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  "map_content": "The Dragon, The Serpent And The Eagle\r\n\r\nSurvival Of The Soul\r\nIn The Time Of The Devouring Dragon\r\n\r\n\ufffc\r\n\r\nSoul over mind and matter\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy didst you live so long by the swamp, that you yourself had to become a frog and a toad? Flows there not the tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in your own veins, when you have thus learned to croak and revile? Why did you not go into the forest? Or why didst you not till the ground? Is the sea not full of green islands?\u201d\r\n\r\n- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche\r\n\r\nPreface:\r\n\r\nThe hero\u2019s journey is a path on the razor\u2019s edge between the physio-mental world and the spiritual world. On one hand, the hero must survive in his physical form all the slings and arrows his enemies and the adventure itself throw at him, but on the other hand he must make sure that his soul survives his fight against the dragon -- or else he turns into a dragon himself.\r\n\r\nNot becoming a monster while fighting monsters is arguably the most important part of the hero\u2019s journey.\r\n\r\nIf the hero becomes a monster while fighting monsters, he loses the great battle, no matter how much worldly power he obtains in the process. If he becomes a monster himself, evil wins. If he fails to carry his soul through his adventures intact, like the flame of a candle through a storm, all has been in vain, all is lost.\r\n\r\nNot losing his soul is the number one priority, but the hero is well advised to do more than just that and nurture the flame of his soul, strengthen it and build it into a fire that makes his entire being shine.\r\n\r\nOn the hero\u2019s journey, survival of body and mind mustn\u2019t come at the cost of losing the soul. That\u2019s the challenge, that\u2019s the path. That\u2019s how the hero returns home victoriously. This is how he becomes the man and king he needs to be.\r\n\r\nThe hero\u2019s journey is simultaneously a path that leads the hero out of his home and into the world full of dragons and serpents, and a path that leads him inside of himself where he must conquer his own dragon and his own serpent and liberate his soul from the dark dungeon where they keep it in chains. He must build up his soul, make it stronger and put it on the throne.\r\n\r\nChapter 1:\r\nThe Landscape\r\n\r\nIn order to survive what the adventure of the hero\u2019s journey has in store for him, the hero must know where he is and what time of the cycle of civilization he finds himself in. Survival is different for every place and every time. It is different in summer than in winter, different in the desert than in the arctic, different in a pre-apocalyptic landscape than in a post-apocalyptic one.\r\n\r\nToday in the West, the hero finds himself in a time and place that prohibits adventures and heroes altogether, which, of course, is the perfect time and place to go on adventures. He finds himself thrown into the last stage of a civilization. A time and place where masculinity is feared, discouraged and prohibited. The heroes and pioneers who built the structures meant to keep the monsters out are now perceived as superfluous, and the structures themselves have become the monsters. The men who built civilization are no longer needed to keep the monsters out, and are feared and hated by the only monster that still exists, the structure itself, the highly centralized control apparatus.\r\n\r\nMen and heroes have been replaced by women and boys who are for some reason convinced that in spite of not knowing the first thing about how any of it works, they are much better equipped for running society. At the end of every civilization a feminine spirit, that very much resembles a morbidly obese, completely deluded woman, climbs onto the throne once built by great men, and devours everything in a naive, misguided and increasingly insane attempt at making the world a better place for \u201call her children\u201d.\r\n\r\nAnd the few remaining men allow it all to happen, because deep inside they long for adventure and want the entire empire to crumble and fall. They want to be survivors, hunters, warriors and heroes again \u2013 or die. They hate civilization once it is too centrally controlled, feminine, boring and tame.\r\n\r\nAt that point, to the remaining men, central authority has become a problem much bigger than the one it was once meant to resolve. It has become the bottomless pit itself, the collective swamp where the soul is stuck in the materialist estrogen-drenched mud and slowly rots away. A place where God has been replaced by earthly \u201cgoddesses\u201d and high-rising churches by fertility clinics that double as slaughterhouses, just like in prehistoric times when the temple was a place of birth and animal or human sacrifice.\r\n\r\nThe force with which female archetypes have taken over Western society in the last decades is an event so spectacular, enormous and obvious that many fail to even see it, just like fish are unable to see that there\u2019s water all around them. Great events are oftentimes only seen from far away, decades or centuries after they happened. Feminism is just a small part of it. Everything has become either maternal or infantile. Materialism, paganism, collectivism, feelings over reason, unconscious, castrated and sterilized masses, maternal central planning and redistribution of resources, these are all expressions of the female archetypes that have taken control.\r\n\r\nThe early phases of a civilization are connected to male archetypes, the hero, the explorer, the conqueror, later the king. But once the structures of society harden and the monsters are quite successfully kept at bay and mostly forgotten, female archetypes tend to take over and manage systems they neither built nor understand according to their misguided maternal instincts. First the queen takes over and rules the at this point highly centralized structure, the population of which has already largely turned into infantile masses far removed from reality. The king, meanwhile, is turning into a more or less wise old man who has long lost interest in being a ruler and longs for the good old times of adventures and freedom.\r\n\r\nAnd then, eventually, in the grand finale, the devouring mother takes over after society has reached a high degree of material wealth and security, but is simultaneously already rapidly deteriorating spiritually and deeply corrupt. She uses the entire force of the state apparatus to try and control and keep together what is already beginning to slide in all directions. The structures once built to keep the monsters out have now become themselves a monster much more powerful and destructive than those it was meant to keep out. And eventually, the devouring mother will drench the earth in rivers of blood. Call her Kali, call her Hekate, call her the whore of Babylon. It\u2019s all the same thing. She is an earth goddess and wants to fertilize the ground with blood.\r\n\r\nThe hero today finds himself in this landscape ruled by a queen who is well on her way of turning into the devouring mother. She means well, she wants to save everyone, feed all her children, clothe and shelter them. But the realm is just too big to be ruled by her motherly instincts. What works well in a family or small group fails miserably when applied to a late stage kingdom or the world, for that matter.\r\n\r\nThe more she fails to save everyone, the more controlling she becomes. A bad king is authoritarian, but an evil queen is totalitarian. She wants to control everything in order to redistribute to all her children according to their needs. And the more she fails because the task she has taken on is much greater than her abilities, the more corruption and insanity take control of her until, in the end, she devours everything.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s inevitable. It may just be the natural and adequate phenomenon to appear in the last phase of any highly centralized society. It seems like all civilizations (societies with a strong tendency towards central authority) are doomed to go through this cycle and get devoured in the end by a blue-haired dragon that cannot be reasoned with. It seems like the moment a society loses the battle against centralizing forces it is doomed to go through the Spenglerian cycle of civilization.\r\n\r\nOf course, the decline and fall of civilizations has many other causes. A succession of archetypes appearing as a result of changing circumstances alone isn\u2019t enough to explain it. The degree to which central power corrupts, for example, is hard to overestimate and could very well be one of the main factors for a civilization to fall in the end. Centralized power is like a dark blood-ritual that slowly extracts power from individuals and concentrates it in one place, until finally enough energy has been focused in one spot to open a portal to hell, and legions of demons rush into our realm and organize the slaughter of millions. \r\n\r\nWithout question many factors come together to create the cycle of civilization, but the force with which the devouring mother archetype has rammed society in our time is impossible to ignore. Even the worship of morbidly obese women has returned from pre-historic times when the goddess was displayed with tremendous breasts and hips, shaped like a pot, symbolizing the all-containing, all-birthing and all-devouring great mother.\r\n\r\nAnd as if that wasn\u2019t enough, we are seeing before our very eyes the worship of the (artificial) hermaphrodite, a symbol going back even further into our dark unconscious past, to a time when the archetypes hadn\u2019t even begun to separate and their symbols contained both the feminine and masculine aspects combined in one figure.\r\n\r\nRight in front of our eyes, the morbidly obese, collectivist, blue-haired whore of Babylon is riding the beast, surrounded by armies of eunuchs, her carious vagina dentata ready to castrate anyone who dares to resist, fertilizing the ground with the blood of millions of children she devours before they are even born. And the streets are filled with filth, degeneracy, corruption and perversion. Half-dead infantilized hoards roam this realm in legions, worship her and get drunk on her wine. \r\n\r\nThe hero of our time is thrown onto a map ruled by late stage archetypes, outrageous corruption and a totalitarian dragon-beast ridden by the Whore of Babylon, worshiped by legions of half-dead, half-alive, half-female, half-male hostiles that may be weak and frail, but have great numbers and all kinds of slings and arrows, nets and dark technological spells.\r\n\r\nThe devouring she-dragon sits in the center of this map like a giant spider in a world wide web that spans the entire realm, rushing to bind anything that dares to move without her permission, rushing to kill or castrate anything that displays individuality or consciousness.\r\n\r\nThis she-dragon is a representation of matter itself (matter = mater = mother). It is unconscious, collectivist and deeply materialist. It is the collective body, so to speak. It is matter itself, it is the earth, the universe, creation. But, paradoxically, materialism isn\u2019t devoid of a spiritual aspect. Paganism is essentially the religion of materialism. It is the worship of mother earth, the universe, the moon and the stars. Paganism is esoteric materialism. It deifies matter, the mother, and denies a Creator, the Father.\r\n\r\nTherefore, it is no surprise that during the rule of the dragon even what remains of the churches has become largely feminine, gay and materialist. Not to mention the supposed alternative, the New Age Movement, in it\u2019s countless expressions, which is the definition of feminine pseudo-spirituality: warmed up feel-good paganism mixed with astrology, witchcraft and self-help books written by depressed spinsters.\r\n\r\nIs it a surprise that the UN is the perfect embodiment of the mother archetype and its feminine, pagan pseudo-spirituality?\r\n\r\nWhat is missing today is a masculine spiritual path, a hero\u2019s journey without and within. A path that calls for a courageous and wise warrior. A path where men can prove themselves and develop uncastrated masculinity. Such a path has always been necessary for men and its absence is a catastrophe of biblical proportions. But this path returns right when it is again most needed, like clockwork, just like the devouring mother has returned right on time for the grand finale, the last phase of civilization.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s terribly easy to confuse cause and effect. When a tree has died and fungi and bugs take over and devour it, to a casual observer it may seem as if the fungus and insects have killed the tree, but in reality they are the effect, not the cause. It may look like civilization is rushing towards the cliff because we\u2019ve taken the wrong turn and allowed feminism, socialism and materialism to take over, but it is much more likely that the absurd theater we are witnessing is the effect of the last stage of civilization and not its cause. \r\n\r\nThe last stage of civilization has produced collectivism, materialism, feminism and neo-paganism. The world isn\u2019t ending because of them, they have come because the end of civilization is on the horizon. They have come to devour everything that\u2019s already half dead and decaying.\r\n\r\nThe devouring mother hasn\u2019t come to devour a healthy and strong tree, using the highly centralized control apparatus as her vehicle, she has come to devour a tree that is already dead. Still standing, but already dead. And maybe it will stand for another century or two, dry and bloodless, but the fungus is already growing, and even if you could get rid of it, the tree wouldn\u2019t come back to life.\r\n\r\nNaturally, this entire landscape and time is the enemy of the hero. And that\u2019s fine, a hero needs enemies. There is no hero without enemies. Our time hates the hero. It may worship fake heroes, but it hates the hero that embarks on the hero\u2019s journey. The conscious, individual, ethical and spiritual hero is the perfect antithesis of the unconscious, collectivist, materialist she-dragon that has taken control of the West.\r\n\r\nChapter 2:\r\nThe Hero\r\n\r\nThe hero is the very antithesis of the devouring she-dragon. \r\n\r\nHe is the consciousness that breaks through the unconscious collective womb. He is the individuality that rejects the collectivism of the herd. He is the soul that escapes the materialist mud in which the dragon wallows. He is the freedom and order that challenge the chaos and control that characterize the rule of the beast. But he, too, carries inside of himself the forces that have taken over the world. Inside of him there is a dragon that has no morality whatsoever and there is also a serpent that constantly tries to deceive him with illusions and lies.\r\n\r\nHis path isn\u2019t to save the world from the dragon, but to overcome the dragon inside of himself. Trying to save the world from a dragon without having first overcome the dragon inside of oneself is like trying to clean a carpet while wearing muddy boots. It just makes things worse, no matter how good the intentions.\r\n\r\nThe return of the hero is the predictable result of the emergence of the dragon. Where there\u2019s a giant beast, heroes will come, eventually. There is no other way. The emergence of the hero in our thoroughly unheroic time is just as inevitable as the eventual takeover of civilization by a devouring mother. Everything has its time and now is the time of the devouring dragon and the emergence of the hero. And just like every real adventure, the hero is outnumbered, outgunned and the entire structure of a corrupt, fungus-infected society stands against him.\r\n\r\nThe odds are terrible, there is no hope. If there was hope, if the odds were good, it wouldn\u2019t even qualify as an adventure and the path would be crowded with cowards and weaklings taking pictures. If the path was easy and safe, the hero wouldn\u2019t choose it. If it was a path for everyone, he would avoid it. If the odds were in his favor, he wouldn\u2019t be a hero. Easy sailing is not a hero\u2019s journey.\r\n\r\nThe hero accepts that he needs to grow up. There is no worldly father to bring back the good old times and no great mother who will nourish all her children in a coming utopia. Civilization is on the way out and the hero accepts this fact and embraces the adventure it offers to him. And since most initiation rituals that once turned boys into men have been forgotten, the hero needs to initiate himself. The adventure is his initiation.\r\n\r\nAt every step, the hero\u2019s journey has other paths forking off, easier paths, paths that please the hero\u2019s inner beasts. The hero must make sure to stay on the narrow path and not follow the dark forces inside of himself that pull him to the left and right, to the dragon and to the serpent. On both sides of his path on the hero\u2019s journey there are opportunities to become a pseudo- revolutionary or a fake savior of the world, the climate and humanity. And not only his inner beasts would applaud him for leaving his difficult, narrow and thorny path, but also the world around him would pat him on the back and the great mother would welcome him back into her warm, smothering embrace.\r\n\r\nThe hero must resist all urges to please the collectivist herd and get its applause. More than anything else, one thing must be clear: his unshakable determination to leave the herd and become who he is meant to be by facing the beasts inside of himself. He must give up cowardice, blaming, whining and victimhood fantasies that give him excuses. He must take full responsibility for where he is in life. It\u2019s nobody else\u2019s fault. Not the fault of the devouring mother, society, or even his parents. If he doesn\u2019t like where he is, he blames his lack of courage and resolves it by facing his fears. The hero takes all responsibility onto his broad shoulders. He doesn\u2019t lament the state of the world, he embraces it. It provides the adventure he seeks and he is grateful for it.\r\n\r\nNobody can keep him from going on his adventure except for himself, his own cowardice. Who could prevent a hero from setting foot on his hero\u2019s journey? The hero isn\u2019t fearless, he is courageous. Fear is good, cowardice is shameful. Fear needs to be faced and overcome. Our courage must match and surpass our fear. He faces the abyss, he faces fear, he faces hopelessness and suffering.\r\n\r\nThe hero must learn humility and acceptance. He must admit that he doesn\u2019t know the answers to the great questions. He accepts the mystery. He gives up on trying to be seen as the one in the know, the one who\u2019s ahead of everyone, the one who is awake or enlightened. He is no longer in competition with others, he is now on an adventure, on a path, on a quest. There are helpers and adversaries on his adventure, but no competition. He is not out to become the savior of the world. He is out to save his own soul in the time of the devouring dragon and the talking serpent. By doing so, he does his part.\r\n\r\nThe hero saves the world from the part inside of him that wants to be seen as everybody\u2019s savior and leader. He knows that those who want to save the world are motivated by wanting to be seen as the saviors that they aren\u2019t, and by the urge to ignore the beasts inside of themselves that they should face instead. The hero wants freedom and adventure, but he knows that others may want a mommy and a daddy and a false sense of safety and revolution. He cares not. He isn\u2019t out to save or change the world, he is out to save his own soul and by doing so save the world from his own ego, his inner devouring dragon and talking serpent.\r\n\r\nThe hero has a heart burning with love. Hatred is for cowards. He loves even his enemies, but he doesn\u2019t serve them. The hero never strays from the truth. Lies are the language of cowardice. Lying is shameful to him. He leaves it to women, children and cowards. For the hero there is never a reason to lie, but oftentimes there\u2019s reason to keep his mouth shut.\r\n\r\nThe hero never attacks, but always defends. Himself and those around him. He is armed and trained. He doesn\u2019t seek to hurt anyone, but he is willing to do whatever it takes to protect the innocent and weak against the brutal and ruthless. The hero is no predator and no parasite, he is a protector and a helper. But he is willing to stand in the way of predators and parasites and put his life on the line in order to keep them from their prey.\r\n\r\nChapter 3:\r\nThe Path\r\n\r\nIn a world that offers the hero no initiation rituals to become a man, the hero has to create his own.\r\n\r\nHe leaves the house and goes on adventures. That\u2019s his initiation. That\u2019s how he begins his path. It\u2019s a decision, nothing more, nothing less. The moment he takes the decision to go on adventures, the door opens up. Nothing outside of himself has ever held him back, in spite of the excuses his mind may have been whispering in his ear. \r\n\r\nHe takes little with him, just the most necessary, just an adventure kit. A bottle of water, a rain-poncho, a knife, a saw, a fire-starter, cordage, a whistle, a blanket and some kind of weapon, and be it just a sturdy (weaponized) walking stick. Going on adventures unarmed is a very bad idea.\r\n\r\nHe goes out into the wilderness not to relax or distract himself, but to challenge himself, to prove himself, to endure hardships and suffering. He takes no tent with him, he doesn\u2019t carry a large backpack with everything he might possibly need and what could comfort him out there. He\u2019s not trying to carve out a comfort zone in the midst of his adventure. He sleeps on the ground. Maybe he won\u2019t be able to sleep at all. Good. \r\n\r\nThe hero must learn how to keep a promise he has given to himself. If he decides to walk a hundred miles, he walks a hundred miles, no matter what. He walks to the finish line even if the skin is falling off his feet. If he decides to stand guard somewhere all by himself until the sun comes up, he does so, no matter what kind of rain and storm is thrown at him. He creates his own challenges and then he suffers through them no matter what.\r\n\r\nMaybe he walks for a couple of days, rests under trees, eats nothing, or only what he finds. Maybe it is illegal to go into the woods where he lives. Good. He goes into the woods and keeps a low profile, stays out of sight, like a ghost. He watches without being seen. He travels light and unseen. He watches during the day and moves at night. \r\n\r\nLike Don Quijote he protects anyone who is attacked, should he witness it. He stands guard, unseen, watching. What he is guarding he doesn\u2019t know. Maybe something that once was but is no more. Maybe something that never was. Maybe something that will one day be, or not. It doesn\u2019t matter. He stands guard nonetheless. Maybe he decides to stand still for hours at the edge of the woods, looking at the city. Good.\r\n\r\nMaybe he can\u2019t get out of the city. He stays in the city, lives on the streets for a couple of days. Stays out of sight of the police and criminals. Fights back if someone attacks him, protects those who are attacked. Maybe he watches a street, hidden away in a dark corner without moving until he no longer feels his legs. The important part is that he sticks to the plan. He mustn\u2019t give up on the challenges he has given himself. And if he does, he will try again until he succeeds.\r\n\r\nWhen the hero is out on adventures, he may want to use the opportunity to combine the outer path with the inner path. The inner path is just as hard, if not harder, than the outer path. But in the end, they are both aspects of the same path. Both lead him to finding the dragon, the serpent and the eagle inside of himself.\r\n\r\nThe inner path is all about observing oneself when things get hard. It is about learning to differentiate the different voices inside of us. The inner path is about learning to distinguish the voice of the soul from the voices of the mind. It is about identifying the dragon, the serpent and the eagle.\r\n\r\nChapter 3.1:\r\nDragon, Serpent And Eagle\r\n\r\nThe hero, just like everyone else, is made up of three parts:\r\n\r\nBody, mind and soul. Dragon, serpent and eagle.\r\n\r\nThe devouring dragon that has taken over the world today is also a force within the hero. It is his material part, the body. All it wants is to seek pleasure and avoid suffering, no matter the cost or harm to others. The dragon has no concept of ethics or morality. It is a beast.\r\n\r\nThe mind, on the other hand, is like a talking serpent. It never shuts up and creates endless stories and fantasies that seem credible until they are challenged by the soul. It winds inside of our head, and just like a snake in the grass, it gets us when we are distracted and its poison traps us in a world of illusions, delusions of grandeur and self-serving lies. It finds excuses and justifications for all the desires of the dragon.\r\n\r\nTo make things more complicated, body and mind are so intimately connected that it is almost impossible to untangle them. The feelings of the body are influenced by the thoughts of the mind and vice versa. One way to look at it is that the mind is the voice of the body. They aren\u2019t as separated as they appear to be. It would make just as much sense to describe them as a serpent with wings and dragon-feet. A flying lizard. But we are used to looking at them as separate and opposites, when in reality they are one complex and its opposite is the soul, the eagle.\r\n\r\nBody and mind agree on most things and work together to keep the soul from being in charge, because that would keep them from fulfilling their base desires. There never was a greater conspiracy than the one inside of ourselves, the conspiracy of body and mind against the soul, the conspiracy of the dragon and the serpent against the eagle, trying to keep it in a coma in order to pursue their own plans unhindered and unchallenged.\r\n\r\nThe dragon is all about chaos, feelings and desires, the snake is all about control, thoughts, illusions, hopes, and fears. The eagle, on the other hand, is all about awareness, truth, order, ethics and morality. The eagle is the one who can watch the other two. The eagle, when it isn\u2019t in a coma, observes the dragon and the serpent with its eagle eyes and calls out all of their lies, deception, weakness, cowardice and wrongdoing.\r\n\r\nWhere dragon and serpent are cowardly and weak, the eagle is loving and courageous. It loves freedom and truth. Where dragon and mind whine and scream, the eagle shows gratefulness and equanimity.\r\n\r\nThese three parts which we can find inside ourselves can also be found in religious symbolism, particularly in Christianity. Satan, Lucifer and Christ can be seen as symbols for the three parts that make up a human being, Satan is the body, the beast, Lucifer the mind, the endlessly talking deceiving serpent, and Christ is the soul, the divine spark, the connection to the Father. \r\n\r\nThe inner path is all about saving the soul from body and mind, saving the eagle from the dragon and the serpent, choosing Christ over Satan and Lucifer. \r\n\r\nIn order to rescue the soul from the dark dungeon where the dragon and the serpent keep it locked up and torture it in the darkness, the hero needs to do something that body and mind don\u2019t want him to do. He needs to voluntarily do something that is excruciatingly difficult and painful and keep doing it when body and mind start trying everything in their power to make it stop. The body will react with pain, the mind with fear, excuses and deceptions.\r\n\r\nThe hero needs to learn to make a promise to himself and keep it no matter what. He cannot stop before the time is up, before the goal is reached, before the watch is over. Only when things get very hard does it becomes possible to differentiate between the countless voices of the mind and the voice of the soul. The mind will say anything to get the hero to stop doing what he promised himself to do, and only the voice of the soul will stand against the mind and demand that the hero fulfills the promise.\r\n\r\nLearning to differentiate between the three parts is essential. Unless we learn to tell apart body-mind and soul, we cannot escape the net of deceptions our own mind has cast over us. There are two quite opposite ways to get to the point where the dragon, the serpent and the eagle become easy to tell apart. One is to bring the body to the point of complete exhaustion and then just keep going when you can\u2019t possibly go on. The other is to stop moving for a prolonged period of time, sit still, or kneel, until the pain becomes unbearable \u2013 and then just keep sitting or kneeling when you can\u2019t possibly sit any longer. In both cases, when the hero can\u2019t go on anymore, the warm-up is over and the real challenge begins. When he can\u2019t go on, it starts. When he wants to stop, the challenge begins.\r\n\r\nThe body will produce all kinds of pains, real and false, to get him to stop. The mind will talk non-stop about how this challenge may have been a great idea, but today isn\u2019t the right day to do it and that what has already been done is more than enough. If that doesn\u2019t work, it will appeal to freedom and say \u201cSure, that\u2019s what I decided earlier, but now I changed my mind! Am I not free to do what I want?\u201d\r\n\r\nOnly the soul can resist and insist that real freedom lies in fulfilling the promise the hero gave to himself and not in changing his mind just because things got tough. \u201cDid I change my mind, or did my mind change me?\u201d, asks the hero.\r\n\r\nThe mind will then try it with fear and say: \u201cI would absolutely do it, like I promised, but something is clearly wrong, it really hurts and I think that if I go on there could be irreparable damage.\u201d And again, only the voice of the soul will be there to resist and counter: \u201cNo. Silence, deceiver!\u201d\r\n\r\nIn this situation the hero will see very clearly the difference between the voices of the mind and the voice of the soul, which otherwise tends to drown in the sea of words produced by the endlessly talking serpent.\r\n\r\nIt may even be the first time that the hero realizes that this permanently speculating, fantasizing and rambling serpent isn\u2019t who he is, even if he is used to identifying himself with its voices. Maybe he realizes for the first time that what he falsely identified himself with is just the voice of the body, the mind, and that his true voice is that one voice of the soul that hitherto had been hidden and drowned out.\r\n\r\nIn the very act of resisting the commands of body and mind, there\u2019s an opportunity for the hero to understand who he really is and to realize that up to this point he had been tricked and deceived. Not by the world, by himself.\r\n\r\nThis is the moment when the eagle starts riding the dragon, holding the serpent in his claws, keeping both in check and in balance. This is the moment when the hero is victorious for the first time against the two beasts inside of him that would do anything to keep him under their control.\r\n\r\nBut it is only the first battle in a long war that may take a lifetime.\r\n\r\nMaybe the hero sits by a river in nature somewhere and stares at creation until his legs feel dead and he can no longer deny that everything around him is a miracle that nobody can even begin to explain. Good.\r\n\r\nMaybe he spends long hours in nature without distractions and when the pain is about to break him he turns to God with gratefulness and love, even though it feels silly at first. Good.\r\n\r\nMaybe he begins to understand that he has been set free inside of a miracle and therefore in his prayers he doesn\u2019t ask for anything. Maybe it would seem shameful to him to ask for more when he has already been given everything.\r\n\r\nEverything.\r\n\r\nChapter 4:\r\nThe Future\r\n\r\nThe dragon that has begun to devour Western civilization will not be stopped and she won\u2019t go away any time soon. The future will most likely bring less order, more control and more chaos. The wheel that turns the cycle of civilization is large and turns without regard for humans and their affairs. And maybe outer dragons and serpents can never be destroyed. But the hero who overcomes the dragon and the serpent inside of himself doesn\u2019t need to worry much about the cycles of the world. He learns to stay away from the herd running towards the cliff with wild eyes. The herd is always lost, but sheep wandering in the wilderness can find their way.\r\n\r\nThe dragon won\u2019t go away any time soon and those who try to slay her outside of themselves will find that for every head they cut off two new ones will appear. The only place to slay this dragon is inside of ourselves. The world is doomed. It is always doomed. But that doesn\u2019t mean that everything is lost. Nothing is lost. But sometimes you have to jump ship when the ship is going down, instead of fighting over control of the bridge.\r\n\r\nCivilization will fall once again, but absent a cataclysmic event, it may take much longer than many seem to think. But this time it will probably be different in many ways because of the unprecedented level of global connection. Today a civilization doesn\u2019t just disappear. There are younger civilizations waiting to take over when the West falls, especially Islam. And then there\u2019s China, a civilization that has died a long time ago but somehow turned into a zombie civilization that adopted a completely foreign zombie-ideology that was a perfect fit for an undead civilization that just keeps marching on: Marxism.\r\n\r\nThe circumstances of the end of Western civilization make good predictions very difficult, which makes it even more exciting. This time around we might even witness the most surprising and spectacular fall of a civilization in known history. But going down with it is a choice. The herd will hold onto the boat until the very last moment and go down in the vortex, but those who manage to depend as little as possible on the herd and on the beast and create their own networks, will become the seed the old and dying plant creates in the end, and they will fall on soil fertilized with the oceans of blood the dragon will shed. Some of them will build something new, eventually, but most of them won\u2019t make it, as it is the way of seeds.\r\n\r\nWhen you jump ship you see that there are others swimming in the cold water. When you go on adventures alone in the forest, when you take on your inner monsters on the path, when you stand watch at night, you may just run into others doing the same thing. Those are the people to create networks with. People who can handle hardship and purposefully cross their own limits. Those who sacrifice their own comfort in order to grow, instead of sacrificing and blaming others. People who are not your competition, but helpers and friends on a thorny and often lonesome path.\r\n\r\nThe only people you can truly trust are people who can keep a promise they have given to themselves, people who challenge themselves and learn to never give up. These are the people one can form cells with, decentralized and undetected, ghost-cells that have overcome the herd inside of themselves and self-organize on the edge of the empire, staying away from the herd instead of trying to save or control it.\r\n\r\nFree men who self-organize. Ethical individualists who build and take responsibility for their own necessities instead of relying on fragile and decaying systems of control. Men who create order, which is the opposite of the mixture of chaos and control that characterize the rule of the dragon and the serpent. Soul-builders. People with honor who create networks where reputation is everything. Such networks may just be what remains when civilization finally disappears once again, after long and agonizing death throes of unbearable centralization, corruption, confusion, degeneration, infantilization, emasculation, and perversion. \r\n\r\nExclusive societies that cast out those who won\u2019t follow the rules instead of trying to re-integrate them. Societies where those who violate other people\u2019s rights either offer restitution, or are chased off the land, forced to live in the wild, unable to find people to trade or make business with. They would have to form gangs and rob and murder to survive. Good men who are at war with them would hunt them down. A war of the honorable against outcast predators. A good war. \r\n\r\nWhen enough heroes have overcome their inner dragon and serpent and create new networks of order, honor and reputation, eventually the great outer dragon will either disappear simply because her time has come, or because the new networks begin to replace her system of chaos and control. And with that system the infantilized and emasculated masses will also disappear, because they are a product of centralized systems of control, unable to exist in their absence.\r\n\r\nThe time has come to choose the war we want to fight, for war is coming, one way or another. There\u2019s the outside war over control of the herd and between the different herds, and then there\u2019s the inner war, the holy war, the fight against the dragon and the snake inside of ourselves. We can either fight over the bridge of a sinking ship, or go on the adventure of facing our destiny. What is it going to be? Fake saviors who can\u2019t even save themselves or real heroes who might just save the world by saving their own soul, one by one, unseen, without looking for attention, followers, recognition or admiration. \r\n\r\nAs the herd becomes ever more lost, materialistic, collectivist, new agey and emasculated, the time has come for the remaining men to stop sitting by the swamp like the ape of Zarathustra, foaming at the mouth about how disgusting it all is, instead of just turning his back and going away. The time has come to go on the hero\u2019s journey once again, leave the herd behind, save the soul, build walled villages, underground networks, decentralized cells, systems of honor and reputation. It\u2019s time to once again become warriors dedicated to the defense of freedom, order, truth and individual rights. Builders dedicated to new structures. Saints dedicated to the path and God.",
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