euro - status nascens

[anna balint]

[so the euro transgressed the virtual state, I have seen the new western money.
I remember Hakim Beys text from 1996 about money's spiritual content, and I wonder
what is euro's spirituality like. It is obvious it's link to some rites sociatives, and 
that is a pity, since there so few are the sacred domains which are not highly commercialised 
and/or politicised, not that the European Union would be apolitical idea, but to gain content 
through money....
Dr. Google gives 12.400.000 results if one seeks for pages about the euro,
among them a project of Chis Byrne for an alternative euro design - 
http://www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/euro/notes.html. 
There is another news: from 1 January Romanians don't need visa for the Schengen
countries - despite the strong protest of the Austrian governement. Maybe Austrians
remember too well that Romanians ate the swans form the lakes in Vienna in 1990: 
they were hungry. Beware, barbarians are coming! greetings, a.b.]


http://www.hermetic.com/bey/millennium/religion.html

Hakim Bey
Religion and Revolution

Real money & hierarchic religion appear to have arisen in the same mysterious moment sometime between the early 
Neolithic and the third millennium BC in Sumer or 
Egypt; which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Was one a response to the other or is one an aspect of the other?
No doubt that money possesses a deeply religious implication since from the very moment of its appearance it begins to 
strive for the condition of the spirit -- to remove 
itself from the world of bodies, to transcend materiality, to become the one true efficacious symbol.  With the invention 
of writing around 3100 BC money as we know it 
emerges from a complicated system of clay tokens or counters representing material goods & takes the form of written 
bills of credit impressed on clay tablets; almost 
without exception these "cheques" seem to concern debts owed to the State Temple, & in theory could have been 
used in an extended system of exchange as 
credit-notes "minted" by the theocracy.  Coins did not appear until around 700 BC in Greek Asia Minor; they were 
made of electrum (gold and silver) not because 
these metals had commodity value but because they were sacred -- Sun & Moon; the ratio of value between them has 
always hovered around 14:1 not because the 
earth contains 14 times as much silver as gold but because the Moon takes 14 "suns" to grow from dark to full.  Coins 
may have originated as temple tokens 
symbolizing a worshipper's due share of the sacrifice -- holy souvenirs, which could later be traded for goods because 
they had "mana", not use-value.  (This function 
may have originated in the Stone Age trade in "ceremonial" stone axe-heads used in potlach-like distribution rites.)  
Unlike Mesopotamian credit-notes, coins were 
inscribed with sacred images & were seen as liminal objects, nodal points between quotidian reality & the world of the 
spirits (this accounts for the custom of bending 
coins to "spiritualize" them and throwing them into wells, which are the "eyes" of the otherworld.)  Debt itself -- the true 
content of all money -- is a highly "spiritual" 
concept.  As tribute (primitive debt) it exemplifies capitulation to a "legitimate power" of expropriation masked in 
religious ideology -- but as "real debt" it attains the 
uniquely spiritual ability to reproduce itself as if it were an organic being.  Even now it remains the only "dead" 
substance in all the world to possess this power -- 
"money begets money".  At this point money begins to take on a parodic aspect vis-à-vis religion -- it seems that money 
wants to rival god, to become immanent spirit 
in the form of pure metaphysicality which nevertheless "rules the world".  Religion must take note of this blasphemous 
nature in money and condemn it as contra 
naturam.  Money & religion enter opposition -- one cannot serve God & Mammon simultaneously.  But so long as religion 
continues to perform as the ideology of 
separation (the hierarchic State, expropriation, etc.) it can never really come to grips with the money-problem.  Over & 
over again reformers arise within religion to 
chase the moneylenders from the temple, & always they return -- in fact often enough the moneylenders become the 
Temple.  (It's certainly no accident that banks for 
along time aped the forms of religious architecture.)  According to Weber it was Calvin who finally resolved the issue 
with his theological justification for "usury" -- but 
this scarcely does credit to the real Protestants, like the Ranters & Diggers, who proposed that religion should once & 
for all enter into total opposition to money -- 
thereby launching the Millennium.  It seems more likely that the Enlightenment should take credit for resolving the 
problem -- by jettisoning religion as the ideology of 
the ruling class & replacing it with rationalism (& "Classical Economics").  This formula however would fail to do justice 
to those real illuminati who proposed the 
dismantling of all ideologies of power & authority -- nor would it help to explain why "official" religion failed to realize its 
potential as opposition at this point, & instead 
went on providing moral support for both State & Capital.
Under the influence of Romanticism however there arose -- both inside & outside of "official" religion -- a growing sense 
of spirituality as an alternative to the 
oppressive aspects of Liberalism & its intellectual/artistic allies.  On the one hand this sense led to a conservative-
revolutionary form of romantic reaction (e.g. Novalis) 
-- but on the other hand it also fed into the old heretical tradition (which also began with the "rise of Civilization" as a 
movement of resistance to the theocracy of 
expropriation) -- and found itself in a strange new alliance with rationalist radicalism (the nascent "left"); William Blake, 
for example, or the "Blaspheming Chapels" of 
Spence & his followers, represent this trend.  The meeting of spirituality & resistance is not some surrealist event or 
anomaly to be smoothed out or rationalized by 
"History" -- it occupies a position at the very root of radicalism; -- and despite the militant atheism of Marx or Bakunin 
(itself a kind of mutated mysticism or "heresy"), 
the spiritual still remains inextricably involved with the "Good Old Cause" it helped create.
Some years ago Regis Debray wrote an article pointing out that despite the confidant predictions of 19th century 
materialism, religion had still perversely failed to go 
away -- and that perhaps it was time for the Revolution to come to terms with this mysterious persistence.  Coming from 
a Catholic culture Debray was interested in 
"Liberation Theology", itself a projection of the old quasi-heresy of the "Poor" Franciscans & the recurrent rediscovery 
of "Bible communism".  Had he considered 
Protestant culture he might have remembered the 17th century, & looked for its true inheritance; if Moslem he could 
have evoked the radicalism of the Shiites or 
Ismailis, or the anti-colonialism of the 19th century "neo-Sufis".  Every religion has called forth its own inner antithesis 
over & over again; every religion has considered 
the implications of moral opposition to power; every tradition contains a vocabulary of resistance as well as capitulation 
to oppression.  Speaking broadly one might say 
that up until now this "counter-tradition" -- which is both inside & outside religion -- has comprised a "suppressed 
content".  Debray's question concerned its potential 
for realization.  Liberation Theology lost most of its support within the church when it could no longer serve its function 
as rival (or accomplice) of Soviet Communism; & 
it could no longer serve this function because Communism collapsed.  But some Liberation theologians proved to be 
sincere -- and still they persist (as in Mexico); 
moreover, an entire submerged & related tendency within Catholicism, exemplified in the almost Scholastic anarchism of 
an Ivan Illich, lingers in the background.  
Similar tendencies could be identified within Orthodoxy (e.g. Bakunin), Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, and (in a 
somewhat different sense) Buddhism; moreover, most 
"surviving" indigenous forms of spirituality (e.g. Shamanism) or the Afro-american syncretisms can find common cause 
with various radical trends in the "major" 
religions on such issues as the environment, & the morality of anti-Capitalism.  Despite elements of romantic reaction, 
various New Age & post-New-Age movements 
can also be associated with this rough category.
In a previous essay we have outlined reasons for believing that the collapse of Communism implies the triumph of its 
single opponent, Capitalism; that according to 
neo-liberal global propaganda only one world now exists; & that this political situation has grave implications for a theory 
of money as the virtual deity (autonomous, 
spiritualized, & all-powerful) of the single universe of meaning.  Under these conditions everything that was once a third 
possibility (neutrality, withdrawal, counter-
culture, the "Third World", etc.) now must find itself in a new situation.  There is no longer any "second" -- how can 
there be a "third"?  The "alternatives" have 
narrowed catastrophically.  The One World is now in a position to crush everything which once escaped its ecstatic 
embrace -- thanks to the unfortunate distraction of 
waging an essentially economic war against the Evil Empire.  There is no more third way, no more neither/nor. 
Everything that is different will now be subsumed into 
the sameness of the One World -- or else will discover itself in opposition to that world.  Taking this thesis as given, we 
must now ask where religion will locate itself on 
this new map of "zones" of capitulation & resistance.  If "revolution" has been freed of the incubus of Soviet 
oppression and is now once again a valid concept, are 
we finally in a position to offer a tentative answer to Debray's question?
Taking "religion" as a whole, including even those forms such as shamanism that belong to Society rather than the 
State (in terms of Clastres's anthropology); 
including polytheisms, monotheisms, & non-theisms; including mysticisms & heresies as well as orthodoxies, "reformed" 
churches, & "new religions" -- obviously the 
subject under consideration lacks definition, borders, coherence; & it cannot be questioned because it would only 
generate a babel of responses rather than an 
answer.  But "religion" does refer to something -- call it a certain range of colors in the spectrum of human becoming -- 
& as such it might be considered (at least pro 
tem) as a valid dialogic entity & as a theorizable subject.  In the triumphant movement of Capital -- in its processual 
moment so to speak -- all religion can only be 
viewed as nullity, i.e. as a commodity to be packaged & sold, an asset to be stripped, or an opposition to be eliminated.  
Any idea (or ideology) that cannot be 
subsumed into capital's "End of History" must be doomed.  This includes both reaction & resistance -- & it most certainly 
includes the non-separative "re-linking" 
(religio) of consciousness with "spirit" as unmediated imaginal self-determination & value-creation -- the original goal of 
all ritual & worship.  Religion in other words has 
lost all connection with worldly power because that power has migrated off-world -- it has abandoned even the State & 
achieved the purity of apotheosis, like the God 
that "abandoned Anthony" in Cavafy's poem.  The few States (mostly Islamic) wherein religion holds power are located 
precisely within the ever-shrinking region of 
national opposition to Capital -- (thus providing them with such potential strange bedfellows as Cuba!).  Like all other 
"third possibilities" religion is faced with a new 
dichotomy: total capitulation, or else revolt.  Thus the "revolutionary potential" of religion clearly appears -- although it 
remains unclear whether resistance might take 
the form of reaction or radicalism -- or indeed whether religion is not already defeated -- whether its refusal to go away is 
that of an enemy, or a ghost.
In Russia & Serbia the Orthodox Church appears to have thrown in its lot with reaction against the New World Order & 
thus found new fellowship with its old Bolshevik 
oppressors,  In Chechnya the Naqshbandi Sufi Order continues its centuries-old struggle against Russian imperialism.  
In Chiapas there's a strange alliance of Mayan 
"pagans" & radical Catholics.  Certain factions of American Protestantism have been driven to the point of paranoia & 
armed resistance (but even paranoids have 
some real enemies); while Native-american spirituality undergoes a small but miraculous revival -- not a Ghost Shirt 
uprising this time, but a reasoned & profound stand 
against the hegemony of Capital's monoculture.  The Dalai Lama sometimes appears as the one "world leader" 
capable of speaking truth both to the remnants of the 
Communist oppression & the forces of Capitalist inhumanity; a "Free Tibet" might provide some kind of focus for an 
"interfaith" bloc of small nations & religious groups 
allied against the transcendental social darwinism of the consensus.  Arctic shamanism may re-emerge as an 
"ideology" for the self-determination of certain new 
Siberian republics -- and some New Religions (such as Western neo-paganism or the psychedelic cults) also belong by 
definition or default to the pole of opposition.
Islam has seen itself as the enemy of imperial Christianity & European imperialism almost from the moment of its 
inception.  During the 20th century it functioned as a 
"third way" against both Communism & Capitalism, & in the context of the new One World it now constitutes by 
definition one of the very few existing mass movements 
which cannot be englobed into the unity of any would-be Consensus.  Unfortunately the spearhead of resistance -- 
"fundamentalism" -- tends to reduce the complexity 
of Islam into an artificially coherent ideology -- "Islamism" -- which clearly fails to speak to the normal human desire for 
difference & complexity.  Fundamentalism has 
already failed to concern itself with "empirical freedoms" which must constitute the minimal demands of the new 
resistance; for example, its critique of "usury" is 
obviously an inadequate response to the machinations of the IMF & World Bank.  The "gates of Interpretation" of the 
Shariah must be re-opened -- not slammed shut 
forever -- and a fully-realized alternative to Capitalism must emerge from within the tradition.  Whatever one may think of 
the Libyan Revolution of 1969 it has at least 
the virtue of an attempt to fuse the anarcho-syndicalism of '68 with the neo-Sufi egalitarianism of the North African 
Orders, & to create a revolutionary Islam -- 
something similar could be said of Ali Shariati's "Shiite socialism" in Iran, which was crushed by the ulemocracy before 
it could crystallize into a coherent movement.  
The point is that Islam cannot be dismissed as the puritan monolith portrayed in the Capitalist media.  If a genuine anti-
Capitalist coalition is to appear in the world it 
cannot happen without Islam.  The goal of all theory capable of any sympathy with Islam, I believe, is now to 
encourage its radical & egalitarian traditions & to substruct 
its reactionary & authoritarian modes of discourse.  Within Islam there persist such mythic figures as the "Green 
Prophet" and hidden guide of the mystics, al-Khezr, 
who could easily become a kind of patron saint of Islamic environmentalism; while history offers such models as the 
great Algerian Sufi freedom-fighter Emir Abdul 
Qadir, whose last act (in exile in Damascus) was to protect Syrian Christians against the bigotry of the ulema. From 
outside Islam there exists the potential for 
"interfaith" movements concerned with ideals of peace, toleration, & resistance to the violence of post-secular post-
rationalist "neo-liberalism" & its allies.  In effect, 
then, the "revolutionary potential" of Islam is not yet realized -- but it is real.
Since Christianity is the religion that "gave birth" (in Weberian terms) to Capitalism, its position in relation to the present 
apotheosis of Capitalism is necessarily more 
problematic than Islam's.  For centuries Christianity has been drawing in on itself & constructing a kind of make-believe 
world of its own, wherein some semblance of 
the social might persist (if only on Sundays) -- even while it maintained the cozy illusion of some relation to power.  As 
an ally of Capital (with its seeming benign 
indifference to the hypothesis of faith) against "Godless Communism", Christianity could preserve the illusion of power -- 
at least until five years ago.  Now Capitalism 
no longer needs Christianity & the social support it enjoyed will soon evaporate.  Already the Queen of England has had 
to consider stepping down as the head of the 
Anglican Church -- & she is unlikely to be replaced by the CEO of some vast international zaibatsu!  Money is god -- 
God is really dead at last; Capitalism has realized a 
hideous parody of the Enlightenment ideal.  But Jesus is a dying-&-resurrecting god -- one might say he's been through 
all this before.  Even Nietzsche signed his last 
"insane" letter as "Dionysus & the Crucified One"; in the end it is perhaps only religion that can "overcome" religion.  
Within Christianity a myriad tendencies appear (or 
have persisted since the 17th century, like the Quakers) seeking to revive that radical messiah who cleansed the 
Temple & promised the Kingdom to the poor. In 
America for instance it would seem impossible to imagine a really successful mass movement against Capitalism (some 
form of "progressive populism") without the 
participation of the churches.  Again the theoretical task begins to clarify itself; one need not propose some vulgar kind 
of "entryism" into organized Christianity to 
radicalize it by conspiracy from within.  Rather the goal would be to encourage the sincere & widespread potential for 
Christian radicalism either from within as an 
honest believer (however "existentialist" the faith!) or as an honest sympathizer from the outside.
To test this theorizing take an example -- say Ireland (where I happen to be writing this).  Given that Ireland's 
"Problems" arise largely from sectarianism, clearly one 
must take an anti-clerical stance; in fact atheism would be at least emotionally appropriate.  But the inherent ambiguity 
of religion in Irish history should be remembered: 
-- there were moments when Catholic priests & laity supported resistance or revolution, & there were moments when 
Protestant ministers & laity supported resistance or 
revolution.  The hierarchies of the churches have generally proven themselves reactionary -- but hierarchy is not the 
same thing as religion.  On the Protestant side we 
have Wolfe Tone & the United Irishmen -- a revolutionary "interfaith" movement.  Even today in Northern Ireland such 
possibilities are not dead; anti-sectarianism is 
not just a socialist ideal but also a Christian ideal.  On the Catholic side... a few years ago I met a radical priest at a 
pagan festival in the Aran Islands, a friend of Ivan 
Illich.  When I asked him, "What exactly is your relation to Rome?" he answered, "Rome?  Rome is the enemy."  
Rome has lost its stranglehold on Ireland in the last 
few years, brought down by anti-puritan revolt & internal scandal.  It would be incorrect to say that the Church's power 
has shifted to the State, unless we also add that 
the government's power has shifted to Europe, & Europe's power has shifted to international capital.  The meaning of 
Catholicism in Ireland is up for grabs.  Over the 
next few years we might expect to see both inside & outside the Church a kind of revival of "Celtic Christianity" -- 
devoted to resistance against pollution of the 
environment both physical & imaginal, & therefore committed to anti-Capitalist struggle.  Whether this trend would lead 
to an open break with Rome and the formation 
of an independent church -- who knows?  Certainly the trend will include or at least influence Protestantism as well.  
Such a broad-based movement might easily find 
its natural political expression in socialism or even in anarcho-socialism, & would serve a particularly useful function as a 
force against sectarianism & the rule of the 
clerisy.  Thus even in Ireland it would seem that religion may have a revolutionary future.
I expect these ideas will meet with very little acceptance within traditionally atheist anarchism or the remnants of 
"dialectical materialism".  Enlightenment radicalism 
has long refused to recognize any but remote historical roots within religious radicalism.  As a result, the Revolution 
threw out the baby ("non-ordinary consciousness") 
along with the bathwater of the Inquisition or of puritan repression.  Despite Sorel's insistence that the Revolution 
needed a "myth", it preferred to bank everything on 
"pure reason" instead.  But spiritual anarchism & communism (like religion itself) have failed to go away.  Indeed, by 
becoming an anti-Religion, radicalism had recourse 
to a kind of mysticism of its own, complete with ritual, symbolism, & morality.  Bakunin's remark about God -- that if he 
existed we would have to kill him -- would after all 
pass for the purest orthodoxy within Zen Buddhism!  The psychedelic movement, which offered a kind of "scientific" 
(or at least experiential ) verification of non-
ordinary consciousness, led to a degree of rapprochement between spirituality & radical politics -- & the trajectory of this 
movement may have only begun.  If religion 
has "always" acted to enslave the mind or to reproduce the ideology of the ruling class, it has also "always" involved 
some form of entheogenesis ("birth of the god 
within") or liberation of consciousness; some form of utopian proposal or promise of "heaven on earth"; and some form 
of militant & positive action for "social justice" 
as God's plan for the creation.  Shamanism is a form of "religion" that (as Clastres showed) actually institutionalizes 
spirituality against the emergence of hierarchy & 
separation -- & all religions possess at least a shamanic trace.
Every religion can point to a radical tradition of some sort.  Taoism once produced the Yellow Turbans -- or for that 
matter the Tongs that collaborated with anarchism 
in the 1911 revolution.  Judaism produced the "anarcho-zionism" of Martin Buber & Gersholm Scholem (deeply 
influenced by Gustav Landauer & other anarchists of 
1919), which found its most eloquent & paradoxical voice in Walter Benjamin.  Hinduism gave birth to the ultra-radical 
Bengali Terrorist Party -- & also to M. Gandhi, the 
modern world's only successful theorist of non-violent revolution.  Obviously anarchism & communism will never come 
to terms with religion on questions of authority & 
property; & perhaps one might say that "after the Revolution" such questions will remain to be resolved.  But it seems 
clear that without religion there will be no radical 
revolution; the Old Left & the (old) New Left can scarcely fight it alone.  The alternative to an alliance now is to watch 
while Reaction co-opts the force of religion & 
launches a revolution without us.  Like it or not, some sort of pre-emptive strategy is required.  Resistance demands a 
vocabulary in which our common cause can be 
discussed; hence these sketchy proposals.
Even assuming we could classify all the above under the rubric of admirable sentiments, we would still find ourselves 
far from any obvious program of action. Religion 
is not going to "save" us in this sense (perhaps the reverse is true!) -- in any case religion is faced with the same 
perplexity as any other former "third position", 
including all forms of radical non-authoritarianism & anti-Capitalism. The new totality & its media appear so pervasive as 
to fore-doom all programs of revolutionary 
content, since every "message" is equally subject to subsumption in the "medium" that is Capital itself.  Of course the 
situation is hopeless -- but only stupidity would 
take this as reason for despair, or for the terminal boredom of defeat.  Hope against hope -- Bloch's revolutionary hope -
- belongs to a "utopia" that is never wholly 
absent even when it is least present; & it belongs as well to a religious sphere in which hopelessness is the final sin 
against the holy spirit: -- the betrayal of the divine 
within -- the failure to become human.  "Karmic duty" in the sense of the Bhagavad Gita -- or in the sense of 
"revolutionary duty" -- is not something imposed by 
Nature, like gravity, or death.  It is a free gift of the spirit -- one can accept or refuse it -- & both positions are perilous.  
To refuse is to run the risk of dying without 
having lived.  To accept is an even more dangerous but far more interesting possibility.  A version of Pascal's Wager -- 
not on the immortality of the soul this time, but 
simply on its sheer existence.
To use religious metaphor (which we've tried so far to avoid) the millennium began five years before the end of the 
century, when One World came into being & 
banished all duality.  From the Judao-Christiano-Islamic perspective however this is the false millennium of the "Anti-
Christ"; which turns out not to be a "person" 
(except in the world of Archetypes perhaps) but an impersonal entity, a force contra naturam -- entropy disguised as life.  
In this view the reign of iniquity must & will be 
challenged in the true millennium, the advent of the messiah.  But the messiah is also not a single person in the world -- 
rather, it is a collectivity in which each 
individuality is realized & thus (again metaphorically or imaginally) immortalized.  The "people-as-messiah" do not enter 
into the homogenous sameness nor the infernal 
separation of entropic Capitalism, but into the difference & presence of revolution -- the struggle, the "holy war".  On 
this basis alone can we begin to work on a theory 
of reconciliation between the positive forces of religion & the cause of resistance. What we are offered here is simply 
the beginning of the beginning.
Dublin, Sept. 1, 1996