THE ABANDONMENT OF OSSIAN IN THE WEST AND ONLINE ORTHODOX “AUTHENTICITY”
“We are like clouds that gather and pass away. Like the mist of the heath before the breath of morning.” - Ossian By Bp. Joseph ( Ancient Church of the West ) The story of Ossian is not merely the story of a literary controversy. It is the story of the modern soul’s broken relationship with truth, authority, memory, and inheritance. In the strange rise and collapse of the Ossianic epics, Europe unconsciously revealed a spiritual pathology that now manifests itself again within modern religious life, particularly in the phenomenon of internet Orthodoxy and the rise of what has come to be known as the “Orthobro.” When James Macpherson published the poems of Ossian in the eighteenth century, Europe did not merely encounter literature. It experienced what felt like the recovery of ancestral consciousness itself. In the mists of the Highlands, in the lamentations of blind bards, in the moonlit specters of dead kings and warriors, Europe discovered a forgotten part of its own soul. ...
