This is an excerpt from Alexander Dugin’s book series Noomakhia: Wars of the Intellect. The topic is the black logos of Cybele, interpreted as a philosophical teaching. His series also discusses the light logos of Apollo and the dark logos of Dionysus.

Twenty Principles of Black Philosophy

1. At the basis of everything lies matter, hule, silva, ‘wood’, space, khora, the wet-nurse (from the Timaeus), the first-matter.

2. Matter, understood maximally broadly (logically, mythologically, philosophically, theologically, religiously, rituality, symbolically, genderly) is identical with being and imbues all the phenomena arising from her with being.

3. Matter possess creative power and can create from itself bodily forms and life streams. The being of matter is transformed into life and into eidetic constructions. Matter is the creator of all.

4. The world is material, created from matter and returning to it. It (matter) is the alpha and omega of existence.

5. Things develop, beginning from maximally material and leading to more eidetic forms up to pneuma (the spirit) and intellect. But intellect (consciousness) is nothing other than the crown of the autonomous work of matter.

6. Time is material, linear and infinite. It flows in one and the same direction, but this flow has no goal. It flows like Titan-Ocean, always in one direction, but never reaching a goal. It has no goal. Matter develops and progresses but always remains itself, while constantly changing.

7. The materiality of the spirit is the highest secret of true knowledge. All forms have a common denominator: chtonic chaos. Appeal to it allows one to die and resurrect, to accomplish transformations and transubstantiations. Spirit is a consequence. It is always relative. Only matter is absolute, and that is true gnosis, freeing the knower from the oppression of dieretic operations.

8. Everything is its own opposite. Differences are never absolute, so transition to the side of the opposite camp, betrayal and transgressions are basic operations of the black logos. Radical euphemism, antiphrasis.

9. Everything is constantly changing and constantly remains itself. The forms change, the eidoses. The materiality stays the same. Elements transition one into another but preserve a connection with the original ontological base, matter itself. Changes (especially movement) have only a cause but no goal.

10. Matter is many, quantity. There is only the many; the one can emerge as a product of the game of the many and can just as easily disappear. Quantity is prior to quality.

11. The priority of quantity (the many) is expressed in the fact that there originally exist only atoms. Between them is emptiness. This atomization is necessary for the many to be many (and not one, if we admit the indivisibility of matter).

12. All bodies and also souls and spirits consist of atoms. They are comprised of atoms and decompose into atoms, some more quickly, others more slowly.

13. Their materiality makes all things equal. They are all dust and vanity.

14. Things and entities constantly attack one another in a battle for matter (as the highest value). Everyone tries to tear everyone apart, breaking them into quantity. [Everything breaks down into atoms to be recombined again.]

15. Possession  – food, riches, things, resources – is the meaning and goal of being. Matter fights with matter for matter. […]

16. Worshipping material, studying material, submitting to material, [etc] people, created by material for material, give eternal praise to matter by their materiality and participation in the [material cycles].

17. Everything existing as something (and not nothing) evokes a smile. Everything is funny, since the form, the thing, presenting itself as a form and thing, forgets its materiality, importantly holding itself forth as its opposite, and that is funny. […] The stupid are smarter than the smart. The ugly is more beautiful than the beautiful. The monstrous matter is more dear than the perfect.

18. That which is closer to matter (and not further from it) is more real. […]

19. Between the world of material bodies and matter itself are infinitely many worlds. They are full of dark and powerful life. The unnformed, incomplete, imperfect, and disfigured is more powerful, massive, stronger and ontologically formed than the completed and finished.

20. Materiality is that which is obvious in all that is present. All that exists is material. But matter itself loves to hide. It is always one level lower. Seek matter! 

Dugin’s twenty points about the philosophy of the black logos speak often of matter, as you see. He says we could also have spoken of nature. Nature loves to hide, and it hides behind a veil. When we try to unveil nature, we run a fundamental philosophy risk. Cybele kills/castrates her lovers, those who try to get too close to her.

translation by BY MICHAEL MILLERMAN