Time and space contract into a single point. Because of this, they can be interpreted to unfold out of the event in different ways: Either we regard them as spatiotemporal entities that have a three-dimensional place and a one-dimensional time, or we see them as inevitabilities, “located” within three-dimensional time (past, present, and future) with an adjacent single space dimension. In any case, the event is becoming our starting point, the base assumption of reality and for this, it cannot already be pre-conceived of as a physical or material entity. The event does not occur in our mind or merely out there. It is the psychophysically neutral starting point from which the various aspects of the mental, physical or other domains of reality emerge.

Dual-aspect monism is the thesis that the mental and the physical are two (epistemic) aspects of an underlying (ontic) reality that itself is neither mental nor physical but rather psychophysically neutral. [...] An important variety of dual-aspect monism regards the psychophysically neutral domain as an undivided whole that is subject to decomposition into aspects, with mind and matter being two of these.

Atmanspacher, Harald, and Dean Rickles. Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning. 1st edn. Routledge, 2022. [1]

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Giordano Bruno, who was a contemporary of Galilei had already hinted at the possibility of time passing at different speeds in different parts of the universe. If each star represented another solar system and there was a potentially infinite amount of worlds like ours out there, time must necessarily pass differently on each planet. Bruno argued this based on the Aristotelian conception of time being the number of motion. If we measure our days by the rotation of the earth around its axis, days would be longer or shorter depending on each planet’s speed of rotation.

Si tempus ponatur nobis, ut Aristoteli, mensura motus, … tot sane erunt in universo tempora, quot sunt et astra. … si nos essemus in alia astra, apertissime constaret brevissimum motum omnium esse alium ab isto, sicut in luna constat alium esse motum diurnum, ubi octo et viginti dierum spatia … quod hoc astrum, tellus, spatia viginti quatuor horarum.

[EN]

If time is posited, as it is for Aristotle, as the measure of motion … then there will indeed be in the universe as many times as there are stars. … If we were upon another star, it would be wholly evident that its shortest motion was different from ours; just as on the moon its daily motion is different, taking twenty-eight days, whereas this star, the Earth, takes twenty-four hours.

Porro, Pasquale, ed. The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and Its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 75. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2001. [19]

Bruno and Galilei can be seen as pioneers of the scientific revolution with different approaches. Their difference, however, did not express itself in open dispute, as they were still both threatened by the same Scholastic authority they both opposed. It took until the debates between Newton and Leibniz when the distinction between absolute space and time and a more relative conception became more prominent. In hindsight, Newton clearly dominated this debate, whether for scientific or political reasons. It was only until Albert Einstein developed his theory of relativity that absolute space and time had to be dropped.

Einstein’s theory of relativity addressed one of the two major unresolved problems that, according to Lord Kelvin, were plaguing physics at the time. It is said that people were claiming that save for these two issues, physics was almost complete and there was little sense in pursuing it as a field of further research. The first issue was the unexplainable fact that hot bodies emitted radiation and the second one was the Ether drift. The Ether represented a last attempt at holding on to a Laplacian (mechanistic) universe, where the phenomenon of light, or electromagnetic radiation, was explained as waves of density in a profoundly subtle medium, an echo of the Aristotelian Quintessence. By finding a way to somehow explain radiation as propagating within a universal see of ubiquitous material stuff, some scientists wanted to explain it all by assuming the world was made of many tiny springs or oscillators. But the reign of pure mechanistic science had to come to an end.

The beauty and clearness of the dynamical theory, which asserts heat and light to be modes of motion, is at present obscured by two clouds. I. The first came into existence with the undulatory theory of light, and was dealt with by Fresnel and Dr. Thomas Young; it involved the question, how could the earth move through an elastic solid, such as essentially is the luminiferous ether? II. The second is the Maxwell–Boltzmann doctrine regarding the partition of energy.

Lord Kelvin https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Thomson

As a slightly alternative current to purely mechanistic science, field theorists emerged right after Newton. Some of their most prominent representatives like Faraday and Maxwell were intensely religious thinkers, and this was arguably not a coincidence. In fact, they continued the Newtonian tradition that understood absolute space and time to be derivative of the immensity of God. Hence, they sought to explain forces in terms of fields that were ubiquitous and acted always everywhere at once. The dismemberment of God as an absolute principle that Leibniz had lamented about Newton’s science therefore took on two competing versions. One was the attempt to understand each of the forces of nature separately as mechanisms. The other was the idea that forces themselves were expressions of fields that constituted time and space instead of occurring within them.

Coming back to Kelvin’s second issue, known as the Ether drift, it was observed by Michelson and Morley in 1887 that light had the same velocity at all times, regardless of whether the inertial system from which it was emitted was in motion or not. This meant that the Ether had to be always moving along with the light emitting source. This would directly disprove the idea of absolute space and time or at least push it into metaphysics and make it irrelevant for the study of physics. If Ether moved relative to bodies all the time, the entire point of having a universal medium for radiation became superfluous and absolute space and time were no longer observable in any way.

Michelson-Morley experiment, an attempt to detect the velocity of Earth with respect to the hypothetical luminiferous ether, a medium in space proposed to carry light waves. First performed in Germany in 1880–81 by the physicist A.A. Michelson, the test was later refined in 1887 by Michelson and Edward W. Morley in the United States.

The procedure depended on a Michelson interferometer, a sensitive optical device that compares the optical path lengths for light moving in two mutually perpendicular directions. Michelson reasoned that, if the speed of light were constant with respect to the proposed ether through which Earth was moving, that motion could be detected by comparing the speed of light in the direction of Earth’s motion and the speed of light at right angles to Earth’s motion. No difference was found. This null result seriously discredited the ether theories and ultimately led to the proposal by Albert Einstein in 1905 that the speed of light is a universal constant.

https://www.britannica.com/science/Michelson-Morley-experiment

The field theories rose to victory as most notably Maxwell’s field equations seemed to be unharmed by the abolition of Ether. The mechanisation that started with Descartes had to yield to the idea that forces were carried by fields that were beyond time and space. In the first step, the need for fields to keep the velocity of light unchanged was mathematically formalised by the famous Lorentz Transformations. Without having taken them into account, Maxwell had formulated laws of electrodynamics that were invariant under these transformations and hence passed the test of time. Now mechanics, the domain that still had to occur within time and space had to be updated, a feat that was accomplished by Einstein’s Special Relativity.

Einstein showed that time and space could not be seen as absolute frameworks, but were entirely relative, meaning they were dependent on the relative motion of bodies. There was no longer a means of claiming that a body was absolutely in motion or at rest, as it could only be so relative to other bodies. Seemingly, one of Kelvin’s problems was resolved, but it did not lead to the completion of physics, but instead triggered a ripple effect of creating further, even more fundamental issues that would ensure the continuation of physics as a field of research for a long time.

In the meanwhile, Einstein, alongside Planck, later followed by Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli and Schrödinger discovered an answer to Kelvin’s first issue concerning the radiation emitted by hot bodies. They discovered a formalism that described energy and matter interchangeably as quantised particles and waves. Quantisation meant assuming a discreteness of nature that, similar to Relativity, had deeper implications for modern physics. The universe came to be seen as probabilistic and no longer concretely determined, rendering even position in time and space as not inherently set. This inherent nonlocality of quantum mechanics represented a turning point in physics, a departure from which onwards theories were categorised into classical and modern physics. Einstein’s relativity remains to be seen as the last theory of classical physics in the vein of Newton, whilst quantum physics with its constituent quantum mechanics and quantum field theories are squarely placed within the category of modern physics.

Whenever we try to deduce laws from our study of atomic phenomena, we discover that we no longer correlate objective processes in space and time, but only observational situations. Only for these can we derive empirical laws. The mathematical symbols with which we describe such observational situations represent possibilities rather than facts. One might say that they represent an intermediate stage between the possible and the factual, which can only be called objective in the sense that, say, temperature is called objective by statistical thermodynamics.

Our knowledge about what is possible does admittedly enable us to make a few clear predictions, but, as a rule, it only allows us to speculate as to the probability of a future event.

Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. [13]

Today, physics constitutes a hybrid of modern and classical theories, as a complete picture of all known fundamental forces requires us to apply general relativity in order to account for gravitation, whilst all the other forces can be modelled to varying degrees by quantum theories. The cascading consequences that both resolutions to Kelvin’s problems brought led to two competing theories with fundamentally irreconcilable contradictions.

Special relativity explained time and space as being dependent on inertial systems and their relative motion to other such systems. A cascading issue, however, was the question of force and inertia. Force represents a change of motion, a measure that, unlike linear homogeneous motion, can be sensed and measured without any external comparative standard. Here, Bernard Riemann and Ernst Mach laid the groundwork for Einstein to accomplish a second, more thorough blueprint for relative spacetime known as general relativity. Mach’s principle asserts that inertia, the inherent ‘urge’ for bodies to resist a force, originates from the conflicting force exerted on each body by the presence of all energy and matter throughout the entire universe. All that Einstein needed to do was to find a way to incorporate the distribution of energy and matter into his relativity of time and space. Initially, Minkowski space had laid the groundwork for this, as it was the first attempt at defining a global system of coordinates that incorporated the relativistic contractions of time and space. This space now needed to be distorted, or rather curved by the presence of energy and matter. Riemann curvature provided the necessary ingredient for the completion of general relativity.

The appearance of a four-dimensional world in this subject is due to Minkowski. Einstein showed the relativity of the familiar quantities of physics; Minkowski showed how to recover the absolute by going back to their four-dimensional origin and searching more deeply.

Eddington, Arthur Stanley. The Nature of the Physical World: The Gifford Lectures, 1927. New York: The Macmillan Company; Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1929. [5]

Relativity theory saved the clock. Time and space were merged into a single, interwoven spacetime and this in turn enabled us to coordinate time across space again. One of the pressing issues that were sought to be solved by Einstein was the fact that it seemed practically impossible, or at least much more difficult than expected, to synchronise clocks across territories. Train stations urgently needed to be able to align clocks and hence it is plausible to say that whilst initially disproving the theoretical possibility of absolute spacetime, Einstein effectively restored absolute space and time by giving it a new form. What had originally been the three and later four-dimensional continuum described by Descartes was now generalised to the spacetime manifold, curved spacetimes that were locally indistinguishable from our conventional Cartesian (or Newtonian) spacetime. It was as though a theory had restored the idea of a flat earth, by describing the globe as a curved entity that was perfectly flat on each point of its surface.

General Relativity is considered to be part of classical physics for the wrong reasons. Generally, it is said to lack quantisation or cannot be quantised and is therefore not reconcilable with quantum theories. The way in which the formalism of general relativity is applied indicates that curved spacetimes really are treated as restored versions of absolute spacetime. This can be seen in the application of the theory to cosmology. It is assumed that the entire universe in its genesis and ongoing development can be attributed with a single spacetime that encodes all causal information about the entire cosmos. The mathematical formalism of general relativity does not necessitate this causal closure at all, but it has become common practise to limit spacetime manifolds to those cases in which full causality is ensured. This does not only apply to the edge case of cosmological models, but also includes black holes where the postulate of cosmic censorship states that any occurring breakdown of causality (e.g. in the vicinity of a black hole singularity) is fenced off by an event horizon, rendering the ‘regular’ region of spacetime outside of this horizon to remain fully causal. Given this circumstance, it is correct to categorise the contemporary interpretation of general relativity as classical, however, the implications of the theory by no means necessitate us to ‘remain classical’.

Was früher in der Mikrophysik eine praktische Schwierigkeit war, ist heute, infolge der Unbestimmtheitsrelation, eine prinzipielle Unmöglichkeit geworden; und dasselbe könnte eines Tages auch für die Schwierigkeiten eintreten, die nicht auf einem ‘zu klein’, sondern auf einem ‘zu groß’ beruhen.

[EN]

What was formerly a practical difficulty in microphysics has today, owing to the uncertainty relation, become a principled impossibility; and the same might one day happen to difficulties arising not from something being ‘too small,’ but from something being ‘too large.’

Gödel, Kurt. Eine Bemerkung über die Beziehungen zwischen der Relativitätstheorie und der idealistischen Philosophie. In Albert Einstein als Philosoph und Naturforscher, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 406–12. Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, 1979. [7]

The contemporary understanding of what would need to be attempted in order to ‘quantise’ general relativity runs under the classical assumption that quantisation signifies the ‘making discrete’ as in ‘dividing up’ continuous spacetime into microscopic chunks. Moreover, it is implicitly assumed that quantum processes would have to be occurring within this quantised spacetime, given the classical understanding of spacetime as an empty receptacle within which mechanics takes place. From its outset, it needs to be emphasized that quantum theory does not incorporate a single Hilbert space or wavefunction for the entire cosmos. In fact, there is no absolute cosmology as such even possible. This was, among other reasons the circumstance that triggered Einstein, Podolski and Rosen to consider quantum mechanics to be fundamentally incomplete, as it lacked the causal closure that was necessary to construct a cosmological world-model. However, it was made clear by Kurt Gödel that such a world-model is similarly made impossible by the implications of general relativity.

While we have thus shown that the wave function does not provide a complete description of the physical reality, we left open the question of whether or not such a description exists. We believe, however, that such a theory is possible.

Einstein, Albert, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Physical Review 47, no. 10 (1935): 777–80. [6]

Finally, since we take quantum mechanics as a complete description of the world at the present level of experimental knowledge … we are forced to accept the result that there is no objective, or more precisely observer-independent meaning to the ascription of a property to a system. Thus, the properties of the systems are to be described by an interrelated net of observations and information collected from observations.

Rovelli, Carlo. Relational Quantum Mechanics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics 35, no. 8 (1996): 1637–78. Preprint, arXiv:quant-ph/9609002v2. [20]

Each set of observations made of a quantum system defines its own space of state vectors, just like each point on the spacetime manifold defines its own Euclidean tangent space. But unlike in general relativity, it is generally accepted that there is no overarching cosmological quantum super-state-space that incorporates all possible quantum systems. Quantum systems stand in a fleeting (implicitly continuous) relation to one another. Therefore, quantum mechanics does not even imply the possibility of an overarching quantised cosmological space. Instead, quantisation is given by the non-commutability of operations on a quantum system. Each operation or observation establishes a reality that the subsequent operation acts on. Bell’s theorem demonstrates that there is no underlying consistent (local) reality that prefigures both operations.

The paradox of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen was advanced as an argument that quantum mechanics could not be a complete theory but should be supplemented by additional variables. These additional variables were to restore to the theory causality and locality. In this note that idea will be formulated mathematically and shown to be incompatible with the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics. It is the requirement of locality, or more precisely that the result of a measurement on one system be unaffected by operations on a distant system with which it has interacted in the past, that creates the essential difficulty.

Bell, J. S. On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox. Physics 1, no. 3 (1964): 195–200. [3]

The misunderstanding of the nature of quantisation does not imply a lack of skill or knowledge among trained physicists throughout the last century. Instead, it implies that the falsifications that prompted us to do away with absolute space and time effected changes in our mathematical formalism, but kept the underlying ontological paradigm intact. Especially the contemporary attitude that treats the quantisation of general relativity as a step towards grand unification shows that we are still regarding physics as a field that is approaching some sort of completion. Instead of attempting this completion, what is required is a more thorough break with the current paradigm and the resulting revelation of even deeper problems to tackle.

One can argue that quantisation has been incomplete. Whilst we have successfully demonstrated nonlocality by turning position and momentum to non-commuting operators (meaning that position and momentum cannot both be observed at the same time, resulting in the position inherently being uncertain or somewhat blurry/fuzzy), we are yet to demonstrate non-temporality. In principle, energy and time are supposed to have the same non-commutative relationship, yet there is no corresponding time operator to the energy (or Hamiltonian) operator that could demonstrate the quantisation of time. Therefore, time in quantum mechanics remains as a classical variable, as indicated by the time parameter for unitary transformations and time-dependent operators.

Wenn Impuls und Ort solche inkommensurable physikalischen Grössen sind, so ist es aus Gründen der relativistischen Viererdarstellung […] eine naheliegende Folgerung, daß dasselbe für Energie und Zeit zu gelten hat. In der Tat gibt es ebenso wie eine Impuls-Orts-Unschärfe eine Energie-Zeit-Unschärfe, die in zahlreichen Situationen experimentell bestätigt ist. Das erstaunliche Faktum hierbei ist aber, daß demgegenüber bislang kein Konsens über einen quantenmechanischen Zeitoperator besteht, der für die dazugehörige Inkommensurabilität von Energie- und Zeitoperator erforderlich ist. Dies ist nach wie vor, auch in den moderneren Formulierungen der Quantentheorie […] ein fundamentales Problem.

[EN]

If momentum and position are such incommensurable physical quantities, then, for reasons of the relativistic four-dimensional formulation […], it is a natural conclusion that the same must hold for energy and time. Indeed, just as there is a momentum–position uncertainty relation, there is also an energy–time uncertainty relation, which has been experimentally confirmed in numerous situations. The remarkable fact, however, is that no consensus has so far emerged on a quantum-mechanical time operator, which would be required for the corresponding incompatibility of energy and time operators. This remains, even in more modern formulations of quantum theory […], a fundamental problem.

Atmanspacher, Harald. Raum, Zeit und psychische Funktionen. In Der Pauli-Jung-Dialog und seine Bedeutung für die moderne Wissenschaft, edited by Harald Atmanspacher, Hans Primas, and Eva Wertenschlag-Birkhäuser, 239–274. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1995. [1]

A quantum observation represents a discontinuation of a continuous temporal flow. Only during the instance of observation does a quantum system reduce to a particular state. Before that, its state represents a continuous distribution. As there is no time quantisation, observations can be done at arbitrary and irregular time intervals. It becomes clear that quantisation does not result in a coarse graining or kind of ‘pixelation’ of the world. The discretisation of the continuum occurs during the reduction of the probabilistic state to a definitive measurement or observation. This is known as the reduction or collapse of the wave function.

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The interpretation of how exactly the wave state and the particle correspond to each other on an ontological level has led to a certain level of controversy and disunity about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The most common approach, being the Copenhagen interpretation (by Heisenberg and Bohr) or ‘shut up and calculate’ method simply abstains from any clarification and leaves our understanding at the superficial level where wave and particle are simply regarded as complementary to one another. Other approaches, such as the Many Worlds Interpretation state that each observation result occurs simultaneously in parallel realities. In order to avoid ontological baggage, we will proceed with a classic Aristotelian model where the observation is a concrete actualisation of a general potentiality expressed in the probabilistic form of the state or wave function.

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory starts from a paradox. Any experiment in physics, whether it refers to the phenomena of daily life or to atomic events, is to be described in the terms of classical physics. The concepts of classical physics form the language by which we describe the arrangement of our experiments and state the results. We cannot and should not replace these concepts by any others. Still the application of these concepts is limited by the relations of uncertainty. We must keep in mind this limited range of applicability of the classical concepts while using them, but we cannot and should not try to improve them.

Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. [13]

Yet we still encounter issues reminiscent of Zeno’s paradox. The infamous quantum Zeno paradox states that if we increase the amount of times in which we observe a quantum state within a certain time period, the state tends to stabilise. This means that the probability of observing the same state as previously measured increases. In its limit case towards infinite observations or perpetual observation, the state would become entirely classical and lose its probabilistic nature. This means that mere temporal frequency of observation allows an otherwise uncertain quantum state to be turned into a certain one. This exemplifies further the loophole that the non-quantised time variable brings into the quantum model1.

A simple natural approach to this problem leads to the startling conclusion that an unstable particle which is continuously observed whether it decays will never be found to decay!

Misra, B., and E. C. G. Sudarshan. The Zeno’s Paradox in Quantum Theory. Journal of Mathematical Physics 18, no. 4 (1977): 756–63. [18]

It should be clear by now that quantisation originates from (seemingly arbitrary) discontinuity rather than uniform chunking of a continuum. In this sense, the quantum model forces us to go back further than the Leibniz-Newton controversy. Despite Leibniz recognising the fact that time and space could not be defined as an absolute continuum, he nonetheless worked under the assumption of a single unified (and most optimal) world. This world was given and already existing, only that time and space came to be derived from events occurring within it. The quantum model assumes that the world is not already existent, but each act of observation, each discontinuity makes its contribution to the overall creation of the cosmos.

For Wheeler, it wasn’t so much a Kantian inclusion of the observer in our knowledge of the world, but rather a more Jamesian ‘possibilist’ approach in which observers were involved as agents (or ‘participators’ as he called them) in the very creation of the objective world through the questions they pose, which are acts of will, nature then providing random answers from the sea of possibilities, some family of which has been selected out by the participator’s chosen question. As he puts it: ‘the observer-participator converts conceivability into actuality.

Atmanspacher, Harald, and Dean Rickles. Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning. New York: Routledge, 2022. [2]

The idea of discontinuous creation echoes the medieval debates on the nature of creation by God. The core disputes over the role of God pertained to the question that if the universe and with it time itself began at the moment of creation, how free and arbitrary was God’s decision to create the universe? Given that only the discrete countability of motions such as the daily cycles allowed us to measure time, another necessary clarification became the relationship between discrete and countable time versus the flow of continuous eternity. Time and again rational models of nature revealed themselves to be insufficient as they required the seemingly arbitrary intervention of God to maintain a stable cosmos. It is becoming clear that the workings of God in the medieval sense can be regarded as an analogy for the function of a participatory observer in modern physics. In the humanistic vein of the scientific revolution, man had truly put himself at the centre of the universe.

When we delve deeper, we come to understand that even the medieval cosmological model was too much burdened by the ontological baggage of its theology. The thus far explored dissolution of the given objective world, found both in general relativity and quantum mechanics, takes us to back even further. The discoveries of Gödel guide us there. In 1949, Gödel demonstrated the need to entirely do away with objective time and space in his famous solution to Einstein’s field equations, in which he proved the possible existence of a universe in which closed time-like loops were possible, or in other words, where time-travel was possible. In a general sense, this showed that a global time variable was not generally provided in our method of modelling the cosmos.

Gödel’s cosmos described a rotating universe that rotated around every point in the spacetime. This necessarily strikes us as nonsensical and contradictory. The intuitive reaction of the scientific consensus was to simply reject time-travel and render it a conceptual impossibility, without paying attention to the deeper implications that Gödel’s observations have. The fact that a rotating universe from the perspective of two observers results in fundamentally irreconcilable times and spaces led Gödel to the conclusion that the laws of nature must stand outside of time and space in a meaningful way.

Every world line of matter occurring in the solution is an open line of infinite length, which never approaches any of its preceding points again; but there also exist closed time-like lines. In particular, if P,QP,QP,Q are any two points on a world line of matter, and PPP precedes QQQ on this line, there exists a time-like line connecting PPP and QQQ on which QQQ precedes PPP; i.e., it is theoretically possible in these worlds to travel into the past, or otherwise influence the past.

Gödel, Kurt. An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solutions of Einstein’s Field Equations of Gravitation. General Relativity and Gravitation 32, no. 7 (2000): 1409–17. Originally published in Reviews of Modern Physics 21, no. 3 (1949): 447–50. [9]

Wenn wir die Konsequenzen dieses seltsamen Sachverhalts verfolgen, kommen wir zu sehr weitreichenden Schlüssen über das Wesen der Zeit. Es scheint, kurz gesagt, daß man einen eindeutigen Beweis für die Ansichten jener Philosophen erhält, die, wie Parmenides, Kant und die modernen Idealisten, die Objektivität des Wechsels leugnen und diesen als eine Illusion oder als eine Erscheinung betrachten, die wir unserer besonderen Wahrnehmung verdanken. Die Argumentation ist die folgende: Veränderung wird nur durch das Vergehen der Zeit möglich. Die Existenz eines objektiven Zeitverlaufs aber bedeutet (oder ist zumindest äquivalent damit), daß die Realität aus unendlich vielen Schichten des ‚jetzt Vorhandenen‘ besteht, die nacheinander zur Existenz gelangen. Wenn aber die Gleichzeitigkeit in dem eben geschilderten Sinne etwas Relatives ist, kann die Realität auf eine objektiv bestimmte Weise nicht in solche Schichten aufgespalten werden. Jeder Beobachter hat seine eigene Reihe von solchen Schichten des ‚jetzt Vorhandenen‘, und keines dieser verschiedenen Schichtensysteme kann das Vorrecht beanspruchen, den objektiven Zeitverlauf darzustellen.

[EN]

If we follow out the consequences of this strange fact, we arrive at far-reaching conclusions concerning the nature of time. In short, it appears that one obtains a conclusive proof for the views of those philosophers who, like Parmenides, Kant, and the modern idealists, deny the objectivity of change and regard it as an illusion, or as an appearance owing to our particular mode of perception. The argument is as follows: change is possible only through the passage of time. But the existence of an objective temporal passage means—or is at least equivalent to the claim—that reality consists of infinitely many layers of what is “now present,” which come into existence successively. If, however, simultaneity is relative in the sense described above, then reality cannot be divided into such layers in any objectively determinate way. Every observer has his own series of such layers of what is “now present,” and none of these different systems of layers can claim the privilege of representing the objective passage of time.

Gödel, Kurt. Eine Bemerkung über die Beziehungen zwischen der Relativitätstheorie und der idealistischen Philosophie. In Albert Einstein als Philosoph und Naturforscher, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 406–12. Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, 1979. [7]

I believe it to be a general feature of many of Kant’s assertions that literally understood they are false but in a broader sense contain deep truths. In particular, the whole phenomenological method, as I sketched it above, goes back in its [central] idea to Kant, and what Husserl did was merely that he first formulated it more precisely, made it fully conscious and actually carried it out for particular domains.

Gödel, Kurt. “The Modern Development of the Foundations of Mathematics in the Light of Philosophy.” In Kurt Gödel: Collected Works. Volume III: Unpublished Essays and Lectures, edited by Solomon Feferman, John W. Dawson Jr., Warren Goldfarb, Charles Parsons, and Robert M. Solovay, 375–87. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. [8]

Gödel’s philosophical underpinning for his understanding of general relativity he derived from what he called idealistic philosophy, more specifically Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. The former was the originator of transcendental philosophy and the latter Gödel regarded as a reformer of Kantian thought in the form of phenomenology. What made Kant unique in his approach is the fact that he attempted a reconciliation of the Leibnizian and Newtonian positions on time and space by positing that Leibniz’ observed collections of related events were external and physical whilst the continua of absolute space and time were internal (a priori) pure forms of observation. In other words, events were real and observable, but space and time in the Newtonian sense were simply fundamental preconditions for observation in general. They needed to be ‘built’ into the subject in order for him to perceive the world in the first place.

In der Raum- und Zeitproblematik spielt der Königsberger Philosoph Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) eine herausragende Rolle. Er spielt sie aus mehreren Gründen. Erstens hat Kant im Lauf seiner eigenen Entwicklung mehrere, zum Teil entgegengesetzte Positionen in Bezug auf Absolutheit oder Relativität der Begriffe vertreten. Zweitens hat er nach dem «großen Licht» 1769 […] in seiner Inaugural-Dissertation einen entscheidenden Schritt vom «entweder-oder» zum «sowohl-als auch» von absoluten und relativen Raum- und Zeitkonzepten gemacht. Er hat dies drittens auf der Basis einer Präzisierung der Erkenntnismodi getan, mit denen Raum und Zeit zugänglich beziehungsweise für die sie erforderlich sind. Dadurch betont er erstmals neben mathematisch-physikalischen Argumenten solche der Psychologie und der kognitiven Wissenschaften.

[…] 1755 und 1756 versuchte er […] eine Aussöhnung von Newton und Leibniz. Ihr Kern besteht darin, daß er […] beiden einen separaten Geltungsbereich zuwies.

[EN]

In the problematics of space and time, the Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) plays an outstanding role. This is so for several reasons. First, over the course of his own intellectual development, Kant adopted several, in part opposing, positions with regard to whether these concepts are absolute or relative. Second, after the “great light” of 1769 […] in his inaugural dissertation he took a decisive step beyond the “either-or” toward a “both-and” conception of absolute and relative notions of space and time. Third, he did so on the basis of a clarification of the modes of cognition through which space and time are accessible, or for which they are required. In this way, alongside mathematical-physical arguments, he for the first time emphasized arguments drawn from psychology and the cognitive sciences.

[…] In 1755 and 1756, he attempted […] a reconciliation of Newton and Leibniz. Its core consisted in his assigning […] to each of them a separate domain of validity.

Atmanspacher, Harald. Raum, Zeit und psychische Funktionen. In Der Pauli-Jung-Dialog und seine Bedeutung für die moderne Wissenschaft, edited by Harald Atmanspacher, Hans Primas, and Eva Wertenschlag-Birkhäuser, 239–274. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1995. [1]

Now, the intuitions which pure mathematics lays at the foundation of all its cognitions and judgments which appear at once apodeictic and necessary are Space and Time. For mathematics must first have all its concepts in intuition, and pure mathematics in pure intuition, that is, it must construct them. […] Geometry is based upon the pure intuition of space. Arithmetic accomplishes its concept of number by the successive addition of units in time; and pure mechanics especially cannot attain its concepts of motion without employing the representation of time.

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Edited and translated by Paul Carus. 3rd ed. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1912. [15]

Today, Gödel is primarily known for his Incompleteness Theorems which can be regarded as formal elaborations on the foundational crisis in mathematics that Bertrand Russell had previously identified. In the same vein, his deliberations on general relativity can be seen as an elucidation of Husserl’s crisis of the European sciences. To the phenomenologist’s dismay, the Kantian approach was entirely abandoned and largely ignored within physics. At the latest, relativity theory would have debunked the Kantian assumptions of Newtonian space and time being hard-coded into our perceptive framework. For Gödel, however, relativity simply meant that Kant’s assumptions needed to be updated rather than discarded entirely. He understood Husserl’s concern over the situation that modern science was and still is faced with.

Ultimately, all modern sciences drifted into a peculiar, increasingly puzzling crisis with regard to the meaning of their original founding as branches of philosophy, a meaning which they continued to bear within themselves. This is a crisis which does not encroach upon the theoretical and practical successes of the special sciences; yet it shakes to the foundations the whole meaning of their truth. This is not just a matter of a special form of culture—‘science’ or ‘philosophy’—as one among others belonging to European mankind. […] Thus the crisis of philosophy implies the crisis of all modern sciences as members of the philosophical universe: at first a latent, then a more and more prominent crisis of European humanity itself in respect to the total meaningfulness of its cultural life, its total ‘Existenz.’

Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated, with an introduction, by David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970. [14]

With the removal of God from the equation, any transcendent principle was removed from science and our philosophical frameworks were constantly at risk of devolving into a mechanistic empiricism that would allow us to accumulate heaps of experimental data without having the guidance of an ontology that could meaningfully make sense of the data. Kant reconciled the Cartesian attempt to introduce the subject as an ontological mode with Humean empiricism, but he remained static in its categories. Hegel can be regarded as an heir to Kant insofar that he brought a dialectic dynamism into play that in hindsight could account for the discoveries of Einstein. By regarding the movement from Newtonian spacetime towards observed spacetime and back to Einsteinian spacetime as a thought movement in the Hegelian sense, we may be able to trace an intellectual tradition that eventual leads to Husserl and his search for Epoché.

Somit ergibt sich […] der unaufgelöste Widerspruch im höchsten Prinzip der Transzendentalphilosophie, der die vorausgesetzte und zugleich vermiedene Dialektik zeigt. Die Auflösung des Widerspruchs wäre das Denken der entgegengesetzten Seiten als Momente einer Denkbewegung: ‚Der Verstand ist er selbst nur als Tatsache und als Prinzip.‘ […] Dazu muss das Prinzip nicht als statischer ‚höchster Punkt‘, sondern als sichselbstbewegende Selbstidentität gedacht werden. Der Erscheinungsgegenstand ist nichts anderes als das Resultat der Selbstvergegenständlichung der Verstandesform. […] Die Frage nach der Existenz der Negativität wird Hegels Wesenslogik beantworten.

[EN]

Thus there emerges an unresolved contradiction in the highest principle of transcendental philosophy, showing a dialectic that is both presupposed and avoided. The resolution would consist in thinking the opposed sides as moments of a movement of thought: ‘Understanding is itself only as fact and as principle.’ […] The principle must not be thought as a static ‘highest point,’ but as self-moving self-identity. The phenomenal object is nothing other than the result of the self-objectification of the form of understanding. […] Hegel’s logic of essence will answer the question of the existence of negativity.

Gottschlich, Max. Die Überwindung der technischen Auffassung der logischen Form: Ein Ausblick von Kant auf Hegel. Hegel-Jahrbuch 2016, no. 1 (2017): 404–8. [10]

We perform the epoche … as a transformation of the attitude which precedes it not accidentally but essentially, namely, the attitude of natural human existence which, in its total historicity, in life and science, was never before interrupted. But it is necessary, now, to make really transparent the fact that we are not left with a meaningless, habitual abstention; rather, it is through this abstention that the gaze of the philosopher in truth first becomes fully free: above all, free of the strongest and most universal, and at the same time most hidden, internal bond, namely, of the pregivenness of the world.

Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated, with an introduction, by David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970. [14]

The Epoché is the sought-after core principle that may hold together the various sciences that otherwise are only bureaucratically tied together by their common affiliation with modern academia (McFadden [16]). As seen by Husserl’s famous student Martin Heidegger, this core principle takes us back much further than the scientific revolution or even the medieval period. It represents a fundamental break in our intellectual tradition and derives its importance from a millennia old misconception of forgottenness of Being (Seinsvergessenheit). It is the question of Being itself that is being raised and that leads us to dissolve our conceptions of time and space all the way back to when they were first conceived at the dawn of occidental philosophy.

If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about must be dissolved. We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of Being as our clue, we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being—the ways which have guided us ever since.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1962. [11]

Phenomenology strives to return to the things themselves. It is a pursuit of restoration of an original, unaffected engagement with the world and its concepts. Naturally, it can never truly return to an imagined past as it stands in the history of being (Seinsgeschichte) at a point where it self-consciously disentangles itself from affections of what has hitherto been understood as metaphysics. The forgottenness of this metaphysical affliction has entered modern science to the extent that metaphysics has been pushed to the margins as a recreational activity with no direct bearing on modern research. This is occurring despite the fact that the inexplicability of quantum mechanics alongside its irreconcilability with general relativity should be seen as the clearest expression of Husserl’s crisis.

The effect of this event of phenomenological disclosure is that the phenomenon becomes its own language. […] Working toward an understanding of nature in Goethe’s way requires the further development of the scientist himself or herself. […] Thus, in Goethean science the scientist himself or herself has to become the instrument, and he or she has to participate actively in his or her own development in order to become this instrument. This is quite a different matter from just using instruments externally, e.g., microscopes and telescopes, to augment the senses.

Bortoft, Henri. The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature. Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1996. [4]

Experience reveals, beneath the objective space in which the body eventually finds its place, a primordial spatiality of which objective space is but the envelope and which merges with the very being of the body. As we have seen, to be a body is to be tied to a certain world, and our body is not primarily in space, but is rather of space.2

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge, 2012. [17]

As explained in a previous section, time and space were not originally seen as things that were already given. Time and space were both created through ritual and familiarity. From the prevalence of frequented places, space was spaced in (eingeräumt) through an active participatory process. The world was fundamentally open and in flux without concrete boundaries with the exception of the bounded horizon, a boundary that was pregnant with all of the possibilities the world had to offer. Building, dwelling and thinking in its primordial sense represented a unit, a common process.

Only things that are locations in this manner allow for spaces. What the word for space, Raum, Rum, designates is said by its ancient meaning. Raum means a place cleared or freed for settlement and lodging. A space is something that has been made room for, something that—namely within a boundary, Greek peras. […] Space is in essence that for which room has been made, that which is let into its bounds.

Heidegger, Martin. Building Dwelling Thinking. In Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, 141–60. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. [12]

When a place is contemplated, it immediately strikes us in both a spatial and temporal sense. Which time effort is required to overcome this distance? This establishes distance. Our world has not changed. These distances are embodied as we can understand them on a deeper level if we can walk them. Distances of outer space, however, can be quantified in numbers, lightyears etc. but remain fundamentally incomprehensible. Towards the edges of our observable universe we too are bounded by a horizon. Same as with our primordial, worldly horizon, the boundary is not sharp but fades into an ever more distant, more diluted microwave background beyond which still remains the infinite potential of the unknown.

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The embodied realisation of a distance builds the space around it. We know the distance and we are familiar with it. Our conception of space and time is our best guess at how the world is structured based on the familiar configuration of events and places. In more concrete, mathematical language we can understand observed distances as geodesics that constrain the range of possible spacetime manifolds that describe our world. In a Kantian sense, time and space retain their epistemological nature.

[1] Atmanspacher, Harald. Raum, Zeit und psychische Funktionen. In Der Pauli-Jung-Dialog und seine Bedeutung für die moderne Wissenschaft, edited by Harald Atmanspacher, Hans Primas, and Eva Wertenschlag-Birkhäuser, 239–274. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1995.

[2] Atmanspacher, Harald, and Dean Rickles. Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning. New York: Routledge, 2022.

[3] Bell, J. S. On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox. Physics 1, no. 3 (1964): 195–200.

[4] Bortoft, Henri. The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature. Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1996.

[5] Eddington, Arthur Stanley. The Nature of the Physical World: The Gifford Lectures, 1927. New York: The Macmillan Company; Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1929.

[6] Einstein, Albert, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Physical Review 47, no. 10 (1935): 777–80.

[7] Gödel, Kurt. Eine Bemerkung über die Beziehungen zwischen der Relativitätstheorie und der idealistischen Philosophie. In Albert Einstein als Philosoph und Naturforscher, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 406–12. Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, 1979.

[8] Gödel, Kurt. “The Modern Development of the Foundations of Mathematics in the Light of Philosophy.” In Kurt Gödel: Collected Works. Volume III: Unpublished Essays and Lectures, edited by Solomon Feferman, John W. Dawson Jr., Warren Goldfarb, Charles Parsons, and Robert M. Solovay, 375–87. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

[9] Gödel, Kurt. An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solutions of Einstein’s Field Equations of Gravitation. General Relativity and Gravitation 32, no. 7 (2000): 1409–17. Originally published in Reviews of Modern Physics 21, no. 3 (1949): 447–50.

[10] Gottschlich, Max. Die Überwindung der technischen Auffassung der logischen Form: Ein Ausblick von Kant auf Hegel. Hegel-Jahrbuch 2016, no. 1 (2017): 404–8.

[11] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1962.

[12] Heidegger, Martin. Building Dwelling Thinking. In Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, 141–60. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

[13] Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

[14] Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated, with an introduction, by David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.

[15] Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Edited and translated by Paul Carus. 3rd ed. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1912.

[16] McFadden, Seán. Gödel’s Incompleteness as an Expressionof the Fragmentation of Epistemology in Mathematics and the Science. Kurt Gödel Freundeskreis. 2023.

[17] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge, 2012.

[18] Misra, B., and E. C. G. Sudarshan. The Zeno’s Paradox in Quantum Theory. Journal of Mathematical Physics 18, no. 4 (1977): 756–63.

[19] Porro, Pasquale, ed. The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and Its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 75. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2001.

[20] Rovelli, Carlo. Relational Quantum Mechanics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics 35, no. 8 (1996): 1637–78. Preprint, arXiv:quant-ph/9609002v2.

The officially accepted lineages of divine revelation by each religion can be attributed to a list of prophets that each accept or reject. Jesus Christ was a first point of departure in which Judaism split from Christianity. Jesus, as well as the followers of Christ were originally Jews themselves, after which their faith was Romanised and spread among the pagans. Later, the various diverging interpretations and versions of Christ-worship were streamlined and corrected by the prophet Muhammad in his quest to deliver the final prophecy. Muhammadism, originally seen as another heresy of Christianity, later established itself as the last great Abrahamic faith, dominating much of the world during the middle ages.

Whilst Moses is regarded as a prophet by all three religions, the focus on him is mostly carried by the Jews, he is said to have specifically liberated the Israelites from Egyptian captivity, hence serving as a national hero. The Ishmaelites, seen as the ancestors of the Arabs, had long before branched off from this lineage and hence Abraham serves as a true common prophet for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

Abraham is known for an event that did not happen. This will be the theme of this article: religion and its relationship to events that deviate from the expected trajectory of prophecy. Abraham did not kill his son. God had commanded to sacrifice his son, human sacrifice having been a common practise during those days. However, in the final moment, God stopped Abraham and prevented it from happening. This way, father Abraham, called to God’s services at an old age, was tested for his faith. The blind obedience to God’s wishes was rewarded with him being able to keep his only son.

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And when his Lord tried Abraham with words and he fulfilled them, He said, ‘Indeed, I will make you a leader for the people.’

Quran 2:124

Abraham was promoted to his name after originally being called simply Abram. Other figures in the old Testament were given similar upgrades to their names, such as Jacob being renamed Israel after he wrestled with God. These promotions represent elevations of regular humans to the status of prophets, remarkable men that reveal commands and plans of the almighty to the people when the time is right. Originally the people meant simply the children of Israel. Christianity was the first promotion that went beyond that. Not only was the prophecy of Christ intended for all people, irrespective of their tribe, but this prophet was identified as the Son of God.

In this sense, the crucifixion could not simply be regarded as a simple execution, but represented a sacrifice, hence the metaphor of the Lamb of God. Not only was it a sacrifice, but it was the response to the sacrifice of Abraham that did not take place. Since the days of the old father, animal sacrifices had taken the place of Abraham’s son, until the body of Christ came to be the ultimate human sacrifice. Due to this significant arc in the story of the bible, Christ came to be seen as the Messiah, the chosen one. However, instead of the people making an ultimate sacrifice to God, the roles were reversed and it was God that sacrificed his only son for the people.

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

Galatians 3:16

The arrival of Christ became the next great event that did not take place. At least not for the party of remaining Jews, following the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees. In their view, the Messiah would be a warrior-like figure that would liberate the Jews from the yoke of Roman rule and would help establish a new kingdom for the Jews. In other words, these Israelites were holding on to the tribal exclusivity of their prophecy. Christ had to be seen as an impostor and hence the curse that had put the children of Israel into hardship and repeated persecution was renewed by the curse brought upon them due to their denial of Christ’s divinity.

The legend of the eternal wandering Jew exemplifies this curse: Those among the Jews who rejected Christ as their messiah were fundamentally different from the pagans. The pagans stood outside the dialectic of Abrahamic prophecy and were later converted into it. The Jews, however, had to actively refuse their salvation and were thereby condemned to keep preserving their tradition and existence whilst being homeless, wandering and subject to the persecutions and whims of Christian and Muslim rulers. The world had inverted, instead of the children of Israel being exclusively salvaged and liberated by their Messiah, he condemned them and turned them into the exclusively cursed people.

This nature of inversion later turned out to be inherent in Christianity. Originally, the Christian doctrine had emerged out of a chaotic tapestry of various Levantine mystery cults. The Marcionites, Gnostics, and others read the same old testament texts but often arrived at opposite conclusions than the Christians: Some regarded the God Jahwe as an evil impostor God that had caged humanity in the garden of Eden. Christ, in the form of the snake, liberated Adam and Eve by bringing them the light. The bringer of light is often referred to as Lucifer.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

Isaiah 14:12

This duality of Christianity was frequently expressed by the persistent heresies of the early and high medieval periods. At times, the doctrine known as Manicheism became the most dominant Christian-adjacent religion. Manicheans, alongside Catharism and Bogomilist teachings all expressed similar ideas about Christ having an evil twin either being the devil or having a similar name like Satanael. The duality of Christ has arguably contributed to the modern form of secularism that we are familiar with today. Modernity is not simply a departure from Christian religiosity, it is an active inversion of it. Buddhists or Hindus are not capable of being secular in the sense that an originally Christian society can be.

We godless and anti-metaphysical, still take our fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old.

Nietzsche, The Gay Science / The Joyful Wisdom, §344.

The vehement rejection of the Church during early modernity, known as the reformation, could not help itself but become part of its own self-fulfilling prophecy. To a certain extent, all revelation is self-fulfilling. The end times are to bring a return of the Messiah alongside the establishment of a new Jerusalem. At the same time, the Jews are still awaiting the first arrival of their Messiah. At this point, almost definitionally, they have become the waiting people, as throughout history, several mass apostacy events would occur (most notably the rise of Sabbatai Zevi in 1666), where a large segment of Jewish society would simply follow some Messiah figure.

The end times are also characterised by an event that did not happen. Christ has not returned. And even if so, it is unclear whether he would be recognised as the Messiah by today’s remaining Jews or whether their Messiah is going to be the prophesised Antichrist that arrives before Christ to first plunge the world into darkness, deceiving its inhabitants. Despite the vast secularisation that had also captured Jewish society, these end times brought about a New Jerusalem. Ironically, it was the secular nineteenth century doctrine of ethnic nationalism from which Zionism arose.

In the meanwhile, Islam was building itself up to become the unifier of the prophecies, bringing all of the diverging accounts of God into a singular framework. The laws of the kingdom were refined and declared for all people, not only the children of Abraham. Simultaneously, the prophecy of Christ was explained and it was confirmed that he had been indeed the Messiah and his return would signify the end times. Everything was perfectly aligned if there hadn’t been the event that didn’t happen.

During the first Fitna, the civil war between the successors of the prophet Muhammad, the chosen heir to the caliphate, Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s son-in-law, was destined to be the head of the Ummah. Instead, he was unable to prevail against Muawiya, the general that would eventually become caliph and establish the Ummayad dynasty. Ali chose to reach a compromise with Muawiya, but this enraged some of his most radical initial supporters, known as the Kharijites, who ended up murdering Ali. They murdered the chosen heir himself for breaking with prophecy. They punished him for not following his destined path. They attacked him over something that did not happen.

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Now the paths of Islam diverged. The followers of Ali, know as the Shiites, similar to the Jews went through regular waves of apostacy, where each founded their own deviation from the Sunnah or orthodox Islam based on the alleged lineage of Imams descending from Ali, and ultimately from the prophet Muhammad. First, the Fatimids broke off and founded their sect based upon the sixth Imam. Later, the seventh Imam was regarded as the last one before the lineage of successors broke. Ultimately, the prevailing form of Shiism follows the twelve-Imam doctrine, where the twelfth Imam, al-Mahdi never died but entered occultation, a state of hidden retreat from the visible world, until he would return together with Christ at the end times.

Within Jewish mysticism, we can find a similar doctrine, where the Messiah is seen as already living among us, but being invisible to the people until he reveals himself when the time is right. According to the Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis alike, the Mahdi and Christ will together fight the forces of Dajjal, the Antichrist.

Today, all of these narrative threads are converging again, climaxing in a crescendo of religiously charged events in the modern Middle East. The party of Ali exists to this day and is represented by a spiritual leadership in Najaf (Ayatollah Sistani), modern day Iraq, and a political leader in the person of the grand Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Moreover, the entire Ummah in the region is burdened by Abraham’s curse in the form of the returning issue of the Kharijites. Various forms of Salafism, a modern newfound radical orthodoxy, dominated by Saudi-funded Wahabis, have focused their energy in fighting other Muslims and their governments, whether it be secular Arab leaders or Shias in Syria and Iraq.

Despite anything Western media (especially establishment conservative outlets) will tell us, the political fault lines are not a simple as Judeo-Christians vs Islamists. The enemies of Israel are largely supported and funded by the Shiites in Iran, whilst one of the Shiites main opponents are Daesh or the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS). ISIS has previously accidentally bombed Israel and apologised for it XXX. The Wahabi doctrine, dating back to Ibn Abdel-Wahab, promotes a zero-tolerance policy towards Muslims who engage in any form of innovation or deviation from the true doctrine of Tawhid, or the oneness of God. In their fury, they consider their fellow mislead Muslims as a greater enemy than the Kuffar or non-Muslim foreigner. This is why we can historically observe the Wahabi Saudis allying with the British (and later with the Americans) to fight their fellow Muslims.

In Israel, the Temple Institute exemplifies their attitude towards the end times perfectly as they intend to build the third temple by genetically engineering the red heifers that are described in the holy texts as the required sacrifices for the temple. The Evangelicals in the United States wholeheartedly support the Israeli right wing’s pursuit of building the third temple. Despite the fact that this will mean that most Jews are either killed or converted during the end times, a clear symbiosis has been emerging between the US evangelicals and the new right wing of Israel. The originally ethnonationalist basis for both the US right and the Israelis has turned into this postmodern form of messianism. At the same time, both of these factions have on various occasions supported, financially and militarily, the neo-Kharijite forces of the Wahabi persuasion.

What does a red heifer have to do with any of this? Perhaps it would be difficult for some to believe that a cow could be so important. But in truth, the fate of the entire world depends on the red heifer. For G-d has ordained that its ashes alone are the single missing ingredient for the reinstatement of Biblical purity - and thereafter, the rebuilding of the Holy Temple.

https://templeinstitute.org/red-heifer-introduction/

At this point, several parties are involved to intentionally escalate the conflict towards some kind of biblical resolution. The radicals among the Israelis would like to hasten the arrival of the Messiah, someone the Evangelicals may identify with Christ, but which Muslims and some Orthodox and Catholic Christians may identify with Dajjal, or the Antichrist. Conversely, the promised return of the Mahdi may be seen by some Evangelicals as the Antichrist, whilst Shiites especially regard true Christianity to be an ally in the struggle against Satanic Zionism.

These are dynamics that are simultaneously ancient and at the same time so characteristically postmodern that the secular society of modernity cannot truly comprehend them whilst also reinforcing them. While Jews, Christians, and Muslims all believe in the end times bringing a global empire, ruled by the chosen one in peace and harmony with God, the secular order has already achieved a global hegemony of liberal modernity.

The post-Holocaust world after the second world war learned two different lessons from the horrors of the concentration camps: This could not happen again, hence the world needed to be cleansed from nationalist chauvinism of any sort. Secondly, this could not happen again, hence the Jewish people needed to be armed and able to defend themselves in their homeland (ergo they were exempt from the ban on chauvinist nationalism). This inherent contradiction has devolved into the neo-Protestant evangelism of global liberalism and democracy having prompted an imperial expansion into the Middle East alongside some short-sighted support for the Wahabis. But most importantly, the legacy of the Holocaust reinforced the Jewish identity of an otherwise increasingly irreligious diaspora. Another one of those events.

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.

Unknown. (allegedly Wladimir Lenin)

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

Also Unknown. (though allegedly Antonio Gramsci)

We all notice when an era comes to an end. We never know what it means and nobody can predict when it will happen, but once it occurs, we cannot miss it. Everything changes. A new world is born and the old world dies off, fading into memory until it becomes something historians deduce from remaining artefacts. The biggest issue we face when trying to explain what exactly happened when monumental transitions came about, is the fact that often it is simply impossible to find a clear causality of events. Forces were at play that had laid dormant for centuries, sometimes even millennia. Many of these influences have never been studied or they interact with each other in such complex ways that it becomes impossible to disentangle them. Most importantly, if we try to understand an era that we are still living through, we are limited by our incapacity of taking on an outside standpoint.

The ‘antiquities’ preserved in museums (household gear, for example) belong to a ‘time which is past’; yet they are still present-at-hand in the ‘Present’. [...] What is ‘past’? Nothing else than that world within which they belonged to a context of equipment and were encountered as ready-to-hand and used by a concernful Dasein who was-in-the-world. That world is no longer. But what was formerly within-the-world with respect to that world is still present-at-hand. As equipment belonging to a world, that which is now still present-at-hand can belong nevertheless to the ‘past’.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962. [8]

I am of course speaking of modernity, an age that refers to itself as the new age. It has a clear temporality, as it not only describes itself as the newest age but it also distinguishes itself as the future of past ages. In this, it is progressive. It moves away from the past, not only in the colloquial sense of the general flow or passing of time, but the conscious and active effort to move away from historical burdens and previous constraints towards a more desirable utopia. This utopia is no longer situated in a world outside of the material realm. We are not anymore at the mercy of a judgemental God that would permit or deny us from paradise after our deaths. Instead, it is the genius of man, the sophistication of science and technology that will allegedly bring about this utopia here on earth.

For amongst the excellent acts of that king, one above all hath the preeminence. It was the erection and institution of an order, or society, which we call Salomon’s House, the noblest foundation, as we think, that ever was upon the earth, and the lantern of this kingdom. It is dedicated to the study of the works and creatures of God [...] The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

Bacon, Francis. New Atlantis. Edited by Gerard B. Wegemer. Irving, TX: CTMS Publishers at the University of Dallas, 2020. [1]

Initially, God still played a role in science as the ultimate demiurge, the mere configurator of the laws of physics, the first cause that wound up the cosmic clock, and from there, let the world take its course on its own according to its mechanistic laws. The idea of divine intervention was transferred to the intellect of man, who came to be seen as increasingly all-powerful thanks to the advances of technology. God was replaced by the Leviathan, the cybernetic conglomeration of people and machines that was forming and growing into the Megamachine of the millennium, a system that now stretches its tightly knit web across the entire globe.

Hobbes’s blasphemy was his vision of a diffuse intelligence that was neither the supreme intelligence of God nor the individual intelligence of the human mind. Leviathan was a collective organism, transcending the individual beings and institutional organs of which it was composed. Human society, taken as a whole, constituted a new form of life, explained Hobbes, ‘in which, the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other Officiers of Judicature and Execution, Artificiall Joynts; Reward and Punishment [...] are the Nerves [...] The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members, are the Strength; Salus Populi [...] its Businesse; Counsellors [...] are the Memory; Equity and Lawes, an artificiall Reason and Will; Concord, Health; Sedition, Sicknesse; and Civill war, Death.

Dyson, George B. Darwin among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1997. [6]

With this new ‘megatechnics’ the dominant minority will create a uniform, all-enveloping, super-planetary structure, designed for automatic operation. Instead of functioning actively as an autonomous personality, man will become a passive, purposeless, machine-conditioned animal whose proper functions, as technicians now interpret man’s role, will either be fed into the machine or strictly limited and controlled for the benefit of de-personalized, collective organizations. […] Two devices were essential to make the machine work: a reliable organization of knowledge, natural and supernatural; and an elaborate structure for giving orders, carrying them out, and following them through. The first was incorporated in the priesthood, without whose active aid the institution of divine kingship could not have come into existence: the second, in a bureaucracy. Both were hierarchical organizations at whose apex stood the high priest and the king. Without their combined efforts the power complex could not operate effectively. [...] Secret knowledge is the key to any system of total control. [...] Today the language of higher mathematics plus computerism has restored both the secrecy and the monopoly, with a consequent resumption of totalitarian control.

Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine, Volume One: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967. [14]

As we are still entangled within and bound by the terminology of modernity, we often cannot help ourselves but portray history through the lens of relentless progress. The scientific revolution, the enlightenment, renaissance, and reformation all came about as steps along the way from medieval ignorance towards modern prosperity, reason, and freedom. We no longer wait for the return of the messiah. For many of us, the messiah simply did not come and we were left with the end times without a new Jerusalem. Therefore, the misery left behind after the second fall of Rome (i.e. the Catholic Church) opened up another timeline, one where man realises his potential by shaping his own destiny. This did not do away with religion or Christianity, not in the least. It supercharged it with a new vigour, allowing Christians to take matters into their own hand and bring about the end times on their own terms. If Christ was not going to build the New Jerusalem, we would build it for him until he arrives.

Modern man, or Faustian man has deluded himself. He is not a rational animal, a being that is unshackling himself from previous ignorance. Instead, he is steeped in ignorance, misled by superstition and must understand that the dawn of modernity was not what it is often purported to be. We are indeed dealing with a new age, but in a much deeper and much less straightforward sense. Historians can focus on specific events like the fall of Constantinople, the discovery of America, or Martin Luther, but the real traces of what happened to our world are encoded in the fabric of time and space that had begun to unravel.

Movement on these paths we call Progress. This was the great catchword of last century. Men saw history before them like a street on which, bravely and ever forward, marched ‘mankind’ — meaning by that term the white races, or more exactly the inhabitants of their great cities, or more exactly still the ‘educated’ amongst them.

But whither? For how long? And what then?

It was a little ridiculous, this march on infinity, towards a goal which men did not seriously think about or clearly figure to themselves or, really, dare to envisage — for a goal is an end. No one does a thing without thinking of the moment when he shall have attained that which he willed. No one starts a war, or a voyage, or even a mere stroll, without thinking of its direction and its conclusion.

Spengler, Oswald. Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932. [17]

The confines of time and space were ripped open. It became undeniable that we were no longer caged in, the universe was not actually a sphere enclosing our planet. Nor was time limited by the end times, and perhaps not even limited in the past by creation. An unimaginable vastness opened up of which the disruptiveness could only be matched by the impact that the Abrahamic faiths had previously brought onto the decaying ancient world. From amidst a medieval kind of scholarly Gnosticism, known as Scholasticism, emerged a new religion, a nameless one that rules us today. Just like the Gnostics, the Scholastics were the last remnants of a bygone era. They lived at the precipice and gave way to an enlightenment, a transformation that was initially brought to Europe by Christ’s disciples, and was now ushered in by the scientists.

Die These, die hier vertreten werden soll, nimmt den behaupteten Zusammenhang von Neuzeit und Gnosis auf, aber sie kehrt ihn um: Die Neuzeit ist Überwindung der Gnosis. Das setzt voraus, daß die Überwindung der Gnosis am Anfang des Mittelalters nicht nachhaltig gelungen war. Es schließt ein, daß das Mittelalter als Jahrhunderte überspannende Sinnstruktur von der Auseinandersetzung mit der spätantiken und frühchristlichen Gnosis seinen Ausgang genommen hat und daß die Einheit seines Systemwillens aus der Bewältigung der gnostischen Gegenposition begriffen werden kann.

[EN]

The thesis to be advanced here takes up the alleged connection between modernity and Gnosticism, but reverses it: modernity is the overcoming of Gnosticism. This presupposes that the overcoming of Gnosticism at the beginning of the Middle Ages had not been lastingly successful. It also implies that the Middle Ages, as a structure of meaning spanning centuries, took its point of departure from the confrontation with late-antique and early-Christian Gnosticism, and that the unity of its systematic will can be understood as an attempt to master the Gnostic counter-position.

Blumenberg, Hans. Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. Erneuerte Ausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996. [2]

The middle ages were not unscientific, nor were they irrational or superstitious. Galileo Galilei was not the inventor of science, but a rebel against the scientific establishment of his time. He was not an atheist and he also did not deny the role that God played in the cosmos. Thomas Kuhn explains this clearly in his analysis of the scientific revolution. He interprets the history of scientific development to have moved through paradigms, meaning that despite the idea that theories need to be verifiable or falsifiable, certain periods will exhibit fundamental assumptions within science that are held onto despite their lack of falsifiability. In other words, the explanatory power that certain unproven assumptions lend towards theorems is useful enough to warrant the continued faith in these assumptions, despite apparent insufficiencies or contradictions among them. Oftentimes there is not yet a new set of assumptions to replace the old ones and improve on them. Only at the right moment, when the outlines of an emerging new paradigm can be sensed, and when the old paradigm is beginning to crack under the weight of its accumulated inconsistencies, does the dam break and we witness a paradigm shift.

Not only did the late medieval scholars have a rational model of nature, they also vividly debated over the relevance of metaphysics and the need for empirical rigour in their research. William of Ockham, a representative of the Nominalist school of thought within Scholastic discourse, denied the existence of universals, meaning that beyond specific round or flat objects, he denied the real existence of ‘roundness’ or ‘flatness’. The assumption that universals were not real as they were merely in the mind implied a clear superiority of the concretely observable (perhaps even proto-Empirical) environment over metaphysical categories and abstract speculation. Later representatives like Nicholas of Autrecourt took this even further and expressed general scepticism over Aristotle’s notions of substance, time and space. As a precursor to David Hume, Autrecourt even expressed the idea that our understanding of the world rests on probabilities derived from experience. Individual, discrete observations in time and space were seen as the only real elements, from which we constructed a time and space continuum in our mind.

The ideas which Nicholas of Autrecourt upheld [...] form a striking instance of the sceptical tendency that had gradually arisen as a natural consequence of the subtle and searching logic of Scholasticism; at the same time they fully justify the fact that Nicholas of Autrecourt has sometimes been styled the medieval Hume. […] On account of his acceptance of atomistic ideas, Nicholas of Autrecourt is mentioned in all works on the history of science, but he is often pictured as a man who formed a striking exception to the thought of his time. There was nothing exceptional, however, either in his scepticism about the possibility of proving religious truths — with the sharp divorce between religion and science and the absolute rejection of the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy that resulted from it — or in his advocacy of a more unbiased observation of natural phenomena.

Dijksterhuis, E. J. The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton. Translated by C. Dikshoorn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. [5]

Scholastic figures like Buridan and Oresme were already developing physical theories on impetus (an ancestor of the notions of impulse and inertia), movement and acceleration. Mathematics was gradually being introduced as the language and grammar of science. The merger of geometry and arithmetic, solidified by the re-emergence of Euclid’s Elements in the common curriculum, was applied to motion and the computation of velocity and acceleration. What was missing? If these medieval scholars were well on their way to develop modern science, why did they need to be overthrown and what role did Galilei and others play in this?

As explained by Kuhn, a scientific paradigm does not simply collapse as soon as some inconsistencies are found. Even if more powerful ideas and theorems are discovered, they still do not suffice to fundamentally topple the predominantly held presuppositions among the intelligentsia. Instead, what is required is a combination of a fertile breeding ground for a new paradigm and a cataclysmic trigger that strikes at the weakest point of the hitherto prevailing paradigm. In the case of the famous scientific revolution the fertile breeding ground was provided by a combination of factors. The rise of universal literacy, accelerated by the printing press, in conjunction with the emergence of free city states that had the funds to financially support the work of artists and scholars, proliferated a widespread culture of independent research and study. Naturally, the reformation was part of this overall development where independence meant that one no longer adhered to the mandate of accepted Scholastic teachings. The triggering event that would give the Scholastic establishment its final blow was the shattering of the geocentric world model.

Thus the impetus theory produced a small but important step toward what we should now call the relativity of inertial motion, and this trend was very much reinforced by the astronomical speculations which occurred during this and later periods. From the fourteenth century on, a number of important scholastic thinkers suggested, normally on a speculative or mystical basis, that the earth was like the other planets and that it moved, and these developments provided a conceptual basis for the technically more complete astronomical revolution proposed by Copernicus in the sixteenth century.

Kuhn, Thomas S. “The Foundations of Dynamics.” In The Quest for Physical Theory: Problems in the Methodology of Scientific Research, edited with an introduction by George A. Reisch, 21–40. 2021. Lowell Lectures, delivered March 1951. [11]

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The Aristotelianism of the medieval Scholastics was not as superstitious and inflexible as many would have us believe. In fact, Galilei did not outright reject Aristotle, but even claimed that the Greek philosopher would have adapted to the empirical observations that were made possible by the telescope. Whilst it was possible to adapt definitions of motion, it was too much of a deligitimisation of the Scholastic model if they had to admit that their entire view of the universe had been false. For the opposing side, there was less of an issue, as there was no united scientific or reformist front. There was a colorful range of thinkers that were often disputing each other. The correct ones only needed to be among them to eventually emerge as the successors of the old regime. It is easily forgotten that the early enlightenment era was a chaotic mess of people promulgating all kinds of radical ideas and theories, most of which were likely insane. But it is exactly this dynamic that is found in any kind of major discontinuous transition of an evolutionary system. The old paradigm exhausts itself, becomes stale, as exemplified in the epicycles of the geocentric world model, where each planet’s trajectory became so hopelessly complicated that the paradigm was bound to collapse under its own weight.

Auch entwickeln sich diese Lebewesen nicht systematisch hin zu größerer Komplexität. Alle Entwicklungsrichtungen stehen ihnen offen, auch die zu geringerer Komplexität, nur dass die Organismen in diesem Fall von dem Berg an Mikroorganismen schlichtweg absorbiert werden und nur im entgegengesetzten Fall als hochentwickelte Lebewesen aus dem Naturgemälde herausstechen. Solche komplexen Lebewesen existieren durchaus, aber der Eindruck, dass die Evolution als eine Fortschrittsgeschichte statthabe, verdankt sich einer optischen Täuschung. Wir sind nicht die Krone der Schöpfung, sondern die Außenseiter, während das Reich der Bakterien triumphiert.

[EN]

These living beings also do not develop systematically toward greater complexity. All developmental directions are open to them, including toward lesser complexity; only in that case the organisms are simply absorbed into the mountain of microorganisms, whereas only in the opposite case do they stand out from the natural tableau as highly developed living beings. Such complex living beings certainly do exist, but the impression that evolution takes place as a story of progress is due to an optical illusion. We are not the crown of creation, but the outsiders, while the kingdom of bacteria triumphs.

Schlaudt, Oliver. Das Technozän: Eine Einführung in die evolutionäre Technikphilosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2022. [16]

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But what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? And, we understand, when we speak of it; we understand also, when we hear it spoken of by another. What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not.

Augustinus, Aurelius. Confessions. Translated by Edward B. Pusey. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. [1]

In the early beginnings of time we beheld the world as an island surrounded by a sea of the unknown. The horizon limited our perspective, but also opened our world up to exploration and discovery. There was always something beyond, some territory to be conquered and roamed. Yet at the turn of the Axial Age, our world became truly enclosed within a spherical cosmos. We were not only living on the surface of a globe, but we were also trapped in a spherical dome, a compound in which we were destined to pass the duration of our mortal existence.

At the threshold of the first millennium, the demiurge, Plato’s creator God, had come to be seen by some as a tyrant. The Gnostics regarded him as an oppressive ruler that had condemned mankind to the purgatory of the material world. The carnal bodies of mankind were being tortured by the toil and suffering of this realm and only the spirit or the soul were able to liberate themselves and ascend to the eternal realm far above and beyond the confines of this dimension. Some Gnostic sects went as far as identifying Yahwe, the God of the Old Testament, with the evil demiurge Yaldabaoth that had originally imprisoned man in the Garden of Eden. In turn, the snake in the Garden was identified with Christ, the son of the true God, the one beyond the material world that had come to liberate Adam and Eve.

The higher realms of God send down mental power symbolized as Eve to assist Adam; both are, of course, symbolic beings and not real people. Yaldabaoth and his demons scheme to imprison Adam and Eve in matter in this world, but the higher realms send down revelation to assist them.

Davies, Stevan L., Übers. und Komm. The Secret Book of John: The Gnostic Gospel Annotated & Explained. Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2005. Second Digital Edition, 2013. [4]

Christianity emerged among a tapestry of various Jewish, Gnostic, and other Levantine sects. We were dealing with a syncretistic melange of the Hellenistic philosophies of Plato and Plotinus (referred to as Platonic Orientalism) alongside various, now unknown sects and mystery cults surrounding the Hebrew prophets, such as Christ. Whilst the religious doctrine of Christendom would end up being less pessimistic about the material world than the Gnostic one, it still retained the fundamental core idea of living in accordance with a law that came from beyond this earth. Life had the sole purpose of preparing oneself for the eternity after death, when our souls would pass out of the confines of this world. It becomes clear once more that time and space are intimately entangled as the eternal realm was not only seen as being outside of our transient dimension, but also beyond the confines of this space.

Even in your folly and your contempt, you despisers of the body, you serve your self. I say to you: your self itself wants to die and turns away from life. […] They called God what contradicted and hurt them, and truly, there was much heroics in their adoration! And they knew no other way to love their God than to nail the human being to a cross.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Herausgegeben von Adrian Del Caro und Robert B. Pippin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [11]

In our contemporary understanding, time and space were both created in the Big Bang. During that instant, all physical substance would have existed in the form of pure radiation, which can be regarded as a kind of very powerful light. This radiation persists until today in the shape of stars, while matter appears to be a secondary, derivative form of energy. In this sense, the material world truly descended from the luminous world, when the nuclear fusion taking place within stars yielded heavier atoms that were able to combine into more complex molecules. In another sense, this descent into the material world mirrors the spiritual descent of the eternal soul into the temporal body: Radiation propagates at the velocity of light c, a ubiquitous natural constant in physics. We understand that as soon as a moving entity approaches the speed of light, time slows down until it finally stops when c is reached. A material body can never truly reach lightspeed, but the implication is that light does not “experience” time. Therefore, pure energy, the ancestor of matter, is beyond time. Light is always already in the here and now as well as in the moment of creation.

Similarly, space contracts when approaching the speed of light until the entire universe contracts into a single point. Hence, light also does not experience space, meaning that the way we experience the spatio-temporal propagation of light must represent a mere artifact of the temporality of our being. We are familiar with the idea that spacetime contracts into single points, known as singularities, which occur at the centre of black holes or at the start of the Big Bang. Beyond the confines of a black hole or for that matter the confines of our universe, the notions of time and space break down, swap their roles, or become entirely indistinguishable. As puzzling as this may seem, our world can just as much be conceived of as a three-dimensional time continuum with a single space dimension, as it can of the opposite.

Da der moderne Leser von irgendwelcher Philosophie oder Wissenschaft herkommt, so pflegt er immer mit dem Raum anzufangen, z. B. nennen die Physiker die Zeit eine vierte Dimension des Raumes. Schlagender kann man nicht beweisen, daß die Weltmänner ihre Gedanken mit dem Raum anfangen. Das ist ein Anfang, der zu nichts Lebendigem je führen kann. Im Raum herrscht der Tod. Es ist natürlich Wahnsinn, dem Raum drei Dimensionen und die Zeit als vierte zuzuschreiben. Es ist eben umgekehrt: die Zeit hat drei Dimensionen, Zukunft, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Wo sie die hat, da ist der Raum der Physik, der Außenraum die vierte Dimension dieser dreidimensionalen Zeit.

[EN]

Since the modern reader comes from some kind of philosophy or science, he usually begins with space; for example, physicists call time a fourth dimension of space. One could not prove more strikingly that worldly people begin their thoughts with space. This is a beginning that can never lead to anything living. Death reigns in space. It is, of course, madness to attribute three dimensions to space and time as the fourth. It is exactly the other way around: time has three dimensions — future, past, and present. Where it has these, there the space of physics, outer space, is the fourth dimension of this three-dimensional time.

Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen. Die Übermacht der Räume. In: Soziologie, vol. 1. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1956. [13]

Given the mutability of other physical laws and given gravitational collapse, it is difficult to see how one can escape two conclusions for space itself: (1) the law for its dynamics must also be mutable, must also be superseded, must also be transcended under sufficiently extreme conditions; and (2) underneath must lie some deeper structure, call it ‘pregeometry’ or call it what one will.

Wheeler, John Archibald. At Home in the Universe. Masters of Modern Physics. Woodbury, NY: AIP Press, American Institute of Physics, 1994. [14]

The correspondence of the ancient and the contemporary conception of material temporality and luminous eternity indicates a consistent pattern throughout our historical models of the cosmos. Johannes Kepler referred to these patterns as Archetypes, systems of understanding that perpetuate themselves but also change with time. In the transition from the ancient mode of world-observation towards our modern form of research, a profound development occurred that involved the merging of philosophy and religious scripture.

Als anordnende Operatoren und Bildner in dieser Welt der symbolischen Bilder funktionieren die Archetypen als die gesuchte Brücke zwischen den Sinneswahrnehmungen und den Ideen und sind demnach eine notwendige Voraussetzung für die Entstehung einer naturwissenschaftlichen Theorie.

[EN]

As ordering operators and form-givers in this world of symbolic images, the archetypes function as the sought-after bridge between sensory perceptions and ideas, and are therefore a necessary precondition for the emergence of a scientific theory.

Pauli, Wolfgang. „Der Einfluß archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler.“ In: Naturerklärung und Psyche, herausgegeben von Carl Gustav Jung und Wolfgang Pauli. Zürich: Rascher, 1952, S. 109–194. [10]

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Religions of scripture had not played the same role in the ancient world as it would in the medieval period. The ancients had been superstitious and observed their traditional rites, but there was little incentive to create a consistent system of theology. Stories about the gods differed across regions. Priests during the Roman or Hellenistic period were not able to settle disputes by spending hours deriving their claims from scripture. Before the universal adoption of Abrahamic faiths, worship had meant something different, though elements of it carried on afterwards. Whilst the veneration of saints, angels, and heroic ancestors resemble the cults of the ancients, they were always subordinate to the supreme authority of God. However, the way God was to be understood was not entirely clear from scripture alone (Bible or Qu’ran). This is where Plato and Aristotle came to influence religious scholarship and the ideas of the One or the Unmoved Mover were merged with the accounts of God in the religious texts.

The book or written text in the phonetic alphabet was the disruptor, the revolutionary technology that created a religious environment that no pagan cult could compete with. Maintaining a consistency of narrative and even establishing a common language and internationally recognised clerical authority (other than simply worshiping the Roman emperor because he happens to be in charge) was made possible through this new innovation. Despite the fact that the medieval period is often seen as a time of technological decline, this new religious discipline was required to bring about the kind of systematised study that would lead to the rise of modern science. Obviously, written texts had predated the bible, but the sheer volume, its frequency and distribution, as well as the amount of scholarship and commentary had been unprecedented. One can regard the written texts of antiquity as early adoptions among elite circles of a technology that the Abrahamic faiths managed to spread across the general public. First, the propagation occurred among the priesthoods, but with time the spread of literacy and the invention of the printing press brought with it a second, more thorough wave of religious zeal known as the Reformation.

Lewis Mumford identifies precisely the individual discipline and sacrificial dedication to otherworldly pursuits as that which was lacking during the inventions of the Hellenistic period. Despite Heron of Alexandria having already constructed an early version of the steam engine, there was no cultural environment that would have society remodel itself around this machine. Christian communities, on the other hand, pioneered by monastic orders, were the first to synchronise their daily routine according to the bell and the clock. Daily life became structured around the perpetual cycle of the clock, the technological image of time. In this way, the clock became an important and frequently overlooked invention of the medieval period that predated the industrial revolution but was perhaps the most important precursor to it.

Physical work no longer occupied the entire day: it alternated with emotional communion through prayer and plainsong. Here the slave’s working day, from sunrise to nightfall, gave way to the five-hour day … This regimen, in turn, was balanced by intellectual effort in reading, writing, discussion, not least in the planning of the varied agricultural and industrial activities of the monastic community. Shared work had the benefit of shared mind.

The order and regularity that was introduced into the monks’ day—with every office performed in due succession at stated intervals, the seven ‘canonical hours’—was timed and paced by the hour-glass, the sun-dial, and eventually, the clock.

Through its regularity and efficiency the monastery laid a groundwork for both capitalist organization and further mechanization: even more significantly, it affixed a moral value to the whole process of work, quite apart from its eventual rewards.

Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967. [9]

What the written book did for spatial synchronisation of thought and teaching, was achieved on the temporal side by the introduction of the clockwork and calendar. The ancients had been sophisticated astrologers, well capable of keeping track of the eons and cycles of the ages, but the new calendar that accompanies us to this day placed us into a homogenised cosmic narrative, fully aligned and equally applicable across countries and empires. Naturally, calendars remained vastly contradictory and disharmonious for many centuries, but the tendency was always towards increasing universal agreement. The birth of Christ was no longer an event in the past, but the global anchor point at which our tracking of time begins. It launched us onto a timeline that would keep moving to the same, standardised pulse until the end times would usher in the apocalypse. For the first time, time itself had a beginning and an end.

Ein Blick auf die Uhr oder den Kalender zeigt das höchst anschaulich. Wenn man dabei findet, es ist jetzt 12 Uhr am 12. Tag des 12. Monats des Jahres 1212, dann kann das zugleich zur Bestimmung eines Zeitpunktes im Strome eines individuellen Lebens, im Strome einer Gesellschaft und im Strom des Naturgeschehens dienen. Auf ihrem gegenwärtigen Entwicklungsstand ist die Zeit, wie man sieht, eine symbolische Synthese auf sehr hoher Ebene, eine Synthese, mit deren Hilfe Positionen im Nacheinander des physikalischen Naturgeschehens, des Gesellschaftsgeschehens und des individuellen Lebensablaufs in Beziehung gebracht werden können.

[EN]

A glance at the clock or the calendar shows this very vividly. If one finds that it is now 12 o’clock on the 12th day of the 12th month of the year 1212, then this can at the same time serve to determine a point in time within the stream of an individual life, within the stream of a society, and within the stream of natural events. At its present stage of development, time is, as one can see, a symbolic synthesis at a very high level — a synthesis by means of which positions in the succession of physical natural events, social events, and the course of an individual life can be related to one another.

Elias, Norbert. Über die Zeit: Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie II. Herausgegeben von Michael Schröter. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. [5]

The entangling of our individual lives with the events detailed in scripture enabled us to not only understand causality as a relationship between isolated events, but something that was always derivative of the overall fate of the universe. In a sense, the Platonic and Aristotelian project could only come to its full fruition once cosmic narratives were unshackled from their local rites and became integrated into a formalised theological framework. The entire cosmos could now be reduced to a single ultimate principle, a highest being. The narrative conveying this singularity of the universe is referred to as creation.

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded.

1 Kings 8:27 (KJV)

It has been shown that most of our conceptions of time and space entail an inner and outer sense. Aristotle gave distinct accounts whenever he spoke of space as the superlunar cosmos or simply the areas delimiting physical sublunar bodies. Plato distinguished between the eternity of the forms and the ceaseless passing of time tracked by the movement of the heavenly bodies. The merger of the religious doctrine of creation with their philosophical ideas brought about an ever intensifying rift between the inner and outer senses. Was the universe itself eternal and creation to be regarded in the Platonic sense as an always already occurring process, implying that creation is still happening? Or is there a distinct separation between the transient material world and the eternal spiritual world, a rupture that occurred at the moment of creation?

If creation happened at a specific point in time it raises the question whether time itself was created at that instant or whether there was an infinite period preceding creation in which God had not yet performed the act of creation. Naturally, this implies a baggage of cascading issues, where one asks whether creation would then be necessary or arbitrary. Whilst Plato maintains an ontological separation between the eternity of God and the temporality of man, Aristotle is rather less clear on this. Time is defined as the number of motion, but the limitless extendibility of natural numbers allows this count of motion to continue in perpetuity. If there was no motion before creation, then no time would have passed in this sense. For Aristotle this means that it is nonsensical to posit the creation of the universe at a particular point in time, as no temporality could be defined before there was any universe in which motion could occur.

If the world had a beginning, why did God, having the power to create it, not create it sooner? and why did He decide to create it at a certain instant rather than at another? For over ten centuries, the standard answer to such questions was that they make no sense, because they depend on a false supposition or imagination of time ‘before’ creation: if one assumes that there is no time without change, the universe is created with rather than in time, and God is prior to his creatures not in duration but in the order of nature.

Porro, Pasquale (Hg.). The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2001. [12]

For those literalists that insisted on the verbatim accuracy of the scriptures, philosophy and its logical musings had to be rejected. The most famous example of this is the dispute between Ibn Rushd, otherwise known as Averroes, and Al-Ghazali: The latter accused the philosophers of incoherence as their claims about the perpetuity of the cosmos stood in direct contradiction to the omnipotence of God. The supreme coherence of the Islamic doctrine being Tawhid, or the unity and uniqueness of Allah, it did not allow for reason or any other human faculty to constrain and restrict the powers of God. As God’s all-powerfulness was realised in the creation of the universe, it would make little sense to proclaim that this universe had already been there, and necessarily so, and was bound to have been created by God only in the way that conforms to reason. Averroes retorted Al-Ghazali’s critique with the (hilarious) Incoherence of the Incoherence, maintaining that reason serves only to showcase the brilliance and perfection of God’s work, as his creation could be seen to be immaculate in its logical consistency.

How will you disprove one who says that the world came into being because of the eternal will which demanded its existence at the time at which it actually came into existence, and which demanded the non-existence [of the world] to last as long as it lasted, and [demanded] the existence to begin where it actually began? So, on this view, existence of the world was not an object of the eternal will, before the world actually existed; hence its non-actualisation. And it was an object of the will at the time when it actualised. What can prevent us from believing such a thing, and what is the contradiction involved in it?

al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Übersetzt, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Michael E. Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1998. [6]

This dispute or difficulty of reconciliation between scripture and formal theology was ubiquitous in the Islamic discourse, and with the dissemination and rediscovery of the great philosophers in the Latin West, this discourse also spread to Europe. It was a tension that constituted an inherent feature of theology, if theology was seen as a reconciliation of philosophy and (Abrahamic) scripture. Despite the difficulties it brought, there is good reason to believe that this particular scholarly debate contributed to the emergence of modern science due to its engagement with concepts that would later become fundamental to physics and cosmology.

The first instinct of the medieval scholars was to introduce more nuance into the concept of eternity. If the universe was truly created at one point in time, it implies that ‘before’ creation there was either no time or ‘time’ meant something fundamentally different. In a Platonic fashion, this pre-cosmic timelessness was regarded as true eternity. After the deliberate act of creation, time itself was created in the way that intervals of time became countable, like during the six days of creation in the Bible. This created time of perpetual countable motion could be conceptually extended indefinitely into the future and past. In order to distinguish this temporal infinity from the pre-cosmic and transcendent eternity, we shall refer to it as perpetuity. The medieval thinkers recognised the necessity to define a separate kind of temporal infinity that would come between the true eternity of God and the transience of man. Hence, some Scholastics employed the term aevum or sempeternity as an in-between, a temporal mode characteristic for angels or other entities that were immortal but beneath supreme godhood.

Time is indeed the topic which is most broadly discussed in Nicolaus’ [of Strasbourg] Summa, and there can be no doubt that he tried to portray as many different positions and theories about specific questions and aspects of the philosophical problem of time as possible. In the only surviving version of the manuscript the treatise De tempore consists of the following divisions: De tempore nostro, De nunc temporis, De tempore angelorum, De aevo, De aeternitate. From a more systematic point of view, Nicolaus’ treatise De tempore can be divided into two parts, the analysis of human time — tempus nostrum — and of the instant — nunc temporis — on one hand, the analysis of the different types of temporal duration, i.e. the hierarchy of tempus, tempus angelorum, aevum, and aeternitas on the other hand.

[…]

Thus, the angels — and angelic ‘spiritual time’ — occupy a very specific place in the chain of being, in the ordo rerum. This place is nothing else than the position of a necessary medium, an element of connection by means of which the universe can be understood and seen as a whole. Mediating between divine atemporality and corporeal temporality, the angelic operations form a bridge of communication between aeternitas and tempus, between full infinite actuality and finite beings. Some of the angelic operations are measured by continuous time, some by discontinuous time; some partake in the eternal.

Porro, Pasquale (Hg.). The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2001. [12]

The aevum was a foreshadowing, a trial run, of what would characterise the tensions within modern mathematics between the potential and actual infinities. As shown by Cantor in 1874, infinite sets of numbers can be distinguished in at least two ways: one is the countable set of infinite numbers that derives its infinity from the fact that each number n has a successor n+1. In the same way, temporal perpetuity is marked by the fact that each countable motion succeeds another. The other form of infinity is the uncountable set, also referred to as the continuum. There is no way of counting the elements in this set and it can always be infinitely subdivided and extended as it itself represents and undifferentiated overflow of infinity. This is eternity.

Aus dem schlechthin kontinuierlich sein des Raumes ergibt sich die absolute Unendlichkeit der Raumzeit (und jedes gesetzten Raumzeit-Punktes) auf Grund ihrer ursprünglichen Unterschiedslosigkeit zu Stoffen/Substanzen, gesetzten (punktuellen) Quantitäten, Zeitrelationen, etc. und ihrer unendlichen Teilbarkeit. […] Das zeigt, wie unsicher, wie beliebig die Situation jenseits des Endlichen ist. [...] Das Unendliche war und bleibt transzendent, auch wenn wir täglich damit umgehen.

[EN]

From the absolutely continuous being of space there follows the absolute infinity of space-time — and of every posited point of space-time — on account of its original indistinguishability from matter/substances, posited punctual quantities, temporal relations, etc., and on account of its infinite divisibility. […] This shows how uncertain, how arbitrary the situation is beyond the finite. […] The infinite was and remains transcendent, even though we deal with it every day.

Mühlenbeck, Cordelia. „Die absolute Unendlichkeit des Raumzeit-Kontinuums als grundlegende Fundamentalontologie.“ In: META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 13, Nr. 2 (2021): 343–366. [8]

The issue of reconciling potential with actual infinity was already familiar to Zeno as shown in his famous paradox. If Achilles was to race a turtle, but the turtle was given a head start, Achilles would mathematically never be able to overtake the turtle, as each time he would catch up to the turtle, it will have advanced a little bit further. This would repeat itself in perpetuity, where he would always get closer and closer to the turtle, but never be able to truly overtake it. What is demonstrated here in terms of spatial distance as well as time, is a paradox arising when applying discrete segmentation on a continuum. Here, the countable perpetuity of the progressively diminishing intervals between Achilles and the turtle are no match for the underlying uncountable continuity of the infinitely divisible geometrical substructure.

Zeno’s paradox can be simply resolved via uniform discretisation of the continuum. This means, that the continuum is segmented into intervals of equal size. Here, another step towards the unification of space and time is accomplished. For if Achilles and the turtle can both be attributed with a specific number of space intervals that they can overcome within a specific standardised time interval, one can compute the time and position at which Achilles gets to overtake the turtle. This is what the calendar and the clock introduced to the uncountable eternity of time: the countable perpetuity of the cycles.

In time also there is a diversity. For one time is the measure of a continuous movement, and therefore belongs to the genus of the continuous, another time is the measure of changes or activities that succeed upon each other without continuity. This succession can somehow be called a movement, and therefore such a time belongs to the genus of the discrete. The first time measures the movements of bodies, the second of minds.

Porro, Pasquale (Hg.). The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2001. [12]

In 1277, a series of condemnations were issued in Paris, including specifics on the temporal eternity of the universe. In the spirit of Al-Ghazali, the teaching of an eternal universe was to be denounced in favour of an officially accepted account of a created universe that had a marked beginning but no end. The aevum came to be understood as a literal semi-eternity that had to be finite in its beginning, but would then go on into perpetuity. Moreover, this would also enshrine a clear universal directionality of time. Time itself became a cosmic clock, one that was wound up and started by God at a given time and was since ticking to a general rhythm. By now, it becomes clear that modern science inherited this medieval legacy and should not be seen as a mere departure from the medieval period.

[Condemned is the notion] That the world is eternal

Condemnations of Paris, 1277

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Whilst Aristotle’s general conception of space as an enclosed body of matter was widely accepted, it was hotly debated as to whether an enclosure entirely devoid of matter was thinkable. In a similar way as it was unclear whether we can speak of time before there was any motion, it was unclear whether space without matter was even possible. Throughout the entire period from late antiquity until early modernity there were scholars on both sides of the debate. Philoponus, Avempance, and Oresme all accepted the possibility of a void space extending beyond our known universe, whilst Aristotle, Averroes, and Aquinas did not. Furthermore, some may have accepted the idea of an extracosmic void existing beyond the firmament of stars, but they would still reject the possibility of an intracosmic void existing within our environment. In any case, we lacked the technological ability to create a vacuum and hence all hypotheticals about void space pertained to the question of whether God would create such a void.

[Space] is not a body, because it displays no resistance, nor is it ever an object of, or subject to, vision, touch, or any other sense. On the other hand, it is not incorporeal, being three-dimensional. It has length, breath, and depth - not just one, two or several of these dimensions, but all of them. Therefore it is an incorporeal body and a corporeal non-body.

Patrizi, Nova Philosophia, fol. 65r. in Grant, Edward. Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. [7]

In hindsight, there were very early thinkers that already exhibited a remarkable accuracy when it came to deliberations about the nature of vacuum. Aristotle and Avempance both maintained that all bodies would fall at equal speeds in a vacuum. The difference was that Aristotle took that as an argument against the existence of a vacuum whilst Avempance did not. For Aristotle, the chief philosopher for the Latin West in the high middle ages, a vacuum with no material resistance was said to result in instantaneous motion, meaning a movement at infinite speed. These kind of claims, despite being wrong, were often derived from initially sensible underlying assumptions. For instance, Albert of Saxony and Bradwardine developed a sophisticated formula for the movement of a body in a medium: F/R, where F stood for the composition and weight of the body and R was a number derived by a careful assessment of the material composition of the medium. Whilst this anticipated the later notions of density, friction and inertia, it implied that if the medium was empty, meaning R approached 0, it would suggest a movement that would be infinitely fast or instantaneous. Even much earlier, Democritus and Leucippus can be seen to have anticipated atomism and vacuum by their doctrine of the world being an infinite empty void filled with atoms. However, the interactions and forces within this void were described as almost entirely random and provided little explanatory power in the way that the modern atomism does. In fact, Plato and Aristotle had incorporated a similarly, if not more advanced idea of elementary physical building blocks into their teachings.

1. First, that essentially and in presence, God is necessarily everywhere in the world and all its parts;
2. And also beyond the real world in a place, or in an imaginary infinite void.
3. And so truly can He be called immense and unlimited.
4. And so a reply seems to emerge to the questions of the gentiles and heretics — ‘Where is your God?’ And, ‘where was God before the [creation of the] world?’
5. And it also seems obvious that a void can exist without body, but in no manner can it exist without God.

Bradwardine, Thomas. De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum. Published by Henry Savile. London: Johannes Billius, 1618; Nachdruck Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964. [3]

Many elaborate attempts were made to explain how a material plenum is maintained at all times, never allowing a space to become empty as nature would abhor a vacuum and would immediately rush in to fill empty space with some form of matter. These thoughts would prevail into early modernity where even René Descartes would hold on to the idea of the plenum. However, towards the end of the medieval period, the idea of space would undergo a similar transition as time had done previously. For time, the disruptive invention of the clock came first and afterwards the condemnations of Paris provided the final blow. For space it was the reverse, where the condemnations of 1277 first vindicated those who maintained that God’s omnipresence is only ensured if he is present in an infinite (and potentially empty) space. What began as something unthinkable, an extra-cosmic void, a nothing that is, later became widely accepted as it became inconceivable that something beyond our world was exceeding God’s reach. If God preceded the creation of our world, his infinite omnipresence must have been there before our world, hence space can exist without matter by simply being available to God.

The mere derivation of void space from the condemnations was not sufficient to lead to a generally accepted conclusion on the matter, until finally a vacuum could be physically created by Otto von Guericke in 1654. Therefore, it was the later technological possibility of obtaining a vacuum that lead to (enclosed) void space becoming a reality. Blasius’1 assumption that one could not avoid both a vacuum and instantaneous motion, was empirically proven correct in favour of the vacuum. Now it was clear that space was, just like time, the discrete compartmentalisation of a continuum, an infinite substance that was in its pure form devoid of matter but carried the infinite potential to be filled.

porrigitur magni nihil extra moenia mundi

[EN]
Nothing stretches beyond the walls of the great world.

Jean Passerat

Obviously, if space is God’s immensity, as it was for some, it could not be divisible. But even if not God’s immensity, space was conceived as an immobile, homogeneous, absolutely continuous, infinite container that was completely unaffected by the bodies and spirits within it. When bodies in that space were imagined annihilated, as was often done, their spaces remained unaffected. If a body was imagined divided, the space it occupied was not similarly divided but remained as before. Space remained immobile as bodies moved from place to place. It could receive bodies and coexist with them by virtue of its incorporeality.

Grant, Edward. Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. [7]

It was the beyondness of God, the transcendent implications of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence that prompted scholars to assume that the laws of nature were transcendent principles that were set in motion before and beyond the confines of our world. The tension between the immanent harmony of the world and the intervention of God’s will would eventually permeate Newton and Leibniz’ scientific debates over the nature of time and space. The idea was popularised that there was always a higher order governing the entire cosmos according to a universal principle. It was understood that currently prevailing contradictions would be resolved with a better understanding of God’s workings. And so the stage was set for the arrival of modern science.

[1] Augustinus, Aurelius. Confessions. Übersetzt von Edward B. Pusey. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

[2] Averroes (Ibn Rushd). Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence). Übersetzt von Simon van den Bergh. London: Luzac / Gibb Memorial Trust, 1954.

[3] Bradwardine, Thomas. De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum. Herausgegeben von Henry Savile. London: Johannes Billius, 1618; Nachdruck Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964.

[4] Davies, Stevan L., Übers. und Komm. The Secret Book of John: The Gnostic Gospel Annotated & Explained. Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2005. Second Digital Edition, 2013.

[5] Elias, Norbert. Über die Zeit: Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie II. Herausgegeben von Michael Schröter. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984.

[6] al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Übersetzt, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Michael E. Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1998.

[7] Grant, Edward. Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

[8] Mühlenbeck, Cordelia. „Die absolute Unendlichkeit des Raumzeit-Kontinuums als grundlegende Fundamentalontologie.“ In: META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 13, Nr. 2 (2021): 343–366.

[9] Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.

[10] Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Herausgegeben von Adrian Del Caro und Robert B. Pippin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

[11] Pauli, Wolfgang. „Der Einfluß archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler.“ In: Naturerklärung und Psyche, herausgegeben von Carl Gustav Jung und Wolfgang Pauli. Zürich: Rascher, 1952, S. 109–194.

[12] Porro, Pasquale (Hg.). The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2001.

[13] Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen. Die Übermacht der Räume. In: Soziologie, vol. 1. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1956.

[14] Wheeler, John Archibald. At Home in the Universe. Masters of Modern Physics. Woodbury, NY: AIP Press, American Institute of Physics, 1994.

"The Middle East is a sentient entity - it is alive! […] Oil has a purpose, and through swarm sentience it consciously acts on its goal by being the lubricant wetting sentient dust particles together to create threads that weave in and out of plot holes in the ‘in-between’.

Reza Negarestani. Cyclonopedia.

Something strange is occurring in the Middle East. It seems like Moloch, Baal, or some other demonic entity has incarnated in order to devour the children of the Levante. Many people have tried to make sense of the reason for perpetual war in several regions of that part of the world. Some blame oil, some blame US-imperialism, the military-industrial complex, or simply Israel. The most likely culprit is a combination of all of them, some ancient Hebrew oil demon, invoked by every child sacrifice that is offered whenever another bomb drops on a city or village in Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, etc. etc.

Somehow the main target of the US’ military operations in the Middle East wind up being children under the age of 5.

After the Geneva Convention, the charter of human rights and all those great accomplishments we somehow managed to break a record by increasing the ratio of civilian casualties in our newest wars. Atrocitymaxxing is the newest trend. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we are dealing with uncivilised savages, Muslim jihadists, avid and obsessive head-choppers, rather than distinguished Europeans. Yet, the majority of deaths are caused by airplane bombers carried out mostly by the United States, Russia, or Israel. No matter how much ISIS, the Taliban or Hamas put effort in, they could never inflict anything close to the number of civilian casualties as the high tech killing machines of the civilised world.

In fact, during the horrendous world wars of the last century (wars with a lower civilian death ratio than the current wars in the middle east btw.) air raids were specifically referred to as terror bombings. Air forces could not win wars or battles, they merely served to break the morale of the besieged nation. Often they incinerated vast swaths of the civilian population in order to break their resolve. The aim was to make them live in hell so that any other option, including total surrender, seemed the more preferable choice.

The city was gone… the heat had been so intense that people had been baked like pottery

Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five.

Interestingly enough, however, on both sides of World War II, these bombings only strengthened the resolve of the civilian population. The more the people felt that the enemy was not only out to defeat their government, but was actually out to exterminate them, the more a people would switch into survival mode. This collective psychological state was a precondition for total war, for a collective sacrifice towards total victory.

In the Middle East, the War on Terror brought with it a series of air raids, up to the point where operations consisted almost entirely of aerial bombings and the dirty work on the ground was done by mercenaries or proxy militias. In other words, terror bombing is the way to combat terrorism, but sometimes you need to hire terrorists to terrorise the terrorists whilst you are terror-bombing them. If during World War II, the Americans had declared war against Blitzkrieg instead of Germany, it would likely had had similarly disastrous results as the War on Terror.

In each case, the citizenry remained loyal to its leaders… in the more than thirty major strategic air campaigns… air power has never driven the masses into the streets to demand anything.

Robert A Pape. Bombing to Win.

Interestingly enough, even now, we have figures like McChrystal explaining the insurgency math to us, where each killed terrorist results in twenty new ones picking up arms. Let me explain what this means in practise: Army forces identify a terrorist who is hiding among civilians. In reality, he is perhaps with his family or at an event with his associates where the line between insurgent and civilian becomes blurred. Then, an airstrike is ordered, almost everyone in the target’s vicinity is instantly killed, but whoever survives swears eternal revenge against the perpetrators of this atrocity. This way, our so-called precision strike entangles everybody further into the tragic quagmire.

for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies

Stanley McChrystal

At this stage, there is an endless supply of people, groups and organisations that hate the United States or the West as a whole, essentially justifying an endless military operation in the region. On top of the imperialistic urge to control the petrol market, the ideological desire to remodel the world in the image of eternally blissful democracy seems to serve as a powerful justification for these endeavours. Increasingly, this dynamic is taking on a fundamentalist zeal, where the most important point has become to make the region safe for Israel and allow for global trade in the region to be in the hands of Israel and Gulf monarchies that serve as proxy states for US interests.

Israel has built up a microcosm of the entire War on Terror dynamic in its own vicinity. Though this could be a chicken-and-egg situation where perhaps the Americans learned it first from the experienced Israelis, who have been fighting the Arabs for decades. As seen in the Dahiya Doctrine or the infamous mowing of the grass, the most common way for Israel to deal with militias in Lebanon or Gaza is to simply terror-bomb them. But wait, isn’t the IDF the most moral army in the world?

For example, it is clear to any sane person that if Israel could install a technical device on its bombs that would prevent them from killing civilians, it instantly would. But this technology does not exist. But the technology to not shoot up a dance party does exist—and Hamas has no interest at all in using it.

Curtis Yarvin

What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases… This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approve.

Gadi Eizenkot

To what extent does intent matter? If the Nazis had developed a special gas chamber that would only kill those Jews that were going to be communist insurgents but left those alive that could become servile supporters of the German Reich, would they have used them rather than indiscriminately killing people? I guess, nobody really knows. I am sure there were plenty of people that just wanted to kill Jews.

He who does not mow the grass, the grass mows him.

Naftali Bennet

Allegedly, Hamas primary aim is to kill Jews, including civilians. Therefore, their intentions are infinitely worse than those of the Israelis, as they simply want to live in peace and only kill terrorist combatants. Yet, Hamas only manages to kill a fraction of the amount of civilians that the IDF kills. If both sides were regarded as morally equivalent, the IDF would have to justify the outrageous imbalance in killings. Instead, the IDF is a regular army with protocols for avoiding collateral damage and civilian casualties, and Hamas is portrayed as a barbaric terrorist group that is simply out for sheer bloodlust and the killing of every Jew on earth. It is true that the Palestinian insurgency has been recruiting from more tribal communities with more visceral and less professional ways of conducting themselves, but are their aims truly that blunt and unstrategic?

It makes much more sense to see Hamas operations as having specific objectives in the same way as IDF operations. As the military power of both sides is imbalanced, Hamas has to resort to taking hostages and other breaches of international law. Due to the built-up hatred and drive for revenge, the concern for civilian Israelis is relatively low, as the Palestinians themselves get to frequently witness Israeli operations slaughtering civilians en masse. For the Palestinian, does it really matter if the death of their family was not planned but happened anyway?

Are there no other options other than flattening entire swaths of residential areas in Southern Lebanon or Gaza? Well technically, the army could send special forces and deal with the Islamists on the ground. However, this could quickly lead to a bloody massacre, as the hardened Arab militias are much more accustomed to the hardship of urban warfare than the comparably sheltered Israelis. Why would anyone voluntarily relinquish their technological advantage? Thus, the aerial bombings continue; and they continue to generate and endless supply of insurgents willing to die fighting their oppressor, and the cycle continues.

The technological advantage and relative professionalism allows the Israeli side to save face by being the more relatable regime that engages in the formalities of restrained and limited warfare. They can always point their finger at the savagery and disturbing nature of the enemy suicide bombers and armed militants. On the other side, the insurgents can declare total war and Jihad as much as they want, abstain from any restraint, and not even inflict a fraction of the damage as the enemy is capable of. They in turn can always correctly point out, that the majority of death and destruction is invariably caused by the more technologically advanced enemy.

Surprisingly enough, Robert Pape’s evaluations of the phenomenon of suicide bombing have concluded that it has little to do with religion or Jihadism specifically. In fact, most of the suicide bombers in Palestine had initially been part of the secular Fatah movement, including Christians, Muslims, and Socialists alike. Pape showed that suicide bombing, and related behaviour that preceded it occurs when a people feel like they are subjected to a war of extermination in which their very existence is at stake. As they are dealing with the highest possible stakes, martyrdom for the survival of the collective is not out of bounds.

The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions. […] In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group… who are adamantly opposed to religion. […] Suicide terrorism is best understood as an extreme strategy for national liberation against democracies with troops that pose an imminent threat to control the territory the terrorists view as their homeland.

Robert A Pape. Dying to Win.

In conclusion, the mass killings of native populations in the Middle East serves as a perpetual motivator to take up arms in the most total form of guerrilla warfare, all the way up to suicide bombing. This in turn, justifies military operations, either performed by the US army, or by proxy via the IDF, that seek to neuter the belligerent militant groups. The militant groups also never run out of arms and support, as the oil-rich region entails a sufficient number of willing sponsors for these groups. Naturally, we should have means of suppressing such financial and military supply lines, but sometimes these militants come in handy and are directly supported in case they are the lesser evil in a given context and can be turned against dictators like Assad. The security situation of the region, specifically when it pertains to Israel’s security interests, warrants the support of terrorists to overthrow hostile regimes. Hamas was originally, and even throughout, supported by Israel to divide the Palestinian resistance and serve as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority.

At this point, I am not sure if anybody really knows what is going on. I could go on a long winded exploration of the Qatari-Hamas connection. Hamas receives Iranian funding via Qatar, which the Israelis allow to be funnelled into Gaza. Hamas is a declared enemy, hosted by Qatar, but Qatar also hosts a US-military base and the football world cup. At the same time, Iran is an enemy, but was until recently part of the NPT and other US-brokered agreements. Most of the Iranian attacks until this most recent war were previously communicated with the Americans and various Democrat administrations have tried to reach agreements with the Iranians. Nothing really makes sense.

An Egyptian friend of mine once explained to me that anyone claiming to understand the Middle East is definitely lying. Perhaps it is the ancient oil demon after all. Why else would the Iranians be burning effigies of Baal right now?

The sky was not just something far away. No matter the distance travelled, one could never closer to it, nor could one reach the outskirts of our world. The world stretched beyond the horizon, far off into distant lands. Familiarity was only to be found right here at the centre of the world. This centre or world-axis (axis mundi) was signified by the hearth, the totem pole, or anything marking the dwelling place of our people. Moving outwards from this base, we transition away from our communal area and our connection to the world becomes less intimate. Places of relevance become sparse. The larger the radius away from home, the more area there is with no familiar places.

What is meant by familiarity and intimacy is the closure of a meaning-circuit. Each thing we encounter in our familiar world reveals to us a myriad of significations. Upon attending towards a building in our home village, the house speaks to us. A church or town hall immediately conveys its significance to us, often already by its architecture. We put in the attention towards the object, and it radiates its sense back at us. Meaning is disclosed through this circuit of signification. When we orient our attention towards the horizon, a meaning circuit opens that never closes. Our signal is sent towards the edge of our world and nothing returns. This ominous barrier separates our world from the Other, the heavens, the world of divine beings.

Could the universe only then come into being, when it could guarantee to produce “observership” in some locality and for some period of time in its history-to-be? Is “observership” the circle that closes the circle of interdependencies?

Wheeler, John Archibald. Genesis and observership. In: Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences, ed. by R.E. Butts and J. Hintikka, Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 3-34, 1977 [1]

In the sky, a different kind of world is to be found. No matter what distance we travel, the heavens maintain their permanence. Everywhere we go, the sun rises, the moon rises, and the stars guide our path. Whilst many of us enter the world and soon perish, the entities above have been at their play for time immemorial. This is where our world discloses its time to us. The perpetual cycles of day and night, the cycles of the year and the great eons beyond, they come and pass whilst we prepare ourselves to pass away from this familiar world of ours. In German, one would say, deceasing is blessing the temporality of the world (Das Zeitliche segnen).

Earth and Sky, Gaia and Uranos, are the principle deities of many ancient religions1 2. The first act of God in Genesis was to separate the heavens from the earth. The opening up of the gap between the worlds first disclosed time to us in the form of a distinction between mortals and eternals, those who stay and those who pass away. Religion is our means of linking back (religio) to the primordial unity out of which earth and sky originally separated. Each cycle during the daily, monthly, or yearly ritual, we re-enact the dramas of the gods. This is the first stirring of time as such, the closing of a meaning circuit between Earth and Sky, where our linear trajectory from birth to death is contrasted by the eternal circularity of the heavens. With each return to the ritual, we have grown older, our understanding of it becomes deeper, but the cycle it represents persists before and after us.

Earth and Sky were one shape, and when they were separated they begot all things.

Euripides Fragment. In: Caldwell, Richard S. Hesiod’s Theogony (with Works and Days). Cambridge, MA: Focus Publishing, 1987. [3]

The circle represents a nest, and it is drawn by the toe because the eagle builds its nest with its claws. Although we are imitating the bird making its nest, there is another meaning to the action; sky touching the earth on every side, and within this circular enclosure the people live. So the circles we have made are not only nests, but they also represent the circle Tirawa-atius has made for the dwelling place of all the people.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. [4]

It will become clearer with time that time and space cannot be dealt with as separate concepts and we will constantly have to relate them to one another. The meaning circuit shows us that spatial distance can only be a salient concept if we have an understanding of what time it takes us to overcome it. Other magnitudes of intervals, assessed by measurement or astronomical observations are less comprehensible distances. Nobody understands viscerally what a billion mile span truly means. Without coupling it with a familiar and intimate understanding of distance, the word loses its meaning. Hence, the world in its vertical totality can only be grasped by linking the temporal disclosure of the heavenly cycles to the spatial disclosure of the earthly expanses.

It is precisely the density of familiar places in the immediate vicinity of the axis mundi that provides a sense of space. Much later on, our geometrical understanding of space comes in the form of an infinite density of point-shaped places. Initially, however, space was an enclosure, a sectioning off of the world, creating a place of dwelling and worship. The linking-back of the religious ritual would occur in these sacred spaces. Cleansing rituals are still required for us to step into these spaces. Whilst the ritual takes us back to the eternity of the heavenly cycle, the place of dwelling establishes a permanent abode for the people to be with the gods. This permanence is required for a place to become a space. Hence, time and space are one.

Numerous rites accompany passing the domestic threshold—a bow, a prostration, a pious touch of the hand, and so on. […] the ritual by which [man] constructs a sacred space is efficacious in the measure in which it reproduces the work of the gods. […] to organize a space is to repeat the paradigmatic work of the gods. […] every human establishment repeats the creation of the world from a central point (the navel). […] by means of rites religious man can pass without danger from ordinary temporal duration to sacred time.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959. [7]

Raum means a place cleared or freed for settlement and lodging. […] Spaces receive their being from locations and not from ‘space.’ […] in this sense ‘the’ [mathematical] space, ‘space,’ contains no spaces and no places. […] But ‘on the earth’ already means ‘under the sky.’ Both of these also mean ‘remaining before the divinities’ and include a ‘belonging to men’s being with one another.’

Heidegger, Martin. Building Dwelling Thinking. Various: Various, 1951. [11]

What is the axis mundi in general? For many centuries now, we are no longer dancing around the fire or worshipping a myriad of pagan divinities. The axis more generally speaking is what links time and space and enables our orientation in the world. Without orientation, the world loses its meaning and dwelling in it becomes impossible. Orientation simply means the alignment of the direction of time with the direction of space. Each conception of the entire cosmos requires us to link it back to a fundamental anchor, a first principle or axiom that establishes the origin of our system of coordinates. We can only determine the position of an object if we know how our measurement is gauged. In other words, each place can only then be given an exact position, if at least one place is chosen to be the universal point of reference. Our world unfolds outwardly from the here and the now of our axis.

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It has been said that our present-day axis, the Big Bang, was not an event that occurred in the past, but is something that is still ongoing. Temporally, it seems as though we have long departed from our starting point, but spatially, every point in space still signifies the centre of the universe. Despite all of the scientific discoveries since our early history, we remain limited by a horizon. This horizon comes in the shape of a sphere around us, delimiting what we can observe of the universe. Wherever we are, this sphere limits the scope of our cosmos. It is a veil beyond which light lacks the velocity to reach us. This is known as the outer rim of the observable universe, but can also be found in the form of a black hole.

[...] all are likewise, from different perspectives, each the center point of some circumference, and a pole, and a zenith for somewhere else. The earth, therefore, is not the absolute center of the universe, but only the center as seen from our location.

Bruno, Giordano. On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds. 1584.

Tracing back the evolution of our world axis, we need to understand that we still are dependent on this anchor, something von Neumann calls the Body Alpha. But it is clear that this first principle has undergone many changes and must therefore be less permanent than initially assumed. Paradoxically, that which we require to consider as universal is always subject to change. This change occurs when the axis breaks down, when all meaning circuits eventually result in the negation of meaning itself. This world-annihilation is familiar to us due to our inherent mortality, but death eventually befalls our entire culture.

If we conceive the body alpha annihilated by any force of nature, the propositions of mechanics would necessarily cease not only to be applicable, but even to be intelligible.

Cassirer, Ernst. „Substance and Function & Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.“ New York: Dover Publications, 1923. [5]

Throughout the last millennia, the disintegration of civilisations was succeeded by a reintegration into even larger and more complex superstructures. The Romans surpassed the Greeks, and the Sassanids outdid the Achaemenids. Each of these sophistications of our cosmology came as a resolution of asymmetries. For example, in the world conception of the early Egyptians, the world itself had an upstream and downstream directionality. The Nile was something of a world axis, providing orientation through the directionality of the river current. Time and space were entangled by the fact that each particular time period had a clear distance that the Nile travelled in that period.

The central feature of Egypt is the Nile, flowing north and bringing the necessary water for life. They therefore looked at other peoples and other existences in terms of their own scene. The Egyptian word ‘to go north’ is the Egyptian word ‘to go downstream’, and the word ‘to go south’ is the word ‘to go upstream’, against the current. When the Egyptians met another river, the Euphrates, which flowed south instead of north, they had to express the sense of contrast by calling it “that circling water which goes downstream in going upstream’, which may also be translated ‘that inverted water which goes downstream by going south’.

Frankfort, H., H. A. Frankfort, John A. Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen, and William A. Irwin. „Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East.“ Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946. [8]

When the world became more cosmopolitan, the horizon expanded well beyond the lands of the Nile. Other cultures exchanged their ideas and it became clear that a Nile--based cosmology would no longer be tenable. Time and space needed to be standardised and as the times were determined by the play of the gods, exterior gods needed to be either eradicated or merged and integrated into the local culture. At some points, the Greeks identified the Egyptian Seth with Typhon3 and Thoth with Hermes.

The most advanced and accomplished pursuit of integration was made possible by the Zoroaster when he introduced Ohrmazd as a new kind of abstract God, one that incorporated a multitude of local deities as one of his many faces. Nietzsche4 famously considered this the beginning of morality, as Zoroastrians were first to worship the Good itself rather than gods that they consider to be good. In many ways, these were the first stirrings of philosophy. Pythagoras, who was to coin the term philosopher, studied in Persia and was likely initiated into the teachings of the Zoroastrian Magi.

Philosophers and early scientists were thriving thanks to the interconnected Hellenistic world of Classical Antiquity. Greek influences were combined with teachings from Egypt, Babylon, and India. Most of our written sources on Antiquity originate from this period. Hence, we can only speculate about the details of the cosmology or the world picture of preceding cultures. Written language brought about a technological revolution that was longing for ideas that were universal and valid across many cultures. It is this time, known as the Axial Age, that brought about universal thought leaders like the Buddha or Christ.

...si la philosophie positive est le véritable état définitif de l’intelligence humaine [...], elle n’en a pas moins dû nécessairement employer d’abord [...] la philosophie théologique [...]. Il est maintenant très facile de sentir que, pour passer de cette philosophie provisoire à la philosophie définitive, l’esprit humain a dû naturellement adopter, comme philosophie transitoire, les méthodes et les doctrines métaphysiques. [...] Telle est la destination naturelle des conceptions métaphysiques [...].

[EN]

...if positive philosophy is the true and definitive state of human intelligence [...], it nonetheless had to begin by employing [...] theological philosophy [...]. It is now very easy to see that, in order to move from this provisional philosophy to the definitive philosophy, the human mind naturally had to adopt, as a transitional philosophy, metaphysical methods and doctrines. [...] Such is the natural destiny of metaphysical conceptions [...].

Comte, Auguste. Cours de philosophie positive. 5e éd., tome premier. Paris: Au siège de la Société positiviste, 1892. [6]

The philosophies of Classical Antiquity represented a move away from mythical thinking towards metaphysical thinking. In order to understand the world of many empires and civilisations, we needed a breakthrough in the concept of the world. Enter the globe.

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If we were to visualise the volume of information available about each era, our era would look something like an explosion. In our time, there are so many primary sources that any historian can only work with a fraction of a percentage of what is available. On the contrary, we need to leverage all the reliable sources that we can find when trying to reconstruct periods in early antiquity. One major exception to this rule is what we call Classical Antiquity. Not only are our sources on the Greco-Roman world between the fifth centuries BC and AD more numerous than those of the early Middle Ages, but we also find that medieval writers often derive much of their thoughts from those same classical texts.

We therefore observe that our rear-view perspective in time is subject to two kinds of filters: On the one hand, the overall transience of artefacts invariably leads to the loss of sources with time, things become distant and less distinct the further away in time they are. On the other hand, the overall advancement of media technologies determines the capacity with which people are able to retain and preserve data. This explains the unique clarity that we have about Classical Antiquity as opposed to the rather low-tech medieval period. If we want to understand past conceptions of time, we need to be aware of the way that each concept of time was produced within a particular time that stands in a particular relationship with our time.

Looking at time as a concept, we can employ various kinds of sources to assess prior ideas about it. For our purposes, it would be ideal if we could simply compare how philosophers before us defined time. In other words, we want to attempt a genealogy of time, finding out how it evolved alongside other ideas. This forces us to begin with Classical Antiquity as our earliest period that produced written philosophical works. Any older sources would pertain to mythical folklore or perhaps astrological motifs. The works of Plato and Aristotle were beginnings of the philosophical worldview, and, at the same time, their works now override everything that had come prior to them. They represent the culmination of a mythical pre-history of thought that, with the exception of some notable pre-Socratics, we only know in sparse traces, as it otherwise remains opaque to us.

Similarly, the collapse of Classical Antiquity has left us with a blind spot in our knowledge about that period. Our conservation of Plato and Aristotle may be due to a severe case of survivorship bias1. They surely were important thinkers of their time, but most likely represented two among several others. The Christian and Islamic world naturally favoured those philosophers that were most compatible with religious theology. Philosophers like Epicurus and Democritus became marginal and almost forgotten. This way, our perspective on Classical Antiquity has already been irreversibly filtered through centuries of religious scholarship. Medieval discourses were engaged in the compatibility of rational philosophy with the omnipotence of God, something entirely foreign to the Ancient way of thinking.

Nous vivons en effet sous le règne des vainqueurs : l’histoire de la philosophie est écrite par des gens nettement juges et parties. La tradition platonicienne, puissamment relayée par le christianisme, domine l’Occident depuis des siècles. Tout ce qui n’entre pas dans cet ordre est minimisé, négligé, caricaturé, oublié.

[EN]

We do indeed live under the reign of the victors: the history of philosophy is written by people who are clearly both judges and interested parties. The Platonic tradition, powerfully relayed by Christianity, has dominated the West for centuries. Everything that does not fit into that order is minimized, neglected, caricatured, forgotten.

Onfray, Michel. „Les sagesses antiques.“ In: Contre-histoire de la philosophie, Tome 1, 11–12. Paris: Grasset, 2006. [1]

We observe a passing of long periods, stretching millennia, throughout which intellectual discourses took on entirely new forms. The old forms were never totally eradicated, but survived in parts by evolving within new scholarly engagements. These extended periods, also called eons, correlate with civilisational cycles, the rise and fall of wide-ranging empires. We therefore find two parallel movements, one cyclical and one linear. The former describes the perpetual cycles and sub-cycles that typify the rise and fall of large-scale human societies. Despite the consistent observance of this anthropological (or even ecological) cyclicality, no cycle ever perfectly resembles another. Consequently, history also appears to us as a linear movement where time is incessantly moving in one direction.

The seemingly persistent expansion of the Oikumune towards global saturation despite temporary reversals (e.g. the Bronze Age Collapse, the fall of Rome etc.) characterises the linear aspect of our history. Overall, technology develops along a linear trajectory towards perpetual sophistication. We are always growing, heaping layer upon layer of civilisation on top of each other, creating ever greater structures. A play with the German word Ge-schichte (history) elucidates the general ‘schichten’ (layering) within our study of time. The further we look towards the past, the more our view becomes screened through these superimposed eons.

The Oikoumene is a Greek term […] Its literal meaning is ‘the Inhabited (Part of the World)’ […] but in practice the Greek inventors and users of the term restricted its application to the fraction of the inhabited part of the World that was occupied by so-called ‘civilized’ societies.

Toynbee, Arnold. „Mankind and Mother Earth: A Narrative History of the World.“ 27–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. [2]

In historiography, there have been endless debates between the progressive theorists of history and the civilisational thinkers2 [3][4]. The most famous representatives of the latter group are Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. From their perspectives, history can only be understood from within the particularity of each civilisation, each of which has an internal logic of emergence and collapse. Both Spengler and Toynbee had to reckon with the fact that a civilisational analysis could only be performed after the fact, following the collapse of said civilisation. What about our own civilisation? We are still part of it and we seem to be able to somewhat encompass all of the other ones, preserving and fossilising them by means of our intensive study.

To complete their historical models, Spengler and Toynbee needed to complement their cyclical framework with an account of linearly unfolding history. Spengler accounted for linearity in Man and Technics, Toynbee in Mankind and Mother Earth. Despite having different approaches, they both identified a crucial evolving factor, namely the increasing transformation of the planet by means of Technics.

There is a path from the trick, oldest of all weapons, to the design of the machines with which today we make war on Nature by outmanœuvring her.
[…]
A will-to-power which laughs at all bounds of time and space, which indeed regards the boundless and endless as its specific target, subjects whole continents to itself, eventually embraces the world in the network of its forms of communication and intercourse, and transforms it by the force of its practical energy and the gigantic power of its technical processes.

Spengler, Oswald. „Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life.“ Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932, p. 47. [5]

In the same way there cannot be an entirely cyclical history, we cannot conceive of a pure linearity either. From within a cycle, especially at the beginning of it, time must appear to be moving linearly. Only after the end of a cycle is the inherent limitation of its period realised. From within such a period, we inevitably remain captured by the suspense of whether the current paradigm will carry on or also come to an end. Once such a cycle ends, we are faced with a reversal. Firstly, a collapse brings us back to the very beginnings (the intellectual tradition of the Middle Ages began with Plato, was then mostly dominated by Aristotle, until finally rediscovering Plato during the Renaissance [6]), and finally, the disappearance of our civilisational paradigm throws us back into the foundation from which it had first emerged. This foundation is in many ways more ancient, more primordial as it is in itself part of an older, longer cycle. The rise and fall of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt was part of the much larger and older cycle of Ancient Egyptian civilisation itself [7].

It is within this context of cycles or eons that we can identify specific conceptions of time. It has been mentioned that there is an internal and external logic at play when investigating notions of time. Any conception of time that we uncover is assessed by external, historiographical means. We are extracting an internal logic that was particular to an eon, a period, before it vanished or transformed into something else.

The initial emergence and final departure of an internal sense of temporality can be described as an opening and closing of time. At the beginning and the end, internal and external time are without distinction. The opening up of time is characterised by the separation of the internal and the external. For example, the declaration of biblical prophecy placed Christendom within an eschatological timeline, a cycle that would end with the apocalypse. Until then, a meaningful cosmos opened up, where the passage of time could be contextualised within an overarching grand play, a universal narrative. Once the universality of this narrative fades, i.e. the end times do not occur, time closes up and traps us within a perpetual delay in which remnants of the expired eon still await the fulfilment of the prophecy.

The event will prove the APOCALYPSE ; and this Prophecy, thus proved and understood, will open the old Prophets, and all together will make known the true religion, and establish it.

Newton, Isaac. „Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.“ In: Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John. London, 1733. [8]

All of this begs the question as to whether we are currently situated within an eon where we can identify a particular conception of time that exhibits the same dynamic of opening and closure. Keeping in mind that from within a cycle, time may appear as linear, we may need to reassess the linearity of technology and come to see it as part of a large cycle. This cycle is perhaps so all-encompassing that our historiography is incapable of identifying its boundaries. All of our history rests on technological artefacts, most notably media, all of which may be reaching a climax in our modern age.

Martin Heidegger expressed in his Question concerning Technology that technics represents a way in which beings are perceived. The strictly technological sense by which we currently engage with the world indicates a very particular implicit meaning that we attribute to people and objects we encounter. This meaning prompts us to understand beings, entities in our world, as a standing resource, a configuration of elements ready for manipulation and extraction. In more contemporary terminology, we can say that the whole of our world is understood in the form of data.

Hence physics, in all its retreating from the representation turned only toward objects that has alone been standard till recently, will never be able to renounce this one thing: that nature reports itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remains orderable as a system of information.

Heidegger, Martin. „The Question Concerning Technology.“ In: The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, 3–35. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. [9]

Heidegger most famously implied in his magnum opus Sein und Zeit [10] that any sense of time is defined by a corresponding sense of being. In our time, this sense of being is characterised by the prefiguring of the world as a reserve of data. We find our own iterations of the opening and closure of time throughout this period. What began with the scientific revolution was an aspiration for perfection by means of human ingenuity. The triumph of rational scientific pursuit positioned us as the successor to God, a principle that was reduced to a mechanistic first cause [11]. We are living now through these prophesised end times that never came. Our conception of time is closing up as we are awaiting the ultimate consolidation of technology.

Thus the complete perfection of technology is a contradiction. It follows, therefore, that as technology approaches its asymptote, it nears its own destruction.

Jünger, Friedrich Georg. „The Failure of Technology: Perfection without Purpose.“ In: The Failure of Technology: Perfection without Purpose, 4. Hinsdale, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1949. [12]

Our modern methods of inquiry have allowed us to develop intricate theories and models about the universe, its creation and its destiny. Our destiny is found in the thermodynamic prophecy of the inevitable heat death of the universe, an infinitely long period of spatial expansion and growing entropic disorder at the end of times. In our future, the vast infinity of disorderly fluctuations will randomly generate another eventual cosmos of similar order and regularity as the one we currently inhabit. In a strict sense, we would no longer be speaking of creation, but rather random emergence.

What the Second Law indeed states, roughly speaking, is that things are getting more ‘random’ all the time. So if we set up a particular situation, and then let the dynamics evolve it into the future, the system will evolve into a more random-looking state as time progresses.

Penrose, Roger. Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. [13]

So much for the external form of time in our age. Internally, we understand time as the foundational data parameter. The most basic ordering principle of data is its succession on an infinite continuum, infinitely divisible into finer data points, finer segments of time. Each segment represents its own infinity with the capacity to bring about fluctuations similar to the ones on the cosmic scale.

The profound sense of randomness is another way of expressing meaninglessness. The cosmos thus lacks any kind of overarching narrative that opens up our notion of time. We are witnessing the collapse of our eon. It is only within or throughout this collapse that it even becomes possible to peak beyond the horizon and discover new pathways or long forgotten trails towards a new beginning. It helps to understand that this form of collapse is reoccurring and therefore something that can be overcome (many world-denying sects of the Axial Age like Buddhism or Christianity can be seen as expressions of decline or closure, but also of new beginnings). Which sense of time is closing up today? Which cycle exactly is coming to an end?

According to Heidegger, the significance of technology in recent times allows us to reflect upon the entire history of Western philosophy. He claims that technics or cybernetics [14] is the culmination of metaphysics, the ultimate end towards which our way of thinking has lead us. Therefore, the approaching end of our cycle gains more gravity as it is not the (sufficiently profound) culmination of the scientific revolution, but the end to our most overarching sense of civilisation. The seriousness of this time forces upon us the question of being (Seinsfrage), a rediscovery of a history of being (Seinsgeschichte), or a truly universal understanding of time that is not limited to any cultural particularity.

The original opening-up of time is (or was) the human awareness of time itself, the nascent consciousness of our transient world. Whether or not our most primordial or ancestral conceptions of time carry some sagacity that can be recovered at all will not change the fundamental character of this research. In any case, the severity of our predicament will only become apparent after this work is completed and we observe the implications and shortcomings of this approach in finding a more genuine path for the continuation of science. Ultimately, we cannot pursue this topic with the aim to deliver some restrained, culturally specific notion of time. We will aspire towards a general and universal conception. These words hereby open up a cycle that ends at the end of this text. This is how the story begins.

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[1] Onfray, Michel. „Les sagesses antiques.“ In: Contre-histoire de la philosophie, Tome 1, 11–12. Paris: Grasset, 2006.

[2] Toynbee, Arnold. „Mankind and Mother Earth: A Narrative History of the World.“ 27–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

[3] Ibn Khaldûn. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated and introduced by Franz Rosenthal. Abridged and edited by N. J. Dawood. With a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015.

[4] Glubb, John Bagot. The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1978.

[5] Spengler, Oswald. „Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life.“ Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932, p. 47.

[6] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy

[7] Moreno García, Juan Carlos. „The State in Ancient Egypt: Power, Challenges and Dynamics.“ In: The State in Ancient Egypt: Power, Challenges and Dynamics. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

[8] Newton, Isaac. „Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.“ In: Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John. London, 1733.

[9] Heidegger, Martin. „The Question Concerning Technology.“ In: The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, 3–35. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

[10] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

[11] https://www.britannica.com/topic/first-cause

[12] Jünger, Friedrich Georg. „The Failure of Technology: Perfection without Purpose.“ In: The Failure of Technology: Perfection without Purpose, 4. Hinsdale, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1949.

[13] Penrose, Roger. Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

[14] Heidegger, Martin. „Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten.“ Interview mit Der Spiegel vom 23. September 1966. In: Der Spiegel, Nr. 23, 31. Mai 1976, S. 193–219.

Concealed within his fortress, the lord of Mordor sees all. His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh. You know of what I speak, Gandalf: a great Eye, lidless, wreathed in flame.

J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings.

The Illuminati have almost become a meme, a joke about conspiracy theories and hidden manipulation. Everybody has chuckled at the idea of the pyramid with the all-seeing-eye. It has something epic and fantastical to it, similar to the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. The Illuminati is said to be working towards a new world order, or new secular order (Novus Ordo Seclorum), something that was announced on the great seal of the United States. Nonetheless, George Washington famously despised the Illuminati and wanted to stop them from entering the country.

I have heard much of the nefarious, and dangerous plan, and doctrines of the Illuminati, but never saw the Book until you were pleased to send it to me.

George Washington. Letter to G.W. Snyder.

The actual Bavarian order of the Illuminati, founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776, is a rather opaque group, as the order officially did not last long before it was banned in 1787 by the authorities. Weishaupt was a former Jesuit who later became a staunch proponent of the enlightenment. He was most influenced by Immanuel Kant, but he named his magnum opus after Pythagoras. His overall ideology and strategy for the Illuminati is laid out in his work Pythagoras - On the secret art of world and government. Surprisingly, this work has not been translated into English and can only be found in the borderline-unreadable Fraktur font in German. In the following, you will have the pleasure to read some excerpts that I translated myself.

I examine the conduct which these relations necessarily produce. From this arises what I call the Eye. Inner politics. A secret association, in the strictest sense, I call that whose origin, purpose, means, organization, and existence are known only to its initiates, and insofar as some of these aspects concern their full extent, only to the most tested among its members. I cannot deny that an association of this kind must possess a great attraction for all who take part in it, and if secrecy is essential to a secret association for the attainment of its purposes, then this kind of association will achieve its purposes more reliably than any other; it will have the greatest incentive from within and the fewest obstacles from without.

Adam Weishaupt. Pythagoras.

Weishaupt studied at a Jesuit university in Ingolstadt, after which he came to reject church authority as well as monarchy. In today’s terms, he can be called a political radical, someone that was in favour of overthrowing the political order and establishing a new kind of utopia. These were common ideas in the build-up to the French Revolution. Rousseau famously despised human civilisation and idealised the primitive stage of mankind as having been the most noble and free. The rapid rise of print media unleashed a flood of such disruptive and incendiary ideas.

Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.

Marquis de Sade.

The Revolution was not a rational period where people all agreed to transition to reason and progress. Europe had already previously been on a path towards modern science and civil liberties. Leaders in France, England, or Prussia considered themselves to be enlightened monarchs. Frederic the Great of Prussia famously appointed himself the head of European Freemasonry and was a close friend of the rationalist philosopher Voltaire. Kings and Queens across Europe were already not beholden to the church and were supporters of the sciences.

Freemasonry (or just Masonry), another common target for conspiracy theories, had long been a hotbed for so-called enlightenment ideas. It represented a forum in which men could exchange thoughts across religious affiliations with the major exception of Roman Catholicism. For the church, Masonry represented a prime enemy, a strategic alliance among Protestant forces, even sometimes permitting Jews into their ranks. Throughout the course of the Reformation, the church had had the inherent advantage of being a single unified institution fighting a heterogeneous multiplicity of Protestant heresies. The intellectual front of this battle was fought by the Jesuits.

Through the creation of the Society of Jesus (known as the Jesuits) by Ignatius de Loyola in 1540, Rome can be said to have been the first in creating a modern political organisation. Jesuitism arose precisely as a reaction to the new media landscape, enabled by the printing press, that first allowed for the reformation to take root in Europe. Some more perceptive church scholars understood the danger of the unrestricted dissemination of literature and so the Society of Jesus was dispatched globally to curb the spread of heretical thoughts and repel the onslaught of Protestant ideas.

Furthermore, one must avoid reading, keeping, or sending elsewhere heretical books... for heretics, in order to deceive the simple, act like those who wish to poison someone by covering the toxin with a little sugar.

Antonio Possevino. Il Soldato Christiano (1583).

By their educational methods, their researches, and their intellectual intrepidity, they made it possible for Roman Catholics to hold their own… in the ocean of new ideas.

Malachi Martin. The Jesuits.

Both the Freemasons as well as the Jesuits have been tied to the Illuminati as part of a grand conspiracy dating back into antiquity. It has been said that Masonry is an ancient practise that can be traced to the mystery schools of Ancient Babylon, where Astrology and black magic were used in the creation of the Temple of Solomon. Milton William Cooper was a radio host in the 90s promoting the idea of such a grand conspiracy. He reached thousands of listeners on his radio show titled the Hour of the Time, where he would go in-depth into historical literature detailing the machinations of a secret elite that has been ruling and enslaving humanity since the dawn of man.

the priests of the ancient Mystery Religions are in charge right now, and we had better damn well find out, and we had better do it very quickly, for the new age is the age of Aquarius, and the exact date of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius can be determined astrologically and I’m not going to tell you what that date is although I have it right here on a piece of paper in front of me.

Milton William Cooper. Mystery Babylon.

Is there any truth to this?

On the surface, Jesuits and Masons were both enemies and pursued entirely separate goals. I would also argue that there is insufficient evidence to prove that they were both part of the same, more sinister cabal, perhaps descending from the late Templars. However, mutual infiltration as well as strategic overlap in political matters is well documented. In fact, at the time of the French Revolution, so-called conspiracy theories about groups like the Masons, Jacobites, or Illuminati were widespread, popular, and taken seriously among polite society.

The Jesuit Augustin Barruel was an opponent of the Revolution and together with the English physicist John Robison, he accused the Philosophers (the proponents of the vicious ideology of Philosophism) of being part of a sinister plot to overthrow the traditional order of Europe. Naturally, if one reads the political pamphlets distributed by the Jacobins and similar groups, their intentions were clearly just that. Moreover, the notion that Freemasonry was often used as a means of political subversion can be exemplified by figures such as the Duke of Orléans.

The Illuminati conspiracy behind the French Revolution was orchestrated under the watch of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France from his Palais-Royal. The Amis Réunis and the Loge des Chevaliers Bienfaisants were the chief conduit of the Illuminati to foment the Revolution of 1789. The Amis Réunis was a part of the Grand Orient and seems to have been among the most radical of the Lodges.

David Livingstone. Ordo ab Chao.

In his work Proof of a Conspiracy, Robison refers to a source detailing the discussions at the Wilhelmsbad conference of Masonic lodges in 1782. Interestingly enough, in the protocols of this assembly, the infiltration of Illuminist but also Jesuit elements into the lodges was acknowledged, whilst any actual connection between Masonry and the Knights Templars was emphatically denied. Theories about grand conspiracies involving the Masons seem to have picked up the Mason’s own mythology about their order, where esoteric scholars such as the Confederate general Albert Pike are seen as having possessed arcane knowledge about the order’s true origins. In other words, conspiracies about specific plots to overthrow the French monarchy were commonly believed, whilst the idea of a grand global conspiracy was only beginning to form.

Their real intention was to abolish all religion, overturn every government, and make the world a general plunder and a wreck. […] The leaders might rule the world with uncontroulable power.

John Robison. Proof of a Conspiracy (1798).

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In order to dig deeper into the origins of political subversion, it is best to go back to the first modern revolution in Europe, the English civil war, ending with the Puritan coup of 1649. Previously, Puritans members of parliament had been engaged in spirited debates about politics and religion. While their immediate opponents were members of opposing factions, such as the Episcopalians, the ultimate enemy was the Catholic church, the arch impostor of Christ’s true church. Naturally, all kinds of political developments were attributed to nefarious Romish influence. Take for instance this comically long title of a treatise written by William Prynne in 1664:

The Quakers unmasked, and clearly detected to be but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuites, and Franciscan fryers, sent from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation by an information taken upon oath in the city of Bristol, January 22, and some evident demonstrations / by William Prynne

With works such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, Puritans were developing a unique counter-narrative to church doctrine, where Rome was Mystery Babylon, William Cooper’s demonic entity described in the book of Revelations.

The paradoxical outcome of the reformation was the circumstance that groups like the Puritans, textbook religious fanatics, became pioneers of enlightenment thinking. It was not easy, facing off intellectually against an institution of such trained scholars as the Catholic Church. Rome had centuries to develop a deep lore and monopolise the interpretation of the Gospels and the Old Testament. In order to create a biblical vision that could rival the Church in Britain and its colonies, its advocates needed to be well versed in Hebrew as well as all kinds of previously forbidden literature. Groups like the Hartlib Circle were formed and Christian Cabala made its way into Reformed Christian thinking.

The extraordinary fact is that the whole movement of Christian Cabala in England - ultimately an influence of Jewish mysticism as adapted to Christianity in the Renaissance - passed without the presence of Jews being acknowledged, though there were, as we saw in an earlier chapter, undoubtedly refugees from the Expulsion of 1492 from Spain in the country, New Christians or marranos, small in number but influential.

Frances Yates. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age.

It can be argued that despite the fact the inherent disunity of the Protestants was a weakness, the innovative character of early Reformation thought was inherently more compatible with the rapid proliferation of literature by means of the printing press. When looking at the initial attempts of the Catholic Church at curbing the rise of heretical thought, we find outdated inquisition tactics that had worked on medieval superstitions but utterly failed in the face of sophisticated scholars like John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Martin Luther, or John Calvin. What good was the Hexenhammer (despite its cool name) when all it provided was primitive scaremongering about witchcraft and demonic forces.

Witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn.

Heinrich Kramer. Malleus Maleficarum (1486).

The Holy See in Rome did not expect anything to be different when the Reformation showed its first signs. Technology’s disruptive potential had yet to reveal itself. Intuitively, church authorities decided to treat the early Protestants as regular heretics. An ecclesiastic critique and warning against Illuminism and Enthusiasm can be found here. Illuminists, advocates of enlightenment had already existed in medieval and early modern times. They were people that believed in the divinity of man and his ability to ascend to Godhood without the need of any worldly church. This category included many groups such as the Cathars, the Waldensians, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, or the Alumbrados. Leading up to the enlightenment, figures like Eckhardt of Hohenheim or Giordano Bruno were pioneering illuminist modes of thought. Nonetheless, there is no reason to believe that the Bavarian Illuminati of Weishaupt had any direct connection to any of these groups. Regardless, they all have something in common.

Weishaupt desired the full and ultimate liberation of man from all power structures. No more governments, no more states, no kings, no gods. He believed in the supremacy of reason and desired to use secrecy as a means to subvert the political order of Europe. He was inspired by Kant’s treatise titled What is Enlightenment where Kant makes an argument for the systematic dissemination of enlightenment ideas by means of print media. Weishaupt and Kant emphasise the importance of secrecy when it comes to avoiding government persecution of politically subversive ideas. Weishaupt is more explicit by invoking Pythagoras and his specific combination of reason, mysticism, and political influence.

After the French Revolution, conspiratorial narratives did not disappear, but they instead grew into more elaborate expressions of paranoia about a hidden hand steering the fate of Europe and the world. The erosion of traditional powers kept going and has been accelerating since. It was almost as if a global cult worshipping the human intellect in emulation of Lucifer’s pride had been succeeding in its grand plan for secularisation. The subjugation of nature and human society to the machine of rational production and scientific, or rather technocratic, control has entirely replaced any kind of traditional sense of sovereign power.

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The last and most destructive Revolution of them all was yet to come in the form of the Bolshevik Revolution. Here, Bolshevism should be understood in a broader sense, encompassing the mass uprisings that characterised nationalist and socialist upheavals of the industrial era. What else is Marxism but the continuation and intensification of Weishaupt’s thought? Marx even descended intellectually from the same German Idealist tradition, famously inverting Hegel’s dialectics to serve the Communist project.

Die Form des englischen ‚Bolschewismus‘ ist die gefährlichste. Ohne die Vernichtung dieser bleibt die Neuzeit weiter erhalten.

The form of English Bolshevism is the most dangerous. Without the annihiliation of this form, modernity will prevail.

Martin Heidegger.

Socialism and its derivative forms (Bolshevism, National Socialism, Fascism) were highly efficient methods of industrial development. In many ways, they came to be seen as necessary ideologies in order to assert sovereignty in a world that was increasingly dominated by a single global empire. Towards the end of the First World War, it looked like Anglo-American hegemony would lead to an ultimate subjugation of the world under a single power. In terms of effective sovereign control over the global economy and international relations, this global empire has been a matter of fact since the defeat of France in 1815. Socialism enabled countries that had fallen behind the rapid innovation of the British project to industrialise at a unprecedented pace (at the cost of many millions of human lives) in order to avoid being subdued and becoming a mere possession of this global system. One can argue that Lenin and Stalin paid with human blood for the relative sovereignty of Russia on the global stage.

A situation has arisen wherein seven-tenths of the world’s population are in a condition of servitude. These slaves are to be found throughout the world and are at the mercy of a handful of countries-Britain, France and Japan. That is why this international system in its entirety, the order based on the Treaty of Versailles, stands on the brink of a volcano, for the enslaved seven-tenths of the world’s population are waiting impatiently for someone to give them a lead in a struggle which will shake all these countries.

Wladimir Lenin. Speech given on 15th October 1920.

The maritime empires of the Anglo-Americans dominated international trade and were effectively controlled by a new kind of financial elite that derived its power from colonial resource extraction. In other words, the old nobility of England simply became outcompeted by a more wealthy and influential elite that formed around the parliament. Political decisions could gain support if they yielded profits via the various powerful companies controlling trade across the colonies. This was the true face of so-called liberal democracy and it has grown into something even more insane since then.

In the present day I become the member of a Masonic Order. I see the wealth and power they possess, the influence they hold [...]. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object—the furtherance of the British Empire, for the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. [...] To forward such a scheme, what a splendid help a secret society would be, a society not openly acknowledged, but who [sic!] would work in secret for such an object. [...] Let us form the same kind of society which should have its members in every part of the British Empire working with one object, and one idea, who should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands. [...] The Society should inspire and even own portions of the press, for the press rules the mind of other people.

Cecil Rhodes. Confessions of Faith (1877)

This kind of financial elite would also invest in political movements in Europe as they would be ideologically more aligned with a secular world order, governed by trade relationships rather than blood feuds among aristocratic families. The dying political order on the continent was hurdling towards a slow capitulation to the forces of the market and the maritime world. Within this context, the imperialist West was paradoxically the largest intentional and unintentional instigator of socialist revolutions. In fact, some of the most influential socialists and their publications would come from the United States. Any ones left on the continent would eventually emigrate to the US (Socialists and National Socialists alike), leaving behind a Europe rendered to rubble and ashes.

When the story of the 20th century is told in its proper, reactionary light, international communism is anything but a grievance of which Americans may complain. Rather, it’s a crime for which we have yet to repent. Since America is a communist country, the original communist country, and the most powerful and important of communist countries, the crimes of communism are our crimes. You may not personally have supported these crimes. Did you oppose them in any way?

Curtis Yarvin (aka. Mencius Moldbug). Technology, Communism, and the Brown Scare.

Major benefactors of revolutionary movements were secular or assimilationist Jews that strove to overturn the medieval order that had reinforced ostracisation and a culture of suspicion against Jewish communities. This externally and internally reinforced segregation of the Jewish community had allowed the shtetl Rabbis to wield a certain amount of power over their constituents. But the urbanised and educated communities of the Jewish diaspora would become especially swept up in the revolutionary fervour within Russia, Germany and other European nations. The external support that many of them were receiving from Jewish owned media outlets in the West, as well as Jewish financiers among the powerful banking families of Europe and the US, turned the resident Jews of Europe into targets of suspicion and paranoia. In many ways, the dominant world order that was eroding and threatening the nations of Europe was seen as an international Jewish conspiracy.

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews; it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders.

Winston Churchill. Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle of the Soul of the Jewish People.

During these crucial times of our last century, we can observe an echo, a repetition of previous revolutions. The Puritans and their ideological descendants populated and dominated the United States for a long period. The paradoxical mixture of religious fervour and liberal or enlightenment ideology, paired with a little occult or esoteric teachings are replicated in the modern USA. During the first half of the twentieth century, a new kind of hegemonic ideology was forming that included at once a belief in secular universalism as well as an apocalyptic (or dispensationalist) belief in salvation through the modern state of Israel. The witchhunt of Jewish residents on the continent was intended to root out the promulgators of erosive Bolshevism. Instead, it only contributed towards fulfilling the vision of a final and ultimate secular order with a new Jerusalem.

In other words: the End Times.

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By now, most of us should have left behind the naïve perspective of a superstitious and backwards Middle Ages that was followed by a liberal, secular and enlightened Reformation. The initial stirrings of secularism were nothing like what we understand under that term today. Nor were they outright rejections of religion in favour of a rational and empirical understanding of the world. Empiricists and rationalists included fanatic religious zealots and sceptics alike. Similarly, the late Scholastic establishment of Roman church doctrine was already teeming with sceptics like William of Ockham or Nicolas of Autrecourt.

Nicholas of Autrecourt has been called “the medieval Hume” for his criticisms of the received views on sense knowledge and causality. The parallel with Hume is indeed very close.

James Franklin. The Science of Conjecture.

But if during the Renaissance and the Reformation we are not dealing with a mysterious illumination of the human spirit, what actually happened? Moreover, how come many of us have come to believe in this narrative of a sudden explosion of reason and enlightenment? To understand the answer to these questions, let us set the stage for the overall historical situation of late medieval Europe.

Two major political entities were about to fall, facilitating the rise of a third one. I am speaking of the disintegration of Muslim Spain in the West and the gradual fall of the Byzantine Empire in the East. Whilst the former resulted in the establishment of a new kind of Catholic empire, the latter conclusively removed the only other major Christian authority outside of Rome. There was no longer any external competition to the Church, but the its biggest challenge was only emerging and it came from within its own sphere.

By the beginning of the 16th century, the Habsburgs had increased their influence to such a degree that they ruled most of Europe in what had become the biggest consolidation of power on the continent since Charlemagne. With a regime with such overwhelming dominance, many European powers were threatened, forcing them to find new ways to gain independence from this growing empire. The stage was set for a revolt.

The unprecedented wealth of free city states throughout the Mediterranean, the North sea, and the Baltic sea evolved a new kind of force that leveraged robust trade networks functioning entirely without kings and emperors. This was the precursor to early republicanism, which should not be confused with the liberal democratic ideal of modern times. City state republics were in many ways authoritarian, only that their leadership was a collection of powerful merchants instead of nobles or clerics.

Taking it all together, the influx of Byzantine Greek refugees into Italy, the consolidation of Habsburg Spain, and the rise of independent wealth and power in new systems of republics of united city states, a last ingredient was missing to light the powder keg: a technological revolution.

It is almost impossible to overestimate the impact the invention of the printing press (the Gutenberg Revolution) had on European society. The fact that ‘independent’ philosophers, artists, and scientists could rise to fame and influence simply with the help of a wealthy patron was enabled by the fact that their works could be spread to the public in their vernacular languages. The secluded and hermetically sealed houses of study of the Scholastic age were now in direct competition with people not beholden to the official Church doctrine, nor bound to write yet another Latin commentary on Aristotle.

Let me emphasise again, this does not mean that this situation would lead people to naturally move towards rationality and enlightenment (whatever that means), but it radically opened up the space of possible ideas to spread at a much greater pace. We may be experiencing something very similar today with the possibility of rapid information transfer via the internet. This new form of media can spread faster than traditional print or even TV. It reaches more people, but nobody in their right mind will claim that the information gathered online is universally of higher quality than that of traditional media. Perhaps in hindsight we will only remember the remarkable thinkers that came via the internet and forget about the majority of slop content.

One such example of genius that was only possible within the context of media transformation was Johannes Kepler. As was common during that time, the re-discovery of the works of Plato and Pythagoras flamed his fascination with the mystical wisdom of the ancient sages. He strove to discover the secrets of the heavenly spheres and sought to attribute a Platonic Solid to each of the observable planets. The spirit of Pythagoras was flowing through him when he wrote Mysterium Cosmographicum and incessantly searched for the mathematical principle underlying the cosmos.

Some may say that Kepler’s work was enabled by the fact that he was a Protestant, thus avoiding the persecutions that Galilei endured later on. Whilst it is true that the overall situation at his time facilitated the prominence of figures like Kepler, the notion of a rational and enlightened Reformation needs to be put to rest. The translations of biblical texts and mass dissemination of opposing narratives that rejected church doctrine triggered a religious zeal barely matched by any conservative Catholic at the time. Whilst the Catholic Reconquista of Spain lead to the expulsion and conversion of Jews from the Iberian peninsula, the Reformation quickly turned against the Jews in an even more aggressive and violent manner.

I had decided not to write anymore, neither of the Jews, nor against the Jews. Because I have learned, however that those miserable, wicked people do not cease trying to win over to themselves us, that is, the Christians also, I have permitted this booklet to go forth that I might be found among those who have resisted such poisonous undertaking of the Jews, and have warned the Christians to be on their guard against them.

Martin Luther. The Jews and their Lies.

Jews throughout Europe had served as carriers of oriental and occult ideas for centuries. Being versed in ancient Hebrew, they rose to newfound prominence as soon as there was a general hype for finding the true original meaning of the biblical texts. However, this new collaboration between Christians and Jews brought about several converts from Judaism to Christianity that would become a detriment to their former religious fellows. The translations would not end with the bible and translations of the Talmud would expose Christian zealots with texts that exposed unspeakable heresies against Christ. It did not take long for the mood to shift against the Jews, forcing them into new regions and roles.

Despite the murderous methods of the inquisition, several Jews were able to survive the conquest of Spain and even maintained favourable relations with the Spanish empire. These were known as the Conversos and Marranos. The former simply means converts, whereas the latter referred to strategic converts that secretly preserved their Jewish identity. The amount of notable members of this lesser known Jewish phenomenon is too numerous to ignore.

Free city states, especially in the Netherlands and Italy, became suitable places for Jews to live. The Ottoman empire also granted them relative safety under its auspices. The new form of power growing via vast trade networks did not halt at imperial boundaries. There were important relationships held across Catholic, Protestant and Muslim lands alike. Which group was better suited to excel in this environment than the shared network of Jews, Conversos and Marranos? For instance, Joseph Nasi, a Portuguese Jew became a major administrator for the Turkish Sultan, even expressing the first proto-Zionist ideas of establishing a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. More examples include Isaac Abrabanel and Luis de Santángel, who were major sponsors of Christopher Columbus’ mission to the Americas.

Despite the unprecedented power of the Deep Empire, the Church needed to develop methods of maintaining and extending its power in this new environment. The Jesuits can be regarded as a resurrection of the Templars with a new structure and a capability for infiltration that went much deeper than the financial and military aims of the medieval knights. They formalised and strategically emulated the Marrano system for concrete political purposes. Here, we can name more notable Marrano-descendent figures, Ignatius de Loyola and Tomás de Torquemada, who were particularly fundamentalist in their opposition to heretics.

In fifteenth-century Castile under Isabella, at least four bishops were of Marrano origin: the Archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, and the Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (1388 – 1468), the uncle of the first Inquisitor-General, Tomás de Torquemada (1420 – 1498), who was it turns out, was also of Jewish descent. For a number of years, Torquemada served as the regular confessor and personal advisor to Queen Isabella […] In the fifteen years under Torquemada’s direction, the Spanish Inquisition grew from the single tribunal at Seville to a network of two dozen Holy Offices. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov features a parable involving Christ coming back to Seville in the days of the Spanish Inquisition, and being confronted by Torquemada as the Grand Inquisitor.

David Livingstone. Ordo ab Chao.

For many decades, the developments during the Renaissance and the Reformation led to anything but enlightenment. Europe plunged into a series of disastrous religious wars during which several nations were born out of a movement for independence from Rome. The northern alliances had seemingly retained some of their Viking spirit and attained emancipation in religious matters. Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands were the most prominent examples of new states that achieved a major political success in the peace of Westphalia in 1648. Additionally, Prussia was emerging alongside other modern nations and they were establishing independent reformed churches.

Power is elite business. Therefore, zealous masses killing each other over religious disagreements would never succeed in their pursuit of independence. It was the careful and intentional crafting of a new elite at the courts of the reformed states that allowed for the first instances of secularism. The British parliament serves as a prime example of how contradictory and messy this idea of independence and secularism really was. The most tenacious political and religious faction during the seventeenth century was the Puritans, a radical protestant sect that managed to take power during the reign of Cromwell in 1653. Despite their religious fervour, politically, they mostly situated themselves among the independents, as they perceived their biggest threat to be a united Church, whether it be Catholic or Anglican. As splinter groups like the Puritans could not expect to convert the entire population to their doctrine, they strategically aligned themselves with those that strove to separate the powers of state and church.

Elites tend to be non-ideological and treat religion and myth as a means for maintaining their power (this does not apply universally, where doctrinally-aligned elites can operate in accordance to some idealistic common goal). In the case of the later stages of the Reformation, we can observe an environment of a teeming variety of spiritual, mystical and occult beliefs. As paradoxical as it may be, the Puritans had substantial overlap with figures like John Dee and Samuel Hartlib. In order to establish a counter narrative to the Catholic Church, one needed to develop a religious system that was at least as powerful and inspiring as the centuries-old intellectual and artistic corpus of the Church. Fan-fictions such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost rose to fame and created a cinematic universe around the New Jerusalem.

Whether based on scriptural or on English history, the poem was intended to glorify the establishment of the English New Jerusalem, a paradise far more tangible and immediate than that which Michael is able to offer Adam in the closing book of Paradise Lost. In the first flush of his reforming ardour, when the consummation seemed perhaps only months away, it was natural for Milton to construe his poetic calling as an extension of his prophetic vocation.

John Spencer Hill. John Milton: Poet, Priest, and Prophet.

It required people of this religious fervour to take on the toil and struggle of emigrating to America in pursuit of the New Jerusalem. But what was to happen to the old Jerusalem? There was no way that the reformed Christians could concede the theological ground to the Catholic Church by validating its claims of being the true successor of Israel. This is where the newly re-invited Jews would come in to represent the remnants of Israel, dispersed after having been banished from old Jerusalem.

John Winthrop (1587 –1649) a wealthy English Puritan lawyer, also a member of the Hartlib Circle, as well as an alchemist and follower of John Dee, sailed across the Atlantic on the Arbella, leading to the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On 12 June 1630, the Arbella led the small fleet bearing the next 700 settlers into Salem harbor. Salem may have inspired the city of Bensalem in Bacon’s New Atlantis, which was published in 1627. The settlement of Salem by Rosicrucians would explain the existence of witchcraft in the city, which would have given cause to the famous witch trails of 1692. Frances Yates notes that Dee’s influence later spread to Puritanism in the New World through John Winthrop’s son, John Winthrop, Jr., an alchemist and a follower of Dee. Winthrop used Dee’s esoteric symbol, the Monas Hieroglyphica, as his personal mark.

David Livingstone. Marranos Everywhere!

The Puritans and all of their adjacent sects appear to have chosen the best strategy, as their colonial project in America would eventually rise to global dominance and many of their descendent Protestant denominations to this day hold serious sway over US politics, alongside their religious veneration for the Zionist project. On the mainland in Europe, however, and in many other parts of the world, the empire was striking back. The Jesuits quickly developed into a sophisticated organisation on top of science, technology, and modern strategies of political subversion. In this way, they were equally prone to the subversive influences of foreign culture and wealth, as well as the revolutionary currents in Europe.

The Jesuit August Barruel famously warned of a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jacobins to overthrow the Christian order of Europe. What else were the Freemasons and Jacobins than those who mimicked the Jesuits only for their own secularist ideals? In the same way as the Jesuits re-established the ideal of the Templar warrior-monk, the Masons saw themselves in the tradition of Jacques de Molay, the final grand master of the Templars who had cursed the king and church, prompting his later disciples to undermine their powers. It is impossible to disentangle whether the Jesuits infiltrated the Masons or vice versa. Was the Church of the Renaissance already run by a heretical faction, displaying overt depictions of God in the Sistine Chapel? Was Luther right in his disgust against the Church of his time? Or was it Barruel’s conspiracy of occult and subversive forces that had successfully infiltrated the Vatican?

In the French Revolution […] everything—except its most horrifying crimes—was foreseen, deliberated, combined, decided upon, and prescribed in advance; everything was the result of profound depravity, because everything was prepared and initiated by men who alone held the thread of the conspiracy, which had long been spun within secret societies, and who knew how to choose and hasten the most favorable moment for their plots.

Auguste Barruel. Abrégé des Mémoires pour Servir à l'Histoire du Jacobinisme.

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In many regards, secret societies and esoteric sects develop their own self-fulfilling prophesies. We do not know of the various failed and disappeared sects that made it to no prominence at all. Especially towards the late 18th and 19th centuries, the Freemasons were truly a hotbed for occult and oriental mystic teachings, syncretising a melange of pseudo-ancient myths in order to claim a narrative of being part of an age old movement. Their opponents similarly believed these myths and accused them of being part of an ancient Satanic cabal. Whether this seems plausible or not will likely depend on the reader’s particular disposition.

Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither should they have a private house or store closed against any one who has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage

Plato. Politeia.

Beneath the surface of our every day lives lies something profound and mystical. We can never truly escape our history, hence we will do best to pay attention to the reverberations of the past. Behind all appearances lies an ancient tradition, built by our ancestors and now largely shrouded in mystery. Hidden forces, secret societies, sects, and elites make up the complicated dynamism of our past. Most of them will remain lost in time forever, but occassionally we are left with decent sources that allow us to gain an insight into the movements that shaped our civilisation.

The Templars represent one of the most prominent groups of history which combine a range of compelling attributes: they were militaristic, but also financially innovative and secretive. They were very religious and eventually developed a unique kind of spiritual fervour. Moreover, the Freemasons have developed their own mythology about how they originally descended from the Templars, which in turn protected what they believed were the remnants of the Temple of Solomon. The architect of this temple, Hiram, is believed by Masons to be their mythical founder, opening up an alternative timelime and interpretation to the biblical narrative.

Ideas about the significance of the Templars became especially famous through the works of Dan Brown and Umberto Eco. Whilst the latter was more ridiculing this sort of conspiratorial view of history, the former was actually inspired by the Temple and the Lodge, written by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.

Suppose the Templars had a plan to conquer the world, and they knew the secret of an immense source of power, a secret whose preservation was worth the sacrifice of the whole Temple quarter in Paris, and of the commanderies scattered throughout the kingdom, also in Spain, Portugal, England, and Italy, the castles in the Holy Land, the monetary wealtheverything.

Umberto Eco. Foucault’s Pendulum.

Baigent and Leigh claim that the Templars represent only one instantiation of the same secret society known as the Priory of Sion, a hoax from the early 20th century. They maintain that the priory preserved the secret of the holy grail, which is understood as Sang Real, the holy blood of the lineage of Jesus Christ himself. Obviously, none of these claims are substantiated and so far merely make for good plots in Dan Brown novels.

Until this day, numerous public figures have claimed to belong to the surviving order of the Knights Templar. Most notably, the occultist and overall weirdo Aleister Crowley had been a member of the Orto Templi Orientis, the Oriental Templar Order. Oriental and occult influences have often been attributed to the Templars, not last by the church itself at a time where the Templars were being persecuted and supressed. Worship of Baphomet was among the accusations against their order.

The reason why the Templars seem to invite such mythmaking and speculation lies in the fact that they did function as a subversive force to be reckoned with. At their time, they were establishing a network of influence which combined religious discipline with a robust system of international banking and finance. Done consistently, this combination is unbeatable. Even our most ancient sources tell us about the priesthoods of early antiquity having engaged in moneylending and banking. A well-managed fund that has military-trained members devoutly following a moral code can find its way to political influence in no time. The church understood this and became justifiably terrified of the Templars.

They had extended their banking activities to Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, and other Muslim merchant centers. Those activities included the kind of clandestine intelligence network that almost always accompanies international banking.

John J Robinson. Dungeon, Fire and Sword.

The Templars mirrorred the order of the Assassins insofar as they were both nominally part of a religious organisation but their exemplary devotion to their own order made them become something separate, something entirely new.

Devotion, fanaticism, the irrational ecstacy of serving and submitting your entire existence to a singular purpose. Nothing has impacted human history more than the miraculous eruption of prophetic and religious zealotry.

When religion and politics ride the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man, nothing can stand in their path.

Frank Herbert. Dune.

As is known, the Templars faced a tragic demise through the supression by the church. However, it is possible that it had been too late: Perhaps the church and its lands had already been infiltrated, ultimately leaving them no choice but to unofficially make an arrangement with the Templars about their continuation in new forms. All of this is speculation as our official records have the Templars ended by 1312.

Baigent, Leigh, and Robinson have a concrete theory abouth how the Templars would have survived in the shadows, ultimately resurfacing in the Freemasons centuries later. In their view, the Templars joined the revolt of the excummunicated Robert Bruce in Scotland. Later, they would become the instigators of the great peasant revolt of 1381.

Thus Templar ships, Templar arms and matériel, Templar fighting men and, just possibly, the Templar treasure would have found their way to Scotland, providing vital reinforcements and resources for Bruce’s cause.

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh. Temple and the Lodge.

It was apparent that some kind of loose organization or group of sympathizers must have been working for the Templars at the time of their arrest in England… A Templar connection would mean that the Great Society was not just an underground group organized to foment or cash in on this rebellion of 1381, but rather was a secret society that had been in existence for almost seventy years.

John J Robinson. Born in Blood.

At their supression and the execution of their then grand master, Jacques de Molay, he is said to have cursed the pope and king, leading to their sudden death only weeks after the incident. But it is said that he went even further and cursed the entire organisation of power in the hand of church and crown, leading all of the remaining Templars to work at eroding and ultimately destroying the church and monarchy across Europe. This is where the ideological connection between the Templars and later Masonic and Illuminist organisations allegedly comes from.

Despite the famous rumour that at the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, a member of the crowd yelled “Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged”, all of these claims have little to no evidence to speak for. Quite on the contrary, there is a much better case to be made that the Templars achieved much of their success during the crusades in the Iberian peninsula, ultimately establishing the Catholic empire of Spain. The powerful Spanish knight’s order of Christ, which would later partially develop into the Jesuits, is a much more plausible contender to be a successor of the Templar order. Naturally, there are also plenty conspiracy theories about the Jesuits and the secrets of the Vatican (and Dan Brown novels about it). But if we are to look at history honestly, we would have to admit that the Templars could not have been both, enemies of the church as well as friends of the church. At least on a surface level, their loyalties must have split until eventually the enemies of the church were victorious. Perhaps we are no longer dealing with the same church and the enemies of the church are running the church? How can we ever know such things.

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What we can know for certain is that the Templars brought about a new kind of organisational innovation that would change the face of European politics and bring about many orders of a similar setup. Whether Masons, Rosicrucians, or Jesuits were direct successors to the Templars or not, their effectiveness was only guaranteed insofar they could emulate the behaviour of the Knight’s Templar. The strategy for gaining power and influence across all Christian realms required people to think in terms of their international trade networks. The Spanish and Portuguese were the first to understand this. Their financial power combined with religious fervour would become the first expressions of global dominance in our history.

There are many legends about the source of the Templars’ wealth. According to Masonic legend, when the Templars came under trial in 1301, their leader de Molay arranged for them to return to Scotland, where, according to Masonic lore, they had brought with them a number of “Eastern Mystics,” referring to the Mandaeans—also recognized as the Sabians—or the radical Ismaili sect of the Assassins of the Islamic world—who were “rescued” from the Holy Land, thus inaugurating the traditions of Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

David Livingstone. Ordo ab Chao.

Who were the Templars? Historically, they were a military order founded in 1118 during the Crusader occupation of Jerusalem. Yet, as with the multiple traditions surrounding Pythagoras, the Templars also acquired a parallel, legendary identity. In later imagination they became a covert network of wealth and influence spanning the Mediterranean, a supposed precursor to a more cosmopolitan and hegemonic Europe.

In general, the study of grand historical conspiracies fails to separate the mythical from the factual. Inevitably, we will be faced with murky periods of history where no clear secret ruling elite can be identified. The Templars represent a kind of island in our understanding of history: They first emerged from a messy and scarcely documented period from which we find the legends of Beowulf, Arthur, and the Niebelung. After their supression in 1312 AD, Europe again returned a period of transition with no unity within the church or amongst the various nobilities. There were multiple popes, no clear emperor, the Black Plague and the Hundred Year war.

The rise of the Templars can only be understood within the context of Rome's consolidation of power over all of Christendom. The crusades had left the Byzantinian empire weakened and had established a new crusader state in Palestine. A new era had begun. After a thousand years, the Holy See had returned to its power over the Holy Land. A long time had passed and the conditions within Europe were severly changed. Was it the Romans returning, or the Christians, or in reality entirely unrelated Germanic warlords with a tacit understanding of Christ, watered down over the centuries? We must assume that it was something entirely new.

The historical veil that shrouds the early medieval world in mystery was similarly affecting the people at the time of the crusades. They themselves were reconnecting to an ancient tradition of which they had little reliable knowledge. Arguably, this mystery is required in order to establish a truly united secret order. The ideas guiding the Frankish, German and Norman kings of the time were an imaginative melange of Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian mythology. The legends of Arthur and Merlin were arguably older pagan stories, translated and syncretised with a more Christian outlook.

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For instance, it is commonly known that the German king also considered himself the emperor of Rome. He regarded himself as part of an unbroken tradition that in reality had long withered away. Instead, the Holy Roman Emperor was a Christian simulation of the imperator. The deep empire was only able to reestablish the imperial throne as a limited proxy for its power. The true first stirrings of deep imperial power came with the Templars. Moreover, many crusaders regarded themselves as literal successors of Rome in the sense that they were descendents of Aeneas, the legendary founder of the city. In other words, in their appeal to a mythical past, they made a reference to a myth that had been a mere legend even for the actual ancient Romans.

The crusaders not only occupied Palestine for almost a century, but also held Constantinople for about 60 years. The Byzantine Greeks were initially Christian brothers in the east, asking Rome for help against the Muslims. However, with time the Greeks were regarded as ancient blood enemies, justified by the entirely speculative Trojan heritage of the Frankish kings. Aeneas had to flee Troy because of the vicious Greeks (which was 2000 years ago even for the crusaders). Now the Trojan-Roman warriors of Christ were to get their revenge. Holy LARP.

Despite the various inconsistencies in the crusader's mission, self-identity and overall strategy, the rise of the Templars ushered in an era of cosmopolitism, a radical break from the relative provincialism of the previous period in western Europe. The crusader empire was something radical, an empire justified by the Holy See and by Christ's eternal kingdom in heaven. The ancient ruins of the temple of Solomon were suddenly in reach, the bible came alive after centuries of mythologisation. Just as the priesthoods of the ancient world were engaged in trade and finances, so did the Templar system lay the groundwork for the subsequent European financial networks. Free city states had already begun rising to prominence across the various seas of Europe, but now they were also tightening their relationships by granting credit across large distances, the early stirrings of capital.

Not only the Christian world produced a secret monastic and military order. The Fatimid caliphate was the first Islamic Shiite empire. The Shiites had been driven underground since the fall of their initial grand Imam and caliph, Ali. This way, they had developed a doctrine involving a lineage of imams with a particularly secretive and mystical element to it. It is said that the Fatimids derived their power not from a particularly strong caliph, but were rather controlled underground by the sect founded by Hasan Ibn Saba, known as the Assassins. Now we are entering a territory that has been renditioned in the video game Assassin's Creed. Here, world history is characterised as a hidden conflict between the tyrannical Templars versus the rebellious Assassins. Whilst this narrative may be too imaginative, there is an argument to be made that the disintegration of centralised Christian and Muslim monarchies allowed for these more decentral networks of finance and influence to flourish across the Mediterranean.

The ultimate downfall of the Templars after their supression in 1312 has become the turning point event for many conspiracy theorists. It has been said that the condemnation of the Templars caused a split among the French bloodlines of Europe. The descendants of the Merovingians, seen by some as the descendants of Christ himself, were betrayed by their brethren at the French court as well as the Catholic Church. Jacques de Molay, at his execution, swore revenge and cursed the king and pope for all eternity, foreseeing their ultimate downfall. The later Freemasons would claim to be followers of the long gone Templars, carrying on their legacy and ultimately contributing to the abolition of the monarchy and church.

Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged.

(Someone allegedly shouted this at the execution of Louis XVI in 1793)

We can observe a common theme, where secret societies are at once the object and purveyor of conspiratorial narratives. It was the Masons themselves that claimed to have been the remnants of a hidden continuation of the Templars. Within this context, they are said to have been the instigators of the reformation, as well as the later revolutions in Europe. Whilst the truth is much more messy and complicated than that, it can be insightful to disentangle truth from fiction within these claims.

The dissolution of the Templars came about at the same time as the rise of prosperity, trade, and literacy in Europe. The reformation is a much broader development that cannot be attributed to the machinations of one particular group. However, many influential Templar networks were be incorporated into political orders that would play a crucial role in the later religious wars. Whilst the merger of the Templars with the Hospitallers or the Teutonic order of German nights still carries its relatively benign legacy to this day, we can find much more subversive developments in Spain, France and Scotland.

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The two centuries following the Templar's supression leave us with only vague traces of two particular successor orders of the Templars. In Spain, we find the direct integration of the Templars into the Order of Christ, a clear predecessor of Loyolas infamous Jesuit order. At the time, southern Spain was still held by the Islamic Emirate of Al-Andalus, but the rather amicable coexistence between Muslims and Christians on the Iberian peninsula was to come to a gruesome end. The first expression of inquisitative violence agaist heretics of the region had been comitted against the Albigensians. Later, Muslims and Jews would become targets of the thorough cleansing campaign that accompanied the reconquista of Christian Spain. This new Christian empire promulgated a return to doctrinal purety, but it was a mythical purity, something that was new and unique to this novel theocracy.

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The other, more speculative, Templar legacy can be found in Scotland, where the excommunicatd Robert the Bruce was leading a rebellion against England and the church. He granted the Templars a safe harbour and took them into his services. Later on, the northern regions of Europe, lead by Scotland, Sweden, the Netherlands and northern Germany would be the leaders of the reformation. The Scottish forces also assisted France against the English in the hundred year war. Modern Freemasons claim to be able to trace their legacy back to these Scottish and French troops. No wonder that some of the most prominent strains of Masonry ended up being the Scottish rite as well as the Grand Orient of France.

The ideas of the reformation can be found in figures long preceding the actual conflicts of the religious wars. It was the threat of a new Spanish empire, ruled over by the powerful Habsburg dynasty that lead the northern nations to hasten its doctrinal separation from the church. Especially the fall of Constantinople and the completion of the reconquista consolidated a new powerful block dominating the entire south of the continent. The predecessor of modern statehood was forming on both ends, accompanied by the Jesuits and Masons alike, despite their rivalry.

The reformation was not a one-way street towards more religious freedom and tolerance but quite the opposite. The first versions of reformist belief were expressed in intense religious fundamentalism. Europe threatened to disintegrate due to various wars of religion fought in France and Germany. Just as the seemingly contradictory movements of the Masons and Jesuits had a common origin, we will find that the zealots of the reformation were deeply intertwined with the secularists of modernity. Evangelicalism and Illuminism are yet to take centre stage.

Throughout antiquity, religious pantheons were tied to regional localities. Cities had their own patron gods and when they declined, their gods would also perish. There were gods of Egypt, Greece and Rome that prevailed across the ancient world, but they all eventually disappeared as soon as monotheism rose to power. This new version of religion seems to survive and even continue growing despite (and often because of) the collapse of its believer’s home empires. Christianity continued and even accelerated its spread after the fall of the Eastern Roman empire in 1453 AD. Islam kept expanding despite the fall of all of the major caliphates.

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There is something about the inherent structure of monotheistic religion that allows for a new kind of transcendent empire, a cultural project that outlasts entire civilisational collapses. The worship of a singular supreme deity had existed1 prior to the arrival of Judaism, but the combination of Jewish theology with Christ’s universal human mysticism really allowed for the only God to sweepingly capture the entire Roman civilisation.

Towards the end of the 5th century AD, the western half of the Roman Empire (the one actually containing the city of Rome in it) fell apart. Rome had been sacked multiple times (most notably 410 AD by the Visigoths, and 455 AD by the Vandals), the provinces of the empire had fallen to independent Germanic fiefdoms. The true centre of the Christian world was Constantinople and all of the major patriarchates of Anatolia, Antioch and Egypt. Yet, the pope in Rome still claimed to be the sole representative of Christ on earth. But he was weak and needed support from various other factions, Germanic and Byzantine kings.

The official Christian doctrine had been clarified and solidified during the councils of Nicaea (325 AD), Ephesus (431 AD), and Chalcedon (451 AD). It was made clear, what interpretation of scripture was heretical and what was within the accepted canon of the church. God was not to be regarded as the literal father of a purely human son. Christ was not to be seen as some kind of demigod in the vein of Odysseus or Achilles. Instead, it became central to the dogma of the church that the mysterious trinity had to be preserved. The three persons of God are separate, yet one. They are neither connected by being properties nor are they disjointed deities. The key to understanding scripture took on an esoteric character, a hidden meaning that struck commoners as being byzantine and mysterious.

As long as the patriarchates of the eastern Mediterranean were in charge of church doctrine during the centuries after Constantine’s conversion (312 AD), there was an overall alignment between the empire and Christianity. At the same time, Pythagoras’ legacy was being reborn in the form of monastic orders. The religious zeal of the missionaries, whether it be Pachom (~292 AD) or St. Patrick (~385 AD) carried with it a truer reflection of Christ’s struggles than the imperial clerics could credibly display. Under enormous efforts, they strove to spread the teachings of Christ across the world. Like the Pythagoreans, they combined sophisticated study with a mystery religion of Oriental origin.

What had been the study of numbers and arithmetic for Pythagoras was the reading of scripture for the early Christians. The bible represented one of the earliest forms of the book in the sense that its collection of texts was mostly kept consistent across the Christian world. The bible was derived from a multitude of preserved Jewish texts, but the Jews studied and followed a much larger, much more complicated and mythical body of scripture. The Christian councils managed to streamline and structure the biblical narrative in such a way that they were included and understood within the context of prophecy and the coming of Christ. The bible became a breakthrough in terms of the spread of the written word.

In the early centuries of Christianity, the Nicaean dogma was far from dominating Christendom. Germanic tribes were either still pagan, or followed Arianism, a heresy repudiated at the first council of Nicaea in 325 AD. In the east, Manichaeism rose to become the prevailing religion. Mani (~216 AD) taught that Christ was one of two sons of God, one good, one bad. The Holy See in Rome was but an island amidst a heretical European peninsula. The expansion of Christianity deep into Europe was only beginning and would end up creating a new kind of Gottesstaat, an empire that would not follow its predecessors but would take centuries to take shape and assert its rule over the Christian world.

Rome naturally had no means of asserting its supremacy over Constantinople. As long as the Eastern empire stood firm, this would not change. However, the rise of the Islamic caliphates changed the situation: Constantinople lost most of its Northern African and Levantine territories and was preoccupied with fending off this newly arisen rival from the Arabian peninsula.

The early middle ages should be regarded as an Islamic period. The centre of civilisation, commerce, culture, science, and art was no longer Rome, but Baghdad, Kairo, and Cordoba. As we are tracing the origins of Illuminism, the secret doctrine of the Enlightenment, we cannot leave out Islamic influence.

The strength and weakness of the Sunni caliphates was its doctrinal unity and exotericism. Tawhid is simple. There is but one God. No trinity, no Transubstantiation, no Theodokos, no Iconoclasm. Commoners were just as initiated into the core of Islamic teaching as mullahs or imams, even if there were differences in their respective spiritual depth. This way, Islam was easily adoptable and allowed for a certain degree of tolerance of other people of the book. Arguably, the success of Islam was not even slightly slowed by the total collapse of their caliphates. It did not take long and the vast realms of the Ummayads and Abbasids vanished. However, what Islam could not achieve was maintaining an inner priesthood that influenced the Umma from within and preserved a separate, secret doctrine. Shia Islam and its hidden imams are a notable exception that will become more relevant further down the line.

The Islamic conquests were an opportunity for Rome. Constantinople was distracted with fending off the Muslims, but the caliphate was also entering Europe from Iberia. Only a strategic alliance between the church and the Germanic rulers would be able to counter the Islamic influence on the continent. This lead to the Frankish alliance between the pope and the Merovingian dynasty, later culminating in the usurper Carolingian dynasty’s victory over the Muslims at Tours in 732 AD.

The establishment of the Holy Roman Empire provides us a glimpse into the inner workings of the deep empire. An imperial power structure began spreading across Germany, France, and even Britain. This development was consistently resisted by sovereign kings and chieftains of the continent. The Holy See in Rome had to endure many struggles for power between the pope and the early Germanic emperors. The relative independence of many bishops and monastic orders rendered the church dependent on kings in order to enforce loyalty and obedience. In exchange, the legitimacy bestowed upon a king by the church would help him fight his own rivals.

The pope did not regard his authority to be shared or compromised with a worldly emperor. Any concessions were seen as temporary and strategic. The unconditional authority of God on earth had to be above any king or other leader. Therefore, many popes were playing the Norman forces of southern Italy against the German forces of northern Italy in order to increase their own sovereignty.

The ultimate victory of the church can be seen in two major events: the great Schism of 1054 AD and the beginning of the crusades in 1095 AD. After the official separation from the east Roman church, the crusades ushered in a war against their rival. Despite being regarded as a war against Muslims, the primary result of the crusades was the consolidation of power by Rome over rival churches within Christendom, especially the patriarchate of Constantinople. The Holy Land merely provided symbolic legitimacy to the lords engaged in this military campaign.

At the beginning of the crusades, Venice and its Italian merchants had a profitable trade relationship with the Fatimid caliphate. As the Fatimids were in possession of Palestine, it strikes us as strange that the amicable relationship with the Fatimids never ceased throughout the crusades, but instead, the Eastern Roman empire was sacked multiple times, with crusaders occupying Constantinople for almost 60 years in 1204 AD. In fact, in the Levant, the crusaders were fighting an enemy of the Fatimids: the Muslim Seljuk Turks.

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The Christian Frankish empires in Palestine became the sole rulers of the Holy Land for almost 100 years and parts of their presence remained until the end of the thirteenth century. The international Mediterranean network of commerce, finance and influence that emerged would set the basis for an even more powerful church syndicate that would quickly match the power of many local armies. I am speaking of the Knights Templars. This is where our conventional story of conspiracy begins.

Pythagoras has been referred to as the first philosopher. In fact, he is said to have coined the term in the first place. To most of us, however, he is known as a mathematician, the famous originator of Pythagoras’ theorem. In other words, he was not raising a conventional priesthood, or following a particular deity, but he was aiming for something more eternal: numbers. The pure logic of digits and arithmetic was regarded as divine and fundamental. One could say that Pythagoras had founded the first ever cult of reason.

Number rules the universe.

Pythagoras

Historians have still not settled the question on whether there was only one Pythagoras of Samos or if there were two philosophers carrying that name. It is alleged that there was a mathematician and a shaman (or mystic) named Pythagoras. While the former was studying the universe by applying the earliest forms of rationality, the latter was a cult leader, a pagan magician initiated into the mystery schools of ancient Egypt.

It is said by Herodotus that the Egyptian priesthood had an unbroken lineage that was over thirteen thousand years old. Egypt was for the Greeks something like a place of deep knowledge and history. The Egyptian scholars were a people that kept accounts on the rise and fall of many dynasties. They built enormous monuments with geometric precision and spectacular alignment with the stars, and they also kept track of the gods, prayers and rituals of their religion. As in Babylon, the priestly elite maintained a tradition that was kept hidden from the general public. Pythagoras was an initiate to the mystery traditions of the ages.

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Something the Egyptians were lacking was the youthful and ambitious energy of the Greeks. The Greek world was at its breakout stage of cultural expansion. The philosophies of the Ionian scientists brought forward new ideas. Their worldviews and theories were no longer religious but rather philosophical in nature. Pythagoras founded his tradition within this context. He alleged that everything originated from number. In a way, the intellectual descendants of the worshippers of numbers have now conquered our modern world. But in Pythagoras’ days, he was but one of many thinkers preaching their ideas. Thales, by contrast, considered the origin of everything to be water.

Philosophy at the time should be understood as both theory and practice. In ancient Greece, people were not immersed in libraries philosophising about the world but carried their message alongside a practice. For Plato, physical exercise was crucial to a healthy mind. Plato was nicknamed the broad because he was a formidable wrestler of his time. It was honourable if a man died in accordance with his life philosophy. Aristophanes was praised for the fact that he died trying to prove a clairvoyant wrong1.

Why, take the case of Thales, Theodorus. While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet. The same jest applies to all who pass their lives in philosophy.

Plato. Theaetetus. 174a

If both the philosopher and the shaman were the same Pythagoras, then the practice of the theory of numbers was a secluded, monastic order similar to the Egyptian priesthoods. Not only were they consciously keeping their teachings a secret, but they also believed that this secret was powerful enough to understand everything in the universe. Plato later brought this idea to clear fruition when he derived the ideal form of government from abstract principles. This connection of the scientific study of the world with the aim at political influence characterises the worshippers of numbers.

Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.

The Pythagoreans were known to have been politically subversive, using their hidden networks to exert influence on governments. By the fact that their teachings had such general applicability, they could outsmart the followers of local religions and superstitions. Pythagoreanism later evolved via Platonism into Neoplatonism and would influence the monastic orders of early Christianity.

Our most important sources on both Pythagoras and the Egyptian mystery schools were created 800 years later. Iamblichus (ca 240-320 AD) is our only source on the inner workings of the Pythagorean school. Similarly, Iamblichus and Plutarch (ca. 45-125 AD) are our only sources on the Egyptian mystery religions. Imagine if a future generation’s only sources on the crusades were videos by PaxTube from 2023.

As both Iamblichus and Plutarch were Neoplatonists, our understanding of Pythagoras is likely influenced by this much later reception of him. What these thinkers had in common with the Pythagoreans was their subjection of the physical world to an immaterial supreme being. The mind was considered the only means of arriving at this truth. The view, carried by Plato and to a lesser degree Aristotle, began its rise to supremacy.

Towards the end of the glory days of the Roman Empire, pagan culture was in decline. The esoteric mystique that had carried the spirit of Pythagoras was no longer accessible within the cosmopolitan world of Rome. The Pythagorean spirit needed a new shamanism, a new cult to merge with.

Nietzsche wrote in The Birth of Tragedy that there were two forces, represented by the gods Apollo and Dionysus, guiding the Greek tragedies of Classical Antiquity. Apollo was an orderly, aesthetic force of symmetry and beauty. Dionysus was a chaotic element, a wild force of drunken ecstasy. The interplay of both of these core principles brought about Greed tragedy. In the same way, Pythagoras’ Apollonian order of mathematical beauty came with a corresponding Dionysian cultish element.

At the time of Iamblichus and Plutarch, the Dionysian sect waiting to infiltrate the entire empire was Christianity. The followers of Christ were also initiates into a monastic cult. They were fanatics, willing to die and sacrifice everything for their faith. Christians carried an energy that could not be matched by the fatigued and declining pagan aristocracy. Various strains of Christianity would emerge, often merging with local (formerly pagan) traditions.

The Aristocracy of Rome was at an impasse. Whilst they had no way of stopping the tide of Christianity, some of them knew how to adopt it and secure their position in the new Rome that was about to be formed. Power has a mysterious ability to embrace most ideologies, even ones which claim to oppose power. The intellectual culture of the Roman Empire underwent a renaissance under the Christian banner. The Latin and Greek scholars of the gospels banded together and established the Nicaean Creed, a canonical reading of the bible and its theology.

The Nicaean Council happened at a time where the center of the Roman world was no longer in Rome but in Constantinople. The city at the Bosporus was geographically and culturally at the intersection of Europe and Asia, or Rome and Jerusalem. The Nicene creed, the official doctrine of Rome had merged the Apollonian depth of the Neoplatonists with this Dionysian Hebrew cult named Christianity. In fact, our understanding of Christianity has been shaped by the Nicene creed or what would later become the Roman Catholic Church.

It should be remembered that at the very beginning, followers of Christ were regarded as one of many Jewish sects. Early sources provide evidence for a colorful variety of messianic cults, each claiming to be fulfilling Jewish prophecy. Even after Christianity had proven to be dominant, there was a diversity in practice, only united in the oppression and persecution by the Roman emperor. This rivalry between the empire and Christ eventually resulted in the conversion of Constantine the Great to Christianity. Then emerged a clear distinction between those followers of Christ suffering in imitation of their God, and the doctrine of the powerful patriarchs and bishops.

What both the elites and the commoners had in common was the apollonian study and theological analysis of scripture, the biblical innovation that allowed for a much more consistent and rapid spread of a religion. The Dionysian aspect, however, had vastly different expressions. The most notable example is that of the Gnostics, which lived ascetic lives of deprivation and starvation in order to experience the bliss of God. Their radical renunciation of the material world brought them to the ecstasy captured by Dionysian mysteries.

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Dionysus was the child of a God and was sacrificed. His body was ritually eaten by his followers and his orgiastic rites were commonly associated with the consumption of wine. The Nicaean creed encapsulated the mystery of Christ within its own ritualistic consumption of their God. To this day, the body is eaten and the blood is imbibed as a ritual to God the son, father and holy spirit. The mystery of the trinity is not understood by the profane but carried by the initiates of the holy scripture.

And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.

1 Corinthians 11:24

It was this doctrine which overcame conventional boundaries and allowed the power of the church to spread despite the fall of its empire. In its place, a new kind of empire was born. One that was no longer of this world. Kingdoms would rise and fall, but Rome kept expanding its domain. This was the rise of the Deep Empire.

In the attempt to bridge the gaps between the sciences, many philosophers (namely Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spengler, and Cassirer) have followed in the tradition of Goethe. Goethe was, and is an exemplar for creative philosophers who are searching for new methods of expressing their ideas. Precisely because Goethe embodied the notion of a complete man—in being both a direct contributor to the culture and arts of his day; and proving himself a visionary, whose insights into the natural sciences continue to compel both artists and scientists to challenge their own methods for discovery.

Not only was there no longer any hegemon in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, but even within cities and fiefdoms, sovereignty was often not particularly clear. The Church was constantly at odds with worldly powers, despite frequently needing their support. Guilds, city states, duchies, kingdoms and other various societal entities all played their role within the diverse tapestry of European power dynamics.

The premise of this article suggests that the Middle Ages may not have been merely a period of the past but perhaps a recurring reversal in civilisational development. This period of disintegration, separation, religiosity and chivalry could be returning at the end of our own imperial period. Perhaps the Roman Empire of Modernity can be identified as this recent 500-year phase of European global conquest. Granted, we never identified a true global monarch (despite the titles that were granted to Queen Victoria), but our global framework of international politics seems to be entering something akin to an empire in transition. Let us explore what this transition may look like.

Dark Ages

First of all, let us tackle the obvious pessimism involved in predicting the arrival of a new Medieval period. Naturally, it is unlikely that we will observe a literal repetition of the last millennium, where we will have to carry our belongings on horseback to the Holy Land because the Pope said so. Instead, it makes sense to understand what the arrival of a Dark Age could mean in our time.

The Medieval Period should not be regarded as a mere lack of some common system. The idea of the Dark Ages can lead us to believe that we were dealing with a life of pure toil, bloodshed and suffering. In fact, a variety of systems means a variety of experiences, good and bad. The darkness we are speaking of is a lack of sufficient source material to understand the details and intricacies of each of the different polities. We are left in the dark about it. Ireland should serve as a prime example of a vibrant and growing intellectual culture that reached its golden age during the Dark period, between the 5th and 9th centuries.

Another reason not to regard the Middle Ages as a lack of a system is the fact that towards the rise of the High Period, a distinct system, namely a particular kind of symbiosis of crown and church had evolved. This specific system served as the basis of rulership, guiding the subject fiefdoms from their Germanic tribal setup towards a more structured imperial configuration. Only the legitimacy granted by the papal authority allowed a king to enforce some semblance of supremacy over the multitudes of rebellious dukes and chieftains.

To summarise, the Dark Period was characterised by a fracture, meaning a compartmentalisation of knowledge furthered by a breakdown of rapid transport and communication. This was accompanied by the lack of literacy among most of the common folk. Literacy was reserved to a clerical elite that represented an important pillar of society but had not yet been integrated alongside the crown and nobility into an established state architecture. Due to the unclear distribution of power, clerics regularly got into conflict with kings. This competition especially characterised the early history of the foremost political entity of the High Medieval Period: the Holy Roman Empire.

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In our current stage of technological development we can in fact imagine a similar kind of illiteracy becoming prevalent. In fact, literacy rates have been dropping and information systems are beginning to shut themselves off from each other. The Chinese model of a separate online network excluding information from outside sources may soon become a common method of shielding political systems from outside influence. If no global hegemon can any longer carry the Anglo-American torch of international open exchange of ideas and commodities, information will soon compartmentalise.

Literacy has changed its meaning: Universal knowledge used to mean being able to read the bible and understand law and power relations across realms - something barely any commoner had access to. Literacy today refers to technological literacy. Our priesthood is transhumanist and lives a separate life from the commoner trapped in his personal algorithm.

And so we find ourselves today connected to vast repositories of knowledge, and yet we have not learned to think. In fact, the opposite is true… The abundance of information… darkens it… It is on this contradiction that the idea of a new dark age turns.

James Bridle. New Dark Age

As Bridle puts it, it is precisely the abundance of information that paralyses our ability to filter for salient knowledge. The sheer amount of raw data flooding our cognition overloads it and requires us to delegate authority over truth and falsehood to those that control the flow of information. It seems, however, that they no longer know how to control it. Hence, no common framework may guide the future and we will be faced with a range of approaches involved in information-containment.

There must be a (possibly changeable) set of rules within the system which resolve the paradox of the informativity of non-information, those programmes with whose help one can decide whether something in the system can be treated as informative or not. If one wanted to let the horizon of what might possibly occur flow out into complete indeterminacy, information would appear to be arbitrary rather than a surprise. No one would be able to do anything with it because it offers nothing that might be learnt, and because it cannot be transformed into redundancies which restrict what can be expected next.

Niklas Luhmann. The Reality of the Mass Media

Feudalism

Throughout the early Middle Ages, Christianity had not yet become what it would later develop into. The pope in Rome was distant and inaccessible for the majority of people. Monastic orders from Ireland, France and Italy were spreading the gospel and had to survive in a world of warring tribes and conflicting interests. Germanic tribes were dominating the European peninsula, having marginalised the Celts and battling Islamic caliphates over Spain.

A major breakthrough was accomplished with the alleged reestablishment of the Roman Empire by Charlemagne. In Aachen, the Germanic king had founded his capital, but in Rome he was crowned to be the Roman Emperor. The Carolingians united the forces of the church with the Frankish monarchy. A system of biblical scholarship was established and the monastic orders sanctioned by Rome now enjoyed imperial protection. The intelligentsia of Christians clerics carried an imperial power structure that was resilient against the local and tribal whims of the clannish chieftains throughout the Germanic fiefdoms.

This imperial power did not last long, though it influenced the most warrior-like late converts to the Roman creed: the Saxons and the Normans. During the 10th century, both of them were at the forefront of a second wave of Christian imperial consolidation.

The Normans had started off being an offshoot of the Vikings from Denmark, a people particularly known for their semi-pagan and barbaric nature. However, the Carolingian environment in France had impressed the Normans with the superior and sophisticated system of the Frankish empire. At that time, much of the lands on the British Isles had lost their connection to the Holy See in Rome. In Ireland for example, Christian priests would begin to resemble druidic elders, preaching the gospel out in open nature. The Norman Conquest in 1066 reestablished the Nicaean doctrine of the Roman Church on Britain, with Henry II later conquering Ireland as well.

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In the meanwhile, the German Saxons had fully adopted the teachings of Christ after an aggressive and genocidal campaign by Charlemagne to convince the Saxons to convert. From amidst the Saxon bloodline, Otto the Great would emerge to reestablish the Roman imperial throne in 962 AD. Similar to his Frankish predecessors, Otto relied on the Holy See in Rome to ensure the legitimacy of his claim to the German crown. Conversely, the papacy was dependent on a strong emperor enforcing its edicts deep in the heart of the empire, especially when the empire went far beyond the Alps.

But by the turn of the first millennium AD, the times of Charlemagne had passed and the imperial throne no longer dominated over papal authority. A real struggle between the German kings and the pope ensued, a conflict that characterised the power structure of the Holy Roman Empire. If the church was divided, whether by two rival popes claiming sole authority or by the emergence of a rival monastic order, the German king would use this moment of papal weakness to secure special privileges over the pope. The Invesiturstreit involved a generational conflict over whether the emperor was entitled to influence the appointment of bishops and cardinals.

Ultimately, the church prevailed in the conflict between worldly and clerical powers. The division of the Italian peninsula between the German and Norman kingdoms facilitated the strategy of the pope to strategically ally with both sides. In the end, the religious fervour that was evoked during the crusades allowed the church to triumph by establishing a truly independent power basis across the entire continent. With time, this power also declined after having essentially stunted the worldly power of its own imperial throne.

In our comparison with modern times, what would our equivalent to the Vatican be? Curtis Yarvin long a ago used the name the Cathedral to refer to our academic-journalistic industrial complex. It is our version of a sovereign institution, a truth-declaring machine. Our most educated and intelligent members of society all follow what is said in the prestigious media outlets and these same elites also follow the current scientific consensus. Politically, it is expressed in the idea of international institutions that advise governments and corporations on their operations.

The process by which the “scholarly community” and the “mainstream news organizations” produce their reliable material is quite different from the process by which the Vatican produces its. The claim that the former is infallible—or even nearly infallible, or even fallible but eventually convergent toward the truth—is not one to be scoffed at. The Cathedral is a grand old edifice, a fabulous achievement of Western civilization.

Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug. Resartus: A Social Revision Engine

Who was the Charlemagne of our age? Yarvin argues, it was FDR, the Holy Roman Emperor and architect of a new world order or postwar consensus. Roosevelt’s unprecedented power derived from a strategic partnership with the Cathedral, which he helped bring into more legitimate institutional formats, such as the United Nations. In Roosevelt’s time, power was clearly in the hands of the worldly presidency. However, as with the HRE, presidential power started declining, facilitating the rise of the Cathedral as an independent power centre. Today, with the emergence of Trump, we are witnessing a battle between the worldly presidency and the clerical forces of the academic and journalistic elite.

The imperial symbiosis is breaking apart. The United States may only ever be America First after it separates entirely from its own child, the Globalist project. Not only is the US breaking away from the global system, Russia and China have already emancipated themselves from the shackles of the so-called international consensus. The Cathedral may have already lived through the peak of its global relevance. Now the tides are turning and bringing back fragmentations reminiscent of Medieval times.

Multipolarity

In medieval Europe, power derived from the ownership of land; in our age, it comes from the ownership of cloud capital – the networks and algorithms that govern communication and commerce.

Yanis Varoufakis. Technofeudalism

A common critique Multipolarity is that the albeit flawed US hegemony at least provides a minimum of human rights and civil liberties, while the emergent competitors (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.) represent much more reprehensible regimes. Any capitulation of hegemony would only embolden them and foster instability. Specifically looking at the decades leading up to World War I, we must be wary of dividing power between hostile nations.

Despite Varoufakis’ claim that we are moving past the importance of land within power dynamics, land distribution does seem to be a relevant difference between the colonial period and this new multipolarity we are entering. I would argue that the emerging division of land power on our globe resembles the medieval period. A fundamental geographical fact about the European period of colonisation was that for the first time the entire globe could be circumnavigated in search of unconquered territories abroad. This allowed various states in Europe to accumulate resources and productive forces that helped bringing about the catastrophies of WWI and WWII.

Today, most of the planet has been integrated into a global system and, over the last century, has undergone a period of rapid decolonisation. Imperial powers no longer focus on exploits far abroad but rather concentrate on their immediate regional neighbourhoods. The United States is the last nation to engage in a European imperialist sort of foreign policy which has lured it from one disaster to another. Sovereign power blocs like Russia and China have long shifted their focus from global dominance towards regional hegemony and it seems increasingly likely that the US will follow suit. Nick Land refers to this as Modernity 2.0.

Given modernity’s inherent trend to degeneration or self-cancellation, three broad prospects open. These are not strictly exclusive, and are therefore not true alternatives, but for schematic purposes it is helpful to present them as such.

1. Modernity 2.0. Global modernization is re-invigorated from a new ethno-geographical core, liberated from the degenerate structures of its Eurocentric predecessor, but no doubt confronting long range trends of an equally mortuary character. This is by far the most encouraging and plausible scenario (from a pro-modernist perspective), and if China remains even approximately on its current track it will be assuredly realized. (India, sadly, seems to be too far gone in its native version of demosclerosis to seriously compete.)

2. Postmodernity. Amounting essentially to a new dark age, in which Malthusian limits brutally reimpose themselves, this scenario assumes that Modernity 1.0 has so radically globalized its own morbidity that the entire future of the world collapses around it. If the Cathedral ‘wins’ this is what we have coming.

3. Western Renaissance. To be reborn it is first necessary to die, so the harder the ‘hard reboot’ the better. Comprehensive crisis and disintegration offers the best odds (most realistically as a subtheme of option #1).

Nick Land. The Dark Enlightenment

In the end, our post-modern world order will resemble a new kind of Middle Age. All three of Land’s scenarios will be merged into one: the imperial centre will disperse into other regional hegemonies, a new kind of peasantry will retreat behind a veil of digitalised ignorance, and finally, the West will be reborn in the form of an Atlanticist empire of which NATO was only the beginning.

How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken the nations!

Isaiah 14:12

I think it is time to speak about it. Recently, Peter Thiel was in the media for hosting an off-the-record lecture on the Antichrist. For many this felt a little unsettling. Comedian Tim Dillon pointed out that something does not feel right about the fact that a billionaire obsessed with surveillance systems and AI-powered military technology has also developed an interest in Satan. I would argue it is not a bad time to seriously tackle the notion of the Antichrist and what relevance he has in our time period.

First of all, let us establish what we even mean when referring to the Antichrist. How is he different from Satan, the devil, or any other demonic figure? The Bible applies the term Antichrist in a twofold manner: On the one hand, individuals that work against the teachings of Christ, and on the other, an off-worldly force opposing Christ himself. This second entity is Satan in a new guise, a version of the devil in a world where Christ had walked the earth.

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.

John 2:18

Whether you follow scripture or you study the Christian religion as a historical phenomenon, it is clear that the coming of Christ represents a break within the continuity of history. The devil may appear in various forms, a horned beast, Satan, Beelzebub, Baphomet or Mephisto, but his most horrific form is that of Lucifer, a figure that descends upon the earth around the time of the coming of Christ. With Christ, the abstraction of God becomes concrete alongside its dark opposite, its shadow-image.

It is highly unlikely that the bond between God and man was broken with the death of Christ; on the contrary, the continuity of this bond is stressed again and again and is further confirmed by the sending of the Paraclete. But the closer this bond becomes, the closer becomes the danger of a collision with evil. On the basis of a belief that had existed quite early, the expectation grew up that the light manifestation would be followed by an equally dark one, and Christ by an Antichrist.

Carl Jung. Answer to Job.

As Jung mentions, in its origins we are witnessing the return of a much older idea that was first discovered among the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia. Through the teachings of Zoroaster, the diverse pantheon of the Iranian plateau had been incorporated into a duality of two opposing forces. This initial emergence of metaphysics reduced deities to mere aspects of a duopoly of overarching mega-gods called Ahuramazda and Ahriman.

However, the formation of the Christ-Antichrist polarity triggered an even more profound rupture through the center of our metaphysical conceptions of God. Lucifer is no ugly beast, not a man-eating creature, but the angel of light, the most capable and beautiful of the creatures of heaven. The Gnostics believed the snake in the Garden of Eden to be Christ, as he liberated man from the confines of the evil impostor God of the Old Testament. The Gematria of ancient Hebrew encodes “Messiah” with the same numerology as “Snake”. Christ brought the light and made blind people see. We are dealing with a profound duality within the figure of Christ.

In some sense, the Antichrist as an idea is something that really comes into being in the world after Christ … And then there’s a lot of things about it that are mysterious. In some ways, the Antichrist copies Christ, the Antichrist pretends to be greater than Christ, hyper Christian, ultra Christian, and then maybe only ultimately, deeply anti-Christian.

Peter Thiel

What exactly induced the fall of this archangel, why would God create an adversary for himself? The biblical tradition leaves little clues about the origin of Lucifer or the Antichrist. All we know is that he was once expelled from heaven, allegedly for his pride and desire to become God. This divine punishment for prideful hubris is reminiscent of the Tower of Babel, a project that strove to allow humans to reach heaven by their own efforts.

Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11:4

Interestingly enough, the most profound description of Lucifer was made by John Milton in the 17th century, right when the Reformation had been leading a religious revival, breaking with the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. Here, the origin of man, the drama at the garden of Eden, is at the centre of the story. It took ‘fan-fiction’ rather than canonical bible scholarship to elucidate the idea of Lucifer.

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
… Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

John Milton. Paradise Lost.

The story of Paradise Lost illustrates Lucifer’s rise from the pits of hell. His ascent to the world of man matches the idea of the Antichrist appearing as a false prophet to rule the world at the end of times. The Reformation represented an explosion of new approaches to bible study and has lead to a multitude of Christian sects discovering new interpretations of the Gospels. At the same time, however, this newfound religious fundamentalism simultaneously paved the way for the so-called enlightenment. Who exactly was the bringer of light again?

Let us keep track of two crucial developments of early modernity by looking at British parliament in the 17th century: On the one hand, we observe the rise of Puritanism as a radical fundamentalist form of Protestantism. At the same time, most Puritans were members of the Independents in parliament, advocating for religious freedom and therefore laying the groundwork for the ensuing principles of free expression and humanism.

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It should not be forgotten, that this enlightenment only happened within the context of Western Christendom, which at the time was a combination of a Christianised Germanic north in rebellion against a neo-Roman empire that had institutionalised Christianity in its imperial structure. There is something strangely Christian about this rise of secularism and subsequent general apostacy. Arguably, it was foretold in the book of Revelations that Christianity would negate itself and the world would be ruled over by the Antichrist. Perhaps this was a dialectical necessity, as the collective spirit of Christendom cannot maintain Christ’s doctrine in its pure form, until it eventually inverts into its opposite. As Goethe’s Mephisto exclaims:

I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil.

Our civilisation, that is, the West, is no longer Christian, but Faustian. Faust represents a character in Goethe’s most classic play on a learned man who sells his soul to the devil in order to gain power and influence within this earthly realm. The story mirrors the story of Job, where God makes a bet with the devil over the soul of Faust. Nobody can deny that mankind has elevated its own reason and rationality above God and has begun worshipping its own intellect. Human ingenuity, it is said, has liberated us from the toil and suffering of the past. Our technology has cured diseases, increased our lifespans, and has made life overall more safe and worthwhile for many of us.

This last idea never thereafter let go its hold on us, for success would mean the final victory over “God or Nature” (Deus sive Natura), a small world of one’s own creation moving like the great world, in virtue of its own forces and obeying the hand of man alone. To build a world oneself, to be oneself God — that is the Faustian inventor’s dream, and from it has sprung all our designing and re-designing of machines to approximate as nearly as possible to the unattainable limit of perpetual motion.

Oswald Spengler. Man and Technics.

Yet, we seem to be haunted by the idea that the fate of Babel is upon us. Horror scenarios about the rise of AI, the techno-capital singularity, or the global network of technocratic surveillance-control are ubiquitous. We can hear the never-ending lamentations about the destruction of our biosphere and the ever-accelerating annihilation of species and traditional languages and cultures. Decline is seen everywhere. Has our civilisation in fact entered a pact with the devil?

the Sole agent of revolution, the Antichrist is not one but many, a swarm of masked infiltrators from the future, ‘poised to eat your TV, infect your bank account, and hack mitochondria from your DNA’;

Nick Land. Fanged Noumena.

This brings us to the possible conclusion that we have in fact already begun with the construction of a new Tower of Babel, an Antichrist system of total control. Only the utter subjugation of mankind offers the sufficient sacrifice to elevate Lucifer to the position of God. We no longer worship God, but a false prophet, a phony impostor. The aforementioned Gnostics referred to the evil impostor God as the Demiurge, a name derived from Plato’s creator god as described in the Timeus.

And when he saw the multitude of the forms which had been made by the image of the invisible Spirit, he became arrogant, saying, ‘It is I who am God, and there is none apart from me.’ And a voice came forth from above the realm of authority, saying, ‘You are mistaken, Samael’—that is, ‘god of the blind.’

Apocryphon of John

Modern science, driven by the Faustian pursuit of total knowledge, has long begun its search for an all-encompassing model of the cosmos. From the days of Decartes and later Laplace, the universe was said to work like a divine clockwork. God had already been reduced to a Deistic mechanism, an amalgamation of formal laws of nature. These laws are still treated as subjects of human inquiry, as though we were able to understand and manipulate the plans of God. Science has built its idol, its demiurge to worship in place of God.

To say that a stone falls to Earth because it is obeying a law makes it a man and even a citizen.

C.S. Lewis

The scriptures leave us in the dark about the meaning of our current developments. Is the false messiah the superhuman AI we are building? Or will it be a misleading figure, claiming to promote a return to the original Gospels? To what extent is any return to Christianity merely a delaying force, perpetually postponing the necessary rise and fall of beast?

And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him … These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

Revelations 19:20

I specifically want to address his justifications for nationalism as a political movement and the historical tradition he places it in. For this, his first two chapters The Endurance of Nationalism and What I believe are my principal sources. Secondly, I will also draw upon his thoughts on the ideal scale of human society in chapter 4 Is Modern Society Too Big? and his thoughts on race in chapter 5 Why We Need to Talk About Race.

It is not only my Irish background that prompts me to focus on nationalism advocated for by an Irish man, but more generally the fact that Irish nationalism can be seen as the first form of anti-imperial nationalism, which has historically lead it to being associated with left wing politics. In a sense, the Irish have the unique role of being a white European nation entirely devoid of the kind of imperial and expansionist nationalism of Britain, France or Germany. Throughout Keith’s earlier work dealing with Hastings and Gat, he specifically argues that Irish national identity is much older than modern anti-colonial struggle and that much of mainstream academia falsely claims that nationalism is a modern concept. Despite approaching this topic from the Right, Keith does not advocate for a monarchical or colonial form of nationalism, and he for sure does not advocate the superficial and fashionable Kneecap nationalism of the Irish left.

Comparing the Irish with the British predicament reveals a conundrum within the search for a coherent national identity. If the Brits want to rediscover their collective sense of self, they need to disentangle it from many of the problems with their imperial legacy. Arguably, the globohomo that right wingers complain about used to be that which the British enforced on large parts of the world, before internal decay eroded any domestic protections against it seeping into their own territory. Did the Brits not enforce mass migrations of Indians (and Pakistanis) onto other nations before they themselves fell prey to it? Keith justifiably argues that potentially Britain itself is not sustainable as a civic national identity and may need to return back to a more limited English nationalism, distinct from the Scots, the Welsh, or the Northern Irish.

The Irish thankfully do not need to face this issue as their national identity is firmly anti-imperial and had opposed the British system even back in the day. It does, however, need to deal with its historical connection to the English liberal left. It is not contradictory to the idea of an empire that its own internal power elite may favour the emancipation of some of its colonies. Many of the Whigs famously supported American as well as Irish independence. Arguably, the tendency for Irish or Scottish national parties to be left wing stems from this historical connection1. However, Keith maintains that the historical roots of Irish nationalism are much older and they can be traced back to before there was any kind of political left in Britain at all. This historical depth is what makes his ideas worth investigating.

Modernists actually get it backward. They believe nationalism was manufactured by elites who could make use of new technology to inculcate a national culture in the masses; in reality, we see an outbreak of nationalism in modernity because the masses became empowered. Aristocrats were always more cosmopolitan than the rest of their countrymen, and as literacy became widespread and industrialisation brought people from the countryside to the cities, the national culture of common people began to receive greater expression.

This is the first part that raises some questions for me and perhaps Keith will be able to answer them, in which case this is more of a enquiry than a critique. He clearly recognises that nationalism had a modern “outbreak” and he will likely concede that this was a singular event in history. Despite there being many valid claims about the ethnic identity of peoples in the past, whether it was Greeks or Israelites, it is clearly the case that in modernity we are witnessing the first ever instance of a political struggle being justified on the grounds of the self-determination of a people.

Another phenomenon that we can observe during the emergence of democratic and nationalist politics is the consolidation of control in an ever more powerful state machinery. Bertrand De Jouvenel tells us how the paradigm of popular sovereignty unshackled the state and allowed it to start mobilising its entire population for war.

Every Power is sure to attack centrifugal tendencies. But the behaviour of democratic Power offers in this respect some peculiar features of a striking kind. It claims its mission to be that of liberating man from the constraints put on him by the old Power, which was the more or less direct descendant of conquest. But that did not stop the Convention from guillotining the Federalists, the English parliament from wiping out, in some of the bloodiest repressions of history, the separatist nationalism in Ireland, or the government at Washington from launching a war such as Europe had never yet seen to crush the attempt of the Southern States to form themselves into a separate unity.

Bertrand de Jouvenel. On Power.

The wars that have devastated the European peninsula since the rise of modern nationalism have arguably destroyed, homogenised and uprooted nations at an unprecedented rate.

Germany is another very fitting example when questioning the authenticity of particular forms of nationalism. Don’t worry, this is not going to be an argumentum ad Hitlerum. Instead, if we go back to German unification during the 1870s, we are dealing with a multitude of separate small-level nationalities that had formerly been loosely united under the Holy Roman Empire. Whilst Keith correctly underlines the existence of a coherent German identity throughout the Empire, the actual modern nationalism under which Germany ended up being united represented more of a Prussiafication.

“Germany, Germany above all.” I fear this was the death-blow to German philosophy.

Friedrich Nietzsche. The Twilight of the Idols.

Keith cannot avoid facing the question of whether the consolidation of power in the German Empire wasn’t the biggest threat to the self-determination of the ethnic Bavarians, Saxons, or Poles. He states:

Most of the countries in the world today are nation-states, with at least an implicit understanding that they are based on ethnic groups. The great multiethnic empires of the 20th century have fallen, and there is no sign of them returning.

Was Germany a multi-ethnic empire or not? Can we reasonably divide Germany into separate ethnicities or has Germany gone through a sufficient amount of ethnogenesis so that it has already merged its various sub-groups into a single nation? I do not intend to be pedantic here as I am not trying to make the typical left wing argument that national identity is unjustified on the grounds that nations themselves are historically composed of other groups.

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Regardless, if we take into account Keith’s arguments for a smaller and more regional organisation of society (which I agree with), it does raise the question about whether nationalism is a good in itself at all or instead something rather neutral, as it can end up being the exact force that eradicates these more local, and arguably more authentic forms of self-organisation. While it is true that literacy played a major role in the emergence of nationalism, it cannot be denied that the subjective identity of a people, especially the Irish, was only politically mobilised when it was targeted by an increasingly nationalist British empire.

In every country in the EU, people still report that they identify most with their nation-state, or a more ethnically homogeneous regional identity, rather than with Europe as a whole.

What is ethnically homogeneous? I struggle to see an objective criteria by which, for example, Yugoslavia needed to be broken up across racially and culturally very similar but religiously distinct borders. Isn’t the petty nationalism of each splinter state much too weak to oppose Western or Russian imperialism? Would a united Yugoslavia not ensure maximum ethnic independence?

This leads us to the final part of this critique, the biological basis for ethnicity. Keith maintains that the term ‘ethnicity’ used to be applied synonymously with ‘race’ and that the common basis for a nation had always been common ancestry. While there is merit to the idea that kinship represents the core of natural forms of group cohesion, it is clear that the more complex a society becomes, the more its social spheres extend into various domains outside of immediate blood relations. As can be seen with modern states such as Pakistan and India, or North and South Korea, the identification with a political ideology or religious belief can dominate your feeling of ethnic belonging. I would describe it in such a way that nationality is something like a historical fate that is conditioned by a multitude of often contradictory biological or social factors.

It makes sense to emphasise the biological contribution to racial differences at a time where many of us dogmatically believe in a kind of blank slate genetic egalitarianism. However, it should not lead us to overestimate our capability of properly discerning the innate from the environmental. There are many valid critiques of twin studies and other kinds of research arguing for the heritability of psychometric measures. As comprehensive critiques of The Bell Curve and similar works have already been written, I would rather make a different kind of argument here: The focus on IQ is often misguided as it is precisely elevating a trait that is characteristic of modernity. Even notorious race realist Ed Dutton recognises the Flynn Effect as having been caused by the fact that people have over the years acquired the skill of performing IQ tests. Mass education and an overproduction of educated elites is precisely what correlated with the historically recent rise in overall IQ. The overall increase is at around 15 points, roughly the current gap between Caucasians and Africans. On this basis, it was precisely the White Irish with a modern-day African IQ that were nativist, race-loyal and traditional and the high IQ elite of today is eroding the nation’s very foundations. A conundrum Keith has to face.

To be fair to Keith, at the end of his recent debate over Western historiography with Daniel Haqiqatjou, he does recognise that much of the unique culture of Western man has lead to the very corrosive influences that are eroding its own foundations. But then again, is that not how any civilisation goes?