There is a funny little word that is suddenly meaningful for Dixie:  synaxis.  It is an ancient Greek word that translates to ‘a gathering’.  On some Church calendars, there are several celebratory memorial synaxes:  the Synaxis of the 70 Apostles (4 Jan.), the Synaxis of St John the Baptist (7 Jan.), and so on.  We, as Southerners, should add a new synaxis of this kind to our yearly calendars, in light of what the uS military has decided to do with its base names, etc.:  The Synaxis of Banned Confederates.
 
The Pentagon has provided us with the names to include in our Synaxis, via a report from Newsmax:
 
‘The USS Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser named for a Civil War battle the confederates won, and the USNS Maury, an oceanographic survey ship named for confederate naval Cmdr. Matthew Fontaine Maury, are the two naval ships affected.
 
‘The nine Army bases affected are: Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Fort Polk, Louisiana; Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Gordon, Georgia; Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Pickett, Virginia; Fort Rucker, Alabama; and Fort Lee, Virginia.’
 
For clarity, they are, with the days they reposed,
 
-Commander Matthew Maury (1 Feb.)
 
-Gen Braxton Bragg (27 Sept.)
 
-Gen Leonidas Polk (14 June)
 
-Gen Henry Benning (10 July)
 
-Gen John Gordon (9 Jan.)
 
-Gen A. P. Hill (2 April)
 
-Gen John Bell Hood (30 Aug.)
 
-Gen George Pickett (30 July)
 
-Col Edmund Rucker (13 April)
 
General Robert E. Lee (who reposed on 12 Oct.), we feel, needs no introduction.
 
There are, of course, many more who could be named, but these will suffice for this Gathering, given that they are the ones singled out in the report.  Serious consideration should be given for other synaxes, though, like a Synaxis of the 12 Southerners who wrote I’ll Take My Stand, which could be held on the book’s original day of publication – November 12th.
 
And we know just what day to celebrate this Synaxis:  June 9th, the day a typical New England shrew, Senator Elizabeth Warren, proposed this genocidal scrubbing of anything Southern from the US military’s consciousness in 2020.
 
On this day, let us heartily celebrate the memory and achievements of these Confederate ancestors of ours, and pray for the peaceful rest of their souls with the righteous (as well as on the individual days of the repose of each, as we are able).
 
We should also include St Columba of Iona in these goings-on, asking him to pray for our ancestors and for Southrons living and not yet living, for his Feast Day is also on the 9th of June, he who did so much to bring our forefathers in Ireland, Scotland, and England to the Christian Faith. 
 
This attack on memory, virtue, etc., is undoubtedly unseemly and dangerous, but there is a positive side to it (as others have pointed out):  No longer will the names and reputations of our Southern forebears be defamed by being dragged into the Federal regime’s unlawful wars with all their atrocities, nor through all the sexual perversity and depravity that the woke Pentagon is now imposing on its soldiers and sailors in the name of diversity and inclusion.  Let them drag the names of those they revere – Lincoln, Emerson, Susan B. Anthony, Sheridan, Hillary Clinton, and all the rest of that strange, disreputable lot – through the blood and the mud instead.
 
However, there is one name that Southerners should insist be removed from a place:  the name of George Washington from Washington, D. C.  General Washington is too fine a gentleman to be associated with that vipers’ nest.  The District can no doubt find a more suitable name, perhaps their latest overseas puppet, Zelensky.  Aside from the massive financial and military aid to the corrupt neo-Nazi Kiev government, the D. C. Establishment has just recently created ‘Ukrainian Independence Park’ in the middle of the city; and some loopy Congressmen want to place his bust in the US House.  The new name ‘Zelensky, D. C.’ would simply close the loop.
 
If the un-Christian globalist types in D. C. are determined to wipe out the memories of our Southern ancestors, we must be more determined to preserve them, honor them, and pass them on to future generations.  It is essential, then, to observe Confederate Memorial Day when it comes round each year in the various Southern States, but with each new action of the Yankees/globalists to purge Southern history and culture, we must make a new effort of our own to counteract it.  Hence, our new Synaxis for the banned boys in grey.
 
(Our thanks to an anonymous tipster for the Newsmax link.)

​The first cold morning of fall in Louisiana
Sends my memory far away to Oklahoma,
To the cavernous den that you added to your house, Uncle Ken.
 
The icy air resting on the rock-strewn hills outside
Bites into the thin skin of mortal flesh, but the hearth inside
Glows with a wood fire, offering its warm benediction.
 
Within this little cosmos, you are all here, my family!
The love that surrounds us is from the Paraclete, surely,
And warms us better than the hearth, no cold malice within.
 
Here, in the awful, joyful stillness of your presence,
Vision becomes prophetic, brought into the future tense,
This precious room a faint foreseeing of our kinhouse in Heaven.

Do you want heart-warming news, fellow Southrons?  Well, there it is, in those quotation marks:  Not only does the South have her own guardian angel, but Dixie is well-nigh full of them – an angel for the whole of us, an angel for each State, an angel for each county, parish, town, hamlet, forest, river, creek, and field.
 
For faithful Southerners seeking victory over the fallen passions, seeking healing of soul and body, and freedom from foes seen and unseen, this is encouraging to know.  For God has bidden the angels to help us in all these things.
 
The Holy Apostle Paul, his disciple St Dionysius the Areopagite, and other holy men and women reveal the mysteries of the angelic realm to us – the nine ranks of angels, their appointed duties, etc.  For example:

​Of particular interest to the South in these times when the enemies of God have become quite strong is the Archangel Michael:

​And in the New Dispensation of the Risen Lord Jesus, there are events like this:

It is altogether a very natural and fitting thing, then, for Dixie to ask St Michael to come to our aid:  ‘We invoke Saint Michael for protection from invasion by enemies and from civil war, and for the defeat of adversaries on the field of battle. He conquers all spiritual enemies.’
 
This is the key, though – We must ask.  The Lord and His holy saints and angels are perfectly willing, and ready, to help us (and they do help us in many ways without our knowledge or our request because of their perfect love), but if we do not ask, we will not get much aid from them.  Our Lord told us this in His Sermon on the Mount:  ‘Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened’ (St Matthew’s Gospel 7:7-8).
 
Nothing will be given, found, or opened unless we ask, seek, and knock.  Thus, we mustn’t be slack in our prayers to St Michael if we want to receive help from him.  The Akathist Hymn to St Michael contains this wonderful prayer (given here only in part) with which Dixie may beseech the Holy Archangel:

​At then end of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, a compilation he put together in the 4th century, there are these words:

​And this echoes the words of St Paul:

Such is the covering, such is the armor, such is the protection that Dixie can and should put on – Christ, His Most Pure Mother, the Cross, the angelic powers, the Apostles, and all the saints. 
 
Especially in this context, let us hymn, exalt, and pray to St Michael the Archangel, that the Lord would save the South from all her spiritual and physical enemies.
 
As with St Alfred on Oct. 26th and St Andrew on Nov. 30th, it would be well for us to sing the Akathist Hymn to St Michael together as a people on Nov. 8th. 
 
I look forward to being with you all in spirit on that day as well!
 
In addition, one could also pray to the Guardian Angels of the South using this Akathist hymn or this canon, substituting ‘Dixie’ or the names of States, towns, neighborhoods, schools, churches, etc., where needed.

​Mr Kenneth Robbins left a comment not long ago which set us to thinking.  Here is the relevant part of it:

​These words brought to mind some questions – How have other Christian countries in the past regained their freedom from invaders and conquerors?  Are there any constants from their experiences that the South can implement in our own efforts to throw off the Yankee yoke?  Let’s look at the history of a couple of countries for answers.

​We begin in a land much loved by Southrons, the land of Greece.  From the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the 19th century, the Muslim Turks treated the conquered Christian Greeks atrociously.  But in 1821, the Lord had mercy on the Greeks, and they began their war of liberation (an event Thomas Jefferson knew about and thought highly of).  The day it began has special significance:

The Greeks’ battle for freedom, then, includes the elements of seeking the blessing and protection of the Mother of God and marching under the protection of the Holy Cross.
 
Let us turn now to a second country.
 
The End of Russia’s Time of Troubles – 1612

The same elements are found here as in Greece’s war of liberation:  the intercession of holy men and women and the presence of holy objects.
 
The pattern is found again earlier in Russia’s history in her battle against the Mongol Tatars

 
The path ahead for the South is therefore quite clear – We need to unite around two things:  patron saints who will intercede for us in our own battle for independence from Yankees, globalists, LGBT tyrants, etc., and holy objects through which God’s Grace will also act to help us achieve that goal.
 
Two main patrons stand out from the other possibilities:  St. Alfred the Great of England (+899), from whose kingdom of Wessex the South received the foundation of her culture in Virginia, and the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, the Patron Saint of Scotland, whose X-shaped cross is the chief feature of our battle flag, the most recognizable symbol of our people.
 
If faithful Southrons can do nothing else together, we need to at least honor these two holy men on their main feast days as one people.  On the 26th of October, let us say as much as we can of the service to St Alfred.  On the 30th of November, let us do the same for the Holy Apostle Andrew.
 
Likewise, let us not fail to have in our homes an icon of St Alfred and an image or a flag bearing our dear Southern Cross of St Andrew.
 
These means may seem unconventional, but history tells us again and again that they are essential.  This is because a Christian’s war for freedom is primarily fought on a spiritual level, with spiritual ends in mind, though it also has material aspects to it. Blessed Photios Kontoglou explains, in the context of the Greek war:

​If we in the South will begin to walk together in unison in these small ways, the Lord will help us, perhaps slowly, perhaps quickly – that is in His hands – raising up leaders like St Demetrios of the Don and St Hermogenes and the many noble Greek clergy who led uprisings and who died as martyrs for the cause of Greece’s freedom; scattering our enemies; securing our fatherland; blessing our churches, families, farms, and cities.  Only let us repent, as Mr. Robbins said above, while we have the time.
 
I hope to be with you all in spirit on 26 October and 30 November!

​The South is undoubtedly passing through a hellish time on earth, where all traces of her past culture are being expunged from existence and her people forced to adopt foreign and ruinous ideologies and practices.  Not even Confederate soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery are allowed to have a memorial in their honor any longer.  It is times like this that make the lives of the Christian martyrs so essential for her to read and dwell and act upon.  The lives of two warrior-princes, David and Constantine, are especially relevant for Southerners who are striving to defend and live the ways of their ancestors, for these two martyrs also lived in very dark times:

​Like Southerners of various sorts through the years who have fought to protect the fatherland from ravaging foes – whether false teachings like Unitarianism and evolution or actual physical foes like Yankee troops – the holy princes David and Constantine were able for a time to defeat the invaders, but later suffered an overwhelming defeat:

​The South, we may say, is in captivity, the same that David and Constantine underwent at the hands of Marwan the Deaf.  The parallel between the Georgians ‘fleeing to the forests’ and the Southern writer Donald Davidson’s poem ‘Sanctuary’ is worth taking note of:

​The response of David and Constantine to their situation is instructive for Dixie:

The Southern generation that lived through the War with the North was able to say what the two Georgians said, that Southern sins led to their defeat. But modern Southrons seem to lack this humility.  Are we prolonging our time stumbling and drifting through the Yankee wilderness because of this?  But there is more:

​Like the brothers, Dixie was ‘beaten without mercy’ during so-called Reconstruction, and also like them, they ‘steadfastly endured the suffering’ and ‘stunned’ their Yankee abusers.  And, again, similar to Marwan, the Yanks (and now the globalists) then resorted to flattery, sorcery, and charms (in the form of access to Elite circles, teaching of heretical ideas like American exceptionalism in public schools, promises of unending economic improvement, etc.), which, alas, have worked here at the South, causing many to renounce the good, long-established ways of their mothers and fathers.  We are ‘drowning in the shallow waters of the coast’ in Yankee errors like fundamentalism and pantheism.  The antidote, of course, is the profession of faith in the ‘One True God’ – the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, by which David and Constantine overcame the wiles of their enemies, the faith toward which Southerners were once much more inclined.
 
This confession of faith may cause more suffering or even death for Southrons; it certainly brought that upon the brothers:

​But death is not the end, by the Grace of God; after suffering comes glorification (continuing the pattern begun by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself with His suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming), though that too may take many years to come to full fruition:

​It may be some time yet, but let Southerners not lose heart that with deep repentance, steadfast faith in the One True God, unshakeable resolve before their enemies, and help from martyrs like Sts David and Constantine (who pray to God from His holy altar, Rev. 6:9-10), Dixie will also see her enemies defeated, her culture resurrected, and her heroes honored. 
 
Apart from that, what can she expect but her descent into another circle of Dante’s Inferno, the circle of Woke hell?

Notes:
All quotes about the life of Sts David and Constantine are from this web page.

​The pressures to conform to the woke religion are enormous and widespread.  Institutions small and large, public and private – from school boards to the US Army; from Major League Baseball to US ambassadors – are attempting to force men, women, and children to accept un-Christian, unhistorical, untruthful ideologies about the sexes, about equality, about the climate, etc.
 
The South continues to be a target of the revolutionary reformers, a people whose culture must be demonized and destroyed in order for ‘progress’ to come nigh unto them and touch them with its precious hands.
 
It would surely be easier for faithful Southerners to simply give in to the pressures bearing down upon them, more sensible to accept our place in the technocratic order as sources of experimentation, exploitation, data, and revenue for the Pfizers, Amazons, and BlackRocks of the world.
 
Many unfortunately have faltered under the psychological, economic, etc., weight placed upon them.  But for those who have not, it is imperative that they remain unreconstructed, that they resist no matter the cost, that their fidelity to Dixie never waver.  The story of Queen Ketevan of Georgia (+1624) illustrates why this is crucial.
 
The country of Georgia has suffered many devastating invasions over her long history as a Christian people (her baptism came in the 4th century).  One particularly destructive incursion came early in the 17th century at the hands of Muslims under Shah Abbas I of Persia.  Desiring to extend his rule over the Georgian people, he launched a brutal assault:

​This is reminiscent of what many parts of Dixie suffered from Lincoln’s Army and from ‘Reconstruction’.  But Queen Ketevan did not despair despite these woeful circumstances, and neither should Dixie’s faithful sons and daughters as new battles rage within her between the woke and those who quite happily remain unwoke:

​When the Shah pressed her to renounce her traditions, to accept Islam, to marry him, and enjoy bountiful and comfortable living, she flatly refused, and this had a tremendous impact on the Georgian people:

​That is why it is vital for faithful Southerners never to give in to the Godless regime that holds sway today:  to encourage other Southerners individually to hold out, to withstand, to resist, no matter how overwhelming the opposing forces appear.  And it could also be that some new Joan of Arc will be inspired by seeing or hearing about a faithful Southron, and go on to lead Dixie collectively out of spiritual and/or physical captivity.
 
The immediate results of resistance may be disheartening at first glance, as Queen Ketevan’s may have looked to her people:

​Yet the Most Holy Trinity will raise up the downtrodden and despairing through the presence and working of His Grace, whether manifesting internally or externally (or both) – But the Lord God sent a miracle: her holy relics were illumined with a radiant light.

​We do not know with certainty what lies ahead for Dixie, but recent events do not point to a calm, rosy future.  It is incumbent upon true Southerners, then, to preserve as much of their patrimony as they can so they might through it both awaken their misguided kinsmen from their phantasies about Yankee/American/globalist utopias as well as have a real community to offer them to rejoin if/when they do wake up.
 
But if they still refuse the good, old ways of our forefathers and mothers and attack us in cold blood, at least we will have the privilege of dying like the martyrs and can look forward to receiving an imperishable crown from Christ our Savior and perhaps also receiving some affection at our burial here on the earth, as our bodies join our Southern forebears’ in Dixie’s pleasant soil and our souls journey to meet theirs in the heavenly realm:

U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson (4th District, La.) said something in reply to the furor that erupted over his commentary on Little Demon that deserves some commentary of its own: ​

The implication is that it is just fine to have explicitly evil ‘entertainment’ being broadcast over the public airwaves as long as Christians have the ability to voice their objections to it. 

But this raises a very serious question:  What is the highest aim of our society?  Maintaining an amoral freedom with no responsibility to any traditional religious values?  Or a society where as many people as possible know the freedom that is found in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Body the Church? 

If we choose the first, we undermine the Church as well as many of the freedoms that we have enjoyed for centuries.  Without the principles of Christianity acting as guardrails in the marketplace of ideas, if Christianity is simply one of many voices in that marketplace, other principles will become dominant, and they won’t be as generous and merciful as what we have known heretofore.  Mary Harrington acknowledges that this is already unfolding in the West: ​

If we choose the second option, aiming for a society of Christians, then that will necessarily entail us putting limits on what can enter and move about freely in the marketplace of ideas.  Whatever undermines the Church would have to be excluded or strictly limited; shows like Little Demon would have to be banned. 

Louisiana, thanks be to God, actually took a good step in the direction of Christian limits of the marketplace by passing and enacting Rep. Laurie Schlegel’s HB 142, which ‘would create a “civil cause of action against commercial entities that publish and distribute material for minors on the internet that don't verify the age of their users first.” In other words, Louisiana parents would be able to sue entities that distribute sexually explicit material for damages if the entity failed to take legitimate steps to verify the age of its users.’ 

In the debate surrounding this law, the same question of primacy arose:  Is the marketplace itself the highest good, or does the marketplace exist to serve some higher principle?  The La. State Legislature and Gov. Edwards (surprisingly!) responded correctly in favor of the latter: ​​

The passage of HB 142 is praiseworthy, but the questions raised above remain largely neglected.   

There can be no doubt, however, that the rich fruits of a Christian culture – the virtues (love, joy, peace, patience; forgiveness, second chances; fearlessness in the face of death; etc.), the arts (hymns, architecture, paintings, literature, and more besides), and the Saints – do not grow from the wild tree, the morally neutral and unregulated market.  If we want those blessings, we must cherish and nurture the Church more than the nihilistic free market. 

There are countries in the world that are doing exactly that, like Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary.  We hope the rising generation of leaders here in the States, and in the South especially – which has shown more faithfulness to Christianity than the other cultural regions of the U. S. – Rep. Johnson (La.), Gov. DeSantis (Fl.), Attorney General Landry (La.), Treasurer Moore (W. Vir.), J. D. Vance (Ohio), and others, will pay special attention to leaders like Orban and to Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia, whose speech in honor of Orban will make for appropriate closing material for all of us to dwell further upon (via the good folks at Chronicles): ​

​Folks in the States got another big hint recently of the totalitarian direction Washington City is headed with the raid on President Trump’s home in Florida.
 
Southerners who remember even a sliver of their history will understand that this is simply the post-Lincoln federal government reverting to type, as a review of the rule of the Yankee General Benjamin Butler in New Orleans in 1862 alone illustrates.
 
But if folks need other examples of what lies at the end of this sort of injustice, we offer one from the much-suffering nation of Georgia from the 20th century under the communists:

This is the kind of benevolence that is waiting for Southerners and others in the States who do not give their allegiance to the Leftist/globalist/Marxist elite who have taken over Washington and many other powerful institutions in the [u.] S.
 
And while it is important to remain engaged in the existing political processes so that we can do what good we can in that arena, politics is ultimately only the outer manifestation of deeper spiritual processes.  We are not, therefore, going to defeat our inhuman, transhumanist, Marxist opponents simply with constitutional amendments, with revisions to the law code, and those kinds of things.  To overcome a demonic ideology, we must use weapons commensurate with the battle, which is at its root a spiritual battle.  Therefore, our main weapon will be the very thing that annihilated the power of the devil and his demons over mankind:  the Holy Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
Its power has been manifested over and over again in history:

​St Ephraim the Syrian (+373) urges Christians to always do the following:

​And perhaps most to the point is this account from the life of St Oswald, King of Northumbria (+642):

A similar spirit was within the Southern army as they fought against the invading Northern revolutionaries, as recounted by Richard Weaver in The Confederate South, 1865-1910 (later published as The Southern Tradition at Bay):

​In other words, holiness matters.  Not the prideful arrogance of the Yanks and their near-of-kin, the globalists, that masquerades as holiness, but true holiness – the kind that arises when the Grace of God penetrates even into the muscles and the bones, to use the words of one of St John Chrysostom’s prayers.  And we carry it with us when we go about our business in the world, and even into the military battles we fight, and with it we are able to conquer our foes:

This we also see again and again in Church history – the presence of holy men and women, or their prayers, or the presence of some other holy object, turning the tide in battle for the Christians.  Archimandrite Kirill added to what he said above about the Holy Cross:

​All of this fits quite well into the Southerner’s religious milieu.  Quoting Professor Weaver again:

​Mundane politics will have its role to play in freeing the South from wokeness, Yankee imperial dreams, and the rest of those harmful ideologies and systems, but by itself it is quite impotent.  Only when the Southern people, armed with the Holy Cross of Christ, full of His Grace, carrying the icons of the Lord and His Most Pure Mother, singing the Psalms and other hymns – in our homes and in our churches, in our neighborhoods and about our towns – only then will we be able to crush the demons who provide the strength of Dixie’s enemies.  And that will enable victories on the other fronts of our battle:  cultural, political, etc.
 
To our enemies and other outsiders, we may well look ridiculous, weak, and foolish as we do these things.  However, the Holy Apostle Paul reminds us of something we must never forget:
 
‘ . . . the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men’ (I Corinthians 1:25).
 
Deo vindice!

​We have perhaps imbibed a little too heavily of the libertarian likker here at the South of late, believing naively that when a need arises, ‘the market’ will spontaneously act to meet that need.  This is not an ironclad law by any means.  Especially when it comes to the creation and preservation of a people’s culture, strong leadership that is willing to undergo hardships and sacrifices, rather than acquiesce to the soft seductions of monetary profits and related interests, is often needed.
 
Serbian and Southern history again intertwine to illustrate this for us.  We begin with Stefan Lazarevic (+1427; also called Stefan the Tall), the son of the Great Martyr at the Battle of Kosovo Polje, Prince Lazar (+1389).  Serbia had been crushed by the Muslim Turks; if decisive action were not taken, Serbia’s Christian identity itself was at risk of being lost.  Thankfully for the Serbian people, the very young Stefan did not shrink back but took upon himself the difficult task of putting the shattered pieces of the Serbian ethnos back together again:

​A parallel may be seen in the way Dixie had to pull herself together after falling to the Yanks in the War:

​But a leader’s work does not end simply because the clash of swords has ceased.  The well-being of a people is not secure without the protection and enhancement of their cultural edifice.  Just as a man needs a home to dwell in, so a community of men needs a culture to live within.
 
St Stefan’s example is helpful and very multifaceted:

​We see the same activity in the older generations of the South.  Robert ‘King’ Carter of colonial Virginia, and his father, John, built the famous Christ Church in the 17th century, which still stands.
 
Nineteenth-century Louisiana produced two notable examples of cultural crafting in Francois Valcour Aimé and Charles Gayarré.
 
Among the acts of Mr Aimé are these:

​About Mr Gayarré, we find that he contributed the following:

​As these and other examples show, a beautiful culture does not arise from ‘spontaneous free market forces’ any more than a beautiful, orderly cosmos arises from the random collision of individual atoms.  Focused, determined leaders willing to sacrifice their fortunes and energies, confront grief and pain, and so forth are essential.  But the allure of money, comfort, ‘fun’, and other such modernisms (not to mention the lies of Yankees and others about Southern culture) has dissipated the ability of Dixie’s folk to perpetuate the leadership needed to build and maintain such a culture.  It is all the more imperative, then, to look back into the past – our own, as well as that of other Christian countries like Serbia – to draw inspiration and practical lessons for the difficult task of re-establishing a vibrant Christian culture in our beloved Southland.
 
A great champion of Georgian national autonomy, Mr Ilia Chavchavadze (+1907; canonized as St Ilia the Righteous in 1987 by the Georgian Orthodox Church) identifies the three fundamental strands of a people’s cultural tapestry and then asks a pertinent question about them:

​This is precisely the question we must ask ourselves as Southerners.