I have had a very unpleasant experience with the “woke” leviathan these last few days, albeit on a very small scale, a true microcosm of something that is killing thousands, and millions in the past in its various manifestations. It is a particularly wicked and deceitful demon. I will keep the exact circumstances to myself. It concerned some of my posts on Facebook and my affirmation of belief in Christianity as a spiritual life. There was a number of postings that englobed the same ideology in the person in question. He would even deny that the “woke” ideology exists and that it was a creation of extreme-right fanatics and bigots against people suffering poverty, gay people, women, transgenders. He had obviously taken onboard the entire ideology, not merely particular points with which he sympathised. I have taken precautions to silence or even cancel these conflicts.

Since yesterday I have modified this posting because I had linked to a podcast on YouTube. I have been informed that the podcast in question is questionable, so I have removed it. It is not proven, as far as I can see, that there is a connection between Islamic Jihadism, mass immigration and Marxist critical theory and the ideology calling itself or being called “woke”.

Is the “woke” tide turning? I can only go by opinions and ideas I read, because I am out of touch with modern urban life. Perhaps we can be optimistic that people will truly awaken and reject this new form of what amounts to a repeat of twentieth century totalitarianism.

Such an idea brings me to a new idea – taking over the word Woke to mean something entirely different, the spiritual nature of humanity. I would like to research this idea more profoundly from a spiritual Christian point of view. We are called to wake up by Bach’s Cantata Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme. As Dr Michael Martin has quoted in his most recent Substack article, The Sophianic Knighthood.

William Blake captures all of this in the opening lines to his illuminated book, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion:

Of the Sleep of Ulro! and of the passage through
Eternal Death! and of the awaking to Eternal Life.

This theme calls me in sleep night after night, & ev’ry morn
Awakes me at sun−rise, then I see the Saviour over me
Spreading his beams of love, & dictating the words of this mild song.

Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand!
I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine. Awake.

There are so many verses in the Scriptures on this theme of awakening, either using the word or implying it. Here are a few:

Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. Ephesians 5:14

And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. Romans 13:11

These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. John 11:11-14

Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Isaiah 52:1

This awakening can mean different things, ceasing to be apathetic, coming to spiritual knowledge (γνώσεως), becoming more noble, rational and original in our thought and not following the mob, so many things. They are a universe away from the madness of post-modernity and the Enemy, the Father of Lies.

We should appropriate the word Woke in this spiritual and Christian meaning. We can make nonsense of the cultural Marxists pretending to uphold Islamic Jihad, LGBT (etc.), transsexualism, cancelling culture and history, promoting the Klaus Blofeld-Schwab world domination agenda and so forth. Who could sow the seed with force and credibility? I remember a film with a speech of Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna during World War II calling Christ the true Führer instead of Hitler, taking from the enemy the meaning of the words they were using to manipulate the people. The story of Cardinal Theodor Innitzer (1875 – 1955) is particularly poignant. After having been deceived by the strength of Hitler’s Anschluß, and having woken up to reality, he preached to the crowd assembled for the Feast of the Holy Rosary:

Meine liebe katholische Jugend Wiens, wir wollen gerade jetzt in dieser Zeit umso fester und standhafter unseren Glauben bekennen, uns zu Christus bekennen, unserem Führer, unserem König und zu seiner Kirche…

Einer ist euer Führer, euer Führer ist Christus, wenn ihr ihm die Treue haltet, werdet ihr niemals verloren gehen.

For that act of courage, his Archbishop’s house was ransacked by the Nazi fanatics, not without Innitzer having saved the Blessed Sacrament before escaping through a secret passage. The scene is portrayed in the film I mentioned which is delightfully available on YouTube, The Cardinal, made in 1963 that impressed me very deeply.

This is a spiritual war and we must have courage, even if we must lay down our lives as our forefathers did in other times.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12).