Was Solovyev a Convert to Roman Catholicism?

Was Solovyev a Convert to Roman Catholicism? 

(from the book "A Solovyov Anthology", edited by S.L. Frank)

Ten years after Solovyov’s death the paper Russkoe Slovo (April 21, 1910) published a statement by Fr. N. Tolstoy, a priest of the Uniate Church in Moscow, that on February 3, 1896, in the presence of witnesses, Solovyov received communion from him, having first read aloud the Creed in ‘ the form adopted by the Roman see for Christians joining the Catholic Church’, and handed in a written profession of faith, identical with the one published in La Russie et L'Eglise universelle (see Introduction, p. 20). This statement was later confirmed by two witnesses. Soon after, on November 2, 1910, the paper Moskovskiya Vedomosti published the account of the Orthodox priest S. Belyaev who received Solovyov’s death-bed confession and gave him communion. According to Belyaev, Solovyov said to him that he had not been to confession for some three years, since at his last confession he had an argument with the priest on a question of dogma (he did not say which) and was not admitted by him to holy communion. ‘The priest was right’, he added, ‘and I argued with him solely out of pride and a wish to carry my point ; afterwards we exchanged some letters on the subject, but I would not give in, though I knew very well that I was wrong. Now I am quite aware of my error and sincerely repent of it’ (quoted in L., Ill, 215-17). 

It follows from these two statements that after communicating in a Uniate (Graeco-Catholic) church, Solovyov did not break off relations with the Orthodox Church. It might be said that his last communion proves nothing, for even a regular Catholic on his death-bed might call in an Orthodox priest in the absence of a Catholic one. But it would certainly be out of order for him under normal circumstances, soon after communicating in a Catholic Church, to go to confession and seek communion from an Orthodox priest, as Solovyov did in 1897. 

The canonical rules laid down by the Catholic Church for converts may or may not have been strictly observed on February 3, 1896 (d’Herbigny says that one exception was made for Solovyov: ‘there was no formal abjuration, for it was considered unnecessary’), but in any case the very fact of his having been given communion shows that the Catholic Church regarded Solovyov as a convert. Solovyov’s subsequent behaviour, however, equally shows that he took a different view of the matter. The statement he made on his death-bed to Fr. S. Belyaev (and also the absence of evidence to the contrary) implies that his ecclesiastical contact with the Catholic Church was confined to that one particular occasion. His sister, Madame M. Bezobrazov, and his intimate friend, the philosopher Lopatin, both testify that to the end of his life he denied being a Catholic.[1] But then what could have induced him to communicate in a Catholic church and what did he mean by doing so? 

Fr. N. Tolstoy says that Solovyov did not receive communion in the Ortliodox Church after 1892 because since that year Orthodox priests refused it to him, evidently under pressure from the Synod. This explanation is utterly untenable. To say nothing of there being no occasion for such ‘pressure’ — since after 1889 Solovyov did not write about church matters — it was from the nature of the case impossible. Solovyov led a wanderer’s life, so that every priest in Russia would have had to be warned against him, and even this would have been to no purpose, since the custom of the Russian Church is to admit people to communion (after confession and absolution) whether personally known to the priest or no. Besides, the absence of any such action on the part of the Synod is clearly proved by the fact that no difficulty whatever was raised about Solovyov receiving communion before he died.[2] If he really had not communicated after 1892, that was simply due to his withdrawing from church life at that period (see Introduction, p. 23). 

At first sight the case is further complicated by the circumstance that in his private letters and public answers to accusations of ‘popery’ Solovyov had frequently asserted that he was Orthodox and had no intention of leaving his church ; the last statement to that effect was in 1891 (L., Ill, 199). He was definitely opposed to individual conversions to Catholicism as ‘harmful to the universal cause’ (the union of the churches), though he added that he could not ‘throw a stone at converts’ who do so from sincere ‘even if mistaken conviction' (L., Ill, 193 and 172, 1886), But curiously enough this is, perhaps, just where the explanation of the riddle is to be found. So long as Solovyov remained on purely ecclesiastical ground and worked for the reunion of the churches in strictly canonical order, it naturally seemed to him wrong and harmful for separate individuals to act on their own initiative. But in the ’nineties Solovyov’s views underwent a definite change (see Introduction, especially the letter to Tavernier) : he no longer ascribed decisive significance to ecclesiastical authority ; he believed henceforth only in the universal Church, consisting of the minority of Christians true to the spirit of Christ and having no visible boundaries; his ‘religion of the Holy Spirit’ was from the conventional point of view the faith of a religious free-thinker. His communion in a Catholic church was not the action of a man who had found in Catholicism the only true Church, but the action of a religious free-thinker who in virtue of his faith in the one universal Church considered himself entitled to ignore the actual division of the churches. He had always believed that every Christian as having ‘the unction from the Holy One' had the sovereign right to judge of church matters, and now it included for him also the right to act ‘in accordance with the spirit of Christ’. And since he retained his conviction of the necessity for all faithful Christians to unite round ‘the traditional centre of unity — the see of Rome’ (see Introduction, p. 20), he wished to testify to this faith by communicating in a Catholic church. The Catholic creed repeated by him accorded with his convictions, though he interpreted it freely, according to his religion of the Holy Spirit. While remaining a member of the Orthodox Church (this is emphasized in his personal confession which, evidently at his own initiative, he included in the rite of communion) he considered himself entitled to ignore its requirements. 

This is indirectly confirmed by another fact which also explains the meaning of the statement he made at his last confession. An intimate friend of the Solovyov family, Madame K. Yeltsov (Professor Lopatin’s sister), was at their house on the day when in 1897 Solovyov confessed to an Orthodox priest (owing to illness, Solovyov was staying at his mother’s), and she has revealed the name of that priest.[3] It was Fr. Ivantsov-Platonov, Solovyov’s teacher at the Theological Academy, who had known for years both him and his ‘Catholic' convictions (in the ’eighties they had a controversy in print — sec Vol. 4, 634-39). Obviously it was not on the ground of those convictions that Ivantsov-Platonov refused to give Solovyov communion, otherwise he would not have come ready to administer it at all. In the paper he submitted to Strossmayer about the union of the churches Solovyov testifies from personal experience that the Russian Orthodox Church admits to holy communion persons who profess Catholic dogmas questionable for it (L., I, 187, note). The only new thing about Solovyov’s ecclesiastical attitude that Ivantsov-Platonov could have learned from his confession was the fact that a year before he had communicated in a Roman church. From the canonical point of view Ivantsov-Platonov was bound to say that by this act Solovyov had cut himself off from the Orthodox Church and to refuse him communion unless he repented. But Solovyov, believing as he did in the right of every Christian to act in church matters in accordance with his religious conscience, defended his action and would not repent of it. This was the subject of their dispute. Before dying, Solovyov admitted that he had been in the wrong : not renouncing any of his general religious convictions, he repented of his unauthorized communion in a Catholic church. 

From the age of thirty to the end of his life Solovyov was conscious of himself as a member of the one indivisible universal ‘Orthodox-Catholic' Church, though his interpretation of it underwent a change. But formally and canonically he always regarded himself as belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, and, if his last confession be taken into account, such he remained to the end, even from the purely ecclesiastical point of view. 

[1] Fr. N. Tolstoy confirms this, but his explanation is that Solovyov joined the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite. 

[2] D’Herbigny turns Fr. N. Tolstoy’s surmise about the ‘pressure’ brought to bear upon the priests into a definite assertion that ‘secret instructions were given to the clergy to refuse communion to him'! This would have been tantamount to a secret excommunication — an unheard-of case, I think, in the history of the Church, and for many reasons impossible in this particular instance. 

[3]. K. Yeltsov, Sovremetwiya Zapiski (Reminiscences about Solovyov), V. 28, p. 257. 

* * * 

[Blog commentary: The following stretch is from the book "History of Russian Philosophy" by N.O. Lossky]

In the eighties Soloviev took a particular interest in the problem of the reunion of Churches. At the invitation of Bishop Strossmayer, an eminent Roman-Catholic prelate, he went one summer to Zagreb in Croatia and there published his book History and the Future of Theocracy, In 1889 he once more visited Bishop Strossmayer in Zagreb and published in Paris a book called La Russie et l'Eglise Universelle, In this book Soloviev pronounced himself in favor of the Roman Catholic Church because it has created a universal super-state organization. 

The Catholics regard Soloviev as having renounced Orthodoxy and joined the Roman Catholic Church. In fact Soloviev had never left the Orthodox Church; he merely came to the conviction that the Eastern and the Western Churches, despite the outward breach, had not severed their mystical bond. Prince Eugene Trubetskoy who was Soloviev's personal friend says, on the authority of Soloviev's own words, that the immediate impulse for Soloviev's change of attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church which he used to regard as the Church of the Antichrist's tradition, “was a prophetic dream which he saw a year before the coronation of the Emperor Alexander III.'' He had a clear vision of himself driving through the streets of Moscow, and he remembered well both the streets and the house in front of which his carriage had stopped. While entering the house he met a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical dignitary whom he at once asked for a blessing. The other seemed to hesitate, doubting whether it was possible to give a blessing to a Schismatic; but Soloviev overpowered his doubts by pointing out the mystical unity of the universal Church which in its essence had not been shattered by the apparent disunion of its two halves. The blessing was given. 

“A year later the coronation of the Emperor Alexander III was, indeed, attended by the Papal Nuncio, and Soloviev relived his dream in reality. The blessing was asked for and given in exactly the same circumstances, the reality coinciding with the dream down to minor details. Soloviev recognized the streets through which he had driven, and the house which he had entered, and the Roman Catholic prelate who indeed after some hesitation, yielded to the same arguments as in his dream. [7]

In reality, Soloviev's new attitude toward the Catholic Church was formed before this dream and its fulfillment. In a letter to Martynov, dated July 18/30 1887, he wrote that eight years earlier he had read for the first time Y. F. Samarin's "Letters on the Jesuits." This work, he said, "considerably contributed to develop my sympathies toward the Catholic Church. The gross logical errors and obvious lack of good faith manifested by the author-otherwise so loyal and intelligent a man as Yury Samarin-made me seriously reflect upon our attitude toward Catholicism." [8] 

Being convinced of the mystical unity of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church, Soloviev did entertain to the former such relations as might have left the Catholics under the impression that he had renounced Orthodoxy and become a Roman Catholic. It can, however, be proved beyond doubt that Soloviev remained faithful to the Orthodox Church.

In 1886, on his return from Zagreb, he wrote to Archimandrite Antony (the future Metropolitan of St. Petersburg): "To achieve the reunion of Churches, any outward union and any individual conversion are not only unnecessary, but would be even harmful. To the attempts at conversion, aimed at myself, I answered in the first place by confessing and communing (at an unusual time) at the Orthodox Serbian Church in Zagreb with its curate Rev. Father Amvrosy.-Generally speaking, I have returned to Russia - if one may say so more of an Orthodox than when I left her." [9]

After the publication of his book La Russie et l'Eglise Uniuerselle, it was rumored that he had joined the Catholic Church. Soloviev's spiritual director, Father Varnava, said to him: "Go to confession to your Catholic priests." The fact that Soloviev was for a long time deprived of the sacraments, which he .deeply cherished, was so painful to him, that after several years had elapsed, he decided to undertake a very dangerous step. On February 18, 1896, he went to confession to Father Nicholas Tolstoy and received communion from this priest who had become a Catholic, but who shared Soloviev's teaching: the preservation of mystical unity of the Eastern and Western Churches, in spite of out ward separation. 

This is why, before receiving communion, Soloviev, having read the decision of the Council of Trent, could add his declaration that the Eastern Church is the true Orthodox and Catholic Church.[10] This means that he performed an act which can be approved neither by the Orthodox nor by the Catholic Church. Soloviev's further statements and acts clearly prove that he had not left the Orthodox Church.

In July 1900 Soloviev came to Moscow where he was taken ill. He left for the country home of Prince Peter Trubetskoy, located not far from Moscow, and where his friend, Professor S. N. Trubetskoy, was staying at that time. Stricken with serious kidney trouble, and aware that his end was near, Soloviev requested on July 30th (the eve of his death) that an Orthodox priest should be called from a nearby village to hear his confession and give him communion. Here is what Father Beliayev, the priest who administered the last rites to Soloviev, was to relate concerning this event: "One evening, a servant of the Trubetskoys' household was sent to me inviting me in the name of Serguei Nikolaievich (Trubetskoy) to celebrate Mass on the next day and administer a sick gentleman who had arrived from Moscow; I was to bring him the Holy Eucharist which I would consecrate at the Mass (according to Soloviev's personal wish)." The next day, "after having recited matins, I went to the Trubetskoys, Vladimir Scrgueyevitch (Soloviev) made his confession with the true Christian contrition and said among other things that he had not received communion during three years; for when he last went to confession, he had an argument with the priest on a point of dogma and was forbidden the sacraments." "The priest was right," Soloviev added, "I argued with him only because of hot temper and pride; after this we corresponded for some time concerning this question, but I would not give in, though well aware that I was in the wrong; now I clearly realize my error and sincerely regret it." [11]

According to the rules of the Catholic Church, a Catholic in extremis may make his confession to an Orthodox priest and receive communion from him if there is no time or possibility of summoning a Catholic priest. Therefore, Catholics say that Soloviev's last communion does not prove that he had remained a member of the Orthodox Church. Of course, they are mistaken. Soloviev himself put off his confession and communion until the next day; he would have therefore had the time to summon a Catholic priest from Moscow. His mention of a dogmatic argument with an Orthodox priest and the fact of his having been forbidden the Sacraments "during three years" prove that after his communion at the hands of Nicholas Tolstoy, he had wished to receive the holy species from an Orthodox priest; in any case, this shows that he had only once received communion from a Catholic priest. This is easy to understand if we take into consideration his condemnation of individual conversions from one Church to another. [12]

Professor Stroyev heard from a distant relative that several months before his death, Soloviev, speaking in a circle of his admirers, resolutely denied his conversion to catholicism. [12]

After the publication of his book La Russie et l'Eglise Universelle in 1889, Soloviev, it seems, grew temporarily indifferent to Church problems. In a letter to L. P. Nikiforov, probably written during the last year of his life, Soloviev declared: "I can tell you nothing about my works in French. Their fate interests me but little. Though there is nothing in them that contradicts objective truth, the subjective mood, the feelings and hopes which filled them when I was writing them, have been outlived by me." [14]

[...]

[7] Prince E. Trubetskoy, The. Philosophy of V. Soloviev. I. 488 ff. 

[8] Soloviev's Letters, III, 25. 

[9] Ibid., III, 189

[10] See D. Stremooukhov, Y. Soloviev, sa mission et son oeuvre, 216, 230. 

[11] See "About Soloviev's Confession," Letters, III, 215.

[12] See Letters, III, 193. 

[11] Article in Russkaya Mysl, XXIX, 136, 1926. 

[14] Letters, edited by Radlov, additional volume, 6, 1823.

[Blog commentary: it is important to note how Solovyev's views have changed over time from a optimistic one (and even utopian) towards a more pessimistic view (therefore one can doubt if at the end of his life he still held his earlier idea of a union of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches)]

During the first period, Soloviev hoped that the incarnation in the world of Sophia, Wisdom of God, can be achieved through Christian theosophy, that is through the knowledge of God and of his relation to the world. Soloviev's major writings belonging to that period are Lectures on Godmanhood and Spiritual Foundations of Life. During the second period, after 1882, Soloviev placed his hopes in the transformation of mankind through theocracy, that is through the creation of a just state and a just social order, which realizes Christian politics. His major works belonging to that period are: The Great Quarrel and Christian Politics, The History and Future of Theocracy, La Russie et l'Eglise Uniuerselle and The National Problem and Russia. Finally, during the third period starting about 1890, Soloviev was absorbed in the problem of theurgy, that is mystical art, creating a new life according to Divine Truth. His major works of that period are the Meaning of Love and The Justification of the Good. Soloviev's last work, The' Three Conversations expresses the end of his utopian hopes in the achievement of good in man's terrestrial life.  [...] In the last period of his philosophical activity Soloviev came to doubt whether theocracy in the form of a Christian State was the way to the Kingdom of God, In his remarkable book Three Conversations, and in the story of the Antichrist appended to it, he represents, in an artistic form "the last act of the historical tragedy" as an epoch of religious impostors "when the name of Christ will be appropriated by such forces in humanity as in their nature and activity are foreign and even hostile to Christ and His work." He describes the social organization of that period as a world empire, at the head of which stands a thinker of genius; he is a social reformer, an ascetic and a philanthropist, but the true motive of his actions is vanity and not love; he tempts mankind by the ideal of a social order which will abundantly secure to everyone panem et circenses. Only a small number of people remain true to the Christian ideal of overcoming earthly limitations for the sake of the Kingdom of God; they retire into the desert, bring about the union of the Churches and go forth to meet the second advent of Jesus Christ

[...] Soloviev's social philosophy at the time of his interest in the idea of free theocracy, and even as expressed in his book The Justification 01 the Good, strikes us as a philosophy of extreme optimism. He often depicts the moral progress, attained in mankind's history, as if society on earth could become the incarnation of absolute good. P. I. Novgorodzev writes in his book, The Social Ideal (3rd ed., 140), that such teachings "can only be applied to the suprahistoric, transcendent ideal, that is to the Kingdom of God" it is completely erroneous to apply them to concrete historical reality." True, Soloviev himself clearly realized this at the end of his activity.

The Teachings of Alexander Dugin and Orthodox Christianity

Not Orthodox


Being not a philosopher, but an ideologist, Dugin identifies himself as an Orthodox and Conservative, from which the very name "Centre for Conservative Studies" is derived. Since Dugin is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, or, more precisely, of the Conservative Consent (believers are Old Believers, who are recognized by the Moscow Patriarchate), he can be formally called an Orthodox person. From the Christian point of view, if a man is baptized, but has lived his whole life as an atheist and whatever, he still responds to the Last Judgment precisely as a Christian. In this sense, we really have a lot of Orthodox Christians. But as an ideologist and pseudo-philosopher, Dugin is not Orthodox. To be convinced of this, it is enough to read any of his metaphysical books, including the most important on the Orthodox theme - "Metaphysics of the Good News. Orthodox esoterism" (1996), which the adherents of Duginism treat as the writing of all the Holy Fathers together. This happens for a very simple reason - because these people first discover Dugin, and only then Orthodoxy itself, if they discover it at all. Therefore, its supporters do not consider the conformity of Dugin's "theology" in relation to Christian dogmas, as it is not Dugin that is tested by the dogmas, but rather the dogmas itself - Duginism. And if some facts indicate the incompatibility of dogmatic Christianity and "duginism", then "the worse" for these facts. Any attempt to analyse his ideas seriously from dogmatic perspective they immediately call "knocking" and "inquisition" - in general, the behavior of a classical sect.

Nevertheless, not every priest and theologian considers it necessary to pay serious attention to Dugin's books in general, which is quite understandable in human terms, but rather reprehensible for missionary reasons. Our dogmatists often prefer to dig into heresies such as "aftertodoketism" and "psilanthropy", which have almost disappeared from history, without looking around - to the openly anti-Christian heresies which are capturing today many seekers and especially young people. But there are also exceptions to the rule. In particular, the fact that Dugin's teaching is heresy was mentioned by such authorities with theological education as Fr. Daniil Sysoev, Fr. Maxim Kozlov, V. Maximov, A. Lyulka and others. Deacon Andrei Kuraev wrote in his book "The Church in the World of Men" (2007) about Dugin: "This enemy is more dangerous than any Blavatsky (because he is smarter and more educated).Like Blavatsky, it's an attempt to digest Orthodoxy into cabalism. It's enough to remember his article "Kabbalah Messianism". The undisguised apology of terror, the desire to turn Orthodoxy into a revolutionary-terrorist ideology also does not cause a desire to get close to this man" (p.142). "In general, the usual 'esoterism': a continuous "tactical trick" to carry out its work of mutating Christianity into something corresponding to the Kabbalistic-Masonic standards" (p. 144). Finally, Dugin's teaching is understood as heretical in aspecialized reference book of the Missionary Department of the Moscow Patriarchate "New religious communities of Russia of destructive and occult nature" (2002). Why are Orthodox dogmas so united in judging the teaching of Duginsk? Again, it is not necessary to understand in detail the theological views of our author, any Orthodox person can open the book "Metaphysics of the Good News" (1996) and read any excerpt of this type: "In the beginning, Adam was androgynous. <...> He does not have a singular body, but there is a synthesis of all singular bodies and physical objects" (p.45-46) and draw the corresponding conclusions. But one connecting ground is necessary to mention - if there is some affirmative constant in the Dugin doctrine, so it is an apology of so-called "manifestationism", i.e. ideas of origin of the world from divine origin in contrast to the Abrahamic "creationism", that is, the idea of creation of the world from nothing.

"Manifestationism" can indeed be called the common metaphysical denominator of all non-Abrahamic (collectively: pagan) religions and in this respect it can serve as an ideal conceptual basis for the anti-Abrahamic, anti-Biblical front. Needless to say, the idea of creation of the world by the free will of God out of nothing is a fundamental position of the whole world of Christianity, concerning which there are no contradictions in any of the Christian confessions. Although the other two Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, have no absolute consensus on this issue, while Christianity has. However, A. Dugin does not participate in this consensus - the main leitmotif of all his metaphysical texts consists in constant discrediting of Abrahamic creationism and apology of Neo-Abrahamic manifestationism, and this opposition extends to Christian religion itself. It is possible to tell that for Dugin the Orthodox religion is remarkable in the degree in which it corresponds to manifestationism and denies Old Testament, the " Jewish " creationism (hence the interest to Kabbalah as a precedent of the Jewish manifestationism). This opposition leads to quite a few serious conclusions that allow to accuse Dugin of real Gnosticism, and a very radical, Martionist type, which denies the Old Testament and understands Christianity as a revolutionary antithesis of ancient Judaism. Thus, if Christianity as a whole is understood as an antithesis to Abrahamism, Orthodoxy is understood as supposedly the manifestationist pole inside Christianity itself in contrast to Western Catholicism which in Dugin's theology turns out to be the principal enemy. As he writes in one of his articles about Orthodoxy and Catholicism - it is completely "two different religions", while from the dogmatic point of view, Catholicism is the closest doctrine to Orthodoxy. For Dugin, purely political differences with the Catholic West are incomparably more fundamental than worldview differences with the pagan or Muslim East. Within the Orthodox world itself, Dugin constantly contrasts Russian Orthodoxy with Greek Orthodoxy, while within Russian Orthodoxy he chooses the position of "old beliver" as a counterpoint to the almost heretical, in his view, "nikonianism".  So the universal truth of Christianity narrows down at him to the limits of Old Believer version, in justification of objective correctness of which he is not especially bothered - after all emotionally adjusted Russian patriot and so it should be clear that all autochthonous is best of all things came, though if to follow this logic up to the end, it is necessary to return at once to pre-Russian paganism, instead of digging in Christianity which has come from far away Palestinians? Of course, this obstinate Marquonism successfully affects the national pagan sentiment of many radicals, allowing them to call themselves "Orthodox", but at the same time to profess their own personal "orthodoxy", which has nothing to do with the confession of the Russian Orthodox Church. I have one simple question for such radicals: if the whole point of Christ's coming was to overcome the "Abrahamic", the "creationist paradigm," then why should they accept this Christianity if they already have their own manifestationist paganism? For example, there is the advaita-vedanta that enjoys the greatest respect among "integral traditionalists". Why should one profess the Orthodox religion in the first place, if other religions also inherit the "integral Tradition", without the "bad" Abrahamic heritage, without the fundamental creationism? There are no answers to these questions, and it is difficult even to imagine a person in the environment of Dugin, who could answer them clearly, and not from his own person, but from the Dugin doctrine itself. [...]

It is hard to imagine any political force that Dugin would refuse to take as an ally in order to destroy the enemy - the list of possible allies here is not limited to Satanism - to the question of his "orthodoxy". Since 1996, he has shown a genuine interest in the teachings of "thelemism" of Aleister Crowley, who, according to Dugin, is justified at least because his Satanism was a reaction to Protestant upbringing. It turns out that any destruction in the West is good only because it undermines the paradigm of Western Abrahamism, and so the Satanist is better than the Protestant. But Dugin is not only guided by purely strategic considerations when addressing this extreme - the justification of Satanism has a strictly substantial, conceptual basis. In 1998, in his "esoteric" magazine "Dear Angel" № 3, in addition to the usual publications of Guenon, Evola, Wirth and other "esoterists", he publishes Aleister Crowley's manifesto "Book of Laws", which has become a kind of "bible" for modern Satanists. The publication of this text is preceded by two theological reflections of Dugin himself - "The Burden of Angels" and "Teaching of the Beast". It is enough to analyze only these two texts to understand the extent to which his teaching is not only far from Christianity, but also in general is essentially anti-Christian. In particular, in the last article he writes that if the creationists accept God-faithful angels, then "manifestationists believe that those angels who have refused to recognize the supremacy of the Creator and their created nature are right" (p.360), which means the fallen angels - demons. Since any duginist will always prefer manifestationism over creationism, it follows that fallen angels are better for him than the faithful. But since Orthodox doctrine in principle will not agree with such manifestationism, Dugin writes that "Orthodox Christians believe that neither of them were completely right" (ibid.). Thus, according to Dugin, an Orthodox Christian in the battle of the angels of light and the angels of darkness can not fully decide on their choices - and this is written by a man who today some consider to be an "Orthodox" figure. It is clear that such "philosophy" is not that of Orthodox conservatism, but it is impossible to talk about any conservatism.

Conservatism has never been a platform for Dugin's politics simply because its declarative goal is not at all to preserve the existing political forms, but rather a "conservative revolution" - to restore the so-called traditional values in a revolutionary way. And Dugin's very political evolution in the 1990s was a consistent movement toward more and more revolutionism, toward open recognition of the ideas of national Bolshevism, communism, and the "new leftists". These ideas were reflected in a concentrated form in his manifesto "Aims and Purposes of Our Revolution" (1995), which was not just a non-conservative text, but an absolutely anti-conservative one. [...] Eurasianism allows a person to pretend to be both a great Russian patriot who cares about national identity, and a broad internationalist who is in love with the "flowering complexity" of the world, and an Orthodox fundamentalist who defends the purity of the pre-Flood rite, and a tolerant ecumenist who calls for "dialogue of cultures", and a white monarchist, and a red revolutionary, and so on and so forth. It is this indistinct and amorphous Eurasian ideology, which, under Dugin's version, has reached its ultimate valence, that can be used very successfully for personal political positioning, but at the same time it absolutely does not allow for the creation of any single movement capable of clearly distinguishing "friends" and "enemies" over a long distance. 

It is quite natural that an Orthodox conservative may not like the secular-liberal West, but it does not follow that he should rush into the embrace of the totalitarian-pagan East.

* * *

The Teachings of Alexander Dugin 

In a recent interview, deacon Andrei Kuraev said of Dugin: “This is an enemy more dangerous than any Blavatsky (because it’s smarter and more educated). Like Blavatsky’s, this is an attempt to digest Orthodoxy into Kabbalism. ” Knowing Kuraev’s assessment of the significance of Blavatsky’s life and work, it must be admitted that what was said by Father Andrew is a strong compliment to any enemy of the Church of Christ. And Dugin is an undoubtedly conscious enemy of the Church, intelligent, active and treacherous. This should be demonstrated through Dugin texts, but in the present work, this is inappropriate due to their extreme abundance. A serious revision of Dugin’s teachings would require a lot of time and take a lot of space. Fortunately, a partial analysis has already been done [44], so I hope that with God's help the results of the corresponding study will soon become the public domain. At the end of the article, I prepared a special surprise for the reader, who had the strength and tenacity to read it to the end.

In the meantime, fortunately, we do not need to know in detail either the content of Dugin’s concepts or their true origin. And that's why. It is not always possible to judge a person’s intentions. Another's soul is a mystery. But sometimes this is possible, especially when the person himself reveals his intentions and means of achieving them. Speaking in terms of an organization or structure, it’s enough for us to state in principle that a certain member of it is obviously its enemy, infiltrated by an “agent of influence”, while where it came from, whose agent it is, is not so important for now. The statement of fact is quite enough for his exile.

Let's see that A.G. Dugin thinks of the Church of which he is a member. Let us see what, in his eyes, is the definition and meaning of the Edinoverie [Translator Note: Edinoverie are the Old-Believers in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate] that he belongs to. Here are the texts from the Arko.ru website in which Dugin shares his thoughts:

Edinoverie is not an ecclesiological fact, it is an Eurasian process within the framework of Russian Orthodoxy. Edinoverie is the vector of movement ... from modernism to Tradition, from Raskol [TN: Raskol was the splitting of the Russian Orthodox Church into an official church and the Old Believers]  to the Old Believers. Movement is not its ultimate goal. But the constellation of Old Believer sects is also not a goal. For us, faith is a radical center. It is political incorrect content in a politically correct (relatively) form ... With Edinoverie, everything is complicated. It was established under certain conditions to achieve certain goal. Then everything changed many times. Today Edinoverie is a process of a general return of the Russian post-Soviet Orthodox to the roots of their paternal Faith. Edinoverie is not sect, not a separate Church, not a tactical department of the MP. 

Naturally, no renunciation of the Nikon heresy takes place when a priest is set up ... Edinoverie  is not a given, but a task. The most correct branch is the line of Father Irinarch (Mikhailovskaya Sloboda) near Moscow ... Edinoverie is much more right and reactionary; more right than most right-wing niconians. Endlessly more right. 

At the same time, there is such a plus in Edinoverie: nothing prevents it from being universal and penetrating into the environment of the MP, where convinced Nikonians [NT: Nikonains are those who followed Patriarch Nikon after the russian schism] are an insignificant minority (Radonezh and Co), and the majority are either curious left-wingers or people who naively (mistakenly) believe that that the Russian Orthodox Church as it is is a continuation of the true root of Russian Orthodoxy. 

Instead of denying it from the outside (from the consensus of sects of the Old Faith in its final form), you can gently and constructively explain to people how it really is. If where you live there is no Edinoverie, form a community or try to create it by other means. According to the provisions of the pre-council meeting of 1917, if the majority of parishioners demand to serve in the old way, this is completely legitimate and their will should be satisfied [45]. 

Here, although in sleek and foggy form, but most important things is said it. Edinoverie by Dugin is a “Eurasian process” that has a kind of “goal”, for which it is necessary to “penetrate the environment of the MP”. The sympathizers are given the corresponding instruction - to create a cell, a community. Its a schism vocabulary: “Nikonians”, “Shchepotniki”[NT: Old Believers slur word for orthodox believers. Literally means "those who make sign of the cross with three fingers"], “Nikonian heresy”. To believe that "the Russian Orthodox Church as it is is a continuation of the true root of Russian Orthodoxy" is naive and erroneous? It is necessary to seize the opportunity, that is, form a single-faith community. For what? It is clear that it was not for the purpose of saving the soul and not for strengthening the Russian Church, even if only as a “business entity" [46]. But the “constellation of Old Believer sects” is not what is needed. The goal is something else, something unnamed. However, if it is not in the Patriarchate and not in "Old Orthodoxy", then, therefore, it is generally outside of Orthodoxy and its schismatic surrogates!

This is all in the public domain. And this is the 2000th year.

And here is Dugin’s programmatic text “Old Believers and Unified Religion” from the Eurasia portal, a reprint from the publication Eurasian Review No. 10 for 2003. In the first paragraph we read:

The subject of Edinoverie is very important, despite the very complicated attitude towards it from the side of the Old Believers themselves, who traditionally consider this a ploy of the Moscow Patriarchate against them. In fact, the history of Edinoverie is, on the contrary, a strategic line for instilling the Old Faith (genuine Orthodoxy) to the tree of the synodal Church [47].

That’s what it really is! And here is the “process” mentioned:

In fact, Edinoverie is a process - a process of a church-wide conservative revolution ... I am convinced that only in Edinoverie as in the process are there prospects for the healing of the Russian Orthodox Church, the opportunity to return to the solid unshakable ground beyond which our Church has been found since the end of the 17th century.

Here we not only learn that the Russian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, according to Dugin, does not stand on the stone of the Orthodox faith, but completely outside the solid soil for hundreds of years, but we also receive additional information about the goals of Dugin and those whom he represents. This is neither more nor less, but an internal church revolution. Conservative, that is, this is the very “temptation that comes from the right,” about which father Andrei Kuraev wrote. Not surprisingly, Alexander Gelievich essentially supported [48] the “Conversion” of Bishop Diomede [49].

Furthermore:

The one in the Russian Orthodox Church who stands firmly against Old Believer’s positions, sooner or later he will find his schismatic, anti-national, sectarian essence … Church officialdom must sincerely repent before the Old Belivers, must earn forgiveness.

And it’s not the schismatics or sectarian, but Patriarch Nikon who turns out to be a sectarian and almost the first communist [50]: “he not only curtailed the sacredness, he contributed to the violation of the balances of Holy Russia. In some ways, he was close to the whips - New Jerusalem, etc. It’s very Montanite, very Münzerian.”

Edinoverie is in fact the Old Faith... Recognizing the historical and spiritual righteousness of Avvakum and his followers, Edinoverie professes a somewhat different ecclesiology. [51]

And again - this is an open, accessible text ... The direct apology of schismatics along with the humiliation of the Church, in which Dugin himself is a member and of which he swears allegiance more than one time! These articles are not refuted by Dugin in a single word. On the contrary, his old works are updated [52]. Texts from different years show that Dugin’s attitude towards the Church does not change. In a 2006 interview [53] - it's all the same, in the same words.

Edinoverie has become that spiritual niche that has completely integrated me into the Old Faith ... Edinoverie is a process leading from the New Believers to the Old Faith. Edinoverie today has changed its function. Once it was called to lead people away from the Old Believers, but now it’s not so ... The Old Believers are the salt of the Russian people ... Russia will not be reborn without the Church, and the Church will not be reborn without the Old Belief.

Is it possible that none of the pastors of the Russian Church and its faithful children, as well as their assistants and secretaries, do not know how to use the Internet?

Tell me, how does a person who spews such blasphemy against the Holy Church participate in joint projects with them [54] and even sit on the same podium of the “World Russian National Council” [55]? How does he practice Communion[56]? For what reason did the public Orthodox television channel “Spas” [57] give Dugin the floor for a long time, actually doing his free PR? However, it should not be completely free, because Alexander Gelievich held the post of leader there, it seems even the editor. Why does a secular person, the scientific director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Leonid Tishkov seem to be struggling alone against Dugin’s dangerous nonsense [58] does not turn into the state recommended social science study book for schools and universities?

Dugin plans and prepares at least another church schism. As a maximum, we see an attempt to gain control of the Church by methods corresponding to the Heresy of the Judaizers. Edinover parishes were chosen as the basis for the split. Why? I would not want to think that there are any serious objective grounds for this. I would not want to ...

In conclusion - the promised surprise!

The teaching of A.G. Dugin. Church assessment.

In our life, it often happens that the right hand does not know what the left is doing. Scripture, however, warns that this is only good when giving alms [59]. Before me is a book published by the Missionary Department of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church with the blessing of His Eminence John, Archbishop of Belgorod and Starooskolsky, Chairman of this Missionary Department

That is an official document of our Church. This is the Handbook "New religious associations of Russia of a destructive and occult nature" [60]. The annotation says that the handbook contains data on some “religious and pseudo-religious associations ... on certain dangerous occult and pagan groups” referred to as “experts of state and public organizations of the Russian Federation and other countries.” The book is intended for Orthodox citizens, and is also intended for employees of state institutions and public associations. ” With your permission, I repeat once again that the reference in the Handbook is about associations of a destructive and occult nature. This is important because in it immediately after the section devoted to purely satanic movements, in chapter No. 4, subparagraph 4.9 [61], there is the chapter “The teachings of Alexander Dugin”.

On the Dugin attitude towards the Church, the Collection says:

“Dugin sees the“ bright future ”of Orthodoxy in the combination of the exoteric principle of the Church (i.e., church organization) and pagan esoteric gnosis ... A. Dugin claims that ...“ the only way is [the Gnostics] accepting the traditional religion, and then try to penetrate through spiritual, ritual and intellectual practice within the framework of this religion in its esoteric internal aspects, in its secrets ”[62] ... This is nothing more than a call to create a new direction (sect) inside Orthodoxy, that is, an attempt to split the Churches again "(P.167).

As for the content of the doctrine, having noticed cases when “in his opus A. Dugin simply blasphemed” (p.166) and appreciating some of Dugin’s views as “erroneous and sometimes directly heretical” (p.167), the compiler characterizes the doctrine and religious position A.G. Dugin as a whole as follows:

1. Anti-Orthodox worldview, based on the primacy of non-existence before existence, using the conceptual and linguistic apparatus of metaphysics.

2. The presence in the doctrine of concepts directly related to Hindu views (Tantrism, Indian metaphysics), as well as elements of theosophy ...

3. Calls for the “reform” of Orthodoxy, in particular by eroding Orthodoxy as a true creed, introducing its opponents into the Church from within, eliminating Orthodox traditions, subjugating it to Islam and ultimately destroying ... As an intermediate stage - the opportunistic use of Orthodoxy to achieve its own political goals ...

4. A clear preference for Islam over other creeds against the background of an indulgent attitude towards Freemasonry and Satanism.

5. The creed of A. Dugin ... focused on the elite social layer ... this translates the creed into the rank of occult-mystical ideology, as a result of criticism of the conceptual provisions of the main world religions.

6. The arbitrary interpretation of the basic tenets of Christianity and the wide dissemination of such materials through publicly available sources of information expel A. Dugin beyond the church fence ”(p. 171).

Alexander Lyulka

Moscow, 2008

The triumph of Orthodoxy

44 see links in this article
45 http://www.arcto.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1228
46 the usual term for the Dugin neo-Eurasians for the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate
47 http://www.evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1326
48 http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/381007.html
49 http://www.pravoslavie.ru/news/070309173512 , http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/303169.html
50 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Münzer
51 see the chapter on V.I. Carpets
52 http://www.arcto.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1468
53 http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=news&id=46941
54 http://www.fap.ru/trans.php?id=2245&show=ff&prevdate=20040122201959&direction=fw
55 http://www.kreml.org/opinions/143774234
56 http://www.interfax-religion.ru/print.php?act=print_media&id=1129 we note that after the bishop’s service, Dugin read a report where “he noted that at different times the term“ faith ”carried a different meaning”.
57 http://evrazia.info/article/2552


Source: https://alyulka.livejournal.com/119427.html

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Alexander Dugin: the secret has become apparent

For all those interested in politics, ideology, and religion the nature of the worldview of Alexander Gelievich Dugin is already known - he is a Satanist.

However, there are, after all, little-informed people, and they can easily be deceived when Dugin starts to tell them that he is an Old Believer. I have been following this Old Believer since the beginning of the 1990s when he joined the National Bolshevik Party, created by E.V. Limonov. I like Limonov as a writer, but the ideology of the party created by him and Dugin was hostile to me because I am a Christian and a social democrat.

E. Limonov himself is a visionary, artist and atheist. As an artist, he is interested in always being in the spotlight, and in the party, he is the leader. But, as strange as it can sound, Ideological questions for him are secondary (which is proved by his current alliance with the liberals).

Dugin was from the very beginning the ideologist of National Bolshevism. The dark mystic, a student of Golovin and an admirer of Aleister Crowley, Dugin is a man of the Black Hundreds fascist views in the political field (he was a member of the Pamyat, video), and the occult, gnostic in the field of religion. When, by the end of the 1990s, it became clear that National Bolshevism had a chance to become a state ideology, Dugin was not on the way with Limonov who wanted to stay in opposition. Dugin went to work for the State Duma representative G. Seleznev, and later became an ardent supporter of V. Putin and the junta (Dugin dad was an officer of the GRU). True to himself, he created the NBF (National Bolshevik Front without Limonov), the Eurasian Movement; etc., etc.

In the 1990s, I regularly acquired Limonka (I thought that you need to know the enemy in person). And once I even went to NBP bunker on Maly Kochki for some open meeting, but (for reasons beyond my control) didn’t get there... This newspaper was really interesting read in stale Yeltsin's reality.

In the issue, part of which I scanned, there is an interesting article by the leader and ideologist of the NBP Dugin, “The Gnostic”, and an anonymous editorial column: the article “How to Understand Occultism” also reflects the views of the then leader of the party A. Dugin.

Limonka № 27

December 1995

How should occultism be understood

 There are two kinds of occultism "soft" and "hard." "Soft" is when quite prosperous bourgeois, climacteric aunts and sick young men with poor skin gather and talk for hours about Shambhala, astral, immortality, spirits and Buddhism. This includes whining a la Grebenshchikov with a burp of undigested Castaneda (Golovin once dubbed it "Castaedov"), Gurdjieff, badly translated (from English (sic!) into Russian) Zen treatises, etc. Such "soft" occultism, also called "new age", is an artificial surrogate for the layman, slipped by the System instead of a full spiritual life. This, in short, is shit. 

There is, however, "hard" occultism. A rather revolutionary direction, claiming that the world in which we live is based on arrogant hypnosis of a profane con man, created from horse shit scientists, foolish politicians and stupid journalists who inspire everyone with false and ideas about a person, reality, structure of the Universe, science, etc. Such "hard" occultism (somewhat close to traditionalism) aggressive, dangerous to the System and oriented for the nonconformist. The super goal of ‘’hard’’ occultism is to arrange a complete revolution of the foundations of a profane civilization, return to the norms of a sacred society, create “new people”, magicians that free from the illusory clichés of our stupid world and have some fun in general. “Hard” occultists are fond of Meyrink, Lovecraft, Evola, Kremermeri, Guilo von List, and especially to hated by “soft” occultists  Aleister Crowley who calls himself various indecent names (for example, That Mega Therion). So there are all kinds of occultists out there. The NBP leans, of course, to the "hard".

The english translation of Dugin's "The Gnostic" can be found in the "New Resistance" site. However, some parts of the original are omitted in the english translation. In the version bellow I added the omitted parts. 

The Gnostic by Alexander Dugin 

The time has come to reveal the truth, to expose the spiritual essence of what boot-licking ordinary people call “political extremism.” We have confused them enough by changing the labels of our political sympathies, the color of our heroes, and by passing from fire to cold, from “rightism” to “leftism” and back again. All of this has been but an intellectual artillery barrage, a kind of ideological warm-up. 

We have frightened and tempted the extreme right and extreme left, and now both, and others, have lost their way, strayed from the beaten tracks. This is amazing. As the great Evgeniy Golovin liked to repeat: “He who goes against the day, should not fear the night.” There is nothing more pleasant than when the group is slipping out from under your feet. This is the first experience of flight. It kills vermin. It tempers angels. 

Advocates of stability, gradualism, an evolutionary approach, conservatives, progressivists, in short, conformists, were seriously concerned by our uncontrollability and deliberate hatred of compromise. 

Finally, they felt that there were forces that would find fault not with ideas, but with types. So this time they will not be able to sit out. For the first time in history, purges threaten to touch not political, ethnic, religious or social groups, but the entire gigantic social body of opportunists, scum, shifters, townsfolk. The scarlet scite of National Bolshevism will pass both right and left, authorities and their opposition, and white and red, if their decay, alienation, and poisonous swagger of brazen mediocrity will be clearly visible ... If we see grimaces of the "evil Demiurge", our main ancient enemy, behind their masks. 

Who are we, really? Whose menacing face is it all the more clearly peering out from the paradoxical, radical political movement with the terrifying name “National Bolshevism?” 

Today we can respond without any ambiguity and vagueness. But this necessitates a brief excursion into the history of the spirit. 

Mankind has always had two types of spirituality, two paths – the “Right Hand Path” and the “Left Hand Path.” The first is characterized by a positive attitude towards the surrounding world, in which harmony, balance, bliss, and peace are seen. All evil is but a particular instance, a local deviation from the norm, something insignificant, transient, having no deep, transcendental causes. The Right Hand Path is also called the “Milky Way.” It does not subject man to any particular suffering; it protects him from radical experiences, leads him away from immersion in suffering, and away from the nightmare of being. This is a false path. It leads to slumber. It leads to nowhere. 

The second path, the “Left Hand Path”, sees everything in the reverse. There is no milky bliss, but black suffering; no silent calm, but the festering, fiery drama of split being. This is the “path of wine.” It is destructive, terrifying. Wrath and rage reign on it. In this path, all reality is perceived as hell, as ontological exile, as torture, as submersion into the heart of some kind of unthinkable catastrophe originating from the very heights of the cosmos. 

If on the first path everything appears to be good, then on the second path everything appears evil. This path is monstrously difficult, but it is the only true one. On this path it is easy to stumble and even easier to disappear. It guarantees nothing. It entices no one. But only this path is correct. He who takes this path will gain fame and immortality. He who survives it will prevail and receive an award that is higher than being. 

He who goes down the Left Hand Path knows that it will end. The dungeon of matter will collapse and be transformed into a heavenly city. A chain of initiates passionately prepares the desired moment, the moment of the End, the triumph of total liberation. 

These two paths are not two different religious traditions. Both are possible in all religions, in all confessions, in all churches. There are no external differences between them whatsoever. They concern the most intimate parts of man, his secret essence. They cannot be chosen. They themselves choose a man to be their victim, their servant, their instrument, their weapon. 

The Left Hand Path is called “gnosis”, “knowledge.” It is just as bitter as knowledge and it generates sorrow and cold tragedy. Once upon a time in antiquity, when mankind still attached decisive importance to spiritual things, the Gnostics created their own theories on the level of a philosophy, a doctrine, the cosmological mysteries, and on a cult level. Gradually people degenerated, stopped paying attention to the sphere of thought, and plunged into physiology in search of individual comfort in everyday life. 

But the Gnostics did not disappear. They moved the dispute to a level of things understandable to modern citizens. 

Some of them proclaimed slogans of “social justice”, developed theories of class struggle, and communism. The Mystery of Sophia became “class consciousness”, and the “struggle against the evil Demiurge, the creator of the cursed world” took the shape of social battles. The threads of ancient knowledge stretched to Marx, Nechaev, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Che Guevara. The wine of socialist revolution, the joy of rebellion against the forces of fate, and the sacred, berserker passion for total destruction of all that was black for the sake of obtaining a new, otherworldly Light. 

Others opposed the ordinariness of everydayness with the secret energy of race, the noise of blood. Against mixing and deformity they raised laws of purity and a new sacrality, a return to the Golden Age, the Great Return. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Evola, Hitler, and Mussolini draped the Gnostic will in national, racial teachings. 

It is quite right that the communists didn’t care much for workers, nor Hitler for Germans, but not out of cynicism. Both were obsessed with a deeper, more ancient, more absolute aspiration, the common Gnostic spirit, the secret and terrible light of the Left Hand Path. What workers, what “Aryans”… The point is totally different. 

Other creative personalities summoned to the Left Hand Path, the path of gnosis, also floundered between “reds” and “blacks” and “whites” and “browns” in their spiritual quests. Entangling themselves in political doctrines, going to extremes, and yet unable to clearly express the metaphysical contours of their obsession, artists from Shakespeare to Artaud and from Michelangelo to Eemans, from the troubadours to Breton, have drunk the secret wine of suffering, greedily soaking up in society, passions, sects and occult brotherhoods the disparate fragments of a terrible teaching that leaves smiling impossible. The Templars, Dante, Lautréamont. They never smiled in their lives. This is a sign of a special chosenness, a trace of a monstrous experience of something that has been common for all Left Hand Pathers. 

The Gnostic looks at our world with his severe gaze – the same gaze as that of his predecessors, the links in the ancient chain of the elect of Horror. A repulsive picture reflects in his eyes. A mad West in consumer psychosis. An East whose dullness and pathetic submissiveness disgusts. A sunken world, a planet lying on the bottom. 

“In underwater woods, rush is useless and motion ceases…” (Golovin) 

But the Gnostic does not abandon his cause. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Moreover, he has every reason to celebrate on the inside. Did we not tell the naive optimists of the “Right Hand Path” where their excessive ontological trust will lead? Did we not predict the degeneration of their creative instinct down to the grotesque parody that is today’s conservatives, who have reconciled with everything that horrified their more sympathetic (but no less hypocritical) predecessors just a few millennia ago? They didn’t listen to us. Now let them blame themselves and read New Age booklets or marketing handbooks. 

We have forgiven no one. We have forgotten nothing.

We have not been deceived by the changes in social decorations and political (wanna-be) actors.

We have a very long memory. We have very long hands.

We have a very severe tradition. 

We sing “Marseillaise”, “The Internationale”, “Horst Wessel”, “Giovinezza” on same motive, the disturbing motive of the End. Our Common End.

The 64,797th year of our struggle is coming to an end.Struggle with you.

Don’t hope that you will get rid of us so easily. Not even death will help. Do you think there are no agents of ours?

The labyrinths of being, the spirals of thoughts, the whirlpools of anger… 

In St. Petersburg, a group of National Bolsheviks discovered Rodion Raskolnikov's axe. Does your necks itching already?

Source: https://tapirr.livejournal.com/2857091.html

* * *

Dugin and Crowley 

After reading the note of Gurianov Pavel about Dugin, I was interested in the following words: Throughout the 90s, Dugin entered various organizations and movements (NBP, the Old Believer community) and was trying to impose on them occult Gnosticism as the true content of their ideology. During his collaboration with Limonov and the National Bolshevik Party he participated in specific events (see video below). In the video, Dugin, and Limonov participate in a concert called “Kurekhin for Dugin”.

Here is what the NBP Limonka newspaper (No. 24) wrote about the concert:

... Limonov and Dugin, of course, in a nutshell, are pure politics, but at the same time their role in the concert was rather close to the function of “mistagogues”. Chairman Limonov read out a list of angels who remained in heaven and descended from there .... Dugin, on the other hand ... proclaimed some mysterious spells in French and Russian associated with the number 418 … The Puppet Theater played the episode from Golden Dawn sexual magic practices, an executioner dressed in a Ku Klux Klan costume ran around in a giant wheel, people tied to burning crosses drawing fiery swastikas in the air while rotating. Necrorealists showed a trick of turning a man into a goat and a striptease of a naval officer. Then the artists of the Kostroma group dressed in the costumes of lunatics carried out the Babylonian Harlot  in the 60s nylon poisonous outfit on the platform, which danced a magnificent dance of the end of the world;

The concert, organized for Dugin, in itself can be evaluated as a black mass. But the participants in the concert did not hide it, they commemorated Aleister Crowley, the black magician, and satanist.

Dugin’s interest in Aleister Crowley is not accidental. The fact is that in 1993 Dugin met with Christian Boucher, the head of the French branch of the Order of the Oriental Templars in Moscow. 

Here's what they write about it on the website of the “Stavros” Center of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church: 

The Order has a reputation for being Satanic, preaching sexual magic and the African Voodoo cult. Boucher’s visit inspired Dugin so much that he decided to immediately publish “At the End of the World”, an almanac of all the fundamental works of the chief theoretician of the Order Aleister Crowley, who called himself the “Great Beast” (for Christians, he is simply a Satanist and Antichrist). 

After such tricks, Dugin, today is already known for the “flexibility” of his statements and actions, rushed to the Old Believers. It is a pity that they did not know about such facts the biography of Mr. Dugin. Otherwise, they would teach him not to hag around satanic covens…

source: https://ruskom.livejournal.com/530657.html

* * *

Recommended reading:
https://stavroskrest.ru/content/nikita-kaledin-aleksandr-dugin-ili-podpole-vyhodit-naruzhu
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/analit/raznie.htm
http://www.religare.ru/2_71336.html

http://www.russ.ru/pole/Ne-konservativnaya-ne-pravoslavnaya-ne-filosofiya

Maximus the Confessor's "Letter to Marinus" (Vladimir Lossky)

Father Venance Grumel, in the article he devotes to Maximus in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique declares that Maximus, in his letter to Marinus, justifies the Roman formula! Now, Maximus shows that it is only a matter of economy. In the ninth century, at the time certain westerners already professed unacceptable views, Anastasius the Librarian, a high dignitary of the Roman Curia and a great Hellenist scholar in a letter addressed in Latin to John the Deacon, speaks of this letter of Maximus to Marinus: "We have translated a passage from the letter of Saint Maximus to Marinus, in which he says that the Greeks were wrong in accusing us, since we do not think that the Son is the cause of the Spirit, but we only want to show the unity of substance: as the Spirit proceeds from the Father, so likewise can one say that He proceeds from the Son, but understanding thereby the sending (missionem) of the Holy Spirit." "And thus,"Anastasius concluded, "Maximus has shown in what sense the Spirit proceeds and in what sense he does not proceed from the Son, and he has avoided the difficulty due to a reciprocal ignorance of the languages." The result is that for Anastasius the attacks by the Greek theologians make no sense. For him, the Father is the sole cause; the Filioque defines a mission. In Migne's Patrology, the editor of the letter of Anastasius (that precedes the letter of Maximus to Marinus) introduces here a little note where he signals that one should read emissionem where the text indicates missionem - if not, one would be in agreement with the schismatic Greeks!

From the book "Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: Creation, God's Image in Man, & the Redeeming Work of the Trinity" by Vladimir Lossky 

Notes on Created and Uncreated Grace

According to St. Basil (both in his letters and in his Contra Eunomium) it is impossible to know anything about the divine essence (ousia). He insists - against the teaching of Eunomius, who held that knowledge of the divine essence (ousia) was possible - that knowledge of God comes only by participation in His energies.

“We say that we know our God from His operations (energeiai), but do not undertake to approach near to His essence (ousia). His operations (energeiai) come down to us, but His essence (ousia) remains beyond our reach.” - St. Basil the Great

The essence / energy distinction also protects God’s hetero-essentiality in relation to creation, while allowing for a real energetic participation in His divinity by creatures. To put it another way, God is essentially (and wholly) transcendent, while He is simultaneously energetically (and wholly) immanent.

In Scholastic theology "created" grace is ". . . a quality, a light that enables the soul to receive worthily the indwelling of the three divine Persons," [Charles Journet, The Meaning of Grace, page 19], but in Eastern theology this Light (or "quality") is the very uncreated energy of God. In other words, the effects of grace in man in Western theology are seen as "created"; while in Eastern theology these "effects" are seen as a participation in the uncreated God Himself as energy. In fact St. Gregory Palamas points out that, ". . . the divine Maximos has not only taught that it [i.e., the gift of theosis] is enhypostatic*, but also that it is unoriginate (not only uncreated), indescribable and supratemporal. Those who attain it become thereby uncreated, unoriginate, and indescribable, although in their own nature, they derive from nothingness." [St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads, page 86] Thus, in Eastern theology there is no such thing as "created" grace, nor can there ever be such a thing, because grace is God Himself.

Now the differences between East and West on the issue of grace were highlighted by Fr. Joseph Gill, S.J., in his book on the Western Council of Florence, for as he pointed out in his treatment of the topic of grace, the doctrinal differences between the two sides became particularly evident during the discussions between John Montenero, O.P., and St. Mark of Ephesus in the fifth session of the Council on March 14, because during a very heated exchange on the issue of the effects flowing from power of grace, Fr. Montenero ". . . pressed Mark [of Ephesus] as to whether the gifts of the Spirit were different from the Spirit Himself," which is what the Latins believed, or if the gifts flowing from the Spirit were the Spirit Himself, which is what the Byzantine Church holds. St. Mark of course rejected the Latin position and this caused further heated exchanges, culminating in an intervention by the Emperor ordering that the subject be dropped. Now even though the exchange ended abruptly (i.e., because of the Emperor's interference), it did show that the two sides disagree on the nature of grace, and in fact as Fr. Gill went on to say, it was this line of debate that brought up the ". . . Palamitic question of the divine energies, which Mark with most Greeks held to be really distinct from the divine essence, an opinion that the Latins both then and now consider wrong." [Fr. Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence, pages 205-206] Thus, it is clear that East and West understand the nature of grace differently, because for the West the effects of the Spirit within man are "created" realities, i.e., they are a "created" grace; while for the East the effects are a true participation in the uncreated divine energy, which is God Himself as He exists outside of His ineffable essence.

*Enhypostatic is used as a contrast to the terms authypostatic and anhypostatic. That which is enhypostatic is not self-subsisting (authypostatic), nor is it merely transitory or illusory (anhypostatic), but is instead a real quality inhering in a hypostasis.

Fr. Hardon on sanctifying grace (http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Grace/Grace_003.htm):

Nature of Sanctifying Grace. What is sanctifying grace? It has been called the “masterpiece of God’s handicraft in this world … far more glorious than anything we can behold in the heavens above us or on the earth at our feet.” Is it just God’s favor toward us, as Luther wanted? No, it is much more. Is it God’s life or nature or God’s love, as some have called it? No, for God’s life and love and nature are uncreated, are God Himself. Sanctifying grace is not God, it is not the Holy Spirit, it is not just God’s favor. It is something created, given to us by God out of love and mercy, which gives us a created likeness of God’s nature and life. It is a supernatural gift infused into our souls by God, a positive reality, spiritual, supernatural, and invisible. 

Divine Quality. According to St. Thomas, sanctifying grace “is neither a substance nor a substantial form, but an accidental form, a permanent quality placed by God in the very essence of the soul, which causes it to participate by means of a certain likeness in the divine nature” (1-2q110aa.2-4). No wonder, then that the Roman Catechism calls it a “divine quality.”

The definitions given by Fr. Hardon in connection with sanctifying grace are completely foreign, and even inimical, to the teaching of the Byzantine tradition on grace. There is no such thing as “created grace,” nor is there a “created supernatural,” etc., and in fact the whole approach taken by the West since the time of the Scholastics is contrary to the teachings of the Eastern Church Fathers.

Fr. Hardon is saying that man receives a “created” quality, i.e., something other than God Himself that makes us only like God in a created manner. This take on grace is simply unacceptable to Eastern Christians.

Eastern Christianity teaches that grace, both in itself and in its reception, is uncreated, and has the effect of making the recipient uncreated energetically. There are no “created” acts of grace, and so when a man loves as God loves, he loves in an uncreated way.

Once again, for the West - according to Fr. Hardon (and the Scholastics he accepts as normative) - there is a “created supernatural,” but there is no such thing in reality; instead, there is only God and creation, for there is nothing that exists in between the Creator and His creation. That being said, it is clear that man does not receive a “created” sanctifying grace, and in fact such a thing (i.e., a created grace or quality) could never divinize a man; and that is why in Eastern theology it is said that man receives God Himself as energy, and that gift of God’s energy is what makes man eternal and uncreated by grace.

Roman Catholic: There is the dogma de fide that “By reason of His endowment with the fullness of created habitual grace, Christ’s soul is also accidentally holy.”

I reject that “dogma” as you call it, because Christ’s soul is holy, not because it has received some alien “created habitual grace,” but because His human soul as been infused (and even permeated perichoretically) with divine energy, and so it has been divinized in reality and not in mere appearance by a some kind of non-existent “created” quality.

It is an ancient axiom of the Eastern Fathers that only the uncreated can divinize the created. So there can be no “created grace,” because such a thing could never elevate man into the very life of the Triune God. To put it another way, man becomes God in God in the Eastern doctrinal tradition; while in the Western tradition (at least since the time of the Scholastics) man becomes divine through a “created grace” that gives him a mere likeness to God in a created fashion. The Western teaching, at least from an Eastern perspective, is very similar to Arianism.

Roman Catholic: The Holy Spirit consists of the created accidental grace and the uncreated substantial grace.

I find this notion utterly repulsive. The Holy Spirit is uncreated, both as to His hypostasis and when speaking of the energies that flow from Him. Grace is not an accident (in the Aristotelian sense); instead, it is God Himself personally (enhypostatically) as He comes down to us. There can be no such thing as “created grace” in the doctrine of the Eastern Churches. The idea of there being “created grace” is as nonsensical as saying there is a “created God.”

Roman Catholic: East and west can agree that God does (actus purus) aside from what he is the ineffable, and the grace of the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

I do not believe that God is “actus purus”; instead, I hold that God is essence, energy, and a triad of divine hypostaseis. Quite frankly, God is beyond the concepts espoused by Aristotle, and that is why it is unwise to try and use pagan philosophy to create a novel Christian theology. It is one thing to use the terms (words) formulated by Plato and Aristotle, and in fact the use of the Greek language will inevitably require that one use terms coined by the pagan philosophers, but it is quite another to absorb the pagan conceptual theories devised by those men into the Christian tradition.

John 14:21: Jesus answered and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.

That is a wonderful text of scripture, and it beautifully supports the doctrine of the Eastern Church, which holds that man is deified by God through entering into His uncreated life, and not by receiving some alien “created grace” or habitus.

Grace occurs in time in the sense of reception, but nevertheless is, and always remains, timeless in itself; and moreover it makes the man who receives it timeless as well, for as St. Gregory Palamas wrote in opposition to the heretic Akindynos:

"According to the divine Maximus, the Logos of well-being, by grace is present unto the worthy, bearing God, Who is by nature above all beginning and end, Who makes those who by nature have a beginning and an end become by grace without beginning and without end, because the Great Paul also, no longer living the life in time, but the divine and eternal life of the indwelling Logos, became by grace without beginning and without end; and Melchisedek had neither beginning of days, nor end of life, not because of his created nature , according to which he began and ceased to exist, but because of the divine and uncreated and eternal grace which is above all nature and time, being from the eternal God. Paul, therefore, was created only as long as he lived the life created from non-being by the command of God. But when he no longer lived this life, but that which is present by the indwelling of God, he became uncreated by grace, as did also Melchisedek and everyone who comes to possess the Logos of God, alone living and acting within himself."

The East rejects any notion of a “created grace” saying instead that man takes on the qualities of the uncreated grace (i.e., God’s uncreated energies) received; while the West reduces grace to man’s created nature, saying that it becomes created in man as a habitus. There is no parallel to this novel Western teaching in the East.

I am reminded of what Vladimir Lossky wrote in his book The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, “Eastern tradition knows no such supernatural order between God and the created world, adding, as it were, to the latter a new creation. It recognizes no distinction, or rather division, save that between the created and the uncreated. For [the] Eastern tradition the created supernatural has no existence. That which Western theology calls by the name of the supernatural signifies for the East the uncreated—the divine energies ineffably distinct from the essence of God.”

To put it bluntly, there can be no “created grace,” nor can there be a “created supernatural,” in Eastern theology.

* * * 

Roman Catholic: Created Grace does not refer to the substance of Grace, which is God himself (the energies of God or His life in us). The substance of Grace is God and is uncreated. Created Grace is the effect.

There are three forms of uncreated grace:

1. Hypostatic Union (John 1:14; 17)

2. Indwelling Presence of God in the just soul (John 14:17)

3. The Beatific Vision (I Peter 1:13)

The effect of each uncreated grace is created and is (respectively):

1. The Second Person of the Trinity unites with a human nature,

2. Sanctifying grace in the soul, and actual graces, making one a partaker in the Divine Nature,

3. The light of glory, in Heaven, allowing to see God face to face.

Blessed Pope John Paul II said 12 September 1984, for the Homily:“We thank the Father for the Son and the Holy Spirit. We thank the Son for the Father. We thank the Holy Spirit because through the love of the Father and the Son he is the uncreated Gift: the source of all the gifts of created grace.”

Roman Catholic: The substance of Grace is God and is uncreated. Created Grace is the effect.

Answer:

In the Byzantine tradition the effect of grace in man is also uncreated, and so when a man loves with the divine energy of love he loves in an uncreated manner, for the effect of the reception of divine love in man is an uncreated and eternal reality, which is why there can be no such thing as “created grace” in the tradition of the East.

Roman Catholic: The effect of each uncreated grace is created and is (respectively):

1. The Second Person of the Trinity unites with a human nature

Answer:

In the Byzantine doctrinal tradition the effect of the union of the divine and human natures in the one person of Christ is uncreated, because the human nature is permeated with uncreated grace and becomes energetically eternal and uncreated at the very moment that the divine Logos assumes human nature.

Roman Catholic:  2. Sanctifying grace in the soul, and actual graces, making one a partaker in the Divine Nature

Answer: 

The deifying energy that permeates man’s body and soul makes him uncreated and eternal by grace, and no “created sanctifying grace” (however one tries to dress it up to make it more palatable) could ever have that effect. So as I have said several times now, the effects of the reception of the uncreated energies by the saints are themselves uncreated.

Roman Catholic:  3. The light of glory, in Heaven, allowing to see God face to face.

Answer:

The Taboric Light, which is the Light of God’s glory, is in itself, and in its effects, eternal and uncreated, and nothing created can empower a man to see God face (prosopon) to face (prosopon).

That being said, the Eastern Churches have always rejected, and will always reject, any notion of “created grace,” for just as the created Arian savior could not save anyone, so too “created grace” cannot divinize anyone.

* * * 

The question of whether or not grace - as it is operative in man - is created or uncreated is not merely an academic debate. The Eastern Churches say - as they have always said - that nothing uncreated can divinize a man; while the West - since the time of the Medieval Scholatistics - has said that grace, as an effect in man, is created. These two viewpoints are not compatible.

Only the uncreated can make man uncreated, which is why I reject the teaching of the Western Council of Trent about justification when it says that man is justified by a justice that is not God’s own justice. To be just, or holy, or merciful in the Christian sense requires participation in God’s own energy of justice, holiness, and mercy, and not created habitus can make a man energetically divine. As I pointed out earlier with my quotation from St. Gregory Palamas’ Triads, theosis is an eternal and uncreated reality and the man who receives the light of glory in theosis becomes eternal and uncreated (see also Palamas’ letter to Akindynos).

The above commentaries were written by Steven Todd Kaster and can be found here and here

On the Fatima Apparitions

Critical Documentation of Fatima published by the Sanctuary of Fatima

As I read the Documentation provided by the Sanctuary of Fatima, I could see some curious things about the apparitions so venerated in Catholicism.

The first reference to Russia is provided by Sister Lucy in 1930. Prior to this - that is, in the various initial interviews and testimonials - Russia is mentioned neither by the children nor by the numerous testimonials of those involved.

Only in Lucia's memoirs, written in the 1940s, there is the first reference that Russia will "spread its errors around the world" and the prophecy about the beginning of World War II appear for the first time. Sister Lucy did not reveal these words of the apparition until after those facts had occurred.

Solar phenomena, however, constitute the strongest fact in the Apparitions. The documentation brings many witness statements. It was a spectacle of light, color and movement in the sky (which has also been reported in the Medjugorje apparitions). But there were also people claiming to have seen nothing.

A strange fact is that, at the first appearances, the priest who interviewed the children feels uncomfortable with something unusual: the children describe that the Lady wore a skirt "knee length". According to the priest, Mary could only appear with the utmost modesty. But the description of the apparition in the initial interviews with the seers (in 1917) goes like this:

- How was she dressed?

- She has a white dress that goes down to just below the middle of her leg and covers her head with a cloak of the same color and length as the dress.

- The dress has no embellishments?

- In the front, there are two golden strands, which fall from the neck and come together by a tassel, also golden, at the middle of the body.

- Is there a belt or some ribbon?

- There is not.

- She use earrings?

- Use some small yellow rings.

Subsequently, all descriptions of Mary's skirt go until the feet in an apparent attempt to "correct" the seers (in which Sister Lucy collaborated). No earrings appear in the official images.

Another strange fact is the mismatch of information about the end of World War I. In the interview on October 19, 1917, with seer Lucia (p. 99), its written:

- On the thirteenth day of the current month Our Lady said that the war ended that day? What were the words she used?

- She said: "The war is over today; wait here for your [Portugal] military very soon"

(...)

 - But look, the war is still going on! ... The newspapers report that there has been fighting after day thirteen! ... How can this be explained if Our Lady said the war was over that day?"

- I do not know. All I know is that I heard she say the war was over on the thirteenth day. I don't know anything else.

- Some people say they heard you say that Our Lady had declared that the war was over soon. It is true?

- I said it just as Our Lady had said.

And in the interview with Jacinta (p. 104):

-  She said: I come here to tell you not to offend Our Lord, who was very offended, that if the people amended, the war would end, if not the world would end. Lucia heard better than I what the Lady said.

- She said that the war was over that day or that it was over soon?

- Our Lady said that when she got to heaven the war would be over.

- But the war is not over yet! ...

- It will over, it will over.

- But then when is it over?

- I think it ends on Sunday. 

In fact, the war only ended about a year later. In an interview in 1924, Lucia seeks to undo the mistake (p. 321):

It seems to me that she said in this way: 'Convert and the war is over today, wait for your military very soon.' My cousin Jacinta told me at home that she said: ''Convert and the war to be over within a year.' As I was thinking about the requests I wanted to make, I didn't pay much attention. 

This same Lucy, who had so much difficulty understanding a simple sentence, later, that is, in the 1940s, will describe long speeches of the apparition making prophecies about the beginning of the Second War (when it had already begun).

From the theological point of view, the apparition was also widely criticized. In the article "The Appearances of Fatima and Orthodox Christianity" we are warned that "to say, therefore, that we must make 'reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary' literally puts her in the place of God." The text also criticizes the materialistic concept of grace present in apparitions, as if it were a kind of commodity to be stored and distributed in exchange for good works. 

Miriam Lambouras in "The Marian Apparitions" shows how many Fatima-like apparitions contributed to a low view of Christ:

Equally doubtful is the suggestion of replacing "Christ our God, patient, all-merciful, compassionate, who loves the righteous and has mercy on sinners," with a distant, impersonal, angry figure, engaged in punishment and revenge. La Salette's apparition says, "I [Mary] can no longer hold the heavy arm of my Son"; Fatima's apparition: "... He is already very offended." In San Damiano, 1961, "The Eternal Father is tired, very tired ...". In Oliveto Citra, Italy, in 1985, we again heard, "I can no longer hold the righteous arm of my Son." The sayings echo the unbalanced but very popular teachings of some latin saints and preachers of the past, in which Christ's kingdom of justice was opposed to Mary's kingdom of mercy. "If God is angry with a sinner, Mary takes him under her protection, she impedes the avenging arm of her Son and saves him" (Alphonsus Liguori). "She is the sure refuge of sinners and criminals from the rigor of the wrath and vengeance of Jesus Christ"; she "prevents the evil that He [Christ] would do to the guilty" (Jean-Jacques Olier). 

Desmond Seward in "The Dancing Sun" states: "One of the most disturbing aspects of these apparitions is that the Virgin appears as an autonomous figure while Christ is strangely absent. It is she who mourns over the sinful state of humanity, she who decides who will be healed ("some I will heal, some not")."

From all this, I claim that we have no legitimate prophecy elements to confirm the divine origin of these events. If you want to believe, you can believe it; I just don't understand the attempt to throw the 'qualities' of this supposed apparition in the face of other Christians. It is much safer to hold to what is right in faith.

Translated from https://catena-aurea.blogspot.com/2019/08/sobre-as-aparicoes-de-fatima.html

* * *

Bellow is part of a review of the book Fátima: milagre ou construção [Fatima: miracle or construction] by portuguese journalist Patrícia Carvalho.

Solidly grounded on the Critical Documentation of Fatima, a publication of the Fatima Sanctuary itself, the book reveals some interesting aspects of the history of the apparitions that the Portuguese village witnessed between May and October 1917. [...] It may also be a little embarrassing to know that the bishop of Leiria, Monsignor José Alves Correia da Silva, ordered the purchase of land and a project for the sanctuary before opening the diocesan inquiry about the apparitions; that canon Manuel Nunes Formigão, one of the main responsible in the spread of devotion, was a man obsessed with having a sanctuary like Lourdes in his country, believing that [Lourdes sanctuary] was responsible for the "re-christianization of France", as he wrote; and that Lucia's mother often read to her daughter a kind of popular catechism called the “Abbreviated Mission,” which contained, among other things, a detailed account of Mary's appearances in La Salette, France - in very similar terms to Lucia's description of the apparitions. 

Even more important is to take into account the fact that what is known today as the second and third parts of the "secret" of Fatima - that is, the most controversial parts, which mention the need for Russia to be converted and the procession of martyrs headed by the Pope - does not date from 1917. Initially the subject of visions that Lucia reports already had when she was a nun, Russia only became part of the history of the apparitions in 1941, when the seer wrote her third memory. The moment in Europe was of world war and in Portugal the anti-communism was growing.

* * * 

As for the "sun miracle", bellow are part of the descriptions from the Critical Documentation of Fatima:

"And then they ask each other whether they saw and what they saw. The greatest number confess that they saw a trembling, the dancing of the sun; but others claim to have seen the face of the Virgin with a smile, swear that the sun has turned about himself like a firework wheel, that the sun lowered almost to the point of burning the earth with his rays ... Some say saw the sun successively change color ... "(p. 76) "(...) what I saw that was truly strange in the heath of Fatima? The rain, at the pre-announced time, ceases; the dense mass of clouds break and the star-king - silver disk - in full zenith appear and begin dancing in a violent and convulsive dancing, which many people imagined to be a serpentine dance, so beautiful and shinning colors successively covered the solar surface ... "(p. 115) "This rosy-pearly disk had the dizziness of movement. It was not the flicker of a star in full life. It was spinning on itself at a rushed speed. Suddenly a cry is heard as a cry of anguish from all those people. The sun, retaining the speed of its rotation, stands out from the firmament and raging advances over the earth threatening to crush us with the weight of its fiery and big millstone. These are seconds of terrifying impression. During the solar event, which I have been describing in detail, there were changing colors in the atmosphere. "(P. 151) "The globe of the sun, like a dull silver disk, revolved around an imaginary axis, and at that moment, seemed to descend into the atmosphere, towards the earth, sometimes accompanied by an extraordinary brightness and intense heat. The sun's rays were yellow, green, blue and purple, they say, but I only noticed the yellow color." (P. 161)

It seems to have been a tremendous spectacle of light, color and movement of the sun. I wonder what a miracle like this means. It is also interesting the fact that the "sun miracle" is often reported in relation to the Medjugorje's apparition: https://www.medjugorje.com/medjugorje/signs-and-miracles/the-spinning-sun.html