Traditionalism, the myth of Hyperborea, and Masculinity

A new article by Christopher E. Forth traces the development of the myth of Hyperborea and its entanglement with Julius Evola’s views on gender. It is “From the far north to the far right: white masculinity and the myth of Hyperborea,” Journal of Gender Studies online first, https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2025.2576814.

Forth finds the origins of the Hyperborean myth in Pinder, and proceeds from there to Helena Blavatsky and the Traditionalists, particularly Evola, who added a north-south axis to the more standard east-west axis, associating the northern (and thus Hyperborean) with the male and the southern with the female. This pair is then adopted by Alexander Dugin and the far right in general, joining concern at what Guillaume Faye called “devirilization.”

Forth argues that myths such as this are important for understanding the appeal of the far right to many men, and that standard arguments referencing patriarchy and the loss of male white (material) privilege do not fully explain what is going on. He sides with the “growing number of gender scholars who acknowledge that… many males… seek existential or ‘ontological security’… in the semblance of a meaningful and inhabitable future.” Concerns about “the erosion of traditional structures of identity, community, and meaning – structures that necessarily include gender roles and expectations” may be legitimate, even if the responses offered by the far right are not.

The remainder of the article discusses Hyperborean memes and the issue of whether Hyperborea is real or mythical. Here Forth cites Greg Johnson, who welcomes myths because they offer “a concrete vision, a story of who we are and who we wish to become... Myths can inspire collective action to change the world.”

An interesting article. It raises questions about the relationship between Evola’s understanding of gender as primarily spiritual and contemporary understandings that might be described as “biological determinism.” In Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola wrote:

It is not a coincidence for a being to “awaken” to itself in the body of a man or a woman... The physical difference should be viewed as the equivalent of a spiritual difference; hence a being is a man or a woman in a physical way only because a being is either masculine or feminine in a transcendental way; sexual differentiation, far from being an irrelevant factor in relation to the spirit, is the sign that points to a particular vocation and to a distinctive dharma.

Evola’s “particular vocation” and “distinctive dharma” are spiritual, not really what is usually meant today by “gender roles.”