Secrets from Russia - the ancient warrior tradition

don't poke at the Russian bear... it's the 'natural human esoteric'

In Russia no less than in the west, things are being revealed after being kept secret for centuries. Not many in the west get to know about them, so perhaps you’ll find this interesting.

Official history places the advent of the Russian nation at the end of the tenth century, specifically at the time of the christening of the Prince of Kievan Rus’ into the Byzantine version of Christianity. Until then, the Slavs were reputedly just a bunch of primitive barbarians. Soviet history abstained from questioning those notions, remaining pretty much in line with the ‘serious’ history initiated in eighteenth century Tsarist Russia, at the hands of ‘experts’ - specifically western European historians. It was assumed that Russians had no sense of their own history, nor any reliable ‘objective’ sources.

When any people’s history is written in the modern ‘serious’ format by foreigners, what kind of history do you get? You already know - a heavily distorted history, with an agenda. If you think the ‘truth’ of history in the west is riddled with falsification, the same applies, but considerably worse, in Russia. To the point that she had no history prior to the princely baptism, no history prior to a thousand years ago.

That christening happened in Kiev, in the southern Slavic lands. It is assumed to this day that the baptism received by the prince automatically converted his people from their animistic pagan beliefs to the true faith. It is still assumed that Orthodox Christianity is intrinsic to the Russian soul, has always been so.

In recent post-Soviet historiography, another picture has been emerging at the hands of impeccable scholars brave enough to work with what archival material actually says. It appears that Byzantine Christianity (a thousand years ago), and its later ‘refinement’ in the seventeenth century - a western Catholic-influenced great Reformation - were not at all to the taste of grassroots Russians, traditionally free peasants who mightily resented the serfdom regime that became entrenched in the shadow of the Reformation. We shall not go down that rabbit-hole today - the emerging true history of Russia from ancient times is too huge a topic.

It is little known in the west that in recent decades, alongside the reconstruction and re-gilding of Orthodox churches under Vladimir Putin (Orthodoxy being an important tool in the rebuilding of the nation after the atrocious rape of Russia post USSR), there has been a parallel resurgence of pagan Russia. The pre-Christian Russia with its considerably more ancient animistic-esoteric traditions.

At the moment, Russia is at war against the western (and Khazarian) ’powers and principalities’ that have sought to subdue her for the past thousand years, and very nearly succeeded after the USSR broke up.

Against this backdrop, I find it noteworthy that a 2014 book deals with ‘The Warrior traditions of the Aryans’ (Voynskie Traditsii Aryev), indeed a manual on the warrior art of the ancient Slavs, by G. Sidorov. In case you are triggered by the ‘Aryan’ word, I hasten to clarify that for Russians, the word has nothing to do with the racist use of it in Nazi ideology, and everything to do with their newly re-emerging ancient history (largely shared by India). Likewise, the swastika has been a symbol ubiquitous in Russia since time immemorial, no less than in India, again without any of the Nazi connotations. It is hardly a coincidence that a key aspect of the present war has been, explicitly so, about ‘de-nazification’.

The publication of Sidorov’s book would have been unthinkable under the tzarist regime, and in the Soviet Union too. The ancient warrior art was too ‘pagan’ and too ingrained in each powerfully individual bearer to be tolerated by leaders increasingly converted to the kind of war that involves abundant cannon fodder (sacrificed to the god of war). So it went underground centuries ago, to be preserved inter-generationally in secret family lineages. Along with other aspects of outlawed ‘pagan’ activity and spirituality, the remoteness of the great Siberian forests offered refuge for the secret art to remain alive - to this day. At its core, it ‘stood against the dogmas of Christianity, in which the flesh was denied and the spirit alone was glorified’.

Its better known derivation is the warrior dedication of the Cossacks, in whose ranks many women trained along with the men, and could comprise some 30-40% of the fighting force. Women on horseback were especially skilled in the wielding of two swords, one in each hand. This was not about brute muscle force, and women warriors were not a lesser category than men.

Sidorov states that in ancient times, the only warriors capable of vanquishing the fearsome Iranian Assassins were the Kshatria of India and the Boyar lineages of Russia, all of whom shared a common heritage (possibly also including the Tibetan warrior monks). A largely esoteric heritage.

He also talks about the recent past, a retired KGB general revealed that he used to be a trainer of officers and secret agents, specifically in the old warrior styles.

Now turning to a core aspect of the ancient Russian warrior, it is the esoteric component that I want to highlight - in line with everything I have been publishing so far about the ‘natural human esoteric’ that, in my considered opinion, we need to reawaken today. Sidorov is making his secret tradition public for this same reason.

Although I am no connoisseur of combat and martial arts, the authenticity of his book is immediately clear to me in its treatment of esoteric aspects, the origins of which are lost in the mist of time yet have left traces in various cultures of Asia. These traces, provided we are dealing with the ‘human esoteric’ (not the anti-human esoteric of the overlords), are convergent.

Very significantly, in putting forth the elements and the progression of a martial warrior in the ancient tradition, Sidorov introduces the esoteric aspects first - they are preliminary to practicing the actual fighting techniques, not the result of lengthy physical practice as is the case in most traditional ways found today. They are so crucial that they even have to become automatic, run by the sub-conscious moving the body. They are the ground upon which the warrior stands. They feed the core spirit without which all the rest is empty technique.

On that ground the warrior moves, unpredictably, with great speed, in what is said to look more like a dance than a fight. The warrior flows naturally, freely, spontaneously - and thus, lethally.

The esoteric ground nurtures the ability to ‘die-alive’, another key point of authenticity (found in various forms across traditional Asian cultures, and referenced in Krivda for its practice in the grassroots) that eliminates instinctive and mental fear of death, thereby releasing the full power of the subtle forces latent in all humans.

Authenticity also shines forth in the author’s assertion that this way of the warrior belongs in the category of natural simplicity. This too aligns with the simplicity of the mystic (a major theme in Broody Blue). From the state of simplicity, natural complexity is activated, bringing insight to the contemplative and mind-bending dance to the warrior’s feet.

Another esoteric consideration: the old Russian warrior art is called the ‘five elements style’ - Earth, Water, Fire, Air plus what we call Ether, which Sidorov names Cosmic Energy. You find those five elements mainly in Indian traditions (or their different version in the Chinese), and would thus be tempted to see the Russian five as a derivation out of India - which it is not.

The Russian warrior must become Fire, Air, Earth, Water - and bring them all together into Cosmic Energy. But prior to those practices, there has to be a clear, experiential, positioning within the exchange of energies between Earth and Cosmos, which the practitioner must learn to feel in and around the body. This seemingly impossible task is actually not difficult (I’ve tested it).

So here is a concrete instruction in order to catch those Earth and Cosmos energies - which is not at all limited to warriors, by the way. It is in fact the very first exercise in Sidorov’s book. Spinning is an old esoteric practice, still alive in certain Sufi lineages. The exercise is simple: first spin round and round clockwise, pulled by the left foot, then spin counter-clockwise with the right foot leading. After each directional spin, soon enough you will really feel a descending energy (from the clockwise motion) and an ascending energy (from anti-clockwise). That’s it - just spinning, then feeling. It takes no more than a few days for the upwards and downwards energies to be perceptible in the body, and thirty days for them to be imprinted in the subconscious. From there it becomes possible to use the subtle force-field, which, Sidorov says, confers great strength.

Notably, he does not elaborate on ‘technique’. Indeed the key point is the sensed experience that belongs to the individual.