Neo-Atlantean Idolatry

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”

I want you to imagine yourself in another life.

You live in a villa on the coast of the Mediterranean. You’re independently wealthy and do not work outside of your passion projects. You spend your days lounging on the beach, exercising, eating the best food, and taking in the Sun. You never miss a sunrise.

You’re jacked and athletic beyond belief. You travel often with a group of like-minded friends. Summer in Lake Como, winter in the Alps. You’re clothed in all linen. Rave on the weekends. San Pellegrino on tap.

You have the desire of the opposite sex. You are in tune with nature and the universe… whatever that means to you.

If this sounds like your dream lifestyle, you’re not alone.

In fact, there’s entire social media spheres completely dedicated to this vision.

Sometimes coined the “Solar” sphere, you may have come across it in your journeys through the internet. Although social media spheres are hard to define and often overlap, I’ll try to give some context.

The “Solar” social media sphere lies somewhere between the Vitalist/Nietzschean sphere of “Bronze Age Pervert” or Raw Egg Nationalist, the “primal” health sphere of Paul Saladino (Carnivore MD) or the WARKITCHEN magazine, and the politically reactionary-self improvement sphere best exemplified by Marcus Follin (The Golden One). There’s an element of the trad, MAGA, and pepe-meme spheres as well. If you didn’t understand any of that don’t worry, you don’t need to get this essay.

At the nexus point of all these spheres is where you’ll find the “Solar” community. The creator “SolBrah” probably best represents this sphere, although my thoughts aren’t directly targeted at him.

These are the people you see promoting a diet of red meat, honey, raw milk, no seed oils, etc. They promote a lifestyle of holistic fitness, constant sunlight, martial arts, entrepreneurship, self-improvement, outdoorsmenship, traditional social and family values, and high-class aesthetics. It’s a community that is actively reactionary and right-wing (but not “conservative”) and has had a mostly unified stance on matters such as COVID, the rainbow agenda, and the WEF. It is best described as a community focused on Vitality. The enemy of the longhouse.

If that all sounds great to you, you’re right. It is great, and the community has helped a lot of young men, many of whom I know personally. I’ve been involved in this community myself on Instagram and had a lot of fun with it.

But obviously, I have a reason for writing this essay today.

At some point, something in this sphere went wrong.

You might wonder how a sphere focused on such great things, that actively stands against the most evil things of our age, could go wrong. Vitality, beauty, strength, aesthetics, high ideals… unassailable, right?

Well, not entirely.

Like in all other aspects of life, there remains always at least one pitfall. A pitfall that even the greatest and highest can always fall to.

And that is pride. Idolatry and pride. And over the years, I believe this sphere of people with such high ideals has fallen further and further into this. Consequently, this community has also become increasingly New Age (or perhaps it happened the other way around).

In many of these influencers and their followers (I’ll stay away from any names), I have seen a loss of purpose, as more and more their purpose in life has seemed to become their lifestyle itself. A community that was initially all about self-improvement, about finding purpose and freedom and fulfillment, is now becoming more and more about the outward trappings of that fulfillment.

They’ve made idols out of objectively good and beautiful things.

Yeah, the travel and adventure and having 10% body fat and financial freedom are cool and all but… to what end?

To what end is all of this?

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”

A couple of years ago, I was part of a small group in this sphere on Instagram, before certain “Solar” influencers had gone down the road that I’m critiquing. At the time, the sphere was more of a unified front, and it’s biggest focus was arguably self-improvement. Increased time in nature, working out, eating right, sleeping well, holding moral cultural and political views, quitting porn, etc.

I can honestly say that that sphere helped a lot of people, especially young men.

But as time went on, a small divide began to grow. Particularly over the question- “To what end?”

My sphere of closer friends agreed on an answer- that the point of all of this is not to just collect material wealth, health, freedom for yourself, but rather the point is to gain those things so that you can help others, so that you can be a leader for your community and family. The point of self-improvement is not just to make your life materially better, but so that you can increase in virtue. This is the road my personal sphere of friends went down. I believe it was the right one.

But others went down a different route. Some figures in that sphere increasingly went down (ironically at the same time) both materialist and New Age routes (it’s worth mentioning that most of the accounts that were of the same opinion as me were all Christian). They did not start promoting anything actively harmful, at least not on the surface. Outwardly their message stayed largely the same. But I believe they began to make idols out of good things.

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”

More and more this sphere became focused on things. Showing you how perfect their diets were, how lean they were, how much money they were making, how desirable they were to women, all the destinations they were traveling to. But the question- “To what end?”- stopped being answered. It was freedom and aesthetics and leisure for their own sakes.

And at the same time, more and more often New Age symbolism and language began cropping up. There was more and more talk of manifestation, of alignment with the “universe”, of energies and whatnot. Much talk of “evolving” and “leveling up” and moving beyond the spiritual level of normal people. Others went a more pagan-larp route and started positing themselves as literal sun-worshippers, which is pretty on-the-nose.

And so in this culture there was both a growth of material gluttony and spiritual egotism. In losing sight of the original point of it all, once good things became vanity.

Everything under the Sun can be made an idol, as can the Sun and everything above it too. Even beauty, health freedom, life itself.

And I should admit, that despite theoretically disagreeing with this trend… I have found that I myself am incredibly susceptible to this form of idolatry. The aesthetics, the lifestyle, the vitality, the freedom. It is a tantalizing idol. I’ve had to regularly remind myself of what really matters. So, I am not saying I am above anyone else.

But what is it about this sort of idolatry that is so dangerous?

Although I’ve been telling the story of a small social media community, this is really a primordial pattern with a much deeper significance than online culture. One that has played out again and again throughout the ages.

It is really a tale as old as time. The greatest falls, the greatest evils, do not come from things that are dark and ugly in their beginning. This is perhaps a modern misconception, a consequence of forgetting the Myths.

“Pride goes before a fall”, the old saying goes. And the higher the thing, the greater the fall can be. There is a reason Lucifer was the Morning-Star, and not some ugly being of darkness. Beautiful things can be just as, if not more, corrupted as anything else by that greatest of all sins, pride.

And the ideals of the Solar community are high and beautifull indeed.

This social media sphere is obsessed with Atlantean aesthetics. The sun, the ocean, the vitality, the heroism, the wisdom, the high ideals. The idea of some high Solar civilization that rules the coasts. All these pages often post Atlantis aesthetics, or just use the word Atlantean as an adjective, or name themselves after Greek heroes and gods.

However, it seems to me that maybe they missed the point of the story. Maybe they latched on the the wrong things. It seems that they have forgotten that Atlantis fell. Washed away to ruin, beaten into dust, blotted from the face of the Earth. What was said by Plato to be the Earth’s mightiest civilization was reduced to nothing but scattered legends.

Recall Plato’s tale of Atlantis:

“They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly on the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by excessive zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost, and friendship perishes with them…

…and the human nature got the upper-hand, then, they being unable to bear their fortune, became unseemly.

To him who had an eye to see, they began to appear base, and had lost the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they still appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were filled with unrighteous avarice and power.”

Atlantis was a supremely beautiful and vitalist civilization. Yet as Plato tells us, they lost sight of what all of their blessings were actually meant for, and where their true worth lay. Their pride unmade them before their destruction.

I think that this online “Solar” sphere, in trying to emulate what they saw as the greatness of Atlantean vitality, ironically is falling to the same vices that destroyed the real Atlantis. Worshipping the Sun rather than its maker/ Material greed, spiritual pride. Pride comes before a fall.

And there will certainly be a fall. These people that are making their lives all about their material life or about some imagined spiritual growth, they will come up empty. Some months or years from now they will find themselves hollow. Health and wealth and youthful vigor will only last you so long…

You cannot worship the Sun. It will go out one day.

Anything put above its proper place is made an idol.

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”

However, with all this said, I can’t bring myself to renounce this whole sphere. It continues to help too many people, it continues to promote a lifestyle that our world is sorely lacking. It continues to spread knowledge on health and self-improvement that people absolutely need to hear. And it has inspired me too much for me to ever say it was worthless. It actually changed my life.

The Solar ideal is a good one, a necessary one. People should live this way, at least in part. Our modern world is lifeless. People are eating poison, injecting poison, drinking poison, consuming media-poison. They’re physically weak, mentally retarded and spiritually castrated. People need another way of live, a call to strength and vitality, a return to beauty and aesthetics and high ideals. The West sorely needs this archetype of the Solar elite warrior class. It’s young men need it desperately. They need to know they can be something other than a cubicle worker or a low-wage laborer or some other lifeless fate. They need to know that there is adventure and purpose and vitality out there in the world that they can claim.

But this ideal can only help anyone if it is used correctly and not made into an idol. The original point of all of this must be remembered. The ideals of this Solar sphere were originally to promote a return to Heroism and Virtue. If this is remembered, then maybe not all will turn to vanity.