Polemos II: Pagan Perspectives

By Askr Svarte

Polemos II: Pagan Perspectives is the much-anticipated sequel to Polemos: The Dawn of Pagan Traditionalism. In this wide-ranging study and compellin

• Language: English
• Publisher: PRAV Publishing
• Release date: Sep 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952671173

Book preview

FROM THE TRANSLATOR AND PUBLISHER

One year has passed between the publication of Polemos: The Dawn of Pagan Traditionalism and the present time in which this second volume, Polemos II: Pagan Perspectives, is being sent off to print. In light of not only the conditions which have overwhelmed experiences of this year for many, but also the very nature of the work at hand, perhaps it would be more fitting to say, as various Native American languages put it, that the/a world has passed. The publication of the first volume of Polemos in the English language opened up a number of worlds which, long thought past, were suddenly retrieved and confronted in their reality here and now, on and off the pages of Polemos - and nonetheless in a year when the experience of time has been severely affected for many people the world over. The time for this (re)opening was evidently ripe - a point which the author himself repeatedly stresses to be central to the line pursued throughout Polemos - and the popularity, interest, and polemics with which Polemos has been received across diverse circles can be said to be a faithful sign of the times. In our recent editorial letter on the occasion of PRAV Publishing’s first year of activity, we wrote: "Polemos, both intensive and extensive in its study and deeply original and inspirited in its manifesto, is already leaving its mark on the landscape of the 21st century. With Polemos in print and making its way around the world, speaking of ‘paganism’ will never be the same… We might also recall what we wrote in our translator and publisher’s foreword to the first volume: That 2020 would be the year in which a rising Russian intellectual would make the leap from Siberia into the realm of English-language literature, for no less than to herald a ‘new dawn’ of pagan philosophy and spirituality, is likely a turn of events which even many of the thinkers, movements, and visions invoked in this book hardly could have forecasted." If the present and, we are gladdened to recognize, now muchanticipated publication of Polemos II: Pagan Perspectives is somewhat less unexpected inasmuch as we already then announced our intention to not leave the first volume translated and published alone, then this by no means diminishes the impact of this volume’s appearance. Polemos II is, after all, the same work as Polemos, a singular panoramic account which on the pages that follow is deepened, made even more "polemosical, timeful, multi-dimensional, and daring in its exposition and propositions. Moreover, with this second volume entering into circulation in the summer of 2021, we have every reason to believe that the now completed translation and availability of the Polemos project" will be received for full treatment by those competent and daring enough to take up the questions and challenges which it poses. As was the case with the first installment of Polemos, it can be said that this second volume is both timely and timeful, ahead of its time and timeless.

In light of these anticipations, we would not dare to leave readers without a few remarks which shed light on some aspects of this work’s translation and publication. Polemos II: Pagan Perspectives is the English translation of the Russian book, Polemos: perspektivy iazychestva, released in Russia in 2016 by the publishing house Veligor. In Russian, the subtitle’s term perspektivy carries a dual meaning which is more conventionally translated as prospects, as such bears a certain temporally indexed connotation, i.e., that something may possibly and is likely or promised to happen in the future. Upon reading this book, we hope that the reader will understand why we have settled on the semi-false cognate of perspectives: like the first volume, Polemos II is composed of an immense, wideranging outline of diverse yet articulately unified points of view, positions, and polemics on no less diverse, interlocking questions facing what it means to speak at all of paganism today. In Askr Svarte’s account, we interpret, it is constantly emphasized that these pagan perspectives are foremost in conceptualizing, addressing, and effecting any pagan prospects today and for the future. From our own reading, we would like to add that these perspectives’ implications and relevance extend far beyond the nominally pagan.

In translating these perspectives into English, we have adhered to the same principles and opportunities presented in our preface to the first volume. On the technical side, this means that the author has taken the opportunity to correct any minor inaccuracies or misprints discovered in the original Russian edition, as well as to provide some helpful clarifications of Russian-specific phenomena and terms. Meanwhile, the only subjects of exclusion for the present English edition were the appendices otherwise available online, namely, Volkhv Veleslav’s review of Polemos and a brief essay by the author, Martin Heidegger, skuka i iazychestvo (Martin Heidegger, Boredom, and Paganism). On the substantive side, as concerns the Russian origin and language in which this work came to be, and as such being of a definite refreshing relevance to English-language readers, we have once again striven not only to preserve the author’s own voice and style, but also, to the extent such is possible, the culturo-linguistic accent. On this note, special acknowledgement is owed to the copy editor and proofreader, Lucas Griffin, who supplied his crucial efforts and suggestions during the formative stage of the manuscript. In some passages, readers have Mr. Griffin to thank for bearing part of the burden of translation.

Without further ado, on behalf of PRAV Publishing I wish readers and researchers a most fruitful engagement with such groundbreaking pathways of thought as Askr Svarte’s ensuing here, paths representing originarily posed questions and proposed answers for Thinking and Being beyond the ‘End of History’ which PRAV Publishing is pleased to have been able to bring forth to the polylogue of civilizations, times, and worlds in which we find ourselves amidst so much idle chatter in the realm of English-language literature.

- Jafe Arnold

PRAV Publishing

17 June 2021

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

Esteemed reader, you are holding in your hands the second volume of the work Polemos, which is dedicated to systematically expounding the doctrine of Pagan Traditionalism. This book was originally created as a single work and later divided into two separate volumes. Both are permeated by a common plot of methods, values, and arguments. This second volume continues our study of contemporary paganism in its most acute spheres, such as the relations between paganism and the Abrahamic religions, various political theories, the space of Eros and sexuality, and the teachings of the Left-Hand Path, all of which continue to draw stable attention.

On the complex and difficult topic of the relations between paganism and the Abrahamic traditions, we have striven to show that the very emergence of Christianity and Islam was to a considerable lot indebted to pagan practices and pagan philosophy. The latter continued to exist and overcome the limitations of creationism from inside these religions, thus creating heretical teachings or mystical schools (such as hesychasm, Rhein mysticism, and Sufism). All of the mysticism within the Abrahamic religions could be boiled down to its pagan foundation, to the idea of overcoming the ontological rift between the Divine and man, between the Divine and the world. Paganism did not know any such insurmountable difference. In the folk environment, one could rightfully speak of a deep synthesis of pagan beliefs and practices and the religion implanted from above. This is the origin of the phenomenon of dual-faith, whereby under the guise of exterior Christianity pagan thinking and beliefs continued their work. Thus, we can conclude that both on the level of folklore and the level of theology, paganism is altogether confidently present, which in turn gives us all the arguments and grounds to affirm our own path and philosophy.

On matters of sex, gender, and sexuality, it is necessary to take into account the complex intersection of several axial lines.

The first is the plurality of cultures and traditions, each of which independently defines its structure of the due and the taboo in the sphere of Eros. Therefore, blindly transferring and imposing one society’s values onto others is unproductive. The second is the consistent degradation of the sphere of Eros, which has become common to all with the advent of Christianity in Europe, the formation of the paradigm of Modernity with its perversions, and the further distortion of normative sexuality in Postmodernity. We believe that we have succeeded in showing the uncoincidental link between various distortions in the structure of Eros and altogether specific modern political and social movements into which contemporary pagans themselves have been drawn.

In the sphere of politics, we are convinced that Pagan Traditionalism potentially allows for establishing an independent political and geopolitical paradigm, free of Anglo-Saxon, Roman-Catholic, and Orthodox messianism in the sphere of international relations, at the head of which would instead stand the interests of all peoples professing paganism and contemporary pagans in the countries of the developed North. This work is only now being traced out in a series of articles and essays which have been released since this book. This second volume of Polemos presents a general survey of the intersections and influences of the classic (and largely dead) political theories of Modernity (communism/socialism, liberalism, the third way) and contemporary paganism and Traditionalism. We should stipulate here that we have examined the problem of relating to progress and technology, a question which is so fundamental and organic to paganism, separately and in greater detail in our new book Tradition and Future Shock: Visions of a Future that Isn’t Ours. The latter sets forth an alternative political doctrine of Pagan Traditionalism based on the Left-Hand Path.

Finally, one of the most problematic domains of contemporary paganism addressed in this volume is the very broad field of teachings and practices of the Left-Hand Path. In our work and from our point of view, only purely pagan manifestations of this path deserve attention. Therefore, five years after this book was first released, we can introduce some small additional points of commentary. First and foremost, the influence and value of Western occultism on the formation of the Left-Hand Path in paganism since the Enlightenment should be annulled. The fully-fledged unfolding of this teaching can calmly proceed without such. Appeals to the experience and metaphors of, for instance, the teachings of Aleister Crowley, are completely unneeded and can be dropped without any loss of quality. Similarly, within the Left-Hand Path in the GermanicScandinavian tradition, the metaphors taken from the language of alchemy have not proven and justified themselves. Our most fully-fledged explication of the Left-Hand Path has been given in our books The Gap: At the Left Hand of Odin (Fall of Man Press, 2019) and Gods in the Abyss: Essays on Heidegger, the Germanic Logos, and the Germanic Myth (Arktos, 2020). The interested reader should direct themself accordingly.

It is also necessary to point towards our book Pagan Identity in the Twenty-First Century (released in Russian in 2020). This book can be considered an unspoken third volume of this work, in which we apply the methods articulated here to concrete cases, such as polemics with Christian priests and theologians, studies in the sociology of contemporary paganism, the development of pagan theology (on the meta-level), and in indicating further necessary paths of development.

We are confident that Pagan Traditionalism wields great potential and can become the grounding for international pagan cooperation and the development of a common antimodernist basis. Our two-volume book Polemos should be seen as an invitation to develop ideas, adapt them to cultures and traditions in different corners of the world, and to expand the already existing network of like-minded thinkers.

- Askr Svarte

Novosibirsk 18 March 2021

(Era Vulgaris)

I

PAGANISM AND CREATIONISM

The relation between paganism and the creationist religions which supplanted it is one of the most acute and disputed topics in Europe, Russia, and, in a less acute form, Asia and the East. As we have more than once pointed out, in their striving to denigrate or discredit the Abrahamic traditions in the pursuit of restoring their own native faith, some pagans have not hesitated to resort to modernist argumentations with the aid of the social-humanitarian and natural-technological sciences. This is a manifestation of misunderstanding Modernity’s destructive role towards any traditional form, whether manifestationist or creationist. In other cases, strategies of open terror have taken place: arson against churches in Norway in the 1990s, clashes between Muslims and Hindus in Kashmir and India, or, vice versa, adopting the church’s denunciatory discourses against heretics and pagans as models for imitating and reconstructing. The Abrahamic faiths, for their part, have also been marked by an emphatic doctrinal intolerance towards those of other faiths, especially polytheists.

In any case, for Pagan Traditionalism, the religions of revelation are, to speak the language of the social sciences, the significant other which has played a large role in formative processes - in our case, the rebirth of paganism in the space of Indo-Europe.

The Nuances of Creationism

The phenomenon of creationism demands that we clarify its position in Sacred history and its relation to the estate pyramid of traditional pagan societies. Earlier, we placed creationism at the lower border of the Bronze Age of Tradition, in direct proximity to Modernity. Such a location at the very bottom of Tradition, but still outside of Modernity, is in agreement with our main proposition that even minimal and distorted Sacrality - such as the pagan relics in Abrahamism - is better than its complete rejection in the Modern era. This is also in agreement with the position of the classical Traditionalists, who did not introduce any principal distinction between the two ontological doctrines of manifestationism and creationism.

Within paganism, however, by virtue of the very fact of the falling away from the native tradition of the ancestors and the folk in favor of an other faith which came from without, the emergence of creationism is to be unambiguously assessed as the onset of the Iron Age. This approach clarifies and nuances paganism’s movement through the ages/Yugas. Even greater clarification and nuance is to be attained if we pay attention to the historical unevenness in the acceptance of baptism among different peoples and the different life stages between peoples and traditions with respect to one another.

At the time the events of the New Testament were taking place, the Roman Empire and the Roman tradition were already in a state of decline1, while in India the active creative process and polemic between darshanas continued, and the peoples of Scandinavia still lived in maximal authenticity. This is to say that by the time of the emergence of the Christian sect in Judea, the tradition of Rome was already close to its own Iron Age, while other traditions were still far from it. In this light, we can conclude that the baptism of Scandinavia in the 10th-11th centuries was already a kind of Ragnarök in its own right for the peoples living there, just like the baptism of the Slavs on the eve of the 10th century and Christianity’s ensuing penetration of different corners of the world which brought an end to folk traditions.

The differences in the emergence of traditions underscore the fundamental diversity and plurality of the pagan world’s historials as opposed to the universalization of history and time brought by Abrahamism and Christianity in particular.

Christians believe that since the very moment of the final Revelation in the form of Christ and his teachings, the world entered one single truth, history, and stage universal to all peoples. We can see how, as a result of Christianization, different peoples and states were led to adopt one generalized perception of the world, time, and history. It is as if the whole world became Christian at the moment of the life-and-death of Christ. But by the time of Rus’ baptism, Rome had been Christian no more than a few centuries, and the Enlightenment dawned in Europe around the later datings of the era of dual-faith. Each people entered the Christian ecumene in its own time, and this process was uneven and, moreover, came in conjunction with polemics and schisms within the Church.

Therefore, when it comes to different traditions, we see different dates of baptism corresponding to their own KaliYugas. In speaking of paganism in a broad sense, its Iron Age dawned with the ubiquitous institutionalization of Christianity in Europe in the centuries close to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. We put Iron Age in quotation marks, for the Renaissance era was a time when Medieval Europe rediscovered glorious Helleno-Roman antiquity and new appeals were made to paganism, yet this did not lead to the triumph of the Gods of Olympus, but rather to the final Iron Age of Modernity. The Renaissance could be likened to Hesiod’s Age of Heroes which, like the final flash of the Sun, shined forth a final ray of light before the onset of the darkness of Modernity - a ray which illuminated the mysterious path in the night which would be perceived by the distant predecessors of Traditionalism: mystics and occultists.2 Thus, when it comes to the (Primordial) Tradition, we find resonance with our previous propositions which allowed us to localize creationism at the lower boundary of the Bronze Age of Tradition.

In the end, paganism did not fall victim to absolute death and oblivion, principles which are purely absent in Tradition, but survived in dual-faith, in popular renditions of folklore, and alongside profound philosophical, occult, and mystical theories and the visions of monks, mystics, poets, and adventurists whose creative genius maintained Christian clothing only on the level of external forms, while in essence and depth (in structure) being absolutely pagan.

A second question that demands clarification in light of the phenomenon of creationism is its estate doctrine and the estate nature which it embodies. Insofar as creationism crystallized among Semitic peoples, firstly among the Jews in Judaism, we find ourselves geographically outside of the European space and the Indo-European structure of society. The particularity of the Semitic peoples lies in their practice of nomadic herding, which allows us to localize their nature close to the third estate, and we can also single out the non-Indo-European estate of professional merchants, traders, and moneylenders. Historically, the Semitic peoples found themselves in the conquered position of slaves or tribute-payers on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. It is telling that one of the defining conflicts of European identity and structure, the war between Rome and Carthage, was waged between continental Europeans and the maritime Phoenicians, who were linguistically Semitic. The fundamental difference between the peoples of Phoenicia and Rome spilled over into the three Punic Wars, over which Rome came to dominate. In 6 CE, the Roman province of Judea was founded in the place of the Kingdom of Judea. If the Jews’ position within the Empire was nearly autonomous, then the situation of the first Christians both within Jewish society and in the Empire itself, in Rome, was lower. Christianity initially spread among slaves, exiles, and the lower estates and castes, and this found reflection in the philosophy of the Christian religion as well as the subsequent adoption of the humanistic ideas of New Time (Modernity).

The metaphysics of creationism are based on perceiving God as the Demiurge, the creator of the material world, a view that corresponds to that of the third estate. Creationism especially emphasizes a fundamental non-identity between the Creator-God and creation, as is expressed in creatio ex Nihilo, or creation out of Nothing, as opposed to the manifestation of the Divine in paganism. Doctrinally, thus, creationism is close to the third estate, but by virtue of the rift between God and the world, as well as given the historical position of the Jews and first Christians in the Roman Empire3, we can identify the Abrahamic religions as sub-estate, at the lower boundary of the third estate, or as being the interlayer boundary anticipating atheism and anti-theism.

Of no less importance for understanding the causes behind the established dominance of creationism in its Christian version in the space of Rome, and later all of Europe, is clarifying the context which preceded its emergence, that is the situation of Roman-Hellenic paganism and society which at the time was in decline. A fundamentally significant event in ancient history that prepared the ground for the emergence of Christianity and its successful expansion was Alexander the Great’s conquest of part of the Mediterranean zone and Asia during his reign between 336-323 BCE. This event served as the beginning of the formation of a new ecumene unified by Hellenic culture and the beginning of a centralization of power and universalization of cultures. Throughout his campaign, Alexander adopted the royal titles and Divine regalia corresponding to the traditions of those peoples which he subdued, thus unifying both the political and Sacred heights of different cultures. Alexander left behind several cities, the Alexandrias, which became centers of Hellenic culture, elite centers, and symbols of power. The most famous such city would be the Egyptian Alexandria, where the Ptolemaic dynasty was established following Alexander’s death. The Ptolemies are associated with the institution of the cult of the syncretic God Serapis (Osiris-Apis), which united the Egyptian and Greek traditions in one figure and cult. The context of this cult’s emergence was the large number of Greeks and Macedonians who arrived in Alexandria from all corners of the former Empire of Alexander. The functions and equivalencies of Serapis and the Greek Gods changed repeatedly throughout this cult’s history, which reflected an aspiration to worship him as a universal God. The end of this cult came in 391 CE, with the destruction of the Serapeum temple by riotous clashes between pagans and Christians under the last Roman Emperor, Theodosius the Great.

After Alexander’s death in Babylon in 323, the empire was quickly divided between his warlords (the diadochi), who instituted their own religious dynasties. If the Greeks considered the center of the ecumene to be Hellas, then the center of Alexander’s imperial ecumene was Alexander himself, the great king. Naturally, the empire disintegrated after his death, but it had already established the prototype for what Rome would subsequently succeed in doing: creating a unified Mediterranean space (Pax Romana) which would become one of the leading European ideas - the idea of a united Europe reflected in an understanding of a common and universal historical fate.

The emergence of Christianity was anticipated by the crisis of the Hellenic and Roman traditions: Hellas saw a decline of belief in myth, as was noted by Plato, and the Roman tradition yielded to the dominance of law and judicial interpretations. Diverse eschatological cults spread ubiquitously, as did doctrines of Eastern origin, in which the figure of a messiah was not uncommon.4 Semitic cults gained traction in Rome, especially the cult of Cybele/Hekate, whose priests committed ritual castration, a practice which perplexed and drew the indignation of Rome’s citizens. In the first century CE, the cult of the God Mithras and his mysteries came to the Empire from India and Iran, and this cult would become Christianity’s main contender in the first centuries of our era.

In the field of religious and philosophical creations, we can highlight two factors: an active creative process that gave birth to numerous sects, schools, and teachings in connection with the West’s penetration by Eastern traditions5, and the philosophical formulation of the idea of the One. The roots of the One can be found in Eastern and Asian traditions, the most colorful example being India’s Brahma Saguna and Brahma Nigurna of India. Brahma Saguna is Brahma with attributes, or God with traits, with intrinsic attributes and images. Brahma Nigurna is Brahma without equalities, or the ineffable supreme God without traits, characteristics, descriptions, and images. Brahma Saguna and Brahma Nigurna are the One Brahman: Brahma Saguna as God with qualities is the object of an adept’s worship and prayers, and he bestowed the dignified and persistent adept with knowledge (liberation) of Brahma Nigurna, the Inexpressible Self. Brahma Saguna can be seen as the multiplicity of the phenomena of this world and the multiplicity of Gods and their personifications, while Brahma Nigurna is always One, One-in-Self, and One-in-Many. The dissonance between the multiplicity of Gods (pantheism) and the One Divine (monism) is thereby subsumed by the higher reality of the ineffable One.

This idea of the One found embodiment and blossomed in the philosophy of Plato and his followers, the Platonists and later the Neo-Platonic school of Plotinus, which we shall come back to.

Traditionalism and Creationism

For a more correct account of our Pagan Traditionalist view, a digression is necessary to return to considering the relationship between these two ontological doctrines and their metaphysics within the philosophy of Traditionalism.

Mark Sedgwick traces the origins of Traditionalism back to the Renaissance, following the Middle Ages and anticipating New Time (Modernity). The Renaissance was the time when European society rediscovered the worldview and culture of antiquity, especially the philosophies of Plato and the Neo-Platonists. In the 15th century, the Italian philosopher and founder of the Florentine Platonic Academy, Marsilio Ficino, (1433-1499) translated the Corpus Hermeticum, a compilation of treatises attributes to Hermes Trismegistus. In Ficino’s time, there was the belief that Plato’s philosophy had been based on the Hermetic corpus as well as the teachings of Orpheus (whose hymns Ficino also translated) and Zoroastrianism. Doubts as to the antiquity of the Corpus Hermeticum would arise only in the next century, when Isaac Casaubon demonstrated the late Greek character of the texts and the absence of any mentions of Hermes in the works of Plato and his students. Today it is believed (such as by Frances Yates) that the Corpus was created in the 2nd-3rd centuries CE as an adaptation of Christianity to paganism. Thus, the rebirth of Platonism as a critique of Catholic Aristotelian Scholasticism relied on an interpretation based on the later Corpus Hermeticum, which was, in turn, an adaptation of Christianity to paganism. This erroneous reading of Plato determined his perception and reading as a Christian before Christ.

It is to Marsilio Ficino and the Hermetism that arose in the Renaissance era that Mark Sedgwick traces the thread of the secret history of Traditionalism.6 The unique situation of the Renaissance, distinct from the preceding dark Middle Ages, and the rebirth of the ancient spirit and creative genius gave way to the Enlightenment and the formation of Modernity, which would determine the main vector of human development. The Traditionalist and Romano-Hellenic pagan potential of the Renaissance would be displaced into the periphery and take shape in secret occult societies not uncommonly existing under the aegis of Catholicism. The roots of decadence might thus also be traced back to the Renaissance, or more precisely to the failure of a fully-fledged restoration of antiquity, and the gloomy fixation of ensuing decline.

Without a doubt, the first Traditionalists were children of Modern Europe as well as, at the same time, heirs to the Catholic traditions rooted in the West, and they accordingly brought relics of creationist thinking into the philosophy of Traditionalism.

René Guénon’s Traditionalist molding came about among Masonic and Hermetic circles as well as amidst close ties with Catholic institutions, where he delivered lectures, and Catholic journals that published his articles. Striving towards Sophia Perennis, the Eternal Wisdom, the idea of which had also taken shape during the Renaissance and which Guénon called the Primordial Tradition, Guénon studied the initiations of the occult circles of Europe (Martinism, Masonry, Theosophy, Spiritualism) as well as the Catholic Church. Yet, the peculiarity of Traditionalism and its affirmation of one grounding and wisdom of all religions drew hostility from Christian milieux and led to a rift with Catholicism. René Guénon himself attached priority to the Indian Vedanta as the most fullyfledged expression of ancient Tradition and used its language and formula, including to explain Christian concepts. Regarding Catholicism itself, Guénon remarked that it had lost its initiatic dimension since the first Ecumenical Councils.

The dualism between Absolute Good and Absolute Evil that is intrinsic to creationism is reflected in Guénon’s Traditionalism in the idea of initiation and counter-initiation, as well as in his language, as in the use of such characterizations as Satanism and others. Universalism can also be seen in Guénon’s idea of the Primordial Tradition, which conceives of a unity-in-oneness of one ancient religion with regards to which all others are derivative. This is confirmed in Guénon’s clarification that he did not convert to Islam but moved into it because he who knows the Source knows that there are no differences in its exterior manifestations.

Such erroneous reading of Platonism through the prism of the pro-Christian Corpus Hermeticum and Hermetism’s existence in the shade of Catholicism ultimately yielded a Traditionalist reading of pagan pre-Christian traditions as forerunning, distorted versions of Wisdom that would be purified and sanctified by the appearance of Christ and his teachings. In other words, the entire pagan period preceding Abrahamism came to be re-interpreted as a preparatory stage for the coming of Christ, and everything good that came before Abrahamism found purification, expression, form, and sublimation in Christianity. Daniel Cologne writes in his apologetic defense of René Guénon and Christian Traditionalism:

The true religion which de Maistre7 revived was the Philosophia perennis, the Religious Faith after which Blessed Augustine named one of his books. He [Augustine] affirmed: ‘That which is today called the Christian religion already existed among the ancients and did not lack among the first of the human race. When Christ appeared in the flesh, the true religion which had already existed came to be called Christianity.’ 8

Daniel Cologne pursues the line of Christian Traditionalism and defines radical monotheism in terms of the Latin word radix, root, which is to say that its radicality lies in turning to the Golden Age of Christianity, the paradisal Eden before the sinful Fall. Like other Christian Traditionalists, Cologne associates the Satya-Yuga or Golden Age with Adam and Eve in Eden while correlating Modernity with the Iron Age and Kali-Yuga. The imminent, post-apocalyptic Kingdom of God is conceived as being the restoration of humanity in its preFall state, and therefore relates to the new Golden Age. Here we see a contradiction between the doctrine of cycles that is intrinsic to paganism and the linearity and one-timeness of history which is fundamental to creationism. The line of time is framed by the Golden Age in the beginning, whenceforth comes the fall and the pagan distortion, followed by the appearance of Christ and the affirmation of his truth, after which is promised the closing of the frame by a new Golden Age. The resultant picture is somewhat intermediate between the cyclical and linear perceptions and is imbued with the idea of a positive future, of progress.

Reading primordial pagan traditions as distortions of a secret Adamic tradition is also widespread among Russian Orthodox Traditionalists. Here we can make note of the works of Alexander Ivanov9 and Vladimir Karpets. This common approach is based on deconstructing artifacts of dual-faith and folklore, the Ariosophy of Guido von List and Herman Wirth, Christian-leaning, primarily Orthodox Traditionalism, and critiquing Pagan Traditionalism on the grounds of contrasting René Guénon and Julius Evola. We leave the voluntarism of such various readings, particularly Vladimir Karpets’ interpretation of Slavic paganism as a proto-monotheism (proto-Christianity), which withstand neither academic nor Traditionalist critique, to the conscience of their authors.

The critique of paganism outlined in Alexander Dugin’s early work Ways of the Absolute proceeds from the views of Dugin’s mentor, Geydar Dzhemal, a Muslim who took antiTraditionalist positions. At the core of this criticism once again lies the difference between creationism and manifestationism reduced to an opposition between the transcendent and the immanent in the creationist reading, in which the supreme privatively belongs to the one God, while immanent creation (the self-contained, the closed-unto-itself ) is pure plurality. The relevance of such a critique is relational, as here we are rather dealing with a categorical condemnation of paganism from the position of radical Islamic creationism. Key for Dzhemal is the supra-ethical volitional act directed from here to there, that is to say from the material world of creation to the absolute, the superior and, in Dzhemal’s interpretation, unknowable to the point of a paradoxically existing-in-non-existing God (Allah). In this treatment, the world, its traditions, social institutions, and the state are self-contained, stirred, eternally self-repeating, immanent dust (i.e., plurality) from which it is necessary to liberate oneself through a radical leap of unsupported faith and fidelity to the transcendent (the one and only God).

Pagans can object to this and say that the world is not created out of nothing, as is postulated by creationism, but is a manifestation of the Divine, creatio ex Deo, and that the High is always present and participatory in the material given, in the world, in things as the reverse, equipolent side of the coin, as the transcendent-immanent. The question lies only in revealing this dimension (if it is hidden at all) and of ascension or submersion along the holistic threads to the spirits, to the daimons, the Gods, or demons. The world, people, animals, and things are manifestations of the Divine, are administrated by the Gods, and are the manifestations of the Ineffable One which annuls the contradictions between the one and the many. He who knows their Divine nature, even while being in the very heart of the material world of many things, sees them as manifestations of the One, as being of the One, but not as quantity passing in totality into quality, but as quality sanctifying in Sacred light and unifying all the diversity of the world.

As we can see, the question of the difference between ontological doctrines is manifest most clearly here, and the resultant opposition does not presuppose any resolution from a privative point of view. Treating paganism as immanence ultimately leads to the grotesque conclusion that pagans bow to idols (of wood, stone, etc.) in their literal material dimension. In other words, an idol or image of a God is only a material, autonomous object without a Sacred and higher dimension, and paganism can therefore be reduced to a primitive form of fetishism approximate to cargo-cults. This interpretation is convenient for propagandistic, denigrating ends and is ubiquitously employed by the Orthodox standpoint to criticize pagans, but it does not correspond to reality. In particular, such a device was used by Alexander Dugin to assert a certain distance between Golovin and his philosophy from paganism, as Evgeny Vsyevolodovich Golovin did not have any idols and did not administer any rites. Such an argument is built on shaky ground and can easily be refuted by the words of Golovin himself, who defended paganism, as well as by the fact that the presence of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic images of Gods is not necessary for paganism, for the Sacred can ultimately elude any images and words.

Without a doubt, the pagan pole in Traditionalism is linked to Baron Julius Evola, who upheld the ideals and worldview of ancient Rome within the modern world. We have previously drawn attention to his early work Pagan Imperialism, which can be considered a condensed, programmatic exposition of the provisions which would unfold across his other works. Evola also expressed a terminological differentiation, preferring the term tradition while leaving paganism to the level of immanence, which he associated with his contemporaries’ neopagan initiatives. We can associate this immanent paganism addressed by Evola with the titanic paganism (the paganism of the Titans) of which we have spoken in previous chapters.

Julius Evola was the first to take a step forward and interpret the era of creationism in European history as a period of decline relative to the greatness of the Roman Empire. As follows, everything in the Middle Ages and Catholicism that was traditional and esoteric was part of the distorted traces of the Roman spirit and Northern Germanic influence, particularly the institute of knighthood.

In the first part of his work dedicated to polemicizing against Evola and apologetics for Guénonism and Christianity, Daniel Cologne points to how the Baron correlated the Roman tradition with the Light of the North and Christianity with the Light of the South. In describing the spirituality peculiar to the Light of the South, Evola insisted on such having a disorderly character, as being taken for a mythical atmosphere by it first and foremost echoing in the passionate, emotional, and irrational part of one’s being. The Divine thus becomes an object of vague inspiration and rapture of the soul. The irrational part thus figures as a lever and instead of rising up the heroic path and intuition into wisdom, faith is asserted as the fundamental means, an impulse of the disquieted soul disorderly directed towards the super-sensual. The religion hailing from the Light of the South, Christianity, thus brought to the Western world a halogenic spirituality based on passions as opposed to the intellectual, typically IndoEuropean path leading to the transcendent.

For Evola, Empire was the highest value, and the period of the Roman Empire’s collapse, followed by centuries of feudal fragmentation, was perceived as decline with the rare exceptions of glimmering remnants of Tradition and the Spirit:

After the fall of this medieval civilisation, after the destruction of this radiant European Spring in its first flowering, after the unleashing of those forces which led to secularisation, particularism, and a disintegrating humanitarianism, the paths to the final downfall were opened. The force of Tradition passed from the visible to the invisible, and became an inheritance which was handed down in a secret chain from the few to the few. Even today some have a presentiment of it, in somewhat confused efforts, still tied to the human and to the material.10

We can see something similarly common to both the representatives of the Renaissance, particularly Marsilio Ficino, and the Traditionalists of the modern period in their critique of Catholicism, whether in terms of the Platonic critique of Scholasticism or the conclusion that Catholicism had lost its initiatic character. And further: in seeing Christianity as decline, especially in its Protestant denomination which embodied a secular approach and opened the theological way for the emergence of Modernity in economics.11

Yet, there is an important nuance in Traditionalist critiques of Christianity: these critiques have not touched upon the Orthodox denomination. On the one hand, this is conditioned by the obvious relevance of Catholicism to Europe. On the other hand, as Alexander Dugin has noted, Guénon was ignorant of Orthodoxy and its specifics. Both Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist have noted more positive and Traditionalistic features in the Byzantine branch of the Christian tradition, thus contrasting Catholicism with what from their point of view is more conservative Orthodoxy. In his work On Being a Pagan, de Benoist indicates that in the Eastern Church there is a more pronounced pagan component than in the Western.12 In our discussion of the potential of Russia in the rebirth of paganism, we have already pointed out the reasons for this conservatism, and we will once again turn to such in our examination of Christianity.

On this note, we cannot avoid the figure and philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, who outlined the concept of a war between eternal Judea and eternal Rome. For Nietzsche, Rome and Judea were not only or not so much real historical entities as archetypal expressions of the spirit of Europe and Hellenism and the spirit of the Semitic East - a Europe saying yes to life and diversity and a Judea bearing desert and death in the form of JudeoChristianity.13 In its nihilism, Europe has been indebted to the Semitic spirit that took shape in the deserts of Near Asia and was brought to Europe with the triumph of Christ’s teaching. Woe unto him who harbors the desert within, Nietzsche wrote, for after the death of God Europe is left alone with its woe, with Nothing.

Turning our gaze beyond Europe and Christianity, we see a constellation of outstanding Traditionalists who, following Guénon, have taken the path of the tradition of Islam: Frithjof Schuon, Henry Corbin, Shaykh Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and others. All of the latter have devoted particular attention to the inner, esoteric dimension of Islam, which opens up a broad expanse for the Traditionalist method as expressed in Shiism, the Sufism of Shahab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi, the poetry of Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the philosophy of love of Mansur al-Hallaj, etc.

René Guénon’s mentor and informant on the Chinese Tao tradition, Georges-Albert de Pouvourville, known by his initiatic name Matgioi, anticipated Traditionalism in his account of Taoism in his work The Metaphysical Way. In his view, the Chinese tradition reflects the Primordial Tradition, its simplicity and conciseness, with minimal distortions. Preferring Taoism to Western Catholicism, Matgioi nonetheless allowed for a number of parallel comparisons between the I Ching and Christianity.

As we can see, Traditionalism initially strove to encompass all manifestations of Tradition, all religions, and to reduce them to a common picture and universal system (as did René Guénon). But, almost immediately, there arose a tendency (represented by Julius Evola) that was converse to this primordial universalism. Here it is important to introduce a distinction between Guénon’s universal method, which considered all religions to be manifestations, rays originating from one center, from one ancient religion, and the view that asserts the primacy and priority of manifestationist (pagan) traditions in all of their diversity, which speaks to the ensuing decline, distortion, and confusion in accordance with the doctrine of cycles, as well as addresses the exclusive universalism brought by creationism with the doctrines of Christianity and Islam.

The division of Traditionalism into more narrow trends is even more pronounced today. In Russia, the Traditionalist school of Alexander Dugin upholds the interests of Orthodoxy, especially the Russian Old Believers Rite of the Edinoverie confession.14 A number of Traditionalists remain faithful to the East and Islam. European Catholic circles have not managed to formulate a viable Traditionalist position15, as a consequence of which a pro-pagan Traditionalist approach is dominant in Europe to the point that the very fate and salvation of Europe is taken in the spirit of returning to native European traditions. The latter is the line of Julius Evola, Dominique Venner, Alain de Benoist, Alain Daniélou, the New Right, Troy Southgate, and others.

The approach of Pagan Traditionalism is also of relevance to Asia, especially India with its rich diversity of traditions, darshanas, peoples, and sub-ethnoi which have by and large survived despite the onslaught of Islam, Buddhism, and the English modernist colonists.

Thus, we can see a distinct demarcation into two Traditionalisms: creationist (Christianity and Islam) and manifestationist. Adherents of the former insist on their commitment to Guénon, who, whether implicitly or explicitly, expressed the creationist position, its exclusivism and dualism. The second insists on the plurality of traditions and more properly gives expression to the doctrine of cycles and the distortion of Tradition down the path of decline, that is from the pagan diversity of antiquity through the universalization of creationism to the Enlightenment and Modernity.

All of this remains an open process to this very day.

The Legacy of Plato

There are no grounds for presuming that any examination of the relationship between the traditions of manifestationism and creationism can avoid paying attention to the figure and philosophy of the greatest thinker of antiquity, Plato (428-348 BCE). Plato’s legacy is so broad, so fundamental, and has so strongly impacted practically all of European thinking all the way up to Postmodernity and the Postmodernists that it is impossible not to agree with the philosopher Alfred Whitehead when he argued that all of Western philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato.

An innumerable lot of works, including within the framework of Traditionalist philosophy, have been dedicated to the study of the philosophy of Plato and his followers, the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, to the point that even simply listing them would take up a decent volume. Therefore, we will highlight out of the Platonic universe only those points which are of principal importance to our further account, leaving out a vast field for more detailed consideration and nuancing of our views.

Plato’s family was of aristocratic origin, and he is believed to have been born on the birthday of Apollo, 21 May, in the thick of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Plato’s famous teacher was Socrates, and Plato himself was Aristotle’s teacher. The historical context of the emergence of Plato’s philosophy was marked by the decline of the Hellenic tradition, which the philosopher himself wished to replenish. We can see in this the root of Plato’s idealistic state and even philosophy as a whole. Plato’s times also saw Greece broadly penetrated by Eastern traditions and customs as well as a flash of eschatological moods.16 Later, Plato’s student, Aristotle, would be the teacher of Alexander the Great, whose empire would initiate a new ecumene and universalism.

The figure of Plato and his philosophy bears at once important and problematic significance for Pagan Traditionalism. We can formulate this in the following manner. Plato was the height of the Greek tradition, the one who completed the formation of Greek philosophy, the Greek Logos which sprouted out of Greek myth, out of the poetry of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, etc. Based on the Greek tradition, its poetry, and myth, Plato created, or more precisely expressed and embodied a new philosophical language in which he described the deep structure of all of Tradition. Yet here we must discourage the reader from equating the structure of Tradition expressed in Plato’s idealistic philosophy with the universal principle. The matter at hand is not an exterior and qualitative equivalence, but the structures of the Sacred Center embodied within all.

Hence why Plato also poses a problem: on the one hand, he is the most profound philosopher and supreme thinker who formulated a number of provisions of Tradition in the purest manner; yet, on the other hand, his philosophy already harbored a distance towards Greek tradition and myth. In this lies the problem of the very phenomenon of philosophy as such. The birth of philosophy saw the decline of myth and ritual, in some shape being torn from and even opposed to myth (Socrates); on the other hand, philosophy appealed to the Sacred and wisdom from the position of ratio, reason. Philosophy is ambivalent; along its roads one can arrive at the Sacred, but one can also arrive at the strict rationality of Modernity.

With regards to Hellenism, we can imagine the relation of Plato’s philosophical Logos and Greek myth as a fraction, Logos being the numerator and Myth the denominator.

The Philosophical Logos of Plato and Platonism

(and Neo-Platonism à la Plotinus)

Greek Myths and the Poetry of Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, etc.

It is inaccurate to speak of Logos as sprouting out of the soil of Myth, for Logos translated means word, speech, notion, and is most accurately compared to a bolt of lightning piercing the darkness of night, from heaven to earth, illuminating absolutely everything around it for the briefest instant. In the case of Plato, who, without a doubt, was a son of his land, his Logos was maximally solar and celestial, descending from heaven to earth, its origin being nowhere other than in heaven. Let us recall that the philosopher was born on the birthday of the God of the Sun, Apollo. Fostered by both the earth of Greek myth and the Gods of the heavens, Plato allowed the Logos-word to manifest itself. Embedded in this unique opportunity is the apogee of viewing the whole Cosmos as Sacred, recognizing the distance between earth and heaven, and recognizing the cooling of the fire of Tradition - not of the Golden Age, but of the age of the people of iron, the age which Hesiod bitterly regretted. Plato did not think up anything new, but rather he gave a rational, philosophically formulated description of Sacred structures in their ideal, central position.

We could compare Plato with the peak of a great mountain: he crowns it, but all around stretches only an abyss of fall and decline. This means that Plato is interesting as the crown of pagan thought as well as a thinker whose philosophy impacted Christianity to come several centuries later. In our examination of the traditions of creationism, we will discover within them Platonism as well as the structures described by Plato, but only in deformed, distorted form. In some senses, such will be a measurement of the pagan component within the Abrahamic religions, of the very nature of the pagan elements within creationism, as well as, of no less importance, how some of the provisions of Platonism found their maximal embodiment in none other than creationism. Just as the peak of a mountain is at once the highest step of ascent and the first step of descent, so is Platonism open in both directions.

The maximal development of Plato’s ideas in synthesis with Aristotelianism, Pythagoreanism, Orphism, Chaldeanism, and the doctrines of India was attained in the Neo-Platonism of the 3rd-6th centuries, the most famous expounder of the latter being Plotinus (205-270). The Neo-Platonic synthesis showed the integrative potential of Platonism and substantiated the expression of the manifestationist structures of paganism, being a kind of pagan theology. We have already more than once referred to Plato and Neo-Platonism and given expression to fragments of this philosophy.

According to Neo-Platonic ontology, at the height (or in the center) is the unknowable and ineffable One, followed by the knowable Nous (νοῡς, Mind, Intellect) in which reside the Platonic Ideas. The Mind is followed by the Soul (Ψυχή, psyche) hierarchically encompassing spirits, daimons, animals, and all beings, thus constituting the Cosmos.

Of interest in this structure is the figure of God, the Demiurge, the builder of the Cosmos. Various thinkers have associated him either with the Mind or the Soul (à la Apuleius), while a contradictory theory was put forth by Numenius, who argued that the Demiurge has one face, the Mind, turned towards the One (the Father), and another facing the Soul and the world as creator. The Demiurge creates (orders) the Cosmos on the basis of contemplating the higher Ideas, his gaze always turned both upwards and downwards. Plotinus later strictly identified the Mind with the Demiurge. The creation of the Cosmos is the Mind thinking itself, i.e., the unfolding of the Cosmos is the unfolding of the Divine with the One in the center (or at the peak) and the diversity of life on the periphery.

Here we have fully arrived at the concept of the emanations of the One