In the path of our civilisation, we in a time of scarcity. Men lack faith in a literal sense. Faith is what guides us, and God has bestowed each of us with faith and the will to be faithful. Today I discuss the 52nd chapter of Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Apostates. In this chapter, Nietzsche describes the apostate,
“Those young hearts have already all become old they declare it: We have again become pious.”
We are men of faith in listening to the good word that guides us to the path of the Superman, but there are many who reject the goodness that man may live up to, and he is an apostate.
The First and Second Companions
We are the Hyperboreans, we are those who enjoy the path to the Superman. As we go about our lives, we meet many who are a meek and modest breed of man. He has condemned himself to the path of what is against the good of man and of mankind. These weak men reject the divine calling which Zarathustra shares unto us:
Ever are there few of those whose hearts have persistent courage and exuberance; and in such remains also the spirit patient. The rest, however, are cowardly. The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the superfluous, the all-too-many — those all are cowardly! Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and fools.
We see that the path to the Superman, to eternal glory and salvation for all of mankind, is one which is built on the bones of those who came before us. Our first companions will indeed be the corpses and fools of our realm, who trod the path we follow. Those who have come before us believed in the greatness of the path to the Superman, and we are their successors. All men are destined to have successors, to pass on their wisdom and learnings to the future generations, and those who fail will leave behind no trace of their legacy.
Always is there a fore-comer, a genesis, and always is there a successor who we will pass the success of our journey onto. When we walk the path of the Superman, the bones of our ancestors, and of our leaders and inspirations will pave that path. As in the words of the famous Will Allen Dromgoole:
There followeth after me today a youth whose feet must pass this way. This stream that has been a joy to me. To the fair-haired youth might a pitfall be. He, too, must cross in the twilight dim. Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.
We each follow the path that our fathers, our mothers, and their own laid out for us. It is not only by our merit that we become the Superman, but by the eternal love of mankind that we may even venture to this path. These first companions Zarathustra names are those we find along the way, but the second companions are not so much the same. Zarathustra says:
His second companions, however, will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded veneration. To those believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, who knows the fickly faint-hearted human species! Could they do otherwise, then would they also will otherwise. That half-and-half spoil every whole. That leaves become withered, what is there to lament about that!
The apostate, who rejects divinity and faith, is a man whose bosom is left empty and victim to the forces of the world. All men seek guidance, all groups of men seek to be guided, and he who takes upon himself the mantle of guide is he who has proven himself supreme over the whole. No matter where you look, those who assert their authority may not be those who are responsible for any particular matter. The elite of a group that lends itself to eliteness are those who out of their own volition take the initiative and create something great. Those who lift themselves into greatness lift their community into greatness. Those who lack purpose and faith are those who are unable to embrace the greatness of their community and instead leave themselves to be swayed by whichever force happens to be asserting itself upon him. My brothers, this is no man we ought to be. Only in faith can a man truly find purpose and fulfilment. Only in the acceptance of his destiny, granted by the divine powers that rule us all, can he become a truly great man. Only by wielding his will to power can a man become the greatest of them all.
Righteousness
When we seek out divine guidance, we are allowing our guide to be that which we feel in ourselves is the divine path to righteousness. We allow our own understanding of the divine to guide us on the path to greatness, the path to the Superman. From this we derive our understanding of our own purpose, how we fit into the well-oiled machine that we live in. It is one’s own Will To Power that allows him to discern his purpose and his goals.
Those who reject this power allow into themselves instability, the lack of faith in their own ideas and their own actions. The apostate is not a man who is firm in his beliefs, who has overarching goals that are of a noble kind. No, he is a man who flips and flops, and as Zarathustra said:
Unto them I look into the eye: Ye are those who again pray! It is however a shame to pray! Not for all, but for thee, and me, and whoever hath his conscience in his head. For thee it is a shame to pray! Thou knowest it well: the faint-hearted devil in thee, which would fain fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier:—this faint-hearted devil persuadeth thee that there is a God!
The apostates are those who listen to the devil inside of them, that urges them towards ways they never would have been, and to ways they are not meant to be. The apostate is guided not by himself, but by the spooks that another has built within him, a parasite of the mind which urges him to devotion to another. These apostates, they are the second companions, the men who cannot for themselves find guidance and so they look to another and build their devotion to him.
Without faith and the belief in oneself, and the love of oneself, a man is doomed to apostasy. He will speak of the foolishness of the other, yet he himself is the one who mocks all that is noble of man. He will question the beliefs of another and place them in a frame of uncertainty, when he himself is a man who has no firm beliefs. He will take initiative only insofar that he is taking initiative find a new master who will be his guide. Zarathustra spoke of the ungodliness of man:
Verily, it will be my death yet—to choke with laughter when I see asses drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God. Hath the time not long since passed for all such doubts? Who may nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things! With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end? They did not “begloom” themselves to death they laughed themselves to death once on a time!
Questioning of the divine is an unnatural state, one which provokes mockery, and one which the apostate is truly fearful of. He mocks the man of status, the man on the path to the Superman, for his unwavering beliefs, yet he does this only because he himself is a man who fears commitment to those beliefs. These men, I say, are those who call upon the many to take action and when the time comes for actions to be made he stows himself away in his own tomb. Scared of death is the apostate, a man who fears the coming of the end as he has made no use of the present.
When we take upon ourselves the path to the Superman, when we walk deep into the unknown with only our bodies and the tools we can carry, we have in ourselves the noble and divine guidance of God to guide us. When we return from the deep and climb to the highest peaks we have ever reached, we are guided by the Superman’s mountain of gold which shines through the clouds and darkness, guiding us to the path of righteousness. We are taking upon ourselves the path of righteousness, the path of the Superman, and in doing so we raise ourselves and those who are inspired by our greatness to new peaks and deeper into new depths. We are guided by the greatness within us, we wield our will to power and carve a new path towards greatness. We are on the path to the Superman, and so we are the Hyperboreans. We enjoy our eternal glory and youth because we create a community of great youth. We enjoy these great things only because we have become great.