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Shades of Arуas
A Discussion Of the Arуan Warrior Legacy with a Young Reader
© 2020 James LaFond
MAR/4/20
Mr. Lafond,
Please don’t feel as if any of my suggestions are commands you alter your writings: they are simply suggestions. I just want to see the damned thing published someday soon, and figure that this is the best way to speed up that process.
After many interruptions, I finally finished your rough draft of Sons of Arуas, and was pleasantly surprised to see Julius Evola referenced at multiple points. I’ve struggled through a couple of his books and enjoyed several of his articles that Arktos Press has published in recent years. It was Evola who first opened my eyes to the horrific pitfalls of American foreign policy: “Russia and North America can be considered as two tongs of the same pincers that are tightening definitively around Europe.” The Russian bear and American eagle, transnational forces working to destroy the European state system, a system which elevated the progeny of the Arуans from inhabitants of a mere appendage of Asia to the undisputed global trend setter in political, military, moral, economic, and religious matters. While I hardly understand Evola when he begins discussing “the hunt for the grail” and so forth, he helped me understand what I love, and I love that you included him in your treatise.
You also included several interesting passages on page 34 of the Arуas transcript and beyond demonstrating the importance nature has in inspiring thought. Very Nietzschean, and again, another concept which you could expand on after you finish trekking through the forests and valleys of Cascadia. At least, I wouldn’t mind if you expanded it.
Regarding pages 38-39, there is a group you forgot to mention in regard to our foolish actions against the Semitic nations: Those soldiers who lost a part of themselves (mentally or physically) in battle, and thus hesitate to support withdrawal from conflict. They would rather stubbornly continue to fight than to admit their sacrifice was for a dishonorable ideal. This group is especially prominent in military intelligence, particularly that branch’s NCOs.
I was so very happy when you mentioned how crucial horses and dogs were to Arуan success: “All of the invaders of Europe out of the steppes up until A.D 1200 had actually been defeated by some other tribe and then took up wandering and invading as a means of avoiding conquest and remaining a distinct folk. First and chief among these, first to domesticate the horse and the hound, where the Arуans, the War Bands, defined not by territory but by action. They influenced the course of civilization from North China to Upper Egypt and were followed in their ways and means by Asiatic nomads, last among them in the West, the Turks and in the Southeast the Moghuls and in the far Northeast the Manchus (251).” My sole gripe is that you didn’t say even more about this, and how the Arуan treatment of horses and hounds differs from how modern Westerners treat their horses and hounds. If Xenophon, Aelian and Aristotle correctly state that dogs and horses resemble their owners, then examining the state of modern dogs and horses can say much about the plight of modern man and do so in a way rarely explored by today’s academics. Evola mentions it in Chapter 13 of Revolt Against the Modern World, but he does so esoterically.
A modern thinker worth reading on this is, oddly enough, C.S. Lewis. He peppers his Narnia novels with relationships between humans, horses and dogs, doing so at length in The Last Battle and (obviously) The Horse and His Boy. I’m not sure how you feel about Christianity (it being a Semitic import after all), but Lewis is as martial and a Christian as can be. In spite of his conversion to the Church of England, Lewis retains the spiritedness of his Gaelic ancestors while tapping into the literary eloquence found throughout the Dark Ages in Ireland’s monasteries. Lewis even analyzes modern man’s dependence (not partnership) on pets in Chapter 3 of The Four Loves and finds it far inferior to the old Arуan methods of domestication.
I’ve got about a million other suggestions, but this email’s too damn long as it is.
Hope you are well,
Xenokles
Master’s Candidate at The Institute of World Politics

In regards to my limited commentary concerning our Semitic cousins and our current military entitlements, I have every intention of minimizing commentary on that subject until the final volume. Interestingly, I personally know a handful of veterans from these conflicts, for whom their participation sparked their dissident view of the world which led them into this strange little corner here. Such a project as this will be difficult to complete in a cardboard box in Baltimore and I have already gotten in some trouble over my other history project. So I envision—as cowards do—leaving my unsavory conclusions concerning my contemporaries for publication after my biological demise.
Sir, I really appreciate your reading. After our rambling conversation, as I got drunk and you remained pinpoint sober, I wanted you to be the one person to read Sons of Arуas before the editor cleaned up the typos and reformatted it. Thence it will be going out to three other advance readers. I had an eye on using you to eager eyes to apply some cold geopolitical sense to Shades of Arуas, which is an attempt to link ancient epic poetry down through the ages to our own plight at what seems to be a bottleneck of sorts.
While I am a heathen, I recognize that much of what I value has only survived into our age through a Christian filter. Besides, I care little for my own parochial views this writing passion of mine being rather dispassionate. I’ve read Voyage of the Dawn Tredder, Prince Caspian, That Hideous Strength, The Screwtape Letters and the Abolition of Man, by Lewis, with the last being crucial to my worldview. With the miles I have left on my eyes dwindling, I won’t be accessing Lewis again. All I really have time for is reading what my readers write and the primary sources, which I will probably fail to get through as it is. That is why this old codger enlisted you. A few quotes and impressions of relevant modern fiction would be great, and, based on your ancient reading, I trust your selectivity.
The fact that you have read Xenophon so much more recently than I, sparked me to enlist your aid in the third volume, as well, which is going to be devoted to the Arуan use of canine, equine and other animals as war beasts. These two volumes, Shades and Hounds of Arуas will be written at the same time. The final volume, Daughters of Arуas, will be written as the capstone to this investigation, which, please understand, is not an attempt to support a theory but to develop one. This is in exercise in chronological wanderlust and I doubt if I will be able to complete it, so, before the other readers, a few of you, interested in this odd subject, I’ll plan on leaving that for you or just letting it rot on the bone. I do not believe I have the health to complete this series and its one of only two worthwhile writing projects I’ve undertaken, both late in the game.
A side, overflow project, is complete, not yet arranged and will be sent to you, titled Might, for advanced reading. It is the stuff on actual combat that I threw out to make Sons of Arуas fit in one volume. This should appeal to your young soul more than my wrestling with Evola’s cryptic ghost.
So, if you can bear with me for a year or two while I annotate and/or adapt The Aenied, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Argonautica, The Anabasis and Arian’s Alexander for Shades, needling me about the Hounds material and dragging me out of the poetic well on a monthly or weekly basis, however you prefer, I would consider what is left of my energy at least pointed in the right direction for Daughters of Arуas, for which I intend to employ Mallory’s Death of Arthur as an adaptive tool.
Thank you, Young Man, and start figuring out how you’re going to handle the Daughters of Arуas, for I’ll be leaving you in their incapable hands with this project undone.
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