SUNS OF HYPERBOREA

“And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils.”

·         Hesiod; “Works and Days”

For most of my life, I have fascinated with myths and legends of human origins and have always been fascinated by the mythic concept of the “fall of man”. While the “Garden of Eden” story may be the best known, stories of a “Golden Age” that ended in a cataclysm, or a “fall” of some kind seems to be ubiquitous throughout the world.

One of these legends in particular has taken firm grasp of my imagination over the past decade and has refused to let go.

Myths and legends across the world spoke of a legendary place to the north where a race of incredible beings lived. The Greeks knew it as the place where the Sun god Apollo would sojourn and called it “Hyperborea”- the land beyond the north wind. It is here that Greek and Roman philosophers and historians like Pliny, Herodotus, Virgil and Cicero reported that people lived to the age of one thousand and enjoyed lives of complete happiness.

These legends state that long ago, before what we know as “recorded” history, there lived a race of godlike men and women of striking beauty, who were free from old-age, illness, and toil.  They needed not kill for food, but simply ate of the fruit and nectar that abounded in their garden paradise.  They lived at the literal top of the world in a place where the Sun always shined.  Bathed in unending light, these people lived at the nexus point of Heaven and Earth. 

These were people who walked alongside the gods, who themselves were the ancestors of humankind, or according to some they were the “gods” themselves, the ancient progenitors of the rest of humanity. they seemed to live in a state of such harmony and resonance with the Laws of Nature and Creation, that they possessed godlike abilities and lifespans.  These were enlightened beings of great beauty and virtuous character, who kept the knowledge of the true nature of spirit and matter.

These “Hyperboreans” and their descendants, seemed to follow what has been described as a “Solar religion”; a spirituality that worshiped the pure, unmoving and eternal Light that they saw to be the origin of all things. This form of spirituality would eventually find itself at odds with, and in many cases, fusing with, the cults of nature, the heavenly bodies and the ancestors that were worshiped elsewhere.

Hyperborea has been seen by many in the philosophies of the various Völkisch and Traditionalist movements and groups of the past couple centuries as the primordial homeland of the Caucasoid (i.e. “White”) ethnic and racial groups exclusively, who would eventually migrate out of their polar homeland, encountering and ultimately mixing with various other racial stocks. Italian Traditionalist philosopher, Julius Evola, in his book, “Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race” writes:

“Now, at the point of the beginnings of the prehistoric Hyperborean emigrations, the Hyperborean race could be considered, among all of them, the superior one, the super-race, the Olympic race reflecting in its extreme purity the very race of the spirit. By and large, it seems that all the other human stocks existing on the earth in that period, appeared either as “races of nature”, that is, animalistic races, or, as races that had become “races of nature” through involutions of the preceding racial cycles. In fact, the traditional teachings speak of a civilization or of an Antarctic race that had already fallen into decline in the period of the first Hyperborean emigrations and colonisations, and whose Lemurian residues were represented by sizable groups of black and Malaysian races. Another racial stock, distinct both from the Hyperboreans and from the Antarctic-Lemurians, was that which originally occupied the Eurasian continent (the Finnish-Mongoloid race) as the yellow-brown race and, as the as red-brown race and also again the yellow-brown, occupied both a part of the Americas and Atlantic lands that are now extinct.”

Some esoteric philosophers influenced by Theosophy and/or Anthroposophy, particularly after World War II, seem to place less emphasis on the “Whiteness” of the Hyperboreans, and seem to emphasize Hyperborea and the Hyperboreans as being more of a universal category for a civilization of human beings that existed prior to any physical differentiations typically used to identify different racial groups (i.e. skin color, facial structure, etc.) existed. This version of Hyperborean is seen almost as a sort of “proto human”, having an ethereal, non-physical form that is considerably different from what we would classify as “human” today. The Theosophy World Resource Center describes this concept:

“The… Hyperborean, race also did not have physical bodies. They reproduced by budding, and developed the sense of touch. The later second race is also called the “Sweat-Born,” because they reproduced by exuding vital fluid which coalesced into an egg-shaped ball, which served as an outside vehicle for a fetus and child. The Hyperboreans were located in a continent near the North Pole comprising the present Northern Asia.”

Still others will specify that we are talking about tall beings that were indeed tall “Nordic Aryans”, but who had an etheric, non-physical or semi-physical body very similar to the “Nordic aliens” that some people have claimed to have encountered.

In his book, “Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar”, Chilean diplomat, occultist and NSDAP supporter, Miguel Serrano speaks of two Hyperboreas: the first being a non-physical or semi-physical realm inhabited by ethereal beings, and the second being a definitively physical realm in the Arctic polar region where the ethereal beings of the first Hyperborea incarnated in physical bodies to partake in spiritual warfare with the “Demiurge”- the dark lord of physical matter who was equated, in Serrano’s Gnostic-informed view, with the Jewish YHVH, who sought to keep the races of men in a prison-like existence.

In any event, these myths and legends generally seem to suggest that something happened that caused these godlike beings to fall from their elevated status.  Some say it was a moral decline.  Some say it was from mixing with other tribes and races of men.  Some say it was the sort of unavoidable cataclysm or natural disaster which tends to occur at a point during the changing from one Great Age to the next.  Others still, would say that it was a combination of many differing factors, all of which led to these beings’ fall from godlike stature and their subsequent exodus into the world we now inhabit.

In any event, the great civilization of those who dwelt in the Great Northern Lands declined, and they eventually spread, dispersed, first to the regions of the northern Atlantic and northern Eurasia, then throughout the world.  Julius Evola, remarks in his magnum opus, “Revolt Against the Modern World” that “[w]e know that owing to an astrophysical cause, that is, to the tilting of the terrestrial axis, in every era there has been a change in climate… the freezing and the long night descended at a specific time on the polar region. Thus, when the forced migration from this seat ensued…”

I believe that, lost in the mists of time, shrouded and perhaps even deliberately obfuscated behind the veil of myth and legend, the stories of Hyperborea, the Garden of Eden and the Golden Age simultaneously tell of a particular event or events that happened at a particular point or points in time, and of a cycle that is recapitulated throughout the lifecycles of human groups and individuals.

I don’t see Hyperborea as having to be either history or an allegorical myth about the human condition; to me, it’s both/and. And honestly, discerning between those two things with this or really, any story, can be almost impossible.

I believe that is important to try and learn the truth of where we came from, as whoever controls the story of the past, controls the narrative of the present and shapes the story of the future. However, I also concede that humans have always been far better at crafting stories with the purpose of eliciting emotion, inspiring morality and promoting virtue than factually recounting events.

Colorful and inspiring stories have always seemed to have far more value to us.

When it comes down to it, believe that becoming who we are meant to be is far more important and far more urgent than discovering any sort of objective truth about our distant past, that may never come to light.

So, I believe it is with the story of Hyperborea.

While the story of Hyperborea and the Hyperboreans has been viewed as both a general human origin story and a specific origin story for the “Caucasian” human phenotype; it can also be understood in terms of what could be referred to as “sacred geography”; that is, the sacred spiritual places that can be found within us. In this latter case, the Hyperboreans represent a people who live their lives in a state of perfected spiritual Light and Hyperborea would be that place we journey to in order to live in that perfect Light.

Writer Jason Jeffrey states:

“Our search for Hyperborea is our desire to return to Paradesha or Paradise — the primordial spring of Man’s original existence…

To seek Hyperborea is to quest for spiritual enlightenment. The Mountain, the Island, the immovable Rock, fixed in a Polar orientation, relays a symbolic representation of our search for Ultimate Reality. Its immovability anchors us to this important task.”

I had a spiritual teacher and dear friend who would talk about being the “eye of the hurricane”, that place of absolute peace and stillness that is completely unshakeable in the midst of the most violent storms.

Author Joscelyn Godwin writes of the metaphysical Polar World Axis in his book, “Arktos: The Polar Myth”:

“The symbol of the World-Axis embodies the archetypal experience of Up and Down… Unlike the animals, whose development proceeds in parallel with that of the earth, the human being has the possibility of making deliberate progress upwards, from earth towards heaven… The human being, like the World-Axis, is a link between heaven and earth, and human life can be lived at every intervening degree, from the virtually animal to the virtually divine.”

I personally think humans and men in particular are created to be vertically oriented, reaching and striving towards godhood through union with our Heavenly ALLFATHER by being someone “who walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart” (Psalm15:2).

In his essay/book “A Sky Without Eagles”, author Jack Donovan calls on men to be “vertically oriented”:

“The vertically oriented man expects to look up and see his idea of greatness circling above him… The vertically oriented man wants all men to strive upward, to better themselves. But, he knows that to strive upward, you have to know which way is up, and which way is down.”

I see Hyperborea as being both an archetypal ideal to strive for- and something that can be lost if we do not live a life of virtue.

I believe that Hyperborea is, first and foremost the state of man living in harmony with ALLFATHER who could be seen as the unmoving “Sun” that made Hyperborea a primordial paradise.

But we lose that connection and “fall” from that place when we obsess over creating and maintaining pleasant physical desires and sensations; when we overindulge our appetites, which leads to addiction, illness, disease and death; when we objectify the world and each other; when we seek to control, dominate and enslave nature and each other; when we fall into idolatry of all types, worshiping the things of the material world rather than their Source; when we misuse our sexual and procreative energy; when we “mix” with individuals and groups who have fallen into idol worship, slavery and/or blood/human sacrifice of all sorts; when we work against Nature instead of with it.

So how can we, “live like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief?”

I might suggest that we start off by actively seeking to nourish our bodies, our minds and our spirits with the sorts of things and the kind of lifestyles that will bring us as close as possible to that ideal.

We quest for Hyperborea by striving to be like Hyperboreans would be- people who love all that is truly spiritually “upright”, virtuous, moral, healthy and nourishing; people who live in the Light.

I strive to be like the immovable Rock; like the Holy Mountain; like the World Tree; unshakable in my character in my virtue, oriented towards Heaven and grounded in Earth. Of course, I will fall and fail over and over and over again, but I will nevertheless continue to strive toward that lofty ideal.

Let us continue to seek the Hyperborea within, that land of the unmoving, undying Spiritual Polar Sun.