Nomadic Loci of the Sacred
by Evgeny Nechkasov (Askr Svarte)
Excerpt from Evgeny Nechkasov (Askr Svarte), Dissimiliatsiia [Dissimilation] (Novosibirsk: Svarte Publishing, 2024). Translated by Jafe Arnold.
The term “nomadic loci of the sacred” is a generic name, whereas such loci themselves actually have numerous native names upheld by the people who create them and dwell within them. This name refers to a local, alternative toponym for a community, or a family of believers living in a certain area, or simply a “house on the edge of the village,” or the underground, an ashram, a monastery, a farmstead, a settlement, a hamlet, a guard shack in a forest, a sacred grove, a peak, a valley, hard-to-reach areas and mountain gorges, lakes, plateaus, and much more. The Latin word locus means place, space, and is encountered — and this is no coincidence for our consideration — in the term Genius loci, “Genius of the place,” that is, the patron Genius of a place or the Deity dwelling therein, whether a spirit or mythological being.
Nomadism can be understood, among others ways, in terms of literally moving from one locus to another, as the preparation of the disclosure of a possible locus within the space of wandering, and so on. But it can also be understood as the fluidity and variability of practices of either concealing or presenting a locus of the sacred in relation to external view — seen from the outside, this locus should present itself as something ordinary, routine, and uninteresting, not exposing its radically different interior. Finally, a nomad is a wanderer who always appears as a stranger and a guest. Our understanding of this is aided by the polysemy of the English word “stranger,” which has also been preserved in the Russian language: a stranger is someone unknown, someone foreign, but they are also a stran-nik (“wanderer”) and are stran-nyi (“strange”). The figure of the wanderer in European culture refers us to Romanticism and thus to the problem of being forsaken by God, as well as to the problem of nostalgia and pain. In Russian culture, wandering (strannichestvo) has the altogether specific, albeit now obsolete, meaning of someone who wanders between sacred places and lives on alms or is fed at monasteries, i.e., an ascetic, a pilgrim, a wandering monk, or a conscious holy fool (Russian iurodivyi). Overall, the figure of the wanderer and guest has an ambivalent character in mythology: the guise of a strange newcomer might conceal a demonic, malicious figure or a Deity (Odin, for instance). This is one of the roots of the culture of hospitality, as a spirit or Deity might reward the welcoming householders, or one might test a foreign guest to see if they are of human or demonic nature. All of these shades and meanings essentially complement and lend volume to this term on the path of dissimilation.
The genesis of the idea of nomadic loci of the sacred is based on the following ideas and intentions:
The later Ernst Jünger and the Gestalt of the Forest Rebel and the Anarch;
The late reflections and seeking of Julius Evola and the figures of the wanderer among ruins, riding the tiger, and the differentiated man;
The generalized concept of diffused Zomia, based on the works of James Scott and adjusted to the figure of the Jüngerian Forest;
The temporary and permanent autonomous zones of Peter Wilson;
The hard anti-technological imperative that is the paradigm of the book Tradition and Future Shock;
Anti-disciplinary discourse in the broad sense, as read through the Traditionalist optic presented in the second part of this book and further developed in Tradition and Future Shock;
Sacrocentrism and the problem of the possibility and forms of post-traditional sacred experience, which we have traced out from the book Polemos up to the radical reposing of the question in the light of the Heideggerian critique of metaphysics in the book Towards Another Myth;
Our own personal experience of dissimilation, including our observations, direct as well as personal, of analogous strategies in different countries among various Traditionalist and religious groups.
Insofar as our word is addressed to broader circles for whom these topics and questions are existentially important, we cannot possibly cover all of the infinite diversity of experiences and potential difficulties confronting the embodiment of sacred loci in different corners of the middle world. Due to different geographical, climatic, geopolitical, ideological, socio-economic, cultural, traditional, and narrower cult-related conditions, it would be impossible, and in all likelihood superfluous, to present any universal, concrete recommendations. The adaptation of the root principles to local conditions and possibilities is a task for thinkers and a matter of the details on the ground. In one place there might be no alternative to the necessity of evacuating from the metropolis, whereas in another place it will be necessary to change agrarian practices or change the modus vivendi from sedentary to hunting and nomadism, while still elsewhere this will mean completely different strategies compromising the status quo and state of affairs. Therefore, instead of a systematic and calculated picture, as if a recipe for utopia, it seems more appropriate for us to expound a series of reflections and meditations on some of the fundamental structures and imperatives of nomadic loci of the sacred.
Loci of the sacred are what the Traditionalist is due to engage. Wherever we are, we affirm the space of the sacred, we bring the air into a vacuum, and we enliven the forests, fields, and waters.
Affirming a sacred locus does not mean that we merely need to open our eyes in order to gain access to an actually existing sacred world around us, whether parallel or concealed. Far from it, for the industrial landscapes surrounding us are in essence agents of impoverishment and nihilism. However, in dwelling within sacrocentric thinking, in raising and posing the questioning of Beyng, we create the possibility for forming islands and loci around us where the Divinities, spirits, and ancestors can convene — or not, for there are no guarantees, and much depends on our tact. We are waging a difficult struggle to reclaim space from the desert for oases of forest, to enchant them anew.
There is no guarantee or arrangement — nor can there be — that dialogue and communion between man and the Divinities will always, necessarily come to fruition within the space of a nomadic locus. Rather, it would be more correct to say that we can confidently take the initiative and extend the invitation to dialogue from our end: “Look, we have lit up the hearth and we invite you, Divinities, ancestors, and spirits, to share sacrifices, food, drink, and thought with us.”
The nomadic locus of the sacred can differ in space: from the thinking in the mind of a single wanderer to the space of the family and close circle, to a village seized by a group of fellow believers along with the nearby forests, cleared of another population and infrastructure.
The important, minimal locus of the sacred is thought, thinking. The most serious thinking of the sacred means directly positioning oneself so as to face the problem of the misfortune of the Divine in our days — with the strictest bracketing of everything else. This means pure presencing in the face of one’s Deity.
The Divine can manifest itself in the sacred locus in different ways. We are generally accustomed to the Divine always manifesting itself as a Deity, but then the expectations of a Deity or Deities might obscure and distract us from another theophany of the Divine.
A nomadic locus of the sacred can be compared to a lifeboat floating off from the Titanic still sailing on its course. It is a little island of preliminary salvation while everyone else is still idly strolling around the ship’s deck, unaware of the icy doom of the Ocean.
However, as we have already said elsewhere, the sacred locus becomes extremely problematic and practically impossible in the industrial world, and it is absolutely impossible in digital, virtual spaces and landscapes. In cases when questions and doubts arise as to the disclosure of a nomadic locus, such questioning should be resolved in favor of the judgment that the sacred locus in question has collapsed or is absent, and thus be interpreted as a call to move on.
Vlassis Rassias, a prominent figure in the renaissance of Greek paganism, has explained that contemporary Greek pagans refrain from holding their worship at the altars and sites surviving from ancient times, regardless of formal law, because of their mass accessibility to tourists and alien faiths, i.e., by dint of their metaphysical impurity and complete profanation in our days.
Generally speaking, a locus of the sacred is established and upheld over a long time, by virtue of many sacrifices and much effort. Reconquering such spaces means sabotaging and destroying infrastructure projects and development, making roads to them inhospitable, and minimizing or disabling their localization by networks. The site itself should be turned into something that outwardly appears to be abandoned, boring, uninteresting, dangerous.
Amidst the reality of the de facto panopticism of surveillance by cameras, gadgets that listen in and track, and invisible satellites, there are increasingly fewer spaces for nomadic loci of the sacred. Achieving a literal state in which no one knows where you are, how to find you, and what you’re doing — when you are maximally “offline” to the agent body of the Gestell to the point that it is as if you don’t exist for a moment — paves the way to the locus of the sacred and strengthens it. Most likely, the future fate of such possibilities and spaces is to be hidden underground or concealed underneath a strong roof and behind walls.
It is not difficult to imagine an altogether concrete future in which faithful Traditionalists will hide the last real plants and artifacts of the "old earth" in underground pits and alcoves — against the backdrop of a surface completely covered by urban, industrial, and futuristic cyberpunk landscapes. Such alcoves and shrubs are also nomadic loci of the sacred.
Another dimension of the question is that of being neighbors with, or desiring to disclose a sacred locus either with the help of, or in proximity to, indigenous and archaic peoples who have been subjected to modernization and Westernization to a lesser extent than Europeans. This strategy does not offer any guarantees: one should not be fooled by exoteric and archaic exterior forms or lifestyles. There are no guarantees that the hearths of their traditions are burning, not smoldering. Nevertheless, in terms of aesthetics, in contrast to the universalism of urban landscapes, and by virtue of being at a distance from the logistic and cultural agglomerations, such a neighborhood might have its meaning and benefits — but without pinning any high hopes or offsetting responsibility.
The following proposition can also be considered true: if ordinary modern people, families, or migrants settle in the space of a Traditionalist locus or nearby, they will undermine and break the already hard-won continuity of the sacred locus. They will create pores, vacuums, and lacunae in it. They need to be squeezed and driven out of the environment.
It is equally necessary to reduce the level of urbanization and infrastructural connection with cities and the industrial environment in the spirit of radically living off the grid. A village which has a cell tower and internet access, a pick-up point for orders from an online store, a gas network, etc., is a village plugged into an artificial lung ventilator. It is a dying space, not an authentic one, from which everyone dreams of getting out, escaping to the city they see on TV and on their smartphone screens, in the meanwhile reproducing such in the local setting in the worst forms of cargo cult.
In the sphere of thinking, one good basis of support is the method of the later Heidegger: systematically thinking through and modeling those dead ends of thinking and strategies by long, roundabout pathways which nevertheless bring us back to the original state, the very paradigm of thinking. In so doing, along the way of evacuation, escapism, and dissimilation, it bears cutting off side roads and those which lead in a circle.
To return to the figure of maps, the Traditionalist should bear in mind entire archipelagos of the sacred loci accessible to him in the surrounding lands as well as those further away. He should know and keep calendars and remember the trails of nomads as the key figures and structures of his “selfhood” within the obligatory distinction of “our own vs. other.”
The calendric quality of nomadic loci of the sacred is not only about place, topos, but also time, chronos: the time of the path to the sacred place, the time of dwelling in it, and the bitter time of leaving it. There is also the time of one’s Dionysia, rituals, meditations, sacrificial offerings, conversations, commemorative feasts, and other actions and holidays prescribed by tradition within the framework of the space and time of a sacred locus — where there are, in principle, no foreign people and eyes.
The very possibility of nomadic loci of the sacred is a miracle, a metaphysical stroke of luck to the highest degree which, like the stark contrast of colors, complements the harsh conditions of the much too early eschatology of our days.