Constantin von Hoffmeister ('Spiritual')
Constantin von Hoffmeister ('Articles')
Eurosiberia (von Hoffmeister on Substack)

Meister Eckhart and the kindled inner fire

Meister Eckhart teaches through a scene from the Gospel in which the young Christ remains in the temple while His kin walk ahead. They search for Him across crowds, across kinship lines, across familiar faces and distant figures. Each place holds sound and activity, yet Christ reveals Himself in none of these spaces. Only when His kin retrace every step and return to the first entrance do they find Him seated in quiet clarity. Eckhart states that every seeker of the divine birth must follow this same pattern: step away from crowds of thoughts, images, and desires, step away from the restless activity of the soul’s faculties, and return to the first ground from which the soul emerged. In this ground, serene and transparent, the birth of the Word appears.

Eckhart explains that ideas created by the senses, even when they shine with divine qualities, offer no chamber suited for this sacred birth. A thought that claims “God is wise” or “God is merciful” may carry brilliance, yet it still enters through sensory gates. Anything that enters through those gates carries mixture, and mixture dims the pure radiance required for this birth. The divine birth calls for a rising from the innermost depth, where every power of the soul yields its claim to shape, direct, or measure the divine. Once all inner forces place themselves in full service to the incoming light, the Word streams forth, pure and entire.

Eckhart addresses a central concern: if the soul must stand aside from its own reasoning, what task remains for reason? He answers that reason finds its highest dignity in a state of perfect readiness.

Alhumdulillah, The Clear Quran is one of the most eloquent attempts to masterfully and accurately capture the elegance and vigor of the Quran in the modern English language. Translated by Dr. Mustafa Khattab and published by Al-Furqaan Foundation. Available for purchase at theclearquran.org. ✅ Quran Word by Word

Psalm 78

Alexander Dugin
Царьград ТВ / Новороссия

"First of all, it is very important to remember that Christian teaching, which the West renounced about 500 years ago, had a completely different understanding of what a ‘rational being’ is. Accordingly, we have been accustomed since school to believe that there is only one type of rational being — humans — and that everything else is considered fairy tales and myths. We grew up with this, we were raised with this, and it seems to us that this is the absolute truth. Something taken for granted, as the English say.

But Christianity believes that this is not the case. And Islam believes that this is not the case. And Judaism. Every religion believes that this is not the case. [Religious faiths are based on] that there are at least three types of intelligent beings. The highest and absolute being is God. God is uncreated, it is the Uncreated Mind. But there is a created mind, which is divided into two types of beings: angels and humans. That is, besides humans, there is another type of intelligent beings created by God: angels or minds.

And these angels surpass humans precisely in that they are only minds. If humans are minds placed in bodies, and the body interferes with thinking, distracting it all the time, then nothing interferes with angels. But at the very beginning of the world, a schism occurred among the angels. And some of them remained faithful to the Supreme Uncreated Divine Mind. They are the ones who are now called angels. The others fell. The fallen minds that rebelled against God are demons.

Dongshan Liangji (807–869)
Translated by Philip Whalen, Tom Cabarga, and Kazuaki Tanahashi
Revised by Joan Halifax and Kazuaki Tanahashi

Dongshan Liangji (807–869), of the Tang Dynasty, wrote this poem. Dongshan became a monk in childhood and then studied extensively with teachers, including Nanquan Puyuan and Guishan Lingyou. Later he became a dharma heir of the Yunyan Tansheng, Qingyuan Line, and taught at Mount Dong, in the Rui Region (present-day Jiangxi). He is regarded as a founder of the Caodong School, one of the Five Schools of Chinese Zen. His posthumous name is Great Master Wuben.

The title of this poem is Baojing Sanmei in Chinese and Hōkyō Zammai in Japanese. The Chinese text is in the Taishō canon.

This text reflects the teaching of the “five ranks” or “five positions,” the philosophical underpinning of Caodong practice. It is frequently chanted in monasteries and groups of the Japanese Sōtō School.

American Buddhist Net | Zelensky has declared war on Christianity in Ukraine | Zelensky is manifestly a Jewish supremacist patently intent on killing as many Ukrainian and Russian Christians as he can. Why is he doing that? The Jewish supremacist Bolsheviks mass-murdered Russian and Ukrainian Christians due to hatred, jealousy, and greed for power and wealth. Zelensky probably has similar motives and also he may be denuding Ukraine of Ukrainians so Jewish supremacists can move there from Israel if Israel falls. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been a small version of what Russia would have become had Putin not come to power. Zelensky and his ilk in concert with ‘American’ Jewish supremacists goaded Russia into this war. The kickbacks through USAID and other orgs to American politicians is window dressing on a deeper seizure of power through violence in Ukraine. The larger goal appears to be expanding the war to include Europe. And this will lead to the final destruction of European Christians and Western civilization, an oft stated fantasy of Jewish supremacists.

■ “Satanism Is Flourishing in Ukraine” — Ex-Ukraine Official Exposes Zelensky’s War on Christians (TCS)
■ Putin slams ‘barbaric treatment’ of Russian culture (RT)
■ Zelensky is a ‘demon’ – Ukrainian MP (03/30/25)
■ Raid on Ukrainian Orthodox Church leaves Metropolitan injured (10/20/24)

Christianity Daily

Patriarch Kirill Celebrates Putin’s Impact as “A Whole New Era in Russia's History”

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, expressed commendation for Vladimir Putin's management of church and state relations, despite religious persecution in Russia.

In a letter to the Russian president celebrating the 25th anniversary of Putin’s rise to the position of head of state, Kirill described this period as “a whole new era in Russia’s history.”

In the letter, Kirill stated, “I would like to express my profound gratitude for the relationship between Church and State that has taken shape with your active support — a relationship without precedent in our nation’s history,” as quoted by The Orthodox Times. He praised the “fruitful dialogue between government and Church,” asserting that it “not only helps address daily challenges but also plays a vital role in the moral renewal and transformation of society.”

LifeSiteNews (staff)
LifeSiteNews

Archbishop Viganò suggested in an unreleased interview with Italian media that every Catholic will judge Francis' reign in the Vatican as 'terrible.'

Archbishop Viganò believes that globalists schemed to remove Benedict XVI from the Vatican and replace him with Francis as part of a worldwide “coup.”

According to an April 23 letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, he gave a characteristic interview about the Bergoglian reign to editors of Italy’s “Fuori dal coro” (“Out of the Ordinary”) television program.

When asked for his evaluation of Pope Francis, the former papal nuncio to the U.S. suggested that every Catholic would judge the Francis papacy...

💬 “...which was not really a papacy at all but only seemed to be such,” to have been “terrible.” “The Church of Rome, after these twelve years of tyranny, is devastated by scandals, corruption, violations of human rights – I am thinking of the Agreement with the communist dictatorship of Beijing – and by a failed management on all fronts,” he added.

Viganò detailed that “a subversive lobby” aiming to carry out an “anti-Christian and Masonic plan of the Revolution” has taken over both governments and institutions. To carry out this “global coup” the lobby needed the collaboration of “corrupt government officials …politicians, doctors, judges and teachers.” According to Viganò, even after the Second Vatican Council, many in Rome “remained firmly anchored to certain non-negotiable principles” and thus still presented an obstacle to the globalists.

Elizabeth Yore
LifesiteNews

“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all of them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the chairs of them that sold doves: And he said to them: My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.” ~ Matthew 21:12-17

Surely a holy and fearless man who loves the Catholic Church exists in the College of Cardinals?

If ever there’s a turning over the tables in the temple moment, it is now at the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Throughout his 12 tyrannical years, Bergoglio packed the temple of God with his den of thieves, who stole the innocence of nuns, children, and seminarians. His den of thieves robbed Catholics of the beauty and transcendence of the traditional liturgy. He and his cabal of thieves homsexualized and radicalized dogma, squandered finances, and perverted global politics.

The self-styled merciful one, the Buenos Aires bouncer, reigned with an iron clad fist, replacing prayer with pachamama, catholicism with synodality, faith with climate politics, and transparency with subterfuge.

He and his modern-day thieves sold out the faithful underground Catholic Church of China, drove them further underground, and replaced crucifixes with the photo of Chairman Xi.

Bergoglio and his temple money changers drained Vatican coffers for financial Elton John biopics, sketchy London real estate deals, and endless Vatican bank scandals.

Imagine Jesus’ fury over the boasts of the St. Gallen Mafia robbers who tampered with and rigged the 2013 papal election of Jorge Bergoglio.

Ponder Jesus’ anger over the tsunami of financial, moral, and dogmatic scandals in the Bergoglio temple for over 12 years.

Tremble at Jesus’ wrath bellowing throughout the Sistine Chapel at Bergoglio who protected and elevated predators, concealed secret deals, excommunicated holy priests and bishops, persistently pilloried the pious, shuttered Catholic Churches worldwide, dogmatized communism and homosexuality, embedded climate change into tenets, and hired heretics.

Where is the outrage? The time is long overdue for the tables to be turned on Bergoglio and his mitered minions.

Constantin von Hoffmeister
Eurosiberia

So, I answer as a historian of the soul rather than as a theologian. I believe in Christ as I believe in destiny — through inner certainty, for His absence erases the map of the West.

I believe in Christ in a way unlike belief in the rising of the sun or the solidity of stone. Christ exists beyond the realm of empirical belief. He is a force, a historical current, the shaper of the Western soul’s most inward yearnings.

When I speak of Christ, I speak of a rupture in time, a spiritual singularity, the quiet thunder at the heart of Europe’s becoming. His birth was a shift in the very grammar of human consciousness. He taught us that history is not a repetition of seasons but a drama, a pilgrimage, a striving towards an end — and in that end, a new beginning. He stood at the intersection where eternity touched time, and in doing so, he reshaped the entire map of the soul.

Christ is the axis of European form, the living core of our cathedrals, our laws, our visions of justice and beauty. His image is not just a symbol among symbols. It is the cornerstone, the hidden architecture beneath our thought, our aspirations, our grief. Even when we turn away, we carry Him with us. In revolt, in silence, in doubt — He remains.

We may dress modern man in the garments of progress and statistics. Beneath them, he still weeps for Golgotha. Christianity gave Europe its depth — a sense of inwardness, of sin and redemption, of the sacred beyond the visible. And Christ, more than any system or empire, gave that inwardness form and flame.

Katherine Watt
Bailiwick News

Madonna and Child with St. Dominic and St. Thomas
Aquinas. Fra Angelico. (From Wikipedia)

Response to some reader questions about why I read aloud from the Summa Simplified book:

💬 As a non-Catholic, how does this all pertain to me? Why should I look at it?

As with all of what I publish at Bailiwick, no reader is obligated to read it, look at it or listen to it. I offer it for anyone for whom it is of interest.

Catholic teaching pertains to you because you have a soul, the eternal salvation of which is of interest to me, and should be of interest to you.

💬 Why is this writing of St. Thomas so important? As with much of the canon, it is simply too long to wade into hoping to be able to eventually figure out whether it holds anything for me. A distillation or summary would be helpful, if you have a link.

The things I'm reading aren't St. Thomas himself. The Summa Simplified is an abridged or condensed version, written in English by two priests and published in 1952, of the full Summa Theologica written in Latin by St. Thomas Aquinas between 1265 and 1274.

The reason I'm reading that out loud, and not something else, is because I came across it in the collection of my late father's Catholic books when I was struggling last November with the magnitude of the deception I was reading about in the biological product law. When I began reading the English translation of St. Thomas's main work, I found opportunities for intellectual rest because it's words about what is true, and thus the opposite of, or balm for, the reams of painful false words (better known as lies) that I've been immersed in for most of the last four years.

Nahida Izzat,
Exiled Palestinian
Poetry For Palestine

حبيبي

حبيبي وخالقي وسيدي ومولاي
كن حاضراً في قلبي
إن سكت أو تحدثت
إن نمت او استيقظت
إن سكنت أو تحركت
إن فتحت عيني أو أغمضت
إن سعدت أو حزنت
إن أمنت أو خفت
إن أُكرمت أو أُهنت
إن دُعمت أو خُذلت
وإن رُزقت أو مُنعت