<div> <p> </p> <div> <figure><blockquote><a href="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/1hMJecL3sxDk0mI7DygqYP?si=K_p8a3SZQYaQykzbo8-f7w&utm_source=oembed"></a></blockquote></figure><div><div>This essay was first published in Volume 29 of <i><em>Sacred Web</em></i>, Summer 2012, pp.59-86. Petra Mundik’s book, <i><em>A Bloody and Barbarous God</em></i>: <i><em>The Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy</em></i>, was published by UNM Press in 2021.</div></div><p>Set mainly in the Wild West of the early 1850s, Cormac McCarthy’s<em> Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West</em> is, in many ways, a study of the gradual paradigm shift that occurred during the era that Marshall Berman refers to as “Classical Modernity” (1789-1900). The Age of Modernity saw the shift away from a mythico-magical apprehension of the world, dominated by the teachings of exoteric religions, towards the dominance of a scientific, but ultimately reductionist, worldview. In <em>Forgotten Truth</em>, a study of the decline of the Perennial Philosophy, Huston Smith argues, “Through and through, from premise to conclusions, the contemporary mind is science-ridden” and that its “sway is the stronger because we are unaware of its extent” (1).[[1]] Western society is now, according to this argument, so completely dominated by science that it is difficult even to think outside of this all-encompassing paradigm. For Smith, the “final definition of modernity” is “an outlook in which this world, this ontological plane, is the only one that is genuinely countenanced and affirmed” (6). Although science can only satisfactorily deal with a limited level of empirical reality, a level occupying “no more than a single ontological plane,” it is continually challenging “the notion that other planes exist” (6). This denial of a world beyond the empirically quantifiable resulted in the “death of God,” for, as Smith explains, “if ‘God’ in principle requires more exalted quarters, the non-existence of such quarters entails his non-existence as well” (7). In what was essentially category confusion, those with a scientific outlook presumed to make pronouncements on matters that could not be examined scientifically. As a result, the era of Modernity has been one marred by reductionism, relativism and nihilism.</p><p>McCarthy’s <em>Blood Meridian</em> examines the onset of this new age. Shane Schimpf offers such a reading of the novel in the introduction to <em>A Reader’s Guide to Blood Meridian</em>, where he argues that <em>Blood Meridian</em> “is a meditation on a Nietzschean world where God has died” and that its aim is “to demonstrate how traditional religion, in the form of Christianity, has become stagnant and ineffectual” (3). Schimpf points out, however, that the “triumph of the scientific paradigm comes at a cost and that cost is nihilism” (3). While I agree with the essence Schimpf’s reading, I believe that both the exoterically religious and the scientifically reductionist paradigms are found wanting precisely because the narrative voice in McCarthy’s fiction—<em>Blood Meridian</em> being no exception—continually suggests that there is another, more direct approach to Reality.[[2]]</p><p>As I will demonstrate, the fact that the narrative voice within <em>Blood Meridian</em> represents this scientific paradigm shift in a distinctly Biblical rhetoric suggests that, for all its scorn for the religious mindset, scientific reductionism is really only another kind of dogma, which necessarily limits our apprehension of reality. Much like the exoterically religious fundamentalism of the preceding centuries, the modern scientific paradigm is incapable of what McCarthy calls a “direct apprehension of reality,” (Wallace 138) which is an experience central to all esoteric traditions.[[3]] In his study of the esotericism of Jacob Boehme, Franz Hartmann explains that “a clinging to the external forms of religion prevents the mind from penetrating into their depths and grasping the spirit that produced these forms, and which is one and the same in all great religions; for the truth is universal, external, and only one” (18). It is noteworthy that the mysticism of esoteric religion is not actually at odds with the scientific worldview. In fact, as transcendental psychologist and philosopher, Ken Wilber, points out: “both mysticism and science are experimental and evidential” and both “demand evidence and reasons, not dogmas and myths” (375). In spite of this, many scientifically minded-people tend to reject mysticism, because they confuse any investigation into the nature of the spirit with the irrational mythico-magical thinking of exoteric religions that their scientific outlook so desperately strives to oppose.</p></div><p></p><blockquote>In confounding superstition with spiritual insight and doing away with both, scientific man limited himself to a purely empirical understanding of reality and thus began the great spiritual decline.</blockquote><p>This is a lamentable state of affairs, because, as Wilber explains, “in throwing out a prerational, anthropomorphic, mythic God figure, the ‘modern West’ also tossed out any transrational, nonanthropomorphic, superconscient Godhead. Gone was a mass of bathwater; gone too a precious baby” (395). Mystics have long been aware of this distinction between God and Godhead; Meister Eckhart taught, “God and Godhead are as distinct as heaven and earth. Heaven stands a thousand miles above the earth, and so the Godhead is above God” (qtd. in Otto 14). In rejecting all irrational thought and celebrating the “Age of Reason,” the West also rejected all that was transrational, or, like the Buddha’s doctrine, above and “beyond reason.”[[4]] In <em>Forbidden Faith</em>, Richard Smoley explains, “Unlike modern thought, which views the invisible and internal dimensions of life and thought as purely subjective (and hence unreal), esotericism says these inner dimensions have a genuine reality and can be known and intelligently described” (17). In confounding superstition with spiritual insight and doing away with both, scientific man limited himself to a purely empirical understanding of reality and thus began the great spiritual decline. </p><p>The very title of the novel—<em>Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West</em>—actually hints at this decline, suggesting that despite all our misguided celebrations of “progress,” the West has already reached its meridian, or peak, and is now spiralling ever downwards into the darkness of a relativism, reductionism and nihilism. The idea is further developed by McCarthy’s choice of epigraph, namely, a quote from Paul Valéry’s essay entitled “The Yalu”: “Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time” (1). In its original context, the quote forms part of a critique of the West’s obsession with rational intelligence. The speaker of the words, a Chinese scholar, criticizes westerners for worshiping intelligence “as if it were an omnipotent beast.” He goes on to say that a “man intoxicated” on intelligence “confuses his quick changes of heart with the imperceptible variation of real forms and enduring Beings” (Valery 372).</p><p>Here, it is important to distinguish between “intelligence,” which is founded on rational thought, and “Intellect” which, as hermetic philosopher Frithjof Schuon explains, “must not be confused with the mental acuteness of logicians” because it “comprises essentially a contemplativity which in no way enters into the rational capacity, the latter being logical rather than contemplative” (49). Thus, according to Valéry, the Westerner has abandoned the spiritual and contemplative “Intellect”—that “higher Knowledge” through which one could indeed comprehend the “real forms and enduring Beings” of which the Chinese scholar speaks—and embraced, instead, the worldly, rational knowledge that may be “acquired by the ordinary discursive mind” (ibid. 8).</p><blockquote>as Huston Smith explains, “Science can deal with instrumental values but not intrinsic ones”</blockquote><figure><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/26/b5/26b5a426-214e-4897-b490-fa1deaa9b7ae/content/images/2026/02/IMG_1051.jpeg" alt="" width="357"><figcaption><span>René Guénon (1886-1951)</span></figcaption></figure><p>René Guénon, who founded the Traditionalist School along with Schuon, writes at length about the deleterious effects of Modernity in his insightful book, <em>The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times</em>. As I will demonstrate, Guénon’s critique of Modernity resonates meaningfully with McCarthy’s own views on the subject, at least as they have been represented in <em>Blood Meridian</em>. Before we proceed in this line of argument, we ought to examine the gist of Guénon’s argument. Much as McCarthy’s choice of title suggests the decline of Western civilization, Guénon’s book similarly challenges the myth of Western progress. Guénon writes: “that which the vast majority of men now living celebrate as ‘progress’ is exactly what is now presented to the reader as a profound decadence, continuously accelerated, which is dragging humanity towards the pit where pure quantity reigns” (77). According to Guénon, we live in a culture in which anything that “cannot be expressed in purely quantitative terms” is perceived as lacking “‘scientific’ value” (85) or any value at all, for that matter;[[5]] or, as Huston Smith explains, “Science can deal with instrumental values but not intrinsic ones” (14). Guénon argues that our scientifically orientated society has reduced everything down to a quantifiable level and is thus no longer capable of recognizing intrinsic quality; hence, what he calls the “reign of quantity.”</p><p>Guénon states that the “anti-traditional action” that brought about this “reign of quantity” began to operate in the West and “the most astonishing thing of all is the speed with which it has been possible to induce Westerners to forget everything connected with the existence of a traditional civilization in their countries” (231). The process occurred in several steps, beginning with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, which “confined men within the limits of their own individuality” and denied them “the possession or use of any faculty of a transcendent order” (232). Man’s attention was then turned “towards external and sensible objects,” thereby enclosing him “within the narrower limits of the corporeal world alone; that is the starting point of the whole modern science” (ibid.). The “corporeal domain” was “thenceforth looked upon as the only ‘reality’” and this itself was “stripped of everything that could not be regarded as simply ‘material’” (233). Guénon writes that this was “the point at which the ‘reign of quantity’ was really entered upon” (ibid.). As a result, science, which has been “mechanistic ever since Descartes, became more specifically materialistic after the second half of the eighteenth century, and was to become more and more exclusively quantitative in its successive theories” (ibid.). Hence, the temporal setting of <em>Blood Meridian</em>—the exact midpoint of the nineteenth century—places the reader squarely in an era during which the reign of quantity had really come into its own.</p><blockquote>As a personification of the “reign of quantity,” the character of Judge Holden seems to embody and signify “quantity” itself.</blockquote><figure><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/26/b5/26b5a426-214e-4897-b490-fa1deaa9b7ae/content/images/2026/02/IMG_1052.webp" alt="" width="1080"></figure><p>Guénon argues that if one were to personify this movement towards spiritual “quality” and towards scientistic “quantity,” one would find the “spirit of negation and of subversion into which ‘Satan’ is resolved metaphysically” (291). Guénon qualifies this statement by stressing that “it must be clearly understood that the word is used quite independently of any particular idea that anyone may have formed, whether in conformity with some theological outlook or otherwise, of any so-called ‘Satan’” (ibid.). In <em>Blood Meridian</em>, this personification of the “reign of quantity” seems to be “the vast abhorrence of the judge” (243). As a personification of the “reign of quantity,” the character of Judge Holden seems to embody and signify “quantity” itself. Not only is he “close on seven feet in height,” (6) but he also weighs “twenty four-stone” (128). The narrative voice constantly emphasizes his massive bulk, referring to him as “immense” (118) and “outsized” (79). His head is a “great pale dome,” (327) and his body a “vast corpus” (168) and a “great bulk” that causes the communal bath waters to “[rise] perceptibly” as the judge “submerge[s] himself to the eyes” (168). As the judge presides over the dance at the end of the novel, he is described as “towering over them all… huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant” (335). </p><p>In confirmation of Guénon’s theory regarding the satanic nature of this personification, the narrative voice within the novel continually imbues Judge Holden with satanic attributes; he can “outdance the devil himself,” is the “greatest fiddler,” (123) the thirteenth member of Glanton’s gang (127) and when he steps through the fire, the “flames [deliver] him up as if he were in some way native to their element” (96). Reverend Green refers to him as the “devil,” (7) as does the ex-priest Tobin, who tells the kid to “give the devil his due” (125). Tobin also calls the judge a “sootysouled rascal” (124) and refers to his gunpowder recipe as “a devil’s batter” while identifying the judge as the “bloody dark pastryman himself” (132). Later, he attempts to defend himself against the judge’s maleficence by “holding aloft a cross he’d fashioned out of the shins of a ram,” (290) as though he were performing an exorcism.</p><p>Guénon writes that as the “reign of quantity” progresses along its natural course, it eventually begins to constitute a counter, or “‘pseudo realization’ leading in exactly the opposite direction to that of true spiritual realization” (204). This results in “an immediate fall into another delusion, worse and more dangerous from every point of view,” namely, “that of an ‘inverted spirituality’” (ibid.). According to Guénon, the “reign of quantity” represents an inversion of genuine spirituality, which constitutes the definition of the “demonic” (ibid.). Huston Smith also argues that while science in itself is beneficial to man when it remains it its own empirical field, but “out of place, as an angel that has fallen, science turns demonic. It presumes to control too much and to disclose more reality than in fact it does” (117). According to Huston Smith, when science becomes “demonic,” so to speak, it begins to deteriorate into “scientism.” Huston Smith elaborates on this distinction: </p><p>“Whereas science is positive, contenting itself with reporting what it discovers, scientism is negative. It goes beyond the actual findings of science to deny that other approaches to knowledge are valid and other truths true. In doing so it deserts science in favour of metaphysics—bad metaphysics, as it happens, for as the contention that there are no truths save those of science is not itself a scientific truth, in affirming it scientism contradicts itself. It also carries marks of a religion—a secular religion.” (16)</p><blockquote>the ascendancy of the judge and all that he signifies represents not just a shift away from the religious worldview towards the scientific, but also involves the creation of a demonically inverted pseudo-religion. … The judge is portrayed as a spiritual leader and the Glanton gang are his devotees.</blockquote><p>When science seeks to provide all the answers it mutates into a scientistic pseudo-religion, which is just as narrow minded and fundamentalist as the traditional exoteric religions that it sought to replace. According to this argument, a purely scientific approach results in a diminished outlook. In his study of the works of Jacob Boehme—whose influence on <em>Blood Meridian</em> is made evident by McCarthy’s choice of epigraph[[6]]—Franz Hartmann writes that any field of inquiry into “external and superficial things” results in a necessary movement away from “that which is real and divine” (163). Paraphrasing Boehme’s thoughts on the matter, Hartmann explains that although man’s knowledge of the manifest world “deals only with passing illusions,” it nevertheless “awakens his pride and self-conceit” (ibid.). In other words, the “more man seeks for the object of his existence in external and sensual things, the more will he depart from his spiritual faith or point of gravitation from his own divine centre or God” (ibid.). Consequently, man “begins to assert his personality against immortality” and “unless he be redeemed by the awakening of spirituality within himself, he will end in awakening instead what Boehme calls the “fiery foundation” or “the principle of evil” (ibid.). Thus, the ascendancy of the judge and all that he signifies represents not just a shift away from the religious worldview towards the scientific, but also involves the creation of a demonically inverted pseudo-religion.</p><p>That a new pseudo-religion is being inaugurated by the judge is hinted at throughout the novel. Riding through the rain, the Glanton gang are described as “slouched under slickers hacked from greasy halfcured hides” so that they appear “like wardens of some dim sect sent forth to proselytize among the very beasts of the land” (187). At times, the judge is portrayed as the priest of a new religion. The narrative voice describes him “standing on the rise in silhouette against the evening sun like some great balden archimandrite. He was wrapped in a mantle of freeflowing cloth beneath which he was naked” (273)—an “archimandrite” being ecclesiastical Greek for the “superior of a monastery or convent, corresponding to the abbot in the Western Church” (OED). </p><p>Recalling the judge’s first mysterious address to the Glanton gang, the ex-priest, Tobin, claims, “It was like a sermon but it was no such sermon as any man of us had ever heard before” (129). The distinctly religious overtones of the word “sermon” are compounded by the imagery of the “sunrise” of “many colours” and “the wind…flappin the judge’s old benjamin about him,” (129) which, according to Schimpf, paint a scene reminiscent of “Charlton Heston as Moses on the mount reading the Ten Commandments, his scarf flapping in the wind” (22). After hearing the judge’s sermon, the members of the Glanton “follow behind him like the disciples of a new faith” (130). Tobin adds that when the judge distributed the gunpowder he has just created out of sulphur and bat guano, “he called us all about to fill our horns and flasks and we did, one by one, circling past him like communicants” (134). The judge is portrayed as a spiritual leader and the Glanton gang are his devotees.[[7]]</p><p>The judge embodies the scientistic paradigm taken to a pathological degree. He is Reason gone mad, a phenomenon witnessed during the horrors of the French Revolution where a shrine to “Reason” was set up in Notre Dame and rationalism turned into a religious cult.[[8]] The judge’s affiliations with the rationalistic, scientistic worldview are emphasized continually in <em>Blood Meridian</em>. One of the subheadings to Chapter XIV reads, “The point of view for his work as a scientist,” (186) referring, of course, to the judge. Numerous examples of this scientific work are documented throughout the novel. Tobin describes how, while the gang fled from a band of Indians, the “judge would stop to botanize and then ride to catch up. My hand to God. Pressing leaves in his book. Sure I never saw the equal to it and all the time the savages in plain view below us” (127). Tobin adds that the judge would stay up all night “watchin the bats” and how he “would go up the side of the mountain and make notes in a little book and then he would come back down (127). When the Glanton gang comes across “a great femur from some beast long extinct,” (251) the judge not only sketches it into his log, but gives the men a lecture on palaeontology: “they sat watching and putting to him such queries as they could conceive of. He answered them with care, amplifying their own questions for them, as if they might be apprentice scholars” (251). Once again, the judge is presented in a position of influence, from which he can instruct and manipulate the consciousness of others.</p><p>Further examples of the judge’s “work as a scientist” (186) abound; the judge continually sketches pictures of flora, fauna and artefacts in his sketchbook, documenting and analyzing the world around him. John Cant writes, “The judge traverses the landscape as did Lewis and Clark, those men of the Enlightenment who surveyed the interior at Jefferson’s behest, recording all in their notebooks, from surveyed measurements to sketches of the flora” (169). Indeed, the narrative voice describes how the judge “roamed through the ruinous kivas picking up small artifacts” and how “he sat upon a high wall and sketched in his book until the light failed” (139). At this point, the narrative voice within the novel suddenly changes register, announcing: “He is a draftsman as he is other things, well sufficient to the task” (140). This eerie comment serves a dual purpose; not only does it prompt the reader to wonder precisely what “other things” the otherworldly judge might be, but the narrator’s unexpected switch to the present tense suggests that Judge Holden is not just a historical figure, but something altogether more sinister, which continues to linger on into our own time. The judge is like no other character within the novel because he embodies far more than can be contained within the limitations of an individual personality; he is a personification of the forces that shaped the modern paradigm.[[9]]</p><p>At first glance, there may seem to be nothing untoward about the judge’s interest in natural history, but when we consider the judge’s disturbing habit of destroying whatever he has recorded into his sketchbook we begin to see the manifestations of reason and science turned pathological. When the judge finds a “footpiece from a suit of armor hammered out in a shop in Toledo three centuries before,” he sketches it “in profile and in perspective, citing the dimensions in his neat script, making marginal notes” (140). After carefully documenting the little artefact, he “studied it again and then he crushed it into a ball of foil and pitched it into the fire” (140). He then “gathered up the other artifacts” he had sketched “and cast them also into the fire” (140). Similarly, after “copying out” ancient pictographs found among the rocks, he takes “a piece of broken chert” and with it “he scapple[s] away one of the designs, leaving no trace of it only a raw place on the stone where it had been” (173).</p><figure><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/26/b5/26b5a426-214e-4897-b490-fa1deaa9b7ae/content/images/2026/02/photo-1527498913931-c302284a62af-1.jpeg" alt="Grand Canyon, Arizona" width="500"><figcaption><span>Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@simonlaunay?ref=sacredweb.com"><span>Simon L</span></a><span> / </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit"><span>Unsplash</span></a></figcaption></figure><p>When a “Tennessean named Webster” asks the judge about this odd behaviour and “what he aim[s] to do with those notes and sketches,” the judge smiles and replies, mysteriously, that it is “his intention to expunge them from the memory of man” (140). Webster sensibly argues:“But no man can put all the world in a book. No more than everything drawed in a book is so,” (141) but the judge paradoxically insists, “What is to be deviates no jot from the book wherein it’s writ. How could it? It would be a false book and a false book is no book at all” (141). The judge’s counterintuitive argument gives primacy to the signifier while rejecting the original signified. In other words, he seems to be arguing, like the philosophers of postmodernity, that there is “no reality outside the text”[[10]] and thereby rejecting not only the transcendental Reality of the mystics, but also the objective reality of everyday experience. By destroying the original object and leaving only the representation behind, the judge makes sure that no reality is <em>permitted</em> to exist outside the text. In other words, there is nothing left that may contradict the veracity of his “book,” not even the dim “memory of man.”</p><p>The judge’s aim is not so much to understand the world, but rather to subjugate it to his will. He claims, “Only nature can enslave man and only when the existences of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth” (198). He explains that a “suzerain” is “a special kind of keeper,” who “rules even where there are other rulers” and whose “authority countermands local judgements” (198). The judge aims to become the sole author of the world, announcing that it is his “claim” and “nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by [his] dispensation” (199). John Cant argues that the judge uses “the language of the accountant,” which expresses the notion of knowledge as power, of the earth as commodity” (170). In a comment that resonates significantly with Guénon’s theories, Cant adds that this is “the language of quantity rather than value” because it offers the “false promise of progress through empirical investigation and the use of reason alone” (171). The judge wants the final say in everything; no other interpretations, or judgements of the world can be permitted to override his own. He destroys the objects he has sketched, because the act of destruction gives the judge power over all that he has documented. When the original object is destroyed all that remains is the judge’s own interpretation of it.</p><p>Furthermore, by destroying the objects around him, the judge is reducing existence to a purely material level. After documenting the outward appearance of an object, the judge feels that he possesses that object in its entirety and can thus do away with the original. Guénon explains that “the idea that there exist things that are purely ‘material’” is an “outlook” that “can be regarded as indispensable in order to enable science to deal with its object, for if a contrary admission were made, science would at once be compelled to recognize that the real nature of its objects eludes it” (212). In order to master the world science reduces everything to a quantifiable level. Huston Smith argues that this kind of reductionism is inherently violent, “The Western hunt for knowledge, analytic and objective to its core, has violence built into it. For to know analytically is to reduce the object of knowledge, however vital, however complex, to precisely this: an object” (126). Elaborating on the theme of scientific violence, Smith writes, “To approach existence as if it were purely or even primarily physical and mathematical is to falsify it. The approach could end in smashing our planet, for if a hammer is the only tool one learns to use, it is tempting to regard everything as if it were a nail” (117). Smith’s arguments seem especially pertinent to the bizarre actions of Judge Holden, whose desire to document, control, and then destroy everything around him is the goal of the Age of Reason taken to demoniac extremes. According to this kind of mad desire for power through knowledge, the world, in all its infinite mutability, may only be properly understood after it has been documented, interpreted and then destroyed, so that nothing may ever contradict that final interpretation.</p><p>This form of violent reductionism denies man knowledge of “higher” things and ultimately results in spiritual poverty. Jacob Boehme, who witnessed the beginning of the ascendancy of science during the Renaissance, warned that scientific knowledge did not constitute real wisdom. According to Boehme, those who embrace science and reject the spiritual aspects of existence “are devoid of understanding. They have a science, but no real knowledge. They have broken the mirror and are looking through spectacles” (Hartmann 312). In other words, science can only focus on minute details of a fragmented world, an integrated, holistic vision of existence—such as that offered by spiritual insight—completely eludes it. Yet, for all its efforts to do away with religion, science cannot help but fall into the trap of a restrictive, fundamentalist paradigm in the form of scientism. Boehme writes, “Science cannot abolish faith in the all-seeing God, without worshipping in His place the blind intellect” (35). When God is pronounced dead, Reason is worshipped in his stead. John Cant argues that the “judge represents the endless futile quest of empirical reason to replace God” (174). The judge seems to be the embodiment of this movement away from the spiritual centre. As a subversively “satanic” entity, the judge also has a stake in preventing spiritual insight and denying men any kind of soteriological transcendence.</p><blockquote>In essence, by degrading all that is “spiritual,” the judge also rejects transcendence and denies man any soteriological hope.</blockquote><p>The judge’s new religion has obvious parallels to Nietzschean philosophy. According to the judge: “Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test” (250).[[11]] In <em>Beyond Good and Evil</em>, Nietzsche argued that “those qualities which serve to make easier the existence of the suffering,” most significantly “pity,” are the products of an inferior “slave morality” (207). When one is a superior “<em>Übermensch</em>” [Superman], on the other hand, one need only feel moral responsibility “towards one’s equals,” for “beings of lower rank” are worthless and one may act towards them “as one wishes,” or “as the heart dictates.” In other words, the <em>Übermensch</em> is “beyond good and evil” (205).[[12]] Thus, the judge is once again spouting a pseudo-religious philosophy that directly opposes the tenets of the great spiritual traditions, for pity—whether understood as Christian love and charity or Buddhist compassion—is upheld as one of the greatest virtues by both the Western and Eastern religions.[[13]] </p><p>A scalphunter named Irving tries to disagree with the judge, arguing, “Might does not make right” and that the “man that wins in some combat is not vindicated morally” (250). The judge dismisses Irving’s argument by insisting that he is talking about “higher” things, a statement that, once again, is indicative of a pseudo-religious philosophy. The judge explains, “Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised” (250); essentially, this is a court without any justice. Much like the seemingly random universe, where the innocent might just as easily meet with a terrible death as the guilty, the judge’s court is not concerned with serving justice, only death sentences. In fact, the judge scorns the very idea of “right and wrong,” arguing, “Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all questions of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, and natural” (250). The satanic judge elevates the death-dealing nature of “War” to a godlike status, thereby rejecting all that is “moral, spiritual, and natural” and embracing all that is depraved, profane and perverted.[[14]] </p><p>Furthermore, by categorizing the “spiritual” as “lesser,” the judge directly opposes the teachings of all the traditions which make up the Perennial Philosophy. According to esoteric traditions, there is no level of existence higher than the spiritual. Although, as Huston Smith explains in <em>Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition</em> “higher” is a misleading term, because “higher levels are not literally elsewhere; they are removed only in the sense of being inaccessible to ordinary consciousness—invisible, for one thing” (21). Nevertheless, spiritual development is often described in terms of “transcendence” or “a mounting up, an attainment of a higher order of reality” (Underhill 203). Guénon writes that any movement which “shuts out all ‘transcendence’” also “shuts out all effective spirituality” (288). In essence, by degrading all that is “spiritual,” the judge also rejects transcendence and denies man any soteriological hope. In this sense, the judge is the devil, for he not only denies the existence of a spiritual Absolute, but, in the ultimate egoistic act of separation from the Divine, he urges men not to be “godservers,” but gods themselves.[[15]]</p><p>The satanic aspects of the judge are further developed by the fact the pages of <em>Blood Meridian</em> are peppered with the judge’s lies and contradictions, for the Biblical devil is often depicted as the “father of lies.” In <em>The King James Bible</em>, Jesus speaks of the devil (literally), claiming, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). In fact, the judge is portrayed as a liar right from the beginning of the novel. When we are first introduced to the judge, he interrupts a sermon to declare the Reverend Green “an imposter,” (6) who is “not only illiterate, but is also wanted by the law” for various crimes, such as “violating” a “girl of eleven years…while actually clothed in the livery of his God” and “having congress with a goat” (7). Later, the judge admits that he had “never laid eyes on the man before today. Never even heard of him” (8). Thus, the reader is encouraged to recognize the judge as a liar right from the very beginning and to regard all his proclamations with due scepticism.</p><p>Other contradictions are more obvious. After watching the judge recording specimens in his ledger book, Toadvine argues, “No man can acquaint himself with everything on this earth” (199). The judge replies:</p><p>“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear….But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.“ (199) </p><p>The judge argues that the world can be known in its entirety and that by endeavouring to understand the world, man may become master of his own existence, a view very much in line with the modern scientific paradigm. Later in the novel, however, the judge directly contradicts himself when he tells the scalp hunters:</p><p>“Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.” (245)</p><p>In other words, man’s knowledge is only a tenuous “string” which is used to navigate the unfathomable maze that is the world. The judge now argues that, try as he might, man can never use his limited mind to understand the nature of existence. </p><p>Though the judge’s latter statement regarding man’s inability to understand existence is, in some ways, closer to the truth, it fails to distinguish between different kinds of knowing. Reason and science alone cannot offer man complete insight into the nature of existence, for they only concern themselves with what can be measured empirically and reject all intuitive and spiritual apprehensions. Huston Smith argues that despite the fact that many people believe that science is in complete contact with reality, its field of inquiry is actually quite narrow and can only see a fraction of the picture. Smith writes, “Strictly speaking, a scientific world view is impossible; it is a contradiction in terms. The reason is that science does not treat of the world; it treats of a part of it only” (7). Guénon also comments on the inability of science to see the big picture, arguing that “the more narrowly limited a conception becomes the more it is looked upon as strictly ‘rational’” (110). That is, science deals only with the material and empirical levels of reality, completely neglecting, and even dismissing, the existence of the spiritual.</p><p>The esoteric traditions concern themselves with spiritual development precisely so that one may come into contact with Absolute Reality, whether one refers to it as <em>Nirvana</em>, the Godhead, or the Absolute. Evelyn Underhill explains that the great mystics of the East and West “have succeeded where all others have failed, in establishing immediate communication between the spirit of man, entangled as they declare amongst material things, and that ‘only Reality,’ that immaterial and final Being, which some philosophers call the Absolute, and most theologians call God” (5). It is clear that McCarthy is familiar with this concept, for he tells his interviewer, Gary Wallace, that “the mystical experience is a direct apprehension of reality” (138). In a sense, both science and mysticism strive at a complete apprehension of reality, yet such a state is only attainable through the Intellect of the Spirit, and not the intelligence of the mind. As the judge explains, “no man’s mind can compass” the totality of existence, for “that mind itself being but a fact among others” (245). Although mystics would agree that one does not arrive at an apprehension of Absolute Reality through the mind, they would also argue that such an apprehension can be arrived at when one has subdued the mind through meditation, or other spiritual practices. Thus, the judge’s statement is a mixture of truth and lies and, as Guénon writes, “is not the cleverest lie, as well as the most deadly, precisely the lie that mixes most inextricably the true and the false, thus contriving to press the true into service in order to promote the triumph of the false?” (304). Thus, even when the judge utters fragments of truth, he does so only to exacerbate the confusion of his disciples. </p><p>All the esoteric traditions that make up the Perennial Philosophy aim at an all-encompassing state of unity in which the individual self, or mind, dissolves and becomes One with the All. As Aldous Huxley explains, “<em>Nirvana</em>,” or whatever one wishes to call a state of spiritual enlightenment, “consists in ‘seeing the abode of reality as it is,’ and not reality <em>quoad nos</em>, as it seems to us. Obviously, this cannot be achieved so long as there is an ‘us,’ to which reality can be relative” (189). Whereas science offers man a string to help him find his way through the maze, mysticism teaches him to become the maze itself. Thus, the judge’s lies are two-fold; in claiming that a full apprehension of Absolute Reality is unattainable, the judge not only contradicts his earlier statement regarding the ability of science to do just that, but also denies the validity of the teachings of the Perennial Philosophy.</p><blockquote>In denying mystery, the judge embodies yet another aspect of modernity.</blockquote><p>As if to compound the fact that he is lying, the judge waits until the “squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning” (116). In fact, he encourages them “until they were right proselytes of the new order”—yet another reference to the judge’s pseudo-religion—and then he “laugh[s] at them for fools” (116). The judge continually misleads men and mocks all those who fall for his lies. The very fact that the judge leads James Robert, the “imbecile” through the desert, with “the idiot in its rawhide collar pulling at the lead,” (298) has highly symbolic connotations, namely that the judge is the leader of the ignorant. According to Dianne Luce, “the judge’s many lies, false accusations, and self-contradictions” are “meant to undermine…men’s faith not in him but in their own moral sense” (“Ambiguities, Dilemmas, and Double-Binds” 23). While the judge’s lies do serve this purpose, their detrimental effects extend beyond the moral realm, for they also undermine any possibility of spiritual transcendence.</p><p>In an attempt to plunge men into the darkness of scientistic nihilism, the judge tells them, “Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery” (252). First of all, the judge’s statement is logically oxymoronic and rhetorically contradictory; if it is a “mystery” that “there is no mystery,” then the first half of the statement renders the second half meaningless.[[16]] Furthermore, when the judge moves away “into the darkness beyond the fire” (252)—a location symbolic of his metaphysical position—his nihilistic statement is immediately contradicted by the ex-priest, who ingeniously mutters: “As if he were no mystery himself, the bloody old hoodwinker” (252). Not only does the ex-priest identify the judge as a liar, but he also draws attention to the fact that the judge is a supernatural figure and thus one of the greatest mysteries within the novel.</p><p>In denying mystery, the judge embodies yet another aspect of modernity. Guénon writes that “the moderns claim to exclude all ‘mystery’ from the world as they see it, in the name of a science and a philosophy characterized as ‘rational’” (110). Schuon argues that even a religious point of view that denies the existence of the supernatural is “cut off from all ‘mystery’” (40). McCarthy comments on this point in an interview with Gary Wallace where, in a discussion about the perennial nature of the “spiritual experience,” he claims that “our inability to see spiritual truth is the greatest mystery” (138). When Wallace feels “nonplussed” by McCarthy’s ideas about the “spiritual experience, McCarthy tries to explain by referring to “Truth,” which is essentially “what writers must accomplish in their writing” (ibid). As a victim of postmodernity, Wallace cannot understand such a concept and comes out with a fashionably problematic cliché, asking “But what exactly is truth?” Luckily, McCarthy does not suffer from postmodern confusion, or so-called “<em>aporia</em>,” simply maintaining that truth is “Truth.” Predictably, Wallace finds “his implications tacit” (138).</p><p>At this juncture, one cannot help but think of Guénon’s statement that “at the very present stage of intellectual decadence, the very notion of truth has come to be completely lost to sight,” (130) an observation which is sadly even more pertinent now than it was in Guénon’s time. Guénon also writes, “The word ‘satanic’ can indeed be properly applied to all negation and reversal of order, such as it is so incontestably in evidence in everything we now see around us: is the modern world really anything whatever but a direct denial of truth?” (237). Precisely because the very concept of truth is central to mysticism, which concerns itself with a direct apprehension of the Absolute Reality, the denial of truth is yet another aspect of that which Guénon categorizes as “satanic.”</p><blockquote>McCarthy’s “worker in metal” is linked to the satanic elements</blockquote><figure><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/26/b5/26b5a426-214e-4897-b490-fa1deaa9b7ae/content/images/2026/02/photo-1605474231723-ab1e22c86dda.jpeg" alt="red and black flame illustration" width="500"><figcaption><span>Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@aga4ar?ref=sacredweb.com"><span>Valentin Vlasov</span></a><span> / </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit"><span>Unsplash</span></a></figcaption></figure><p>An examination of the judge’s incessant falsehood also sheds light on one of the most mysterious passages within <em>Blood Meridian</em>, namely, the kid’s hallucinatory dream of the “coldforger,” or “a worker in metal…who worked with hammer and, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men’s fires” (310). Guénon comments on the rather sinister nature of the aforementioned profession, explaining that “in many countries a sort of partial exclusion from the community, or at least a ‘holding aloof,’ was practised and even still is practised so far as metal-workers are concerned” (185).[[17]] Guénon explains that the evil connotations of metalwork stem from the fact that “from the traditional point of view metals and metallurgy are in direct relation with the ‘subterranean fire,’ the idea of which is associated in many respects with that of the ‘infernal regions’” (186). Thus, McCarthy’s “worker in metal” is linked to the satanic elements.[[18]] </p><p>As the kid watches the coldforger in his dream, he notes how the demonic “judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade” (310). Not only does the coldforger work in the shadow of the judge—the shadow carrying further connotations of darkness and evil—but he also “seeks favor with the judge,” (310) thereby consciously courting the satanic forces that the judge embodies. Furthermore, Guénon notes that “the consumption of metal brought about by modern wars is truly prodigious” (185). Thus, precisely because metalwork uses technological advancement to produce a variety of weapons, it is closely allied to both science and war; which, significantly, are the judge’s two main preoccupations and the essence of his pseudo-religion.</p><p>Not only is the coldforger a sinister “worker in metal,” he is also a “false moneyer,” working with his “gravers and burins” and seeking to “render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter” (310). Just as the judge spreads falsehood and deceit, the coldforger spreads false currency, thereby seeking “favor with the judge” (310). Edwin Arnold also notes that this “‘false moneyer’ aids the judge in his on-going deception and corruption” (“Go to Sleep” 48).[[19]] The dissemination of counterfeit currency, then, represents the dissemination of the judge’s counterfeit pseudo-religion; the false coins are the false teachings. Furthermore, because false currency devalues legitimate currency, it becomes increasingly difficult to recognize genuine spiritual insight among all the pseudo-religious falsehoods. As a result, the Perennial Philosophy itself becomes distorted and devalued, so that people can no longer distinguish between mysticism and spiritualism, or even, for that matter, between science and scientism. </p><p>Significantly, when Guénon writes of the modern process of spiritual devaluation—through which “everything seems to be increasingly artificial, denatured…falsified” and “counterfeit” (230)—he also refers to the devaluation of coinage and the loss of the qualitative value of money. According to Guénon, “money is something which appertains as completely as possible to the ‘reign of quantity’” (133). He explains that money “possessed at its origin, and retained for a long time, quite a different character and a truly qualitative value” (ibid.). For example, “ancient coins are literally covered with traditional symbols, often chosen from among those which carry some particularly profound meaning” and “many traditions speak of coinage as of something really charged with a ‘spiritual influence’” (134). As the reign of quantity progresses, money, amongst other things, undergoes a process of “profanization,” which “comes about chiefly by the reduction of things to their quantitative aspect alone; indeed, nobody is able any longer to conceive that money can represent anything other than a simple quantity” (136). Guénon concludes that because money, in modern society, is…deprived of everything that was able, in traditional civilizations, to make it as it were a vehicle of ‘spiritual influences,’ not only is it now reduced to being in itself no more than a mere ‘material’ and quantitative emblem, but also it can no longer play a part that is otherwise than truly nefarious and ‘satanic.’ (350) Thus, for Guénon, the “false moneyer” is the “reign of quantity” itself, which devalues coinage by robbing it of its original spiritual quality.[[20]] </p><figure><img src="https://storage.ghost.io/c/26/b5/26b5a426-214e-4897-b490-fa1deaa9b7ae/content/images/2026/02/photo-1550731879-14c16845e2b1.jpeg" alt="red surface" width="750"><figcaption><span>Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@deleece?ref=sacredweb.com"><span>Deleece Cook</span></a><span> / </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit"><span>Unsplash</span></a></figcaption></figure><p>Just as a market flooded with counterfeit currency will inevitably collapse, the judge’s pseudo-religion will also result in spiritual deterioration. Guénon explains that the very concept of the “counterfeit” is “the spirit of negation” and the “spirit of lying,” (238) characteristic of all things satanic. Guénon writes that the satanic, much like the coldforger’s counterfeit coinage, "wears every disguise, often the most unexpected, in order to avoid being recognized for what it is, and even in order to pass itself off as the very opposite of what it is; this is where counterfeit comes in; and this is the moment to recall that it is said that ‘Satan is the ape of God,’ and also that he ‘transfigures himself into an angel of light.’"(ibid.) Guénon adds that Satan, as the spirit of negation and reversal, “imitates in his own way, by altering and falsifying it so as always to make it serve his own ends, the very thing he sets out to oppose” (ibid.). The process, as described by Guénon, is strongly reminiscent of the coldforger’s production of false currency, intended to imitate and undermine the value of the original.</p><p>In a satanic imitation of the lost spiritual dimension of ancient coins—which, as Guénon points out, were once “covered with traditional symbols”—the coldforger imprints every one of his false coins with an image. He is described as “contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass” (310). The face on the coldforger’s coinage is most probably that of the priest of the pseudo-religion, namely the judge, who presides over the forge and whose favour the coldforger seeks. The description of the coldforger’s work carries sinister connotations; “contriving” not only suggests “manufacturing,” but also “plotting” and “scheming,” words which emphasize the concept of the satanic element disguising itself as the very thing it seeks to overthrow. Similarly, the words “cold” and “brute” suggest an unfeeling cruelty, or the brutalization of that which was once refined. Furthermore, a “crucible” is associated with alchemy and carries overtones not only of the esoteric, the supernatural, but also of transmutation; recalling Guénon’s point that Satan “transfigures himself into an angel of light” (238). The description also resonates meaningfully with a passage in Evelyn Underhill’s <em>Mysticism</em>, where she writes of how the true mystics “ever seek, like the artists they are, some new and vital image which is not yet part of the debased currency of formal religion, and conserves its original power of stinging the imagination to more vivid life” (114). The coldforger’s work is a satanic parody of this process, for he is no mystic, and he seeks to contrive a new image, not to conserve the power of the original currency, but rather to debase it completely.</p><p>Guénon explains that the satanic spirit of negation works through a process of false affirmation, consisting “not only of debasement, but of a complete subversion” (277) of all the traditional values and teachings that constitute the perennial philosophy. In other words, the anti-traditional action conceals its true aim—that is, “the negation of all [true] principles,” “under the affirmation of false principles”—until “disorder takes on the appearance of a false order” (238). Thus, when the coldforger is depicted as “hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be,” (310) he is, in fact, deceiving men with the false promise of order, or the “dawn” that will arrive. The connotations of a non-existent dawn are particularly significant; dawn, with its triumph of light over darkness, symbolizes salvation and illumination, but, in working towards a dawn that will not be, the coldforger is, in effect, plunging mankind into eternal night. In other words, the soteriological promises of the pseudo-religion are completely empty; only the darkness of nihilism awaits the “disciples” of the judge’s “new faith.”</p><p>According to Guénon, the goal of this anti-traditional action is to shut “out all transcendence and so also…all effective spirituality” (288). When spirituality and the potential for transcendence are taken away from mankind, only materialism and nihilism remain. Even after being plunged into this reductionistic, materialistic and nihilistic worldview, human beings continue to strive for something to fill the meaningless void. Guénon explains that when “there is nothing left, or at least nothing… but a vague ‘religiosity’,” there nevertheless remains “a sort of confused aspiration towards an ‘ideal’ of some description” (267). Yet, without the guidance of Traditional teachings, this void is often filled with a paradigm that amounts to what Guénon describes as “an inversion of spirituality” and “a substitution for it of what is truly its opposite” thus “inevitably lead[ing] to its final loss” (288). As “disciples of a new faith,” the Glanton gang embrace the judge’s new paradigm with a religious fervour, worshipping violence like a new religion and war as god. This is, of course, exactly what the judge desires and this is why he presides over the coldforger’s work.</p><p>Earlier in the novel, the kid desired to know what exactly the judge was the “judge of” (135) and now his question is finally answered; the narrative voice tells us: “Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end” (310). Namely, it is the judge’s responsibility to oversee the production of the false currency, or the “new faith,” spreading confusion throughout the world and keeping mankind in that state of perpetual spiritual ignorance, or the “night” that “does not end.” A glimmer of hope remains, however, in the fact that if the face on the coins is one “that will pass,” (310) then perhaps the false teachings may pass also; suggesting that the future of the judge’s reign is as “conjectural” as the coldforger’s “destiny.” Precisely because the narrative voice suggests that the judge’s new religion will fail, Shane Schimpf believes that Blood Meridian is “ultimately nihilistic” (40). He argues that “the new religion, the worship of science, is just as barren as the one it has replaced. God has failed in this new land, but science has not really succeeded either” (ibid.). I believe, however, that it is not so much a case of God or science failing man, but rather man failing to strike a balance between the spiritual and the rational, both of which have their place in human existence. Furthermore, though the judge’s teachings are false, they do not invalidate the teachings of the Perennial Philosophy. When accused of deceiving men with an uncanny coin trick, the judge is the first to admit, albeit only to taunt his accusers, with the claim “that there are coins and false coins” (246). It may yet be possible to salvage the genuine coins from among the counterfeits, but only if one is able to recognize the face of the judge and all that he represents.[[21]]</p><h3>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3><p>Arnold, Edwin T. “Go to Sleep: Dreams and Visions in the Border Trilogy.”<em> A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy</em>. Eds. Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne C Luce (Jackson: U.P. of Mississippi, 2001), 37-72.</p><p>Berman, Marshall. <em>All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity</em> (New York: Viking Penguin. 1988).</p><p>Bloom, Harold. <em>Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: New Edition - Cormac McCarthy</em> (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009).</p><p>Canfield, J. Douglas. “The Border of Becoming: Theodicy in Blood Meridian.” <em>Mavericks on the Border: the Early Southwest in Historical<br>Fiction and Film</em> (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2001).</p><p>Cant, John. <em>Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism</em> (New York: Routledge, 2008).</p><p>Christy, Arthur. <em>The Orient in American Transcendentalism: A Study of Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott</em> (New York: Octagon Books, 1969).</p><p>Derrida, Jacques. <em>Of Grammatology</em>. Trans. Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore:<br>John Hopkins UP, 1997.</p><p>Fordham, J. D. <em>The Crisis of the Modern World and Traditional Wisdom</em> (Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies, 1990).</p><p>Girard, René. <em>Violence and the Sacred</em>, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins U. P., 1979).</p><p>Guénon, René. <em>The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times</em>. Trans.<br>Lord Northbourne (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972).</p><p>Hartmann, Franz. <em>Jacob Boehme: Life and Doctrines</em> (New York: Steiner Books, 1977).</p><p>Huxley, Aldous. <em>The Perennial Philosophy</em> (New York: Harper & Row 1945).</p><p>Jarrett, Robert. <em>Cormac McCarthy</em> (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997).</p><p>Kushner, David. “Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalypse.” <em>Rolling Stone</em> Issue: 1042/1043 (New York: Dec 27, 2007 – Jan 10, 2008), 43-48.</p><p>Luce, Dianne C. “Ambiguities, Dilemmas, and Double-Binds in Cormac McCarthy’s <em>Blood Meridian</em>. Southwestern American Literature 26.1 (Fall 2000), 21-46.</p><p>McCarthy, Cormac. <em>Blood Meridian</em> (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).</p><p>Nietzsche, Friedrich. <em>Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future</em>. Trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966).</p><p>Oppenheimer, Paul. <em>Evil and the Demonic: A New Theory of Monstrous Behaviour</em> (New York: New York U. P., 1996).</p><p>Otto, Rudolph. <em>Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism</em> (New York: Macmillan Company, 1957).</p><p>Rai, Supriya. <em>Spiritual Masters: The Buddha</em> (Mumbai: Indus Source Books, 2003).</p><p>Rotham, G. <em>The Riddle of Cruelty</em> (London: Vision Press, 1971).</p><p>Schimpf, Shane. <em>A Reader’s Guide to Blood Meridian</em> (USA: Bon Mot<br>Publishing, 2006).</p><p>Schuon, Frithjof. <em>Gnosis: Divine Wisdom</em> (Middlesex: Perennial Books Ltd, 1959).</p><p>Sepich, John. <em>Notes on Blood Meridian - Revised and Expanded Edition</em> (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).</p><p>Smith, Huston. <em>Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition</em> (New York:<br>Harper Colophon Books, 1977).</p><p>Smoley, Richard. <em>Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism</em> (New York: Harper Collins, 2007).</p><p>Spurgeon, Sara. “The Sacred Hunter and the Eucharist of the Wilderness: Mythic Reconstructions in Blood Meridian.” <em>Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: New Edition - Cormac McCarthy</em>. Ed. Harold Bloom. (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 85-106.</p><p>Todorov, Tzvetan. <em>Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps</em> (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1996).</p><p>Underhill, Evelyn. <em>Mysticism</em> (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1961).</p><p>Valéry, Paul. <em>Collected Works</em>. Vol 10. Trans. D. Foliot and J. Matthews. New York: Pantheon, 1962.</p><p>Wallace, Gary. “Meeting McCarthy. <em>Southern Quarterly</em> 30.4 (1992), 134-139.</p><p>Wilber, Ken. <em>Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution</em> (Boston: Shambhala, 1995).</p><p>[[1]]: The numbers in parentheses throughout this article refer to page numbers of the cited texts whose complete citations are found in the appended Bibliography</p><p>[[2]]: When I speak of “Reality,” I do so in the traditional, Platonic sense of the word, where the ultimate reality is held to be the “Good,” or the Absolute. Although the concept that something can be “more real” has largely vanished from the modern—and especially the postmodern—worldview, Huston Smith argues that “the view of reality as consisting of graded levels of being dominated man’s outlook until the rise of modern science” (5). This traditional paradigm held that “Atop being’s hierarchy is the Form of the Good, the most real of the various grades of reality, the ‘Good Itself.’ Radically different from our everyday world, it can be described only through poetic images” (ibid.)</p><p>[[3]]: In order to understand the distinction between exoteric and esoteric religion, it is important to realize that there is a vast chasm between religiosity and spirituality. In other words, one must distinguish sharply between the irrational myths of exoteric religion and the transrational Perennial Philosophy of the great esoteric traditions. J.D. Frodsham writes that the “major differences are not between religions but between degrees of spiritual understanding. Exoterically, the various religions are at varying distances from each other… Esoterically, however, all the religions are quite close together, the paths of all faiths drawing steadily nearer to each other as they climb higher up the spiritual mountain until they merge in the Absolute” (26). Thus, while on a lower, external, exoteric level, the religions of this world stand in sharp opposition to each other, they all come together in the higher, transcendent reaches of esoteric, mystical insight; this is precisely why Aldous Huxley called the Perennial Philosophy the “highest common factor” (vii) in all great mystical traditions</p><p>[[4]]: “After Enlightenment, the Master was actually not inclined to speak at all. He was worried that no one would be able to comprehend his teaching, so subtle and beyond reason was his Awakening” (Rai 48)</p><p>[[5]]: Even within the humanities, all internal aspects of existence are now regarded as purely subjective and hence non-existent. Such relativism has made it impossible to talk about the existence of absolute values, objective “Truth,” or even “Reality“</p><p>[[6]]: One of the three epigraphs to <em>Blood Meridian</em> consists of an excerpt from Jacob Boehme’s <em>Six Theosophic Points</em>: “It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness“</p><p>[[7]]: Other critics have noted the eerily religious connotations of the judge’s actions and speeches. Harold Bloom describes the judge as the “spiritual leader of Glanton’s filibusters” (<em>Modern Critical Views</em> 3). Sara Spurgeon writes, “McCarthy consistently presents the judge as a priest, a mediator between man and nature, shepherding, or more accurately manipulating, the scalphunter’s souls” (88). While Schimpf argues that “the implication is that the Judge is the priest of a new religion and the Glanton gang his disciples” and that this “new religion is science” (22). While I agree with both Spurgeon’s and Schimpf’s statements, I believe that if the judge does indeed take the role of a priest, he does so to preside over an inverted and subversive new religion. Furthermore, this religion goes beyond mere science and into the realms of “scientism.” Scientism is not content with remaining in the arena reserved for empirical inquiry, but tries to trample on fields best left to metaphysics and spirituality. As such, it is hostile to genuine spiritual progress, and, therefore, corresponds to Guénon’s definition of the satanic</p><p>[[8]]: On the morning of November 10, 1793, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was converted into the ‘Temple of Reason’: “Rising up in the nave was an improvised mountain, at the top of which perched a small Greek temple dedicated ‘To Philosophy’ and adorned on both sides by the busts of philosophers, probably Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Montesquieu. Halfway down the side of the mountain a torch of Truth burned before an altar to Reason” (Baumer 35)</p><p>[[9]]: Harold Bloom comments on the “mythic status” of the judge, arguing that he is “both more and less than human” (<em>Modern Critical Views</em> 3). Robert Jarrett writes that the judge is “a nineteenth-century version of Blake’s <em>Urizen</em>, a representation of the unrestricted will to power of the transcendental Reason” (Cormac McCarthy 79). Shane Schimpf argues that “the transforming power of science and technology” is “embodied in the person of the Judge” (3). According to John Cant: “The judge personifies the extreme of anthropocentrism, of Enlightenment hubris” (170). Steven Frye writes, most perceptively, that the judge is “the dark <em>avatar</em> of scientific positivism—in this case the Enlightenment gone horribly astray….who espouses a brutish philosophy that McCarthy presents as the ethical outcome of a rigid philosophical materialism” (<em>Understanding Cormac McCarthy</em> 69). Frye also states that “the judge can be seen as a potential result of the assertions of a modern science taken to the philosophical extreme, which privileges the phenomenal over the numinous, the material over the transcendent” (ibid. 78)</p><p>[[10]]: According to Jacques Derrida, “<em>Il n’y a pas de hors-texte</em>,” or “There is nothing outside the text,” “There is no outside-text” (158)</p><p>[[11]]: Shane Schimpf writes , “There can be no doubt that this is a reference to Nietzsche,” in particular, “his classic text <em>Beyond Good and Evil</em>” (7). J. Douglas Canfield also argues that “the judge is not only Nietzschean but social Darwinist,” for the “the way that history<br>manifests its ‘law’ is through the triumph of the strong over the weak” (“<em>The Border of Becoming</em>” 43)</p><p>[[12]]: This odious philosophy would later be adopted by the fanatical pseudo-religion of the Nazi party, as G. Rotham explains in <em>The Riddle of Cruelty</em>, “Philosophy contains a number of systems which even glorify cruelty. The most conspicuous one in our time—Nazism—goes back to the teachings of Nietzsche,” who taught that “Compassion was supposed to be the virtue of the weak, who were expected to serve the strong” (11). In <em>Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps</em>, Tzvetan Todorov also notes that “Hitler himself spoke contemptuously of pity, that onerous holdover of Christian ethics” (163)</p><p>[[13]]: Etymologically, <em>compassion</em> comes from the Latin stem <em>compati</em>, meaning “suffer together with, feel pity” (specifically, <em>cum</em> “together with” and <em>pati</em> “to suffer”). Thus, the original, albeit obsolete, meaning of compassion suggests “suffering together with another, participation in suffering; fellow-feeling, sympathy” (OED). While the original definition emphasizes “co-suffering,” the modern definition now refers to the “feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it” (ibid.). The chief difference between these two definitions lies in the fact that compassion was originally something felt between “equals or fellow-sufferers,” whereas, according to the contemporary definition, compassion “is shown towards a person in distress by one who is free from it, who is, in this respect, his superior” (ibid). Compassion, especially in its originally meaning, is revered by all great Traditions, but finds its greatest emphasis and development in the Buddhist concept of <em>Karuna</em>, which makes no distinction between the suffering of the self and the suffering of others. Edward Conze writes, “As our capacity for compassion grows, it widens the field of the sorrow which we feel as our own” (<em>Buddhism</em> 46)</p><p>[[14]]: The blending of war with religion calls to mind the behavior of a religious terrorist, or the cult of ‘jihadism.’ In his review of Scott Aran’s <em>Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values</em>, <em>and</em> <em>What It Means to Be Human</em>, John Gray actually cites McCarthy’s <em>Blood Meridian</em> as an example of a world “in which violence has come to be a way of life practised for its own sake”) in order to refute Hobbes’s idea that “violence is instrumental”<br>(<a href="http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/gray_12_10.html?ref=sacredweb.com">http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/gray_12_10.html</a>. According to Gray, Hobbes “could never account for…soldiers who sacrifice their lives in order to protect their comrades,” because he believed that such behaviour was “not only irrational, but…a symptom of madness.” Gray equates Hobbes’ argument with the popular contemporary notion that “suicide bombers are driven by their irrational religious beliefs.” Gray then paraphrases the findings of anthropologist Scott Atran to argue that “religion is not particularly prominent in the formation of jihadi groups,” because “what motivates them to go willingly to their deaths is not so much the cause they espouse—rationally or otherwise—but the relationships they form with each other.” Gray arrives at the conclusion that: “The readiness to kill and die for one’s group is not a human frailty that can be remedied.” This may well be the case, but Gray doesn’t strengthen his argument by citing the violence in <em>Blood Meridian</em>, where no character is prepared to die for a cause, let alone a fellow human being. The Glanton Gang are no ‘band of brothers,’ but a shamelessly mercenary and perversely sadistic group of vicious scalphunters, who do not hesitate to slaughter innocent villagers, or even each other, if there is something to be gained. In other words, they engage in violence for purely instrumental reasons, namely, profit, pleasure and self-preservation</p><p>[[15]]: For all the traditions that make up the Perennial Philosophy, the sole purpose of spiritual developed is to attain a state in which one ceases to be separate from the Absolute. The great mystic, Meister Eckhart, regarded even a brief glimmer of spiritual insight into the nature of the Godhead as being worth more than the entire world: “The meanest thing that one knows in God—for instance, if one could understand a flower as it has its Being in God—this would be a higher thing than the whole world!” (qtd. in Underhill 255). Aldous Huxley explains that “for the Perennial Philosophy, good is the separate self’s<br>conformity to, and finally annihilation in, the divine Ground which gives it being; evil, the intensification of separateness, the refusal to know that the Ground exists” (184). Huxley adds, “Hell is total separation from God, and the devil is the will to that separation. Being rational and free, human beings are capable of being diabolic” (229)</p><p>[[16]]: In <em>Evil and the Demonic</em>, a study of evil characters in film and literature, Paul Oppenheimer notes that one of the recurrent motifs he encountered was the “impressive command of language of certain evil figures” (6). In particular, “deceptive obscene, tritely eloquent, and<br>jargonistic speech pouring out of a fiendish manipulator, speech which is as often seductive as it is devoid of logic and facts, speech which itself collapses into meaninglessness, a kind of silence, if subjected to scrutiny” (ibid.). Oppenheimer’s observation might well have been written about Judge Holden himself!</p><p>[[17]]: The concept of the exiled metalworker is a common one in various cultures. In his study of <em>Violence and the Sacred</em>, René Girard explains that while “metal is a source of inestimable benefits,” because it “facilitates domestic tasks and helps the community defend itself against outside enemies,” its “advantages are not without a reverse side; all weapons, after all, are double-edged” (260). Consequently, the weapons used against one’s enemies, might also be used against the member’s of one’s own tribe. In Girard’s words: “The existence of metal increases the danger that would result from an internal conflict; its potentiality for good is balanced by its potentiality for evil” (261). As a result, the metalworker is regarded with suspicion because he is “the master of a potent form of violence,” “a slightly sinister figure,” and “someone to be avoided”. Hence, in many primitive societies, “his forge is relegated to the outskirts of the community” (ibid.)</p><p>[[18]]: William Blake (1757-1827) frequently employed imagery of the forging of metal to evoke the fiery operations of hell and the evil within creation. For example, in “<em>A Divine Image</em>”: “The Human Dress is forged Iron, / The Human Form, a fiery Forge, / The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d, / The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge” (lines 5-8). Likewise, in “<em>The Tyger</em>”: “What the hammer? what the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil? what dread grasp / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?” (lines 13-16). Similarly, Blake writes about the “mind-forg’d manacles,” that can be heard in the “cry of every man” (“<em>London</em>,” lines 8, 5), evoking spiritual imprisonment and suffering through the image of forged iron</p><p>[[19]]: Edwin Arnold argues that the coldforger evokes various mythical and literary characters, “ranging from Pluto, god of the underworld, to Spencer’s melancholy gnome-like Mammon, who lives in hell making money” (47). Most significantly, Arnold draws comparisons between McCarthy’s “worker in metal” and William Blake’s “mythic Los, the smithy who works at the command of Urizen just as the coldforger works to please the judge” (ibid.). Arnold argues that both Urizen and Holden “wish to control the world by denying or obliterating mystery through logic and science” (ibid.). Furthermore, Los assists Urizen by forging “the chains that will bind man through the limitations and assumptions of reason alone, which confines and organizes and thus diminishes the world” (ibid.). Arnold’s reading of the coldforger passage, then, is in line with Guénon’s criticisms of modernity’s worship of “reason.” It is also noteworthy that Blake’s Urizen is a phonetic pun on “your reason” or “you reason”. Robert Jarrett also identifies Blakean allusions in <em>Blood Meridian</em>, arguing that the judge is “a nineteenth-century version of Blake’s <em>Urizen</em>, a representation of the unrestricted will to power of the transcendental Reason” (79)</p><p>[[20]]: It is noteworthy that the American transcendentalist philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, recalled a dream in which the different religious symbols of various traditions were also described in terms of currency. In the dream, Emerson conversed with a pundit, who told him that “the name of gods, as Jove, Apollo, Osiris, Vishnu, Odin” or “the sacred names of Western Europe and its colonies, as Jesus and the Holy Ghost” are “are like coins of different countries, adopted from local proximity or convenience, and getting their cipher from some forgotten accident, the name of a consul, or the whim of a goldsmith; but they all represent the value of corn, wool, and labor, and are readily convertible into each other, or into the coin of any new country” (Christy 160). In other words, the outward symbols of various spiritual traditions may vary, but they all represent the sacred truth of the Perennial Philosophy and, like foreign currency, may be exchanged for “coinage” of equal value. The trouble with McCarthy’s coldforger, however, is that he is flooding this market with counterfeits that possess no value; a practice that can only result in the collapse of this spiritual economy</p><p>[[21]]: In fact, <em>Blood Meridian</em> ends on a note which suggests that not all hope is lost. The epilogue to the novel marks a change into a heightened, poetic register, signified not only by the italicized font, but also by the esoteric symbolism which abounds within the strange scene: “In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there” (337). Evelyn Underhill points out that: “fire imagery has seemed to many of the mystics a peculiarly exact and suggestive symbol of the transcendent state which they are struggling to describe” (421). For example, transcendentalist philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, employs this imagery in “<em>The Poet</em>,” where he writes: “We were put in our bodies, as fire is put into a pan to be carried about” (92). Similarly, Jacob Boehme writes of “the fire of the soul” which is “illuminated by the divine light” (Hartmann 18). Thus, the “fire” in <em>Blood Meridian</em>’s epilogue seems to be “that uncreated and energizing Fire” (Underhill 421); symbolic of the spirit, as well as the Godhead, with which it is one in substance. If one reads the epilogue in light of such metaphors, then the fact that the mysterious figure is described as “striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there” suggests that he is separating and liberating the transcendent from the material. Thus, he represents a ‘saviour,’ or a messenger from a divine realm, working in opposition to the ‘reign of quantity’ as represented by the judge and his pseudo-religion</p> </div>
<p><a href="https://www.sacredweb.com/volume-29/reading-cormac-mccarthys-blood-meridian-in-light-of-rene-guenon/" target="_blank">- Enlace a artículo -</a></p>
<p>Más info en https://ift.tt/Zy51DFS / Tfno. & WA 607725547 Centro MENADEL (Frasco Martín) Psicología Clínica y Tradicional en Mijas.
#Menadel #Psicología #Clínica #Tradicional #MijasPueblo</p>
<p>*No suscribimos necesariamente las opiniones o artículos aquí compartidos. No todo es lo que parece.</p>
