Theme: Civilization

ARYAN MYTH, ABRAHAMISM AND THE BEGINNING OF THE EUROPEAN CULTURAL NEUROSIS

by Daniel Gurpide (worth repeating)

The Indo-Europeans introduced not only practical techniques for the appropriation of the physical and biological world but also, above all, a new technique for organising socio-political and juridical relationships. It developed concepts such as ‘genos,’ ‘polis,’ and ‘imperium’—in their classical, medieval, or modern translations—and this constituted the difference that came to define Indo-European identity when confronted with other populations, cultures, and civilisations.

Such a way of organising society derived from a particular Weltanschauung. This world view, expressed in all fields of human activity, gave birth to a cosmogonic myth, around which Indo-European man understood, explained, and organised the universe and history. Its unique character is better perceived when contrasted with the mentality and culture of the Book of Genesis. The latter narrative, in its religious and secularised forms, continues to obsess contemporary Western civilisation.

What is most striking when studying Indo-European cosmogony is the solemn affirmation, found everywhere, of man’s primacy. Indo-European cosmogony places a ‘cosmic man’ at the ‘beginning’ of the current cycle of the world. It is from him that all things derive: gods, nature, living beings—and man himself as historical being. In the Indian world, the Rig Veda names him Purusha; his name is Ymir in the Edda; and, according to Tacitus, he was called Mannus among continental Germans. For the Vedic Indians, Purusha is the One through whom the universe begins (again). He is ‘naught but this universe, what has passed and what is yet to come.’ In the same fashion, Ymir is the undivided One: and by him the world is first organised. His own birth results from the meeting of fire and ice.

Kalidasa’s poem Kumarasambhava—one of the summits of Indian poetic reflection on the traditions of the Vedas—marvellously explains the allusions of the Indo-European cosmogonic myth. The opposition between Purusha (cosmic man) and Prakriti (which corresponds, approximately, to natura naturans) is revealing. Through being able to see without depending for this on Prakriti, Purusha is at the origin of the universe.

Since the universe is but indistinct chaos, devoid of any sense or significance, it is only by means of the outlook and word of cosmic man that the multitude of beings and things may emerge—including man fully realised as such. Purusha’s sacrifice is the Apollonian moment at which is affirmed the principium individuationis—‘cause of all that exists and shall exist’—until that time when the world will crumble: the Dionysian end that is also the condition of new beginning.

The universe does not derive its existence from something not part of it. It proceeds from the being of cosmic man: his body, his gaze, his word—and his consciousness. There is no opposition between two worlds—between created being and uncreated being. On the contrary, there is incessant conversion and consubstantiality between beings and things, between heaven and earth, between men and gods.

(h/t: brandon hayes)