Our Vision
The mission of The Postil Magazine is to work for the return of Christendom (the Sacrum imperium), and then to nurture its inevitable outgrowth—high culture, which is the pointing of the soul to Beauty, the first mystery of God. And the quest for Beauty is to follow Truth wherever it may lead, for so the medieval romance cycles knew well in their resonance, allegorizng Christ’s teaching of the narrow road.
We recognize that human beings cannot live without Ideals, without Transcendence, without Truth, without Beauty: there is no humanity without God. And all four are magnifications of a celebratory soul.
Much of the West today is lost to ugliness, with its inevitable consequences: anger, hatred and violence, an unholy pall of confusion that some mislabel as “collapse.” It is rather the growth of Modernity which knows only the sowing of chaos as it mows down tradition and leaves behind emptiness. The West needs reseeding with good ideas so that it can again seek Beauty and thus realign itself to Truth, that it not gain the whole world and thus preserve its soul. This is also known as courage.
Rootlessness is burking the West. It is a true Dark Age, where Wisdom is flounced with information, Truth is besieged by spin, and Faith is pilloried as superstition; and thus language is winnowed into absolutes, thought is stunted into propaganda, and common sense discountenanced by combative emotion pandering as “science.”
And yet a hunger for deeper faith, for purer enlightenment, for greater virtue, for sharper reason, and for good ideas persists. In other words, a hunger to be rapt in Beauty. It is this hunger that alone can build and sustain Civilization, in which men and women know and pursue their eternal purpose. All else is dystopia.
Our Name
The term “postil” comes from the first “Renaissance,” which defined the Carolingian Age (in the ninth century AD).
During this time, it was common practice to leave marginal notes and comments beside passages of Scripture. This marginalia came to be known as “postils,” and this method of commentary later expanded into homilies and sermons, which were also known as “postillations.” Of course, such notes were not only comments but also reflections upon ideas that were essential to the life of the soul and of the mind. The word itself is likely a contraction of the Latin phrase, post illa verba textus (“after those words of the text”).
In the spirit of such reflections, on matters both spiritual and worldly, we want to revive the role of the postil, where the purpose of learning is not the acquisition of power, but the strengthening of faith.
Thus, The Postil Magazine stands both as comment on the ways of the world and as a gloss to the building of Christendom.
Our Motto
Our Latin motto, Vivida vis animi, means, “the vigorous strength of the mind, or the vigorous strength of the soul,” since the Latin word, animus, can mean both “mind” and “soul,” which for us means both faith and reason, as practised so edifyingly by Saint Thomas More. It comes from Lucretius’ De rerum natura, Book I, line 72.
Submissions, etc.
The Postil Magazine happily accepts pseudonymous submissions, as well as credited ones. Sometimes anonymity is needed. In fact, many of our writers hail from academia where they cannot openly express their views for fear of the censor, or even peril to their jobs. Of course, the ideas and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Postil Magazine.
You are welcome to pitch us an idea for an article via our contact page.
For poetry, we will only consider traditional verse, which uses both meter and rhyme (showing both discipline and thought). We are not at all interested in free-verse. Send us a query with two or three samples of your work.
Letters to the editors are always welcome, which we prefer instead of comments in a forum.