Welcome back. A number of people have asked me what books have most shaped my worldview, especially my spiritual and psychological perspective. Ernst Junger wrote that one could understand the perspective of a person from listing only a few of their main influences (or, as I’ve heard elsewhere, who one’s closest friends are). I’ll offer the books that have had the biggest impact on my journey, then some that were helpful but not essential. The importance of these works depends on one’s stage of spiritual development and the particularities of one’s life path; if I had read them prior to when I was psychically prepared for it, or if my life path were different, I would have gotten far less out of it. For example, I tried reading G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature From Jekyll Island a decade ago and put it aside, totally bored by it; later on, when I revisited it a couple of years ago I was enthralled. Furthermore, my core objective is centered around trying to achieve wholeness, to survive the limit condition of the horrifying god-image of Abraxas, and – without my prior understanding as I read these books – they were all steps along the journey toward that goal. Your Self’s core goal may be different than mine, and your interior god image too – that is okay, we are all on different paths and journeys, but it is important to keep that in mind when you assess whether a book will resonate with you or not.

Because questions about my book influences are a common question, this post will be added to the header under “Influences” and updated from time to time, as necessary, if I come across more resonant authors and works on my journey.

With that said, the biggest influences on me so far are:

1. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), first treatise, available here. I actually experienced deja vu and saw a flash of light while reading this, which I have not experienced with any other book. This treatise gets to the heart of where people’s core beliefs come from, answering a question I had been unconsciously struggling with for decades. Basically, Nietzsche argues that the Jewish people used a form of spiritual bolshevism to rile up the gentile Roman masses as a weapon against the Roman elite in revenge for the destruction of the Second Temple, which I discussed here, and the effect of adopting Yahweh as their egreogre resulted in a concomitant, still-present slave morality in the form of ever-intensifying egalitarianism as a result. Note: I have mostly stayed away from Nietzsche other than his Geneology during this journey because of his ego inflation via the Ubermensch followed by complete collapse; ego inflation is a weakness of mine and I have therefore been weary to revisit him, but will likely in the future.
2. Guido Preparata’s Conjuring Hitler (2005). This book put to death the idea that the international financial elite archons can be opposed on their own terms. It explained how the Hitler phenomenon was arranged by the upper elites in order to build up Germany post-World War 1 in order to then destroy it as a sacrificial offering and bring forth the modern trans-national order. It does not argue that Hitler was a controlled agent, just that the social and financial conditions were arranged so that a revanchist populist would rise to power in Germany and be turned against the also-controlled Bolsheviks to the East. I covered it previously here.
3. G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island (2018) was my first real exposure to how monetary systems function as elite control structures. I discussed it here. While often dismissed for his lack of institutional pedigree, his work remains foundational in the dissident sphere, so much so that Ron Paul devoted a full chapter to him in one of his books. Stephen Mitford Goodson, a South African central banker and descendant of the Mitford sisters, covers similar ground in A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind (2014), though with less stylistic polish (which is banned on Amazon but available online here and previously discussed here). Eustace Mullins, too, made important contributions, though I found his tone too bitter and his focus overly forensic.
4. Jung’s Answer to Job (1952) which introduces the new God image containing all good and all evil, previously covered here recently and here earlier, and the very advanced Liber Novus (2009), which is incredible and terrifying and inspired me to partake in active imagination, along with his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962) where he discusses how life’s journey is meant to be understood as an evolution of the psyche. Edinger’s commentaries on Jung’s works are also clarifying and helpful. Note that Jung in his later life partially stepped back from his conception of Abraxas, discussed in this Note, for multiple reasons.

Secondary Influences

Lesser influences on my development include:

1. Charles Bukowski’s novels, such as Post Office (1971) and Ham on Rye (1982), and his poetry: he made me appreciate poetry for the first time, and his honest, direct, world-weary and pained but engaged style is just awesome. He lived phenomenologically the crucifixion of opposites and lived as if life is tragic, which resonates with me.
2. Emil Cioran’s aphorisms such as in his A Short History of Decay (1949). He shows the limits of pessimism where he goes beyond even where I feel comfortable. Brilliant author. Previously covered here.
3. Stephan Hoeller’s books on gnosticism, such as Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (2002), which explains what it is non-pejoratively and with decades of study and personal experience. I covered his work previously here and here. (I would note, though, that the conception of the limit condition of Abraxas is not gnostic, which I will explain more in the future).
4. Ernst Junger’s works, which are written in a strange way that helps the reader to think for himself and to stand apart from society’s intense influences. I especially liked his World War 2 journals and Eumeswil (1977). I covered him previously here but have other posts ready for publication on him. His weakness is that he describes the orientation and aesthetics of the anarch, but he has no advice on process for those struggling with forming their worldviews, which is a major deficiency to me; furthermore, the anarch’s detached, aloof, intellectual stance of superiority is merely a form of psychic inflation to be avoided in a metaphysics where everyone from the highest lord to the lowest peasant is crucified permanently between the opposites.
5. Tom Holland’s Dominion (2020) does a good job explaining the history of advancing egalitarianism rooting in certain underlying core beliefs.
6. Joshua Foa Dienstag’s Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (2009) is dry and academic but it does a good job of contrasting the Nietzsche vs. Schopenhauer responses to an underlying pessimistic worldview. I covered it here.
7. Gore Vidal’s Julian (1964) puts one into the lived reality of the transition from Hellenism to Christianity and is an amazing historical novel. I covered it here.
8. While Ted Kaczynski has not been much of an influence on me – his manifesto is well written but his luddite solution is just wrong, as much as I appreciate his analysis – regarding the unrelenting advance of technology, I appreciated The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of the Times (1945) by Rene Guenon, which was difficult to read but which introduced to me a couple of important concepts, previously discussed here and here, and I also appreciated Ellul‘s The Technological Society (1954), which is also difficult, but easier than Guenon, which I have a future post planned on.
9. Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1843) is excellent – he truly lived the crucifixion of opposites. This is an advanced book that won’t be understood by those who are not at a certain level of development – I would not have understood it even a year or two ago. His solutions to philosophical pessimism and the crucifixion of opposites was to engage in a leap of faith into irrational belief into an external privatio boni God image, whereas I alternatively turn inward to the Self within via the individuation process.
10. Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace (1947) and her Letter to a Priest (1951). Weil lived the crucifixion of opposites in a world of philosophical pessimism as well, but her response was a lopsided ascetic withdrawal to the point where she likely starved herself to death. Neither of these are written very well, Gravity is especially vague, but they point to one of the failure points of the individuation process.
11. Nikolai Berdyaev’s The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar (1949). Like Kierkegaard, Weil, Jung, he understood the crucifixion of opposites and philosophical pessimism as constituting baseline reality. His solution was to focus on the creative spirit as a counter to the despair that could otherwise result.

There are no system-builders, utopians, modern political theories, therapeutic optimism, or “how to live” manuals in this group. None of these texts tell the reader what to think in a programmatic way; they all focus on something more dangerous: they break an inherited moral or metaphysical frame and then refuse to fully repair it. Nietzsche dissolves moral innocence, Preparata dissolves political innocence, Jung dissolves psychological innocence, Kierkegaard dissolves religious innocence. I feel drawn to works that force the reader into a confrontation with contradiction rather than offering reconciliation. Most of these writers are wrestling – implicitly or explicitly – with the failure of the privatio boni model even when they don’t name it as such. Nietzsche exposes the moral lie at the heart of Christian ethics, Kierkegaard breaks ethics in the name of faith (the Abraham paradox), Jung eventually admits the problem of evil cannot be psychologically or theologically bracketed, Berdyaev/Weil/Cioran each, in their own way, refuse the idea that evil is merely absence, error, or misalignment. Even Vidal’s Julian is about a man who intuits that Christianity’s moral cosmology is structurally dishonest, even if his attempted restoration is doomed. Jünger’s Eumeswil is not revolutionary, not redemptive, not even properly hopeful – the Anarch survives metaphysically without expecting historical resolution and which aligns closely with my thinking: there is no faith in collective salvation, no belief that history “turns out right,” with an emphasis on inner sovereignty under persistently adverse metaphysical conditions. His WWII journals reinforce a reality observed without illusion but also without nihilistic collapse. At first glance, Bukowski looks like the odd man out, but he isn’t – he functions as a somatic corrective to over-symbolization, a reminder that life with all of its messiness – exhaustion, humiliation, alcoholism, resentment, boredom, the Dionysian body living under Saturnian structures – must be lived, grounded and experienced, and not merely floating upward into abstraction endlessly. Life is meant to be experienced, even if the human experience is rooted in limitation, pain, and ultimately death.

The developments of my journey also explains why my ability to read broadly has collapsed; I can’t read 95% of the writers I used to be able to read. Once someone has passed through these kinds of texts and metabolized them, most contemporary writing (especially dissident writing) feels thin, reactive, or morally evasive. This is the reading list for those who – either consciously or unconsciously, as a felt resonance – cannot tolerate false moral closure, is willing to sacrifice comfort for coherence, is drawn to thinkers who stand alone rather than lead movements, and is slowly being forced upward in challenging their belief hierarchy. This is a reading list for someone being pushed – slowly or violently – toward a god-image change that contains contradiction rather than explains it away, culminating (at least for me) in the horrifying new limit God image of Abraxas.

Thanks for reading.