THE SATURNINE PRINCIPLE AND THE BACCHANALIA OF THE MODERN WEST

The Overthrow of the Apollonian Hierarchy

by Alex Fontana

“Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order: it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal.” [1]

Saturn is the most distant planet that is observable from the Earth with the naked eye. For the ancients the planet and the gods associated with it had special meaning. They considered Saturn – or Kronos, to use his Greek name – as lacking the divine ‘nous’ of spiritual illumination, that is the force associated with the Platonic light of the divine intellect.

The ninth-century Persian astrologer, Abu Ma’shar, identified Saturn as presiding over “avarice, blindness, corruption, hatred, guile and haughtiness.”[2] Saturn was also associated with the melancholic humor – hence the adjective ‘saturnine; which also has an alchemical connection to lead – the basest metal. A further association was with the Goat, as in the astrological sign Capricorn. This connected the planet to the another god, namely Dionysus.

DUGINISM – THE UNNECESSARY IDEOLOGY

A version of this article was published at the old Alternative Right site on the 2nd of October, 2013. This is an updated and expanded version.

by Duns Scotus

Doctor Johnson once famously refuted the nonsensical idealism of the Anglo-Irish cleric Bishop Berkeley by kicking a rock. This example is relevant when considering the over-intellectualization that many on the alternative right are drawn to in their attempts to challenge the hegemonic power of "Liberal Ideology," while also signalling their general intelligence and all-round superiority to their friends. It is certainly relevant to the contentious and arcanely expressed ideas of Alexandr Dugin.

The Russian intellectual's striving for a "Fourth Political Theory" is based on his abstracted view of the history of ideology, which, like Berkeley's idealism, seems to exist in a rarefied space separate from a robust dialogue with physical reality of the kind that Johnson favoured.