I’ve touched on this before, but I think the chivalrous story of Lancelot fighting for Guinevere’s honor in Chrétien de Troyes Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart is worthy of a dedicated post. I should note that I have not read the original work, and all quotes and summaries in this post are from CS Lewis’ Allegory of Love and Infogalactic’s synopsis of the 12th century poem of chivalry and courtly love.
In the poem Lancelot challenges Meleagant to a fight to defend Guinevere’s honor after Meleagant accuses Guinevere of adultery, and this leads to Lancelot fighting in a tournament. However, as Lancelot is duty bound to follow his Lady’s every whim, he at first must humiliate himself by losing. From Infogalactic:
When he finally did fight the tournament fighters, Guinevere asks for him to lose to prove his love. He obliges and when he starts to lose, Guinevere changes her proposal, now hoping for him to win. Lancelot complies and beats the other tournament competitors…
But a bit of back-story is needed to explain how Lancelot came to defend Guinevere’s honor at the tournament. Guinevere (King Arthur’s wife) was abducted by Meleagant, and Lancelot (one of Arthur’s knights) sets out on a quest to free her.
As one of the prime virtues in courtly love is a man debasing himself out of romantic love for another man’s wife, Lancelot is early on forced to humiliate himself by riding in a cart:
Lancelot encounters a cart-driving dwarf, who says he will tell Lancelot where Guinevere and her captor went if Lancelot agrees to ride in his cart. Lancelot boards the cart reluctantly since this is a dishonorable form of transport for a knight.[2] Gawain, not about to demean himself, chooses to follow them on horseback. Along this journey they encounter many obstacles, with the most prominent one coming from other people being unwilling to talk to Lancelot due to his implied low status because of the cart.
The quote above is from Infogalactic. Lewis offers a more detailed explanation of the symbolism of the cart. The cart Lancelot rides in is no ordinary cart, but a tumbril, a cart to haul manure that was also used to humiliate criminals, similar to a cucking stool*.
In this predicament he is met by a dwarf driving a tumbril. To his questions, the dwarf—surly like all his race—replies, ‘Get in, and I will bring you where you shall have news of the Queen’. The knight hesitates for a moment before mounting the cart of shame and thus appearing as a common criminal; a moment later he obeys.50 He is driven through streets where the rabble cry out upon him and ask what he has done and whether he is to be flayed or hanged.
After much hardship and humiliation, Lancelot finally encounters Guinevere. But his queen rebukes him coldly, because she has learned of his momentary hesitation in climbing into the tumbril:
When he has crossed the bridge, wounded in hands, knees, and feet, he comes at last into the presence of the Queen. She will not speak to him.
Eventually Guinevere warms to Lancelot, and she commits adultery with him. Ironically this is the act of adultery that Lancelot is defending. From Infogalactic:
They spend a passionate night together after Lancelot breaks into her tower. He injures his hand during his break-in, and leaves blood all over Guinevere’s sheets. Lancelot sneaks out of the tower before sunrise, and Meleagant accuses Guinevere of committing adultery with Kay, who is the only wounded knight nearby. Lancelot challenges Meleagant to a fight to defend Guinevere’s honor.
When conservatives mourn our ostensibly lost sense of chivalry in our feminist age, the values taught in tales like Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart are what they are referring to as lost virtue. Courtly love was from the very beginning a glorification of adultery, and a worship of women with men ritually debasing themselves to the intertwined sovereigns of romantic love and women. As Lewis explains, Lancelot worships Guinevere and her sexuality:
The submission which Lancelot shows in his actions is accompanied, on the subjective side, by a feeling that deliberately apes religious devotion. Although his love is by no means supersensual and is indeed carnally rewarded in this very poem, he is represented as treating Guinevere with saintly, if not divine, honours. When he comes before the bed where she lies he kneels and adores her…
Even after Lancelot worships Guinevere’s sexuality, and even while he is defending her (nonexistent) honor, Lancelot demonstrates the virtue of courtly love by yet again humiliating himself:
Even when he is forgiven, his trials are not yet at an end. The tournament at the close of the poem gives Guinevere another opportunity of exercising her power. When he has already entered the lists, in disguise, and all, as usual, is going down before him, she sends him a message ordering him to do his poorest. Lancelot obediently lets himself be unhorsed by the next knight that comes against him, and then takes to his heels, feigning terror of every combatant that passes near him. The herald mocks him for a coward and the whole field takes up the laugh against him: the Queen looks on delighted. Next morning the same command is repeated, and he answers, ‘My thanks to her, if she will so’. This time, however, the restriction is withdrawn before the fighting actually begins.53
Above I wrote that conservatives mourn the ostensible loss of chivalry, because the idea that a woman’s sexuality is divine is if anything more deeply rooted today than it was in the original works of courtly love nearly a thousand years ago. In the past this divinity was merely implied, but today we have conservative pastors explicitly teaching that a woman’s sexual desire (or lack thereof) is a message from God, and that a wife’s romantic love is needed to sanctify sex in marriage. We also have country music hits where men explicitly worship their wives, singing about their sexuality as holy and sanctifying:
You’re an angel. Tell me you’re never leaving
‘Cause you’re the first thing I know I can believe inYou’re holy, holy, holy, holy
I’m high on loving you, high on loving you
You’re holy, holy, holy, holy
I’m high on loving you, high on loving youYou made the brightest days from the darkest nights
You’re the river bank where I was baptized
Cleansed from the demons
That were killing my freedom
Let me lay you down, give me to ya
Get you singing, babe, hallelujah
We’ll be touching
We’ll be touching heaven
What conservatives commonly mourn as a lost virtue is in reality a sickness that has grown more malignant over time. The problem with courtly love is not that it started as noble and was later twisted. The evil has been there all along, and it plays into a weakness men and women both exhibit going all the way back to the fall in Genesis.
*Tumbril is in fact an alternate name for a cucking stool.
This is why old Catholic “lives of the saints” – the life of Ignacio de Loyola comes to mind – often mention chivalric novels as a temptation or vice the saint had to overcome on his or her path to holiness. Back in the day serious Christians were not supposed to be reading this stuff.
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A huge amount of trauma an this topic for me. Not sure many women I’ve meet have honor.
Wow. Guinevere is a psychopath.
I’ve heard in one of the legends that Merlin warned King Arthur that she wouldn’t be faithful to him. It probably wasn’t foresight on his part but merely a simple observation of her character.
Not sure ANY women I’ve met have had honour.
Rugby. Fixed it for you.
Honour means not only honouring your word and beliefs but willing to sacrifice to defend them. Just “not being bad” is not honour and that is all we ask of women.
An honourable man must fight for right in the world even when he himself has not sinned.
This is a good series you’ve been doing, Dalrock.
Tumbrils were also famously used to transport prisoners to the guillotine during the French Revolution.
Guinevere is a typical heterosexual woman, and Lancelot was the typical heterosexual man. Both had junk sex (despite marriage to another) just like millions and millions of mediocre people do today. In order to earn the privilege of debasing himself this way, the female made her suitor debase himself. This is nothing unusual.
That’s awesome. I need to look these stories up.
Dalrock has done a very good job illuminating the problem of woman-worship that has so successfully seeped into our cultural norms here. Even a hardened misogynist like me didn’t realize what these quaint old stories were actually teaching folks.
Boxer
Wow
I had no idea Guinevere was such a sociopath.
It’s not good but some infidelity is very human and understandable. Like alcoholism. The mind games and humiliation is amazing.
I hate it when commenters say “Gosh, that was a great post. ” (I mean, I did, back when I had a blog. Nobody ever says that to me, now. ;)) Nonetheless, I have to say, great posts on this topic. Keep it up.
Good post, Dalrock.
The more I learn of the courtly love tradition, the odder the whole thing seems to me, really. I can clearly see the roots of many contemporary pathologies in it, not least of which are some rather common male sexual paraphilias which would seem to be very closely aligned with the Lancelot/Guenevere tale.
The Red-Pill perspective puts a lot of fairy tales in new light. I had to reclassify Beauty and the Beast as horror even before the latest Bizney movie and Dracula as female porn. Still upset about the latter. Those Castlevania games now feel like Mr. Belmont is trying to win a sexual peacocking contest against Lover Boy.
“Back in the day serious Christians were not supposed to be reading this stuff.”
Because ignorance of women was better than cautionary tales?
Firstly it is important to remember that these are fictional characters, and there are a few versions of it all. If you can’t be bothered to read the originals – Mallory is the main one – I suggest that you treat C.S. Lewis with caution.
Wasn’t the key point if it all that Lancelot betrayed Arthur by entering in to an adulterous relationship with his wife. This made Lancelot unworthy of the grail and doomed to fail in his quest to find it. The quest was subsequently successfully concluded by his son Galahad who was a pure knight. If you want a real laugh then have a look at the Germanic legends of what happened next as most memorably represented by Wagner in his opera Parsifal.
I honestly don’t think this is a red pill story!
The RP perspective certainly paints Lancelot as something other than the Alpha Male that he is held up as being in common folklore.
@Dalrock
I highly recommend buying a copy of Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory, specifically the version with a foreword by Robert Graves; he goes into significant detail about how the Arthurian legends are pagan tales coated over with the “Christianity” visage, particular concerning marriage and adultery. The characters are, as he put it, “Christian in name, only.” It is only in the Victorian Age courtesy of Howard Pyle and Tennyson that the Arthur legends are cleaned up and the characters given virtuous qualities. Like Beowulf, the legends were originally oral traditions sung or recited in halls by mistrals who, ironically enough, mocked marriage and thought it was foolish.
Incidentally, the tale of Guinevere and Lancelot was first popularized and made famous by the French.
People who promote chivalry and courtly love are advocating concepts that are utterly heathen in nature. It is really just modern-day LARPing. If they want to return to courtly love and chivalry, they can go to a Renaissance Fair or join the Society for Creative Anachronism.
WTF is this: http://mensteppingupblog.com/
Swifty….in the old tale Merlin lives his life “backwards” That is his memories are all of things that from the perspective of this is is yet to come.
Glorifying love is in its essence, worshiping and prostrating before an Emotion.Esentially a hardwired female trait, unfortunately very often practiced by many so-called ‘beta males’. I am not going here into some Alpha/Beta/MGTOW debate.
This issue for me is, Emotional vs. Rational. Women vs. men.
We men are supposed to lean heavily towards the Rational by default, but obviously this is not the case in the real world.
The $64,000 question is, why do many men adopt this basic female personality trait?
My take, DNA, or obsucure biochemistry, or some relatively underdeveloped, or over developed part of the brain. It exists and manifests in huge number of males and accross all races, religions, cultures, and geographical regions.
Therefore, easily transmitted.
A phrase oten used when describing a disease. Why this comparison?
Because, disease, by definition is a state of, either or body or soul, that is harmful for person.
Great post BTW. Variety of information is spice of life.
Lancelot was Beta. He compromised himself, his integrity, his mission, his natural talents, his sense of self, all for just the prospect of intimate relations with his ONEitis. Romance formula praises his dedication and perseverance when in fact he, and any man, would be better served by resisting the head games of women. It’s the counterintuitive response to the romance script that generates tingles. King Arthur gets cucked, Lancelot is brought low, all because they subscribed to the divinity of the Holy vagina.
The moral of the story is that elevating women above the purpose of men’s mission makes for the ruin of both of them and the empires men build.
The 3rd Commandment of Poon:
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/the-sixteen-commandments-of-poon/
@Sean Toddington
This post isn’t about the Arthurian legends, but about courtly love. To demonstrate the reality of courtly love I have in this post focused on a single famous poem by Chrétien de Troyes from roughly 1177. This is one of the most famous works involving courtly love. That Mallory came along several centuries later (1485) with a different version of the Arthurian tale doesn’t change the reality of courtly love as a literary movement. Courtly love is the very romantic chivalry that conservatives pine after, even though as I have demonstrated if anything we are even more infected by this evil than the creators of the movement. If you want to defend conservative pining for courtly love, then I would be very interested to read your defense.
Dalrock, so what you’re quoting wasn’t meant as a cautionary tale? I thought that reference to a nasty, testing dwarf was a olid indicator. Perhaps I’ve been reading too much Brothers Grimm; the dwarf seems to be a trope of morality tales.
KL:
that mensteppingupblog you linked to is a blog publication of Family Life, one of those protestant family/marriage ministries that puts out the positions Dalrock and others have criticized. If you click on the “about” page at that site you’ll see the names of a lot of the usual suspects: Dennis Rainey, Bob Lepine, etc. Rainey and Lepine run the FamilyLife Today radio show heard on Christian talk stations. It’s all of a piece: Men need to man up and marry the sluts; men need to man up and do this and that; while women are put upon victims.
“Wow. Women are psychopath’s.”
FTFY
@Gunner Q
Interesting take. Lewis explains that unlike Ovid on the same topic, the courtly love authors were selling something serious.
As Infogalactic explains:
Great post, but I’ll add the standard disclaimer:
Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere lead to the fall of Camelot. It is his greatest failing, his Achilles Heel.
So while this is all in the poem, and it’s a good cautionary tale, and it lead to harmful ideas of courtly love, in the original story it’s the sins of Lancelot and Guinevere that end up spelling doom for all.
(Or at least, in the Malory story. That was actually a little later. Malory was a genius.)
Good Lord, I never really realized what a putrid philosophy “Courtly Love” was, and is. It’s not fit for Christians, or honorable pagans, for that matter. It just shows that our problems run deep, and didn’t just suddenly spring up in the ’60’s, as a lot of us would like to believe. Thanks, Dalrock, for reading this crap, so that we don’t have to.
Rollo,
Lancelot was Beta. He compromised himself, his integrity, his mission, his natural talents, his sense of self, all for just the prospect of intimate relations with his ONEitis.
Bingo. Lancelot is the patron saint of betas.
I encourage everyone to read T.H. White’s “The Ill-Made Knight” for a brilliant exploration of this whole topi
@malcom,
Yes, but it was worth it because love. That’s what I always hated about the Camelot movie.
@Hmm,
Yeah, it depends on the version. In T.H. White’s original story the movie was based on, it was very tragic, but not worth it.
White portrays it as something of a Greek tragedy. Arthur’s mistake was the slaughter of the 19th infants that lead to Mordred resenting him, and his tolerance of Guinevere’s infidelity. Lancelot’s mistake was not controlling his sinful urges. Guinevere just sucked.
@Sean Toddington
I honestly don’t think this is a red pill story!
I’ve come to believe ALL stories involving men and women are red pill stories. There are simply different levels of ignorance or perfidy amongst the players.
“The lover (idolizer) accepts the independence of his mistress and tries to make himself worthy of her by acting bravely and honorably (nobly) and by doing whatever deeds she might desire, subjecting himself to a series of tests (ordeals) to prove to her his ardor and commitment. Sexual satisfaction, Paris said, may not have been a goal or even end result, but the love was not entirely Platonic either, as it was based on sexual attraction.”
So, in a nutshell, modern day Internet white knights are basically digital Lancelots. It just goes to show that no matter how much things change, they stay the same.
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Malory’s version of the tale of Lancelot and the cart has been repeatedly brought up as a counter to the original. But from the Cliff’s Notes it appears to also have Lancelot fighting to defend Guinevere’s honor after she is rightly accused of adultery:
And as I read this later bit of Cliff’s Notes, it seems that Malory has dressed courtly love in a cloak of Christian virtue:
@ Dalrock
“it seems that Malory has dressed courtly love in a cloak of Christian virtue”
This is exactly what Robert Graves describes in the foreword to Malory’s book. His comments might actually be worth quoting in a separate blog post if you decide to do a follow-up to this.
Listening to a Professor of Medieval History, recently, it seems that the most probable conclusion is that Arthur was a personage of real, historical significance at the time. His wife much less so, and Lancelot, a fictional character made up out of whole cloth by a French author in order to insert a Frenchman into an admired historical, ENGLISH narrative….. as the unbeatable warrior and irrisistable (eventually) lover.
“Remember, you’re fighting for this woman’s honor, which is probably more than she ever did.”
Rufus T. Firefly
“There lived not long since, in a certain village of the Mancha the name of whereof I purposely omit,…”
which you will all recognise as the opening of the Sheldon translation, and the question is, as with Bruce Jenner or Rachel Dalziel , to what extent does performativity whether as an undocumented Doctor or undocumented Knight Errant make you what you are acting out. Is Austin Powers really Gods gift to women and do those who practice Game on unsuspecting females become Alpha males? Are Powers and the Gamesters deluded or do they like Alonso Quixana become what they believe themselves to be?
The Glove and the Lions
By Leigh Hunt
King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
The nobles filled the benches, and the ladies in their pride,
And ‘mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed:
And truly ’twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,
Valour and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.
Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;
They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws;
With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another;
Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother;
The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air;
Said Francis then, “Faith, gentlemen, we’re better here than there.”
De Lorge’s love o’erheard the King, a beauteous lively dame
With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seemed the same;
She thought, the Count my lover is brave as brave can be;
He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;
King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;
I’ll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine.
She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then looked at him and smiled;
He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild:
The leap was quick, return was quick, he has regained his place,
Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady’s face.
“By God!” said Francis, “rightly done!” and he rose from where he sat:
“No love,” quoth he, “but vanity, sets love a task like that.”
Dalrock,
Of course it is the same story. The difference is that earlier a famous vow is taken by all of Arthur’ s knights. The one who breaks it most spectacularly is Lancelot. And thus, Camelot falls.
I wasn’t denying that was in Malry’s but pointing out that it is clear as day Malory is painting Lancelot as directly breaking Arthur’s moral code.
More simply:
To Malory Lancelot is a perfect portrayal of courtly love. Which is why he goes to war with Arthur and causes the fall of Camelot.
Failing shit-tests is chivalrous? Who knew?
Sir Beta Lancelot’s tale tells us that even in times past, women were never virtuous. They are not designed to be. This is why they should never be Pastors, Missionaries, politicians, soldiers, in the civil services (police and Fire). These positions require clear understandings of and adherance to moral codes. Ideally, they should get a decent but not excessive education, marry early, have children early and pursue whatever job they can once the children are self-sufficient. Oh wait – isn’t that what marriage is about?
This is off topic Dalrock, but it seems that the Australian Federal Government has decided that simple communication is not enough to get Australian girls into sport and other activities. Apparently we need an expensive campaign:
https://campaigns.health.gov.au/girlsmove
Needless to say, there doesn’t seem to be any State-sponsored ”Boys, Make Your Move” campaign.
Worth noting that “Guenevere” means “fair one”, a woman who is the object of one’s adoration, devotion, particularly chivalrous love. The name is of course a precursor to the French female name “Jennifer”. I love that name, and it was very popular in the US for over 15 years time.
But unfortunately I cannot help but associated it with the adultery of Arthur’s wife.
The knights of the round table vowed to protect one another, the king, and to live honorable lives. They all succeeded in this except Lancelot.
Lancelot not only committed adultery with Guenevere, but he also slayed the former kitchen knave and Knight of the Round Table, Percival, probably the best knight next to Gallahad, and the dude who kicked the asses of the red, green and black knight’s in reverse alphabetical order.
Lancelot was the best knight. The alpha of the group.
He effed it all up, and for what?
For the filthy buttocks of the least honorable woman in the entire kingdom no doubt.
This stuff even still comes up in modern reinterpretations of the tales of that time.
A Knight’s Tale ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183790/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ) actually does the “fail at the tournament/win the tournament” stuff with our main character trying to impress his Woman. I remembered thinking how damn stupid that was. It’s still insanely stupid, but it’s different when you’re reading it compared to watching someone get beaten to a pulp for it. (I actually would recommend giving the movie a watch. It’s got some great performances, if you can get past what their clear socio-political lines they’re pushing. It’s a good chunk of cheesy fun.)
Though, on a little reflection, this study is very much a version of “don’t meet your heroes”. As the old assumptions are looked into, it’s clear they were horrific and stupid. Yet by the time anyone actually looked at them, they were just an assumed part of cultural understandings. What horrible creatures, we are.
They spend a passionate night together after Lancelot breaks into her tower. He injures his hand during his break-in, and leaves blood all over Guinevere’s sheets. Lancelot sneaks out of the tower before sunrise, and Meleagant accuses Guinevere of committing adultery with Kay, who is the only wounded knight nearby. Lancelot challenges Meleagant to a fight to defend Guinevere’s honor.
This particular part of the story caught my attention. Notice that when Guinevere gets publicly called out as a slut for keeping a secret lover, Lancelot jumps to defend her reputation in spite of the fact that he, being her actual paramour, knows better than anyone that the charges were true. But when Sir Kay — his fellow knight whom he’d presumably fought beside during battle — initially catches the rap for the affair, the same “noble knight” is content to sit on his hands and allow an innocent party to get strung up for a crime that he knows the man never committed. So why is it that for a lot of people, the name of Lancelot still evokes the image of a worthy and noble hero? He’s so quick to defend a woman’s honor — however nonexistent — that you’d almost forget that other principles like honesty, accountability and camaraderie meant absolutely nothing to him when they involved his “brothers” just a few moments before.
I can’t help but wonder if there’s a modern-day parallel to this kind of a thing when you see religious leaders like the Driscolls and the Stantons praise unwed baby-mamas as heroes worthy of honor, then turn their wrath on the hapless single men of their congregation and bellow that it’s time for them to put down the video games and MAN UP and marry these sluts. Gentlemen, there is a lesson here: You can have brotherhood amongst the men of your organization, or you can have the woman-worship we call “chivalry.” But you can’t have both — and sadly, we already know which one the modern church has chosen.
Dalrock,
Have you heard of the Targum? I have not recently watched this Jonathan Kleck video, but he mentions the Targum as a Coptic Christian OT Bible dating waaaay back. BTW, I am not very comfortable with JK, but watch this video, esp around 3-4 min mark:
The Targum Genesis has Hava (Eve) being an adulterer with the serpent, which results in a heteropaternal superfecundation pregnancy (“twins” not only from two eggs, but two different fathers as well), the other father of course being Adam. Thus the whole light is dark, up is down, good is evil, twins paradigm is born.
Clearly, this is NOT church doctrine. But, it shines a new (interesting) light onto the Cain and Abel story. One could understand the church fathers not wanting to perpetuate this version of the Creation story.
But re: your post, you ended it with “courtly love” in the Garden. Maybe you are more correct than you imagined.
@ Looking Glass says:
March 15, 2017 at 6:01 pm
“A Knight’s Tale ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183790/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ) actually does the ‘fail at the tournament/win the tournament’ stuff with our main character trying to impress his Woman. I remembered thinking how damn stupid that was. It’s still insanely stupid, but it’s different when you’re reading it compared to watching someone get beaten to a pulp for it.”
I watched that movie with a mixed-sex group of friends when I was in college. I remember thinking (and saying) that Jocelyn’s request made her a horrendous bitch who didn’t give a damn about William’s well being.
The females in the group, of course, thought it was terribly romantic.
But from the Cliff’s Notes it appears to also have Lancelot fighting to defend Guinevere’s honor after she is rightly accused of adultery
I guess it’s my defective genes, but I cannot for a second imagine any man worthy of the title, from any era or culture, wasting even a millisecond’s worth of energy or an ounce of his own reputation to defend some other man’s wife against charges of adultery that he knowsto be true (especially if he’s the one cucking her husband). It truly “does not compute.”
I watched that movie with a mixed-sex group of friends when I was in college. I remember thinking (and saying) that Jocelyn’s request made her a horrendous bitch who didn’t give a damn about William’s well being.
Oh, to see a red pil remake of one of these movies, where the conniving adulterous slut pursues the knight, who makes it known in no unmistakeable signals that he wants nothing whatsoever to do with her, which only increases her desperation, which in turn ultimately leads him to abandon not only chivalry towards her, but human decency, which at the end of the movie results in her becoming the “concubine” of a gang of filthy, diseased, depraved peasant highwaymen.
@Oscar:
The original script must have gone through a lot of rewrites, as you have a movie that opens with Queen & a jousting tournament having direct allusions to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The romance had actually nothing much to do with the overall story, but a young Heath Ledger was going to be a hit with Women.
I mostly remember it for Alan Tudyk & Paul Bettany. The cast, it turned out, was really good. The actual story was somehow a mashup of some combination of practically every pre-1800 story. The Globe Theater might have made cameo as well. Add in some “modern” sensibilities (no Woman is going to be an ancient blacksmith, really, or use a Nike swoosh), and you got a pretty cheesy fun movie.
This story proves how innate the FI is, which makes sense given the evolutionary realities (and why these realities are becoming obsolete today).
That is why is irritating to see supposedly ‘red pill’ people still claim that :
i) ‘Feminism’ stared in 1858 at Seneca Falls.
ii) ‘Feminism’ happened because of the VietNam War
iii) ‘Feminism’ is due to a group that is only 2% of the population.
People who believe that are ones who have no idea how innate the problem is, and often get fooled by stories like ‘Young women rejecting feminism’, when they are keeping 99% of it.
To not recognize how the FI is an innate aspect of humanity, is to not understand why some aspects of humanity are now becoming obsolete.
you’ve kind of talked all around the primary point, but i don’t think anyone has stated it baldly:
honor, for a woman, has nothing to do with what she does but is merely what others say about her. ( or are permitted to say )
honor, for a man, has nothing to do with what others say about him but is entirely about what he does, whether known or not.
honor, for a knight practicing Courtly Love, has nothing to do with what others say about him nor does it have anything to do with his actions. “honor”, for a knight practicing Courtly Love consists entirely of how thoroughly he can debase himself for the object of his affections.
and the actions of the Courtly Love knight demonstrate ONLY how thoroughly the woman has dominated the knight through her seductive whiles.
this is why women love the story. it is a public demonstration of the woman’s power over a man of standing. and, as a story, women insert themselves into the Guinevere role.
feeriker: The RP perspective certainly paints Lancelot as something other than the Alpha Male that he is held up as being in common folklore.
Lancelot was the ultimate, prototypical White Knight. The role model for all future would-be White Knights. He set the mold and established the standard.
The Question: Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory, specifically the version with a foreword by Robert Graves; he goes into significant detail about how the Arthurian legends are pagan tales coated over with the “Christianity” visage, particular concerning marriage and adultery. The characters are, as he put it, “Christian in name, only.”
From what I’ve read about the Arthurian legends, back about when Excalibur came out, the stories evolved and changed over maybe a thousand years.
The characters with Celtic pagan names — Arthur, Mordred, Morgana, Merlin — are much older. Arthur was likely the brother and husband of Morgana in the earliest versions.
The French named characters — Guinevere, Lancelot — were introduced later, probably after the Norman Conquest. These characters are from French Christian tales.
At some point, the Celtic pagan and Norman Christian tales were merged.
This is Lancelot and Guinevere from the early 1980s film, Excalibur:
I loved it when it came out. I now see how Blue Pill it is.
@Dalrock and the Cliff Notes: “Launcelot has had to choose between queen and king.”
So – a retelling of the Adam and Eve story. Eve forced a situation that required Adam to choose between her and God. Seems Guinevere did the same thing to Lancelot. We might conclude that both stories are telling us about an enduring aspect of the human condition – the constant struggle between passion and duty.
The Bible, in reference to the Adam and Eve story, tells us that God already had a plan in place to deal with the fallout of Eve and Adam’s choices before Eve ever offered the forbidden fuit to Adam. Seems like Lancelot is supposed to choose Guinevere over the King every time. Seems that it’s a feature, not a bug. Redemption (at least for Adam) can’t happen if Adam chooses God over Eve every time. And the entire Bible is about the redemption that was planned long before Eve ever offered the forbidden fruit to Adam. That redemption plan and all the effort put into it will be a waste if Adam keeps choosing God over Eve, if Lancelot keeps choosing King Arthur over Guinevere.
RichardP….
Your hypothesis fails on the point of God’s omniscience. The redemption plan was required because God knew that Adam would fall, not because Adam was predestined to do so, by God.
Had there been no fall, there would have been no plan, because it was known to be unnecessary.
RPL…
“The characters with Celtic pagan names — Arthur, Mordred, Morgana, Merlin — are much older. Arthur was likely the brother and husband of Morgana in the earliest versions.
The French named characters — Guinevere, Lancelot — were introduced later, probably after the Norman Conquest. These characters are from French Christian tales.”
The problem with this narrative is that the British of Arthur’s period were not very far removed from the Roman period of occupation. The culture of this period is generally described as “Romano-Briton” and the prevailing religion was Christian.
It was the invading Saxons – who Arthur is believed to have fought in defence of his land – who were the pagans.
What stokes me is that art and life often follow each other. So for this story to be accepted or tellable in the 12th century this sort of thing would have to be going on. Not the whole of it, but the characters have to be relatable and thus recognizable.
Which is a long way to say the cucks or betas as a type were well established by the time the story was written
Whilst I entirely agree with Anonat 10.45pm, I believe that it is generally accepted that the first shot fired by women in what may be called the War for Female Supremacy (i.e. Feminism) was Mary Woolstencraft’s 1792 tract A Vindication of The Rights of Women. There are doubtless precursors – perhaps French – but it is Anglo-Feminism that here matters.
Did the demise in the English speaking world of female Monasticism (the Convent) inadvertantly bring about Feminism by failing to provide a ‘safe space’ for those women temperamentally or wilfully unwilling to marry and to reproduce?
Opus invokes the Convent of lore. I often find myself nostalgic for times past that probably never existed as I like to imagine them. How many problems were resolved or forestalled by the simple order – “Hie thee to a Nunnery”?
Of course the number of Convents required today under this model would make short work of even the most robust treasuries.
Thank you for articulating this. I share some of this with my children.
I would recommend the book “honor a history” by James Bowman if you haven’t read it.
According to the intro, Troyien’s “The Knight of the Cart” was a story requested–and also recounted to Troyien–by Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Both women were great patrons of troubadours (read: medieval Harley Mcdrummertattoo badboys). Here is the beginning.
Notice too the backhanded, almost passive-aggressive, compliments to Marie. Troyien repeats what is said about her, but makes pains to say he doesn’t say them. A little push-pull game.
So, to win the Queen’s favor, a Harley McDrummer pens the Queen’s version of a tale that both humiliate the sort of men who protect her, and also challenging them to win her favor. Troyien can’t lose here. In a sense he is like a modern pastor who can win a crowd of women by barking lies about “what real men do”.
Link to full text in translation: http://omacl.org/Lancelot/
Comparing White’s Once and Future King, Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur, and Troyien’s The Knight of the Cart is a waste of time except as an investigation of what was popular during different periods of time. The themes tell you more about the people telling and reading the stories than it does about some “true” Arthurian legend. There isn’t one. There isn’t an original, or even a composite one. Arthurian legends are more akin to freestyle rap battles than histories.
That’s not really true. At different times in western history, titles like Marquis de Sade’s 1000 days in Sodom and Anne Desclos’ l’Histoire d’O were wildly popular. Just a few years ago, a lowbrow bit of porn called Shades of Grey spent months and months on the best seller lists. All this despite the fact that most people didn’t seek out pain or humiliation in their marital or sexual relationships.
People generally find the idea of wanton degeneracy much more appealing than actually indulging in it. Freud, Jung and Adler explained all that and it’s well understood, besides being totally tangential.
What Dalrock has successfully illuminated with these articles on courtly love is not the historical-realist slide into humiliating oneself as part of courtship, but the sublimation of a tendency to expect as much, which is much more deleterious, as it expresses itself at a subliteral (and perhaps even subconscious) level, hidden behind the façade of tradition and supposed nobility and rightness.
Boxer
PeterW:
“The redemption plan was required because God knew that Adam would fall, not because Adam was predestined to do so, by God.”
I don’t understand this statement. What is the difference between knowing with certainty that something will happen, as opposed to that something being predestined?
A modern, medieval-day lore
Of a goddess unwisely adored
Always up for the fight, enters Lance the white knight
Sells his soul for a beautiful whore
There’s actually a lot of literature on this problem. Google “Newcomb’s boxes” for discussion. It’s interesting.
Cane,
Comparing White’s Once and Future King, Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur, and Troyien’s The Knight of the Cart is a waste of time except as an investigation of what was popular during different periods of time.
This is very correct. There’s no “correct” version, just one version or another. I’m just defending Mallory because it seems very clear to me that he, particularly, knew what he was doing – in fact, considering the oath the knights take earlier in the narrative contrasted with Lancelot’s actions I’m not sure how he could NOT be aware that Lancelot was openly and blatantly breaking it.
That was the whole point – Lancelot is Arthur’s greatest and most noble knight except for this one, massive, tragic flaw. It’s like a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. For Othello, the flaw was jealousy. For Oedipus, pride. And for Lancelot, lust and whatever you might call that particular male tendency to debase themselves for women.
And this is what causes the fall of Camelot.
(And I’ll defend White for the same reason. White was trying to create a “humanized” version of “Le Morte D’Arthur, which he admits even in the narrative itself is his main resource. He makes it very clear in the text that what Lancelot and Guinevere are doing is very wrong. And Arthur, who knew about it but did nothing to stop it, is arguably worse.)
Reading through the comments, it reminds me of the “Chivalry” episode of Highlander. An older female Immortal who can’t stand the fact she’s eternally post-Wall, and tends to murder her male lovers when they try to leave her. She takes up with our main character’s student, and while MacLeod agonizes about what to do, his buddy repeatedly tells him to get over his stupid insistence that women are somehow better than men. The quote, if I’m remembering it right, is a derisive “a couple of poets dream up chivalry on a rainy day and you take it as a lifestyle.”
MacLeod stays in denial, even after the woman tries to kill his student, and his buddy goes in and casually beheads, with a flippant comment about how he doesn’t care about her gender.
Looking back, the show has a lot of great little moments like that, where other characters are constantly having to shake MacLeod out of his beta preconceptions. I doubt you could get away with almost any of those storylines today. But I had no idea how insidious the concept of chivalry has been to our culture.
@Cane Caldo
Arthur, of course, was a Romano Britain fighting a losing battle against invaders and thus surely proto-Brexit: Get rid of one group of European Imperialists (409 A.D. – goodbye Romans); get invaded by another (hello Saxons 500 A.D.).
As it has not and probably wont be mentioned may I draw to your attention when considering different versions of Arthur that Rutland Boughton 1878 – 1960 (more famous – once – for The Immortal Hour) composed a cycle of five operas on the Arthurian legends for which purpose he attempted to create an English Bayreuth at Glastonbury which is where Arthur is said to be buried – the earliest Glastonbury Festival (1914-1926) – the present re-incarnation is entirely different; its purpose being, so far as I can see, to pay a lot of money to sleep in a muddy field and listen to pop music you would otherwise ignore as one is soaked by rain. That part of the world with its ley-lines is very New Agey.
@Opus
I like to call them “eclectic pagans”.
The present Glastonbury is where Bridget Jones meets her American Mr Right in BJ’s Baby.
@Rollory 10:07am
Let me have a go at your question. First, John 17:12
“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
As with both Adam and Judas, did God “write into the script” that Adam would fall, and Judas would betray? Or did God in His omniscience know that Adam would choose to fall and Judas would choose to betray before either acted? This is really the Christian Question: Do we have free will, or are we hemmed in by God’s divine predetermination?
As a Christian, I believe two things. One: I have free will to accept God’s Grace, or to choose the Lake of Fire. Two: God knows my choice before all time. Whether he predetermined my path, or “simply” knew my path at every breath doesn’t matter to me. My “will” is “free” to me, and that’s all that matters. Yet, it truly is more than that. Regardless of His omnipotence, God is prohibited from contravening His own rules. If I choose the devil, as much as it aggrieves God (and it does), he “cannot” override my choice because I have free will.
Final thought. In John 11 (and elsewhere), Jesus wept over Lazarus’ death. Jesus deeply loved the siblings Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. Did Jesus know that Lazarus would die, and that He would resurrect him, before all time? I would have to say yes. So, did Jesus “ham it up” to milch the Divine Script when He wept? Or was He bitterly aggrieved at Lazarus’ death in actuality? I think it’s the latter.
I don’t know. Does this help?
I think our gracious host doth read too much into these tales – I was brought up on them, and in none of the printed retellings popular in the pre-60s was it implied that the relationship of Lancelot and Guinevere was anything but a betrayal and a tragedy – THE betrayal, in that from it springs the shattering of the fellowship.
What Hollywood’s made of it since might be a different matter.
Dear Hugh:
I originally thought along the same lines. I was wrong, and so are you. I’ll try to explain why, below.
Memes like this have two primary lines-of-flight into the psyche. In the first place, the retellings tend to minimize betrayal and provide excuses for the weakening of bonds between men. In the second, the act of retelling itself makes the primary themes powerful. That the outward dressing is as cautionary tales make them all the more enticing, because by accepting, strong men have the illusion that they are handicapping themselves in a show of strength, and the themes slip over the transom, whereon is stenciled “couldn’t happen here.”
One will note that these stories arise at the very same historical time that marks the deprecation of their antitheses… things like this:
https://books.google.com/books?id=lrnbCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA546&lpg=PA546&dq=civic+virtue+triumphant+over+unrighteousness&source=bl&ots=mBXduhMh1Y&sig=TpzxY1Kp18BHX9v59OUUUS7Hby4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH2YKGx9vSAhXK7CYKHYQmCMkQ6AEIPzAI#v=onepage&q=civic%20virtue%20triumphant%20over%20unrighteousness&f=false
The statue is set to be demolished, I hear, at some point this year.
Boxer
I once read a comic book where as I recall from memory Lancelot tried to commit suicide but a witch’s curse prevented it. Instead he was forced to wander the world, except Britain, his soul bound inside his suit of armor while his dead body slowly rotted. Until the curse is broken when the once and future King Arthur returns and Lancelot as an empty rusty suit of ghost haunted armor can return to the island and fulfill the vows to his king he broke when Arthur returns to drive out the pagans in it’s hour of greatest need.
Then later on they retconned it to where the armor had a mind of its own and his soul was really trapped in a magic mirror or something.
I think the first is more poetic.
@Hugh Mann
I do not believe that is true. Most modern retellings focus on the “tragedy of helpless soulmates kept apart by circumstance”. The fact that the betrayal is portrayed in the modern retellings isn’t endorsement for a code of ethics, but a challenge for us to change circumstances. One example of the kind of “circumstance change” that would be acceptable from this modern perspective is: Divorce. Another is delayed marriage/carousel-riding.
You get the idea.
OT a bit. Virginity do-overs in Australia:
http://www.whimn.com.au/love/intimacy/the-rise-of-bornagain-virgins/news-story/b2998c8e3f6f8451de73ca7940f8ea90
“I think our gracious host doth read too much into these tales”
Some tales have been retold and retooled so many times that it’s like looking into a shattered mirror and picking your favorite reflection. The takeaway here is that feminism and white-knighting were occasionally dominant in medieval times, which proves they are not a recent phenomenon.
Accounts like the OP are an excellent validation of Christianity. The flaw that led Adam to choose Eve over God comes up time and again in history.
…
cynthia @ 11:22 am:
“The quote, if I’m remembering it right, is a derisive “a couple of poets dream up chivalry on a rainy day and you take it as a lifestyle.””
They need to make more shows like this. Larry Correia writes too slow.
Where white knighting ends
http://nypost.com/2017/03/14/transgender-dad-and-daughter-transition-together/
It’s a “made up” legend / mythos. This wasn’t even real. The real medieval Code of Chivalary mentions only one line about women. The rest of the code is about the conduct of battle, warfare and the care of the defeated population.
@Rollory
“The redemption plan was required because God knew that Adam would fall, not because Adam was predestined to do so, by God.”
I don’t understand this statement. What is the difference between knowing with certainty that something will happen, as opposed to that something being predestined?
Sort of been touched on.
The difference is this. If it was predestined, then God “forced his will” for man to fall ergo = God is not good (not true. He is good).
Knowing something will happen = God is omniscient, he is good, He is so good that he gives us free will.
There is a big difference between the two even though the difference may seem subtle at first.
And the thing about Cain being of another seed @Curios, (i know you dont subscribe to it as that is what you wrote)
If Cain was from the seed of Satan, why does God bother to warn/rebuke/chastise him (God disciplines those whom he loves) . Genesis 4:6-7 “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, WILL YOU NOT BE ACCEPTED? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
anybody read the Book of Jasher? According to that, Cain was very grieved for what he did and we find out that God (according to the Book of Jasher) accepts Able’s offering because he gave the best of what he had while Cain’s offering was rejected because he didnt give the best produce he had.
The Moody Blues song “For My Lady” fits into the theme of this topic. Medieval style tune.
Beat me to it I must say! That Moody Blues song is from 1972….was going to post but you got it brother! Well done!
Another pastor worshiping at the V.
Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in Charlotte (18,000 members).
http://www.piratechristian.com/fightingforthefaith/2017/3/are-you-ready-for-your-next-chapter
Starting at approximately the 1:05 point:
“The women went that morning, ‘cuz sometimes women have more faith than men do. They have the ability to feel God in ways; you know men; when you get men to worship it’s like a miracle. Women, women will lift their hands, they don’t have a problem coming into the presence of God and sometimes a woman will have the kind of persistence and patience with a child…I thought you would back me up here; I’m trying to get some, some love to the women…”
Interesting that he had to prompt the audience for applause.
@Otto Lamp
That was an educational link. The site banner of pirates (apparently led by Blackbeard) boarding some sailing vessel and wreaking havoc may be a little incongruent with the “Fighting For the Faith” theme, but we’ll give them marks for combative imagery.
Then I did a five minute search of the people featured in program segments, to wit:
– Real Talk Kim
– Joel Osteen
– Steven Furtick
– Martyn Layzell
If this crew is fighting at all, I think it may be against the Faith. Gentlemen, meet Pastor Real Talk Kim. Think Chivalry, courtly love, fighting for the lady’s honor, etc.
Excellent link. It strengthens of what I have been searching for quite a while now. By the way, King James is the only modern Bible that has 95% accuracy of that of the Hebrew and Greek translations, Septuagint and the Textus Receptus. Now that the video mentions a variant that I have not heard of, I am fully open minded and will dig into it with the permission and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We live in a world where truth has been suppressed by false, counterfeit institutions counterfeiting as “christian”. Bastardizing the Bible to their own modified variants of scripture and spreading it as if it where the truth. NIV, ESV, ASV, Scofield, are all dangerous and satanic variants that branched off from Jesuit infiltrators of America in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. The KJV was spreading like wildfire and the institutions of the world can’t have any of God’s word, so variants, edits, creation of the false Rapture, dispensationalism were created, all not present in ancient scripture.
Also, about the twin birth genetics, the heteropaternal superfecundation pregnancy, it follows STRONGLY about the Microchimerism topic in the scientific findings…
Women absorb and carry living DNA and cells from every male they have sexual intercourse with
Reading through the entire post, with a few jokes, denial and garbage comments, there is very interesting correlation between God’s intended marriage, sex and genetic cleanse/responsibility us humans need to deal with when it comes to today’s satanic, lustful, highly sexual culture. In other words, “marriage”, “came to her”, “sex”, and even “kissing”, can affect the female forever genetically and spiritually. We may have infant research in dna and sex but we are definitely immature when it comes to DNA’s light, electromagnetic properties of personal communication with other humans beings.
Also..
“Clearly, this is NOT church doctrine.”
Depends what “church” you are talking about…
Let me remind you of Revelation 17, directly warned by God…
Revelation 17
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.“
God never mentions, church, practices, individuals or figurines, but one self.
I’ve read both T.H. White and Malory. Way back when I was still extremely blue pilled. White makes no secret that Malory is his main source as mentioned above. Further White often references Malory when explaining something. Both called Arthur sleeping with his half sister the sin that it was; White in fact uses this opportunity in the narrative to explain that this sin was the reason Malory titled his epic “Le Mort d’Arthur”, literally, The Death of Arthur. Also both are clear that Lancelot is sinning with Guinevere.
In light of red pill and the more modern reading of the two, it needs to be brought out that Lancelot grew up as a misfit, thinking of himself as poorly as possible. Typical self effacing beta boy, in our language. There’s reason White calls this book (within The Once And Future King) The Ill-made Knight which was submitted by an earlier poster for your perusal. I strongly recommend reading at least this section of the novel, it will be made clear just how beta Lancelot developed.
White also points out an irony: that Guinevere slept with Arthur and Lancelot but never carried a baby successfully while both Arthur and Lancelot had sons by other mothers. Mordred was Arthur’s son with Morgause and Galahad was Lancelot’s son with Elaine.
@Hmm:
You beat me to it . . . quite appropriate since we are ont he subject of fairytales. When I read it all I could think about were these schmucks that married these used up cunts.
http://www.whimn.com.au/love/intimacy/the-rise-of-bornagain-virgins/news-story/b2998c8e3f6f8451de73ca7940f8ea90
@Samuel:
What I found interesting is that the article is about non-religions women. At least a small coterie of them appear to relish the idea of giving their virginity to someone she loves. Of course, they probably didn’t cherish their original virginity nearly as much the first time.
The Jack Russell Terrorist March 16, 2017 at 5:09 pm:
Jack Russell: I’m a fan of The Moody Blues, that is, until I took a dose of Red Pills by mistake one morning – and then, as you know, the whole world changes for you. One of those things that changes is that the Red Pill spoils a lot of good music.
In the case of ”For My Lady”, it’s writer, flute player Ray Thomas, wrote it for his wife. He had a very turbulent marriage that finally ended in divorce, with her taking a heap of his earnings. It was a recurrent theme for Thomas, who had written a song for their album ”In Search Of the Lost Chord”, mentioning the Arthurian stories and Guinevere by name.
Random Angeleno,
I consider “The Ill-Made Knight” the second greatest fantasy novel ever written. An amazing book.
@ Lost Patrol
Fighting For The Faith does not promote all those false teachers, rather the host of the show directly exposes what’s wrong with them in the program segments.
To the people asking about predestination, you have to study what the Bible says predestination is, not what philosophers say it is (if you’re a Christian). Here is a good video which shows what the Bible says (he is a southern baptist pastor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jTf58y5ZKg
That’s what they claim, but you’re a fool to believe it.
It’s actually a way for a banged out ho’ to establish dominance over her future kitchen bitch: making him pay dearly for what other men got for free. “I have the pussy, so I make the rules” &c.
@Random Angelino
As long as there is an understanding that histories of Lancelot suffer the same problems as stories of Arthur: There is not a defining history. Each author writes what he wants to write.
Lancelot probably first shows up in Marie de France’s lais “Lanval” as the title character. (Malcolm, you should check it out.) Lanval is not a beta to the queen. After Marie’s Lanval spends some time in the court of Elaine of Aquitaine, he evolves into the knight of courtly love. (Marie de France the authoress is not to be confused with Marie de Champagne, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter and fellow lover of troubadours.)
Where in the audio does he talk about what you note Otto? I listened to a bit, but his style grates on me. Most heresy hunters are similar. Instead of focusing on truth, they focus on what others do wrong. They can have validity in what they say, but the focus is completely off.
He also seems to be part of those who still cling to cessationism, something that is completely lacking Scriptural evidence, so I would expect some other errors in what he says. I cannot tell however if what you note was him or him critiquing what someone else said. I stopped part of the way in before I found out.
Not being able to jump around due to the web player is also annoying. I hate being force-fed media today. I suspect I could work around that, but I didn’t want to take the time to do so.
Dalrock,
You may find the following Breitbart article and the study it links to relevant to this blog.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/07/study-american-adults-less-sex-quarter-century-ago/
In particular, note the following paragraph:
The drop in sexual activity among married people was even sharper, going from 73 times a year in 1990 to 55 in 2014. The frequency of sexual activity among married people was below that of unmarried people, who have sex an average of 59 times a year.
I think Sean Toddington is right. You can´t take Lancelot out of the context of the Holy Grail quest and the point is, he failed there. And as you Christians should know, that´s what really counts. It won´t do to rely on Chretien de Troyes. He was not the author, he just wrote down one of the versions and the whole Arthurian cycle was well known to everybody. The people probably liked Lancelot´s story for the same reasons people today like Game of Thrones – it was filthy, unreal and exotic (pre-Norman conquest Britain, let´s not forget that the Arthurian cycle thrived in continental Europe more than on the Isles) nonsense, something you could never witness in real life. Can you seriously imagine a man who had been to the wars listening to the nonsense and taking it seriously?
Another aspect is the literality of our perception compared with the metaphorcality of theirs – it´s hard to tell what the people of the era thought when they heard the tales. No one at the time would think that humping a king´s – or a knight´s – wife was a good idea, let alone a moral idea. It was an adventure and the character got punished for it, meaning that Dalrock is not right: the chivalrous ideal wasn´t celebrating adultery, it was saying: look what happens when you fornicate with a married woman – you like an idiot (I am sure no sane man could consider Lancelot a hero) and as a bonus you lose your shot at the Holy Grail, that´s what. For us today, it seems almost irrelevant but for a medieval man, this was THE message. The naughty fornication and swordplay bit was welcome amusement but unlike a normal person today they all knew what the serious business was about. And the cycle is centered on the Holy Grail, not on women (even Monthy Python got this right…).
What makes me laugh are two things:
1. the difference between how much commenters here focus on the evil woman while the actual text never gives a damn about her salvation or damnation.
2. In spite of how wrong the post is concerning the analysis of the meaning of the chivalry text it is dead right about its prevalent today´s interpretation.
@Dalrock
hello, I’ve discovered your blog and Rollo’s blog before 3 days and have been reading both of them since. I never heard about RedPill until my friend mentioned it to me about 6 months, but everything written there seemed very logical.
I’m a Christian and have been in a relationship with my girlfriend for 1 year and we are living with no sex before marriage. I’m 23 years old and she is 21. She is a virgin while I’m not. It’s been progressively harder for us to live like this, because the more time we spend together (e.g. if we go on a concert), we cuddle, make-out and me and her both enjoy that experience in that moment.
While I enjoy those types of evenings, she always feels very guilty about these situations. Last time this happened, she became really horny and turned on and would constantly want to be close to me. The day after she felt extremely guilty, because she was having sexual thoughts about me for an entire day and said that she never had problems with these thoughts about her previous boyfriends she’s been in a relationship with.
Anyways, now she wants us to stop cuddling and kissing so much so that we as a couple don’t get in these types of situation again. While I get that this is what turns both of us on, I like cuddling and kissing and I don’t want to stop doing it completely just because she wants to have sex with me. If that was the case we would basically be like friends (except for holding hands) while we are in a relationship?
What do you think about this situation? Also, I really do love her and I think that she’s an amazing girl.
I know this is not the right post to ask this question, but I’m not sure if you will respond to older posts.
Cane, I’ll take a look.
It’s also possible, though unlikely, that Lancelot evolved from early Irish stories of Llenleawg, I believe the name is. The great Stephen Lawhead used this theory in his Pendragon Cycle. I find this somewhat unlikely, though it’s possible that those legends and stories of a French Lancelot morphed over time into a composite character.
In Lawhead’s version Lancelot is sort of super loyal hired bodyguard to the Queen (who gets a more positive and arguably somewhat anachronistically feminist portrayal). In one of the books he is seduced by Lawhead’s version of Morgause and runs off to be with her, kidnapping the Queen in the process. An interesting take on the story.
@ Pariah
Thank you for that clarification and subsequent sense of relief.
@MtC
I’m a big fan of Lawhead, (I think I may have been the one to recommend Lawhead to you.) but his whole mythos is much more Celtic than most Arthurian tales.
OT but relevant to the site:
In the NYTimes today, “The Increasing Significance of the Decline of Men”
TLDR: Men who are anything but Fortune 500 CEOs are faring worse and worse in all arenas, from education to work to earning power to mental health to avoiding substance abuse. It’s especially bad for boys raised by single moms:
From the NYT:
“For boys and girls raised in two-parent households, there were only modest differences between the sexes in terms of success at school, and boys tended to earn more than their sisters in early adulthood.
“Among children raised in single-parent households, however, boys performed significantly less well than their sisters in school, and their employment rate as young adults was lower. “Relative to their sisters,” Autor and his collaborators wrote, “boys born to disadvantaged families” — with disadvantage measured here by mother’s marital status and education — “have higher rates of disciplinary problems, lower achievement scores, and fewer high-school completions.””
Boys raised by two parents outearn their sisters. Boys raised by mom do poorly in school, earn less, have discipline problems, and don’t finish what they start.
Not the same with girls: Girls do equally well in school whether raised by mom and dad, or just mom.
More summary of the article:
Working class men have no social support systems. They used to have a compliant wife, the Church, the neighborhood bar, the union. Those are gone, or overrun by women.
There’s a difference of opinion on whether men need to “change their act” and “get with it”, and whether it’s that simple. David Deming at Harvard B-School says it’s more complicated than that. Increasingly, higher level, high pay jobs require fewer math/STEM/analysis and more social skills, and that favors women. Men would be more willing to take more service jobs if they paid more and were more secure. Men are less willing to serve people of higher status; whereas women have less of a problem with subordinating themselves to higher status people (Men).
Men develop more slowly in “Right Brain” functioning (emotions, social acumen, intuition). When boys are young, their brains respond negatively to stressors especially those from their parents, which can hinder right brain development. That causes ADHD and conduct disorders (antisocial personality disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, etc.) Putting boys in day care at age 6 weeks really develops this because they’re around women caring for them, and not around their fathers. Between birth and age 2, fathers are crucial because they teach boys how to “be male” through channeling aggression and drive.
The author’s takeaways:
More jobs requiring social skills (including STEM jobs) make it harder for men who lack those skills to get good high paying employment.
Boys suffer much more than girls do from single parent households and from not being around their fathers.
More parental leave is required.
Thoughts?
That THING (Real Talk Kim) is a senior pastor? From the Church of Michael Jackson, no doubt.
…
thedeti @ 10:39 am:
“More jobs requiring social skills (including STEM jobs) make it harder for men who lack those skills to get good high paying employment.
“Boys suffer much more than girls do from single parent households and from not being around their fathers.
“More parental leave is required.
“Thoughts?”
Sounds increasingly familiar. Pundit: “Looking back at our progress since year zero, things have only become worse the more we intervened. This clearly indicates that our actions have *WHIRR-CLUNK* are more needed than ever.”
Bystander: “What was that noise?”
More parental leave is required.
Thoughts?
The punchline from that article was absolutely hilarious.
Most of the article talks about how boys do poorly in single mother homes, and then at the end they bring in a shrink who basically says it has to do with lack of interaction with *fathers* after 6 weeks. Well, all the parental leave in the world isn’t going to put the father back in the picture, now is it? And boys in intact families seem to be keeping up, per the stats cited in the article, under the current leave system. Increased leave for single mothers wouldn’t seem to impact the issue one bit, and nothing in the article suggests that they would do so, either. A pretty shameless non-sequitur of an ending, even from someone as generally shameless as Edsall.
More fundamentally, the article simply doesn’t address its various premises. After going on about how differences in aptitude for high social skill jobs will leave many men out in the cold for biological reasons, it basically then just sidesteps that issue, and jumps to focusing on parental leave. Just a very odd article. The real issue is the lack of intact families and how this increases the lower you go on the economic totem pole due to female hypergamy (David Buss doesn’t use the term, but that’s what he’s talking about, anyway). So below a certain education/economic level there just aren’t enough marriageable men, so there will be lots more single moms, so there will be underperforming boys and the cycle continues. There’s nothing in the article addressing that cycle itself, because that would be politically impossible from the stance of the NYT and its readership — so instead it pivots to something like parental leave, which will have no impact on the issues that the article itself cites as the underlying causes here.
I think it’s pretty obvious that the lack of connecting the dots is clearly willful — I mean Edsall’s sources were practically telling him how to connect the dots and somehow he still ended up talking about parental leave.
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Welcome Kratos,
You are right that it makes no sense to be celibate boyfriend/girlfriend. At the risk of seeming trite, the biblical solution is clear. As Paul instructs in 1 Cor 7, if you burn with passion, marry and have sex frequently.
So the real question is:
1) Do you want to marry. If yes, then:
2) Do you want to marry her.
If your answer is yes to 1 and 2, then marry as soon as possible. If your answer to either is no, then break it off immediately. Either way, stop playing the role of celibate boyfriend.
The challenge of course is how to answer questions 1 and 2. This post from seven years ago is quite dated. However, it should at least give you a starting point for considering question #2.
@thedeti re the NYT article on the decline of men:
If you read the whole article it comes down to three words: men need fathers.
@dalrock re Advice to @Kratos:
Don’t forget the most important question regarding his girl is this: will she be a good mother to his children.
@Son of Liberty (March 16, 2017 at 7:02 pm)
Thanks for your comment. You can order the Targum on Amazon. I have not yet, and I might not ever. With that said….
I am an Orthodox Chrisitian. The Orthodox church regards itself (rightly, IMO) as the one true church. Our bishops and patriarchs possess an unbroken chain of ordination to the Apostles. Period. All other churches are “breakaway” or “protest” churches, even the mother of them all, the Catholic church.
I grew up Lutheran, lived in apostasy for much of my adult life, rediscovered Christ in a Protestant community church, and was summoned (I cannot call it any other thing) by the Holy Spirit to the Orthodox church.
I am writing to mention one thing. The Orthodox Bible. You may want to add to your bibles this one. It has the Septuagint as its OT, and the NKJV as its NT. Amazon link:
Notably, the Septuagint is quite different than the KJV OT. Several more books, Daniel is the last book with several more chapters. Remember (or note), the KJV comes after the Great Schism of 1054, and is thus arguably a “breakaway” product.
Too much to say about the Orthodox Church. But this: every Liturgy, every church year, is 100% about Christ. It’s not about “feels”, it’s not about SJWs, it’s not about Team Woman. My hesitation in wandering too far off the ranch (and studying the Targum) is my desire to be obedient, because obedience to my church, my priest, my bishop, IS obedience to Jesus Christ. My bible is the Orthodox Bible. It’s not the Targum. To get seduced by some non-canonical compelling writing is to eat the forbidden fruit. Disobedience. I understand that the devil wants to shame me and laugh at me for being an intellectual fuddy-duddy. And it is a fuddy-duddy that I will be.
Good luck, God bless.
Curios
Lost Patrol says: “If this crew is fighting at all, I think it may be against the Faith. Gentlemen, meet Pastor Real Talk Kim. Think Chivalry, courtly love, fighting for the lady’s honor, etc.”
It’s a discernment ministry.
They are critically reviewing these people’s theology, not endorsing them.
BillyS says:
“Where in the audio does he talk about what you note Otto?”
At one hour and five minute (1:05) mark.
Press the play button, then you can tap on the black bar to jump to any specific part.
He is an old-school, traditional Lutheran. His theology is pretty conventional: scripture only, no female pastors, anti-gay marriage.
Oh, look! More cuckoldry porn! Only, this time, it’s set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide!
Because, obviously, a story about Muslims slaughtering millions of Christians can’t possibly be compelling on its own, and only one thing can make it so… cuckoldry!
Welcome Kratos,
My spidey-sense was going off a bit in reading about your relationship with your girlfriend, and I just have a warning for you to consider.
You mentioned that your girlfriend is overcome with guilt after a cuddling/kissing session, and that she is guilty about being horny and having sexual thoughts about you. Those guilty feelings could be a very normal and natural response to violating her own standards. OR, they could be an indication of some very unhealthy, umbilical, and damaging attitudes or beliefs about sexuality in general.
It’s very important for you to tease out the details of the guilt she is feeling. In their enthusiasm to support biblical standards of sexual morality for singles, many Christian speakers/leaders/pastors have inadvertently (or sometimes overtly) fostered the idea that sexuality itself is shameful or sinful. If your girlfriend has bought into those lies (even subconsciously), putting a ring on her finger isn’t going to change what’s going on in her mind. You may end up in a largely sexless marriage, and what little sex she may give up will likely be duty sex or starfish sex.
Before you decide whether to marry this woman, you need to have several very open, very lengthy, very detailed discussions about marital sexuality. Both of you need to compare notes about what you believe and expect regarding sex within marriage.
Ooops. Umbilical should be UNBIBLICAL.
God and his agency
@ Gunner Q: “The flaw that led Adam to choose Eve over God comes up time and again in history”.
To all, not just Gunner, I say: In all of your getting, get this. It wasn’t a flaw. It was a feature. That is the logical conclusion from reading the story of Creation. Everything else written in the Bible must be interpreted against the truth of these two points. Please note that this is not a discussion of predestination versus free will.
1. God can do anything he wants to. Therefore, he can create anything he wants to. He could have created Adam and Eve any way he wanted to. Truth: God knew what Adam and Eve would choose, before he even created them. He could have made them differently, so that they would have chosen something different. He didn’t. In this context, God is responsible for what Adam and Eve chose. He knew what they would choose and made them anyway. This is not an argument for predestination or free will. It is an argument for the logic of what the Creation story says. God can do anything he wants to, and he is all-knowing. So we must at least accept this as an accurate portrayal of the sequence. Before God ever made Adam and Eve, he knew that he was going to make them a certain way, and he knew what choices that certain type of creation was going to lead to. He knew, and so created a solution to the problem that Adam and Eve would create – before he even created them (the Bible says this). He could have created them so that they would have behaved differently and so the solution would not have been needed. He could have, but he didn’t. That is a truth of the Creation story, regardless of what name you put to it. It is not heresey and it is not blasphemy. To insist that it is is to say that God doesn’t know everything and that he can’t create whatever he wants to.
2. God created Adam and then walked and talked with him. God and Adam fellowshipped together. They had a relationship. And yet God said of Adam that he was alone and that it wan’t good that Adam was alone. Adam had God, yet God said that Adam was alone. God himself said that he alone was not enough for Adam. And so he created a help for Adam, knowing that she was going to force Adam to choose between her and God. But God knew that he alone was not sufficient for Adam. He knew what Eve would do. He knew that Adam HAD to choose Eve over God, because God created Eve to fill a need in Adam that God himself said he didn’t (not couldn’t, but didn’t) fill. God could have created Adam to not need Eve, and he could have created Eve to not force Adam to choose between her and God. He could have, but he didn’t. He knew how they were going to choose, and created them anyway. The name you put to this, predestination or free will, is irrelevant. What IS relevant is the truth of what was just said. God can do whatever he wants to do. He knows everything. He knew the choices that his creations were going to make. He could have made them so that they would choose differently. He didn’t. To deny this truth is to say that God doesn’t know everything and that he can’t create whatever he wants to.
God knew what he was doing. He knew what the results would be of what he was doing. He knew this before the foundation of the world, and so made a solution to the problem that Adam and Eve would create – long before he created Adam and Eve (says so in the Bible). You can say this doesn’t make sense all you want to. But it is the story of Creation. It is actually what God did. God chose a certain course of action, for his own reasons and for his own purposes. He could have chosen a different course of action, but he didn’t. For the course of action that God did choose, concerning the Creation story recorded in Genesis, Adam had to choose Eve. God knew that, because he made him that way. That is why he created Eve. God knew that he had created a man who needed something more than God was giving him.
This is not what they teach in Sunday School. But it is the truth. Unless you want to accept that God doesn’t know everything and that he can’t do whatever he wants to. To try and pin the tag “predestination” on this story is to vastly oversimply what actually took place. You can know something is going to happen without being the cause of it happening. But – because God COULD have created something different, and didn’t – we must accept that he IS the cause of what happened with Adam and Eve. Not because God made them do it. But because God, before he made Adam and Eve, knew they would do it, and made them the way they were anyway. He could have made them different. He didn’t. To create someone and make them do certain things is predestination. What do you call it when you know in advance what someone is going to do just because of the way you make them, know that you can make them differently, so that they choose differently, but don’t? I don’t know what the correct word is, but I DO know that God has agency. To argue that he is no way responsible for the way Adam and Eve turned out is to deny that agency.
We are not blaming God for anything here. We are just admitting that God can do, and does do, whatever he wants to. Because of that agency – however something turns out – it is because God wanted it to turn out that way. To deny that is to say that God is not in total control.
God and his agency – reduex: God created exactly what he wanted to create. And it turned out exactly as he knew it would turn out. To argue otherwise is to argue against God’s agency.
Adam had to choose Eve – because that is the way God made him. Stories throughout history repeat this theme, as in the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.
God could have created a world that did not need redemption. He didn’t. He created exactly what he wanted to create. And it turned out exactly as he knew it would turn out. To argue otherwise is to argue against God’s agency.
@thedeti & @Novaseeker
When a single woman has kids, the boys generally turn out worse than the girls, but if her girls also grow up to be single mothers, those children are likely to be a hot mess whether they are boys or girls.
It makes a big difference in real life if the bastard children are surrounded by legitimate cousins from intact nuclear families vs. a situation where the children grow up without any contact with extended family members who live a traditional lifestyle.
@Dalrock
@Mountain man
Thank you for a quick reply Dalrock. I want to get married and I want to marry my girlfriend, but not now, probably in somewhere between 1-2 years. As you written in that post you linked me, I’m not certain if she possesses the qualities neccessary to be a good wife.
She is amazing and I want to believe that she does. From what we’ve talked she thinks that marriage is extremely big deal and puts very big value into it. Still, some of those questions are left unanswered and I don’t want to marry her just because of sex.
I am extremely curious about her feeling guilty about thinking sexually of me and I’ve talked to her about that. That is the only thing thst worries me in the future.
She doesn’t masturbate because she considers it as a sin (she would feel guilty for it) and she believes that our first time having sex is going to hurt her like hell, so that indeed is a really big red flag.
I tried to tell her that she is wrong about it, but she doesn’t believe me. Her friend that is in her late 20s got married 4 months ago and also was virgin before getting married and she told her how she still doesn’t like having sex with her husband and that it still hurts her/ makes her uncomfortable.
I believe that her friend and most people from the Christian society where she heard same type of stories scared her.
How do I work with her about her feeling guilty about sexual stuff. In the moment she has no problem with our cuddling and making out intensively and is probably ready to go all the way? But the day after she feels like shit…
Thank you for your informative answers guys.
Kratos:
I am assuming both you and your girlfriend are christians? If so, you both need to read the following before you go any further and upon up a pandora’s box.
https://artisanaltoadshall.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/the-lie-that-caused-the-adultery-epidemic/
If you want to take this woman to wife and she wants you to husband her, then what are the two of you waiting for? Why wait 2 more years? This is un-natural at your age, you need to enjoy her sexually while she and you are both in your youth. This isn’t wine we’re talking about here, it doesn’t get sweeter with age. I am a man in my early 40’s, married for 16 years with two kids and I never “knew” a young woman in her virginity . . . it is the greatest regret of my life and I have had a very full life with many accomplishments personally and professionally, but this exceeds all of that by far.
Original Laura
When a single woman has kids, the boys generally turn out worse than the girls, but if her girls also grow up to be single mothers, those children are likely to be a hot mess whether they are boys or girls.
Mess, yes. Hot? Maybe, maybe not. We have plenty of evidence what multiple generations of babymommas tends to do just by looking around (ok, looking outside of gated UMC / UC country club communities).
This is kind of old news. What can be seen now? Young men / young women raised by two homosexuals. That’s taking “mess” to a new dimension, from what I can see.
Question for anyone still reading: suppose that you, reader, knew a homosexual couple with a boy child approaching puberty. Knew them on friendly terms, like neighbors, but not close friends. Would you do or say anything? If so what?
That would be why I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see that option. I may check it out later. Thanks for noting how. I hate those type interfaces.
I have also listened to more than my share of heresy hunters in the past. I am not generally impressed by them. I would rather read The Wittenburg Door, since at least that has attempts at humor, even when it is in error.
Kratos,
Fish or cut bait. She is either worth marrying or quit fooling around. Don’t mess with her emotions or yours.
Women can do some things to make sex easier, or so I read before I was married, but that is somewhat irrelevant. A woman who wants to be sexual with her husband will ultimately enjoy doing that in all but some rare medical cases. Those who ultimately do not will continue to always be unhappy.
It is quite sad that many of those who will never enjoy sex in marriage gave it away fairly freely prior to marriage. That may not be the example in your case, but it is far too common.
Your girlfriend will need to decide if she believes that God made sex good or not.
Kratos, if your GF is worried about how a penis is going to hurt, she’ll really freak out when she starts thinking about giving birth. I have to wonder if she’s even going to want children (and if she isn’t, why in Hades would you then even consider marrying her).
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The deep end of the Manosphere, e.g., Dalrock, is kind of the male sexual version of the Ku Klux Klan — a conflation of male intellectual and social misfits. Mentally ill, or -like, feelings of inferiority, or superiority? Religious zealots? Another miscreant male affliction?
YES! Women have their such afflictions. But here I’m dealing with those we own (us); at our well.
Between the two sexes — recognizing the worst among women; whiners and bitches DO exist — the far FAR worse overall behavior concerning abuse of power positions, emotional abuse; physical abuse; denial of numerous “rights” and other such demeaning, nasty and vile misogynistic behavior. Though sometimes men ARE at the receiving end, again, men OWN the “far FAR” worse horrendous trophy.
And there is the Bible — God > man > woman. To those “true believers,” obviously nothing else makes as much sense. Nothing else matters. Therefore that’s IT. WE others will have to deal with that indefinitely.
I feel better. Rather satisfied. I got it out. Those of you here who act as such deserved it.
I have no plan to ever post here again.
I hope the best for all of you.
John
NJ
I guess this won’t make it to the forum. That would be OK, if only you read this “Dalrock,” whatever the hell that means. 🙂
I want my last word to be “Peace.” 🙂
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