Articles

Canadian and European political leaders of various stripes seem to be tripping over themselves to articulate a sensible position on the escalating conflict between NATO allies over Greenland, a Danish colonial possession until 1953 that is now an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, and a territory the United States now seeks. However, this collective incoherence does nothing to reduce tensions, much less help overcome the danger we all face. As a Canadian, I propose an outside-the-box compromise solution that puts Canada First. 

Big changes are afoot in Eurasia. Over the past several months, the region has undergone a series of tectonic shifts, as countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus have recalibrated their respective foreign policies and expanded ties with the West. [...] What's different today is that Eurasian states appear to have a different direction in mind. The U.S. should help them pursue it.

To make sense of how Gamsakhurdia engaged with Georgian Christian mysticism, I organize his sources into two analytical categories—what I term the “Gelati current” and the “prophetic current.” These are, crucially, not divisions that Gamsakhurdia himself articulated, but rather, groupings that help illuminate the different functions these sources served in his thinking.

This piece is the second in a three-part series on the esoteric sources of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s worldview. The first piece introduces the series and provides theoretical and historical context for its material and claims. This piece focuses on anthroposophy. The third piece will focus on Georgian Christian mysticism.

In these pieces, I begin (but certainly do not finish) the process of undertaking that engagement by tracing and examining the esoteric sources that shaped Gamsakhurdia’s worldview. To Gamsakhurdia, Georgia was not just a newly independent state among many newly independent states, but the bearer of an ancient history and a future mission of great significance. It was a chosen mediator between—and synthesizer of—worlds: Western and Eastern, earthly and divine.