whose occupations involved contact with dirt or death. This caste system — which later reached bewildering level of complexity and still persists in an attenuated form in modern India — began as a social mechanism designed to prevent miscegenation. Only the "twice-born" Aryan classes were ordained, as the result of an initiation ceremony, to study the Vedas and kindle the sacred fire; the Shudras were only ordained to serve the other three superior castes. The tripartite functional division of society, a division of labor rather than a social hierarchy, into priests, warriors, and cultivators was a common feature of most Indo-European societies and undoubtedly dates from before their dispersal from their common homeland. The four-class Indo-Aryan version of the model was adapted to their special circumstances in Ancient India, namely their presence among non-Whites. For a theoretical account of the gradual departure of the caste system from its initial segregationist purpose, see Alfred Rosenberg's article on this site.
"twice": Once in Central Asia, in the early thirteenth century, by the Gurkhan of the Kara-Khitai, against both Islam and Nestorian Christianity, and another time, in seventeenth-century Japan, by the first Shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty: Iyeyasu, Hidetada, and Iyemitsu against Christianity. (Devi's note).
"he kisses him": "Dostoevski's famous page" is, of course, Ivan's parable of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov (external link).
"Lord Shiva":
god of cosmic destruction and renewal, originally the Vedic storm-god Rudra A recognition of the dynamic relation between creation and destruction is common, in varying degrees and forms, to many religious traditions. It is one of the "few, essential, eternal truths" Devi mentioned earlier. |
("terrible"). He is often depicted as a white or silver-colored man, with
a third eye in his forehead, but he most memorably appears as Nataraja,
the King of Dancers. Since, as Devi indicates, "destruction and creation
are inseparable," Shiva the Destroyer is also a creator, and his famous
dance (depicted at right) represents the cosmic rhythm of creation and
destruction. Hence the circle of flames, symbolizing the universe, within
which he is enclosed.