Let us examine some aspects of Russia in its purely Russian, Slavic form, i.e., Russia of the Gardariki (as its northern Scandinavian neighbors called it), or Russia in its purely European borders from the Carpathians to the Urals.

Hyperborean Dacia and the 2 circles of civilization

As the point of departure of our investigation we shall take the extremely interesting data concerning the sacred geography of the southernmost (or, more precisely, the south-western) territorial sector of Gardariki (the Galician principality) gathered in the book Hyperborean Dacia [13] by the Romanian Traditionalist author of a Guenonian orientation, Geticus (Basil Lovinescu). In this work, the author convincingly demonstrates on the basis of sacred toponymies and a deep analysis of Romanian folklore that ancient Dacia (modern Romania and Moldova) was once the sacred center of the Hyperborean tradition, albeit secondary in regards to Polar Hyperborea which was far more original than other indirect spiritual centers of traditional civilizations. In our opinion, the thesis of Hyperborean Dacia looks quite convincing and we would especially like to dwell on the mystery of the Danube delta which, according to Geticus, was the location of one of the main sanctuaries of Hyperborean Apollo. 

The author of Hyperborean Dacia notes the following peculiarity of the Danube delta and its cult center: river Danube flows into the Black Sea on the 45th parallel, i.e., on the belt dividing the entire northern hemisphere in half. Thus, the cult center of Apollo in Dacia was located in the far north for the entire southern half of the northern hemisphere whose establishment has only recently become known to modern historians of civilization. We note that the 45th parallel in general plays an extremely important role for Eurasia and in the far West. In France, two of the most important sacred centers, Lyon (the “city of meadows, i.e., the center of the geographical spiral of the druids as examined in Louis Charpentier’s book The Giants and the Mystery of the Origin [14]) and Grenoble (the “land of the Dauphins” [15] whose solar, Hyperborean symbolism was researched by the scholars Eugene Canseliet – Sevren Bafrue and Guy Beatrice in the book Land of the Dauphin [15]). At the same time in the Far East, in Mongolia, at approximately the same latitude is located the sacred center of Genghis Khan’s empire, the city of Urga. In addition, it is interesting note that the borders of the Russian Empire also more or less followed this parallel over a gigantic space resembling a sinusoid with a recess in the South in the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, and in the Pamir mountains, and a rise in the North in South-Eastern Siberia, Altai, and across the Amur River. In addition to such an important parallel at which the center of the Apollonian cult of “Hyperborean Dacia” was located, what is also extremely important for us is that the longitude of this place was 30 degrees east. It can be said that this meridian, in its northern part, was the axis of the Slavs’ settlement. To its west were the Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, and Belarussians, and to its east are the Great Russians. Thus, in addition to the “extremely northern” location of “Hyperborean Dacia” in relation to the mediterranean world, the extreme South of its situation can also be considered in regards to the Slavo-Baltic-Scandinavian world and Gardariki Rus. In fact, the mouth of the Danube was always the southern sacred-geographical pressure point of the “masses” of the Slavic, Russian world to the north. 

“Hyperboran Dacia” once formed part of Rus itself as the “Principality of Galicia,” the southernmost of the principalities. Based on the above considerations, some kind of a dual, sacred-geographical map in which Geticus’ “Hyperborean Dacia” serves as a common pole for two opposite circles can be outlined – that is, for the southern, Mediterranean circle and for the northern, “Gardarikian” Slavic-Russian one(together with Baltic and Scandinavian elements) one. These circles can be placed on our 30th meridian of longitude to the east above and below the mouth of the Danube respectively. The most logical point to take opposite of the Danube delta at 30 degrees would be the intersection of this meridian with the northern polar circle “above” and the tropic of cancer ‘below” as these belts in turn quite naturally mark 14 degrees of the length of the meridian from the southern pole to the equator, that is, where the distance from “Hyperborean Dacia” to the pole and the equator and then back again is halved. Thus, we obtain two circles, the northern one with its pole not far from the Russian city of Velikie Luki (here Charpentier’s work Giants and the Mystery of the Origin should be recalled again since it throughly examines the role of the “god” Lug (meadows) in the sacred geography of the Druids and the phonetically identical Russian word “Luki” and Celtic “Lug”), and the southern circle with its polar point in the Mediterranean Sea whose distance is equal to that between Cyprus and Crete and the Nile Delta and the southern coast of Anatolia. 

Yet another important testament in the form of medieval Scandinavian geographical maps which reflect the sacred picture of the world can confirm the sacred validity of the pattern we have drawn out. As a rule, these maps present circles where continents were symbolized by inscriptions rather than portrayed in shape, often bearing recurring graphic symbols when the map is oriented towards the east, towards the west, or, finally, in the case of a sharper northern orientation. The labels on these maps clarify that these graphic signs symbolize the location of three bodies of water, i.e., the two sacred rivers – the Tanais (Dnieper) and the Geon (Nile) – and the Mediterranean Sea which includes the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. It is crucial to note that the Tanais-Dnieper and the Geon-Nile actually flow in one way or another along the meridian at 30 degrees east longitude. The Dnieper flows from the North to the South, and the Nile from the South to the North. This parallelism between the two great sacred rivers gives us every reason to construct two circles of civilizations:

Here we can recall the famous account of Hyperboreans sending gifts to the temple of Apollo on the island of Delos. Delos can be approximately identified with the southern limit of the influence of northern, Hyperborean civilization where the spiritual radiation of the north circle “descended.” In addition, it is worth mentioning the “amber road,” later known as the “path from the Varangians to the Greeks,” from the Baltic to the Greece, along which the northern peoples carried mysterious “gold of the North”, later identified as amber, originally had an entirely different, purely initiatic meaning. Thus, the entire northern circle, including all of “Gardariki,” was Hyperborean and polar symbolism in fact abounds in the the toponyms of Rus, i.e., the naming of Russian cities and the names Slavic peoples. The Apollonian, polar roots “pol,” “appolo,” and “polus,” are preserved in the words “Poland” (the country), “Polanie” (the Slavic people), and “Polotsk” (the city in Russia) just as is identical, according to the laws of sacred linguistics, in the case of how the root “bor” in the Greek word “Borea”, or “North”, can be found in the variations of “Bor” (the city), Borovsk (the city), etc.[16] In addition, place names with the base “mur” are characteristic, such as the city of Murom which, according to Wirth, evidences links with the original cult center “Mo-uru.” Finally, it is impossible not to recall one of the largest ancient Russian cities, Tula, which is identical to the Hyperborean city of “Thule.” It is telling that even among the later coats of arms of this city we find the hieroglyph of the Hyperborean eight-pointed star, albeit stylized in a simplistic, utilitarian way in accordance with the arms industry central to the city.[17]

Besides mere toponyms, a number of other factors suggest that Gardariki Rus and the Balto-Germanic lands adjoining it represented the center of a particular sacred-geographical energy whose traces we find in local folklore, myths, and the peculiar interpretations of Christianity in the solar, northern, bright, and heroic manners. Here it should be mentioned that the first Russian Orthodox saints were Boris and Gleb, the princely brothers the first of whose name, according to the Slavic Nirukta [18] has an obvious Apollonian, Hyperborean character. Boris is a variation of “Borea” and “Apollo.” In addition, in accordance with this “folk” and in fact sacred-linguistic etymology, one should consider the Russian Christmas ritual of eating the pig porosenka and the Slavic name for hog or boar which preserved a clear phonetic relationship with the name of the polar lands in Hinduism, i.e., Varahi (“Land of the Boar”). This link between Christmas (winter solstice) and “Borea” is evident in the iconographic canon of the figures of Boris and Gleb whose characters were also tied to Christmas and the New Year. Boris was always portrayed as older, the “elder,” which is emphasized by his beard (the Russian word for beard, boroda, also has a “Hyperborean” sound [19]), while Gleb was the young, beardless one. Together the saintly brothers represent the essence of symbolism of the Old and New Year unified in the iconic scene under the sign of the “winter solstice.” 

Be that as it may, Hyperborean Dacia represented the southern limit of Hyperborean Gardariki Rus which concentrated in itself the sacred energies of the North and distinctly Hyperborean mythological, solar tales. However, its intermediary position between the two circles in fact grants it a special function in “sacred handicraft” and clearly explains the resilience of the Hyperborean line on the land of Romania. As regards the southern, “Egyptian” circle, its role is associated with “Hyperborean Dacia” for sake of the existence of the northern circle which further enhances it, acting as a reservoir for the sacred-geographical impulse covering this point along the ancient “amber route,” the path of the “gold of the North.” 

The sacred circle of Gardariki

Let us now consider the northern circle, or Gardariki, and the particularity of its sacred-geographical composition. This circle must have a qualitative structure, and its sacred space must coincide with a temporal cycle. Obviously, the clearest and most impressive temporal cycle is the annual, or yearly cycle. Thus, the Russian circle on the space of Eastern Europe has its seasonal correspondences. It is immediately apparent that this circle is limited by two bodies of water to the North and the South which have expressive symbolic names. In the North, there is the White Sea and in the South there is the Black Sea. In this case the North has a positive, bright, solar coloration for Russian mythological tales and Slavic legends in general. The South, conversely, has a negative, dark, or shadowy tint. The majority of conflicts in Russian history in ancient times were with precisely those residents of the southern steppes, such as the Alans, the Huns, Cumans, Khazars, Tatars,etc. In the North, peace reigned more often than not. Proceeding from this particularity, it is logical to equate the North of our circle – the White Sea – with Summer, and the South and the Black Sea with Winter. In addition, it is important to stress that this line should not be considered one relating to climate, but rather towards “light” and “spiritual” analogies which are in fact specific to the Hyperborean tradition [20]. Meanwhile, the East, as always, is identified with spring, and the West with fall.

It is worth recalling the Greek myth of the birth of Apollo and the goddess Leto, who in Latin is Latona. According to legend, the island on which they were born is located in the far North. It is impossible not to notice the phonetical correlation between the goddess Leto and the Russian word leto (“summer”) which denotes not only the season itself, but also the entire year or the whole annual cycle. 

In appealing to Russian myths and legends, one can notice the following peculiarity: the tales of the Russian North abound with references to deer, doe, or stag. In one legend, it is said that “small doe” or “calves’ fall from the heavenly clouds in the North. Deer or elk of some sort are the main motifs in ancient Russian embroideries and are almost always associated in one way or another with the North and summer. 

The deer or elk is the sacred symbol of the northern half of the “Russian circle” of Gardariki. This stag is always linked with the sun, light, heaven, or blessing. Here a parallel can be drawn with the H. Wirth’s discoveries of the Nordic roots il, ilu, and ilx as the ancient names for “god” among the northern peoples, and from here the root was passed later to the southern, Semitic tribes. Just like Scandinavian elk and elx, the Russian words olen (“deer”) and los (“elk”) contain the rudiments of this root. It is also notable that in the runic circle, the rune ilx is placed in the mid-summer time of the “year” and its shape represents an ideograph of a deer or antlers. It is quite astonishing that the Orthodox liturgical cycle for the feast of St. Elijah falls on July 20, and in the Russian folk consciousness the prophet Elijah is actually identified with the heavenly light principle, the source of light and blessing [21]. 

The North of Gardariki finds itself under the sign of the solar deer or elk, summer or mid-summer, and the summer solstice. In the opposite sector, in the southern regions of Rus respectively, “winter” and “winter-solstice” characters associated with darkness, the underworld, chaos, and the chthonic elements are evidnet. In fact, the sayings and myths of the south of Russia often include a wolf, serpent, dog, or dragon. In Ukrainian legends, it is often found that the Serpent lives in the Black Sea from which he assaults the settlements of Rus, kidnaps or demands virgins as tribute, and ruins arable lands, etc. Sometimes, the Serpent is merged with the Wolf, thereby generating such heroes as the “Fiery Serpent Wolf” of the South Slavs. Russian heroes often “descend” or head down South in order to defeat the chthonian “lower” beings and liberate people from oppression. This also accords with the Russian sacred-geographical logic of the cyclical year. The Serpent, Wolf, and Dragon are images of dark forces absorbing the winter sun and preventing it from rising and giving life to the “crown of summer,” the North. The virgin abducted by the Serpent symbolize the “Solar Maiden” and her return thanks to the exploits of the hero is one of the most frequently recurring themes in Russian fables. In fact, this northern-serpentine and Apollonian tale was noted in the sacred geography of the mouth of the Danube by Geticus in Hyperborean Dacia, where he points to the presence of an island with the name “serpentine” in the Black Sea that was associated with the cult of Apollo in the delta itself. 

This is applicable on a larger scale to all of Rus. As an example we can take the feat of the Russian hero Ilya Muromets who liberates Kiev from the Serpent, beats it, harnesses it to a plow, and forces him along all the lands of Kiev down to the Black Sea – from which remains to this day the “serpent’s wall” in Ukraine – and drowns him. [22]

It is important at this point to take note of other purely Hyperborean details from the story of Ilya Muromets. Firstly, his very name might be an archaic substitute for “god” or il from the original center of “Mo-uru.” Secondly, the legend stresses that the hero was born in the village Karacharvo, a fact which strangely reminds us of the Buddhist “Kalacharka,” the doctrine of the “cycle” and “salvation” associated with Shambhala and the phenomenon of its king at the end of the cycle. Thirdly, it is important to mention that the hero “sitting” for up to 30 years might symbolize the immobility of the pole. Thus, the once stationary polar Ilya Muromets (Il of “Mo-uru”), who abides in Karacharovo (“Kalacharka” literally means “wheel of time”) decides to leave his central position (the Russia city of Murom is in fact located in the middle of our Russian circle), heads south (he “appears” or “enters into the sphere of change”) where he beats the Serpent (sometimes a Nightingale Robber who kills with a whistle [23]). Chaos is ended and the sacred order of spring and summer is installed (restored). 

This “avatar” and “winter-solstice” aspect of the heroic mission is often described in other legends as a battle between the hero and the Serpent on the Kalinov Bridge. “Kalinov Bridge” is also astoundingly similar to the name of the Hindu goddess Kali, the goddess of dissolution and death as well as cold (Hindi kali, Germanic kalt, and Russian kholod have identical Indo-European roots). In addition, the Russian word kalyadki for the ritual of winter holiday celebrations and kalyada for the main character of such can be traced back to the same root. The fight on “Kalinov bridge” or the battle with “King Kalin” suggests the New Years’ mystery of the sun passing through the lower point of the annual cycle, the passage through the center of darkness, cold, and death, i.e., the kingdom of Kali, and the realm of the “bottom” of the South.

We should also recall the Greek legend of Hercules and the snake woman, the first ancestor of the Scythian kings. According to this myth, this woman lived in the kingdom located at the mouth of the Dnieper where she guarded hidden treasures. The mouth of the Dnieper is in fact the point of the extreme South in sacred Russian cosmography!

It is also curious to note the theme of the Wolf. The Wolf is a symbolic synonym for the Serpent. According to Nordic legends, it swallows the sun during winter, steals the light of the world, and fights against the “avatar” hero. Given the cyclical and spatial mappings we have examined, we can solve one of the mysteries that troubles the minds of many “demonologists” along the way. The fact has been noted more than once that stories of vampires spread along clear borders and have one unique center where they appeared: Transylvania. From Transylvania they spread all over Eastern Europe while more or less preserving their originally “Romanian” features. In the old Slavonic language, the word “vampire” was a commonly-used synonym for “ghoul” or “werewolf.” This word originally meant “wolf-man” or “wolf shifter” and this character was symbolic of the winter solstice (hence the fact that wolf costumes were donned for christmas celebrations) as the wolf swallowed or killed the sun. Then, the sun rises again and begins to shine. A merging of the two (sometimes opposing) symbolic figures into one which produces a hybrid image can be noted quite often among archaic peoples. Simultaneously, each symbol itself could have two opposite aspects. Thus, for example, Apollo was called the “patron saint of the wolves”, and wolves in general, while not losing their “winter solstice quality”, could act as “sources of the sun” or “life-giving darkness.” This is the case in Roman history and among the Turkic peoples. Thus, the werewolf-vampire is a figure associated with killing the sun, absorbing the sun, or drinking its blood (sunlight), at which point darkness overcomes light, and is also associated with the subsequent reemergence of the sun. It is striking that legends of vampires (Dracula or the Dragon) originated precisely west of the Danube delta, i.e., from that point of the winter solstice in the sacred Russian sector, the sector characterized as the “darkest” or “most frightening” one over the course of the sun’s descent. It is also characteristic that symbolism of the wolf and dog continue to be quite widespread even when moving from this most southern point of Gardariki to the East, albeit they remain inferior to the image of the falcon or the Scythian falcon (the sun, having passed its critical points, begins to soar into the heavens of summer and towards the North, returning the heavenly reindeer).

Finally, the famous Baba-Yaga from Russian fairy tales is the last sacred character closely associated with the South and the winter solstice. Baba Yaga is an elderly witch who lives in the woods and resides in a hut built of chicken legs. Many students of folklore are bewildered by these “chicken legs” in the home of Baba Yaga. However, if we realize the Southern and chthonic nature of this figure usually blocking the path of a solar hero and preventing him from achieving his goal and, moreover, if we recall that in some tales Baba Yaga lives underground, i.e., in the South, then we can conclude that the point is an image of Mother Earth in her sinister, negative function. It is here that the “hut on chicken legs” suddenly makes sense if one takes into account the fact that one of the oldest hieroglyphs of Mother Earth in Sumerian-Akkadian hieroglyphics appears as the following:

Moreover, this hieroglyph was even pronounced “baba.” The Akkadian variant was “mother” [24]. The “chicken legs” are represented by the two New Year’s runes yr upon which the “abode” of the Great Mother stands.

This is the amazing coincidence between the name Baba Yaga and “baba” in Sumerian. 

In the most archaic sayings, the daughters of Baba Yaga, the “Yagishni,” are always present in action similar to Amazons in that they fight in a manly style against a hero. Interestingly enough, the location of the Amazons’ kingdom, the “women’s kingdom” in fairy tales, also corresponds to the South of the Russian circle, the steppes, and the shore zone. This geographical peculiarity logically connects the idea of the “Kingdom of the Mother”, that is, primordial chaos, with the region in which light descends from the heavenly sphere to the earthly order for the summer half of the year and to the dark regions untouched and uncultivated by the influence of heaven and its organizing, potent element which resides in a free state during the winter part of the year. 

All of the above considerations which, of course, could be developed further, give us a general impression of the mythological structure of the “Slavic circle” of Gardariki Rus and allow us to locate reference points among the boundless elements of Russian mythology and Russian folklore. What is most important of all is that we can sense in all of this the intricate and native tales of pre-Christian and even Christian Russian themes outlining the Russian person’s unified, global view of sacred geography in his sacred Homeland. This map is reflected in fairy tales, myths, legends, and in some symbolic elements of the Russian Orthodox tradition that have persisted for a very long time among the popular strata. Indeed, this picture can be felt sometimes even today in certain unconscious archetypes which structure the internal space of the Russian, Slavic soul. 

The Birthing Mother of Light

One of the fundamental elements of Russian embroideries, and namely the embroideries preserving the most archaic themes, is the depiction of a woman in labor surrounded on two sides by deer (or horses with riders). No other image is repeated with such persistence and with such regularity. Sometimes, the Birthing Mother has zoomorphic features and is depicted with the horns of a stag [25]. 

In Russian designs, the birthing mother is presented as a prostrate female figure in the shape of a frog or tree between whose legs is either a human, the head of a deer, or even a circle in the shape of the runes “yr.” In his book The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs, B.A. Rybakov correctly discerned that this figure is the “female deity” associated with seasonal symbolism. In addition, he assumed that this was the Slavic goddess known as Lada, the congenial mother of Apollo and Summer. He did not understand, however, that this figure does not only represent “seasons,” “spring,” or the “summer solstice,” etc., but the entire year as a whole. This image is the synchronous symbol of the female-year, the virgin of light, Virgo Solar, the heavenly mother, and the female eon. Interesting enough, Rybakov pointed to the fact that figures of the birthing mother are often found in embroideries dedicated to the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. What’s more, in some cases the Birthing Mother is depicted in the birthing position inside a church. Thus, in this regard, the pre-Christian virgin of light merges with the image of the Queen of Heaven. 

The most typical pattern of the Year of Virgo Solar depicts her with raised hands between two deer antlers. The raised hands and antlers are patterned in the formulation of the runes ilx, the “reindeer rune”, or the symbol of the summer half of the year. The deer on both sides themselves represent the two halves of the year. One is facing upwards towards spring, and the other is faced downwards towards autumn. Sometimes, both of the deer are fused together which stresses the inseparability of the year. Other times, in the most archaic patterns, the deer are replaced by two horses with riders. It is not difficult to recognize here the archetype of Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin which, according to Wirth, also represented the two halves of the year, i.e. four legs correlate with spring (the first horse in Russian embroideries), and the other four to autumn (the second horse). It is characteristic for these horses and deer to often bear the signs of the sun wheels:

                                                                                               

In certain patterns, the birthing mothers have their hands and legs in the form of tree branches which refer to the symbolism of the World Tree from which, according to the Norse saga, the first humans were created, Ask (“ash”) and Embla (“willow”). It is important to note that ancient Russian civilization was predominantly “arboreal,” hardened in many of its manifestations during the Hyerborean, pre-stone age phase when worshiping the Tree was a direct reflection of the Axis in the material world connecting earth, people, and the spirit of heaven and extending to all aspects of life from the building of homes or churches to “arboreal writing” through “cuts” and woodcarving, etc. It is indicative that the very figure of the Birthing Mother of Light itself is always symmetrical as if she was split in half by an axis, the Axis of the World, which she herself actually represents. 

Virgo Solar, or Lada, has her prototypes in ancient petroglyphs found on the territory of the Russian North. Here is a schematized and extremely simplified depiction:

Here we see between the Birthing Mother’s legs the newborn’s head, which is equivalent to the sun, the light of the world, that is “born” during the great feast of the winter solstice in the heart of winter. When this New Year’s sun, the newborn-sun, or the solar hero begins to grow by leaps and bounds, the pre-Christian Slavs celebrated Maslenitsa, where the main ritual meal was pancakes – “sun disks made from sun-raised bread.” It is extremely interesting to compare the figure of the Birthing Mother of Light to some embroidered calendars which both in Russia and among the Germanic peasants had a sort of sacred relationship to carved runic calendars. On embroidered calendars one sees two summer horns: a strange combination of cross-traits inside the final, 12th star (denoting 12 months). Their unequal distribution gives us the number 66, the “solar” number in symbolism. The year itself, presented in the form of a worm, has 73 divisions, i.e., 73 five-day weeks. This unique feature refers us back to the Herman Wirth’s idea that the people of the primordial tradition measured the year in 5-day weeks corresponding to the five fingers on a hand [26]. Pagan holidays were marked by social signs. The bottom features an inner star, the sign of the sun itself being “born” as in the figure of the Birthing Mother of Light at the moment of the winter solstice.

In addition to a purely annual calendar, the meaning of the Birthing Mother of Light, sometimes represented as a Solar Moose (and it should be noted that the constellation of the Great Bear was once called the constellation of the Moose by Russians!) – can be associated with the space of Gardariki Rus itself. The deer antlers and Virgo Solar thus belong to the Russian North up to Scandinavia and Karelia. The bodies of the goddess and the two elks belong to the center from Prussia to the Urals and, finally, the legs correspond to the Carpathians and the lands between the Azov and the Caspian Sea. Moreover, it should be noted that Hyperborean Dacia, with its cult center of Nordic Apollo, corresponds with precisely the newborn sun of the winter solstice, the child of light, the solar hero, and the secret treasure. Thus, in sacred geography Virgo Solar is identified with Rus itself whose national consciousness is perceived as the Solar Wife, or in the Christian perspective as the Heavenly Queen, the Mother of God venerated as the supreme patroness and secret soul of Russia.

The identifications explored by us are confirmed by yet another important observation. Sometimes, the prostrate Birthing Mother on northern embroideries is substituted by the figure of the double-headed eagle, the official emblem of Russia, in a similar structural composition [27]. The Byzantine double-headed eagle is depicted in the precisely the same form as the Virgo Solar and the depiction of its tail replicates the rune yr, the symbol of the lowest point in the annual motion of the sun that is often found in the classical images of the Birthing Mother. The sacred-geographical meaning of the Russian emblem is obvious: the one head represents the West and the second is the East. Moreover, the emblem of the Western and Eastern provinces are sometimes laid out on each wing respectively, thus rendering the eagle a sort of symbolic map of Rus. By analogy, the eagle’s interchangeability with the Birthing Mother grants the possibility of a geographical interpretation according to the the sacred female figure itself which reinforces what we have already said on this matter. 

However, the Apollonian meaning of Hyperborean Dacia in sacred-geographical Russian consciousness can be shifted further south all the way down to Constantinople, from whom the solar and light Christ of Faith came to Rus. The sacred relationship of Rus to Constantinople, Tsargrad, which was always the heritage of the Russian people not only for the enlightened political and religious elite, but also among the ordinary population who preserved the majority of Russian sacred geography’s myths in the form of legends, myths, sayings, songs, and tales, is determined precisely by this. In this perspective, the link between Moscow and Constantinople acquires a purely symbolic character. Constantinople is the South, the New Year’s point of the Russian Circle, that place where the Sun of Faith was born. Moscow is located roughly in the center (slightly east of the center) of the Russian circle, and for this reason was named the Third Rome by the Russians. “There shall be no fourth” as Moscow is the cyclical point in the solar orbit (like Constantinople – the Second Rome), the center of this circle itself, and the heart of the Birthing Mother of Light, the “Wife dressed in the sun.” Being the center, the last Rome lies at the heart of the cyclic transformations enveloping the circle. 

The Dnieper vs. the Nile

Having outlined the sacred-geographical circle of Gardariki Rus in general terms, we can once again turn to the Southern “Egyptian” circle with its center in the Mediterranean Sea. One is immediately struck by the fact that this circle encompasses all that might be called the Mediterranean cultural area including the Middle East, Egypt, Greece, Anatolia, Northern Mesopotamia, etc. The northern limit of the circle is Hyperborean Dacia. It is characteristic that this area is considered by modern historians to be the source of civilizations known to us, and it is from here that any fundamental civilizational principles – the origins of written language, mythology, religion, etc. – are supposed to be derived and used as reference points. In some sense, one can define this entire area as the sphere of “sacred-geographical Egypt”, as Egyptian cults and the sacred significance of the Nile are in many ways endowed with a special, original nature. We can recall in particular that Scandinavian maps indicated only one graphic point for all the southern rivers, the Great Nile. It should thus be assumed that this sacred-geographical vision was peculiar to the ancient Mediterranean civilizations themselves for whom the northern peoples, i.e. the entire region of Gardariki’s sacred circle, were associated most often of all with barbarity, primitiveness, danger, and the unknown. In the Bible in particular there are the kings of the North – the Kings of Gog and the Magog from the Kingdom of Rosh – and practically the majority of “Japhethian” peoples (according to the Bible, Japheth was the progenitor of the white, northern race) were identified as the enemies of the Semitic Jews and Yahweh [28]. 

On the other hand, such a fundamental author as Rene Guenon claimed that Middle Eastern and particularly Egyptian sacred forms are post-Atlantic ones entirely remote from even the Primordial Tradition’s secondary branches. In regards to Egypt, Guenon emphasized that this tradition was a combination of Western (Atlantic) and Southern sacred tendencies (the same applies to the Semitic tradition). Undoubtedly, this does not deny the authenticity of this traditional civilization, but it does assign it a subordinate, secondary position in the complex of Tradition as a whole. Moreover, Guenon emphasized the peculiarity of the Egyptian tradition as a tradition immanently cosmological which had lost much of the purity and clarity of Hyperborean, Apollonian metaphysics. 

In this context, similarly important is Guenon’s remark in his critique of certain alchemical-hermetic tendencies of the “Brotherhood of Heliopolis” (Fulcanelli and Kansele’s line). Guenon asserted that “Egyptian Heliopolis” was merely a reflection, a substitute for the true, nordic, and Hyperborean Heliopolis and, accordingly, those who looked to Ancient Egypt as a traditional landmark risked reaching an outcome that is completely opposite to true initiation and spiritual realization. Guenon associates this with a truncated from of the Great Pyramid whose apex, in his opinion, was not lost over time but never actually existed seeing as how Egyptian initiates did not regard the mysterious, higher metaphysics of Hyperborea which in any normal case crowned “the building of the sacred cosmos” [29]. 

Given the symmetry in sacred geography not only between North and South in general but also between our two circles associated with the 30th meridian, it can be suggested that the most direct sacred-geographical antipode of the Semitic-Egyptian circle is the Russian circle, the Birthing Mother of Light of Rus. What is also very important is the link between the Dnieper as the sacred axis of Gardariki and the sacred myths of Tuatha Dé Danann, the “Tribes of the goddess Danu.” The word Dnieper boils down to the Aryan Dan-apru (“Water of Danu”). The Tuatha Dé Danann of the Celtic saga, according to Herman Wirth, were not so much Celtic as they were a proto-Aryan, sacred Hyperborean people who once inhabited the polar regions. Wirth traces the very word “Teutons” or teutschenand deutschen to the word “Thuata.” Having as its central river the “Dan-apru,” the Dnieper, Rus, as the White Land, Sveta Dipa, and “Great Sweden” is opposed to Egypt with its Nile, i.e., the Black Land, or Kemi as the Egyptians themselves called their country. In such a case, if Egypt and the Middle East are used by conscious or unconscious “Semitophiles” as a strategic paradigm, as a Weltanschauung in the cultural, geopolitical, and religious sense, then it is only natural that the supporters of the “Japhethian” line take the Russian circle as the main sacred-geographical landmark. 

This can result in a particularly radical revision of the Phoenician theory on the origins of writing and in the development of the Hyperborean, Nordic idea on the emergence of writing as first formulated by Wirth. In this sense, Russian symbolic tales in ornaments, embroideries, architecture, and iconography are invaluable material confirming this theory, as “Russian cuts” and some elements of cyrillic symbolism indicate the existence of an ancient, verbal-ideographic and original Hyperborean character. 

The Russian “Avatar”

The Hyperborean complex of Holy Rus, in full harmony with Orthodox soteriology, knew of the necessity of dark times, the existence of the “Black Sea” Serpent, and the inexorable onset of cosmic night and cosmic winter.  At the same time, Russian consciousness is imbued with an absolute conviction that it is precisely during these moments of the seeming victory of “Southern” demonic forces that the Hero, the Savior, the true Tsar, and the true Lord appears from the spiritual, invisible center of Tradition, the sacred cosmos of the Northern Circle.

Footnotes: 

[13] Geticus, La Dacia Iperborea, Parma, 1984

[14]  Louis Charpentier, Les geants et le mystere des origines, Paris, 1975

[15] Severin Batfroi, Guy Beatrice, Terre du Duphin, Paris, 1976

[16] See R. Guenon’s Le Roi du Monde, op. cit., “Les Formes traditionnelles et les cycles cosmiques”, op. cit., and Herman Wirth’s Aufgang der Menschheit, op. cit.

[17] An interesting detail: the hammers on the emblem are gold while the muzzle and blades are silver. This corresponds to the symbolism of the “great mysteries” including the vertical axis, the 2 hammers, and gold, and the “small mysteries” including the horizontal axis, the intermediate axis, the muzzle, the blades, and silver. 

[18] Nirukta is the Hindu principle of sacred linguistics which considers not the etymology of words, but their consonance according to mantric phonemes. In many ways, Nirukta is similar in its particular operations to Jewish Kabballah . See R. Guenon’s “Les Formes traditionelles et les cycle cosmiques,” op. cit.

[19] Hence the Russian custom in which a bear distinguishes a “solar” male face from a lunar one which is only “half lit” with rays of hair, i.e., a woman’s face. The symbolism of the beard had deep religious cignifiance and the “Nomocanon” considers shaving one’s beard to be a serious sin with all the ensuing consequences. Such a traditional, sacred attitude towards having a beard is preserved to this day among Russian Old Believers.

[20] See Herman Writh’s Aufgang der Menschheit, op. cit. and A. Dugin’s The Hyperborean Theory

[21] In Novgorod, there existed two churches of Elijah the Prophet, Elijah the Dry and Elijah the Wet. Here, in fact, it is worth recalling the traditional symbolic idea that the sun controls not only heat( and light) but also rain (blessing) which was noted in the presence of the sun in the traditional image of two types of rays, i.e., direct vs. wavy rays, or direct light and heat or wavy water and rain. The word “sun” in Russian, solutes, consists of the same root “il”. It is also curious to note that the Russian Orthodox celebration of Elijah the Prophet falls on the same date as the pagan festival of Perun, the “god” of thunder, in which case the rune “ilx” can be understood as a hieroglyph of “Perun’s arrows,” or lightning. See The Metaphysics of the Gospel, chapter 36 and “The Order of Elijah and Elijah in the calendar of Tradition.” 

[22] This feat is sometimes performed by different heroes such as Nikkita-Kozhemyaka, Kozma and Demyan, and in some variants it is even performed by Saints Boris and Gleb. 

[23] In some regions in Russia the Duden ceremony of whistling for the summer solstice (the “winter yuletides”) or in funeral ceremonies, i.e. when “a man’s life moves on to the winter solstice.”

[24] See H. Wirth’s Heilige Urshrift der Menschheit

[25] See B.A. Rybakov’s The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs, Moscow, 1981.

[26] The worm-like 72 division recalls the myth of the division of Seth by Osiris into 72 parts, thereby forming the whole year without a single week, i.e., without the five-day divisions corresponding to the sacred time of birth of the “gods’ and “goddesses” during the winter solstice. 72 x 5 + 5 = 365 days in a year. In general, the number 72 is the most important one in cyclical symbolism.

[27] See B.A. Rybakov’s The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs, 

[28] The identification of Russia, its people, and its statehood with the Biblical King Gog is extremely widespread in Jewish circles to this day as well as among Protestant fundamentalists, the majority of whom profess the particular doctrine of “Dispensationalism.” According to this theory –  formulated by the English Protestant preacher Darby and then taken up by the Americans, in particular Scofield, the publisher of the most popular “Annotated Bible” in the US which is saturated with Dispensationalist commentary – the Old Testament prophecies that after Christ the Jews and all the rest of Christians will exclusively become the “New Israel”, or the Christian Church, should be taken literally, and not figuratively. Dispensationalists welcomed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1947 and considered this event to be a confirmation of their historical right. Today, they quite seriously expect the fulfillment of the rest of their prophecies, including the beginning of war between Russia (the kingdom of god) and Israel (the “tribulation). Thus, the final defeat of the Russians and the coming of the Messiah is expected and praised by Protestants, who refer to the Jews.

[29] See R. Guenon’s “Les Formes traditionnelles et les cycles cosmiques”, op. cit. 

Translator: Jafe Arnold  

Chapter 4 of Mysteries of Eurasia (1996 edition) from the collection Absolute Homeland (Moscow, Arktogeya: 1999)

http://www.eurasianistarchive.com/author/alexander-dugin/chapter-4-russi...