A new series of blogs,
re “The4thAwakening”
at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/
First two blogs are available.
There is something different about Latvian history here.
Heard say: I haven’t thought about it that way before.

The 4th Awakening
3 Blessings from Herrnhut

When in 1729 one Christian David came from Herrnhut (about 90 km east of Dresden, Germany) to Livonia, one would think nothing would come of it. The behavior of the German barons had made Latvians skeptical of all Germans, and why should this one be better?

Yet by 1736, when Graf Ludwig Zinzendorf, a German nobleman who took the plight of the peasants (aka as pagans and paYans) seriously, and was the man who had sent Christian David as a scout ahead of him, himself came to Livonia, the Livonian paYans were ecstatic.

Though Zinzendorf came at the invitation of General and Countess Hallert of Wolmar (Valmiera), his concern over the dismal conditions of the paYans was genuine. Though Zinzendorf’s journey included visits to other towns and cities [Konigsberg, Riga, Tartu (Tallin)], it appears that Wolmar or Valmiera was the focal point….........................................

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The 4th Awakening
4 A Short-sheeted History

The Awakening of Latvians by the Herrnhuters is not recognized by Latvian historians as an Awakening. When Latvian historians refer to the First Awakening, they chose to ignore the Herrnhuters except as a force in the deep background. It appears that the Herrnhuters are too removed from the deliberate struggle to raise Latvian ethnic self-consciousness even though the German barons and the Lutheran ministers were very worried that this is what in fact was happening.

In the foreground of Latvian school books, the public is presented with certain students or writers who dared call themselves “Latvians” [Latvietis (Latweetis)] or wrote patriotic poems. The official period for the First Awakening, with the stamp of approval from government and academia, begins in the 1850s and ends about 1880.

In real time, the First Awakening began with the 1730s and the period mentioned by the government and academic historians was its culmination. Without the Awakening initiated by the Herrnhuters, it is unlikely that there would have been a Latvia or Estonia today.

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The 4th Awakening
5 Awakening Inside a Trojan Horse (1)

Another way to look at the Herrnhuter success in a society suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is to see it not only as its Savior, but as an aggressor. The aggressor appeared the moment the Saved had learned to stand up and push up against the doors of the heirs of the Teutonic Order.

Shortly before events turned the Saved into a threat to the barons, Livonians were moving in a direction that was already discernible as one not necessarily the German Herrnhuters had in mind. The Common Man of Liuonia, supported by the teachings of the Bible (1694, transl. by the German Lutheran Pastor Gluck Ernst Gluck) was beginning to have ideas about imitating the lords of the manor. After all, man is mime and mime is man.
Fortunately for the barons, the Russians attacked the Swedes and threw the evolution of self-consciousness among the Latuous off track. The movement toward a new identity in Livonia was inhibited by the Great Northern War (GNW: 1700-1721), which was won by Russia. Early in the war (1702), Ernst Gluck—whom the Germans may have believed to be against their interests—was removed to Moscow. The German barons were permitted to stay. The Lutheran pastors, subservient to the interests of the barons, did not encourage the paYans to read the Bible or anything else.

That is why thirty-five years after ………………….

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The 4th Awakening
6 Awakening Inside a Trojan Horse (2)

Except for the intervention of the tsars, the barons, and the Lutheran church to stop the consciousness raising and healing begun by the Herrnhuters, the social fabric of Latvians would probably be more harmonious today.

The baron rejection of the Herrnhuter movement did, in a manner of speaking, stop the iconoclasm of the native Herrnhuters (against the symbols of their paYan past). Still, it was but a pause of a particular current in a much bigger and broader stream.

The political consequences of the repression took the descendants of the Herrnhuters into territory their parents had avoided in order not to have to retreat behind a mask of submission if challenged. In short, the descendants of the descendants of Herrnhuters discovered the phenomenon of ethnicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_origin.

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The 4th Awakening
7 Metamorphosis of the Trojan Horse

The ferocity with which some Latvians cling to their Trojan horses (no doubt because the history of Latvia in practice is no older than 150 years) is of some interest. I am referring specifically to the massive state sponsored song festivals that for all those 150 years have stolen recognition from village choirs. It speaks volumes about the exposure to risk and ultimately loss of community spirit in Latvia.

The argument for state sponsored unity is that the shallows of the Baltic are filled with pools of amber and antique folk designs. All one needs do is take off one’s shoes, come wade, and stir up the sand…………….
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The 4th Awakening
8 What Happened to Great-grandfather John?

The energy unleashed by the Herrnhuters among their Latvian brethren took time to consolidate itself, but when the tsar, the barons, and the Lutheran priesthood repressed them, they died, and by doing so took a leap into the future.

In the geographic space that had been under the influence of the Herrnhuters in the last half of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, there occurred something that was a surprise.

No longer able to sing their Johns Songs anytime they wished, and those they could sing limited to Johns Day Festival and not a day beyond (this is like your radio station silencing your favorite singer), the pa-Yans or pagans had an inspired idea. When disbanded and forbidden to meet for choir practice, the remnant—now ecumenicalized and kind of secularized for lack of better words to describe their fate—talked among themselves and said: Let us do them one better and organize the First Latvian Song Festival. This was the first proto-song-cum-festival of the future Latvians.

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The 4th Awakening
The Flag of Johns, 1873

As important as choir singing is for upholding the identity of the Latvian community, the topic of the first Latvian flag is no less so. I am talking about what is commonly known as the “Līhgo” flag.

“Lihgo” is like “halleluiah!” In fact, one can hear “lihgo” in the second part of “halleluiah!”: halle + luia. Halle stands for the German word Heilig, Holy. A rough English translation of the meaning of lihgo might be “We are on a swing! Praise be!” The spirit corresponds to the famous Shaker song, “Simple Gifts ”, these days known also as “The Lord of the Dance”.

The Lihgo Flag is not a modern flag. Its design resembles that of a church icon made of cloth. It was common in former days for churches to present themselves with a flag. Such flags, while still fairly common in some areas of the world, may nevertheless be viewed as remnants from days that preceded the iconoclasts (the image or icon breakers) of our day. One such flag was the Latvian “Lihgo flag”. The flag pictures John cum Latvis after a drawing by Baumanu Karlis, an artist well known among Latvians.

What is unique about this first Latvian flag are the images it holds, and the images which it excludes that are a part of the original drawing.

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The 4th Awakening
10 The Devaluation of Latvos

The reduction of the Children of to pa-Yanhood (now generally called “paganhood”) is evidence of what a violent, aggressive, and persecuting ego does. Such an ego belonged to forces of the West, which is not to say that it belonged to the Order of Teutonic Knights only.

The persecution began long before the Teutonic Knights came on the scene in Livonia. It was part of the movement of the princes of the world to shatter the hegemony of the old kingdom under the sacred king and capture a piece of its land for themselves. In the English speaking world, the famous moment of power transfer is the Magna Carta (1215). Joan of Arc (1431) saved the French king from his feudal aristocracy, which remained under his control, more or less. However, the feudal aristocracy fell with King Louis XVI’s head (1793) in the French Revolution. More about this paradigm shift in a future blog.

We may effectively translate the persecutions initiated by the West by perceiving them as the pursuit of positivism. The persecution advanced (openly, but pretending invisibility) on the king’s castle stealthily—as the story of the moving forest in Shakespeare maintains. The killed (cut down) forest hid Neo-Christian missionaries, who were sneaking up to the king and his people with the “good news”.

[The people of Livonia received the good news several times over. The first time probably was the attack of the Teutonic Knights under the flag of Neo-Christianity on Jersika in 1209. There are several contour maps of such forced conversions available. One is sketched here by these blogs of course. There is also the so-called “Bloodlands” (click on ‘audio’  version.

In 1209, Bishop Albert of Riga, attacked Jersika and its king Visvaldis (Vis=All; valdis=ruler). The bishop defeated Visvaldis, brought him to Riga, humiliated him before the public, took away most of his land, and sacked him beyond recovery when he tried to rise a few years later.

The attack on Visvaldis coincides with the crusade of the Pope Innocent III against the Albigensians in southern France in the same year, 1209. While it is unlikely that seven hundred years later we will discover a label with “proof” written on it, it is equally unlikely that the date of attack was an accident.

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The 4th Awakening
11 Jahni, Bless Latvia

Not long ago (in blog 7), I mentioned that saying “Labdien, Jahni!” or “Labdien, Žane!”(Good day, John; Good day, Jane) was to address dear God, dear Sun, dear Johns, dear Death, and dear Others, all of them dear at the same time. Wow!

The evolution of such inclusiveness in a word, however, is natural enough. It occurred because the individual who came toward you on the country road could be any of the mentioned. You greeted all who came toward you in a way that none would feel slighted. You said: “Hello, John!” with a certain inflection, with certain background information stored in your mind. A friendly greeting was as obligatory (for your personal safety’s sake) as it was a ritual. Though you hoped that the John coming toward you was not the Father of the Dead (veļi), perhaps you wished it was Laima, the Goddess that gave birth to lady Luck, or a piece of chocolate as the modern Latvians have been taught by advertising to know her.

What is it about John that makes the word so embracing and powerful?

One student and historian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Allegro  of religions, John Allegro, opined that the U sound was ancient and sacred. It makes one think of the Tibetan mantra, the Oum. While at the beginning of writing only consonants were written, the absence of written vowels gave the readers a certain freedoms of how to pronounce the words. Thus, the consonant J, pronounced as Y in many languages, could also be pronounced as J in Jazz, or G in General, or even D in Don or P in Pan. For example, the subject of the word janissary could be a gendarme or a general.  In the course of time this led to considerable confusion of names and meanings.

Let us take, for example the name of Don Juan. There are probably not many people who know that the name of the famous lover, Don Juan, actually means John’s John or, yes, Ghengis Khan. ........................................................

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The 4th Awakening
12 Lihgo, John Whoever! (1918)

If in 1873 a Latvian artist could still believe that when drawing a representative figure of a Latvian, he could do no wrong by portraying Latvis as John, by 1888 this was no longer true.

Came 1888, the Latvian poet Andrejs Pumpurs published the pseudo epic “Lāčplēsis” (Bear Slayer). Borne on wings of fictitious history (composed 1872-1887), Bear Slayer soon replaced John, Son of the Sun.

The origin of Pumpurs’ Bear Slayer figure is uncertain. While Latvian schoolbooks claim that the origins are to be sought in Latvian folk tales, it is more likely that the folk tale is a variant of mythological figures popular in the middle ages. One such figure appears in Martin Luther’s illustrated Bible, another is an illustration by the famed medieval artist Lucas Cranach. In both instances the figure is named Samson, the Lion Slayer.

Following the example of Pumpurs, another Latvian poet, Rainis, wrote “Uguns un Nakts ” (Fire and Night), a play in the sing-song style of Latvian folk songs. The political function of the play, published in 1905, was to confirm Bear Slayer (see Prologue) as a true figure of Latvian mythology. Because Rainis was a member of the Socialist Democratic Workers Party, he, like Pumpurs, had little use for the religious notions of Latvian pa-yans (pagans). Pumpurs, an officer in the Tsars army, who fought against the Turks alongside the Serbs, was declared by Rainis to be a Latvian “peoples’ soldier”. Thus, it came to be that on the symbolic level the first Bear Slayer Medal of Honor (Lāčplēša ordenis) was awarded by a poet to a poet, by Rainis to Pumpurs.

Rainis subtitles his play “old songs sung to new melodies”. In fact, the play is anything but an old song. The name of John or Johns (Jahnis in Latvian) does not make an appearance. Instead, the Bear Slayer is Pumpurs’ and Rainis’ version of the German Siegfried.

As soon as Bear Slayer is invented, he makes haste to take John’s place. This happens with less ado than when Jacob tricks Esau out of his birthright. All that is remembered of Johns by Pumpurs is “Lihgo”. Indeed, Pumpurs has Bear Slayer and Laimdota (Good Fortune) marry—would you believe it?—on Johns Day without John ever being mentioned. Instead of the name of “John”, we hear “Lihgo” and “Lihga”.*

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The 4th Awakening
13 The Proto-Latvian View of the Here and Now (I)

In order to discover the proto-Latvian view of themselves and their future, we need to reconstruct an ever so brief spiritual history of our forebears. As argued in my previous blog (12), the zionationalist “mythical historical narrative” of Latvia that prevails in our day is actually a story of how one history is murdered to substitute it with another. How did this come about?

The mythical historical narrative of Latvia originates at about the same time as Zionism http://vimeo.com/11568199 . Though the histories of Zionist Israel and zionationalist Latvia are distinct stories, both nationalist groups originate in the abandonment of their respective early religious backgrounds, which are substituted by a secularist orientation.

[color=green]Since the ideal of a secularist orientation is global in outlook, once the secular entity was separated from its religious base, and in order not to dissolve in its own all material plasma, it needed to find something to anchor itself to and then provide itself with a new body, a new singularity. That “something” to which secularism attached itself was the geo-political state—re Israel and Latvia. However, the body or singularity discovered itself in a newly created fictional community—ethnicity, known also as ethnocentricity or ethnocentrism.

Since the story of the Bible and the presumptions that go with it are well known, this writer will concentrate on the religious origin of the proto-Latvian people instead.

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The 4th Awakening
14 The Proto-Latvian View of the Here and Now (II)

In the previous blog (13), I mentioned the populist hypothesis, i.e., that the endearing word [officially (and politically) referred to as the diminutive] was embedded in the Latvian language by anonymous proto-Latvians living their own lives in the primeval forests of Europe as yet undisturbed by philosophers.

The embedment of piety (not necessarily in the word’s “Romanized” meaning) in the Latvian language is so profound, that to this day the language retains the potential for being one of the more religiously expressive languages in the world. It stands as a mute counterargument to NATO’S aggressive and violent methods of peacekeeping of which the Latvian government forces the nation to be part. The government policy holds in contempt the spirit of the Latvian language. Only the poverty presently visiting the people has reduced Latvia’s commitment to NATO from the previous 2% to about 1% of its budget.

The hypocrisy of Latvian parliamentary democracy has its origins in the militarist atmosphere prevalent during WW1. As everyone knows, the evidence of the founding act of Latvia is but a single photograph . Moreover, the founding act is a divisive event painted over by legalistic jargon (after entering the site, go to “hronologija”, then “1918”, then to the date “18.11.1918”, and then click “Tautas Padome”—text will appear in Latvian).

This is not to say that Latvia has no reason for being and is without a founding act, but the labyrinthine complexity of the last allowed the powers that arose to ignore the Latvian people as a populist entity. This in turn allowed the newly formed Latvian government to act democratically only in a “parliamentary” manner.

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The 4th Awakening
15 A Glimpse of Arch-Christian Proto-Latvians

While the persecution of the Arch-Christians by the princely (proto-capitalist) oriented Neo-Christians is nothing new, the 13th century crusades by Pope Innocent III against Languedoc and Jersika, stand for what 20th century called a “total war” effort. The attacks were coordinated affair even if this may be the first time some readers hear of it.

The persecutional nature of the war in Languedoc is relatively well documented, though lecturers such as Caterina Bruschi and her book “The Wandering Heretics of Languaedoc” are only now leading away from the persecutors’ version of the events. The Hundred Years War Plus (actually continuing through to our own day) brought against the Arch-Christians by the crusading Neo-Christians (the neo-capitalist predations of today being the most recent expression of materialism on the march), drove aggressively into Eastern Europe and the proto-Latvian lands.

The persecutors’ version of history remains to this day little challenged in the territories once inhabited by proto-Latvians. This phenomenon may be explained to be the result of the violently repressive conversions to Neo-Christianity that were instituted by the apologists for violence. It may also be due to the material poverty of the area called Livonia. Scholars and historians are, plainly put, scarce here, and such as are have little time and money to take sabbaticals, travel, and devote themselves to creative research. Even the educated elite of Europe are following their long ago persecutors’ version of European history.

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The 4th Awakening
16 The Start of Clever John’s Via Dolorosa

Desire is not something that comes hormone driven. Desire is mimesis. Desire is like that sudden rush that makes me say: “I saw the banana first” and try to snatch it before you get it. You of course think: “I saw the banana first”. This is what is known as desire, imitation, wanting to get something done before the other can do it, competition.

If I were alone when I saw the banana, I might have decided not to climb after it, but pick the coconuts from the palm tree growing just a few feet away. Still, when I saw that you wanted the banana, my adrenalin got the better of me. Note that the adrenalin rush comes once I know that someone else wants the banana, not before.

The six brothers of Clever John, whose story began in the previous blog, all saw that Clever John would do wonders to get a horse and were therefore the first to grab theirs. Nevertheless, let us remember that Clever John never knew that he needed a horse, before his elder brothers told him that horses would be needed to get to the ball at The Old Witchs’ Inn tomorrow eve.

If Clever John had wished to go to the ball on his own, perhaps he would have grown him a moths’ wings as Peter Pan (Yan) did. However, the risk of going to the ball on his own, not saying anything to the brothers, and leaving them behind was that the brothers could make a butterfly net and catch him before he got past the gate. In such a case, it would stop or delay Clever John from getting to the dance floor first and choosing the prettiest bride. By entrapping Clever John, perhaps even killing him, the elder brothers—every one of them—improved their chances of getting the prettiest bride instead.

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