As the daylight rapidly increased a priestess similar in dress I thought to the Virgin Mary appeared from a nearby group of trees carrying the ‘thorny-rod’ which she held up to the sun as she incanted the curse in some long-forgotten English dialect.

The cursing was a hair-raising event and the prayer of the crowd “Erce, erce, erce, eorþan modor” got louder and louder and sounded somewhat like a Gregorian chant. A man was brought forward to certify the curse with his blood and the priestess dragged the thorny rod across his palm. Thus having drawn his blood onto the rod she set it in a pewter bowl, added fat and set it on fire.

“Thus burneth and destroyeth their wishes and desires for our ending, thus turneth their infamy against themselves” She cried in modern English. There was silence for the few minutes the fire lasted and then people turned, went away and dissapeared off up the lane and away in all directions from the top of the road.

“So why the Olympics?” I asked. “Because these Olympics have nothing to do with sport, its all about politics and in the words of the Fabian Society “It is an Hegelian event designed to change forever the notion of Britain as a white nation.”

Given this new understanding of Hegel, then, where is the general reader left in trying to apprehend the meaning of world history? History is fundamentally the striving of Spirit for its own freedom, Reason is consistently manifesting itself in the course of development, and the process is essentially a dialectical progression towards an end goal. Is this not deterministic? Accepting Hegelian boundaries, can we not approach the course of world history with foreknowledge or will contingency continue to confound such iron-clad predictability?

In order to soften the impact of Hegel's statements, some interpretations have suggested that references to "necessary" events in history could be inferred as "rationally necessary." This would presumably reduce Hegel's argument from one of determinism to hopeful idealism. However, since Hegel states that "the rational, like the substantial, is necessary," no qualitative difference exists between the terms "necessary" and "rationally necessary." In addition, we have already proven that for either contingency or necessity to exist, the other must also exist. Any attempt to dilute the Hegelian meaning of "necessity" therefore will not help us to encompass the contingency often seen in world events.