From Sacred Geography to Geopolitics
Aleksandr Dugin
This text appeared under the title “Ot sakral’noy geografii k geopolitike” in Elementy n.
4, and as the chapter 7 of “Misterii Evrazii” (
Geopolitical concepts became the major factors of modern politics since a long
time ago. They are built on general principles allowing to easily analyze the situation of any particular country and
region.
Geopolitics in its present form is undoubtedly a worldly, “profane”,
secularized science. But maybe, among all modern sciences, it saved in itself
the greatest connection with Tradition and traditional sciences. René Guénon said that modern chemistry is the outcome of the desacralization of a traditional science — alchemy, as
modern physics is of magic. Exactly in the same way one might say that modern
geopolitics is the product of the laicizing and desacralizing
of another traditional science — sacred geography. But since geopolitics holds
a special place among modern sciences, and it is often ranked as a
“pseudo-science”, its profanizing is not so
accomplished and irreversible, as in the case of chemistry or physics. The
connection with sacred geography here is rather distinctly visible. Therefore
it is possible to say that geopolitics stands in an intermediate place between
traditional science (sacred geography) and profane science.
The two primary concepts of geopolitics are land and sea. Just
these two elements —Earth and Water — lie at the roots of human qualitative
representation of earthly space. Through the experience of land and sea,
earth and water, man enters into contact with the fundamental aspects of his
existence. Land is stability, gravity, fixity, space as such. Water is
mobility, softness, dynamics, time.
These two elements are in essence the most obvious display of the
material nature of the world. They stand outside of man: everything is heavy
and fluid. They are also inside him: body and blood. (The same happens also at
a cellular level.)
The universatility of the experience of earth
and water generates the traditional concept of Firmament, since the presence of
the Higher Waters (the source of rain) in the sky also implies the presence of
a symmetric and necessary element —earth, land, the celestial vault. Anyway,
Earth, Sea, Ocean are in essence the major categories
of earthly existence, and for mankind it is impossibile
not to see in them some basic attributes of the universe. As the two basic
terms of geopolitics, they preserve their significance both for civilizations
of a traditional kind and for exclusively modern states, peoples and
ideological blocks. At the level of global geopolitical phenomena, Land and Sea
generated the terms: thalassocratia and tellurocratia, i.e. “ power by
means of the sea ” and “ power by means of the land ”.
The force of any state and any empire is based upon the preferential
development of one of these categories. Empires are either “thalassocratic”,
or “tellurocratics”. The former imply the existence
of a mother country and colonies, the latter of a capital and provinces on
“common land”. In the case of “thalassocracy” its
territory is not unified into one land space - which creates an element of
discontinuity. The sea — here lies both strength and weakness of “ thalassocratic power ”. “Tellurocracy”, vice-versa, has the quality of territorial
continuity.
But geographical and cosmological logics would at once complicate the
seemingly simple scheme of this division: the pair “land—sea”, by reciprocal
superimposition of its elements, gives birth to the ideas of “
maritime land ” and of “land water”. The maritime land is the island,
i.e. the basis of maritime empire, the pole of thalassocracy.
Land water or water within land are the rivers, which
predetermine the development of overland empires. Just on the river is located
the city, that is the capital, the pole of tellurocracy.
This symmetry is symbolic, economic and geographical at the same time. It is
important to notice that the status of
One more detail is relevant: historical thalassocracy
is linked to the West and the
Thalassocracy and Atlantism became synonyms long before colonial expansion of
Besides these two global categories — Land and Sea —geopolitics operates also
with more particular definitions. Among thalassocratic
realities, there is a differentiation between sea and oceanic formations. So,
for instance, the sea civilization of the Black Sea or Mediterranean Sea are
rather qualitatively different from the civilization of the oceans, i.e.
insular powers and peoples dwelling on the shores of the open ocean. More
particular divisions exist also between river and lake civilizations, linked to
continents.
Tellurocracy too has
its particular forms. So it is possible to distinguish a civilization of the
Steppe and a civilization of the Forest, a civilization of the Mountains and a
civilization of the Plains, a civilization of the Desert and a civilization of
Ice. The varieties of landscape in sacred geography are understood as
symbolical complexes linked to the specificity of state, religious and ethical
ideology of the different peoples. And even in that case, when we deal with
universalistic ecumenical religion, its concrete embodying in such or such
people, race, or state will be identically subject to adaptation according to
the local sacred-geographical context.
Desert and steppes represent the geopolitical microcosm of the nomads. Precisely
in deserts and steppes the tellurocratic tendency
reaches its summit, as the“water” factor here is
minimally present. The empires of Desert and Steppe should logically be the
geopolitical bridgehead of tellurocracy.
As an example of the empire of Steppe, one might consider the empire of Gengis Kahn, while a typical example of the empire of
Wilderness is the arabian khalifat, arisen under direct influence of the
nomads.
Mountains and the civilizations of mountains more often represent
archaic, fragmentary. Mountain countries not only are not sources of expansion;
on the contrary, there are concentrated the victims of the geopolitical
expansion of other tellurocratic forces. No empire
has its centre in mountain regions. Hence the so often repeated motive of
sacred geography: “mountains are populated by demons”. On the other hand, the
idea of the conservation of the residuals of ancient races and civilizations on
the mountans is shown in the fact that precisely on
the mountains the sacred centres of tradition are
placed. It is even possible to say that in tellurocracies
a mountain corresponds to some spiritual power.
The logical combination of both concepts — mountain as a hieratic image
and plain asa regal
image— became the symbolism of the hill, i.e. a small or average height. The
hill is a symbol of imperial might raising above the secular level of the
steppe, but not reaching the limit of supreme power (as it is in the case of
mountains). A hill is a dwelling place for a king, a count, an emperor, but not
for the priest. All capitals of large tellurocratic
empires are placed on a hill or on hills (often on seven hills – the number of
the planets; or on five — thye number of elements,
including ether; and so on).
The forest in sacred geography is close to the mountains in a definite
sense. The symbolism of the tree is related to the symbolism of the mountain
(both the former and the latter designate the world axis). Therefore in tellurocracies the forest also plays a peripheral function
— it, too, is the “place of the priests” (druids, magi, hermits), but also at
the same time the “place of demons”, i.e.
archaic residuals from a vanished past. Neither the forest zone can be the
centre of the overland empire.
The tundra represents the northern analogue to the steppe and the
desert, although the cold climate makes it much less significant from a
geopolitical point of view. This “periphericity”
reaches its apogee with ices, which, similarly to the mountains, are deeply
archaic zones. It is indicative that the eskimo
shamanic tradition implies departing alone among ices, where to the future
shaman the world beyond is opened out. Thus, ices are a hieratic zone, the
threshold of a different world.
From these primary and most general characteristics of the geopolitical
map, it is possible to define the various regions of the planet according to
their sacred quality. This method can also be applied to the local features of
the landscape at a level of single countries or even of single localities. It
is also possible to trace the likeness of ideologies and traditions of the most
(apparently) different peoples, in the event that the native born landscape is the
same.
Cardinal Ponts in the context of sacred geography
have special qualitative characteristic. In the various traditions and in the
various periods of these traditions, the picture of sacred geography can vary
according to the cyclical phases of development of the given tradition. Thus
the symbolic function of Cardinal Points often varies also. Not going deep into
details, it is possible to formulate the most
universal law of sacred geography with reference to East and West.
Sacred geography on the basis of “space symbolism” traditionally
considers the East as “the
The West has the opposite symbolical meaning. It is the “country of
death”, the “lifeless world”, the “green country” (as
the ancient Egyptians called it). West is “the empire of exile”, “the pit of
the rejected”, according to the expression of Islamic mystics.
West is “anti-east”, the country of “zakata”[in russian], decay, degradation, transition from the manifest
to the non-manifest, from life to death, from completeness to need, etc. West [Zapad, in russian] is the place
where the sun goes, where it “sinks down”[za-padaet].
According to the given logics of natural cosmic symbolism, the ancient
traditions organized their “sacred space”, founded their centres
of cult, burial places, temples and edifices, and interpreted the natural and “civilizational” features of geographical, cultural and
political territories of the planet. In this way, the structure itself of
migrations, wars, campaigns, demographic waves, building of empires etc. was
defined by the original, pragmatic logics of sacred geography. Along the
East-West axis were drawn peoples and civilizations, possessing hierarchical
characters — closer to the East were those closer to Sacral, to Tradition, to
spiritual wealth. Closer to West, those of a more decayed, degraded and dying
Spirit.
Of course this logicis was not absolute, but
at the same time it was neither minor nor relative — as it is today wrongly
considered by many “profane” scholars of ancient religions and traditions. As a
matter of fact, sacred logics and the following cosmic symbolism were much more
consciously realized, understood and practised by the
ancient peoples, than it is agreed to esteem today. And even in our antisacred world, at an “unconscious” level almost always
archetypes of sacred geography are preserved in their integrity, and are awoken
in the most relevant and critical moments of social cataclysms.
So sacred geography univocally affirms the law of
“qualitative space”, in which the East represents the symbolic “ontological
plus”, and the West the “ontological minus”. According
to the Chinese tradition, the East is Yang, the male, bright, solar principle,
and the West is Yin, the female, dark, lunar principle.
We shall observe how this sacred-geographical logics
is mirrored in geopolitics, which, being an exclusively modern science, is only
focused upon the factual situation, leaving out of the frame the most sacred
principles.
Geopolitics in its original formulations by Ratzel,
Kjellen and Mackinder (and
later by Haushofer and
the Russian eurasists) just refrained from connecting
the features of the different kinds of civilizations and states to their
geographical disposition. Geopoliticians stared at
the fact of a fundamental difference between “insular” and “continental”
powers, between “western”, “progressive” civilization and “eastern”, “despotic”
and “archaic” cultural forms. Since in general the question about Spirit in its
metaphysical and sacred comprehension never arose in modern science, geopoliticians left it aside, preferring to evaluate the
situation in different, more modern terms, rather than through the concepts of
“sacred” and “profane”, “traditional” and “antitraditional”
etc.
Geopoliticians
established the major differences between political, cultural and industrial
development of Eastern and Western in the last centuries. The final picture is
the following. The West is the centre of “material” and “technological”
development. At the cultural-ideological level, there “liberal-democratic”
tendencies, individualistic and humanist world
views are prevailing. At the economic level, priority is given to trade and
technical modernization. In the West theories about “progress”, “evolution”,
“progressive development of history” for the first time appeared, completely
alien to the traditional Eastern world (and also to those periods of Western
history, when a rigorous sacred tradition existed there too - as it was, in
particular, in the Middle Ages). Coercion at a social level in the West
acquired only an economic character, and the Law of Idea and Force was
gradually replaced by the Law of Money. Gradullay a
peculiar “Western ideology” was cast in the universal formula of “ideology of
human rights”, which became a dominant principle in the most western regions of
the planet —
Geopolitical East represents in itself the straight opposition to
geopolitical West. Instead of economic modernization, here (in the “less
developed countries”) traditional, archaic modes of production of corporative,
shop-manufacturing type prevail. Instead of economic coercion, more often the
state uses “moral” or simply physical coercion (Law of Idea and Law of Force). Instead
of “democracy” and “human right” the East gravitates around totalitarianism,
socialism and authoritarianism, i.e. around various types of social regimes,
whose only common feature is that the centre of their systems there is not the“individual”, “man” with his “rights” and his peculiar
“individual values”, but something supra-individual, supra-human — be it
“society”, “nation”, “people”, “idea”, “weltanschauung”, “religion”, “cult of
the leader” etc. The East opposed to western liberal democracy the most various
types of non-liberal, non-individualistic the societies — from authoritarian
monarchy up to theocracy or socialism. Moreover, from a pure typological,
geopolitical point of view, the political specificity of this or that regime
was secondary in comparison with the qualitative dividing between “western” (=
“individualist - mercantile”) order and “eastern ” (= “supra-individualist –
based on force”) order. Representative forms of such anti-western civilization
were the
It is curious to notice that Rudolf Kjellen,
the first author to use the term “geopolitics”, illustrated the difference
between West and East in this way. «A typical pet phrase of the Americans, —
wrote Kjellen — is “go
ahead”, that literally means “forward”. In it the interior and natural
geopolitical optimism and “progressism” of the
American civilization, being the extreme form of the western pattern, is
mirrored. Russians usually repeat the word “nechego”
[nothing] (in Russian in Kjellen’s text — A.D.). In it are shown “pessimism”,
“contemplation”, “fatalism”and “adherence to
tradition,” all peculiar features of the East
».
If we now return to the paradigm of sacred geography, we shall see the
direct contradiction between the priorities of modern geopolitics (such
concepts as “progress”, “liberalism”, “human rights”, “mercantile order” etc.,
are today positive terms for the majority of people) and the priorities of
sacred geography, evaluating the various kinds of civilizations from a
completely opposite point of view (concepts like “spirit”, “contemplation”,
“resignation to superhuman force or superhuman idea”, “ideocracy”
etc. in sacred civilizations were exclusively positive, and so remain till now
for the Eastern peoples at the level of “collective unconscious”). So modern
geopolitics (except for Russian eurasists, German
followers of Haushofer, Islamic fundamentalists etc.)
evaluate the picture of the world from an opposite perspective than traditional
sacred geography. But thus both sciences converge in the description of
fundamental laws of the geographical picture of civilizations.
Besides the sacred-geographical determinism on an East - West axis, an
extremely relevant problem is represented by the other, vertical, orientation
axis — the North - South axis. Here, as well as in all remaining cases, the
principles of sacred geography, the symbolism of cardinal points and the
related continents, has its direct analogue in the geopolitical picture of the
world, which either is naturally built up in the course of the historical
process, or is consciously and artificially formed as a result of purposely
actions of the leaders of such or such geopolitical formations. From the point
of view of the “integral tradition”, the difference between “artificial” and
“natural” is generally rather relative, as Tradition never knew anything similar
to carthesian or kantian
dualism, strictly separating the “subjective” from the “objective”
(“phenomenal” and “noumenal”). Therefore the sacred
determinism of North or South is nor just a physical, natural,
landscape-climatic factor (i.e. something “objective”) or just “idea”,
“concept” generated by the minds of such or such individuals (i.e. something
“subjective”), but something of a third kind, exceeding both the objective and
subjective poles. One might say that the sacred North, the archetype of North,
halving itself in history in northern natural landscape, on the one hand, and
in the idea of North, “nordism”, on the other
hand.
The most ancient and original layer of Tradition univocally affirms the
primacy of North above the South. The symbolism of North relates to a Source,
to an original northern paradise, from where all human civilization originates.
Ancient Iranic and Zoroastrian texts speak about the
northern country of “Aryiana Vaeijao”
and its capital “Vara”, from where the ancient arians were expelled by glaciation,
which sent them Ariman, spirit of Evil and oppositor to the bright Ormudz. The
ancient Veda too speak about the Northern country as
the ancestral home of the Hindu, about a Sveta-dipa,
The ancient Greeks spoke about Hyperborea, the
northern island with capital
Sacred geography correlates North to spirit,
light, purity, completeness, unity, eternity.
The south symbolizes something directly opposite — materiality,
darkness, mixture, privation, plurality, immersion in the stream of time and
becoming. Even from the natural point of view, in polar areas there is one long
semi-annual Day and one long semi-annual Night. It is the Day and Night of the
gods and heroes, of the angels. Even decayed traditions remembered this sacral,
spiritual, supernatural Cardinal North, including the northern regions as the
dwelling place of “spirits” and “forces from beyond”. In the south the Day and
Night of the gods are fragmented into a set of human days, the original
symbolism of Hyperborea is lost, and its memories
become a piece of “culture”, of “legend”. South generally often corresponds to
culture, i.e. to that sphere of human activity where the Invisible and the
Purely Spiritual acquires material, hardened, visible outlines. South is the
reign of substance, life, biology and instincts. The South corrupts the
northern purity of Tradition, but preserves its traces in materialized
features.
The North - South pair in sacred geography is not reduced to an abstract
opposition of Good and Evil. It is rather the opposition of Spiritual Idea to
its coarsened, material embodying. In normal cases, as the primacy of Northis recognized by the South, between these parties of a
light there exist an harmonious relation — the North “spiritualizes” the South,
the nordic messengers give the southerners Tradition,
lays the foundations of sacred civilizations. If the South fails to recognize
the primacy of North, the sacred opposition, the “war of continents” begins,
and from the point of view of tradition the South is responsible for this
conflict by breaking the sacred rules. In the Rama-Yana,
for instance, the southern island Lanka is considered as a home of the demons
which have stolen the wife of Rama, Sita, and declared war to the continental North with
capital Ayodjya.
Thus it is important to mark that in sacred geography the North - South
axis is more relevant than the East - West axis. But being the more relevant
one, it corresponds to the most ancient stages of cyclical history. The great
war of North and South, Hyperborea and Gondvana (ancient paleo-continent
of the South) refers to “antidiluvian” times. In the
last phases of the cycle it becomes more hidden, veiled. The paleo-continents of North and South
themselves disappear. The testimonial sign of opposition is passed to East and
West.
The shift from the vertical North - South axis to the horizontal East –
East axis, typical of the last stages of the cycle, nevertheless saves the
logic and symbolical connection between these two sacred-geographical pairs. The
North – South pair (i.e. Spirit - Matter, Eternity - Time) is projected on the
East - West pair (i.e. Tradition and Profanity, Origin and Decay). East is the
horizontal downward projection of North. West — the
horizontal upward projection of the South. From such transference of
sacred meanings one can easily obtain the structure of the continental vision
peculiar to Tradition.
Sacred North defines a special human type, which can have a biological, racial
embodying, but can also not have it. The substance of “nordism”
is consist in the capability of man to raise each
object of the physical, material world to its archetype, to its Idea. This
quality is not a simple development of rational origin. Vice-versa, carthesian and kantian “pure
intellect” for its nature is not able to overcome the thin border between
“phenomenon” and “noumenon”-
but just this ability lies at the bases of “nordic”
thinking. The man of North is not simply white, “arian”
or indoeuropean for his blood, language and culture. The
man of North is a particular kind of being possessing
a straight intuition of the Sacred. To him the cosmos is a texture of symbols,
each of them called out of secret by the eye of the Spiritual First Principle. The
man of North is the “solar man”, Sonnenmensch, not
absorbing energy, as black holes do, but outlining it, pouring out light, force
and wisdom from its spiritual flow of creation.
The pure nordic
civilization disappeared with the ancient Hyperboreans,
but its messengers have laid the bases of all present traditions. This nordic “race” of Teachers stood at
the origins of religion and culture of the peoples of all continents and colours of skin. Traces of an hyperborean
cult can be found among the Indians of Northern America and among the ancient
Slaves, among the founders of the Chinese civilization and among the natives of
the Pacific, among the blond Germans and among the black shamans of
The man of the South, the gondvanic type, is directly
opposed to the “nordic”
type. The man of the South lives in a circle of effects, of secondary
manifestations; he dwells in the cosmos, which he venerates but does not
understand. He worships exteriority, but not interiority. He carefully saves
tracks of spirituality, its embodying in the material environment, but is not
able to proceed from symbolizing to symbolized. The
man of the South lives by passions and rushes, he puts the psychic above the
spiritual (which he simply does not know) and worships Life as a higher
authority. The cult of the Great Mother, of the matter generating the variety
of forms, is typical of the man of the South. The civilization of the South is
a civilization of the Moon receiving the light from the Sun (North), preserving
and diffusing it for some time, but periodically losing contact with it (new
moon). The man of the South is a Mondmensch.
When the people of the South stay in harmony with the people of North,
i.e. recognize their authority and their typological (not racial!) superiority,
harmony reigns among civilizations. When they claim their supremacy because of
their archetypical relation to reality, there arises a distorted cultural type,
which can be globally defined by adoration of
idols, fetishism or paganism (in the negative, pejorative sense of this
term).
As in the case of paleocontinents,
pure northern and southern types existed only in remote ancient times. The
people of North and people of the South opposed one another at the origins. Later
all peoples of North penetrated into southern lands, founding sometimes bright
expressions of the “nordic” civilization — ancient
The type of the people of North could be projected in the South, East and West.
In the South, the Light of North generated great metaphysical civilizations
such as the Indian, Iranian or Chinese, which in the situation of the
“conservative” South for a long time saved the Revelation, entrusted by it. However,
the simpleness and clearness of northern symbolism
turned here into a complex and miscellaneous tangle of sacred doctrines,
sacraments and rites. However, the further to the South, the feebler are the
traces of the North. And among the inhabitants of the Pacific islands and
In the East, North is shown as the classic traditional society founded
on the univocal superiority of the supra-individual above the individual, where
the “human” and the “rational” are erased before the supra-human and
supra-rational Principle. If the South gives the civilization a character of
“stability”, the East defines its sacrality and
authenticity, the major guarantor of which is the Light of the North.
In the West, North was shown in the heroic societies, where such
tendency, peculiar to the West, to fragmentation, individualisation
and razionalisazion surpassed itself, and the
individual, becoming the Hero, grew out of the narrow framework of the “human –
too-human” personality. North in West is personified by the symbolical figure
of Heracles who, on the one hand, releases Prometheus (the pure western,
titanic, “humanist” tendency), and on the other, helps Zeus and the gods to
defeat the rebellion of the giants (i.e. serves for the sake of sacred rules and
spiritual Order).
The South, on the contrary, projects itself on all three orientations
according to an opposite image. In the North, it gives the effect of “archaism”
and cultural stagnation. Even the most northern, “nordic”
traditions under the southern influence, “paleo-asiatic”,
“Finnish” or “Eskimo” elements acquire the characters of“idol-worshipping” and “fetishism”. (This is
characteristic, in particular, of the German-Scandinavian civilization in the
“epoch of the Skalds”.)
In the East, the forces of the South are shown in despotic societies,
where normal and fair eastern indifference to the individual turns into the
denial of the great Supra-human Subject. All forms of Eastern totalitarianism,
both typological and racial, are linked to the South.
And at last, in the West the South is shown in the extremely rough,
materialistic forms of individualism, when the atomic individuals reach the
limit of antiheroic degeneration, worshipping only “the golden veal” of comfort
and egoistical hedonism. That exactly such combination of the two
sacred-geopolitical tendencies gives the most negative type of civilization is
obvious, since in it two attitudes, already in themselves negative — the South
on the vertical line and the West on the horizontal line - are laid one upon
the other.
If from the perspective of sacred geography the symbolical North univocally
corresponds to positive aspects, and the South to negative, in an exclusively
modern geopolitical picture of the world everything is much more complex, and
to some extent even turned upside down. Modern geopolitics understands the
terms “North” and “South” as wholly different categories than sacred geography
does.
Firstly, the paleocontinent of North, Hyperborea, since many millennia already does not exist on
a physical level, remaining a spiritual reality, on which is directed the
spiritual look of the intiated, exacting the original
Tradition.
Secondly, the ancient nordic race, the race of
the “white teachers”, coupled with the pole in the primordial epoch, does not
coincide at all with what is commonly agreed to call today the coupled with
white race”, based only on physical characters, on the colour
of the skin etc. Northern Tradition and its original population, “nordic autochtones” since a long
time do not represent any more a concrete historical-geographical reality. By
common judgement, even the last remains of this
primordial culture have disappeared from physical reality already some
millennia ago.
Thus, North in Tradition is a meta-historical and meta-geographical
reality. The same can be said also about the “hyperborean race
” — a “race” not in the biological, but in pure spiritual, metaphysical
sense. (This theme of “metaphysical races” was in detail developed in the works
of Julius Evola).
The continent of the South and the whole South of
Tradition, too, since a long time ago do not exist any more in the pure state,
no lesser than its most ancient population. Somehow,
the “South” from some moment onwards became practically the whole planet, as
the influence of the original polar initiatic centre
and its messengers on the world diminished. The modern races of the South
represent a product of multiple mixtures with the races of North, and the color
of the skin for a long time already ceased to be the distinctive sign of
belonging to such or such “metaphysical race”.
In other words, the modern geopolitical picture of the world has very
little in commun with the principial
vision of the world in its supra-historical, meta-temporal cut. The continents
and their populations in our epoch have gone extremely far from those
archetypes, which corresponded to them in primordial times. Therefore between
real continents and real races (the realities of modern geopolitics), on the
one hand, and meta-continents and meta-races
(the realities of traditional sacred geography), on the other hand, today there
exist not just a simple discrepancy, but almost an inverse
correspondence.
Modern geopolitics uses the concept of “north” most frequently with the
definition “rich” — “the rich North ”, and also “the
advanced North ”. This connotates
the whole aggregate of the western civilization, giving its basic attention to
the development of the material and economic side of life. “Rich North ”
is rich not for being cleverer, or more intellectual, or more spiritual than
the “South” but because it builds its social system on the principle of
maximizing the material which can be taken from the social and natural
potential, from the exploitation of human and natural resources. The racial
image of “Rich North ” is linked to those peoples having white skin, and this
feature lays at the roots of the various versions, explicit or hidden, of
“western racism” (in particular Anglo-Saxon). The success of “rich North” in
the material sphere was raised to a political and even “racial” principle in
those countries which were the avantgarde of
industrial, technical and economic development — i.e. England, Holland, and
later Germany and the US. In this case, material and quantitative welfare was equalled to a qualitative criterion, and on this base the
most ridiculous prejudices about “barbarism”, “primitiveness”,
“underdevelopment” and “untermenschlichkeit” of
southern (i.e. not of belonging to “rich North”) peoples were developed. Such
“economic racism ” was especially clearly shown in the
Anglo-Saxon colonial conquests, and afterwards its embellished version was
introduced in the most rough and contradictory aspects of the
national-socialist ideology. Thus, often Nazi ideologists simply blended vague
guesses about pure “spiritual nordism” and “spiritual
arian race” with vulgar, mercantilistic,
biological racism of the English kind. (By the way, precisely this substitution
of categories of sacred geography with categories of material and technical
development was also that most negative side of national-socialism which led
it, eventually, to its political, theoretical and even military collapse). But
even after the defeat of the Third Reich, this kind of a
racism of the “rich North” has not disappeared at all from political
life. However its bearers became first of all the
Actually, “rich North” geopolitically means those countries where forces
directly opposite to Tradition have won - forces of quantity, materialism,
atheism, spiritual degradation and emotional degeneration. “
Rich North ” means something radically distinct from “spiritual nordism”, from “hyperborean spirit”. The substance of North
in sacred geography is the primacy of spirit above substance, the definitive
and total victory of Light, Equity and Purity above the darkness of animal
life, the arrogance of individual passions and the mud of base egoism. “Rich
North” mondialist geopolitics, on the contrary, means
exclusively material welfare, hedonism, consumer society, the unproblematic and
artificial pseudo-paradise of those whom Nietzsche called “the last men”. Material
progress of the technical civilization was accompanied by a monstrous spiritual
regress just of sacred culture, and consequently, from the point of view of
Tradition, the “wealth” of modern “advanced” North cannot serve as a criterion
of genuine superiority above material “poverty” and technical backwardness of
modern “primitive South ”.
Moreover, material “poverty” of the South quite often is conversely
linked to the conservation in southern regions of the genuinely sacred forms of
civilization; this means that behind such “poverty” a spiritual wealth is
sometimes disguised. At least two sacred civilizations still exist today in the
Southern space, in spite of all attempts from “rich (and aggressive!) North” to impose on everyone its own measure and path of
development. These are Hinduist India and the
Islamist world. As the
The “Poor South” in mondialist projects is actually
synonym ot “the Third
world”. This world was called “Third” during the cold war, and this concept
supposed that the other two “worlds” — advanced capitalist and less advanced
Soviet — are more relevant and significant for global geopolitics, than all
remaining regions. Basically, the expression “Third world ” has a pejorative
sense: according to utilitarian logics of tthe
”rich North”, such definition actually equates countries of the “Third world ”
to “nobody’s” bases of natural and human resources, which should only obey, be
exploited and be used for its own purposes. Thus “rich North ” skilfully manoeuvered the
traditional political-ideological and religious features of the “poor South ”,
trying to asserve to its exclusively
materialist and economic concerns those forces and structures, which on
spiritual potential much more exceeded the spiritual level of “North”. This
was almost always possible to it, as the same cyclical moment of development of
our civilization favours perverted, abnormal and
unnatural tendencies - since, according to the Tradition, we are now in the
latest period of the “dark century”, Khali-Yuga. Hinduism,
Confucianism, Islam, the autochthonous traditions of the “not white” peoples
became for the material conquerors of the “rich North” simply a drag on the
accomplishment of their purposes, but at the same time they have often used the
separate aspects of Tradition for achieving their mercatilistic
purposes — exploiting contradictions, religious features or national problems. Such
an utilitarian use of the various aspects of Tradition
for exclusively antitraditional purposes was an even
greater evil, than the straight denial of all Traditional values, since the
highest pervertion consists in that the great is asserved to the insignificant.
Actually “ the poor South ” is “poor” at a
material level precisely because of its spiritual attitudes, always
giving the material aspects of existence a minor and unimportant place. The
geopolitical South in our time saved in general an exclusively traditionalist attitude towards the objects of the
external world — a quiet, detached and, eventually, indifferent attitude — in
stark contrast to the material obsession of the “rich North”, to its
materialistic and hedonistic paranoia. The people of the “poor South” normally
dwell into Tradition, and till now their existences are fuller, deeper and even
more magnificent, as the active comparticipation in
sacred Tradition bestows on all aspects of their personal lives that sense,
that intensity, that saturation of which have been deprived for a long time the
representants of the “rich North”, - made hysterical
by nevroses, material fears, internal desolation,
complete aimlessness of existence, representing just a bright glass
kaleidoscope, only an empty picture.
It could be said that the correlation between North and South in original
times is polarly opposite to their correlation in our
epoch, as it is the South that today still preserves some links with the
Tradition, whereas the North has definitively lost them. Nevertheless this
statement does not absolutely cover the whole picture of reality, since the
true Tradition cannot admit in relation to itself such humiliating reference,
as the practices of aggressive-atheistic “ rich North
” with the “Third world”. The fact is that Tradition is preserved in the South
only in an inertial, fragmentary, partial way. It holds a passive position and
resists, only defending itself. Therefore the
spiritual North does not fully transfer itself to the South at the end of times - in the South there is only an accumulation
and preservation of spiritual impulses, never coupled with the sacred North. In
line of principle, the active traditional initiative cannot emanate from the
South. And on the contrary, the mondialist “rich
North” has managed so to harden its pernicious effect on the planet due to the specificity of northern regions, predisposed to
activity. North was and remains the elective place of force, therefore true
efficiency belongs to the geopolitical initiatives coming from the North.
The “Poor South” possesses today all spiritual priority before the “rich
North”, but it thus cannot serve as a serious alternative to the profane
aggression of the “rich North”, nor can offer the radical geopolitical project
capable to subvert the pathological picture of modern planetary space.
In the bipolar geopolitical picture “rich North” — “poor
South” there always existed an additional component having self-supporting and
very relevant meaning. It is the “second world ”.
Under the expression “second world ” it is
conventionally understood to mean the socialist camp integrated into the Soviet
system. This “second world” was neither the present “rich North”, as definite
spiritual motives secretly influenced the nominally materialistic ideology of
the Soviet socialism, neither the present “Third world”, since as a whole the
attitude to material development, “progress” and other only profane principles
laid at the roots of the Soviet system. The geopolitically eurasian
The end of the “Second world” as a special civilization leaves to the Euroasian space of the former USSR two alternatives —
either to be integrated in the “rich North” (that is, the West and the US), or
to be thrown down to the “poor South”, i.e. to turn into the “Third
world”. As a compromise variant, the separation of regions (part to the
“North”, and part to the “South”), is also possible. As always has been in the
last centuries, the initiative of redistributing geopolitical spaces in this
process belongs to the “rich North”, which, cynically using the paradoxes of
the same concept of “Second world ”, fixes new geopolitical borders and breaks
zones of influence. National, economic and religious factors serve the mondialists only as instruments in their cynical and deeply
materialistically motivated activity. It is not surprising, that besides false
“humanist” rethorics the “racist” reasons invoked to
inspire the Russians a complex of “white” superiority in relation to the Asian
and Caucasian south will even more often and almost openly be
used. To this is correlated the inverse process — the definitive rejection of
southern territories of the former “Second world ” to
the “poor South ” is accompanied by playing the the
card of fundamentalist tendencies, people’s inclination to Tradition, and the
revival of religion.
The “Second world”, being disintegrated, is broken along the lines of
“traditionalism” (the southern, inertial, conservative kind) and “antitraditionalism” (the actively northern, modernist and
materialist kind). Such dualism, which is only planned today, but in the near
future will become the dominant phenomenon of the Euroasian
geopolitics, is predetermined by the expansion of mondialistic
understanding of the world in terms of “rich North” — “poor South” “. Any
attempt to save the former Soviet Great Space, any attempt simply to save the
“Second world” as something self-supporting and balancing halfway between North
and South (in their exclusive modern meaning), cannot be crowned with success,
without putting into doubt the fundamental polar conception of modern
geopolitics, understood and realized in its real nature, leaving aside all
deceitful declarations of humanitarian and economic mood.
The “Second world” disappears. There is no more place
for it on the modern geopolitical map. At the same time, the pressure of the
“rich North” on the “poor South” increases, being one with an agressive materialistic technocratic society in the absence
of an intermediate power, that existed till yesterday – the “Second world”. Any
different destiny for the the “Second world”, than
the total partition according to the dictating rules of the “rich North”, is
possible only through a radical waiving of the planetary logics of a dichotomic North - South axis, considered in a mondialist key.
The “Rich mondialist North” globalizes its domination
over the planet through partition and destruction of the “Second world”. In
modern geopolitics this is also called as the “new world order”. The active
forces of antitradition consolidate their victory
over the passive recalcitrance of southern regions, preserving their economic
backwardness and defending Tradition in its residual forms. The internal
geopolitical energies of the “Second world ” are put
before a choice — either to be incorporated in the system of the “civilized
northern belt” and definitively to tear off any connection with a sacred
history (project of leftist mondialism), or to turn
into an occupied territory being allowed a partial restoration of some aspects
of tradition (project of the rightist mondialism). In
this direction the events today are developing and will develop in the near
future.
As the alternative project it is possible theoretically to formulate a different
path of geopolitical transformation based on rejecting the North - South mondialist logics and on returning to the spirit of genuine
sacred geography — as far as it possible at the end of dark era. It is the
project of the “Great Return” or, in different terminology, of the “Great War of Continents”.
In its most general features, the essence of this project is as
follows.
1) The “Rich North is opposed not to the “poor South”,
but to the “poor North”. The “Poor North ” is an
ideal, the sacred ideal of returning to the nordic
sources of civilization. Such North is “Poor”
because it is based on total ascetism, on radical
devotion to the highest values of Tradition, on the complete despise of the
material for the sake of the spiritual. “Poor North” geographically exists only
on the territories of
2) The “Poor South”, unable to counter itself
the “rich North”, engages a radical alliance with the “poor (eurasian) North” and starts a liberation struggle against
“northern” dictatorship. It is especially important to
strike the representants of the ideology of the “rich
South ”, i.e. those forces which, working in the “rich North”, stand up for
“development”, “progress” and “modernization” of traditional countries, which
practically will mean only an increasing withdrawal from the remains of sacred
Tradition.
3) The “Poor North” of the eurasian
East, together with the “poor South”, extending on a circle around the whole
planet, concentrate the forces struggling against the “rich North” of the atlantist West. Thus an
end is forever put to the ideologically vulgar versions of Anglo-Saxon racism,
hailing the “technical civilization of the white peoples” and echoing the mondialist propaganda. (Alain de Benoist
expressed this idea in the title of his famous book “The Third world and
During the struggle, the flame of the “resurrection of the
spiritual North”, the flame of Hyperborea transforms
the geopolitical reality. The new global ideology is the ideology of Final
Restoration, putting the final dot to the geopolitical history of civilization
- but not that dot, which wanted to put thhe mondialist
spokesmen of the End of History. The materialistic, atheistic, antisacral, technocratic, atlantist
variant of the End is turned into a different epilogue — the final Victory of
the sacred Avatar, the coming of the Terrible Destiny, giving those who chose
voluntary poverty a reign of spiritual abundance, and to those who preferred
wealth founded on assassination of Spirit, eternal damnation and torments in
hell.
The missed continents are lifted from the abysses of the past. Invisible
meta-continents appear into reality. A New Earth and New Heaven arise.
This path is not from sacred geography to geopolitics, but on the
contrary, from geopolitics to sacred geography.