Author: Alexander Dugin
Translator: Jafe Arnold
Introduction to Noomakhia – The Logos of Turan: The Indo-European Ideology of the Verticle (Moscow: Academic Project, 2017)
Turan and Eurasia: Similarities and Differences between Concepts
The space of North-Eastern Eurasia upon which Russia has established itself as a state and civilization over the past 500 years represents a special existential horizon. We can call this the Eurasian Horizon and speak of a specific Eurasian Dasein. This territory acquired the name Turan in Iranian sacred geography, and this name can by all means be seen as an analogue to the notion of “Eurasia.”[1] Insofar as we will examine Russian civilization and its Logos in a separate volume, and given that in Russian civilization the Eurasian element is largely predominant, it is natural to apply the notion of Eurasia to the study of the Russian Logos, as did the Eurasianist philosophers, such as N.S. Trubetzkoy [2], P.N. Savitsky [3], G.V. Vernadsky [4], N.N. Alekseev [5], L.N. Gumilev [6], etc. In this case, the civilizations of Eurasia, united by a common horizon preceding the emergence of Russia as an historico-cultural axis, can be integrated into the concept of Turan.
In Noomakhia, by Turan we mean the civilizations and cultures which took shape on the territory of North-Eastern Eurasia (with the exception of Russian civilization which is examined in a separate study). This, of course, is a rather conditional division, as Russian civilization itself can be studied from different angles of view, whether as part of the Slavic world, as a most important component of the Byzantine Orthodox space, as something self-sufficient and unique (samobytnoe, in the likes of “Continent Russia” [7]), or as one historical expression of the existential horizon of Turan. In the present volume of Noomakhia, we will focus on those peoples who took shape on the territory of Turan before and/or parallel to the Russians. In this case, establishing a correspondence between the Logos of Turan and the Russian Logos might be the next important step allowing for a better understanding of both.
Yet another important consideration to be taken into account is that, originally, we planned for this volume of Noomakhia to examine all the civilizations either belonging to the Eurasian group or figuring under Eurasian influence. Thus, as we have just said, for us Turan and Eurasia were to function as synonyms. However, over the course of working on this subject, we have found that such might be divided into two components: firstly, we can speak of the Indo-European (and only Indo-European!) nomadic cultures that formed on the territory of Eurasia, more precisely in the space of the Great Steppe, in the period from the fifth millennium BC to the first millennium AD; secondly, we can consider those non-Indo-European peoples, on whom the influence of the nomadic Indo-European societies of the Great Steppe was decisive and fundamental, and who subsequently inherited the Indo-Europeans’ mission starting in the first centuries AD, with the invasion of the Huns, and continuing up to the 19th century.
Thus, we have divided our study into two volumes. In the first, present book, The Logos of Turan, we focus exclusively on the Indo-European peoples who arose in the Great Steppe and spread their influence across virtually the whole territory of the Eurasian continent. In the second volume, The Horizons and Civilizations of Eurasia: The Indo-European Legacy and the Traces of the Great Mother, we follow the transfer of this steppic, nomadic, martial tradition to other, non-Indo-European peoples, first and foremost of the Altaic family, and we study the influence of Indo-European culture on other neighboring civilizations, such as the Siberian (and Paleo-Asiatic), the Tibetan, the Finno-Ugric, and the Caucasian.[8] For the sake of clarity of exposition, we have thus had to divide our preliminary conceptualization of the shared identity of the notions of Turan and Eurasia into two postulates: we understand “Turan” to be the civilization created in the space of the Great Eurasian Steppe by the Indo-European peoples and then transmitted directly to other nomadic peoples (first and foremost the Altaic); by “Eurasia”, we mean the much wider spectrum of existential horizons, including Turan – as the core of the Eurasian continent, both Indo-European as well as post-Indo-European (Turko-Mongolian) – and the totality of civilizations and cultures that formed around the periphery of the Great Steppe which were influenced (both directly and indirectly) by Turan and the Indo-Europeans.
Thus, Turan should be considered the core, center, and heart of Eurasia, and Eurasia itself as the broader geosophical context including both Turanian and non-Turanian elements, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European cultures. This situation is further complicated by the fact that, moving throughout the space of Eurasia, some Indo-European cultures lost their primordial, axial identity (for example, the ancient Lydians and Phrygians in Anatolia, or the peoples of Western Europe in Modernity), while at the same time some non-Indo-European peoples (above all the Altaic peoples, as well as the Tibetans, the Uralic peoples, the peoples of the Caucasus, and even some Paleo-Asiatics, such as the Kets) adopted and laid such at the foundation of their cultures.
It is precisely with regards to this dialectic that the title of the second volume of Noomakhia dedicated to the question of Turan and Eurasia features an appeal to the gestalt of the Great Mother. If the Logos of Turan is at the center of the Eurasian continent and represents pure Apollonianism, then on the (noologically) opposite pole is the Logos of Cybele.[9] In the projection of this noological structure onto the geographical map we can see that the Logos of Cybele exerts decisive influence around the periphery of the Eurasian continent, i.e., it is built into the geosophical structure of Eurasia. If the Logos of Apollo dominates in Turan (the Great Steppe), then in the periphery traces of another civilization can be noted, one in which chthonic motives, Titanism, and matriarchy predominate. Turan (Apollonianism) exerted its influence, embodied first and foremost and most lucidly of all in the Indo-European nomadic, warrior cultures, on all the peoples and cultures of Eurasia, but its strength diminished insofar as it neared the coastal zones of the Eurasian continent where, on the contrary, the Logos of Cybele has been proportionally strong. This constitutes the main geosophical map of Eurasia and the dialectical essence of the Eurasian horizons. But in order to be convinced of this thesis, we need to study and dissect first the structures of the Indo-European civilizations and cultures of Turan, in order to determine their noological nature, and then, with the achieved results, turn to surveying other peoples and societies. The conceptual difference between Turan and Eurasia will be fully clear upon acquaintance with these two volumes of Noomakhia, which represent a whole, or two parts of one and the same study.
As follows, it bears recalling that the methodological foundation of Noomakhia was expounded in the first two volumes, The Three Logoi: Apollo, Dionysus, and Cybele and Geosophy: Horizons and Civilizations,[10] and the examination of individual societies and cultures belonging to the circle of the Indo-European horizon has already been undertaken in the individual Noomakhia volumes dedicated to the study of the Germanic, French, Latin, and Greek Logoi, to the civilization of Great Britain, the Semitic world, and the Indian and Iranian cultures.[11-18] All of the latter volumes of Greater Noomakhia are of principal importance to adequately understanding the Logos of Turan just as, in turn, this volume and its closely adjoined companion, Horizons and Civilizations of Eurasia,[19] can be considered key to the above-cited. Taken together, all of these works constitute a most important cornerstone of the Geosophy of Eurasia.
The Turanian Proto-Culture á la Oswald Spengler
As the special space of a self-sufficient civilization, Turan has only rarely been the subject of what have been rather narrowly specialized and thematic studies. One exception to this is the work of Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), who discerned Turan to be a particular civilizational field of principle significance to mankind as a whole. Spengler developed his theory of Turan in his unfinished work under the working title The Epic of Man, fragments of which have been published and made accessible to scholars only recently.[20-21] In this work, Spengler describes the voluminous field of history as consisting of four main stages or phases: A, B, C, and D.
Phase A lasted from the undetermined time of the first signs of Homo sapiens to the Upper Paleolithic. Spengler generally adheres to the concept of evolution, but he imparts such with a particular cyclical dimension. For our part, we categorically reject this theory and appeal to such exclusively from the standpoint of describing cultures while discarding any genetic continuity, much less hierarchy between societies built on notions of “more ancient vs. more modern”, where “more modern” is seen as more developed, perfect, and differentiated than “ancient.” The first signs of reasoning man might appear in one or another epoch only to disappear in another. Everything depends on how we understand “reason”, a question which is in itself conditioned by a specific culture and mythology. Therefore, no universal criteria can be accepted here, and all the more insufficient are any attempts at building a progressive sequence from “less rational” types of society and man towards “more rational.” If we engage in such, we are simply projecting the criteria of our own society (e.g., modern Western or Western-centric) onto all types of society in general, which is in itself illegitimate and incorrect ethnocentrism. Therefore, for Spengler, Phase A is purely a conditionality meant to inform us that we know nothing for sure of this epoch and can advance no hypotheses on this matter.
Phase B, according to Spengler, is situated in the interim from 20,000 to 6,000 BC and is characterized by man’s discovery of the “inner world”, the soul, and the phenomenon of death. Spengler metaphorically likens this period to his beloved crystals and minerals. Phase B, according to Spengler, means the presence of self-consciousness, distinguishable by the modern scholar, and identifiable in the traces of ancient cultures. Although Spengler and many of our contemporaries in general conceive of such “self-consciousness” as “simpler”, this does not mean that it really was such.
Spengler calls both Phase A and Phase B “non-organic”, and the two following, C and D, “organic.” Spengler compares the third phase, C, to the slowly but autonomously moving simplest animal, the amoeba.[22] In this phase, proto-cultures are formed which will later, in Phase D lasting up to the present day, lie at the heart of all the historically known historico-cultural types. Spengler enumerates three “proto-cultures”, three “civilizational amoebas” at stage C: (1) the Atlantic, (2) the Kushite, and (3) the Turanian.
The Atlantic culture, in Spengler’s view, claimed the Western parts of Europe and Africa, and was distinguished by a heightened concern with the post-mortem worlds. In classical archaeology, the pre-Indo-European population of Europe, to which belonged the Minoans, the Pelasgians, the Basques, the Sicels, the Iberians, and the Leleges (to which some would also add the Picts, and so on), is generally considered to be the bearer of this Atlantic culture. This is the “culture of the otherworld.” Hence the immense monuments erected for the deceased, the cult of the “otherworld” and its divinities, and the cyclopean constructions typical of this culture, such as the megaliths. This culture was preoccupied with questions of genetic identity, blood, which connects the living to the world of the dead. Hence the beginning of mummification, embalmment, and luxuriant burial rituals. The Atlantic culture was the culture of “living death.”[23]
The second proto-culture of epoch C was the Kushite culture, whose center Spengler situates in the South of Eurasia between India and the Red Sea. This proto-culture was typified by a preoccupation with the of idea of “fate”, as if such were a mathematical law of the world embodied in the Sky to which all processes on Earth are subject. The Kushite culture was indifferent towards death and life, instead concentrating all of its attention on the study of the mathematical patterns of the world. In Phase D, the Kushite style would be most fully of all expressed in Assyrio-Babylonian civilization.
The third type of proto-culture is that of Turan, and it is here that we arrive at ideas which resonate with both Noomakhia and some of the philosophical and historical intuitions of the Russian Eurasianist thinkers. The proto-culture of Turan, according to Spengler, represents a pure “heroic style.” At its center stands the battle of the hero against the forces of death and fate. The hero and his “I” are put in the forefront and recognized to be a divine element. The world is full of the forces of life and is the field of endless battle. Neither fate (of the Kushite style) nor death (in the Atlantic style) are higher values for the man of Turan. Immortality is achieved only through battle, and a dignified life was believed to be one lived with a high-raised head. The gods of the martial civilizations of Turan embody this archetype: they are warriors, fearless, and indomitable. Spengler considers the chariot to be the most important symbol of the Turanian style. The identification of the chariot with the Indo-Europeans is not only Spengler’s hypothesis, but is the common ground of archaeology. Indeed, the most ancient traces of chariots are to be found in Eurasia, in the South Urals around 2000 BC, and the first whole chariots were found in the Sintashta cultural circle dated to the end of the 21st century BC. Around 2700 BC, the first traces of carts, which preceded the first war chariots (the Maikop culture), are also to be found in Turan. It is from the South Urals that chariots began to disperse throughout the surrounding regions, including all the way up to the Caspian and Aral Sea, and across Eurasia in both directions – to Western Europe, all the way up to the Atlantic, and to the Far East.
Around 1200 BC, waves of warlike peoples on chariots descended towards the Mediterranean and founded new types of cultures. The Achaeans flooded Greece and settled in Mycenae. The Hyksos invaded Egypt, and the Kassites seized Babylon. In the very same period, Indo-European warriors on chariots advanced into Hindustan and built the Vedic culture of India on top of the remains of the ancient Mohenjo-Daro and Harappan cultures (which, in Spengler’s view, belonged to the Kushite type). In China, the bearers of the Zhou civilization also arrived on chariots and conquered China. Thus, almost simultaneously, the bearers of the Turanian element (the “civilization of amoeba C”) founded the three “high cultures” of Phase D: the Chinese, the Indian, and the Hellenic (in parallel with the Turanian invasions of the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizational zones). Thus, according to Spengler, the Indo-European peoples of Turan and their heroic style exerted decisive influence on the birth of the majority of the classical civilizations of the Old World, in whose shadow we continue to live to this day.
Lev Gumilev and the Study of Eurasia and the Nomadic Empires of Turan
The study of the nomadic civilizations of Eurasia, less known to European scholarship, constituted the core of the historical works of the Russian historian Lev Gumilev (1912-1992). Developing the particular approach of the Eurasianist philosophers, Gumilev devoted increased attention to the nomadic empires and ethnoi of Turan, demonstrating their fundamental influence on both the formation of Russian statehood and the histories of other civilizations. In his works on the Huns, the Ancient Turks, the Mongols, the Sarmatians, and other ancient nomadic peoples, Gumilev showed that the latter were not “barbarian tribes”, but rather the bearers of a special cultural code associated with a particular value system, worldview, and ethics peculiar to the inhabitants of the steppes and the warrior nomads of Eurasia.[24-26] This ethical model was established in the Great Yasa Code of Genghis Khan and was addressed towards a particular type of people: “the people of long will.”[27]
According to Gumilev, Eurocentric perspectives hinder full appreciation of the dignity of the civilization of Turan: for the historical Europeans, such was seen as the territory of “barbarians”, from which the danger of attacks and invasions emanated from time to time. Perceiving the space of North-Eastern Eurasia in such a manner, Europe thus considered this land to be the “periphery of civilization”, where one could find only scattered and incoherent relics taken from more developed cultures of the Mediterranean or India. But Gumilev demonstrated that if we look at the surrounding peoples and civilizations from the standpoint of Turanian man, through his own eyes, then we are revealed an entirely different picture, one saturated with nuances and hints, with a fully-fledged and complex historial, and with a special identity and numerous overlapping cultural circles in need of attentive and scrupulous study.
The civilizations of Turan were predominantly nomadic, and this is their distinctive trait. In the eyes of the sedentary civilizations, the culture of the nomadic peoples was constantly perceived to be hostile and alien. Moreover, nomadic conditions were not conducive to the development of literary and architectural objects, which necessarily poses difficulty to any study of this culture’s content. Gumilev nevertheless called for overcoming both Eurocentrism and the cliches of the settled civilizations, and urged us to attempt to reconstruct, on the basis of the data we have in myths, chronicles, legends, travelers’ accounts, etc., the structure of Turanian identity as it remained unchanged at its core, independent of the numerous peoples who subsequently or simultaneously became its bearers.
Leo Frobenius: Telluric Culture and the Feminine Sun
The theories of the German historian and anthropologist Leo Frobenius (1873-1938) might also be of use for identifying the typology of the civilization of Turan. Frobenius associates every culture (in his terminology: paideuma) with earth, land and the organization of landscape.[28] Relations with and approaches to land therefore determine the essence of a given human culture. Thus, Frobenius proposed the following formula:
|
Культура есть земля, ставшая организмом через посредство человека. |
Kultur ist durch den Menschen organisch gewordene Erde |
Culture is earth that has become organic by means of man. [29] |
On these grounds, Frobenius constructed a dual topography of culture using the metaphor of plants. According to Frobenius, the paideuma can be seen as a plant, having roots and a stem with branches and leaves. Such is the composition of the two halves of one organism: one part moves into and under the earth, which Frobenius called the “chthonic element”, while the other draws upwards from the earth – this is the “telluric element.” Both are tied to earth, to land, but in different ways: the chthonic is drawn to that from which it came, while the telluric strives towards the other, away from the soil from which it emerged. Both trajectories constitute the life of a culture.
Thus, according to Frobenius, cultures (paideuma) can be divided into two types or poles. One pole, the chthonic, is tied to the matriarchal element and exhibits centripetal tendencies, being drawn towards contraction, being closed or self-absorbed. The second, telluric pole is associated with the patriarchal element, with centrifugal motion, the feeling of expansion, overcoming limits, dynamism, and striving to break away from roots. Turan, in Frobenius’ account, is the principal space of telluric culture.
While matriarchal cultures are inclined towards creating dwellings in caves, pits, and in dugouts, then patriarchal cultures erect homes and, at times, “great homes”, which reflect the aspiration to create something large and gigantic. Such “great homes” served religious aims, initiations, and ceremonies among archaic peoples. Patriarchal societies are also constructed along a vertical geometry: the child reaches upwards from the earth, and society and social institutions are conceived as the branches of a tree, the point of a spear or an arrow, and become symbols of the axis around which hunting, war, and rituals are organized. Patriarchal cultures appreciate that which strives upward, especially fire. Hence the rites of cremating bodies. Death is understood as a prelude to new birth, like the seeding of plants. Matriarchal, chthonic cultures, on the other hand, value above all the material, the corporeal, and the maternal, and all that is associated with the lower levels of the universe, with that which is hidden within earth. Hence the social practices of gathering roots, berries, and mushrooms.
Both poles of culture envision space differently, on which point Frobenius emphasizes:
|
Теллурическим является покой неограниченного простора; хтоническим – тесное место, исполненное беспокойством. |
Tellurisch ist Ruhe im unbegrenzten Raum. Chthonisch Unruhe im begrenzten Raum. |
The telluric is the peace of unlimited space; the chthonic is the unrest of confined space. [30] |
In Frobenius’ view, it is the polarization of these two types of culture and their subsequent impositions upon one another that established the social architecture of civilizations with which we have to deal up to the present day. The territory of Turan, and more specifically the steppe zones of Eurasia, the Great Steppe, were the primordial hearth of the centrifugal cultures of the telluric (patriarchal) type, while the coasts of the Mediterranean and South Asia represent the zones of centripetal matriarchal cultures. The expansion of mobile, masculine cultures into the territories of the chthonic zones led to the emergence of the “great cultures” of India, West Asia, the Aegean zone, Rome, France, and England. Moreover, in Frobenius’ view, these patriarchal cultures carry strength and vital life forces, while the matriarchal element imparted them with plastic forms. It is in this synthesis, in this dialectic between the telluric and chthonic that Frobenius sees all of world history. The telluric impulse, according to Frobenius, ceaselessly emanated from the territories of Turan.
Also of extreme importance to discerning the civilizations of Turan is Frobenius’ study of various symbols, which he proposed to differentiate between types of society. Alongside the chthonic and telluric, Frobenius drew attention to another detail: the gender of the two celestial luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, across the languages and mythologies of all the world’s peoples. Working through an enormous mass of linguistic and mythological material, Frobenius discerned an extremely interesting pattern, according to which all cultures can be distinguished as belonging to one of three basic groups with relation to the following symbols:
- The masculine sun and feminine moon, envisioned in the form of man and wife or as brother and sister (joined in incestuous, but not explicitly censured marital bond).
- The feminine sun and masculine moon, or Lunus, envisioned only as brother and sister, whose incestuous relationship is explicitly taboo. The violation of this taboo (generally by the moon) is understood to be a catastrophe and drama.
- The masculine sun and masculine moon as two brothers.
The systematization of such an enormous mass of materials on the basis of all the sources available to him led Frobenius to construct a series of maps designating the zones dominated by each of these three forms. One is immediately struck by the fact that these zones represent stable poles which remain uninterrupted by the borders running between ethnoi, cultures, peoples, and civilizations. Moreover, the commonality of this symbol can even be found among cultures which otherwise lack anything similar and are even to be found on different civilizational levels.
The map of the distribution of the masculine sun and feminine moon looks thusly: we can clearly follow an uninterrupted strip running from England in Northern Europe through the Northern Mediterranean, Anatolia and the Middle East to India, South China, Polynesia, and up to Central America and the North-Eastern coast of South America. All of the indigenous cultures of these regions exhibit stable attributions of the male gender to the sun. According to Frobenius, cultures of this type are of a matriarchal orientation and cultivate everything associated with space.[31] To a significant extent, sacrality is derived from the number 4 (as in the four directions/orientations of space).[32]
The following map delineates the distribution zone of cultures in which the sun is depicted as female and the moon as of male gender[33]:
Here we can see that the territory of Turan is the core of the cultural space of the male moon and female sun. This space is distinguished by its patriarchal orientation, and at the center of its attention are time and symbolic and religious systems in which the number 3 occupies the central place. Thus, the telluric character of Turan is confirmed in its distribution of the pair of the male moon and female moon as well as by the predominance of the symbolism of time and the number 3.[34]
René Guénon: The Culture of Abel and the Civilization of Mantras
Insofar as Turan is principally the zone of nomadic civilizations, the symbolism of nomadic societies is crucial to the study of Turanian identity. The French Traditionalist philosopher René Guénon (1887-1953) drew attention to the symbolic peculiarities between the structures of nomadic societies (nomadism) and settled peoples (sedentarism). According to Guénon, in the Biblical context the figure who most generally represents nomads and pastoralists is Abel.[35] Guénon writes: “They [Cain and Abel] are the types of the two sorts of peoples who have existed since the origins of the present humanity, or at least since the earliest differentiation took place, namely that between the sedentary peoples, devoted to the cultivation of the soil, and the nomads, devoted to the raising of flocks and herds.”[36]
According to Guénon, the notions of Iran and Turan also reflect this dualism, even etymologically: in Guénon view, the term arya, from which is derived the word Iran or Aryana, the “land of the Aryans”, originally referred to someone engaged in agriculture – in this case from the Indo-European root *ar-, hence the Latin arare (“to plow”), arator (“plowman”), and arvum (“field”).[37] The Ancient Jews were nomads and shepherds, and therefore their sacred texts unequivocally take the side of Abel as the victim of Cain. Abel is considered to be the righteous, while Cain is the brother-killer and cursed.
Guénon believed that pastoralists and nomads conceptualized the principle of time as unfolding in front of them, as their priority object, their element, all the while as they enjoyed the quality of unending space. Settled peoples, who conversely embody the permanence (or synchronism) of space, have time as their main object. Settled societies live in a fixed place, and therefore time is “closed” and constant. Living long cycles in the same place, settled cultures begin to attentively observe time, study its structures, and investigate its patterns. They thereby conceive themselves to be the historial and an historical phenomenon, i.e., something “lasting”, uniting past and future.
Nomadic peoples, for their part, do not create anything “solid” or “long-term.” They live in open space, which is their existential element. They unfold their potential in space, while time remains a secondary matter. They do not devote extensive attention to time or the method of its dimension. In Guénon’s view, settled cultures therefore embody the principle of “compression” or “squeezing”, while nomadic ones exhibit “stretching” and “expansion.” The fact that nomads are primarily engaged in the herding of cattle symbolically corresponds to their mobility. Cereal and plant cultivation, conversely, are peculiar to settled cultures which, like plants, are immobile and tied to one place. Thus, settled cultures assign priority to the development of visual forms of sacred art, such as paintings, sculptures, architecture, etc. In Hinduism, such sacred images are called yantra. For nomadic peoples, meanwhile, visual depictions are often taboo, whereas the symbolism of sound is considerably more developed, as is the case with the Hindu mantras. In Guénon’s analysis, vision is related to space, while hearing is tied to time. As follows, settled cultures develop “plastic” forms of art, while nomadic peoples tend to develop sonorous forms, such as music, poetry, etc.
As a concept, Turan is undoubtedly the field of nomadic civilization, the civilization of Abel. This does not exclude the presence in Eurasia of significant enclaves of settled societies, but the dominant identity of Turan is none other than nomadism. Hence the dominating factor of space, the scarcity of visual monuments, the absence of developed writing, and many other traits specific to Turanian culture. Turan, for Guénon, is the civilization of mantras.
The Turanian Factor: The Vertical Diurne
By correlating these introductory considerations, we can obtain a preliminary picture of the object of our study. Turan is the horizon of North-Eastern Eurasia coinciding with the Great Steppe, stretching from Transylvania in the West to Manchuria in the East. In terms of culture, this horizon is primarily the zone of inhabitance of nomadic peoples. We are dealing with a nomadic civilization dominated by the militaristic and patriarchal element, i.e., a culture of the telluric type. The influence of Turan is associated with expansion (as in accordance with Guénon); indeed, historically, Turanian expansion to the South and West repeatedly led to the establishment of new states, cultures, and developed civilizations, in which the peoples of Turan became the ruling class, the legislators of patriarchal style and, quite frequently, the bearers of the dominant language. The civilizations and polities of Rome, Greece, Anatolia (the Hittite kingdom, the Mitanni state, Urartu, etc.), Iran and India, Western Europe, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and others were created under the direct cultural and linguistic dominance of the Indo-European peoples of Turan as they expanded beyond the Great Steppe.
The role of this Turanian factor in the origins of historically known states is veritable with numerous historical examples, in which nomadic peoples subjugated settled populations and only jointly thereafter established political structures resembling or being states in the full sense of the word. The nomadic peoples assembled city-fortresses as centers for the storage and the protection of tribute exacted from the conquered farmers. They also became the core of the military aristocracy of socially differentiated societies. In this sense, the Turanian factor is a state-forming factor. On this note, it is telling that neither nomads nor farmers create states on their own, and any forms of intertribal associations among themselves are short-term and unstable.[38] This principle was first conceptualized by the Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), and in the 19th century this theory was developed in detail by the Polish-Austrian philosopher and sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909).[39-40]
The civilization of Turan is founded on the basic envisioning of open space and, in accordance with Frobenius, Turanian civilization cultivates the symbolism of the number 3. Moreover, in many of the myths and languages of the peoples of Turan, we theoretically ceaselessly encounter a male gender for the moon and a female gender for the sun.[41] The telluric character of the Logos of Turan is expressed in its foremost and rigidly, emphatically vertical orientation. The horizon of Turan structures the world along a vertical axis. This is expressed in the religion, cosmology, socio-political hierarchy, and psychological mode of Turanian societies. In the terminology of the sociology of the imagination [42] as developed by the French sociologist Gilbert Durand (1921-2012), this type of society corresponds to the psychic regime of the diurne. This regime is typified by:
- A high degree of strict divisions
- An attraction towards light and crystal clarity
- An aspiration towards cleansing itself from materiality and corporeality
- The sacralization of the Sky, luminaries, and elements of flight
- High speed, rapidity
- Militancy and heroism
- Challenging death
- Masculinity (virility)
- Cutting and piercing weapons
- Dualism, pairs of opposites
- Hierarchies founded on subjugation and force
All of these considerations allow us to suggest from the very onset that, in the horizon of Turan, we are dealing with the predominance of the Logos of Apollo. This follows from everything that we know about the roots of European civilization and from theories on the Indo-European languages and cultures. We are tasked with determining to what extent this equivalence is convincing, justified, and legitimate, whether or not there are exceptions among the Indo-European cultures and, if there are, what has conditioned them.
***
Footnotes:
[1] See: Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Iranian Logos: The War of Light and the Culture of Awaiting (Moscow: Academic Project, 2016).
[2] N.S. Trubetzkoy, Nasledie Chingiskhana (Moscow: Agraf, 1999). In English: The Legacy of Genghis Khan and Other Essays on Russian Identity (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1991).
[3] P.N. Savitsky, Kontinent Evraziia [Continent Eurasia] (Moscow: Agraf, 1997).
[4] G.V. Vernadsky, Nachertanie russkoi istorii (Moscow: Algoritm, 2008).
[5] N.N. Alekseev, Russkii narod i Gosudarstvo [The Russian People and the State] (Moscow: Agraf, 1998).
[6] L.N. Gumilev, Ot Rusi do Rossii [From Rus to Russia] (Moscow: Ayris-press, 2008); Ibidem, Drevniaia Rus’ i Velikaia Step’ [Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe] (Moscow: Mysl, 1989); Ibidem., Tysiacheletie vokrug Kaspiia [The Millennium around the Caspian] (Moscow: AST, 2002).
[7] See: Alexander Dugin, “Continent Russia” in Absolutnaia Rodina (Moscow: Arktogeia, 2000).
[8] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Horizons and Civilizations of Eurasia: The Indo-European Legacy and the Traces of the Great Mother (Moscow: Academic Project, 2017).
[9] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Three Logoi: Apollo, Dionysus, Cybele (Moscow: Academic Project, 2014).
[10] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – Geosophy: Horizons and Civilizations (Moscow: Academic Project, 2016).
[11] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Germanic Logos: Apophatic Man (Moscow: Academic Project, 2015)
[12] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The French Logos: Orpheus and Melusine (Moscow: Academic Project, 2015)
[13] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Latin Logos: The Sun and the Cross (Moscow: Academic Project, 2016)
[14] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Hellenic Logos: The Valley of Truth (Moscow: Academic Project, 2016); Ibidem, Noomakhia – The Byzantine Logos: Hellenism and Empire (Moscow: Academic Project, 2016)
[15] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – England or Britain? The Maritime Mission and the Positive Subject (Moscow: Academic Project, 2015).
[16] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Semites: Monotheism of the Moon and the Gestalt of Ba’al (Moscow: Academic Project, 2017)
[17] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – Great India: Civilization of the Absolute (Moscow: Academic Project, 2017)
[18] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Iranian Logos: The War of Light and the Culture of Awaiting (Moscow: Academic Project, 2016)
[19] Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Horizons and Civilizations of Eurasia: The Indo-European Legacy and the Traces of the Great Mother (Moscow: Academic Project, 2017)
[20] Domenico Conte, Catene di cività: Studi su Spengler (Napoli: Ed. Scientifiche Italiane, 1994).
[21] Anton Mirko Koktanek, Oswald Spengler in seiner Zeit (Munich: 1968).
[22] Heidegger devoted heightened attention to amoebas, the very existence of which he tried to conceive in philosophical terms in his cycle of lectures on boredom. See: Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe Der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983). It is suggestive that Heidegger spoke of amoebas with a certain “tenderness”, as when he called amoebas “little animals” or Tierchen.
[23] The Lithuanian scholar of Ancient Europe, Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994) believed this culture to be matriarchal and bearing the cult of the “Great Goddess.” Gimbutas called the cultures belonging to this type “Old Europe.” See: Marija Gimbutas, Tsivilizatsia Velikoi Bogini [The Civilization of the Great Goddess] (Moscow: Rosspen, 2005).
[24] L. Gumilev, Hunnu [Xiongnu] (Moscow: Izd. Vostochnoi literatury, 1960).
[25] L. Gumilev, Drevnie tiurki [The Ancient Turks](Moscow: Nauka, 1967).
[26] L. Gumilev, Tysiacheletie vokrug Kaspiia [The Millennium around the Caspian] (Moscow: Harvest, 2008); Ibidem., Otkrytie Khazarii [Discovering Khazaria] (M. Di-dik, 1996); Ibidem., Drevniaia Rus’ I Velikaia Step’ [Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe] (Moscow: Mysl, 1992).
[27] L. Gumilev, Chernaia legenda [Black Legend] (Moscow: Ayris-press, 2008).
[28] See the discussion of Frobenius in: Dugin, Noomakhia – Geosophy: Horizons and Civilizations.
[29] Leo Frobenius, Das unbekkante Afrika: Aufhellung der Schicksale eines Erdteils (Munich: C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1923), 67. Frobenius is also responsible for the following formula: “Human culture should be seen as an independent organic being.” [Menschliche Kultur ein selbständiges organisches Wesen sei] – L. Frobenius, Paideuma: Umrisse einer Kultur- und Seelenlehre (Munich: Beck, 1921), 39.
[30] Frobenius, Das unbekkante Afrika, 75.
[31] Leo Frobenius, Von Kulturreich des Festlandes (Berlin: Wegweiserverlag, 1932), 53.
[32] If in Eurasia and the Pacific this model of Frobenius’ overall coincides with the geosophical map which we have constructed in Noomakhia, then with regards to Central America and South America we have arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. See: Alexander Dugin, Noomakhia – The Civilizations of the New World: Pragmatic Dreams and Split Horizons (Moscow: Academic Project, 2017).
[33] Frobenius, Von Kulturreich des Festlandes, 55.
[34] Once again, with regards to Eurasia, the Geosophy of Noomakhia coincides with Frobenius’ theses, while contradicting them entirely when it comes to North America. See: Noomakhia – The Horizons and Civilizations of Eurasia: The Indo-European Legacy and the Traces of the Great Mother.
[35] René Guénon, Le règne de la quantité et les signes des temps (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 295; René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (Hillsdale: Sophia Perennis, 2004).
[36] Ibid., 145.
[37] Ibid., 146.
[38] See: Alexander Dugin, Etnosotsiologiia [Ethnosociology] (Moscow: Academic Project, 2014). In English as: Alexander Dugin, Ethnos and Society (translated by Michael Millerman, London: Arktos, 2018); Ibidem., Ethnosociology: The Foundations (London: Arktos, 2019).
[39] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, 3 vol. (New York: Princeton University Press, 1958).
[40] L. Gumplowicz, Die soziologische Staatsidee (Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1892); Ibidem., Der Rassenkampf: Soziologische Untersuchungen (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1928).
[41] This is explored in: Alexander Dugin, “Russia and Virgo Solar” in Mysteries of Eurasia.
[42] Alexander Dugin, Voobrazhenie: Filosofiia, sotsiologiia, struktury [The Imagination: Philosophy, Sociology, and Structures] (Moscow: Academic Project, 2015)
[43] G. Durand, Les Structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire (Paris: Borda, 1969).