Western civilization was originally built around the tragic vision developed by the ancient Greek dramatists and philosophers. On top of this was fabricated a superstructure of egoic attitudes assembled by the expanding empire of Christendom, incorporating its roots in Israelite apocalypticism and the nomadic functions of the exiled and forever wandering Jew (and this archetype’s antisemitic shadow).

Repressed beneath this exterior lies the spirit of the original cultures now referred to disparagingly as forms of paganism—which most often were nature-goddess-worshipping tribes, usually in fact pantheistic and polytheistic, and far more peace-loving and largely free of ambitions of conquest.

These cultures were rapidly overwhelmed by the imperial monotheists, who devolved into atheistic capitalists, intent on dominating and colonizing the human species and keeping centralized control in the hands of as small and hidden a ruling cabal as possible. The degradation and impotentiation of mature heroic masculinity—as well as the defilement of divine femininity—among the masses became a required part of their program.

This history has led to the current resistances that even serious