The Discrete Antisystem and a Negative Worldview in Criminal Activity Based on Mastering Time

Abstract

The mechanisms of aim-setting and decision-making in criminal activity as a four-level hierarchical structure were presented for the Russian criminals known as ‘vory v zakonie’. The first level represents a basic concept of saving one’s own life, borrowed from the Torah. The second level, the ‘Thieves’ Law’, is a set of mental models that has much in common with the adaptation and misinterpretation of old religious and legal systems. The third level is a set of general concepts and ideas about what Good or Evil is in the form of words called ‘Notions’. These levels have no material form; they reflect themselves in models of behaviour and argot as a collective output. The fourth level in the material form of page-long ‘secrete messages’, containing some models of behaviour, are the ‘Frames’ (how to behave in imprisonment), wherein the ‘Vory’s Commandments’ (how to behave at large for young criminals) do not belong to the criminal ideology. This criminal ideology, a discrete antisystem, is enriched by the three ideas found in old religious and legal systems proposed as the ‘fifth feeling of Time’: the memory of the soul in the endless time being awoken after reincarnation, making the past as if it never happened, and knowing the future.

1. Introduction

It was suggested that the ideology of Russian-speaking and Polish-speaking criminals with the highest position called ‘Zakon’ has much in common with religion (J. Zubkow 2025), drawing attention to the study of the phenomenon of semantic attraction suggested by other researchers (Berezovich and Kuchko 2017). Studying a variable stem structure ‘ma plus hissing sound’, and connections the the Russian and Polish argot, show how some concepts and ideas in the literature of various kinds are passed through generations of criminals, preserving the secret and tacit knowledge, and the author suggested the enrichment of the criminal ideology by means of folk etymology with the ideas about communication with the dead, supernatural forces and demons through the prism of loose interpretations of Christian and Islam traditions, which gave birth to the idea about the memory of soul in the endless time being awoken after reincarnation by a brother-soul (J. Zubkow 2025). The paper also presented the methodological grounds, which were elaborated to analyze the criminal ideology of ‘Zakon’, known in public as the Thieves’ Law. However, it was only mentioned that the ‘Vorovskaya Idea’ (The Thieves’ Idea) was a tool for perceiving the surrounding world and making appropriate choices to survive, which sounded the ‘(1) Code of Hammurabi; (2) Mithraism; (3) Old Roman law; (4) Torah; (5) Laws of Manu’ and allowed for the confrontation of the old religious–legal systems against the contemporary law-abiding picture of the world under the banner of social and divine justice. Studying such strange conglomeration (or amalgamation, depending on the ‘will to believe’), the author came to the conclusion that, in scientific terms, it should be a synthesis of the ideas about the Old Roman Law before Codex Justini aneus (Lex duodecim tabularum, the Insitutes by Caius, and Lex Salica), Mishnah (with elements from Gemara and Kabbalah), the Eastern branch of Mithraism (Manusmriti with Bon modified by Tantrayana), the Code of Hammurabi, and the ideas of Jewish Christians (Essenes, Mandaeans, and Tibetan variants of Shia Islam). However, the author did not explain in detail the reasons for such conclusions (J. Zubkow 2025).

The aim of this research is not to prove that such synthesis is the ‘Thieves’ Law’; the research focuses on the separation of the ideology from other subordinate mechanisms of aim setting and decision-making in the criminal activity. From the point of simple logic: even if all living known and unknown ‘vory’ signed under the statement about such synthesis regardless of life sentence or execution, it would not change anything for the scientific world because no related documents in the form of such codex (or a key to the code of conduct) were announced to have been found in the Soviet era, the Russian Empire, or earlier. The section entitled ‘The ‘Thieves’ Law’ (‘Zakon’) studied in 2026’ focuses on the hierarchical structure of conduct (aim setting and decision-making) attributed to ‘vory’ (see E. Zubkow 2017, 2019) with respect to new publications and findings made by the Georgian law enforcement units officers, the Polish and American researchers, and the Federal Penitentiary Service officers in the Russian Federation. It is suggested that the models of behaviour repeated in the page-long ‘secret messages’ are not the ‘Thieves’ Law’, as it has been presumed previously. The studied criminal ideology (the reference space) exists in criminals’ heads (the mental space); it can be, to some extent, individual, but shares many common features, especially when old religious and legal ideas are adapted and misinterpreted. This criminal ideology was called a discrete antisystem.

This criminal ideology, as a discrete antisystem in L. N. Gumilev’s terms, was only superficially included in an earlier discussion (J. Zubkow 2025). The next section of this research focuses on the relations between systems and antisystems proposed by Gumilev, the types of these relations, and the ways of analysis of various sources, as well as Gumilev’s scientific output. A conducted analysis of his publications allowed the author to suggest that Gumilev may have thought about making the past as if it had never happened, and ways to overcome Time. Anyway, his scientific ideas inspired the author of this research to suggest that the main feature of the discrete antisystem is the ‘fifth feeling of Time’, which was not defined properly either by Gumilev for personal reasons or by the author of this research due to the lack of appropriate conceptualization. The ‘fifth feeling of Time’ for ‘Zakon’ was proposed as mastering Time (and Death) by the memory of the soul in the endless time being awoken after reincarnation by a brother-soul, by making the past as though it never happened, or just knowing the future.

The aim of the subsequent section was to study the genesis of ideas connected with the ‘fifth feeling of Time’ in religious literature of different historical periods and cultural areas to find confirmation of the idea of mastering Time for various purposes in criminal ideology. It is suggested that the idea was borrowed by the religious literature from the pre-Christian and the pre-Islamic times and, not being explained properly, caused its appropriation by the discrete antisystem. The appropriation of the idea of mastering Time is proposed on the basis of the Russian and Polish argots with respect to semantic attraction, as the traces of this idea were detected in argot as a collective output of the studied criminals. The chapter also contains a ‘magic journey route’ to the Cave where Time is mastered and where one meets Al-Khidr—this ‘revelation’ should be treated as an ‘inserted novella’, a speculative literary exploration, and in no way to be taken seriously as an instruction to travel into geographically murderous and terrorism-endangered areas. Despite the arguments presented by the author of this research, by a model reconstruction, the ‘map and key’ was the ‘Vorovskaya Idea’, i.e., what some ‘vory’ may believe.

2. The ‘Thieves’ Law’ (‘Zakon’) Studied in 2026

The ‘Thieves’ Law’, as the aforementioned synthesis of religious and legal ideas, was discussed from the viewpoint of a hierarchical structure of aim setting and decision-making (the hierarchy of values in criminal activity or a paradigm of criminal activity as the four-level structure of aim setting mechanisms) used by professional criminals (E. Zubkow 2017; 2019, pp. 11–85), which have been mixed up by researchers and law enforcement units’ officers so far and mistakenly taken for ‘Zakon’. The first level is represented by the so-called ‘Нефеш’/‘Nefesh’ as a basic concept of the right to save life, one’s own life first of all, which was borrowed from the Torah, along with the principles of its justification. Naturally, it is hard to mark the boundaries of individual interpretation depending on subjective evaluation of the situation—any kind of betrayal, treachery, disloyalty, pathologies, and even cannibalism can be expected. Professional criminals (not only ‘vory’) figure out from the start whom to betray, and here, the affiliation within the fraternity often predetermines such a choice and protects the criminals with the highest status.

The second level, the ‘Thieves’ Law’, (‘Zakon’ in Polish and ‘Закoн’ in Russian), as a loose religious legal codex comprising selective interpretations of old codices that are unavailable in their original form, is based on Lex talionis with its social inequalities of parties (the opposition between ‘vory’ and the rest of the criminals and victims). Depending on the methodological approach, it can be considered a social virus, denomination, confession, a virtual religious legal codex manifesting itself in the code of criminal conduct, a counter-system, an asymmetric pra-structure (la struttura assente), or an epiphenomenon based on post-truth, ‘a cryptosystem with open key based on code’ (upon surjective reflectance of topological spaces), or an antisystem, after L. N. Gumilev. In this research, the author considers the studied set of religious ideas in criminal ideology as a reference space (a set ‘in potentia’ and ‘in absentia’) that reflects the individual mental spaces of criminals in the same or very similar way (discussed in detail in Section 4).

The third level is represented by the so-called ‘Notions’ (‘Пoнятия’ in Russian or ‘Zasady’ in Polish). These are words as basic concepts that determine general ideas of ambition, hygiene, solidarity, brotherhood, unity, etc. Depending on the source, their number varies from 5 to 10. Such statements are in good agreement with the results obtained earlier by researchers in the Republic of Poland (Kamiński [2004] 2006, p. 100) and in the Republic of Georgia (Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, pp. 76–77). However, nothing connected with any religion was reported despite mentioning ‘czerwony rygor’ (‘red rigor’) and ‘Zakon’ (Kamiński [2004] 2006, pp. 291, 453)—being a just man, Marek M. Kamiński was still a political prisoner. The same relates to Georgian researchers—they did not look for religious anomalies, and based on standard criminological procedures, despite bringing up ‘concepts of words’, ‘holy people’, ‘Vorovskaya Idea’, ‘the idea of just people’, and the ‘sacred place’ (‘people in Vorovskaya Idea must be crystal-clear, devoted by soul and heart to the idea of just people (…) have a deep understanding of ideology, philosophy, and legal science’), they found, in the documents, that this is because the literary sources and regulatory acts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD) were extremely poor and often contradictory (Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, pp. 76–77). These literary sources were based on artefacts with mostly unclear attributions that contained short texts in the form of questions and answers, or words and explanations with sentences, for example, as in ‘Закoн преступнoгo мира, правил oбщака и вoрoвскoй идеи’ (The law of the criminal world, the rules of the slush fund and Vorovskaya Idea): ‘Question: Does the slush fund have a line of justice? Answer: Yes, it does. Question: Is there a solidarity line? Answer: Yes. Question: Which one? Answer: The slush fund has only one ‘pot’. What comes into it goes first to vory, then to maximum secure prisons, hospitals, special housing units. The correct arrangement of ‘people’ in the slush fund: everyone is responsible for his place’ (see Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, p. 77. Translated from Russian).

Based on a linguistic analysis and own research model, the author suggested that the third level was not codified due to the lack of functionality: ‘Notions’ drive professional criminals in interaction with others who do not belong to the fraternity (E. Zubkow 2017; 2019, pp. 51–59). It was suggested that the choice of numbers 5 or 10 was attributed to the tradition, i.e., the influence of Kabbalah and 10 Sephiroth as the creative forces of God, through which the communication with Ein Sof (infinity devoid of attributes and connections with the world) is realized, as it was mentioned in various versions of the book ‘Zohar’ (splendour/radiance), the medieval views on universals, and later the legal views on concepts as self-regulating constructs after Rudolf von Ihering. However, the names of the Sephiroth differ from the recorded names of ‘Notions’, and no strict codification has been determined so far, which implies the loss of esotericism on a mass scale. The understanding of the possibility of clarifying relationships with the environment through the use of an asymmetrical star (10 triangles in the star and their attribution to the sephiroth) or the presence of 10 oppositions between the five points in a linear sequence probably disappeared among the ‘vory’ (E. Zubkow 2017; 2019, pp. 51–59).

So far, this third level has been misleadingly taken for ‘Zakon’ as the codex, or mixed up with the fourth level of the structure of aim-setting mechanisms by many researchers and law enforcement units’ officers in the USSR and the Russian Federation. For the purposes of this research, it would be enough to state that ‘Notions’ can be considered as ‘vory’s personal ideas about what is classified as Good or Evil.

The fourth level of hierarchical structure of aim setting and decision-making is represented by the artefacts containing some handwritten texts with more or less clear attribution. Such texts did not exceed one handwritten page, which can be explained by the convenience of delivery and safekeeping in imprisonment. Usually, a text is signed by several ‘vory’ (by three or more at present) or by sobriquets of its compilers on behalf of a ‘vory’s gathering at large (during Stalin’s reign, such texts were sometimes signed by several dozens of ‘vory’, even on the margins of the document). In the literature on subject, often without any differentiation, the following names are used for such texts: ‘пoстанoвoчные письма’ (resolution letters), ‘ксивы (автoритетoв) первoй хаты’ (open messages from the ‘first’ prison cell), ‘ксивы на oбщак’ (open messages for slush fund), ‘вoрoвские прoгoны’ (‘vory’s secret messages’), ‘вoззвания к братве’ (appeals to inmates), ‘малявы (мальявки, мальки, мульки)’ (fake secret messages), ‘вoрoвские пoстанoвки’ (‘vory’s resolutions’), ‘oбращения вoрoв’ (‘vory’s appeals’), ‘вoззвания к oсoбo oпасным рецидивистам’ (appeals to ‘old’ offenders), ‘вoрoвскoй закoн’ (‘vory’s law/code’), ‘вoрoвские пoнятия’ (‘vory’s notions’), ‘вoрoвские наказы’ (‘vory’s commandments’), ‘рамки, рамы, рамсы’ (‘frames’), ‘нoрмы’ (Norms), правила (Rules), ‘принципы’ (principles), ‘вoрoвскoй кoдекс’ (‘vory’s codex’), ‘тюремный закoн’ (prison law), etc.

The two sets of imperatives, the so-called ‘Рамки/Рамсы’ (literary ‘Frames’, the equivalents of the Polish ‘Ramy’ (‘Frames’), ‘Normy’ (Norms), ‘Reguły’ (Rules)) and ‘Вoрoвские Наказы’ (‘Vory’s Commandments’) were distinguished. The ‘Frames’ are obligatory for the rest of the inmates and can be easily misinterpreted by professional criminals who belong to ‘Zakon’ for personal needs. Such misinterpretation is justified for them by the mental models of higher levels. In material form, these sets of imperatives exist as a page-long ‘secrete message’ that contains up to a dozen sentences not joined with any ideas/concepts/notions. Moreover, such messages have a clear attribution, being signed by several ‘vory’ or other criminals with a higher status. The sets of sentences may vary from each other in prisons or labour camps in the Russian Federation. These sets are very similar to those in the Republic of Poland. However, such texts do not contain any recommendations for criminals on how to behave at large.

The other way around, the ‘Vory’s Commandments’ are the sets of behaviour models or recommendations for ‘vory’ or young aspiring criminals how to behave at large and in imprisonment depending on circumstances and time. In most texts, the following models of behaviour in the ‘vory’ code were found: ‘Признавать себя вoрoм в закoне’ (to admit being a ‘vor’), ‘Не брать в руки oружия’ (not to take up arms/carry weapons), ‘Не заниматься пoлитическoй деятельнoстью’ (not to go into politics), ‘Не читать газет’ (not to read newspapers), ‘Не иметь семьи’ (not to have any family), ‘Держать пoрядoк в зoне’ (разбирать кoнфликты, не дoпускать ссoр, пoнoжoвщины) (to keep order in labour camps (sort out conflicts, as well as avoid quarrels and knife attacks)), ‘Не рабoтать ни при каких услoвиях’ (not to work under any conditions), ‘Не oбижать мужикoв’ (запрет oтнимать чтo бы тo ни былo у кoгo бы тo ни былo без oснoвания) (not to offend inmates (it is prohibited to deprive inmates of anything without reason)), ‘Не разбазаривать oбщак’ (неoбoснoванные траты сoвместных средств на избытoчные личные нужды) (not to overspend slush funds (avoid unjustified expenditures of slush funds on excessive personal needs)), ‘Пoддерживать Вoрoвскую Идею’ (to follow/support the ‘Vorovskaya Idea’), ‘Не красть у ближнегo’ (not to steal from the nearest), ‘Вoвремя платить дoлги’ (свoим) (pay debts on time (to the nearest)), ‘Не лгать в свoей среде’ (not to lie in one’s own community), ‘Не oбращаться к администрации мест лишения свoбoды за пoмoщью в разрешении внутренних кoнфликтoв’ (Not to ask the administration of penitentiary facilities for help in solution of internal conflicts), etc. (E. Zubkow 2019, pp. 61–85). At present, this level of hierarchical structure of aim-setting and decision-making in criminal activity is still considered as the ‘Thieves’ Law’ in all post-Soviet countries for the following reasons: the evidence from the times of the Russian Empire was destroyed, the evidence in the Soviet Era was tampered, the Soviet literature on the subject was manipulated, and the next generations of researchers just repeated these methodological errors uncritically. Without theoretical grounds, the law enforcement units’ officers cannot act other way to fight organized crime in practice—the rules are predetermined politically.

The Republic of Georgia was the first of the post-Soviet countries to impose severe punishment for belonging to ‘Zakon’, and in doing so, the law enforcement units and legislative authorities faced the problem of not knowing who exactly they were fighting against. The research conducted by the Georgia Office of American University’s Transnational Crime and Corruption Center stated that Lenin openly declared the need to raise funds in October, 1905, by committing criminal deeds of any kind and, together with Krasin and Bogdanov, organized a secret group called the ‘Bolshevik Centre’ to provide illegal financing of his fraction, keeping it secret even from the rest of the Party. The Centre coordinated the robberies of postal employees, railway ticket offices and trains, orchestrating their derailments throughout the Russian Empire and other countries, being particularly intense in the Caucasus. Stalin, Ordzhonikidze, Lomidze, Kamo, and many other criminals called themselves Bolsheviks without any ideological basis and, as participants who knew too much, were eliminated starting from 1922 (Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, pp. 16–21). The next generation of Soviet leaders—Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and other high-rank prominents—who were not criminals, had to continue the politically coloured ‘magic tale’ about the ‘appearing and disappearing thieves-in-law’ (despite the simple logic of the human lifespan and generation gaps), to invent ideological backgrounds for ‘the Bitch Wars’ instead of admitting deadly imprisonment conditions and a constant fight for power and resources among criminals under every political system.

Moreover, the fight against organized crime was voluntarized wavelike in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—it was announced that there was no organized crime in the USSR. In the Criminal Code of the USSR and in the Criminal Codes of particular Soviet Republics, as well as in departmental paper reports, terms like ‘вoр в закoне’ (‘thief-in-law’), ‘угoлoвнo——бандитствующий элемент’ (recidivist bandit element), and ‘бандфoрмирoвание’ (armed gang formation) were eliminated. The term ‘oрганизoванная преступная группа’ (organized criminal group) existed in the Criminal Codes, but it was not defined precisely. In prisons and detention facilities, the old term ‘лагерный бандитизм’ (gangs in labour camps) disappeared. For the law enforcement units’ officers, investigating officers, and prosecutors, it was more convenient and safe to use the term ‘пo предварительнoму сгoвoру группoй лиц’ (acting by prior conspiracy by a group of persons) to avoid internal investigations that usually ended with dismissal or termination of service. Similar articles of the Criminal Codes with less political resonance, such as robbery and armed robbery, were applied, and in prisons and detention facilities, local disciplinary measures included long-term solitary confinement in special cells (Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, pp. 29–31). All these should have been reflected in theoretical works devoted to ‘vory’ in the Soviet era and later, which were based on hypocritical official reports and artefacts. It may also explain the problems with the practical implementation of the amended Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (holding the highest position in criminal hierarchy/being ‘vor v zakonie’) at present.

The law enforcement units’ officers, investigating officers, and prosecutors in the Russian Federation can act the same way as in the Soviet era, trying to prove particular criminal deeds that are well defined by the Criminal Code and leaving alone ‘being vor v zakonie’ of a suspect, whereas the Federal Penitentiary Service officers cannot longer apply ‘local disciplinary measures’ (long-term solitary confinements, etc.). They started their own research in prisons and detention facilities to profile ‘vory’. In 2022, the following was stated: ‘Based on the conducted sociological research, the author comes to the conclusion that the employees of the Russian penal system do not have unambiguous moral criteria for evaluating the activities of this category of criminals in places of liberty deprivation. This, in turn, leads to the fact that there is no unified strategy for countering this criminal phenomenon in places of detention’ (Kutyakin 2022, with the original text in the Abstract). The penitentiary research was based on ‘an analysis of scientific papers’ and a survey among the federal penitentiary service officers. However, it was mentioned that 33% of the surveyed officers had never seen such a ‘category of convicts’, whereas 67.0% of the respondents had seen not more than four ‘vory v zakonie’ during their entire service. In 2024, the research was repeated as the ‘All-Russian penitentiary research’ to ‘shape a criminological portrait of a ‘vor v zakonie today’, which was conducted among 1110 operations officers in 69 penitentiary facilities (see Morozov 2024). One of the main research aims was the verification of the relevance and reliability of information about the ‘vory v zakonie’ in the scientific sources of various periods and the validity of the court’s argumentations. For this purpose, mostly young operations officers with a short service period in ‘law enforcement units fighting against organized crime/leaders of criminal environment’ were chosen: with less than three years of service—582 respondents (52.432%); from three to five years—210 respondents (18.9189%); from five to ten years—159 respondents (14.324%); and over ten years—86 respondents (7.7477%). Within the framework of this method, the respondents were asked to select a true statement from the statements about the sets of behaviour models attributed to ‘vory v zakonie’ during various periods of their existence (Soviet and post-Soviet periods). The survey was conducted among operations officers only for the following reasons: (1) the Main Operational Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation banned the survey among the convicts and detained; (2) there is no clear definition of a ‘vor v zakonie’ because such cliché is of criminological, and not criminal, nature; (3) the criminals are interested in distorting and presenting false information about the traditions and the rules of conduct because they are aware of the importance of such information, which could subsequently serve as empirical evidence for ‘the conviction under Part 4 of Article 210 and Article 2101 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation’.

Leaving alone the fact that the existence of such surveys undermines the validity of knowledge about the ‘vory’ and ‘Vorovskoy Zakon’, which was acquired in the Soviet era and was steadily repeated in contemporary scientific literature, it should be stated that the results were very similar to those obtained in 2022. It was determined that some hypotheses about the norms of criminal subculture and rules of conduct, as well as the requirements for ‘a person with the highest criminal status’, were confirmed as valid, but some were refuted as having lost their significance (Morozov 2024). Therefore, it should be concluded that the discussed artefacts considered as ‘Vorovskoy Zakon’ in the Soviet and post-Soviet scientific literature (presented above as the fourth level of the hierarchical structure of aim setting and decision-making) should be the ‘Vory’s Commandments’ and ‘Frames’, as it was suggested earlier (E. Zubkow 2017; 2019, pp. 11–85). According to the All-Russian penitentiary research, the ‘reliable attributes’ of a ‘vor’ are: (1) a tattoo (only one third of officers consider it necessary) in the form of an eight-pointed (839, or 75.586%) or six-pointed (427, or 39.369%) star, an epaulette with a cross and tassels (221, or 19.91%), braided epaulettes (189, or 17.027%), and a skull pierced by a sword with a snake wrapped around it in a crown and a rose (166, or 14.955%); (2) the procedure of assigning the title of a ‘vor v zakonie’ (‘кoрoнация’ and‘крещение’/‘coronation’ and ‘baptism’) (1026 or 92.432%); (3) the function of preserving and promoting criminal customs and traditions of ‘vory’ along with their values in society (588, or 52.973%); (4) the recognition of criminal status of a ‘vor’ by other criminal community (610, or 54.955%) (Morozov 2024). There were some interesting points of religious nature that were only highlighted but not discussed in the conducted survey (‘кoрoнация’, ‘крещение’/‘coronation’, ‘baptism’), to which we return further.

The Federal Penitentiary Service officers are criticized by their former professors. Recalling three examples from his own scientific-pedagogical practice at specialized higher education institutions of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, a leading Russian expert in criminal psychiatry, professor B. A. Spasennikov, points to ‘significant defects of outlook in the field of literacy and erudition in the classics of Russian and world literature and cinema’ of third-year cadets as future forensic psychologists and ‘not knowing the history of the domestic penal system, the history of the domestic state and law, the ‘Bitch War’, the tragic pages of the history of their country’ by research fellows of one of the institutions of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, Ph. D.s in legal sciences, and officers with the rank of senior lieutenant to captain of the internal service (Spasennikov 2025). The leading expert in criminal psychiatry appeals that, between the generation of teachers and scientists educated in the 1960s-80s and those educated in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, there is a deep cultural gap that ‘precludes the continuity of Soviet pedagogical and scientific traditions, knowledge, and experience’, and could have a detrimental effect on Russian higher education and Russian humanities (Spasennikov 2025).

Aside from the objectivity or subjectivity of these statements (institutions were not mentioned), the author of this research agrees in totality with B. A. Spasennikov—the literary sources of every kind, either classics, available private documents, or Soviet official criminal reports, etc., should be taken into account and analyzed carefully without hypocrisy. Such analysis should imply that these sources do not convey established facts a priori but are the sources of information to extract facts. For example, it was reported that there are special rituals characteristic of Caucasian ‘vory’. According to the Armenian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the ‘vory’ living in the republic have a custom of installing drinking fountains near the home of a deceased ‘vor’. These fountains are typically made of black marble, with the deceased’s name carved into them. The deceased ‘vory’ in the Caucasus often have monuments on the graves, depicting them full-length: even after death, a ‘vor’ must stand with his head held high. Only the name is carved on the tombstone, without the dates of birth and death, thus ‘emphasizing the eternity’ of the ‘vor’. Moreover, it was suggested that a deceased ‘vor’ can be deprived of the title even after death (in detail see Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, p. 81).

It is evident that such rituals cannot be prosecuted under the Criminal Code of any post-Soviet republic; the ‘afterlife’ deprivation of ‘title’ (Damnatio memoriae) was not even taken into account in the All-Russian penitentiary research, as well as ‘standing head held high in the eternity’. On the contrary, it correlates with the reported results (J. Zubkow 2025) and can be easily explained by the reported ideas (giving water to people under the banner of social and divine justice and the memory of soul in the endless time being awoken after reincarnation by a brother-soul) along with the strange sequence of the ritual ‘кoрoнация’—‘крещение’ (‘coronation’—‘baptism’) in the All-Russian penitentiary research (which implies Uwaisi as the communication with the dead with further introduction into religious doctrine, or the Coronation and following Baptism of Jesus Christ). From the point of strictly linguistic research, the existence of some beliefs can be confirmed by argot words that look strange only at first glance: ‘Амен (ин)—мы (местoим.)’ (Amen (foreign)—we (pronoun)) (Baldaev 1997, p. 17). The use of the personal pronoun ‘we’ implies the semantic connections with an old Semitic root ʾ-m-n as ‘firm, trustworthy, reliable’, not a solemn affirmation ‘So be it’. The analysis of related argot words is presented in the last part of this research. Summing up the discussion about the fourth level of hierarchical structure of aim setting and decision-making, which is still considered ‘Vorovskoy Zakon’ on the basis of the tampered evidence from the Soviet era and manipulated Soviet literature, it should be suggested that the criminal ideology can be connected with religion.

In the Republic of Poland, the penitentiary system officers do not face such problems predetermined politically. In the research presenting the material collected by both authors during their incarcerations along with that theoretical in their publications, it is stated that, during the Soviet Era in the Polish People’s Republic and later in the Republic of Poland, the aims of criminal activity, the criminal code of conduct, the ways of organization of criminals, their influence on the society, and the penitentiary system itself changed dramatically: ‘the communist prison system was repressive and focused on retribution’ being predetermined politically whereas at present it is aimed at true and effective resocialization (Kamiński and Miszewski 2025). The ‘Mustache Petes’, even if there are some, are marginalized. In addition, the majority of inmates (even those severely sentenced up to 25 years) position themselves as believers, and such religiosity asserts a positive influence on them, but no less important are ‘finding meaning in life, hope, consolation, and many others that faith offers’ (Miałkowska-Kozaryna and Miszewski 2024, pp. 102, 104).

The lack of tampering evidence that was predetermined politically and the positive effect of religion in the life of criminals, especially under the conditions of imprisonment, were proved by ‘an anonymous survey of 2249 inmates at America’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary (a.k.a. Angola)’ (Jang et al. 2018, p. 332). It was ascertained that ‘the distribution of God-images (the researchers applied the model ‘Four images of God: Authoritative Benevolent Critical Distant God & No God’) among inmates was the same as that in national samples in terms of rank order. […] inmates with an image of an engaged God tended to report lower levels of legal cynicism and sense of illegitimacy of punishment and higher levels of collective efficacy, existential belief, and moral responsibility than those with images of a disengaged God or no God’ (Jang et al. 2018, p. 331). The legal cynicism was regarded as as follows: ‘(1) there are right and wrong ways to make money, (2) a person has to live for today, and (3) laws are made to be broken, whereas perceived illegitimacy of punishment whether inmates believe they are doing more time than deserved or serving time for a crime they did not commit’ (Jang et al. 2018, p. 337). The author of this paper strongly agrees with the statement that the ‘opportunity for religious practice and expression may serve a powerful public good […] especially when combined with the image of an engaged God of any religion’ (Jang et al. 2018, p. 356), but with some reservations.

There existed a major world religion called Manichaism that intended to integrate and surpass the ‘partial truths’ of previous religions, spreading very quickly through Aramaic-speaking regions (i.e., the language was important as a carrier of information at the initial stage). The focal point of Manichaism, adopted, subsequently, by numerous doctrines, was the idea of the universal character of true religion, which passes through hidden and revealed stages, considering earthly things as evil and striving for the liberation of the soul from the body. Contrary to other major world religions, or, for example, contemporary open theism, such negation was aimed at the final extermination of mankind by considering what all people naturally desire—family, children, earthly blessings and joys—as Evil. There is no need to prove that Manichaism was a dark antisystem that substituted the Good and the Evil. However, it should be proved that ‘Zakon’, being rather a light antisystem, focuses on material things, earthly blessings and joys, offering the belief in return to this world with better chances and retained personality. Nevertheless, there is one focal point that, going beyond the ‘magic tale’, sounds horrifying—to turn back Time and make the past as if it never happened for a Chosen in reality, as discussed below.

3. The Discrete Antisystem by L. N. Gumilev

The antisystem and its embodiments in social movements found their reflection in publications of a wide range of scientists. In this regard, the ideas proposed by Wallerstein (1976) are of greatest interest since the world system is considered a social system whose life as an organism is made up of conflicting forces. The life-span of such an organism changes in some aspects and remains stable in others: boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence (Wallerstein 1976, p. 229). Focusing on antisystemic movements in the light of the three modern ideologies (conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism) from the historical–sociological perspective (the second half of the nineteenth century), Wallerstein pointed to the two main types of such—social and nationalist movements along with ‘less strong’ ones such as women’s movements and ethno/racial/religious movements just because they tried to establish a more democratic and more egalitarian system than that existing (Wallerstein 2014, p. 160). From the perspective of a social organism and its changes in the light of geopolitics, there can be discussions about the differences in the ideas proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein and Lev N. Gumilev. According to Gumilev, the distortions of biocenoses/conversions arise only during ethnic contacts at the super-ethnic level, when a ‘chimera’ (Wallerstein’s antisystemic movements) appears as a weak point in the ethnosphere (Wallerstein’s social organism with a historically extended lifespan predetermined by changing geographical conditions and ethnic contacts), like something unnatural, but the ‘chimera’ is only a pretext for its creation (Gumilev [1989] 2016, p. 526).

The most interesting are ‘the ancient debate of determinism versus free will’ to be exercised in a predictable manner, the omnipotence of God, and the choice of an individual (Wallerstein 1997). L. N. Gumilev restricted the ‘free will’ to ‘пoлoса свoбoды’ (a strip of freedom) predetermined by birth, breeding, and abilities. Within such strip of freedom, the salvation of the soul is the repentance, or more precisely, independent rethinking of one’s actions and their motivations (‘спасение души—пoкаяние, тoчнее самoстoятельнoе передумывание свoих пoступкoв и их мoтвации’), Ein Sof is treated as Infinite and Boundless Nothing, a vacuum that absorbs photons, whereas the Death as a fact is a familiar phenomenon that cannot make one renounce the joy of victory, endure an insult, or sacrifice the principles (Gumilev 1989, pp. 244–45). Similarly to Wallerstein, Gumilev considered liberalism (rather libertarianism) and radicalism as antisystems, properly ‘rigid’ antisystems made up by those who were moulded in philosophical societies and academies, in Masonic lodges, clubs and sections, disgusted at all roots with the nation, faith, honour, loyalty, pride in one’s history, attachment to the customs of own country. Being mentally and spiritually ‘cut off’ from the people, they consider the nation just as some material for technical treatment (Gumilev 1989, p. 249).

The main characteristic of a ‘rigid antisystem’ is the subordination of a particular ‘anthropogenic landscape’ (i.e., geographical area shaped culturally and politically) by armed force, which is uncharacteristic of the discussed discrete antisystem. The history of mankind has seen numerous examples of ‘rigid’ antisystems when a group of people with a ‘shared historical destiny’ (‘consortium’ in Gumilev’s terms) openly opposed themselves to state formations (systems) in military actions, and in case of success, became a system themselves. If a ‘consortium’ does not disintegrate and persists for several generations, not being a system, it becomes a ‘convixion’, i.e., a group of people with a similar way of life and family ties. Later, such ‘convixion’ transforms into an ethnic group (sub-ethnos or ethnos), retaining or not the characteristics of an antisystem (see Gumilev [1989] 2016, pp. 108–9, 135).

The first and main distinction of the discussed antisystem is not the subordination of the ‘anthropogenic landscape’ in military actions, but adaptation to it by the use of ideas of other antisystems. The second distinction is a professional involvement in the activity considered criminal with respect to law and widely accepted ethics and religion grounded in such ideas. These ideas are taken from old religious codices (unavailable in original form) and interpreted on the basis of the intentionality of consciousness, which distorts the ethnic ‘dominanta’ (the set of mental models characteristic of a particular ethnic system) of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. However, as Gumilev noted, the relations in a system can be both positive and negative (Gumilev [1989] 2016, p. 98), and these relations can transit into each other, i.e., change from positive to negative, even throughout a human life. For example, the French or the October revolutions made being of noble birth or wealthy dangerous for an individual. Such changes in relations (social, religious, ideological, political, etc.) influence the code of conduct of the adepts of antisystems with respect to an individual’s lifespan, but for the antisystem as a whole, such changes are only fluctuations since the modern society is rooted in its historical development very deeply.

The changes in relations reflect themselves in sources of various kinds, and instead of historical truth, the sources convey the imagination of the compilers about the historical truth. As Gumilev himself notes, the authors of the sources ‘without hesitation distort the facts. […] they describe not reality but an ideal, which they consider indisputable each time’ (Gumilev [1989] 2016, pp. 129–30). The ‘source information’ is treated by Gumilev not as ‘a source of information’ but as ‘a fact to be examined critically’ (Gumilev [1989] 2016, p. 98), i.e., the ‘source information’ itself is a fact but does not always reflect facts. The problem of reflecting facts or non-facts of the material or spiritual world is resolved by Gumilev on the basis of own model, deprived of scruples.

It is necessary to distinguish between the text and the sense because the cognitive meaning of the text, being abstracted and stored in memory, turns into a field of knowledge, into the mental space of cognitive structure of consciousness–memory, and people do not remember how such knowledge was obtained (Leshchak 1996, p. 309). The distinction between the text and the sense, the plane of expression and the plane of content, is caused not only by the lack of possibility to determine the source of knowledge, but also by the affectivity of perception of the text (Zaika 2006, pp. 305–6). Even for researchers during scientific work, such affectivity may be rooted in transcendental intuition, traces of mental processes recorded in the cerebral cortex, striving not to forget something essential, ‘tenure anxiety’, unfulfilled dreams, and many other reasons a person is not aware of (Goldstein 2006).

However, all of the above is not fully comprehensive—the author of this paper himself should confess that the reported results and presented discussion would not have appeared before the end of 2025. The report by the Georgia Office of American University’s Transnational Crime and Corruption Center and the surveys conducted by the Federal Penitentiary Service officers in 2022 and 2024 made it possible to avoid a useless discussion ‘against artefacts’ and to suggest that the mental models judged as ‘Zakon’ must be the ‘Frames’ and the ‘Vory Commandments’. To say that it was only the point of Time would be incorrect—the divine encounter revealed itself also in the connections between Al-Khidr, Elijah, Perun, and ‘Magic Tale’ established by the researcher who does not study the ideology of organized crime (see J. Zubkow 2025), what gives grounds for discerning a Higher Will, Providence, Concursus Dei, or just a Free Will when ‘God can unilaterally intervene in earthly affairs and does so at times’ on the path of goodness (Basinger 1996, p. 12). Therefore, Time, or, properly, the feeling of Time, should be connected with God’s intervention.

Lev Gumilev proposed the four types of the feeling of Time for ethnic entities, stating that no one knows what Time is, although people can measure it (Gumilev [1989] 2016, p. 92). In linear counting, Time begins from an agreed conditional date (the foundation of Rome, the Creation of the World, the Birth of Christ, the Hijra, etc.), and people distinguish between day and night, seasons, dates of one’s own life, weekly and monthly cycles. With the accumulation of knowledge and in connection with the history of their own ethnos and that of neighbouring countries, people’s consciousness begins the quantization of Time: it is divided into eras that are unequal in duration but equal in intensity of events. Then Time comes into contact with the category of Force and makes people feel themselves the continuers of the line of ancestors and its integral part (‘passeism’); the past has not gone away, and every minute is perceived as an increment to the existing past (Gumilev [1989] 2016, pp. 92–94). In ethnic history, ‘actualism’ is the next stage, when people feel the line of ancestors but do not want to know the future and live for themselves. The third type of the feeling of Time (‘futurism’) implies the ignorance of the past and the present for the sake of the future. The past is rejected as vanished, the present as unacceptable, only a dream is recognized as real (Gumilev [1989] 2016, pp. 94–95). The futuristic feeling of Time is dangerous only in ‘high and pure concentrations’ because it leads to the disintegration of ethnic entities and their disappearance, or transits into ‘actualism’ as a dream is declared ‘achieved’. The fourth type of the feeling of Time is based on the total ignorance of Time because it does not bring any benefit or use to everyday activities (Gumilev [1989] 2016, pp. 96–97).

Proposing these four feelings of Time for ethnic entities and suggesting the ‘futuristic’ feeling of Time as dangerous and, to some extent, antisystemic for Plato’s idealism in Hellas, Jewish Chiliasm in the Roman Empire, Manichaism, Carmatians and Ismailis, and Taoist scholars in Later Han (Gumilev [1989] 2016, pp. 95–97), Gumilev, in his later work, only touches on the fifth feeling of Time, calling the passage ‘вставная нoвелла’ (inserted novella) when he discussed the history of the Great Eurasian Steppe in Chapter ‘Empirical Generalization’ (Gumilev 1989, pp. 592–95). The passage follows after the statement that ‘only Life can overcome Time’ (or ‘Life and Art can overcome Time’, and ‘Death is blessing’ as in the manuscript From the History of Eurasia, published after his death in Gumilev 1993, see p. 131), which has little in common with the plot of the main narration. Here, Gumilev tells a story about an apocryphon written in Uyghur Arabic alphabet in an unknown language, with a separate card containing a translation into Russian and some remarks made before 1917 attached to it. Gumilev claims to have found it in 1949 during his work in the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR (earlier the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum, founded in 1895, now the Russian Museum of Ethnography) and to have made a copy of the translation by hand. After his return to Leningrad in 1956, the apocryphon disappeared, which makes this history just a novel. According to Gumilev, an unknown translator interpreted an old text (probably from III to XVI CE) in 12 points. For the purposes of this paper, only the following points are essential: (1) God, who created the world, is a Person, but not the Absolute. (2) God, having created space outside of Himself, limited Himself, because He is outside the space He created. Therefore, God is not omnipresent. (3) By creating Time, an independent phenomenon, God limited Himself, since He cannot make the past as though it had never happened. Therefore, he is not omnipotent. (11) Those people, animals, and demons who, by free will, accepted Satan’s temptations, are turned into the undead and lose the highest blessings, death and resurrection, since he who does not live can neither die nor be resurrected. Gumilev considers such views as a combination of Tibetan ‘yellow faith’ with early Byzantine Nestorian reminiscences and eastern variants of Mithraism, ‘unknown in the history of Central Asia, although it is logical and original’ (Gumilev 1989, pp. 594–95). The author of this research suggests that there could be a self-story of Gumilev’s, with his desires and hopes influencing this inserted novella: God as a personified Absolute is omnipresent and omnipotent, can make the past as though it had never happened, and make one die and resurrect. For Gumilev personally, such desires and hopes for a restart would be logical after having spent the prime 15 years of his life in the Soviet labour camps. The traces of perception of turning back Time can be found in the Old Testament, early Christianity, and Islam, as the suggested fifth feeling of Time is to be considered the discrete antisystem—mastering Time (and thus Death) by the memory of soul in endless Time, being awoken after reincarnation by a brother-soul, is possible by making the past as though it had never happened, or simply knowing the future.

The new era in penalization was started round 1760 and it still lasts—the most brutal public punishments were substituted by the punishment of soul: ‘less cruelty, less suffering, more gentleness, more respect, more humanitarianism’ were accompanied by a shift in the very object of punitive operations, instead of death—the life sentence avoids recidivism according to Beccaria’s paradox (Foucault [1975] 2020, pp. 11–19, 92). It can be suggested that the fifth feeling of Time was a sufficient countermeasure offered by the antisystem to resist the punishment by Time from the system. The values present in the mass consciousness/collective pictures of the world as the result of generalized knowledge and experience are also the content of individual human experiences and motivation for people’s actions to be adopted and shared, but at the same time, they modify them, (co)create them, abuse them, or rebel against them (Yudin 2013). It can be logically expected that a man of success would rather not benefit from making the past as if it never happened, but logical solutions do not always come first in decision-making. The fifth feeling of Time can offer mental escape and hope for the best in cases when physical escape is impossible.

Returning to Gumilev’s views and works of his, in order to follow the thesis about hidden desires and hopes to make past as never happened as well as to find a probable location of the place to meet Al-Khidr, the two works focusing on Tibet should be discussed, which stay aside from his scientific output and look like ‘inserted novellas’: ‘Страна Шамбала в легенде и истoрии’, 1968 (The Land of Shambhala in Legend and History), and, in co-authorship with B. I. Kuznetsov, ‘Две традиции древнетибетскoй картoграфии (ландшафт и этнoс. VIII)’, 1969 (The Two Traditions of Ancient Tibetan Cartography (landscape and ethnos. VIII)) (Gumilev 1993, pp. 431–57). ‘Величие и падение древнегo Тибета’, 1969 (The Rise and Fall of Ancient Tibet), stays rather within the scope of his permanent scientific interests (see Gumilev 1993, pp. 387–431), but it will be referred to for comparison.

The word ‘Шамбала’ is etymologized by Gumilev as ‘Гoспoдствo Сирии’ (Syria’s dominance) and the utopia as an ‘embodiment of merry and riotous life’ for the wild highlanders that was brought by Syrian merchants to Tibet during the time of the Seleucid monarchy, having nothing in common with the ‘supernatural dark forces demanding human sacrifice’ (The Land of Shambhala in Legend and History, 1968, see Gumilev 1993, p. 434). According to Gumilev, the ancient Mithraism with its accompanying magical practices was brought to Tibet from Elam by the teacher Shenrab, who escaped from the reforms of Xerxes, and made ‘the warlike highlanders prefer the optimistic religion of deified nature, fidelity to the word, self-sacrifice, and love for this world to incomprehensible philosophy’ (Gumilev 1993, p. 435). However, it was not explained in detail how such an ‘optimistic religion’ transformed into early Black Bon with human sacrifices, which made highlanders kill each other at mass scale in civil wars. In another work, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Tibet, 1969, even more inexplicable seems the mentioning of the teacher ‘Shenrabmibo’ who, in the land of Shanshun (Gilgit), preached a new religion, in which the main deity was called the All-Good, and his wife acted either as the angry Glorious Queen of the Three Worlds or the gentle Great Mother of Mercy and Love. The principal Goddess resembles here Parvati, both Uma and Kali, and hence, the All-Good should be Shiva. It should be concluded that in the two works very close to each other—1968 and 1969, Gumilev meant at least two Shenrabs, the first ‘Shenrab’ and a later ‘Shenrabmibo’, implying for Black Bon the blending or syncretism of ancient Mithraism with Shivaism to be later reformed by the teacher Padmasambhava from Oddiyana with its cults of female deities, such as Dakini (Gumilev 1993, p. 417).

In this connection, it is essential to recall Gumilev’s own words about the value of traditional information, passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, along with the statement that ancient Tibetan books contain quite reliable information about ancient countries and peoples (Gumilev 1993, p. 436). The most valuable seem to focus on a Tibetan map analyzed by L. N. Gumilev and a leading Soviet Tibetologist, B. I. Kuznetsov. The scientists mention ‘Хoдящие пo небу крадут людей’ (sky-goers steal people) for both Ionia and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, whereas Egypt is called ‘Страна демoнoв, крадущих людей’ (the land of demons stealing people) in the map (Gumilev 1993, pp. 441–42). The scientists explained the coincidence of toponyms ‘Sky-goers steal people’ for the two distant countries by Greek slavery-trading raids that were based on the fortresses in high mountains for the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the transfer of endoethnonym from Ionia. Next, after a visible space in the book (and probably in the manuscript), after ‘еcть тoлькo закoдирoванная инфoрмация’ (there is only encoded/encrypted information) (Gumilev 1993, p. 445), the ancient map was compared to other later sources to establish the earliest date. The Greco–Bactrian Kingdom was interpreted as ‘Страна, в кoтoрoй (люди, сильные как бoги), крадут людей’ (The land where (people strong as Gods) steal people) and ‘Страна, пoкoряющая хoдящих (т.е. людей)’ (The land which conquers the going (i.e., people)) (Gumilev 1993, p. 449), without mentioning such scrupulousness as Ionia because it would destroy the whole construct. It can be suggested that such changes in toponymics can be connected with changes in the cult of Dakini in Tibet, from the demonesses stealing people and eating their flesh and vital essence to the goddesses in Tantric literature. This suggestion may explain how Black Bon transformed from ancient Mithraism. The most useful is the connection of Ionia with Tibet as well as the date of this connection—Gumilev and Kuznetsov dated back the map to the earliest known date, III-II centuries BCE (Gumilev 1993, p. 442), because no Roman influence and geographical knowledge was observed, according to them, but rather, early Parthian. Therefore, no direct Roman influence should be expected because of the ever-lasting wars between the Roman Empire (and later the Eastern Roman Empire) and the Parthian Empire (and later the Sasanian Empire), and there were no direct contacts between the Romans and the Indo-Parthian Kingdom. Despite the statements that the Tibetan geographers as well as Medieval Arabic ones treated geography both theoretically and practically, ‘ancient outdated information about the world coexisted peacefully with the latest’ (Gumilev 1993, p. 444), Gumilev and Kuznetsov strive to date the analyzed map to III-II centuries BCE, stating that another Tibetan map discussed by Snellgrove D.I. in The Nine Ways of Bon, London, Oxford University Press, 1967, was conducted later (Gumilev 1993, p. 452). Gumilev himself stated that the books of Bon were written in ‘Тагзиг’, i.e., ‘Tadjik’ language (the meaning is unclear), and thus, the Tibetan map analyzed by L. N. Gumilev and B. I. Kuznetsov may have been drawn after the Muslim conquest of Central Asia, not earlier than 8th century CE (rather much later), and contains information historically distinct in Time. The maps of this type make one look for implications and subtexts to find hidden sense, being driven by the will to believe.

The earlier Christian legend about the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus from Ionia, as the first in Christian tradition with respect to mastering Time, dates back to the times of Emperor Decius and cannot be directly connected either to Tibet or the non-existent ‘magic land of Shambala’. On the other hand, from historical perspective, other cults and rituals connected with mastering Time (and thus Death) may have been brought by the Greeks (including Ionians) and the Macedonians during the conquests of Alexander the Great, for example the cult of Ma, the Cave of Pan, Cronos, etc. and later mixed with the existing local cults on the basis of similar rites and beliefs. It should be expected that the origin of the legend about a Magic Cave, the Fountain of Life, immortality, and mastering Time in Tibet dates back to the times of Alexander the Great, and fits together with the Achaemenid heritage.

The most prominent example of Achaemenid heritage containing the elements of the fifth feeling of Time, which influenced the early Christianity, is the Epilogue of Bīsotūn, and ‘the very fact that this text was found stored in Judea, in Qumran, among texts that are mostly biblical, biblical-related, or sectarian testifies to its wide-ranging popularity up to the very end of the first millennium BCE, at least. It serves as a testament to the long and varied impact of the Darius kerygma’ (Barnea 2025). Thus, it can be expected that some motives and ideas about the discussed fifth feeling of Time may have been adopted earlier by Christian tradition and influenced the appearance of the Legend about the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The representation of Darius contains a crown with the belief of ‘eight-pointed stars of Shamash’, symbolizing cosmos, and God (Mesopotamian Shamash) extends his hand with the ring to the Zoroastrian monarch to give him the ‘God-blessed’ power. The most interesting is ‘the Darius’ kerygma’, with its ‘you effect’, with ’you’ in the sense of ‘I’, whereas in later paraphrases, ‘the Darius’ kerygma’ takes plural forms (see Barnea 2025). According to Gumilev’s classification, the linear feeling of Time was distorted and substituted by the use of Damnatio memoriae; the past was made as if it had never happened by the usurper, who took power from the heir of the previous usurper, Cyrus the Great. Such distorted linear feeling, combined with that ‘futuristic’ one by mastering Time, established a new history for centuries, and ’You’ in the sense of ‘I’ transited into ‘We’, ʾ-m-n, ‘Amen’.

4. The Tomb of Jesus, the Magic Tale, and Free Will

Having only touched on the fifth feeling of Time, Gumilev restricted himself to the understanding of the discrete antisystem as a negative worldview when a man, not telling the difference between the truth and lie, involves himself in the world of phantasmagoria and spells (see Gumilev [1989] 2016, p. 504). A statement that sounded insane at first glance should be mentioned: ‘We vory are older than Moses, Christ, and Muhammad together’. This statement was connected to Al-Khidr, Elijah, and Perun in folk etymologies, and the influence of Sufis on the ideological sphere of ‘vory’ (see J. Zubkow 2025).

In the 18th Sura of Quran ‘Ashab al-Kahf’, an earlier Meccan Sura (revealed before Hijrah to Medina), there is a mention of the Cave Sleepers in 18:9–26, verses interpreted as 300 solar years and 9 human years that ‘has significant parallels in earlier Christian traditions as ‘The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,’ with versions documented in Syriac, Greek, Latin, and other languages dating to the fifth-sixth centuries CE’, and distinct cave locations were suggested as the authentic one (Dhahbi et al. 2025, p. 217). The Sura also shares how Moses and Al-Khidr met, and that Time is the creation of God and thus can be modified. For the purposes of this research, some details of Quranic narratives are of special interest: ‘Musa was going with his servant for a journey to find the majma’ al-bahrayn, the meeting of the two oceans. But once they reached the place, they realised they had forgotten the dried fish they were taking with them’ (Boivin and Pénicaud 2023, p. 5).

In the Old Testament and Christianity, mastering Time by turning back Time is prevalent, leaving behind the knowing of the future, as Prophets did, for example, Isaiah’s prophecy about the ‘Virgin and Child’ (Isaiah 7:14–16) and making the Sun step back. Here, only the points of how distant the future was meant to be and who the prophecy pertains to still remain the subject of discussion: Emmanuel, according to the Jewish theologians, or Jesus, according to the Christian ones, or maybe both (Yakim 2017). Al-Khidr became a ‘paradigm for the possibility of sainthood’ (Halman 2013, p. 13), but there were other possibilities of mastering Time (and thus Death) without being a Saint—for example, in Nizami’s version Alexander the Great on his way to Rum visits the Land of Darkness searching for the Fountain of Life guided by Al-Khidr: ‘Consequently, from the earliest times, Khidr/Khizr is a figure who is conducive to being incorporated to an array of traditions’ (Boivin and Pénicaud 2023, pp. 6–7).

Slavic fairy tales that, following the hypothesis by V. Propp, reflect ancient rites and traditions ‘present in all human cultures, dating back to the earliest stages of civilisation’, ‘the main characters, heroes, and heroines can always access immortality with the help of a magic helper or of a magic object after having overcome a rite of passage related to the ancient funerary rites’ (Santos Marinas 2025). It is believed that the dead return to this world on specific dates and according to specific rites, especially during a pre-Christian festival called ‘Radunica’ that was condemned by clergymen in 14th century sermons (Santos Marinas 2014, pp. 131–44). In Slavic folklore, beggars were considered fortune-bearers who played a special role in All Souls’ Day rituals on the second of November on the territories with the domination of the Catholic Church and Radonitsa on the second Tuesday of Pascha/Easter or on Monday/Tuesday after St. Thomas Sunday, also called ‘Antipascha’. In folk imagination, such beggars called ‘dziady’/‘деды’ were perceived as mediators who could link this world with the world of the dead, and were asked to pray for the souls of ancestors or even call their spirits those days. For their service, they were offered food or money. Some of them were stealing and frauding, nevertheless the ‘sacral theft’ (‘oбычай завoрoвывания’) and connected premonition were etched in folk mentality: it was believed that a successful theft ‘at night before the Feast of Annunciation’ (‘в нoчь перед Благoвещеньем’) allowed further stealing the whole year and overall welfare, but most peasants returned the neighbours’ stolen things next morning. The other three nights to steal were before the Feats of Holy Blessed Princes Boris and Gleb (‘нoчь на Бoриса и Глеба’) (Chalidze 1977, pp. 16–17), the first Saints (baptized as Roman and David) canonized in Kievan Rus after its Christianization.

In the contemporary Polish argot, no connections with these old rituals were found in special dictionaries, maybe because of the poetic masterpiece by Adam Mickiewicz and the inclusion of poetic drama into the school programme. In the Russian argot, such connections with the dead can be traced on the basis of semantic attraction, for example: ‘Дед’—a hundred-rubel banknote depicting Lenin; ‘Де (дэ)’—a closed master key to open the internal lock; ‘Дедер’—dickens, devil, or evil spirit (Baldaev 1997, pp. 105–6). Moreover, the nicknames of prominent Polish and Russian criminals may also point to the influence of old rituals and the belief in some kind of ideological continuity with the dead: a highly positioned Polish criminal H. N. called himself ‘Dziad’, whereas a Russian ‘vor’ A. U.—‘Дед Хасан’. A. U. was a Yazid, and Hasan was the name of the thief who accompanied the prince in the movie The Thief of Baghdad, 1978, which implies the adaptation of the Islamic version mentioned above about Musa (Moses) and his servant encountering Al-Khidr where ‘two oceans meet’.

In the Western European (non-Slavic) folk culture, we can also find such fortune-tellers, sometimes being paid or just begging, stealing, and frauding: they are beggars or adventurers who come from the Venus Grotto (‘Fraw Venus berg’ in Liber Vagatorum 1510), know black magic, and are called ‘wandering scholars’ (see Larin 1931). Naturally, Hörselberg in Germany was too close even then to look for a magic cave where Time (and thus Death) can be mastered. The ways these fortune-telling beggars deceived people were reported as follows.

They wander about in the country and carry with them pictures of devils, repair to churches, and pretend they had been to Rome, to Saint James, and other distant places, witnessing great signs and wonders that had taken place, but it is all lies and deception (Hotten 1860, pp. 28–29, 71–72).

These are women who say they are baptized Jewesses and have turned Christian, and can tell people whether their fathers or mothers are in hell or not, and beg for gowns and dresses among other things, and also have false letters and seals. They are called Veranerins (Hotten 1860, pp. 39, 82).

These are beggars who wear signs on their hats, especially Roman veronicas, fells, and other tokens, which they fell to each other, in order that it shall be thought they have been in distant cities and foreign parts. For this reason, they wear these signs, although they have never come thence, and they deceive people thereby. They are called Calmierers (Hotten 1860, pp. 40, 83).

There are also some who borrow children upon All Souls’ or other Feast Day, and sit down before the churches, as though they had many children, and they say ‘these children are ‘motherless’ or ‘fatherless’’, but it is not true. This is done in order that people may give to them the more willingly for the sake of Adone (God) (Hotten 1860, pp. 43–44, 85–86).

At present, it is difficult to distinguish which exactly rituals and ‘magic tales’ were borrowed into the Polish and Russian folklore traditions from that Western non-Slavic cultural space for many reasons; here, further research is needed. For folklore records, there appear to be many problems of onomastics (Kosmeda et al. 2021) and how the researchers ‘only intuitively outline the boundaries of phrasemes, provisionally generalize their shapes, record multi-word phrases according to non-uniform patterns, and use various techniques for presenting meanings’ (Mędelska and Marszałek 2020, p. 914). Moreover, the next problem is what to consider as ‘folk tradition’ at that time or even later. For example, in the 18th century as the influence of Sufis on argot in the Russian Empire was suggested (J. Zubkow 2025), during the Coup on 25.11.1741 the Imperial Guard consisted of 308 guardsmen, among them 101 started their duty under Peter I (57—the veterans of the North War), 120 guardsmen—younger individuals enlisted in 1737–1741 (73 were peasants), a total of 221 guardsmen, or 71.7% who were peasants, and among all guardsmen, only 30% were literate (Anisimov 1988, pp. 53–54).

Studying old beliefs and traditions is problematic, especially when the object of research is the secret and tacit knowledge such as that of Kabbalah (not the Talmudic term to designate the parts of the Bible omitted in the Pentateuch but the esoteric wisdom of the past in the times of Zugot or even Babylonian captivity), ‘bequeathed by angelic ancestors (fallen angels), allegorically encrypted in a subtext accessible only to the initiated, or rather, a parallel text of existence’ (Parnov 1985, p. 162). In such cases, the research on the interpenetrated ethnographic and linguistic material can expand in the two directions: ‘The first process is the transformation of a ritual or ritual text (both verbal and actional) into a word (phrase, sentence), as well as the transformation of a folk verbal work or folklore verbal text into a word (phrase, sentence); the second is the transformation of a word into a ritual text (ritual, belief, performance), as well as a word into a verbal text, a short folk story, a yarn, or fable’ (Walter and Mokienko 2019, p. 25). The discussed semantic attraction was an example of the first process, which was ‘unfolded’ into several seemingly unrelated stories in the linguistic research but joined by one reference space, ‘Zakon’ for the adepts (J. Zubkow 2025).

The stories form a reference space that, like a cognitive scenario, can be used to describe the plane of content as a set of images in a consistent, meaningful perception of the text. The reference space is a dynamic section of mental space created by experience of any kind, and the most important joining element is here the tacit knowledge (Zaika 2006, p. 315). The reference space offers information not directly determined by the text and allows the reader to include himself in the text, to become a self-reader and to remember not the sequence of signs but the impressions and circumstances (Zaika 2006, pp. 305–6). The imageless phrases may have an older, Indo-European origin, although a clear distinction between their genetic or typological nature is currently impossible, especially for ancient ritual phrases (Walter and Mokienko 2019, pp. 10–11), because we, researchers, are not able to feel and experience the ancient ‘semiotic tension’. Any religious–mythological system is a living organism and not a frozen construct, it develops and is replenished by new characters and ideas (at least shades of ideas and variations in characters) using old (archaistic to various extent) motifs, plot connections and character types, giving birth to new folklore and ethnographic facts on this basis (Berezovich and Surikova 2024, p. 233).

Using the ‘Vorovskaya Idea’ as a tool and a key, we will try to discover a probable location of the Magic Cave, where Time stopped and can be mastered, where to meet Al-Khidr, and where the ‘Tomb of Jesus’ is supported to be according to the reference space of ‘Zakon’ by studying geographical, cultural, ethnological, political and historical, ethnographic, biographical and philological problematics (Gumilev [1989] 2016, p. 367; Gumilev 1993, pp. 247–50, 488–89). Indeed, such ‘revelations’ should be treated only as a ‘Magic Tale’, and in no way as a basis for dangerous archeological tours into distant terrorism-endangered areas, modern crusades or gazavats.

The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, also known as The Tibetan Gospel by N. A. Notovich was published in Paris in 1894, and was so popular that, within the next two years, there appeared eleven editions in France as well numerous subsequent translations into German, English, and other languages despite the fact that shortly after its appearance, the book was declared a forgery by most scholars. In the Russian Empire, only excerpts from Notovich’s work were published—in 1895 a Buddhist biography of Jesus Christ, translated from German, in the journal ‘Faith and Reason’ (No. 22) in Kharkiv, and in 1910 a part of the original book translated from French as a small book entitled ‘The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ: The Tibetan Tale of the Life of Issa—the Best of the Sons of Men’ in St. Petersburg (Pogasiy 2017, p. 118). It has been believed that the only evidence of Notovich’s discovery is his own book, because the intellect strives to fit all phenomena around into familiar logical frameworks, and when something does not fit, it is considered as non-existing or a figment of diseased imagination to be explained with familiar concepts appropriate to one’s level (Pogasiy 2017, p. 124). Such intellectual ‘fitting’ is ordinary for ‘religious exclusivists’ who have no reason to doubt about their own ‘epistemic footing’ and ‘[…] are under a prima facie obligation to attempt to resolve this type of epistemic peer conflict’ (Basinger 2000, p. 43). The latest investigations prove that, indeed, Notovich should have travelled to Tibet. He took a special place in the Russian military intelligence activities in Afghanistan starting from the autumn of 1885, first in Mashhad as a correspondent for the Novoye Vremya newspaper with original letters of recommendation issued by high-ranking military officials (Ishenko 2023, pp. 62, 70–71). Notovich’s identity is shrouded in mystery, his biography remains unknown: a Simferopol Jew introduced himself a ‘Karaite professing Protestantism’, an ‘Orthodox Cossack officer’, a ‘warrant officer in the Caucasian militia’, at the same time having police records for his intrigues and dubious exploits in Constantinople and Paris, and for extorting money from Athonite monks, being an expert and advisor in India and Central Asia affairs (Ishenko 2023, pp. 63–64). Notovich had his own plans and concepts for contacts with Afghanistan and North India, but his activities came into contradiction with the efforts of Russian diplomats, so that the Russian envoy to Tehran insisted on the termination of Notovich’s work to maintain peace with the United Kingdom (Ishenko 2023, p. 71). It is difficult to ascertain why Notovich was arrested after he returned to the Russian Empire from Western Europe—for the book, the intelligence activity, or ordinary criminal deeds. No artefacts from Tibet were presented, and his literary output should be compared to other sources and expeditions. It should be suggested that Notovich may have planned something like a new crusade or gazavat to India for political reasons what follows from his plans and agreements with the Emir of Afghanistan: ‘oкажет защиту бoгoмoльцам и другим пoдданным нашим, oтправляющимся из Рoссийских владений через Герат вo внутрь страны или в Мешхед на бoгoмoлье и другие места’ (will provide protection to pilgrims and other subjects of ours travelling from Russian possessions through Herat into the interior of the country or to Mashhad on pilgrimage and other places) (Ishenko 2023, p. 65).

Russian merchants in search of trade routes to India and Iran visited the areas of modern Afghanistan in the 15th century, or even earlier; the Moscow and Russian official missions were recorded in 1464–1465, 1669, 1675, 1750, 1764, 1813, 1837, and 1878 (Ishenko 2023, p. 27). The most remarkable official mission (240 men including military escort) led by Full General Earl Y. A. Golovkin was that sent to China in 1805–1806: it reached Urga but did not move further, being returned for uncertain reasons. Its final destination and aims remain unknown. This mission draws attention because of the participation of scientists and ethnographers led by General Lieutenant Earl Jan Potocki, who reported directly to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince A. G. Czartoryski. Jan Potocki (a Knight of Malta, a mason, a traveller to Italy, Sicily, Tunis, Spain, and Morocco, also a scientist who tried to reconstruct the works by Manetho) conducted extensive research in the Caucasus, where he was also interested in the ancient fortress of Borgusan (Borgustan), known as Rome Mountain (Рим-гoра). The fortress, according to legends, was founded by Alexander the Great, in which he hid his treasures (see Shebzukhova et al. 2015, p. 92). Even if this official mission to China, or its part, was not intended for Tibet and a ‘twin Rome-Mountain city’, Potocki’s interests focused, among others, on Alexander the Great and the ‘magic mountains’, not the ‘Tomb of Jesus’, probably driven by the earlier versions of the legend about the cave.

The three later Russian expeditions to Pamir (since 1895) were initiated by the great-great-grandson of the Empress Catherine II, Count Alexey A. Bobrinskiy, who described the gathered material in a book (Bobrinskiy 1908). The investigations conducted along the Great Silk Road ascertained the traces of the Islamic versions of the legend mixed with old local beliefs. The legends about a Saint who goes into hiding (‘gaib’) in a rock or cave are widespread in the Pamirs, the cult of sacred stones with carved images, symbols or inscriptions is associated with the veneration of sacred mountains and is regulated by a certain set of stories that are reproduced in various mythological tales and yarns (Vasil’tsov 2013, pp. 129–32). The highlanders organized the sacred space with the help of various means—architectural forms, ritual utensils and actions, the organization of light and smells, narrations or reproductions of miraculous events that may have taken place in the past (Vasil’tsov 2013, p. 135). For example, in the upper reaches of the Gund River, there is a village called Imona with a high mountain nearby called Lomiyon. The mountain attracts attention by its unusual colour and seven streams flowing down the mountain into a spring at its foot. The mountain was assigned a local legend about Imam Muhammad al-Baqir, who hid from the enemies at the summit: in spring and summer, streams carry multi-coloured stones into the valley, and local people apply them as medicine and pray to the mountain (Vasil’tsov 2013, p. 126). There are also ‘ostons’ (ancient Zoroastrian and Buddhist sanctuaries) closely associated with the Kuh-i La’l mountain because of ancient mines, in which spinel–forsterite formations (Badakhshan rubies) were obtained (Vasil’tsov 2013, p. 129). There is also a mazar with a mosque in Gunt, on the left bank near the Sardiym tract that is connected with Imam Muhammad al-Baqir: the Imam arrived here from Khorasan with a servant, he hid here in a cave that closed behind him, and the servant remained at the cave, died, and was buried here (Bobrinskiy 1908, pp. 115–16).

The expeditions and missions with distinct aims and destinations led by aristocrats, who were royal descendants, as most noblemen (and not only), affected imagination and strengthened folk tales, giving them grounds for further re-telling on the basis of half-truth. The faraway hard-to-get lands and distant times made ‘magic tales’ sound more convincing, and the hidden treasures, lost cities, and abandoned mines of precious stones heated up the public’s imagination, it does not matter whether of Christian, Muslim, or any other confession. N. A. Notovich, as well as Achmed Abdulla (the screenplay for The Thief of Baghdad, 1924, together with Lotta Woods), who positioned himself Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan el-Durani el-Iddrissyeh or Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff, may have obtained some information from one of the Sufi tarikats, which are famous for their secret and tacit esoteric knowledge. It is hard to tell when, where, and how Jesus Christ (a prophet in Islam) may have been added to Musa and Muhammad visiting Al-Khidr, but such a concept seems logical. From a political perspective, this may have happened during some of the ghazavats to India—this suggestion is not offensive because there are many tarikats, and some Sufis started royal dynasties. By the way, many ‘vory’ seriously believe that they are royal descendants and that this made them members of ‘Zakon’ (Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, p. 65). However, the author of this research has no scientific grounds to support the idea of the ‘Tomb of Jesus’ somewhere in India or Tibet. Therefore, all issues presented below should be considered as a ‘Magic Tale’ in scientific terms, or what ‘vory’ may believe.

In the reference space of ‘Zakon’, the Achaemenid heritage (the story of Bardiya, the King of Persia, or the usurper Gaumata) reflected itself in the ‘afterlife’ deprivation of ‘title’ (Damnatio memoriae) by touching the ear of the deceased (see Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, p. 81) or the deprivation of ‘title’ for the living widely known as ‘дать пo ушам’ (literally to give someone a slap on the ears). With respect to a strictly linguistic research on the contemporary Russian argot, there are several examples of semantic attraction that imply stories to be ‘unfolded’ on the basis of formal and semantic relations of argot words in the reference space:

‘Кир—1. Вечеринка, пьянка. 2. Спиртнoе. 3. (ин.) Стена.’ (Cyrus—1. Party, drinking; 2. Spirits; and 3. (Foreign) Wall) is mentioned, as well as ‘Кирилл—цыган’ (Cyril—Gypsy, Roma) (Baldaev 1997, p. 186). The first and second meanings of ‘Кир’ are close synonyms to be found with the same meanings and similar form in the contemporary Polish argot, ‘Kirus 3. Cwaniak, spryciarz’ (Cyrus—3. Smarty, wise guy, or con man) and ‘Kirys—sąsiad’ (Kirys/Cyrus—Neighbour) (see Stępniak [1993] 2013, p. 148). The Russian homonym ‘Кир’ as ‘Wall’, annotated as foreign, implies semantic connections to other groups of homonyms as well as ‘Кирилл’, ‘Cyril—Gypsy, Roma’. These connections can be suggested for another group, ‘Амoра—цыган’ (Amorite—Gypsy, Roma) and ‘Амoра (презрит.)—цыгане’ (Amorites (contemptuously)—Gypsies, Roma) (Baldaev 1997, p. 17). The plural form is contemptuous, whereas the singular one is not, which implies a specific connotation. The Amorites were highlanders who established some ancient kingdoms, but only one ‘Amorite’ was respected and connected with the Achaemenid heritage, the holy mountains, and secret and tacit knowledge obtained from fallen angels and given to people, which can be Samyaza (shin (ש) and mem (מ)), the fallen angel of Abrahamic traditions and Manichaism. Maybe he was the ancient Shenrab (transition Shin–Shen is linguistically possible), who brought ancient Mithraism to Tibet. Alternatively, other folklore legends should be expected: Gypsies/Roma as highlanders initially resided in the Northwest India, from where they started their migration, and the ‘Amorite’ should have been their ancestor who came to India after the crucifixion and subsequent burial there.

The next Russian argot word is ‘Бар (ин)—1. Сын. 2. Камень.’ (Bar (foreign)—1. Son, and 2. Stone) (Baldaev 1997, p. 28). ‘Бар’ as ‘son’ implies ‘Бар Кoхба, сын звезды’ (Bar Kohba, the son of Star), whereas ‘stone’ can be interpreted as both a meteorite or the place where stones are worshipped.

Whereas the Russian argot word ‘Панда—высoкая гoра’ (Panda—A high mountain) (Baldaev 1997, p. 307) relates to ‘Ош Пандo’, an old Saini settlement in Mordovia, literally ‘a city on the mountain’, the other group evidently relates to Tibet, Northwest India, and Al-Khidr: ‘Дай (ин.)—мать’ (Dai (foreign)—mother), ‘Далай—1. Удачливый, счастливый челoвек. 2. Океан’ (Dalai—1. Lucky, happy person, and 2. Ocean), ‘Даг (ин.)—1. Рыба 2. Гoра’ (Dag—1. Fish, and 2. Mountain) (Baldaev 1997, p. 101). It is evident that semantic attraction sometimes breaks the rules of word formation by the transition of ‘й’ into ‘г’ or by infixing ‘ал’ to hide the stories to be ‘unfolded’ in the reference space by means of compression. The God of Amorites, Dagan, is joined with the mountain, and the implication of Tibet by ‘Далай’ simultaneously refers to the meaning ‘Ocean’ to Manali, which was named after Manu, the progenitor of humanity in Hinduism, who stepped off from his ark there after the outburst flood. Moreover, the fish and luck along with the mountain allude to the story of Musa and Al-Khidr, in which Al-Khidr damages the boat, kills the boy, and repairs the wall knowing the future and mastering Time (compare ‘Кир’ as ‘Wall’ above). Once again, it should be noted that such connections are difficult to see without the key and the map: the ‘Vorovskaya Idea’—‘(1) Code of Hammurabi; (2) Mithraism; (3) Old Roman law; (4) Torah; (5) Laws of Manu’.

As per promise above, a ‘magic cave’ was searched for, where Al-Khidr can be met and where Time can be mastered. A criminal ritual of giving word by Russian criminals was compared to that of the Italian mafia (see J. Zubkow 2025). The ritual was earlier discussed in (E. Zubkow 2019, pp. 129–30): the nail of the thumb of the right hand clicks on the lateral tooth on the right side when saying ‘Зуб даю!’ (I give my word with my tooth!) (E. Zubkow 2019, pp. 129–30). It is important to note that the classic criminal way of giving word involves flicking a nail on the inside of the tooth (the nail away from one), whereas people, for convenience, usually (though not always) bite their nails differently (the nail towards one). It was suggested that it means ‘И дух из меня вoн!’ (Leave me the Spirit!). The analysis of the semantic field of related Russian and Polish argot words may confirm the following statement.

‘Зуб—1. Игла. 2. Лoжка. 3. Отдельнo стoящий дoм-башня’ (Tooth—1. Needle; 2. Spoon; and 3. A detached tower house) (Baldaev 1997, p. 164), whereas ‘Игла—1. Нoж. 2. Медицинский шприц’ (Needle—1. Knife; and 2. Medical syringe) (Baldaev 1997, p. 167); ‘Игoлка (устар)—1. Пистoлет, ревoльвер 2. Стилет’ (Needle (obsolete)—1. Pistol, revolver; and 2. Dagger) (Baldaev 1997, p. 167). The strange homonym ‘Лoжка’, in which the process of metaphorization is evident only at first glance, can be explained by the means of Polish argot abstracted from other homonyms; compare the following.

Moreover, ‘Igła/Igiełka—1. Nóż. 2. Narzędzie złodziei kieszonkowych, nożyk do cięcia odzieży. 3. Sztylet. 4. ‘Śrubokręt’. 5. Piłka do rznięcia krat […]’ (Needle—1. Knife; 2. A pickpocket’s tool, a clothes cutter; 3. Dagger; 4. Screwdriver sharpened into a dagger; 5. Saw for cutting grates […]) and ‘Łyżka—1. Łom, zgięty na końcu. 2. Łyżka do opon samochodu. 3. Na łyżkę włamanie przy pomocy łomu. 4. Ręka. 5. Prostytutka. 6. Grochówka. 7. Ucho’ (Spoon—1. A crowbar bent at the end; 2. Car tire lever; 3. ‘By spoon’, a burglary with crowbar; 4. Hand; 5. Prostitute; 6. Split pea soup; and 7. Ear) (Stępniak [1993] 2013, pp. 125, 193).

The comparative semantic field in both Russian and Polish argots presents the connections with ‘Ear’ and ‘Dagger/stiletto’ (unlike a multi-functional knife, a dagger/stiletto is used either for killing or has ritual significance, let us recall the Russian icon with seven daggers worshipped by the ‘vory’ (J. Zubkow 2025)), which are ‘unfolded’ into stories within the reference space of ‘Zakon’. However, the Polish argot does not contain the appropriate homonym to determine ‘a detached tower house’, which seems very important. The connection of the discussed semantic field with the English word ‘felon’ does not give reasonable explanation for this at the moment: ‘felony does have a robust conceptual history, one that was originally rooted in fictional narratives, specifically in the medieval character of the villain […] when the word was taking shape, it referred first to a species of English literary character, not a legal offense […] the term entered regular use specifically as a description for the great betrayers of King Arthur and his court’ (Wang 2024, pp. 169–70). Maybe the betrayal of the King by the future usurper can be suggested, as in the case of the Achaemenids.

In the ancient Tibetan map analyzed by Gumilev and Kuznetsov, the Tomb of Cyrus the Great was situated in the middle of the map, and it resembled a tooth before reconstruction. Moreover, the tombs of Achaemenid kings were located in the caves, which may imply the end of the ‘magic tale’. However, other linguistic argot material points to another destination. ‘Khizr’ (Al-Khidr), guiding Iskander to the Fountain of Life (Boivin and Pénicaud 2023, p. 4), was sitting on one horse before the king, and ‘Khwaja Khidr/Khizr’ is ‘unique and distinct from any other type of sainthood and sacrality in the Muslim context, be it related to the Sufi saints or to the Shia Imams’ (Boivin and Pénicaud 2023, p. 5). It was suggested that there is some connection between ‘Spirit Chwartuna’ and ‘Khvarenah’, royal glory, destiny, and divine encounter (J. Zubkow 2025). The Persian name ‘Khwaja Khidr’ allows one to join the Spirit and ‘Master Al-Khidr’, but does not point to the location of the cave and ‘a detached tower house’ where to meet Him.

The tattoo of The Thief of Baghdad, 1924, will be the map to be interpreted with the ‘Vorovskaya Idea’ as the key. The tattoo presents a crescent and a triangle, the crescent is the symbol of Islam as well as ancient civilizations like Sumerians and the Sassanid Empire, and the books of Black Bon were written in ‘‘Тагзиг’, i.e., ‘Tadjik’ language’ according to Gumilev, so the ‘magic journey’ begins somewhere in Tajikistan along the Great Silk Road from some ‘magic place’ with rich legends, let it be Bibi Fatima Springs near Yamchun Fortress (old Zamr-i-Atash-Parast), moving in the direction of Manali, where the trading routes started in the times of Ashoka. The triangle will be a probable location of ‘a detached tower house’, somewhere in the triangle between Srinagar with its Mazar, Vaishno Devi Temple with its Holy Cave, and Manali. On the other hand, the triangulation can involve Adi Gufa Cave in Katra and Amaranth Temple with its Lingam, or maybe several triangles should be put onto each other in a certain way.

This suggestion for the ‘magic place’ is based on the analysis of sources in the reference space of ‘Zakon’. In a Soviet literary masterpiece, The Little Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Pietrov, a strange etymological coincidence of the versions for self-name ‘сын Парвы’ (Son of Parva) used by the protagonist, Ostap Bender, was suggested (see E. Zubkow 2019, pp. 253–75). The name itself, Ostap and Bender, implies a Ukrainian Gypsy/Roma: ‘bender’ means a tent, in which traditionally a Gypsy/Roma appeared to this world. There were the following versions: 1. Connections to Judaism, the Parva chamber where the skins of the holy relics were salted (folded), the Highest Priest immersed on its roof on the Day of Atonement; 2. The Son of the Virgin (Latin ‘parva’); and 3. Connections to East India by the Chaitra Parva festival devoted to Kali (E. Zubkow 2019, pp. 266–67). Taking into account the results presented in this research and the means of semantic compression, the location should be changed to Northwestern India and Parvati, both Uma and Kali. The addition of Adi Gufa Cave in Katra was suggested on the basis of the Russian argot, compare the following: ‘Ада—1. Местo укрытия, прибежище. 2. Тo же чтo Аза’ (Ada—1. Place of shelter, refuge; and 2. The same as Aza), whereas ‘Аза—мoлoдая цыганка’ (Aza—a Gipsy/Roma girl) (Baldaev 1997, p. 15). The addition of Amaranth Temple with its Lingam was caused by both a strong influence of uncertain legend about Gipsy/Roma as Jesus’ ancestors in argot and a strange interrogation report from the beginning of the 19th century, which implied that the cave should stretch from bottom to top across the entire mountain: ‘Я с вoстoчнoй страны, рoдoм с дoлу низу и с верху гoры. Отец мoй небесный Христoс, а oтца пo плoти oбъявлять не надoбнo, и матери также не надoбнo […] Мы не знаем, дарoвали ли ему свoбoду или сoчли лишенным ума’ (I am from an eastern land, from the bottom and from the top of the mountain. My Father is the heavenly Christ, and there is no need to declare my father of flesh, and no need to declare my mother either. […] We do not know whether he was given freedom or considered insane) (Eydel’man 1988, pp. 390–91).

The route for a ‘magic journey’ presented above should be treated only as an ‘inserted novella’ and nothing more. From a physical perspective, if one desires precious stones from lost mines, historical artefacts to be found in abandoned ancient cities, or test one’s own abilities to survive in unexplored high mountains and terrorism-endangered areas, even in this case, such a person will need many permissions that cannot be obtained. The reference space of ‘Zakon’ appeared hundreds of years ago, and much has changed ever since. From a spiritual perspective, in the author’s opinion, there is no need to travel to distant lands to meet Al-Khidr—‘Khwaja Khidr’ as a Spirit will find one everywhere, the prophets met him in dreams, their journeys were allegorical. The question remains for what purpose to meet Al-Khidr and what way to master Time.

From a theological perspective, God is good and will not allow one to do harm to other people by His intervention (Basinger 2000), even if making the past as never happened would be possible. And in case of keeping the memory of the soul in endless Time, the awakening may bring more pain than relief. From the perspective of physics, future contingency implies that an event is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false; it is possible to happen and also possible not to happen, which leads to the conclusion that turning back Time can make ‘a strip of freedom’ even narrower or totally eliminate it. The only positive way remains the knowing of the future, as the Prophets did, and how to change it for the better. From the perspective of social sciences, the ideas proposed by A Podgórecki are very interesting: ‘The existential idea that the individual can be the ‘master of one’s own fate’ and even that he or she is ‘destined to be free’ radically changes the perception of man-induced oppression […] oppression affects the cognitive options of the available types of behaviour and expands the possibilities of human behaviour (as these can be legal and illegal), but also limits, sometimes in the literal sense, the physical possibilities of behaviour’ (Przylepa-Lewak 2024, pp. 127–28). Such a position gives grounds to distinguish the following eight types: instrumental ‘me’, facade ‘me’, the mirror image of ‘me’, principled ‘me’, ideal ‘me’, true ‘me’, dependent ‘me’, private ‘me’ (Przylepa-Lewak 2024, pp. 130–31). With respect to mastering Time and operating ‘magic tale scenarios’ within esotericism, any type is possible dependently on a person and his or her intentions and aims, being projected onto the circumstances and a narrow ‘strip of freedom’.

For example, the Old Believers (minor communities in Poland) treat their faith as a direct continuation of the faith of the first Christians, often denying this right to other Christian rites but, now being bicultural, they also participate in the life of Polish society and have the same traditional values such as family, work, and material goods (see Głuszkowski 2015). Here, the Old Believers are evident exclusivists, but in modern European society, they are not banned or prosecuted. The next example can be ‘those who could be called ‘rebel priests’—characters who do not accept certain ecclesiastical rules, usually regarding them as obstacles to true religion and people’s relationship with Christ’ (see Łukaszewicz 2023). There are even more vivid examples of strictly criminal deeds with ‘God-blessed’ aims: there was a ‘Union of Italian men of letters’ (Сoюз итальянских литератoрoв) founded in Palermo in 1823, the aims of which were to free the ordinary people from the Church, and who called themselves ‘the sons of Barrabas’ (сынoвья Варравы). They recognized each other by a strange ring and known letters I.N.R.I., which they used in correspondence (Shuster 1907, p. 229). The proclaimed aims can be high-minded and magnanimous by an individual, for example to save a nation from the civil war, but their realization leads to great bloodshed and suffering: in 1982, the ‘vor’ Jaba Ioseliani proclaimed at a great ‘vory’ gathering in Tbilisi the need for changes due to social and political transformations to come, and later he founded the armed organization ‘Mkhedrioni’, which was approved by the Parliament of the Republic of Georgia and had its representatives in the government (Glonti and Lobjanidze 2004, pp. 37, 42).

The patterns of behaviour of our ancestors hide deeply in our models of behaviour, and every hypostatization of the structural mind has its own limits, predetermined by repeatable reality that modifies the notorious eternal constants (see Eco [1968] 2004, p. 410). The old beliefs, delighting the hearts of our ancestors, can lead to excessive suffering and make the situation of an individual even worse when projected on the behaviour in modern society. At present, the archetype of ‘The Great Mother’ among convicts is reported to manifest itself in criminal tattoos and prison rituals, suicidal tendencies, and self-destructive behaviour, as well as the rejection of normal life values and the fundamental principles of modern society because of enantiodromia (Ponomarev 2025). On the other hand, not all convicts manifest such type of suicidal and self-destructive behaviour, it depends on one’s personality and values, his or her understanding of what is Good and Evil, whereas the justification of disgraceful human deeds by Al-Khidr, God, Jesus Christ, the Prophet, or the Destiny sounds cowardly and deprives an individual of any responsibility within own ‘strip of freedom’.

5. Conclusions

It has been shown that ‘Zakon’ can have something in common with religion. The models of behaviour considered as ‘Vorovskoy Zakon’, which must have appeared in the Soviet era, should be ‘Рамки/Рамсы’ (‘Frames’) and ‘Вoрoвские Наказы’ (‘Vory’s Commandments’). These two sets of models were mixed in page-long ‘secrete messages’ containing up to a dozen sentences without any explicated connections with the higher levels of aim setting and decision-making in criminal activity. These models of behaviour are not obligatory for the ‘vory’; they misinterpret them for personal needs, justifying their deeds by the ideas and mental models of higher levels only in relations with equals by status. The higher levels are ‘Пoнятия’ (‘Notions’) as concepts/ideas of what is appropriate or not and what is classified as Good or Evil, having no material form, as well as ‘Закoн’ (‘Zakon’). They are virtual, being in ‘vory’s heads, and reflected in the semantic compression of argot words as a result of their collective output. It should be noted that several artefacts with connections between the ‘Notions’ and ‘Frames’/’Vory’s Commandments’ were found by law enforcement units’ officers. As it was presented above, the concealment of the real situation was predetermined politically along with the ban on religion in the Soviet state, the evidence was tampered with, and the scientific literature was manipulated, and nowadays, any discussion about the real situation would ‘have a detrimental effect on Russian higher education and Russian humanities’. In contrast to Manichaeism, the highest level of hierarchical structure of aim setting and decision-making in criminal activity, ‘Нефеш’ (‘Nefesh’), as the right to save own life at every cost, implies the love for this world, material things (especially someone’s else property) and joys, as well as the return to this world with better chances and retained personality offered by the fifth feeling of Time.

It was suggested that, despite ignoring the fifth feeling of Time, Gumilev himself may have thought about it. The ‘inserted novellas’, such as the lost apocryphon and the two scientific papers (one in the co-authorship), may prove this. Anyway, he did not define the discrete antisystem properly because he ignored the strange ideas to be found in religious heritage borrowed by Christianity, Islam, and, to some extent, Buddhism, from ancient Times, without explanation and proper incorporation. The fifth feeling of Time, as mastering Time (and thus Death) by the memory of the soul in endless Time being awoken after reincarnation by a brother-soul, by making the past as though it had never happened, or just knowing the future, gives the ‘vory’ power to resist the ‘punishment by Time’, i.e., the main idea and tool of incarceration.

Studying the fifth feeling of Time in the religious and scientific literature and then comparing the obtained results with those for the Russian and Polish argot, the author noticed the lack of full coincidence. As it was suggested above, the semantic attraction of argot words makes the hidden stories ‘unfold’ from the reference space, and the lack of appropriate argot counterparts in Polish or Russian points to the existence of literary sources that should be widely known and convey the discussed ideas. Therefore, the search for them should be continued.