Introduciton to Noomakhia (lecture 5) Logos of Dionysos

Now, in the geosophy perspective, we understand better what the Logos of Apollo and the Logos of Cybele mean in the concrete sense and in the sense of the cultures and existential horizons. So now we are going to speak about, not in the general sense, the Logos of Dionysus, but in the concrete ethno-sociological, historical, sociological, and economical sense. We have fixed the very important moment in European history that defined the main structure of European Noomahia, European historical sequence of the events. The key to interpret European history in its ontological and existential dimension is to follow and observe how this process of Noomahia or how this interaction between two opposite existential horizons developed itself through the historical epochs and eras and cycles. We already have a kind of grilles de lecture reading system of interpretation, hermeneutic of European history, because as we have seen, it is based on the mutual reinterpretation of the same symbolic and mythological structures, religious structures, and cultural structures from two contrary perspectives. That is Noomahia in the purest sense. The Logos of Cybele tries to reinterpret the same figure or impose its own figure in the context of the mixed civilization. And that is a kind of fight for the gender of the deity, of the divinity, because divinity could be interpreted in the materialistic Cybelian perspective or spiritualistic and patriarchal, heavenly, vertical, Indo-European (in its original sense) way.

We have a kind of intersection or battlefield of European history between two Logos, which demands an encounter, a meeting point between two existential spaces. And this battlefield creates a kind of new structure, a third structure, because in the purest sense, the Logos of Apollo is represented by Turanian nomadic society. In its purest sense the Logos of Cybele is represented by agrarian, matriarchal, sedentary society. But there is a new dimension that is created that is precisely the field or space of Dionysus, where the patriarchal concept of the man is descending into the depth of the matter. That which belongs to the sky comes to the earth and comes into the center of the earth, to the center of underground. Dionysus became a king of Hell as Zagreus in the Greek myth. So there is a kind of differentiation of this Apollonian structure. The pure Apollo has no direct contact with the matter of the Logos of Cybele. He stays outside absolutely untouched. He belongs to the sky, to the day, to the light. He has no contact. He is pure. Apollo’s order is the order of the father, of the purity, of the Logos, of the logical, and of the metaphysical strictness. There is the law of Heaven, of Platonic ideas, of the light, of the stars. But when the sun of the sky comes to the earth, that begins a new dimension and this dimension is the dimension or level of the Dionysus. There is a completely new field of reality. A new Logos is appearing. It could be regarded as a kind of result of the encounter, meeting, or the battleground between two Logos but little by little it could be as well regarded as something autonomous that is not the product of the encounter of two opposite Logos but the third Logos as such.

We see that not in the European history but we see that in other cultures. For example; in Chinese culture or in the Pygmies in Africa. Chinese and Pygmies have the Dionysian society in the purest sense, and not as a result of a superposition of two existential horizons, but something original and autonomous. We should preserve in this Logos. Why are we speaking about three Logos and not about two? Because there is possibility in some societies, (not in the Indo-European sedentary or nomadic) but in other societies, we have the structures based fully on the absolute domination on this Dionysian Logos. But in the case of Indo-European culture, there is always a battlefield. Dionysus is a battlefield. (In other societies, not necessarily.) We need to take that into account in order to better understand what the Logos of Dionysus is. But in the Indo-European society, we are dealing precisely with the war between the Logos of Apollo and the Logos of Cybele. In the ethno-sociological sense, it is translated by the fundamental events and processes that were developing in the field of the third Indo-European function where there was a synthesis between third function (pastoralists), cattlers function of the Turanian pure Indo-European existential horizon and sedentary agricultural matriarchal society. In this segment of the society, in the European peasantry was the special space of the Dionysus. There is the field and the kingdom of Dionysus. It is the kingdom of the agriculture. Dionysus is the God of agriculture and the God of wine but is as well the God of the sacrifice of the bull and the cow. And in the mysteries and above all in the Eleusinian mysteries, he is always accompanied by Demeter, the new figure. Dionysus and Demeter are both the deities and the figures of agriculture. And that is a very important pair and very important duality between Dionysus and Demeter who play central roles in the Eleusinian mysteries. Eleusinian mystery was the mystery of the wine and the bread; wine grape represented by Dionysus and the sprout of the wheat represented by Demeter. This pair of the mother and heavenly son and patriarchal seed not created from her but put in her, in the center of the earth, in order to resurrect, in order to be revived, in order to come back. That was completely new version of agriculture, patriarchal understanding of agriculture.

Demeter is not the same as Cybele. It is a completely different understanding of what mother earth is. That is the concept of the patriarchal interpretation of mother earth. It is the mother earth that is seen from above and not from inner side. It is ephictonich and not epochtonich deity. Epicthonic is above the surface of the earth. That is the field. Demeter is the mother of fields labored, prepared and directed to the sky, open to the sky, and open to the influences of the sky. That is the figure of the great mother recognizing transcendentality, the transcendent principle of heaven and the father. And it is submitted and domesticated mother. It is the mother in the patriarchal sense, embedded in the patriarchal society and accepted under such conditions precisely as agriculture. There is the shift from Cybele to Demeter. It is the very important shit. It is the shift from savage mother and domesticated mother. The mother creating autonomously the world and mother as helper to the father’s seed to grow. That is different concept of the feminine principle of woman that is here intact. Dionysus is pair; he is son and he is lover and he is husband. He as well is father of Demeter. It is completely new relations. And here we see in that pair in Eleusis mysteries of Greece, of the Thracian region (and I will explain why Thracian region is so important and Thracian partly covered Serbian territory) that is a mystery of the shift from purely Cybelian existential space in the peasantry into the patriarchal Demeteric space of the mixed Indo-European agrarian society. And there appears Dionysus as completely new figure. It is not Apollo but it is not Attis from Cybelian cycle. It is new figure of immanent transcendence - something that is coming from the sky in order to go to the center of the earth and after that save the earth from its chaotic or gravity or this Cyebalin aspect. This is purification of the earth by the wine. The mystery of wine is kind of like the mystery of blood of God that has descended into the center of the earth in order to save the world, the matter itself.

The wine is Dionysus as a kind of freedom from the Great Mother. The freedom is possible and Dionysus is the sign of the freedom. Return is possible. The freedom is possible. The flight is possible. We could die but we should arise with Dionysus. So that is very important transcendental dimension installed in the context of the agrarian sedentary matriarchal society or existential horizon. There is very important aspect in the cycle of the myths and rites around Dionysus. There were Bacchae groups of women, followers of Dionysus. There was a moment when the Bacchea heard the call of Dionysus. That was a kind of silent voice that only initiated Bacchae women could hear. And that was a kind of call to go to the mountains. And the Bacchae, hearing the call of Dionysus, became mad and crazy and went through the fields and forests as crazy, tearing apart everything they encountered on their way, in order to get to the cave of Dionysus because that was the call that Dionysus is alive. And this crazy state of mind was very similar to the matriarchal orgy but with a very important difference. That was the appearance of the transcendental male figure. That was the profound feeling of the existence or the arrival of the savior (male savior). That was not autonomous creation of female androgyne (Agyditis) as in the cycle of Cybele. That was a kind of appearance of transcendental seed that was not a part of the great mother. That was female madness encountering with the real transcendental male figure, completely different from the previous orgiastic tradition. And that encounter with this transcendental vertical aspect was the essence of this call of Dionysus.

It is very interesting that in Indo-European tradition, we never see Dionysus in the pure state. It is always Dionysus as brother of Apollo, as bearer of light. So we interpret the figure of Dionysus and Logos of Dionysus in the Apollonian perspective. We have no other Dionysus. There is only one Dionysus in our tradition. It is Dionysus of the Indo-European existential horizon. But there is always possibility to re-interpret this figure in the perspective of Cybele. Cybele tries to regard this coming of the male figure, of the transcendental patriarchal figure, in its ancient matriarchal Cybelian perspective, and to replace the Dionysus by Adonis. Adonis was the figure of the matriarchal cycle, by Attis. And that slight change of the meaning turned everything upside down. That is why Dionysus was and is battlefield between two Logos in Indo-European context. Indo-European reading of Dionysus was Apollonian but they operated in a very dangerous space where the power of the Great Mother and its interpretations and its hermeneutics was very very strong. And that is as well one of the reasons why there were no special rites and myths dedicated exclusively to Dionysus. And the majority of the rites, processions, myths, figures of Dionysus were taken from the special worship practices of Great Mother. That is fully described in two books that I suggest to you to read. The book of Carl Kerenyi; Dionysus; Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, and Dionysian and Pre-Dionysian (that is Vyacheslav Ivanov, in Russian Language.) When Carl Kerenyi (Hungarian author and friend of Mircea Eliade, a very interesting and profound author) tried tor reveal the sources of the cult of Dionysus, he came to the conclusion that there was before the figure of Dionysus something very near and very close to him but in completely different context. That was purely matriarchal cult with almost the same processions, almost the same rites of the cave, of the Bacchae, of the madness, of the orgies, but totally matriarchal. That is the most important and most interesting point. In the field of the rites, the cults, the legends, the myths of Dionysus in their origins were matriarchal traditions, transformed by coming of new Indo-European existential horizon.

The cult of Dionysus and Logos of Dionysus was the Logos, structure, and cult of Great Mother transformed by the descent of the transcendental patriarchal principle. So all the symbols of Dionysus were pre-Dionysian and matriarchal. Sometimes he appeared as the serpent. Sometimes he appeared surrounded by the figures of the half-man satyrs, half beasts. They were normally partners of the Great Mother. And these processions of Dionysus were as well continuations of the processions of the Great Mother, with the same rites, with the symbolism; the symbolism of Paean linked with Dionysus was the symbolism of the Great Mother as well. That is interesting that that was a kind of conquest of the territory of the myth by Indo-Europeans. It was conquest and inner semantical transformation. The Indo-Europeans have conquered not only the physical space or villages or peoples. They conquered the space of myth. They conquered as well, worship practices. And they transformed semantically the figure of Cybele surrounded by all the symbols and all the signs and all the practices and worship and the cult into the figure of Demeter and Dionysus. This transformation was as well a kind of conquest. Indo-Europeans were conquerors that have appropriated the space that didn’t belong to them because in the Turanian way of life they didn’t know such things. They had taken that and conquered that and had imposed their reading. That was a kind of attack on the new field by Indo-European civilization.

In the metaphysical sense, in the neoplatonist tradition, Dionysus was presented as a mind. The main myth of Dionysus was the myth how the titans had turned Dionysus apart. The little child Dionysus playing on Olympus was attacked and turned apart and eaten by titans to win Olympus, in order to kill Dionysus. Neoplatonic interpretation of Dionysus is a mind that is present in any human but as a kind of spark of Dionysus. Because in Orphic interpretation, in neoplatonic interpretation of human nature, human nature is double. On one side, it is Titanic by the body and by the material aspect, and on the other side, it is Dionysian. And that is human soul and human mind. Human thought is Dionysian. Dionysus is turned apart as a spiritual intellectual principle presented in the multitudes but being unified, unique in its core. That is the concept of immanent intellect. Not the paradigm of intellect in the father. But that is a kind of son of God present in the human nature and opposite to the other side of this nature that is titanic. This is precisely the problem of metaphysics of Dionysus and the metaphysics of human culture. It is double (human culture) because it consists from two horizons. There is titanic horizon that is not the body as such and not the matter but is the Cybelian reading of what is body. That is Noomahia. Dionysus is the man. Dionysus is the other name for the human being as cultural being in the context of superposition of two existential horizons. So that is the problem of all Indo-Euorpean society - the problem of Dionysus. Dionysus as battlefield between the patriarchy and matriarchy embedded in our culture. That is precisely the problem of Dionysus. It is the problem of Indo-European culture and it is key to Noomahia of Indo-European society, in Western Europe or in Asia. Because in Iran and India, there is exactly the same structure of the cultural problem. There is no such figure as Dionysus in Indian culture but there is Shiva, a paradoxical figure. And there is no direct equivalence but there is always this battlefield between two Logos.

And what is interesting is that in Indo-European societies, this Logos of Dionysus is unstable. There are the other cultures I have mentioned already (Chinese and Pygmy and maybe up to a certain point the culture of Aztecs in the new world [in America, South America, Central America] with Quetzalcoatl figure which is more or less a combined figure, a winged serpent). But in Indo-European society, the figure of Dionysus and field of Dionysus is unstable because it is very antagonistic and conflictual. There is the conflict between mind and body, not because of the nature of mind and body but because of the reading of the nature of mind and body. Mind as we consider it is something that belongs to Logos of Apollo and its immanent representation in Dionysus. And our body is read (not is the part of the Logos of Cybele) as something material, something with gravity. That is not necessary. There are other cultures that have completely different concept of body with no materiality inside. But our Indo-European problem, with the weight of the body, of the materiality of body is the trace of the Logos of Cybele and not the objective nature of the body. Everything we are dealing with are the projections of this paradigm. So the existential horizon of Cybele dictates the quality of our body, of something that is gravity, that is a limitation of the soul. It is not natural. It is cultural construction (our concept of mind, body so on). But what is important is that the figure of Dionysus in our cultures is unstable. The center of the Logos of Dionysus is always shifted. Or to the Apollonian Logos that is the normal situation. So we don’t know Dionysus as such. Indo-Europeans know Dionysus in Apollonian perspective as the brother of Apollo, not as such. So the center of Dionysian understanding of the world is shifted to the top. It belongs to the Apollonian universe that dominates in Indo-European cultures. So the Logos of Dionysus is normally a kind of continuation or immanent dimension of the Logos of Apollo. That is a classical or normative case of Indo-European civilization.

In order to understand better what is Cybele, we could not compare that with something material, for example the waves or frequencies. We are dealing with Logos. We are not dealing with the same matter with different gravity or different density. We are dealing with completely different understanding of everything. So we could not regard the Cybele as something that is outside of us, as object or matter or vibrations or frequencies or beauty or darkness. Cybele is a kind of vision of the world. For example, if we are speaking about matter or elements, we could suggest three readings of that. So the main idea of Noology is the Logos of Cybele, Logos of Dionysus, and Logos of Apollo are deep inside of any form of thought. They are inside of thought and not in front of thought. They are the paradigms that are very difficult to grasp, to seize, and to understand because they are dealing behind our mind, defining its structure. We could not see Cybele as image that is in front of us (or Apollo or Dionysus). When we are speaking about the Logos, we are speaking about something that is deep behind our fluid of consciousness that defines the roots of our mentality. We could not speak about the pure or impure, of high frequency or low frequency. Just because it is not the matter, it is not the wave; we could not put it in front of us.

But in order to proceed with Logos of Dionysus, we need to understand the problematic nature of Dionysus in our culture. It is not the universal law or rule in our culture. It is shift to the top. It is not pure Logos of Dionysus. It is Apollonian Dionysian Logos we are dealing with. But being the battlefield and being precisely the intermediary space, there is always the possibility of opposite reading. Through the books and through studies of Noomahia in my books, I have discovered that that is maybe the main metaphysical problem of all Indo-European cultures in history. That is a kind of structure or moment or sequence of Noomahia. It is a key to our historical being. As historical beings, that is the key to understand what we are and what is our history. Because there was always the effort of something inside us to put this center of the Logos of Dionysus to the other direction and regard it as something that lays beneath this line that separates and distinguishes Logos of Apollo and Logos of Cybele. I am calling that (a kind of presumption) black double of Dionysus, or Adonis, or Attis. That is not as Dionysus as we know in our normative Indo-European tradition but a kind of product of Cybelian re-interpretion of Dionysus. And that is precisely the titan, the figure of Lucifer, or the titan of Prometheus, or someone that is very very close to Dionysus. We could consider that but it is kind of his black double. There is German word, ‘between’ of Adonis (‘dunkler Zwilling’ – black double). And this figure is very close to the figure of Dionysus. It is not normative. It is considered to be completely opposite to our world vision but it is always present as shadow of Dionysus, but not the shadow in the simply material way. It is metaphysical shadow that is maybe more ancient than Dionysus because it belongs to the Great Mother (cosmos). Because Dionysus is always mystery as something dynamic. It is not only the eternal light that shines always (the day). That is the light that becomes darkness, that fades, that disappears, and shines anew. So there is dynamic, the mystery of dynamic, the mystery of the seed, which dies, is resurrected as a sprout or a plant. And we could consider that as a kind of cycle of something that belongs to the top essentially, goes down to the center of the night, darkness of the earth, and after that it resurrects and returns to its original place on the top of creation. That is the full cycle of the sun, of the year.

We could consider almost the same starting from the other point. There is something that belongs to the bottom, that is created by Great Mother and it arises, storming the Heaven in order to bring down the Gods and to replace them. That is a kind of rise of this Titanic Prometheus element, to dethrone the Gods. But there is the fate of Titans to fall down as Prometheus. He could trick the Gods and win the Gods for time being (as for example Typhoeus that has overcome Zeus in Greek mythology) but the fate of Titan is to fall down. If we re-present this cycle, it’s almost the same as in the case of Dionysus. Because something is rising, something achieved the highest point, and after that something falls. So if we consider that in the main features, it is almost the same scenario, almost the same tale. But the first tale begins from the sky to the earth and returns to the sky. The other tale begins from the earth; it is conquest of the heaven and the fall; the fall of angels, of titans, of Prometheus into Tartaros. Titans are climbing to the top of Olympus. They tear apart Dionysus there. And they are blamed and they are stricken by Zeus with his bolt and they fall, totally destroyed, and go to the Tartaros. So there is a kind of Noomahia that we could read normally from both sides.

And there is a kind of symmetry. Logos of Apollo and Logos of Cybele agree about the main structure of this Titanomachia but they read this process, the same tale, from two opposite points of view, two perspectives. What is conscious decision of Dionysus to come down to the center of the Hell in order to save his mother Semele and bring her back to Olympus, that is one cycle. And if we read that from other angle, we have Titan born by the Great Mother, attacking the Gods, dethroning the Gods from Heaven and the sky in their kingdom. And after that there is revenge of the fate of the destiny and they fall down to the same point from where they have appeared. So it is the same tale with two readings. That gives the problem of black double of Dionysus all its metaphysical measure. Because dealing with the cycle, with the logic of the year, of the sun, of the cycle of any kind, we are dealing always with two possibilities of reading, with two semantic structures of how to interpret that. When Dionysus arrives in the mixed society where there is a superposition of two existential horizons, there begins the open problem of the nature of Dionysus. The nature of Dionysus in our tradition is absolutely unstable. It is dynamic. It is contradictory. It is dialectic. There is not only one version to interpret this dialectic. There are two versions. Dionysian can be at the same time, almost simulacrum of Dionysian, could be Adonysian, at the same time as Dionysian. That could be pre-Dionysian and Dionysian at the same time. The problem of the European civilization is the problem of Dionysus. It is not something that is given to us as something granted. It is an open question and we could not solve it abstractly because we are this process. As neo-platonists have said, Dionysus is our mind. So our mind in that vision has its own double, black double inside of it. So our mind, our soul, our spirit is double in its nature being Dionysian. It is split. It is dealing always with something that is opposed in itself to its inner self. There is simulacrum problem that is embedded in the Indo-European mind because Indo-European mind is double and is based precisely on the superposition of two existential horizons. And we could not be sure when we are Titans and when we are Dionysus. For example, mind is Dionysian and the body is Titanic. There is as well Dionysian body and titanic mind. So the body and mind are not so clearly separated. They are intermingled because mind and body are the products and projections of Logos and not something that exists without Logos. In human world, nothing could exist without Logos. Everything we are dealing with are the products of project, of perspective of this paradigmatic approach. There are two bodies and two minds in us. There is spiritual body (the body of Resurrection in Christian doctrine) and there is material mind (titanic mind, mechanical reason, calculation). So we have as well material body and spiritual mind. And that is the problem of dialectic of our culture because this double of Dionysus is not something that exists outside of our culture but it exists inside of our culture.

If we consider now, that is the most important concept of the Logos of Dionysus. That is why the figure of Dionysus was so important to discover, in the case of Nietzsche and developed in the philosophers that followed Nietzsche. They discovered this problem, this dark Logos. It is the real problem of European history because we could not be sure we are dealing with Dionysus or Adonis, when we are dealing with real mind or the simulacrum of mind. The Logos of Cybele now explains carefully and fully what we are dealing with. So that is the necessary dimension that explains everything in this problem of Dionysus. But to reveal and to find out the Logos of Dionysus in the case of Nietzsche was already a heroic act, a metaphysical revolution that has discovered the key to the problem of European or Indo-European, I would say, man. That is double of Dionysus. The possibility of Titanic reading of Dionysus explains why before Noology, before the introduction of Logos of Cybele, that Dionysus was mistakenly taken for Titan or some purely negative aspect of the light or white Logos of Apollo. So that is most important metaphysical discovery because with the introduction of the Logos of Cybele, everything is put in its place. Now we see why there is some dialectical misinterpretation of Dionysus and its identification with the black perversion or something upside down. And now we see the most important thing is the instability of Dionysus. So the interpretation, or speaking with Paul Ricoeur, the conflict of interpretation is open. We are dealing with two hermeneutic spaces embedded in the figure of Dionysus and there is always a possible kind of replacement, of tricks, of special metaphysical perversion or deviation of the semantic structure linked to the Logos of Dionysus.

In order to make a kind of example of this kind of Dionysian approach to understand better and deeper what is the Logos of Dionysus, I would like to say some words about Gilbert Durand. He is a very important author (Gilbert Durand, French, died recently at very old age). Gilbert Durand has created sociology of imagination. Sociology of imagination is excellent. I have made my third doctorate on sociology of imagination. He is a follower of Carl Gustav Jung, Henry Corbin, and Gaston Bachelard. But he has developed a very original version of the structure of imagination. According to Gilbert Durand, man is imagination. We have nothing but imagination and we are nothing but imagination. Everything we are dealing with are imagined structures. And he studied the roots of the imagination and how imagination works in us. It is not reflection of the existing object, but quite contrarily, the objects are the products of our imagination. First we imagine something and after, we are dealing with what we have imagined previously. That is almost the same as phenomenology.

I have already mentioned Edmund Husserl and his concept of intentionality. According to Husserl, intentional act is the act directed towards something that exists outside of our mind but that has no quality in it. So any quality that we are dealing with is inside of mind. Husserl calls that noema. The process of intentional act is noesis and noema is something that is thought of. So we are dealing with the qualities of the objects that are inherent to our process of thought and not exterior to it. So that is phenomenology. Heidegger is a continuation to this phenomenological tradition as are many others. But Gilbert Durand proposes a different way to this phenomenological approach and he speaks about the regimes of imagination. That is very important. Gilbert Durand affirms that our imagination works in three regimes. And that is very very close to the concept of three logos. Now we are going to see how. Regime of imagination is a kind of inner state of the structure of human mind that creates different sequences of basic principle images, symbols and structure. According to Gilbert Durand, there are three regimes. First is diurne, which is the regime of day. That is the regime of light that is based on the concept of strict duality. So there are strict and absolute differences. So when we divide and separate (regime of diurne is to separate, not unite, only separate) everything is clear as in the daylight. And this regime as well is a regime of vertical organization of the space. It is linked, according to Durand, with the postural reflexes of the child. When the child begins to stay in vertical position, it is considered by imagination as a flight. He is a kind of arrow that is going to the heaven. That is the flight. Verticality is strictly connected with this regime of diurne that is heroic, warrior, male, patriarchal regime. What we have said about the Logos of Apollo could be easily applied to the regime of imagination that is called diurne. That is vertical orientation of everything and according to Durand, the regime of diurne (that is Latin word for day, daily) is the fight against the night, against the death, and against the darkness. So that is a kind of conflictual Apollonian war of light that is continuing always. In the field of mental illness, it corresponds to paranoia. Paranoia is absolutization of this diurne. So everything is separate up to the atomic quantities and there is always consolidation of the subject and destruction of the object. That is warrior. Warrior is always fighting. He destroys with the sword everything and the sword is diurne, is something that separates, not kills but separates, mutilates, puts apart. That is consolidation of the subject and destruction of the object. That is regime of diurne and that is very Apollonian and Indo-European. According to Durand, Logos is born from this regime.

So our thought is based on the development on this kind of imagination. We imagine the things separately. We separate the things and the objects and we consolidate our subject by this. Everybody is against us but we are winners of everybody. So that is the creation of hierarchy, of verticality, with the most paranoid subject at the top of the society; the tsar, the king that destroys everything and consolidates himself. So the paranoia is purely the illness of the kings because everybody is against them and everybody is planning to overthrow them (and that is the case sometimes) but they go to the final fight with the death and with the darkness because the king is surrounded by shadows and darkness and his destiny is to fight against them, to start the war, to win the war, to estroy everything and consolidate everything inside and destroy everything outside. That is normal warrior attitude. Our reason is working in this regime. Our reason differentiates. The main practice of the reason is to differentiate. (That is not so, that is here, there, that is one thing, that is other thing). And negation is as well very diurne because negation is separation; what is and what is not, what exist and what doesn’t exist and so on. So any kind of pairs. But our process of our thinking is based on that and that, duality, on pairs and separations, and that exists or doesn’t exist. That is how our reason proceeds.

But according to Durand, it is no more than one regime of imagination. There are two other. Both of them are called ‘nocturne.’ First is dramatic nocturne and the other is mystical nocturne. So what is it? That is regime of functioning of our mind in a completely different way, in a way not to separate but to unite, not to distinguish but to put together. It is not to separate something that is outside of us and to consolidate something that is inside of us, as in the case of the diurne, but quite opposite. It is to unite everything that is around us and to divide ourselves. That is purely schizophrenic attitude, in the extreme case. Schizophrenic is separated inside. So there are voices and different egos inside and there is the world around it that has reason, that is more powerful than the subject. So the world is united and strong and the subject is weak and problematic and ill. That is nocturne regime and that is based not on the logic but on the rhetoric and on the effeminization. For example when it hurts, we are happy, we are satisfied. When we lack something, we consider that a kind of gift that we lack something. For example, darkness, we are afraid of the light, something mild. That is effeminization. We call the things by completely different names in order to avoid the horror that is embedded because we are afraid of everything and of ourselves as well. We are not sure about our existence so we are using the tactic of naming the things by the opposite names in order to avoid. For example, when the women call the big husband with the diminishing names such as fish or sheep and so on with great powerful muscular man in order to diminish them in order to make them a child, to make them innocent by this magic of regime, by regime of words, and that is diminishing the proportion of the world, and as well treating something that menaces us, threatens us, as something very friendly. So that is not warrior concept but pacifist consciousness. So ‘be quiet. We have something in common. You are not as horrible as you look. Let’s try to find a common denominator.’ In the extreme case that is Stockholm Syndrome. You are taken as a hostage and you come to the side of the terrorists. You share with them their position. Immediately you discover that they are right in their claims. Because it’s very difficult to stay in this position of absolute domination of other so you say ‘they are not other. The Muslims are very good. The fundamentalist terrorists are nice guys. Lets stay with them. Lets stay with the evil because it’s not so evil. Lets stay with the death because its not death, its new beginning. Lets stay with the loss because it is a kind of gift.’ So that is the other regime of imagination according to Durand. It’s very expressive and very interesting to follow many many examples and symbols that Durand gave in his books and writings. It is a very complicated theory. I am explaining in the simplest version.

But in the field of this regime of nocturne, there are two versions as well. The radical form of nocturne is called mystical nocturne by Durand. It is a complete exchange of the object and subject, myself and the other. It is a complete betrayal of the self. So everything is outside. Inside is nothing or just reflection of outside. It is pure night. Night is the light. Bottom is top. Top is bottom and so on. Male is female. Female is male. To die is to live. To live is to die. So it is pure antiphrasis in rhetoric. You are calling the things by completely different names, by contradictory name, and you are happy with that. So that is mystical nocturne that corresponds to the Logos of Cybele. That is the absolute domination of something created by self-betrayal. The subject is not consolidated. It is completely dissipated in the imagination. And the process of dissipation of mind creates the matter or exterior world. The subject is weak and the matter is strong. But the matter doesn’t exist. It is a project of this weakness of imagination. It is not something that exists independently. It begins to exist as if it is independent, by the weakness of the subject. That is the same imagination that could imagine the strong subject or weak subject. That is inner move. That is why it is so close to the concept of Logos. And I’m using the concept of Gilbert Durand in my interpretation of different cultural, religious, and historical phenomenon.

And there is the third regime, as well nocturne, as well the regime of night, but it is called dramatic nocturne, in the works of Durand. It is not radical effeminization. It is more of less balanced effeminization. In this regime, we don’t call night a day and a day a night. We are calling them dawn. So there is not light and not darkness. There is the plane, something intermediary. So we are in the dusk, in the shadow that is not the complete darkness. That corresponds to the Logos of Dionysus. And that is problematic because it could be interpreted in the radicality as darkness that pretends to be light or as light that is not too clear for example. And there is the problem of Dionysus that I have spoken of. So if the regime of diurne is paranoid and the regime of mystical nocturne is schizophrenic, what is the mental disease that corresponds to the dramatic nocturne? That is normality. That’s interesting. There is no mental disease. It is normality. Because we are using in a normal situation this dramatical nocturne, the Dionysian approach to reality. Sometimes there is effeminization and sometimes there is radical separation and differentiation. So we are using both strategies at the same time.

So the problem, in the psychological way, speaking about imagination and its anthropological structure, the problem of Dionysus is the structure of our imagination. We are imagining the world precisely in that way. But if we consider that there is something material, we are approaching the mystical nocturne but staying in the dramatical nocturne. But when we distinguish something clearly and separately, when there is a kind of reason or function we are approaching the other, the light pole of this Dionysian concept. But we are using both. The mental disease begins when it is too clear or too dark in our imagination. When we are attracted too much to one of these poles. All the structure of the society could be Apollonian or in this way diurne. That is hierarchy, rationality, law, and official relations and norms. And there is a night side of the society where are these laws are separated; where there are crimes, corruption, and domination of anything that is against law. So that is nocturnal aspect of society that is presented inside of the society.

So we could imagine the normal society, clear society, but as well we are imagining the dark society and night side of society and they are embedded in each other. So if there is law that rules, in the other there is crime that rules. But the crime for the criminal is the law. In Russia we have the term ‘robber in law’ (Вор в законе). That is completely nocturnal. That means that there is some criminal group where the chief of this criminal group (but criminal is to be against the law) has all the right and has the law to be considered as some legitimate figure. So that is the robber in law (robber who makes robbery of banks or killings). So we have a kind of state against the state or the chief or leaders of the crime groups but considered to be legal and legitimate. That is legitimation of the night side of the society. Sometimes they interact in very special way in Russian society. Now it’s difficult to say where the day ends and where the night begins because in our society both aspects are intermingled. But normally we understand that. For in Russian we have the saying, ‘the правда is not право.' It’s very difficult to say in English. So the law is not truth maybe. So if you go directly in the law way and accomplish all the demands you can be not right, you can be evil, being completely strict in following the law, because the law and the truth are separate. It’s impossible to explain to Western Europeans because they could not understand the meaning of that. But that is the realistic understanding of the multitude of the regimes of imagination that is proper to our Slavic culture and our society. We understand that there are the laws of the night and the laws of the day and they work together. That is the richness of the imagination. We could imagine at the same time contradictions. That is why we are Dionysian up to a certain moment. We could deal with dialectic, the law and the truth. We could imagine many theories on this account. But the main basic motivation of it, that is the richness of regimes of imagination.

We could finish this explanation of Logos of Dionysus and all historical and existential analysis, adding one phrase that ‘Dionysus is Dasein’ as well. Dionysus is in the center. It is between, not to either pole. And it has some affinities to what Gilbert Durand called dramatic nocturne. So, that is all and now I propose to make a break and now the questions. And after, we will have the sixth lecture about the structure of European civilization based on this Noological analysis.

video: https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/studio/introduction-noomahia-lecture-5-logos-dionysus

italian translation