The Phenomenology of War

Understanding Deep War

For the past few weeks, I have been attempting to write a piece that I have so far been unable to pull together in a coherent way. The scope of the piece is probably part of the problem. It was perhaps a bit aspirational in breadth. I have been attempting to pull together several large themes in a logical, connected way but it was proving difficult to do in a single post. Another problem was the nature of what I wanted to write about. I’m still working on how some of the ideas fit together, though I’m convinced they do.

I decided I would go ahead and just throw some preliminary thoughts together while I continue to refine them into something more comprehensive and developed. Instead of presenting this as a well-researched argument following some coherent train of logic, this will merely be a few thoughts thrown together as a presentation of ideas and questions. After all, so much of this is speculative in nature.

War & Warfare

I don't know if we're headed to WW3. However, if we were headed for a massive war, the indicators we would see would look a lot like the escalations we're seeing now.

We Americans speak a lot about war but I'm convinced few (myself included) truly understand the full extent of war. War is a phenomenon that has shaped man and mankind since the beginning of time. It has sealed the fates of dynasties and empires. It has ushered in and closed out sweeping eras of time. It has determined the geopolitical order. Has it perhaps done more than even this? We tend to think of war in physical terms first, but then also in economic, political, and even psychological terms. Is there, however, something deeper? Is there something metaphysical that is inherent in war?

“War makes one realise the relativity of human life and therefore also the law of a ‘more-than-life’, and thus war has always an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value.

“…in order to fully define the conditions under which the spiritual aspect of war actually becomes apparent, it is necessary to examine the matter further, and to outline a sort of ‘phenomenology of warrior experience’…”[1]

I have spent much of my life studying what I thought was war but in reality was often the more limited concept of warfare. That doesn’t mean I never studied war, but the majority of my martial studies focused on warfare.

The concepts of war and warfare are related but are not exactly synonymous. War is the more fundamental concept which is why it is the root of the other word. The concept of warfare is a derivative of the concept of war.

If war is armed conflict, then we can see warfare as the methods in which war is waged. That would make war a what and warfare a how.

The Spiritual Realm of War and Warfare

As we now face the very real threat of a massive war, it’s important for us to remember that we’ve been at war though the enemy isn’t necessarily someone wearing a different type of uniform. We seem to be living in a post-Westphalian world in which the global construct of political entities called nations is obsolete or artificial. If it's true that we live in a fake geopolitical schema, then who starts all the wars the world sees?

Those waging war against humanity must know there is something metaphysical about war. Sure, they use the violence to shape events, elicit responses, and meet their objectives. But that's using war as the means to some desired end. Perhaps war is also an end unto itself. War for war's sake?

Think about the implications of an endeavor that forces even good men into situations in when they must kill. Setting aside moral culpability and just war for moment, we must at least acknowledge the widespread spiritual significance.

It is known that blood and sex are used in the most horrendous occult rituals carried out by the most vile people on this planet. I don't pretend to know much about the dark world these depraved people operate in - alongside the demonic entities they interact with in some capacity - but I certainly believe that it's real. Blood and sex seem to be themes (ingredients?) used in their rituals. These evil networks of powerful people know something about using the energy inherent in life (in both giving and taking life) and attempt to harness that power for their sinister, ungodly purposes.

It’s as if these dark individuals (and their demonic overlords) wish to take some of the greatest powers that God granted to man and then twist them for evil purposes.

What type of energies are perhaps released on a massive scale in the midst of war? What deeper impacts of the phenomenology of war are we missing?

We often hear the term spiritual warfare. One thing I’ve come to realize is that we frequently use this term metaphorically. We speak as if these spiritual battles only consist of warfare in a metaphorical sense. I have spoken this way myself, but this is wrong…or at least incomplete. Spiritual warfare is warfare in a literal sense, even if it doesn't necessarily involve physically kinetic action or violence perpetrated in a way that we most often associate with warfare.

Another way in which we inappropriately approach this theme is that while we recognize spiritual warfare (albeit often incompletely), we seldom acknowledge the spiritual war. And when I refer to the spiritual war, I’m referring to THE war. The war of all wars. The ultimate war. The war that mankind has always been involved in since the beginning, though we seem currently to be at a strategic inflection point. Evil doesn’t fight God directly because it is incapable of doing so. It fights us, and it does so against each individual in the particular and against all of us in the collective. This grand war is fundamentally spiritual though it is expressed along various modalities of warfare (one of which itself is spiritual). This means that a variety of strategies are used in this spiritual war and it is fought amid various domains but one of the methods used is spiritual warfare itself.

The most vile people on Earth are not atheists. They very much believe in the spiritual realm even if they seek to align with the darkest entities within it. In fact, I assume that the most supremely evil persons know God exists and have chosen to knowingly and openly rebel against Him. To the highest occult practitioners, atheism is merely a trick for the uninitiated.

Deep War & Deep Warfare

We hear terms such as deep state or deep politics and intuitively understand what they mean.[2] The metaphor is instructive in creating in our minds the image of a sea’s surface currents that are active and visible while the cold, dark, undisturbed depths remain invisible to us and yet are just as real and represent far more of the sea’s volume.

Though more literal in its usage, there are some similar terms used for Soviet military developments in the 1920s and 1930s prior to WW2. These terms are deep battle and deep operations. A full explanation of these concepts is outside the purview of this post, but feel free to check out a helpful video here that gives a great description of the ideas in a way that those without an extensive military background can still easily follow. Simply stated, the idea was to use large numbers of successive units to effect combined arms maneuver to exploit weaknesses at the enemy’s front and then penetrate deeper to eliminate or neutralize logistic lines of support and command nodes.[3]

Are we experiencing the effects of being caught in a deep war that we might not readily recognize? If so, then what might deep warfare look like?

If warfare that attacks the body is superficial, at least in relative terms, then warfare that attacks the mind or the psyche is deeper. Psychological operations and worldview warfare have been leveled against us for a long time but these methods of attack have intensified recently. Sometimes great effects can be achieved through these efforts without overt violence.

“Silent weapon technology has evolved from Operations Research (O.R.), a strategic and tactical methodology developed under the military management in England during World War II. The original purpose of Operations Research was to study the strategic and tactical problems of air and land defense with the objective of effective use of limited military resources against foreign enemies (i.e. logistics).

“It was soon recognized by those in positions of power that the same methods might be useful for totally controlling a society. But better tools were necessary.”[4]

If the onslaught on the psyche, the mind, or the brain (check out the NATO study described here) represent deeper warfare than physical attacks, then attacks directed towards the spirit would be the deepest form of warfare because it penetrates our human nature or the very essence of what God created in forming man.

In 1999, two Chinese colonels from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) wrote a book called Un-restricted Warfare that explained how a nation like China might thwart a more advanced superpower like the United States. Though we understand that the conventional geopolitical schema is largely artificial, that does not mean that nations like China do not represent a threat to their adversaries like the U.S. even if a conflict between the two were manufactured inorganically. Further, the ideas presented by the two Chinese colonels can be viewed as techniques that could be used by any government or group with the means to do so against a group they wanted to attack. Therefore we need not just read the thoughts of Chinese military strategists in terms of the threat they represent to us as Americans but also as the threat that these ideas represent towards humanity at the hands of those networks of power that hate mankind.

One of the themes presented in the book is the change from the traditional way of warfare in which militaries adopted tactics based on their weapons to a newer way of warfare in which specific weapons are used based on the reality of the fight.[5] The first way is more passive and the latter more active. Extending the comparison further, we could envision an even more proactive course in which weapons are developed now for the type of fight forecasted for a future date.

If those in power wish to more broadly engage mankind in spiritual warfare, then they would ensure they had the weapons available to do so. Are there specific weapons available that target man’s spirit directly? I don’t limit this idea to the temptations such as sex, drugs, alcohol, or greed that can weaken man’s spiritual resolve and cause spiritual corrosion. I’m referring to the potential for more sophisticated weaponry that seeks to sever man’s spiritual connection to God. Are there spiritual weapons currently in operation that we are unaware of and are therefore less prepared to combat against? Are there material ways in which our spirits can be targeted?

Understanding that first and foremost the war is spiritual and that a major warfare component in that war is also spiritual, it is necessary that we spiritually prepare ourselves. This means that there is truth in the idea of fighting first through prayer or reading the scriptures, or fasting, or participating in other such activities. Actions such as prayer are literal actions in this deep war.

Admittedly, much of what I have written here is a collection of unrefined thoughts and ideas thrown together. Some of it is also largely conjecture about the current war we’re in. I sincerely believe we understand very little of our world and are therefore vulnerable to attacks we can’t even imagine. While I certainly believe we are in the midst of a raging spiritual war, I’m speculating as much as anyone else as to the exact ramifications.

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Notes & Citations:

[1] Julius Evola, the Metaphysics of War (Arktos, 2011), 21-2. Julius Evola is a controversial author who heavily critiqued modernity in favor of what he viewed as esoteric Traditionalism. This work focuses primarily on the metaphysical implications of war on the individual, these implications can be extrapolated to the greater society as well. Evola often speaks positively of these metaphysical implications but he nonetheless explains and describes how these implications exist.

[2]. Canadian researcher Peter Dale Scott was the first to popularize the terms deep state and deep politics. Scott used the term “deep politics” as early as his 1993 book Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Scott first used the term “deep state” in his 2007 book The Road to 9/11. He had borrowed the term “deep state” from its use in Turkey to describe that nation’s extralegal government framework. This article provides a good history of the term “deep state:” https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/how-the-deep-state-came-to-america-a-history/

[3]. Another more in-depth resource for understanding deep battle and deep operations would be the works of retired military officer and military historian David Glantz. For example, see his book Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle.

[4]. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, (San Diego: The Book Tree, 1998 (original publication date unknown)), 5. This booklet purportedly originates from a document discovered in 1986 by a Boeing Aircraft employee in a copy machine. Its ultimate authenticity is unknown though it is widely accepted as genuine in conspiracy research circles. In any case, its information is valuable and instructive regardless of how the manual came to be initially created.

[5]. COL. Qiao Liang and COL. Wang Xiangsui, Un-restricted Warfare (Brattleboro, Vermont: Echo Point Books & Media. Originally published in 1999 by China’s People’s Liberation Army), 10-3.