Temporal Power

Tibetan depiction of
Red Jambhala (ཛམ་བྷ་ལ་དམར་པོ་)

Temporal Power |
Wednesday – February 4, 2026

Temporal power—what moderns refer to as the state—constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of primordial wisdom or knowledge, and this power, the word power being used to symbolize some physical ability to change or alter the conditions of the material domain, is always derived from the mandate of Heaven, as the Confucians put it; the sovereign is in other words the envoy of the spiritual authority. Spiritual authority is different from temporal power, and according to most scholars it is fitting to delineate the words "authority" and "power" in this manner by evoking their different application: authority being inherent in wisdom and knowledge and therefore a part of contemplation, or the nature of the sacred and the immutable; whereas power is something much more immediate and terrestrial, having very much to do with action and change, as previously mentioned; and from this point of view it should become clear therefore that temporal power is subordinate to spiritual authority, the Lord Temporal is hierarchically subordinate to the Lord Spiritual, which is an English convention, but a similar convention is to be found in India, or really any traditional culture, where tradition of the caste system infers different roles on persons with different abilities by virtue of natural differences inherent in each individual, expressed as aptitudes generally common among individuals making up each caste, and in this connection the terms Brahmin and Kshatriya would be the Hindu equivalent, at least for most purposes of a generalizing and descriptive character. This dynamic can be seen, as previously stated, in all traditional societies, which meant that the King or the sovereign was ultimately responsible for keeping order in his realm, but this could only be carried out after a royal consecration, which involved a royal initiation in concordance with the priesthood (the spiritual authority), and this dynamic, basted on the primordial tradition, lend itself to total and complete order in the terrestrial world, because the power of the sovereign was derived from knowledge, and only from knowledge can any principle, may that be power in this instance, be manifested in the world, and with time and the invariable change of the temporal domain, moving into new cycles, this dynamic became further extrapolated downwards in a hierarchical manner, with the top or summit of the hierarchy being the spiritual authority extending into the heavenly, and the bottom of the hierarchy extending into the terrestrial, the material; Hyperborea, without apprehending too much, would be the prototypical example of this primordial society based on a sacred order. This nature of sacred hierarchy was necessary for the harmony of society, but with time, as the world moves through the cyclical stages of the cosmological order, this harmony has progressively become disrupted as man has deviated away from the sacred order, and this deviation has lead increasingly to societal disharmony, and in modern times man has reached the point of completely inverting the metaphysical order derived from the primordial tradition, and this deviation away from the metaphysical order was first carried out, or put into motion, by the temporal power—by the warrior class, the Kshatriya's—in an attempt to cling onto the material world, and to this extend the spiritual authority has been misused and corrupted to serve these terrestrial interests; again in the modern world this rebellion against the cosmological order has reached the point of completely inverting the hierarchical order, which in turn has made the practice of extending into the Earth, into matter, the paramount achievement of life and of civilization. This is also why characterizing politics as a form of metaphysical warfare is very fitting, and why democracy must necessarily stand in opposition to the natural and the normal, and why the result of egalitarianism is ultimately social chaos and the worship of nihilistic nothingness in the face of a universe that the material means of negation will continue to fail to describe. What else than ultimate and entropic breakdown should be expected under this rubric of anti-knowledge?

    Of course, the modern world is characterized by the extension of temporal power downward and the disappearance of spiritual authority, and the result is the dilapidation and devaluation of true temporal power, because the Western conception of temporal power is entirely corrupt and without the slightest trace of spiritual authority of the Mandate of Heaven, and where monarchs are to be found, they are bound by the laws of an entirely profane order; and besides, these so-called "monarchs" are merely ordinary people without true ability, skillful means, or sacred initiation – the term "constitutional monarchy" should, in light of this, be very fitting, but an even better term would be an anti-monarchy or a profane monarchy. Of course, since the modern concept of "nations" and nation-states run parallel with the temporal power, a contraption demanded by democracy and the supposed liberation of the masses, no real hierarchy could be expected to be adhered to either, and this is why the nation of India should be given an entirely different and profane consideration than the ancient caste system that is derived from a spiritual order, but in light of the Kali Yuga it should be expected that this caste system is thoroughly corrupted with all kinds of modern and material conceptions that are wholly misplaced, which has lead to continual confusion about the metaphysical nature of sacred hierarchies, and at best these confusions should be understood as a category error, but since most modern men remain incorrigible in their material and liberal convictions nothing can be made to correct their misapprehensions about the metaphysical order; this tendency is usually expressed as a kind of moral confusion about the manifestation of the primordial principles in the world, but of course, this morality has no place in the order of metaphysical knowledge, and therefore it should be fitting to refer to this very modern impulse as a category error. But enough about the confused understanding of modern men.

    Temporal power has its place in the world, especially in regards to the up keeping of an orderly societal organism, but this power has been misplaced and allowed to completely push out the sacred authority found in any normal society, and it is this tendency to praise action above contemplation that can be detected everywhere in the modern world and especially in the Western world, where temporal power has been completely turned into a materialist bastardization, and where the game of politics, on all levels, have enabled a complete societal breakdown that can be characterized as a sort of material fatalism in keeping with some kind of Darwinian conception of might is right. Indeed, these societies, especially of the Western world, can only be considered anti-societies, for they are void of any and all spiritual authority, and without spiritual authority there can be no meaningful temporal power, and the result is nothingness and meaninglessness, which has become the cultural marker of modern civilization – the assertion of nothingness and the imposition meaninglessness is permeating the entire being that is the terminally diseased societal organism of modern civilization. Verily, this is what temporal power means without spiritual mandate – the reign of confusion.

Reginald Drax – February 4, 2026.