Indo-European accelerationism: a critique of Askr Svarte

 

Askr Svarte, Gods in the Abyss, Arktos Media, 2020

The review to this text is related to the following remarks by my friend Francesco Boco, written in a fruitful contribution to the Prometheica magazine:

Accelerationist philosophy is usually based

on esoteric references of various kinds, but almost never does the

Hermeneutic research turns into ancient Indo-European languages,

Greek, Latin or ancient Germanic. This means that the horizon

of meaning within which ranges the perspective

of the future of these authors is marked by a cultural choice

very specific, which conditions their worldview. The

forma mentis that is derived, for example, by linking one’s

reading of the present and the future to Kabbalah, Islamic esotericism

or Middle Eastern demonology is certainly

different from that which is obtained by reactivating reference

to Greek rather than Nordic myth in the interpretation

of planetary technology. It is therefore not surprising that for all

accelerationists, from Nick Land to Mark Fisher, the

techno-capitalist is not in question and it is considered

the only possible system. One God, one system.

Fracesco Boco, A PLURIDIMENSIONAL VISION

OF TECHNOLOGY in Prometheica VI Winter Solstice 2023

What immense conceptual propulsion could be unleashed if we found accelerationism no longer on Middle Eastern esotericism but on Greek or Norse myth?

We consider crucial to find an answer to this question, although we are certain that ours is not a quest aimed at a single, monotheistic logos, but rather at a complex vision, linked to the Uranic and polytheistic conceptions of the peoples speaking Indo-European languages.

Moreover, we need to see whether other authors have already tried in providing an answer to the questioning of the Indo-European Logos as a founding moment of an alternative vision of the new beginning.

Among the various possible proposals, the one that seemed most pertinent to our research is the one in the work of the traditionalist philosopher Askr Svarte, nome de plume of Evgeny Nechkasov.

In details, it is his work Gods in the Abyss: Essays on Heidegger, the Germanic Logos and the Germanic Myth published by Arktos in 2020 that raises the question regarding the original Logos, identified by the author in the Germanic one.

Askr Svarte is the author of several works with traditionalist tendencies, including Polemos I and Polemos II. In addition, he has also been interested in esotericism and specifically published in 2017 Gap: A Left-Hand Path Approach to Odinism.

In Gods in the Abyss, our author strives to find a common thread between elements of Nordic mythology and the mysticism of Meisther Eckhart all the way to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The author, whose family of Germans from Bessarabia was relocated to Siberia during the Soviet regime, openly defines the guiding principle of his “mythical philosophy” as German Logos. This would in fact cross the millennia and, beginning with the Asen mythology, come to full maturity first with the Rhenish mysticism of Eckhar and Tauler and finally with the philosophy of Heidegger. Our author, moreover, thank to his previous works devoted to the Heraclitean principle of conflict, Polemos precisely, innervates his entire treatment with interesting references to the agonal thought of the Ephesian thinker.

This Germanic logos would be contrasted, again according to Askr Svarte, with modern materialist technology, embodied according to Asrk Svarte in Junger’s Arbeiter (sic.), misinterpreted as “the man-mass,” a slave to technology and a victim of modernity.

Such a technophobic interpretation is fallacious and astonishing in an author in other ways decidedly profound and endowed with undoubted insight. It is worthwhile to fix some key elements of the Jungerian Arbeiter figure in order to avoid dangerous misunderstandings.

The Arbeiter – the first of the three Jungian figures, to be followed by the Rebel and finally the Anarch – overcomes the bourgeois order through his different approach to the emergence of the elemental and all that is risky and problematic in existence. Jünger will formulate his well-known maxim “better criminal than bourgeois” in the very pages of Arbeiter.

The Artificer/Arbeiter uses and dominates technique to mobilize the world; his face gradually mutates into a metallic mask that depersonalizes him but at the same time makes him a participant in a higher unity, not unlike that of the medieval monastic Orders. The Arbeiter’s destinal vision is definable as “Heroic Realism.” So the Arbeiter/Artefice is certainly not framed as a Nietzschean “last man” as Askr Svarte would have it.

The text of Der Arbeiter, subtitled “form and domination,” is the culmination and culmination of a series of Junger’s political and warlike works that began with the autobiographical novel “In the Storms of Steel.” The title, moreover, is definitely relevant to the interpretive horizon since it is taken from a kenning for “battle” that comes from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla.

It is precisely those Norse sources so dear to Askr Svarte that deliver to us a vision of time and cosmic destiny that could be associated with Ernst Junger’s “heroic realism,” that is, the vision of those who continue to march on despite a destiny of total and impending destruction: precisely in his manifesto book Der Arbeiter Junger expresses himself thus, “The virtue that befits this state is that of heroic realism, which is not shaken even by total destruction or hopelessness.” Easily juxtaposed to such a description of “heroic realism” is that of the einherjar army, led by Odhinn and the other Asen, facing the forces of chaos unleashed in the Wigrid camp to give rise to a hopeless cosmic battle, and which Odhinn knows to be such.

There are thus several indications that Junger’s interpretation of technology and thought in Askr Svarte, and of the Arbeiter in particular, is decidedly out of focus. Moreover, paradoxically, Askr Svarte would have found precisely in the heroic realism of the Arbeiter an ideal continuation of Norse amor fati in the face of Ragnarok.

Regardless of this, truly incapacitating, technophobic approach, as well as of some blunders in the mythological field and the lack of attention to continental Germanic culture–to the almost exclusive advantage of Icelandic sources–which leads the author to make glaring historical errors regarding the period of the barbarian invasions; Askr Svarte’s myth-philosophical attempt nevertheless turns out to be interesting and in many ways acceptable.

Indeed, there are several reflections to be kept in mind in his “myth-philosophical” approach.

«The word heide in german means “wasteland”, sometimes it is translated as “steppe”. According to the reports of the ancient roman historians, the germanic tribes cosidered a great honor to surround their settlement with as much uninhabitated land as possible. They found pride in living in solitude. We find the same word in icelandic heidr and in old english hæþen. From the icelandic heidr comes heidni wich means heathen; from old english hæþen comes the term heathen.»

In this sense, the term “heathen” would originate from the practice of settling in areas that tended to be isolated from other communities or settlements. This “rural” and “wild” aspect is paradoxically similar to the concept of “pagus” as applied to pagans, albeit with negative connotations.

«Also we should add the fundamental position of M. Heidegger who lived in seclusion in the province and defended this image and place of life, as well the huge role of the black forest paths and trails, which the philosofer actively uses as metaphors and illustrations of his thought of being».

Thus, the antagonism between isolated communities and forced urban coexistence, between the countryside and the megalopolis reappears: a dualism addressed repeatedly by twentieth-century culture, from the conservative revolution up to the theoretical-existential parable of Theodore Kaczynski.

Askr Svarte also recognizes in pagan traditionalism the valid impetus of eternalizing the origin and not wanting to “turn back” to a mythicized past. The theme of a Heideggerian new beginning fits with this heathen perspective, corroborated by a lot of examples and insights.

Askr Svarte also brilliantly links the Heraclitean fragment “Polemos of all things is father” with the Germanic assembly of the thing.

 

Indeed, the world’s first conflict, that between Asen and Vanen, narrated by Voluspa begins with a council of the gods who must deliberate on what to do.

Then the Deities
Went each to their judicial stools.
Considering whether mischiefs from bad counsel
Would occur from the Asæ;
Or whether all the Gods
Should reserve their banquets to themselves.

 

If in the Edda then, the gods, before every great decision-and war decisions in particular-met, so on the earthly plane the Germans formed their assembly of the armed; of those free men who could bear arms. Every beginning is thus a Thing, but every beginning is also marked by bringing arms into the assembly to deliberate on a possible conflict. On the other hand, the British inscription dedicated to Mars Thincsus , a probable reference to the Germanic Thing deity, the juristic ruler Tyr/Tiwaz, is well known.

 

But why named after the belligerent Mars?

 

«What are the relations of *Tywaz-Mars to war? To begin with, relations that are not exclusive, as he has other activities. In several inscriptions he is qualified as Thincsus, which means, despite interminable arguments on the matter, that he is, without a doubt, protector of the thing (German Ding) – in other words, of the people when assembled in a body to arrive at judgments and to make decisions. But even apart from this important civil function, *TTwazMars remains a jurist in war itself. And here let me quote de Vries (op. cit, pp. 173-175); “Thus the god Mars Thincsus was closely connected with the people’s assembly with the Ding, the same thing can be seen in Denmark, where Tislund, in Zealand, was a place of assembly. Tiwaz was therefore both a protector in battle and a protector of the assembly. In general, his character as a god of war has been brought too much into the foreground, and his significance for Germanic law insufficiently recognized…. These two conceptions (god of battles, god of law) are not contradictory War is not, in fact, the bloody hand-to-hand combat of battle; it is a decision, arrived at by combat between two parties, and governed by precise rules in law. One has only to read in the works of historians how the Germans were already fixing the time and the place of their encounters with the Romans to realize that for them a battle was an action to be carried out in accordance with fixed legal rules. Expressions such as Schwertding, or Old Scandinavian vapnaddmr, are not poetic figures, but correspond precisely to ancient practice. The symbolic gestures linked with combat are incontestable proofs of this; the declaration of war among the Latins by the hasta ferrata aut praeusta sanguinea is directly comparable to the ceremony in which the northern Germans hurled a spear at an opposing army And that spear bears the same essential significance as the one planted at the center of the Ding: if the Scandinavian Tyr bore a spear, as J. Grimm has already pointed out, it was less as^a weapon than as a sign of juridical power (cf. H. Meyer, Heerfahne und Rolandsbild, Nachr. d. Gesellsch. f. Wiss., Ph.-hist. Klasse, Gottingen, 1930, p.460ff.). From these facts considered as a whole, it becomes evident that, in every respect, the name Mars Thincsus is a very fitting one for this god of law. Naturally the Romans were unable to perceive him as anything more than a god of war because their first contacts with the German tribes were all in terms of war.”»[1]

Finally, it is worth pointing out how the Germanic Logos, centered in the pre-Christian sphere mainly on the figure of Odin, is actually readable as an Indo-European Logos, starting with the fact that many of Odin’s magical-schamanic characteristics are shared by other Indo-European deities, namely the terrible and nocturnal rulers such as the Vedic Varuna, the Greek Uranus and the Balto-Slavic Velinas-Veles.

Askr Svarte thus repeatedly touches the theme of the nocturnal ruler but seems unable to delve into it all the way through: even when he acknowledges that Grimnir, Odin’s epithet meaning “the masked one” and which returns in the Italian surname Grima, refers to Odin’s nocturnal aspect-in the sense of the night enveloping and covering things just as a mask does-he does not take the opportunity to really make this vision complete by grasping the analogy with similar nocturnal figures in the variegated Indo-European world, among them Uranus who envelops everything as the night does.

So, rather than an exclusively Germanic Logos, it would be necessary to revive a post-Christian, Indo-European Logos. And why not perhaps at the European level overcoming technophobic attitudes. This would be the basis for an accelerationism freed from the fetters of the cabalistic reflections of a Land.

 

 

[1] G. Dumezil, Mitra Varuna An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignt, Zone Books, New York, 1988.