Tag: Castalia Library

The Book People Speak

The poll has closed. A respectable 190 Castalians had their say and the results were remarkably close.

  • 29% Aristotle – Rhetoric
  • 26% The Cambridge Medieval History Vol. 2
  • 26% Machiavelli – Discourses on Livy
  • 09% Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms
  • 09% Waugh – Decline and Fall

Tomorrow, therefore, we shall begin with the serialization of RHETORIC by Aristotle, utilizing the Library edition which begins with an Introduction by none other than your favorite dark lord. If you want to take part in the group reading and the discussion in the comments, be sure to subscribe to the Castalia Library substack.

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The Stalwarts of Library

Congratulations to the intrepid subscribers to the Castalia Library substack, as today marks the end of our second serialization. After 315 daily installments and 614 pages covering everything from the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed to the Teutonic migrations, we have finally managed to accomplish together something I never quite managed to do on my own despite it being one of my prize possessions, which is read every single page of The Cambridge Medieval History Volume I: The Christian Empire.

So, well done, everyone.

To be honest, I’ve been a little shocked at seeing how many people have been reading along; there are usually 1,000 post-reads recorded, so even if three-quarters of those readers are only glancing at each post, that’s a lot more people reading through one of the more advanced historical summaries ever published.

Tomorrow I’ll put up a poll for what the next daily serialization should be. One option is to simply continue with Volume II: Foundation of the Western Empire, but perhaps we might do with a break from the Cambridge historians for a while. Feel free to make any suggestions on SocialGalactic, but recall that any work we serialize there must be in the public domain.

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The People Have Spoken

In what leather would you prefer to see the two Homer Library editions bound?

  • 54% The new Franklin-style pigskin
  • 34% The new cowhide
  • 11% The original Easton-style cowhide

    There is also considerable enthusiasm for the ability to retroactively back the two Castalia Bindery editions, so we’ll probably get that rolling next week, for the next 2-3 weeks. This will be a useful way of helping us pay for the hubbing tools and the leather-cutting press that we now need to acquire.

    If you are a Bindery backer and you have a religious problem with pigskin, get in touch with me. Due to our great appreciation for your support in helping us get the bindery going, we will arrange to bind your backer editions in the new cowhide. Which, fittingly enough, is something that we can actually do now that we control the production process.

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    Homer in Leather

    The original plan was to print THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY in the same Italian cowhide with which we’ve been binding the Library and History books to date. However, after five years of searching, we have finally located quality pigskin leather in the quantities we require and we also have access to some higher-quality cowhide from the same supplier. Hence the poll at the Castalia Library substack concerning the preferences of the backers and prospective retroactive backers.

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    The Narrative is Always Wrong

    James Delingpole actually reads Machiavelli for the first time and discovers that the generally accepted narrative about the Florentine is almost completely false:

    Machiavelli was the victim of a Europe-wide hit job. By the time anyone outside Italy had read The Prince – it wasn’t translated into English til 1640 – Machiavelli’s name had long since become a byword for evil. England’s last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury Cardinal Pole, who resented his anti-clericism and his rudery towards the Pope, set the ball rolling by declaring him an ‘Enemy of the human race’. Machiavelli’s Christian name – Niccolo – was said to have given the devil his nickname, “Old Nick”. Elizabethan dramatists blamed him as the inspiration for all the scheming and murder that took place in Renaissance Italy. They hated him in France, too, where he was blamed for inspiring the behaviour of Catherine de Medici.

    But what had Machiavelli actually done to deserve all this? Not a lot, as it happens. But enough Renaissance history and literary criticism. I want to conclude by extrapolating a more general truth about the nature of our understanding of the world. And about how the dark rulers who currently lord it over us – the modern equivalent of the Medicis, the Pope, Charles V and the various Italian city states, I suppose – get away so easily with doing to us what they do.

    One of the things we Awake types are often lamenting is the way in which the tiniest, smallest sliver of a fraction of the world’s population – the Cabal; the Predator Class; The Powers That Be; the Satanic Bloodlines; call them what you will – has yet been able to treat us like cattle, or worse than cattle, for generation upon generation. And while obviously, I’m not letting the Cabal off the hook – they really are evil – I do think there’s a degree to which we have invited our own destruction by being so complacent and lazy.

    I’m blaming myself as much as anyone. Especially the person I was before I woke up. There I was, blessed with one of the best educations the world supposedly offers, and yet still, mostly, I remained mired in ignorance because I took too easily for granted what I had been told by my imagined superiors – parents, teachers, the government, ‘experts’, whoever.

    The Machiavelli thing is just one tiny example of this. Here, briefly, I have with luck demonstrated that everything 99.99 per cent of the people who’ve heard of Machiavelli know about one of the bigger names in history, or political philosophy anyway, is a caricature of a travesty of complete nonsense. It’s at best a crass simplification; at worst – probably for the usual reasons of propaganda and political intrigue – a cynical misrepresentation.

    And it happened because, as usual, none of us did our homework. We regurgitated what teacher wanted to hear – Machiavelli bad, m’kay – and the reason teacher wanted to hear it was because he or she hadn’t bothered to do the homework either. Rather than read the actual book, we all went with the received idea of people who hadn’t read the book and took it on trust that the generally accepted narrative was the correct one.

    I am aware that some are dubious about my contention about the importance of the Junior Classics, Castalia Library, UATV, and preserving knowledge for the future. But when one considers the fact that every single backer of the Junior Classics, and every subscriber to Castalia Library, are observably better informed with regards to history, philosophy, science, and religion than even the graduates of some of the most elite college educations in the West, that contention suddenly appears much more soundly based on the available evidence.

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    Spring Library Sale

    First, Castalia Library is announcing a surprise Spring Library sale made possible by our finally merging the warehouses and getting an accurate count on our entire stock. We also knew we had some additional books in Alabama, but in the aftermath of losing our good friend at Cryptofashion, we didn’t know how many we had and which books were there until everything was shipped to the current warehouse and counted correctly.

    The sale has only been announced here ahead of being announced publicly Monday on VP and elsewhere, so if you want to make sure you obtain one of the less-available books, you should probably take action pretty quickly. All of the books are in stock at the warehouse and available for immediate shipment.

    The 11 books that were previously out of stock, all of which are cowhide Library editions, are:

    The sale price on all 11 volumes is $79.99 while supplies last. No subscription or coupon is necessary. The sale price includes shipping. It’s a good opportunity to round out your collection if you’re missing anything, or pick up an additional volume of interest or two.

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    The Man Who Loved His City

    A lovely little essay on Niccolo Machiavelli and his love for his native city of Florence:

    The tradition of political realism has a reputation for being pessimistic—that is, for seeing and expecting the worst from the world, its individuals, and its states. Yet, despite all his realism, Niccolò Machiavelli was a romantic about his city. He famously said in a letter to his friend, diplomat Francesco Vettori, “I love my city more than my own soul.”

    In 1512, the Medici retook Florence from Piero Soderini, and removed Machiavelli from his diplomatic position. The following year, they accused him of conspiring against them and tortured him for three weeks. After this, Machiavelli retired to his family home in Sant’Andrea, and never ceased to lament his “great and continued malignity of fortune” of not being able to contribute to his city’s administration.

    Exiled from praxis, Machiavelli theorised about politics. He wrote two historical works—Discourses on Livy and Florentine Histories—to speak to the ways in which he thought that the Italy of his day should aspire to the glory of ancient Rome and the ways in which it failed to do so. He never rejected his being a modern man, and he did not believe that Renaissance Italy could imitate ancient Rome in all respects. However, he pushed his fellow citizens to take inspiration from it and to consider carefully that they share something with their past: it’s not “as if heaven, sun, elements, and men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity.”

    In what you may rightly suspect to be closely related news, Castalia Library has announced the April-May-June book for the History subscription.

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    Defectus Eclipsus

    The mystery of phantom time continues as TEMPUS OCCULTUM is now up to Episode 14.

    The door of the observatory creaked open, and I started, hastily covering Brother Clemens’s manuscript with a star chart. But it was the old astronomer himself who entered, looking unsurprised to find me there.

    “I thought I might find you here,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Your meeting with our visitor from Rome has concluded, I see.”

    “Yes,” I replied, my voice tight with excitement and anxiety. “Brother Clemens, I’ve been comparing your calculations with a reference provided by Doctor Visconti, and I’ve found—”

    “Discrepancies,” he finished for me, sinking onto a stool with a sigh. “Yes, I imagined you would.”

    “Then you’ve known? About the falsified eclipse records, the impossible comet appearances?”

    He nodded slowly. “For many years, Brother Lukas. But knowing and proving are different matters. And proving and revealing different still.”

    “But this is extraordinary evidence!” I exclaimed, gesturing to the open books. “If Halley’s Comet appeared in 530 and again in 684, with only 154 years between—”

    “Then the chronology is compressed,” Clemens said, “and the missing years must lie somewhere in that interval. Yes, I reached the same conclusion decades ago.”

    “Why did you never publish your findings? This overturns our entire understanding of medieval history!”

    The old man’s expression was a mixture of resignation and suppressed excitement. “Publication requires approval, Brother Lukas. And such approval would never be granted for work that undermines the established chronology. Men like Visconti ensure that.”

    “The guardians of true time,” I murmured.

    “They have many names throughout history,” Clemens replied. “But their purpose remains constant: to maintain the fiction, to guard the secret that time itself has been manipulated.”

    Also, there is a sneak preview of the stamp design for one of the two volumes of the Castalia Library edition of A SEA OF SKULLS.

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    The Books Must Flow

    First thing: the new Castalia Library book for March-April 2025 has been announced.

    Second thing: DRACULA is being bound. SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON and ASOS 1 and ASOS 2 are being printed. We’ll keep you posted on when they’ve a) been approved and b) are ready to ship.

    Third thing: We’ve finally completed the move from the second bindery space to the third one. This was absolutely necessary because the 50-ton foil stamper did not fit in the building. We are now testing our third and fourth glues, and we are optimistic that one of them will be the right one.

    Fourth thing: We know we’ve built up a backlog, but we’re not quite as behind schedule as it seems because most of the interiors and the designs are done. We’ve delayed getting them made because we want to know what the full range of our bindery options are, as there were benefits and problems to each of them, even before the new tariffs became a potential issue. The point is, don’t worry, we will catch up fast once all of the necessary details are nailed down.

    Fifth thing: The fancy-dancy HYPERGAMOUSE cover proof will arrive on Friday. Once it’s approved, the paperback, hardcover, variants, and book blocks will be printed.

    Sixth thing: We’re close enough that we’ve started putting together the interior of THE ILIAD. It’s going to be an original layout with illustrations leading every chapter. It promises to be spectacular. More about it later this week on the Library substack.

    DISCUSS ON SG