The Waldgang - The Forest Passage and Calling Things by Their Proper Names

Abdallah discusses 'The Waldgang' essay by Ernst Junger with Dr Ali Azzali, the Vice Chairman of Dallas College, teacher and historian based in Cape Town, South Africa. 

The Waldgang translates into English as the Forest Passage, but is a metaphor for the journey to the self, facing the fear of death and emerging from the 'forest' heroic, spontaneous and free to call things by their proper names.  

Buy 'The Waldgang' by Ernst Junger here

Buy 'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Junger here

 

Timecode Guide:

2:10 The meaning of the word ‘Kufr’ and how the works of Junger unveil the truth of the 20th Century

3:03 Junger as a war hero in the First World War and how the World Wars transformed the men that survived. 

The Waldganger doesn't fight ideology with ideology. He resists by tapping into the deeper parts of his being. 

04:27 The link between heart and courage

04:57 Junger's book 'Storm of Steel' 

06:51 How the soldiers of the First World War couldn’t accept the terms of the Treaty of Versaille and were unable to adapt to bourgeois society. Junger said “Better a criminal than a bourgeois.” Bourgeois society aimed at protecting men from destiny and fate.

09:57 The principle of efficiency in the capitalist technocratic state and the Waldganger as the one that resists by taking the passage into the forest. 

11:00 What the forest represents and how the men of Allah never act with ideology, they act by calling things by their proper names

12:00 Ideology is a cover up of reality - a view of existence that is limited  

12:41 Lexical Innovation

13:42 Mass education based on ideology

15:02 Dante on the metaphor of the forest 

16:44 Encountering the truth through encountering yourself

17:38 Bear Grylls and his experiences in the most hostile environments

18:37 "For the light to shine through there must be a crack". The great teachers take you to the place where you are forced to rely on Allah

19:21 "The Sufi is like the earth, you throw rubbish at it and roses grow"

19:54 Science was put in the place of the Divine - Man is not rational

22:00 "The Modern battle of the Thermopolae is fought in the heart of man" and "Every man is a Path." A man who is looking for the truth in himself will look for the truth outside. 

24:02 Junger on modern medicine; "Health and wellbeing is with the fearless."  The fear of death.

28:34 Paralysis, rigidity and fear. "The physiological age of the body is defined by its stiffness". 

29:43 What is love? Love is renunciation of will. 

31:27 Junger's example of David and Goliath

32:16 The eternal part of man being denied by Western science

33:52 Without the spirit there is no man and the spirit is the essence of man. 

34:52 The source of the strength to resist

35:41 The metaphor of the journey

36:47 The metaphor of marrying your real self

37:07 Nietzsche and the Cosmic poem of Iqbal

39:34 Junger’s book ‘The Adventurous Heart’

40:04 Style as something that speaks to something deeper

42:20 Initiation of traditional societies for young men and women to prove themselves

43:49 Know yourself

44:14 Every great event in history has been initiated by a small elite, never by the masses. The masses follow!

 

Music by Ian Cattanach