By Askr Svarte (Evgeny Nechkasov)
Translated and Edited by Jafe Arnold
With a Foreword by Richard Rudgley
402 pages / 1st edition released July 2020, 2nd edition August 2021 / Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook.
Volume II – Polemos II: Pagan Perspectives
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What is paganism? What does it mean to be a pagan in today’s world? What do the Gods, the Sacred and Myths of pagan traditions tell us about what has transpired over past millennia, and how do the developments of recent centuries affect our understanding of them? Polemos: The Dawn of Pagan Traditionalism takes up these and other penetrating questions in a conceptual tour de force, exploring a worldview long thought lost under the weight of monotheistic conversions, the science and technology of Western Modernity, and the deconstructions and simulacra of Postmodernism. In this wide-ranging study and compelling manifesto, Askr Svarte illustrates how, far from a fragmentary relic of the past, paganism is very much alive and wields a critical analysis of the past, present, and future with the potential to return to the forefront of consciousness.
Polemos: The Dawn of Pagan Traditionalism, the first book of the two-volume work published in Russian in 2016, sets out not only to rediscover and redefine the pagan legacy, but to orient paganism’s understanding of the paradigms which have confronted it. Titled after the ancient Greeks’ divine representation of war, which the philosopher Heraclitus deemed “the father and king of all”, Polemos maps paganism’s positions on the battlefield of ideas between paradigms, polemics, and trends. From ancient rites and myths to contemporary technologies and socio-cultural dynamics, few stones are left unturned in this extensive articulation of the pagan worldview in the twenty-first century.
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Table of Contents
From the Translator and Publisher
Foreword by Richard Rudgley
Author’s Preface to the English Edition
I: Prolegomena
Dawn?
Paganism: Doctrines, Names, and Symbols
Traditionalism
II: Time and Initiation
Cyclical Time
Linear Time
The Golden Age
The Silver and Bronze Ages
The Profane
The Heroes
The Iron Age
The Ontology of Estates
Pagan Initiation
Initiation as Death
Initiation as a Social Phenomenon
Initiation as Education
The Historical Heritage
The Horizontal and the Vertical
Language and Thinking
Two Languages
Translation and Rite
Vertical Initiation
Aspects of Initiations in Contemporary Paganism
The Problem of Counter-Initiation
The Triumph of the Titans
III: Paganism, Modernity, and Postmodernity
Dharma and the Due
Dharma in the Kali-Yuga
Modernity and Estates
The Constructs of Modernity
The Human
Humanism
The Material View on Traditional Societies
Reflection
Reality
Primitiveness
Gnoseological Racism
Technology
Freedom
Postmodernity
Post-Ontology and Post-Gnoseology
The Post-Human
Post-Society
The Consumer Society
Revolt, Anomie, and Death in the Consumer Society
The Rhizome
Post-Space
Post-Time
Post-War
An Intermediate Summary
The Horizons of Counter-Initiation
Post-Religion
The Fate of Europe – The Destiny of the World?
The Place and Time of Postmodernity
The Potential of Russia
IV: The Contemporary Pagan Experience
The Authentic and the Foreign
A Typology of Pagans
Subcultural Infiltrations
The Contemporary Experience
Personalities
Critical Remarks on Practice
Simulacra and Sects
The West
Russia and the Post-Soviet Space
The East and Asia
Compromises
Epilogue
Bibliography
Excerpt I – Banned on Facebook
Excerpt II – Prometheus and Modern Man
Excerpt III – ‘Primitive’ Life vs. Modern ‘Development’
Excerpt IV – Author’s Preface to the English Edition (@ Askrsvarte.org)
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Askr Svarte (Evgeny Nechkasov, b. 1991) is a Russian Traditionalist philosopher and pagan activist, the founding head of the Svarte Aske community and since 2019 an editor of the Foundation for Traditional Religions media resource. Descended from Bessarabian Germans exiled to Siberia in the early 20th century, since 2009 he has been a practicing pagan in the Germanic-Scandinavian tradition and an active voice in the rebirth of paganism in Russia and Europe. Nechkasov is the founding editor of the journal Warha and the author of multiple books, such as Polemos: Pagan Traditionalism, the first volume of which is presented here in English for the first time, Gap: At the Left Hand of Odin (Fall of Man Press, 2019), Forthcoming and Encirclement: Thoughts on the Germanic Logos, Tradition, and Nothingness (Gnosis, 2020), and Pagan Identity in the Twenty-First Century (Veligor, 2020). Since 2017, Nechkasov has been a featured guest in Russian print and TV media as an expert and defender of paganism and has delivered numerous public and academic lectures. He lives in Novosibirsk, West Siberia, Russia.
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