This paper examines the transformation of "messianic" motivations among foreign combatants by comparing Italian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) with contemporary foreign fighters in Ukraine. While the rhetoric of defending "civilization" persists, the structure of meaning has shifted from state-centered ideological "beforethoughts" to individualized, retrospective "afterthoughts." The adaptive function of Wydra's sacred-profane dichotomy remains, but both its content and the process through which individuals assign political sacredness have evolved. Using micro-historical and interpretive methods, the analysis draws on diaries, memoirs, testimonies, and historiography to reconstruct how fighters articulated their participation. Italian volunteers—particularly those of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV)—operated within a state-driven ideological framework, where action was justified by a collective mission rooted in Fascist universalism and the defense of a "Latin-Christian civilization" against Bolshevism. By contrast, contemporary fighters in Ukraine often act outside formal state structures, framing their involvement through personal ethical commitments to sovereignty, human rights, and resistance to aggression. The paper situates this shift within a broader philosophical and political-anthropological perspective. It argues that the political imaginary of war has moved from a teleological, collectivist model—where individuals enact predefined, "invented" historical destinies—to a fragmented, post-material landscape in which meaning is constructed retrospectively through individual moral narratives. This reflects a transition from a "religion of the state" to a "religion of ideas," where legitimacy happens to be individual. Rather than a mere rhetorical change, this evolution signals a deeper reconfiguration of the relationship between self and politics: from embeddedness in totalizing ideological orders to the rise of morally self-authorizing actors.