19

Space, Time, the Earth

I have previously pointed out that the difference between traditional and modern man is not simply a matter of mentality and type of civilization; rather, the difference concerns the experiential possibilities available to each and the way in which the world of nature is experienced according to the categories of perception and the fundamental relationship between I and not-I. For traditional man space, time, and causality had a very different character than they have in the experience of modern man. The mistake of epistemology from Kant on is to assume that these fundamental forms of human experience have always remained the same, especially those with which we are most familiar in recent times. On the contrary, even in this aspect it is possible to notice a deep transformation that reflects the general involutive process at work in history. With this said, I will limit myself to discussing the difference in the perception of space and time.

As I mentioned in the foreword, my main contention is that time in traditional civilizations was not a linear, “historical” time. Time and becoming are related to what is superior to time; in this way the perception of time undergoes a spiritual transformation.

In order to clarify this point it is necessary to explain what time means today. Time is perceived as the simple irreversible order of consecutive events; its parts are mutually homogeneous and therefore can be measured in a quantitative fashion. Moreover, a distinction is made between “before” and “later” (namely, between past and future) in reference to a totally relative (the present) point in time. But whether an event is past or future, whether it takes place in one or another point in time, does not confer upon it any special quality; it merely makes it a dateable event, that’s all. In other words, there is some kind of reciprocal indifference between time and its contents. The temporality of these contents simply means that they are carried along by a continuous current that never inverts its course and in which every moment, while being different from all others, is also equal to all others. In the most recent scientific theories (such as Minkowski’s and Einstein’s) time even loses this particular character. Scientists talk about the relativity of time, of time as space’s “fourth dimension” and so on; this means that time becomes a mathematical order per se that is absolutely indifferent with regard to events, which may thus be located in a “before” rather than in an “after,” depending on the reference system being adopted.

The traditional experience of time was of a very different kind; time was not regarded quantitatively but rather qualitatively; not as a series, but as rhythm. It did not flow uniformly and indefinitely, but was broken down into cycles and periods in which every moment had its own meaning and specific value in relation to all others, as well as a lively individuality and functionality. Each of these cycles or periods (the Chaldean and Hellenic “great year”; the Etruscan or Latin saeculum; the Iranian aeon; the Aztec “suns”; the Hindu kalpas) represented a complete development forming closed and perfect units that were identical to each other; although they reoccurred they did not change nor did they multiply, but rather followed each other, according to Hubert-Mauss’s fitting expression, as a “series of eternities.”^[1] Since this wholeness was not quantitative but organic, the chronological duration of the saeculum was ephemeral. Quantitatively different periods of time were regarded as equal, provided that each of them contained and reproduced all the typical phases of a cycle. And so, certain numbers such as seven, nine, twelve, and one thousand were traditionally employed not to express quantities, but rather typical structures of rhythm; thus they had different durations though they remained symbolically equivalent.

Accordingly, instead of an indefinite chronological sequence, the traditional world knew a hierarchy based on analogical correspondences between great and small cycles; the result was a sort of reduction of the temporal manifold to the supertemporal unity.^[2] Since the small cycle reproduced analogically the great cycle, this created the possibility of participation in ever greater orders and in durations increasingly free from all residues of matter or contingency, until what was reached was some kind of space-time continuum.^[3] By ordering time “from above” so that every duration was divided into several cyclical periods reflecting such a structure, and by associating to specific moments of these cycles the celebrations, rituals, or festivities that were destined to reawaken or to reveal the corresponding meanings, the traditional world actively promoted a liberation and a transfiguration; it arrested the confused flow of the “waters” and created in them a transparency in the current of becoming, thus revealing immobile metaphysical depths. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the base calendar that measured time in ancient times had a sacred character and that it was entrusted to the wisdom of the priestly castes and that the hours of the day, the days of the week, and given days of the year were considered sacred to certain deities or associated with specific destinies. After all, as a residue of this notion, Catholicism developed a liturgical year spangled with religious festivities and with days marked by sacred events; in this liturgical year we can still find an echo of that ancient view of time that was measured by ritual, transfigured by the symbol, and shaped into the image of a “sacred history.”

The fact that stars, stellar periods, and given points in the course of the sun were traditionally utilized to determine the units of rhythm hardly lends support to the so-called naturalistic interpretations of time; in fact, the traditional world never “deified” the natural or heavenly elements, but on the contrary, these elements were thought fit to convey divine forces in an analogical fashion: “There is in the heavens a great multitude of gods who have been recognized as such by those who survey the heavens not casually, nor like cattle.”^[4] Therefore, we can assume that the position of the sun in the course of the year was primordially the center and the beginning of an organic system (of which the calendar notation was just another aspect) that established constant interferences and symbolical and magical correspondences between man, cosmos, and supernatural reality.^[5] The two arches of the ascent and the descent of the solar light during the year appear to be the most apt to express the sacrificial meaning of death and rebirth, as well as the cycle constituted by the dark descending path and by the bright ascending path.

I will discuss later the tradition according to which the area that today corresponds to the Arctic regions was the original homeland of the stocks that created the main Indo-European civilizations. It is possible that when the Arctic freeze occurred, the division of the year into one long night and one long day highly dramatized the perception of the sun’s journey in the sky, and thus made it one of the best ways to express the abovementioned metaphysical meanings, substituting them with what was referred to in more remote periods as a pure, though not yet solar, “polar” symbolism.

Considering that the constellations of the zodiac, which were articulations of the “god-year,” were used to identify the “moments” of the sun’s position in the sky, the number twelve is repeatedly found as one of the most apt “rhythms” to express anything that may have the meaning of a “solar” fulfillment. This number is also found wherever a center was established that in one way or another embodied or attempted to embody the Uranian-solar tradition, or wherever myths or legends have portrayed the type of an analogous regency through figurations or symbolical personifications.^[6] But in the course of the solar journey along the twelve points of the zodiac, one point in particular acquires a special meaning, and that is the critical one corresponding to the lowest point on the ellipsis (winter solstice), which marks the end of the descent, the beginning of the reascent, and the separation of the dark and the bright periods. According to figurations formulated in remote prehistory, the “god-year” is portrayed in this context as the “axe” or as the “god-axe” who splits in half the circular symbol of the year (or other equivalent symbols): from a spiritual perspective this marks the typically “triumphant” moment of solarity and the beginning of a “new life” and of a new cycle (natalis dii solis invicti). This moment was represented in various myths as the victorious outcome of the struggle of a solar hero against creatures manifesting the dark principle; these creatures were often represented by the sign of the zodiac in which the winter solstice happened to fall in that particular year.

The dates corresponding to stellar positions in the sky (such as the solstice), which were apt to express higher meanings in terms of a cosmic symbolism, are preserved almost identically in the various forms assumed by Tradition and passed on from one people to another. Through a comparative study it is possible and very easy to point out the correspondence and the uniformity of feasts and of fundamental calendar rhythms through which the Sacred was introduced into the fabric of time, thus breaking its duration into many cyclical images of an eternal history that various natural phenomena contributed to recall and to mark the rhythm.

In the traditional view, moreover, time presented a magical aspect. Since by virtue of the law of analogical correspondences every point of a cycle had its own individuality, duration consisted in the periodical succession of manifestations typical of certain influences and powers: it presented times that were favorable and unfavorable, auspicious and inauspicious. This qualitative element of time played the main role in the science of the rite; the parts of time could not be considered indifferent to the things to be performed and thus presented an active character that had to be reckoned with.^[7] Every rite had its own appointed “time”; it had to be performed at a particular moment, outside of which its virtue was diminished or paralyzed, and could even produce the opposite effect. In many ways we can agree with Hubert-Mauss, who said that the ancient calendar marked the periodicity of a system of rites. More generally, there were disciplines (such as the science of divination) that attempted to establish whether a given time or period was auspicious or not for the performance of a given deed; I have already mentioned the attention given to this matter in Roman military enterprises.

This is not “fatalism”; it rather expresses traditional man’s constant intent to prolong and to integrate his own strength with a nonhuman strength by discovering the times in which two rhythms (the human rhythm and the rhythm of natural powers), by virtue of a law of syntony—of a concordant action and of a certain correspondence between the physical and the metaphysical dimensions—are liable to become one thing, and thus cause invisible powers to act. In this way the qualitative view of time is confirmed. Within time every hour and every aspect has it sacred aspect and its “virtue”; also, acting within time on the higher, symbolical, and sacral plane^[8] there are cyclical laws that actualize in an identical fashion an “uninterrupted chain of eternity.”

The considerations that follow from these premises are very important. If traditionally, empirical time was measured by a transcendent time that did not contain events but meanings; and if this essentially metahistorical time must be considered as the context in which myths, heroes, and traditional gods lived and “acted”—then an opposite shift acting “from below” must also be conceived. In other words, it is possible that some historically real events or people may have repeated and dramatized a myth, incarnating metahistorical structures and symbols whether in part or entirely, whether consciously or unconsciously. Thereupon, by virtue of this, these events or beings shift from one time to the other, becoming new expressions of preexisting realities. They belong to both times; they are characters and events that are simultaneously real and symbolical, and on this basis they can be transported from one period to another, before or after their real existence, as long as one is aware of the metahistorical element they represent. This is the reason why some of the findings of modern scholars concerning the alleged historicity of events or characters of the traditional world, much of their obsession to separate what is historical from what is mythical or legendary, some of their doubts about the “childish” traditional chronology, and finally their belief in so-called euhemerism, can most decisively be said to lack solid foundations. In these cases—as I have previously argued—myth and antihistory represent the path leading to a deeper knowledge of what we regard as “history.”

Moreover, it is in this same order of ideas that we must look for the true meaning of the legends concerning characters who became “invisible,” who “never died,” and who are destined to “reawaken” or to manifest themselves at the end of a given time (cyclicalcorrespondence) such as Alexander the Great, King Arthur, “Frederick,” King Sebastian. The latter are all different incarnations of the same one theme transferred from reality into superreality. The Hindu doctrine of the avatars, the periodical divine incarnations who assume different personalities but who nevertheless express the same function, must be interpreted along these lines.

If traditional man had an experience of time essentially different from that of modern man, it follows that analogous considerations must be made concerning the experience of space. Space is considered today as the simple “container” of bodies and of motions, totally indifferent to both. It is homogeneous: a particular area of it is the objective equivalent of another one, and the fact that a thing is found—or that an event may take place—in one point of space rather than in another, does not confer any particular quality to the intimate nature of that thing or of that event. I am referring here to what space represents in the immediate experience of modern man and not to certain recent physical-mathematical views of space as a curved and non-homogeneous, multidimensional space. Moreover, beside the fact that these are mere mathematical schemata (the value of which is merely pragmatic and without correspondence to any real experience), the different values that the points of each of these spaces represent when considered as “intensive fields” are referred only to matter, energy, and gravitation, and not to something extraphysical or qualitative.

In the experience of traditional man, on the contrary, and even in its residues (at times present among some savage populations), space is alive and saturated with all kinds of qualities and intensity. The traditional idea of space is often confused with the same idea of “vital ether” (the ākāśa or mana), which is a mystical, all-pervasive substance-energy, more material than immaterial, more psychic than physical, often conceived as “light,” and distributed according to various saturations in various regions; thus, each of these regions seems to possess its own virtues and to participate essentially in the powers that reside in it so as to make every place a fatidic space endowed with its own intensity and occult individuality. In the well-known expression of Epimenides of Knossos (sixth century B.C.) that was quoted by Paul in his speech in the Areopagus: “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), if we substitute for the word “him” the word “divine” or “sacred” or “numinous,” it may be employed to express what traditional man often saw instead of the space of the moderns, which is ultimately an abstract and impersonal “place” filled with objects and motions.

It is not possible in this context to discuss all of what in the traditional world was based on such an experience of space. I will limit myself to references in the two distinct orders mentioned above, namely, the magical and the symbolical.

Space in antiquity has constantly provided the basis for the most characteristic expressions of the metaphysical dimension. The heavenly and the earthly regions, high and low, the vertical and horizontal axis, left and right, were all categories that provided the material for a typical, highly significant, and universal symbolism, one of the most famous forms of which was the symbolism of the cross. There may well have been a relationship between the two-dimensional cross and the four cardinal points; between the three-dimensional cross and the schema derived by adding to these points the dimensions of “above” and “below.” Still this does not lend any support whatsoever to the naturalistic and geo-astronomical interpretations of ancient symbols. At this point it is helpful to repeat what has been said concerning the astral element of the calendars, namely, that when the cross is found in nature this means that “true symbolism, far from being artificially devised by man, is found in nature itself; or better, nature in its entirety is nothing but a symbol of transcendent realities.” ^[9]

When we shift to the magical plane, every direction in space corresponded to given “influences” that were often portrayed as supernatural beings or as spirits; this knowledge not only helped to establish important aspects of the augural science and of geomancy (see the characteristic development of this discipline in the Far East), but also the doctrine of the sacred orientations in the rite and the arrangement of the temples (the art of orientation of the cathedrals was preserved in Europe up to the Middle Ages), always in conformity with the law of analogies and with the possibility, afforded by this law, to extend the human and the visible element into the cosmic and invisible dimension. Just as one moment of traditional time did not correspond to another because of the action (especially a ritual one) that had to be undertaken, likewise there was not a point, a region, or a place of traditional space that corresponded to another. This was the case in an even wider sense owing to the fact that some rites required subterranean places or caves, while others required mountain peaks, and so on. In fact there was such a thing as a real (that is, not arbitrary, but conformed to physical transpositions of metaphysical elements) sacred geography that inspired the belief in “sacred” lands and cities, in the traditional centers of spiritual influence on earth, and also in environments consecrated so as to “vitalize” any action oriented to the Transcendence taking place within them. Generally speaking, in the world of Tradition the location of the temples and of many cities was not casual, nor did it obey simple criteria of convenience; their construction was preceded by specific rites and obeyed special laws of rhythm and of analogy. It is very easy to identify those elements that indicate that the space in which. the traditional rite took place was not space as modern man understands it but rather a living, fatidic, magnetic space in which every gesture had a meaning and in which every sign, word, and action participated in a sense of ineluctability and of eternity, thus becoming transformed into a kind of decree of the Invisible. And yet the space in which the rite occurs should be regarded as a more intense kind of space in the general perception of the man of Tradition.

I will now briefly discuss the “myths” with which, according to our contemporaries, ancient man embellished the various elements and aspects of nature. The truth is that here we find once more that opposition between hyperrealism and humanism that separates what is traditional from what is modern.

The “experience of nature,” as it is understood by modern man, namely, as a lyrical, subjectivist pathos awoken in the sentiments of the individual at the sight of nature, was almost entirely absent in traditional man. Before the high and snowy peaks, the silence of the woods, the flowing of the rivers, mysterious caves, and so on, traditional man did not have poetic and subjective impressions typical of a romantic soul, but rather real sensations—even though at times confused—of the supernatural, of the powers (numina) that permeated those places; these sensations were translated into various images (spirits and gods of the elements, waterfalls, woods, and so on) often determined by the imagination, yet not arbitrarily and subjectively, but according to a necessary process. In other words, we may assume that in traditional man the power of the imagination was not merely confined to either the material images corresponding to sensible data or arbitrary and subjective images, as in the case of the reveries or dreams of modern man. On the contrary, we may conclude that in traditional man the power of the imagination was free, to a high degree, from the yoke of the physical senses, as it is nowadays in the state of sleep or through the use of drugs; this power was so disposed as to be able to perceive and translate into plastic forms subtler impressions of the environment, which nonetheless were not arbitrary and subjective. When in the state of dream a physical impression, such as the pressure of the blankets, is dramatized with the image of a falling rock, this is obviously the case of a fantastic and yet not arbitrary production: the image arose out of necessity, independently from the I, as a symbol that effectively corresponds to a perception. The same holds true for those fantastic images primordial man introduced in nature. Primordial man, in addition to physical perception, also had a “psychic” or subtle perception of things and places (corresponding to the “presences” found in them) that was generated by a power of the imagination free from the physical senses and responsible for determining in it corresponding symbolical dramatizations: for example, gods, demons, elementals, and spirits ruling over places and, phenomena. It is true that there have often been different personifications according to the multiform power of the imagination of various races and sometimes even of different people; but a trained eye is able to see a unity behind this variety, just as a person who is awake is immediately able to see unity in the variety of impressions created by the diversity of symbols in the dreams of different people. These images are nevertheless equivalent once they are reduced to their common objective cause and perceived in a distinct way.

Far from being fantastic poetical tales drawn from nature, or better, from those material representations of nature that modern man can perceive, the myths of the ancients and their fantastic fundamental figurations originally represented an integration of the objective experience of nature. The myths also represented something that spontaneously penetrated into the fabric of sensible data, thus completing them with lively and at times even visible symbols of the subtle, “demonic,” or sacred element of space and time.

These considerations concerning the traditional myths and the special relation they have with the sense of nature must naturally be applied to every traditional myth. It must be acknowledged that every traditional mythology arises as a necessary process in the individual consciousness, the origin of which resides in real, though unconscious and obscure, relationships with a higher reality; these relationships are then dramatized in various ways by the power of the imagination. Therefore, not only naturalistic or “theological” myths but historical ones as well should not be regarded as arbitrary inventions totally devoid of an objective value with regard to facts or people, but rather as integrations that did not occur casually. These integrations eventually revealed the superhistorical content that may be found to varying degrees in those historical individuals and events. Therefore, the eventual lack of correspondence of the historical element with a myth demonstrates the untruth of history rather than that of the myth; this thought occurred to Hegel too, when he spoke about the “impotence [Ohnmacht] of nature.”

What has been said so far relates to the presence of some kind of existential situation concerning the basic relationship between the I and the not-I. This relationship has lately been characterized by a set and rigid separation. It so appears that in the origins, the borders between I and not-I were potentially fluid and unstable, and in certain cases they could partially be removed. When that happened, either one of two possibilities could occur: the possibility of incursions of the not-I (of “nature” in the sense of its elemental forces and its psychism) into the I, or an incursion of the I into the not-I. The first possibility explains what have been called the perils of the soul. It is the idea that the unity and the autonomy of the person may be threatened and affected by processes of possession and of obession; hence the existence of rituals and various institutions that have as their goal the spiritual defense of the individual or of the collectivity and the confirmation of the independence and the sovereignty of the I and of its structures.^[10]

The general presupposition for the efficacy of a body of magical procedures was that the second possibility, which consists of the removal of the boundaries and of the ensuing incursions in the opposite direction (of the I into the not-I), could take place. Since the two possibilities shared the same basis, the advantages of the latter had as a counterpart the existential risks derived from the former.

We should remember that during the last times, following the progressive materialization of the I, both possibilities have disappeared. The active and positive (magic) possibility has disappeared everywhere but in few insignificant and marginal residues. As far as the “perils of the soul” are concerned, modern man, who boasts to have finally become free and enlightened, and who laughs at everything that in traditional antiquity derived from that different relationship between I and not-I, is really deceiving himself to think he is safe from them. Those dangers have only assumed a different form, which disguises them; modern man is open to the complexes of the “collective unconscious,” to emotive and irrational currents, to collective influences and to ideologies with consequences far more harmful and deplorable than those found in other eras and deriving from different influences.

Returning to what I have expounded before, I would like to say something about the ancient meaning of the earth and of its properties.

From a traditional point of view, between man and his land, between blood and soil, there existed an intimate relationship of a living and psychic character. Since a given area had a psychic individuality in addition to its geographic individuality, those who were born in it were bound to be deeply affected by it. From a doctrinal point of view we must distinguish a double aspect in this state of dependency, the former naturalistic, the latter supernaturalistic, which leads us back to the abovementioned distinction between “totemism” and the tradition of a patrician blood that bas been purified by an element from above.

The former aspect concerns beings who do not go beyond empirical and ordinary life. In these beings the collective predominates, both as a law of blood and stock and as law of the soil. Even if the mystical sense of the region to which they belong is awakened, such a sense does not go beyond mere “tellurism”; though they may know a tradition of rites, these rites have only a demonic and totemic character and they contribute to strengthening and renewing rather than overcoming and removing, the law by virtue of which the individual does not have a life of his own and is thus destined to be dissolved into the subpersonal stock of his blood. Such a stage may be characterized by an almost communist, and at times even matriarchical social organization of the clan or of the tribe. What we find in it, however, is what in modern man has either become extinguished or has become nationalistic or romantic rhetoric, namely, the organic and living sense of one’s own land, which is a direct derivation of the qualitative experience of space in general.

The second aspect of the traditional relationship between a man and his land is very different. Here we find the idea of a supernatural action that has permeated a given territory with a supernatural influence by removing the demonic telluric element of the soil and by imposing upon it a “triumphal” seal, thus reducing it to a mere substratum for the powers that transcend it. We have already found this idea in the ancient Iranian belief that the “glory,” the celestial, living, and “triumphal” fire that is the exclusive legacy of kings, pervades the lands that the Aryan race has conquered and that it possesses and defends against the “infidels” and the forces working for the god of darkness. After all, even in more recent times, there has been an intimate and not merely empirical relationship between spear and plough, between nobility and the farmers. It is significant that Aryan deities such as Mars or Donar-Thor were simultaneously deities of war and of victory (over “elemental natures” in the case of Thor) and of the soil, presiding over its cultivation. I have already mentioned the symbolical and even initiatory transpositions that surrounded the “cultivator” and the memory of it that remains in the derivation of the word “culture.”

Another characteristic expression lies in the fact that in every higher form of tradition, private ownership of the land as private property was an aristocratic and sacred privilege; the only people who could lay claim to the land were those who had rites in the specific patrician sense I mentioned in chapter 6, namely, those who are the living bearers of a divine element (in Rome this right belonged only to the patres, the lords of the sacrificial fire; in Egypt it belonged only to the warriors and the priests). The slaves, those without family names and tradition, were not thought to be qualified to own land because of their social status. For instance, in the ancient Nahua-Aztec civilization, two distinct and even opposite types of property coexisted. One was an aristocratic, hereditary, and differentiated type, that was transmitted together with one’s family’s social status; the second was popular and plebeian, of a promiscuous type, like the Russian mir. This opposition can be found in several other civilizations and is related to that which existed between the Uranian and the chthonic cults. In traditional nobility a mysterious relationship was established between the gods or the heroes of a particular gens and that very land; it was through its numina and with a net accentuation of the meaning (originally not only material) of ownership and lordship that the gens was connected to its own land, so much so that, due to a symbolical and possibly magical transposition, its limits (the Greek ἔρκoς and the Roman herctum) were regarded as sacred, fatal, and protected by gods of order such as Zeus and Jupiter; these are almost the equivalent, on another plane, of the same inner limits of the noble caste and of the noble family. We can say that at this level the limits of the land, just like the spiritual limits of the castes, were not limits that enslaved but that preserved and freed. Thus, we can understand why exile was often regarded as a punishment of a seriousness hardly understood today; it was almost like dying to the gens to whom one belonged.

The same order of ideas is confirmed in the fact that in several traditional civilizations, to settle in a new, unknown, or wild land and to take possession of it was regarded as an act of creation and as an image of the primordial act whereby chaos was transformed into cosmos; in other words, it was not regarded as a mere human deed, but rather as an almost magical and ritual action believed to bestow on a land and on a physical location a “form” by bathing such land in the sacred and by making it living and real in a higher sense. Thus, there are examples of the ritual of taking possession of lands and of territorial conquests, as in the case of the landnama in ancient Iceland or in the Aryan celebration of a territory through the establishment in it of an altar with fire.^[11]

In China the assignment of a fief, which turned a patrician into a prince, implied, among other things, the duty to maintain a sacrificial ritual for one’s divine ancestors (who thus became the protectors of the territory) and for the god of this piece of land, who was “created” for the benefit of the prince himself. Moreover, if in the ancient Aryan law the firstborn was entitled to inherit the father’s property and lands—often with the bond of inalienability—the property belonged to him essentially because he was regarded as the one who perpetuated the ritual of the family as the pontifex and the βασιλεύςof his own people, and as the one whose responsibility it was to tend the sacred fire and not let it be put out, since the fire was considered the body or life of the divine ancestor. We must also consider that the legacy of the rite and that of the earth formed one whole, filled with meaning. The odel, the mundium of free Northern-Aryan men, in which the ideas of possession of the land, nobility, warrior blood, and divine cult were aspects of an unbreakable synthesis, was an example of this. In inheriting the ancestral land, there existed an unspoken and express commitment toward it, almost as a counterpart of the duty toward the divine and aristocratic legacy that was passed on through the blood and that alone had originally introduced the right to property. The last traces of these values can be found in the feudal Middle Ages.

Even though during this time the right to property no longer belonged to the type of the aristocrat of sacred origins who was surrounded only by equals or by inferiors, as in the traditional forms of the origins found in the oldest constitution of the German people, and even though an aristocratic warrior class came to own the right to the land, nevertheless, the counterpart of such a right was the capability of a superindividual, though not sacred, dedication. The assignment of a fief implied, from the Franks on, the commitment on the part of the feudal lord to be faithful to his prince, that is, to exercise that fides that had a heroic and religious as well as a political and military value (sacramentum fidelitatis). This fides represented readiness to die and to sacrifice (i.e., a connection to a superior order) in a mediated way rather than immediately (as in the case of sacred aristocracy), sometimes without a metaphysical insight, although always with the virile superiority over the naturalistic and individualistic element and with a well-developed ethics of honor. Thus, those who are prone to consider not only the contingent and historical element, but also the meaning that social institutions assume on a higher plane, may detect in the feudal regimes of the Middle Ages traces of the traditional idea of the aristocratic and sacred privilege of ownership of the land, the idea according to which to own and be lord of a land (the inalienable right of superior stocks) is a spiritual and not merely a political title and commitment. Even the feudal interdependence between the state of the people and the state of the lands had a special meaning. Originally the state of the people determined the state of the territorial property; depending on whether a man was more or less free, more or less powerful, the land he inhabited assumed either this or that character, which was validated by various titles of nobility. The state of the lands reflected therefore the state of the people. On this basis, the dependency that arose between the ideas of ownership and land became so intimate that later on the sign often appeared as a cause and the state of a people not only was indicated but determined by that of the lands; moreover, the social status and the various hierarchical and aristocratic dignities were incorporated in the soil.^[12]

Thus I agree wholeheartedly with the idea expressed by Coulanges according to which the apparition of the “will,” in the sense of an individualistic freedom, of those who own the land to divide their property, break it up, and separate it from the legacy of blood and the rigorous norms of the paternal right and primogeniture, truly represents one of the characteristic manifestations of the degeneration of the traditional spirit. More generally, when the right of property ceases to be the privilege of the two higher castes and shifts to the two lower castes (the merchants and the serfs), what de facto occurs is a virtual naturalistic regression, and therefore man’s dependency on the “spirits of the land” is reestablished; in the case of the solar traditionalism of the lords of the soil, superior “presences” transformed these “spirits” into zones of favorable influences and into “creative” and preserving limits. The land, which may also belong to a merchant (the owners of the capitalist, bourgeois age may be regarded as the modern equivalent of the ancient merchant caste) or to a serf (our modern worker), is a desecrated land; in conformity with the interests typical of the two inferior castes, which have succeeded in taking the land away from the ancient type of “feudal lords,” the land is only valued from an economic point of view and it is exploited as much as possible with machines and with other modern technical devices. That being the case, it is natural to encounter other typical traits of a degeneration such as the property increasingly shifts from the individual to the collectivity. Parallel with the collapse of the aristocratic title to the lands and the economy having become the main factor, what emerges first is nationalism, which is followed by socialism and finally by Marxist communism. In other words, there is a return to the rule of the collective over the individual that reaffirms the collectivist and promiscuous concept of property typical of inferior races as an “overcoming” of private property and as nationalization, socialization, and proletarization of goods and of lands.

Footnotes

1. Hubert-Mauss, Mélange d’histoire religieuse, 207. According to the Chaldeans, the universe’s eternity was divided into a series of “great years” in which the same events keep on recurring, just like winter and summer keep on recurring every “small year.” If some time periods were sometimes personified as divinities or as divinities organs, this was yet another expression of the idea of the cycle as an organic unity.

2. “The durations of traditional time may be compared to numbers that in turn are regarded as the enumeration of lower unities or as sums capable of serving as units for the composition of higher numbers. Continuity is given to them by the mental operation that synthesizes their elements.” Ibid., 202.

3. This idea is reflected in the Hindu view according to which a year on the earth corresponds to a day for some lesser gods; while a year of these gods’ lives corresponds to a day for gods occupying a higher hierarchical level, until we reach the days and nights of Brahman, which express the cyclical unfolding of the cosmic manifestation. See The Laws of Manu 1.64–74. In the same text it is written that these cycles are repeated by the Supreme Lord “as if he were playing”; this expresses the irrelevance and the antihistoricity of the repetition in comparison to the immutable and eternal element that is manifested in it. We may also recall the biblical saying: “For a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday, now that it is past. …” Ps. 90:4.

4. Emperor Julian, Hymn to King Helios, 148c.

5. From a traditional point of view, great reservations should be expressed about the theory of H. Wirth concerning a sacred series derived in primordial times from the astral movement of the sun as “god-year”; this series, according to Wirth, was the basis for the measurement of time, for the signs and for the roots of a common prehistoric language and also for meanings related to the cult.

6. The number twelve, characterizing the signs of the zodiac, which correspond to the Hindu āditya, appears in the number of chapters of The Laws of Manu; in the twelve great Namshan of the circular council of the Dalai Lama; in the twelve disciples of Lao-tzu (originally two, who in turn initiated another ten); in the number of the priests of several Roman collegia (such as the Arvali and the Salii); in the number of the ancilia established by Numa in return for the sign of the heavenly protection he received (twelve is also the number of vultures that gave to Romulus rather than Remus the right to give his name to the city; twelve were also the lictorians instituted by Romulus), and in the altars dedicated to Janus; in the twelve disciples of Christ and in the twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem; in the twelve great Hellenic and Roman deities; in the twelve judges of the Egyptian Book of the Dead; in the twelve jasper towers built on the Taoist sacred mountain named Kuen-Lun; in the twelve main Aesir and their corresponding dwellings or thrones in the Nordic tradition; in the twelve labors of Heracles; in the number of days of Sjegfried’s journey and in twelve kings subjected to him; in the twelve main knights sitting at King Arthur’s Round Table; and in the twelve palatines of Charlemagne. The list could go on and on.

Traditionally the number seven refers to rhythms of development, of formation and of fulfillment in man, the cosmos, and the spirit. As far as the spiritual dimension is concerned, see the seven trials found in many initiations; the seven deeds of Rostan; the seven days Buddha spent under the “bodhi tree”; the seven cycles of seven days each necessary to learn the doctrine, according to some Buddhist traditions. While the days of biblical “creation” were believed to be seven, these “days” corresponded to the millennia of the Iranian-Chaldean traditions; these millenia were cycles, the last of which was considered a cycle of “consummation,” that is, of fulfillment and resolution or destruction in a solar sense. See R. Guénon, Le Symbolisme de la croix. Thus the week corresponds to the great hebdomadary of the ages of the world, just as the solar year corresponds to the cosmic “great year.” There are also many references to the development and duration of some civilizations, such as the six saecula of life attributed to the Roman world, the seventh being the saeculum of its demise; the number of the first kings of Rome; the ages of the first Manus of the present cycle according to the Hindu tradition, and so on.

7. Concerning this future, see the characteristic expressions of Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1.15.

8. Such a plane should not be confused with the magical plane, although the latter, in the last analysis, presupposes an order of knowledge deriving more or less directly from the former. A separate group consists of those rites and those celebrations, which despite their cyclical character, do not find real correspondences in nature but are rather originated by fatal events connected to a given race.

9. R. Guénon, Le Symbolisme de la croix. Also J. Evola, The Hermetic Tradition.

10. This should refer mainly to civilizations of a higher kind. When talking about the earth, I will mention the existence of an opposite orientation in the primitive connections between man and earth.

11. M. Eliade, Manuel d’histoire des religions (Paris 1949), 345; see The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, 1954). Eliade correctly remarked that at the time of the expansion of the Christian ecumene, to raise or plant a cross (today this is done with a flag) in every new country added to this ecumene.

12. M. Guizot, Essais sur l’histoire de France (Paris, 1868).