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About Modern Civilization’s Contagion

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About Modern Civilization’s Contagion(from "Revolt Against the Modern World")[...] This present "civilization," starting from Western hotbeds, has extended the contagion to every land that was still healthy and has brought to all strata of society and all races the following "gifts": restlessness, dissatisfaction, resentment, the need to go further and faster, and the inability to possess one's life in simplicity, independence, and balance. Modem civilization has pushed man onward; it has generated in him the need for an increasingly greater number of things; it has made him more and more insufficient to himself and powerless. Thus, every new invention and technological discovery, rather than a conquest, really represents a defeat and a new whiplash in an ever faster race blindly taking place within a system of conditionings that are increasingly serious and irreversible and that for the most part go unnoticed. This is how the various paths converge: technological civilization, the dominant role of the economy, and the civilization of production and consumption all complement the exaltation of becoming and progress; in other words, they contribute to the manifestation of the "demonic" element in the modem world." (1) [...]JULIUS EVOLA(1) The word "demonic" is obviously not to be understood in the Christian sense of the word. The expression "demonic people" found in the Bhagavadgita applies very much to our contemporaries: "Thus they are beset with innumerable cares which last long, all their life, until death. Their highest aim is sensual enjoyment, and they firmly think that this is all" (16.11).
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Certain People Still Cherish False Hopes in Islam

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Certain People Still Cherish False Hopes in Islam(from “The Path of Cinnabar”)[...]
The realistic point of view I felt the need to adopt in Ride the Tiger has lately led to my polemical confrontation with certain people who still cherish false hopes with regard to the current potential of 'traditional residues'. For instance, I discussed certain matters with Titus Burckhardt, who pointed to remnants of Tradition in areas outside Europe. I felt compelled to ask Burckhardt whether he was willing to acknowledge the fact that these areas, too, will fall subject to 'cyclical laws' - in which case, any emphasis on places where devolution has yet to reach the level it has reached in the West seems rather irrelevant. Burckhardt also mentioned the existence of 'spiritual influences that, albeit often invisible, by far surpass all of the material powers of humanity', and which are exercised by surviving 'initiatory' centers. While stressing the fact that I do not deny the possibility that similar influences might exist, I remarked that it is likely that those centers capable of exerting them might have received the order not to do so, in such a way as to not interfere with the general process of devolution. Otherwise, what should we make of a place like Tibet, which is being invaded and profaned by the Chinese Communists? Or of the Japanese kamikaze, who in most cases were decimated like flies by the massive firepower of terrified anti-aircraft crews, and were never allowed to draw near to the enemy so as to activate 'the wind of the gods'? And while some Sufi initiatory centers certainly exist within Islam, their presence hardly prevents the Arab world from 'evolving' at an increasing speed in a modernist, progressive and anti-traditional direction. To these, many other examples might be added. (I returned to such matters in a chapter of the second edition of my book, The Bow and the Club, entitled 'Initiatory Centers and History'.)
The world, therefore, appears to be left to its own resources. In other words, the general process of 'solidification' and deconsecration of the world limits the influence of the aforementioned powers - powers which are also difficult to measure without taking account of the sphere of action, as well as that of pure knowledge. Once again, the impression one gains is that the cycle is drawing to a close.
[...]JULIUS EVOLA
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‘Democracy’ Dilemma in the US may bring Interesting Developments

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‘Democracy’ Dilemma in the US may bring Interesting Developments(from "Civilta Americana")There is a significant and growing discrepancy in the United States between the shibboleths of the prevailing political ideology and the effective economic structures of the nation. A large part of studies of the subject is played by the 'morphology of business'. Studies corroborate the impression that American business is a long way from the type of organization which corresponds to the democratic ideal of U.S. propaganda. American businesses have a 'pyramid' structure. They constitute at the top an articulate hierarchy. The big businesses are run in the same way as government ministries and are organized along similar lines. They have coordinating and controlling bodies which separate the business leaders from the mass of employees. Rather than becoming more flexible in a social sense the "managerial elite" (Burnham) is becoming more autocratic than ever - something not unrelated to American foreign policy.
This is the end of yet another American illusion. America: the 'land of opportunity', where every possibility is there for the person who can grasp it, a land where anyone can rise from rags to riches. At first there was the 'open frontier' for all to ride out across. That closed and the new 'open frontier' was the sky, the limitless potential of industry and commerce. As Gardner, Moore and many others have shown, this too is no longer limitless, and the opportunities are thinning out. Given the ever increasing specialization of labor in the productive process and the increasing emphasis on 'qualifications', what used to seem obvious to Americans - that their children would 'go further' than they would - is for many people no longer obvious at all. Thus it is that in the so-called political democracy of the United States, the force and the power in the land, that is to say the industry and the economy, are becoming ever more self-evidently undemocratic. The problem then is: should reality be made to fit ideology or vice-versa? Until recently the overwhelming demand has been for the former course of action; the cry goes out for a return to the 'real America' of unfettered enterprise and the individual free of central government control. Nevertheless, there are also those who would prefer to limit democracy in order to adapt political theory to commercial reality. If the mask of American 'democracy' were thereby removed, it would become clear to what extent 'democracy' in America (and elsewhere) is only the instrument of an oligarchy which pursues a method of 'indirect action', assuring the possibility of abuse and deception on a large scale of those many who accept a hierarchical system because they think it is justly such. This dilemma of 'democracy' in the United States may one day give place to some interesting developments.JULIUS EVOLA
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European Decadence

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European Decadence(from "Imperialismo Pagano")Present western "civilization" awaits a substantial upheaval (rivolgimento), without which it is destined, sooner or later, to smash its own head. It has carried out the most complete perversion of the rational order of things. Reign of matter, gold, machines, numbers; in this civilization there is no longer breath or liberty or light. The West has lost its ability to command and to obey. It has lost its feeling for contemplation and action. It has lost its feeling for values, spiritual power, godlike men. It no longer knows nature. No longer a living body made of symbols, gods, and ritual act, no longer a harmony, a cosmos in which man moves freely like "a kingdom within a kingdom", nature has assumed for the Westerner a dull and fatal exteriority whose mystery the secular sciences seek to bury in trifling laws and hypotheses. It no longer knows Wisdom. It ignores the majestic silence of those who have mastered themselves: the enlightened calm of seers, the exalted reality of those in whom the idea becomes blood, life, and power. Instead it is drowning in the rhetoric of "philosophy" and "culture", the specialty of professors, journalists, and sportsmen who issue plans, programs, and proclamations. Its wisdom has been polluted by a sentimental, religious, humanitarian contagion and by a race of frenzied men who run around noisily celebrating becoming (divenire) and "practice", because silence and contemplation alarm them.
It no longer knows the state, the state as value crystallized in the Empire. Synthesis of the sort of spirituality and majesty that shone brightly in China, Egypt, Persia, and Rome, the imperial ideal has been overwhelmed by the bourgeois misery of a monopoly of slaves and traders.
Europe's formidable "activists" no longer know what war is, war desired in and of itself as a virtue higher than winning or losing, as that heroic and sacred path to spiritual fulfillment exalted by the god Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. They know not warriors, only soldiers. And a crummy little war was enough to terrorize them and drive them to rehashing the rhetoric of humanitarianism, and pathos or, worse still, of windbag nationalism and Dannunzianism.
Europe has lost its simplicity, its central position, its life. A democratic plague is eating away at its roots, whether in law, science, or speculation. Gone are the leaders, beings who stand out not for their violence, their gold, or for their skills as slave traders but rather for their irreducible qualities of life. Europe is a great irrelevant body, sweating and restless because of an anxiety that no one dares to express. Gold flows in its veins; its flesh is made up of machines, factories, and laborers; its brains are of newsprint. A great irrelevant body tossing and turning, driven by dark and unpredictable forces that mercilessly crush whoever wants to oppose or merely escape the cogwheels.
Such are the achievements of western "civilization". This is the much ballyhooed result of the superstitious faith in "progress", progress beyond Roman imperiousness, beyond radiant Hellas, beyond the ancient Orient - the great Ocean.
And the few who are still capable of great loathing and great rebellion find themselves ever more tightly encircled.JULIUS EVOLA
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Fascism: Myth and Reality

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Fascism: Myth and Reality(from "Il Fascisimo")Fascism has undergone a process which can be called mythologization, and the attitude which many adopt towards it is of a passionate and irrational kind rather than a critical, intellectual one. This is especially true of those who retain an idealistic loyalty towards the Italy that was. [...]
Mythologization has naturally gone hand in hand with idealization, so that only the positive aspects of the Fascist regime are highlighted, deliberately or unconsciously playing down the negative ones. The same procedure is practiced the other way round by those who represent anti-nationalist forces, their mythologization leading to systematic denigration, the aspects with a view to discrediting it and making everyone hate it. [...]
Over and above any polemical one-sidedness, those who, unlike the 'nostalgics' of the younger generation, have lived through Fascism and have thus had a direct experience of the system and its men, know and acknowledge that not everything about it was in order. As long as Fascism existed and could be considered a movement of reconstruction in the making, one of yet unrealized and un- crystallized possibilities, it was still permissible not to criticize it beyond a certain limit. And those who, like ourselves, while defending a set of ideas which only partially coincided with Fascism (and with German National Socialism), did not condemn these movements, even though fully aware of their questionable or aberrant aspects, did so precisely because we counted on future possible developments--to be encouraged with every means and strength we could muster--which might have corrected or eliminated these aspects.
Today, when that Fascism lies behind us as a historical reality, our attitude cannot be the same. Instead of idealizing it in a way consistent with the 'myth' of Fascism, what is necessary now is to separate the positive from the negative, not just for theoretical reasons, but for practical guidance with an eventual political struggle in mind. Thus we should not accept the adjective 'fascist' or 'neo-fascist' tout court; we should call ourselves fascist (if we feel we must) in respect of what was positive about Fascism, not fascist in respect of what Fascism was not.[...]
Even in the search for the positive, there is in practice an essential difference between on the one hand those whose only reference point is Fascism (or possible analogous movements of other nations--German National Socialism, Belgian Rexism, the early Falange in Spain, Salazar's Regime, the Romanian Iron Guard: at one point it was possible to talk of a 'world revolution', a general movement of opposition to the proletarian revolution), seeing in it the be-all and end-all of their political, historical, and doctrinal horizons, and on the other those who consider what emerged from such movements as particular manifestations, some more perfect than others, of ideas and principles based in that earlier Tradition of which we have spoken, but adapted to particular circumstances. These principles are to be associated with 'normality' and permanence, relegating what is original and in the strict sense 'revolutionary' about those movements to secondary, contingent traits. In other words, it is a question of making linkages as far as it is possible between the great European political Tradition and discarding what at bottom can be seen as compromises, divergent or even deviant possibilities, or phenomena which were products of the very evils which people set out to take a stand against and fight.JULIUS EVOLA
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Hitler and the Secret Societies

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Hitler and the Secret Societies(from "Il Conciliatore")It is remarkable that some authors in France have researched the relationship of German National Socialism to secret societies and initiatic organizations. The motivation for this was the supposed occult background of the Hitler movement. This thesis was first proposed in the well-known and very far-fetched book by Pauwels and Bergier, "Le Matin des Magiciens" (English ed., "The Dawn of Magic"), in which National Socialism was defined as the union of "magical thinking" with technology. The expression used for this was "Tank divisions plus René Guénon": a phrase that might well have caused that eminent representative of traditional thought and esoteric disciplines to turn indignantly in his grave.
The first misunderstanding here is the confusion of the magical element with the mythical, whereas the two have nothing to do with one another. The role of myths in National Socialism is undeniable, for example in the idea of the Reich, the charismatic Führer, Race, Blood, etc. But rather than calling these "myths," one should apply to them Sorel's concept of "motivating energy-ideas" (which is what all the suggestive ideas used by demagogues commonly are), and not attribute to them any magical ingredient. Similarly, no rational person thinks of magic in connection with the myths of Fascism, such as the myth of Rome or that of the Duce, any more than with those of the French Revolution or Communism. The investigation would proceed differently if one went on the assumption that certain movements, without knowing it, were subject to influences that were not merely human. But this is not the case with the French authors. They are not thinking of influences of that kind, but of a concrete nature, exercised by organizations that really existed, among which were some that to various degrees were "secret." Likewise, some have spoken of "unknown superiors" who are supposed to have called forth the National Socialist movement and to have used Hitler as a medium, though it is unclear what goals they could have had in mind in so doing. If one considers the results, the catastrophic consequences to which National Socialism led, even indirectly, those goals must have been obscure and destructive. One would have to identify the "occult side" of this movement with what Guénon called the "Counter-Initiation." But the French authors have also proposed the thesis that Hitler the "medium" emancipated himself at a certain point from the "unknown superiors," almost like a Golem, and that the movement then pursued its fatal direction. But in that case one must admit that these "unknown superiors" can have had no prescience and very limited power, to have been incapable of putting a stop to their supposed medium, Hitler.
A lot of fantasy has been woven on the concrete level about the origin of National Socialism's themes and symbols. Reference has been made to certain organizations as forerunners, but ones to which it is very difficult to attribute any genuine and factual initiatic character. There is no doubt that Hitler did not invent German racial doctrine, the symbol of the swastika, or Aryan anti-Semitism: all of these had long existed in Germany. A book entitled "Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab" [The man who gave Hitler his ideas] reports on Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (the title of nobility was self-bestowed), who had formerly been a Cistercian monk and had founded an Order that already used the swastika; Lanz edited the periodical "Ostara" from 1905 onwards, which Hitler certainly knew, in which the Aryan and anti-Semitic racial theories were already clearly worked out.
But much more important for the "occult background" of National Socialism is the role of the Thule Society. Things are more complex here. This society grew out of the Germanenorden, founded in 1912, and was led by Rudolf von Sebottendorf, who had been in the East and had published a strange booklet on "Die Praxis der alten türkischen Freimaurerei" [The practice of ancient Turkish Freemasonry]. Practices were described therein that involved the repetition of syllables, gestures, and steps, whose goal was the initiatic transformation of man, such as alchemy had also aimed at. It is unclear what Turkish masonic organization Sebottendorf was in contact with, and also whether he himself practiced the things in question, or merely described them.
Moreover, it cannot be established whether these practices were employed in the Thule Society that Sebottendorf headed. It would be very important to know that, because many top-ranking National Socialist personalities, from Hitler to Rudolf Hess, frequented this society. In a way, Hitler was already introduced to the world of ideas of the Thule Society by Hess during their imprisonment together after the failed Munich Putsch.
At all events, it must be emphasized that the Thule Society was less an initiatic organization than it was a secret society, which already bore the swastika and was marked by a decided anti-Semitism and by Germanic racial thinking. One should be cautious about the thesis that the name Thule is a serious and conscious reference to a Nordic, Polar connection, in the effort to make a connection with the Hyperborean origins of the Indo-Germans--since Thule appears in ancient tradition as the sacred center or sacred island in the uttermost North. Thule may just be a play on the name "Thale," a location in the Harz where the Germanenorden held a conference in 1914, at which it was decided to create a secret "völkisch" band to combat the supposed Jewish International. Above all, these ideas were emphasized by Sebottendorf in his book "Bevor Hitler kam" [Before Hitler came], published in Munich in 1933, in which he indicated the myths and the "völkisch" world-view that existed before Hitler.
Thus a serious investigation into Hitler's initiatic connections with secret societies does not lead far. A few explanations are necessary in regard to Hitler as a "medium" and his attractive power. It seems to us pure fantasy that he owed this power to initiatic practices. Otherwise one would have to assume the same about the psychic power of other leaders, like Mussolini and Napoleon, which is absurd. It is much better to go on the assumption that there is a psychic vortex that arises from mass movements, and that this concentrates on the man in the center and lends him a certain radiation that is felt especially by suggestible people.
The quality of medium (which, to put it bluntly, is the antithesis of an initiatic qualification) can be attributed to Hitler with a few reservations, because in a certain respect he did appear as one possessed (which differentiates him from Mussolini, for example). When he whipped up the masses to fanaticism, one had the impression that another force was directing him as a medium, even though he was a man of a very extraordinary kind, and extremely gifted. Anyone who has heard Hitler's addresses to the enraptured masses can have no other impression. Since we have already expressed our reservations about the assumption that "unknown superiors" were involved, it is not easy to define the nature of this supra-personal force. In respect to National Socialist theosophy [Gotteserkenntnis], i.e. to its supposed mystical and metaphysical dimension, one must realize the unique juxtaposition in this movement and in the Third Reich of mythical, Enlightenment, and even scientific aspects. In Hitler, one can find many symptoms of a typically "modern" world-view that was fundamentally profane, naturalistic, and materialistic; while on the other hand he believed in Providence, whose tool he believed himself to be, especially in regard to the destiny of the German nation. (For example, he saw a sign of Providence in his survival of the assassination attempt in his East-Prussian headquarters.) Alfred Rosenberg, the ideologist of the movement, proclaimed the myth of Blood, in which he spoke of the "mystery" of Nordic blood and attributed to it a sacramental value; yet he simultaneously attacked all the rites and sacraments of Catholicism as delusions, just like a man of the Enlightenment. He railed against the "Dark men of our time," while attributing to Aryan man the merit of having created modern science. National Socialism's concern with runes, the ancient Nordic-Germanic letter-signs, must be regarded as purely symbolic, rather like the Fascist use of certain Roman symbols, and without any esoteric significance. The program of National Socialism to create a higher man has something of "biological mysticism" about it, but this again was a scientific project. At best, it might have been a question of the "superman" in Nietzsche's sense, but never of a higher man in the initiatic sense.
The plan to "create a new racial, religious, and military Order of initiates, assembled around a divinized Führer," cannot be regarded as the official policy of National Socialism, as René Alleau writes, when he presents such a relationship and even compares it, among others, to the Ishmaelites of Islam. A few elements of a higher level were visible only in the ranks of the SS.
In the first place, one can see clearly the intention of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to create an Order in which elements of Prussian ethics were to be combined with those of the old Orders of knighthood, especially the Teutonic Order. He was looking for legitimization of such an organization, but could not obtain it, since these old Orders of Catholicism were openly opposed by the radical wing of National Socialism. Himmler was also seeking, without the possibility of any traditional connection, a relationship to the Nordic-Hyperborean heritage and its symbolism (Thule), albeit without those "secret societies" discussed above having any influence over it. He took notice, as did Rosenberg, of the researches of the Netherlander Herman Wirth into the Nordic-Atlantic tradition. Later Himmler founded, with Wirth, the research and teaching organization called the "Ahnenerbe." This is not without interest, but there was no "occult background" to it.
So the net result is negative. The French authors' fantasy reaches its high point in the book "Hitler et la tradition cathare" by Jean-Michel Angebert (Paris, 1971). This deals with the Cathars, also called Albigensians, who were a heretical sect that spread especially in Southern France between the 11th and 12th centuries, and had their center in the fortress of Montségur. According to Otto Rahn, this was destroyed in a "crusade against the Grail," which is the title of one of his books. Whatever the Grail and its Grail-Knights had to do with this sect remains completely in the dark. The sect was marked by a kind of fanatical Manicheism: sometimes its own believers would die of hunger or some other cause as a demonstration of their detachment from the world and their hostility to earthly existence in flesh and matter. Now it is assumed that Rahn, with whom we corresponded during his lifetime and tried to persuade of the baselessness of his thesis, was an SS man, and that an expedition was sent on its way to retrieve the legendary Grail which was supposedly brought to safety at the moment when the Cathars' fortress in Montségur was destroyed. After the fall of Berlin, a unit is said to have reached the Zillertal and hidden this object at the foot of a glacier, to await a new age.
The truth is that there was talk of a commando unit, which however had a less mystical commission, namely the rescue and concealment of the Reich's treasures. Two further examples show what such fantasies can lead to when they are given free rein. The SS (which included not only battle units but also researchers and scholarly experts) mounted an expedition to Tibet in order to make discoveries in the fields of alpinism and ethnology, and another one to the Arctic, ostensibly for scientific research but also with a view to the possible situation of a German military base. According to these fantastic interpretations, the first expedition was seeking a link to a secret center of the Tradition, while the other was seeking contact with the lost Hyperborean Thule...JULIUS EVOLA
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Humans and Production in the United States

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Humans and Production in the United States(from "Civilta Americana")In his classic study of capitalism Werner Sombart summarized the late capitalist phase in the adage Fiat producto, pareat homo. In its extreme form capitalism is a system in which a man's value is estimated solely in terms of the production of merchandise and the invention of the means of production. Socialist doctrines grew out of a reaction to the lack of human consideration in this system.
A new phase has begun in the United States where there has been an upsurge of interest in so-called labor relations. In appearance it would seem to signify an improvement: in reality this is a deleterious phenomenon. The entrepreneurs and employers have come to realize the importance of the 'human factor' in a productive economy, and that it is a mistake to ignore the individual involved in industry: his motives, his feelings, his working day life. Thus, a whole school of study of human relations in industry has grown up, based on behaviorism. Studies like Human Relations in Industry by B. Gardner and G. Moore have supplied a minute analysis of the behavior of employees and their motivations with the precise aim of defining the best means to obviate all factors that can hinder the maximization of production. Some studies certainly don't come from the shop floor but from the management, abetted by specialists from various colleges. The sociological investigations go as far as analyzing the employee's social ambience. This kind of study has a practical purpose: the maintenance of the psychological contentment of the employee is as important as the physical. In cases in which a worker is tied to a monotonous job which doesn't demand a great deal of concentration, the studies will draw attention to the 'danger' that his mind may tend to wander in a way that may eventually reflect badly on his attitude towards the job.
The private lives of employees are not forgotten - hence the increase in so-called personnel counseling. Specialists are called in to dispel anxiety, psychological disturbances and non-adaptation 'complexes', even to the point of giving advice in relation to the most personal matters. A frankly psycho-analytic technique and one much used is to make the subject 'talk freely' and put the results obtainable by this 'catharsis' into relief.
None of this is concerned with the spiritual betterment of human beings or any real human problems, such as a European would understand them in this "age of economics". On the other side of the Iron Curtain man is treated as a beast of burden and his obedience is maintained by terror and famine. In the United States man is also seen as just a factor of labor and consumption, and no aspect of his interior life is neglected and every factor of his existence is drawn to the same end. In the 'Land of the Free', through every medium, man is told he has reached a degree of happiness hitherto undreamed of. He forgets who he is, where he came from, and basks in the present.JULIUS EVOLA
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Important Clarification on the Term Mediterranean

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Important Clarification on the Term Mediterranean(from "Men Among the Ruins")[...]
The way in which I employ the term Mediterranean requires a further clarification. I have often spoken of Mediterranean civilization, the Mediterranean spirit, and even a Mediterranean race, taking little care to indicate what these vague and elastic designations meant. (1)(1) In one of my early works (Imperialismo pagano, Rome: Atanor, 1928) I mentioned a "Mediterranean tradition." What I meant by it was clarified in later works of mine, such as Revolt Against the Modern World. The German edition of this book no longer contained this expression."Mediterranean" merely designates a space, or a geographical area in which very different cultures and spiritual and racial powers often clashed or met, without ever producing a typical civilization. In anthropology, the "Mediterranean" myth was promoted by Giuseppe Sergi in the past century. Sergi believed in the existence of a Mediterranean race of African origin to which many Italic populations belonged, including the Pelasgians, the Phoenicians, the Levantines, and other half-Semitic populations: these are hardly flattering kinships, which should rather be referred to as "bastard brothers," an expression Mussolini once used to refer to the myth of the Latin spirit. The theory of Sergi is now passé. I believe it is fitting to use the term Mediterranean to designate some suspicious spiritual and ethnic components. These components, which are found in other Mediterranean and "Latin" more or less mixed populations, are also present in various strata of the Italian people, in opposition to its more noble and original nucleus (which should not be called "Mediterranean") reflecting the "Roman" element.Some psychologists have tried to define the Mediterranean type, not so much anthropologically, but in terms of character and style. In these descriptions we can easily recognize the other pole of the Italian soul, namely negative aspects likewise found in the Italian people that need to be rectified.The first "Mediterranean" trait is love for outward appearances and grand gestures. The Mediterranean type needs a stage, if not for the sake of vanity and exhibitionism, at least in the sense that he often draws the impulse and motivation even for noble, remarkable, and sincere things from his main concern to be noticed by others and to make an impact on them. Hence the inclination for a "gesture"—that is, to do something to draw attention and curiosity, even when the person knows he is the only one to witness it. In the Mediterranean man there is a splitting between an "I" that plays the role and an "I" that regards his part from the point of view of a possible observer or spectator, more or less as actors do.Let me repeat: what is problematic here is the style, as the action or the work per se could have a positive value. But this has very little to do with Roman style, and it marks a disintegration and an alteration; it is the antithesis of the ancient saying esse non haberi [to be and not appear to be], or of the style due to which, among other reasons, ancient Roman civilization was characterized by anonymous heroes. In a wider context, the opposition could be formulated in these terms: the Roman style is monumental, monolithic, while the Mediterranean style is choreographic-theatrical and spectacular (see also the French notions of grandeur and gloire).Thus, if this "Mediterranean" component of the Italian man were to be rectified, the best model to follow would be that of the ancient race of Rome—the sober, austere, active style, free from exhibitionism, measured, endowed with a calm awareness of one's dignity. To have the sense of what one is and of one's value independently of any external reference, loving distance as well as actions and expressions reduced to the essential, devoid of any exhibition and cheap showmanship—all these are fundamental elements for the eventual formation of a superior type. And even if the Italian man had in common with the Mediterranean type the above-mentioned "splitting" (as simultaneous actor and spectator), this splitting should be utilized for a careful supervision of one's conduct and expressions. This supervision should prevent every primitive spontaneity; one should carefully study one's own demeanor, not with the purpose of making an "impression" on others, or with great concern for their opinion, but for sake of the style that one intends to display to oneself.The propensity toward outward appearances is easily associated with a personalism that degenerates into individualism. This is another typical negative trait of the Mediterranean soul: the tendency toward a restless, chaotic, and undisciplined individualism. Politically speaking, this is the tendency that, after asserting itself by fomenting struggles and constant quarrels, led the Greek city- states to ruin, although it had previously contributed in a positive manner to their articulated formation. We find this trait in the turbulent times of the early empire; it finally erupted in medieval Italy, degenerating into particularisms, schisms, struggles, factions, and all kinds of rivalries.And although the Italian Renaissance has splendid features, they are nevertheless problematic features that derive from this Mediterranean individualism, which does not tolerate any general and strict law of order; and valuable possibilities dissipated in purely personal positions and in the fireworks of a creativity disjoined from any higher meaning and tradition. Here the author, rather than the work itself, is at center stage.Thus, descending even lower, the same "Mediterranean" component is found in the contemporary pseudo-genial type, who is ever critical and always ready to uphold the opposite thesis in order to make a show of himself, being very clever in finding ways to get around an obstacle and in eluding a law. Even lower we find the maliciousness and the shrewdness (i.e., knowing how to "fool" others) that the Mediterranean type regards as synonyms for intelligence and superiority, whereas the "Roman" type would feel in this a degradation, a betrayal of one's dignity. I have discussed this attitude earlier on, when speaking of Manacorda.The Roman chastity or sobriety of speech, expression, and gesture is contrasted by the gesticulating, noisy, and disordered exuberance of the Mediterranean type, by his mania for communication and effusiveness, and by his feeble sense of boundaries, hierarchy, and silent subordination. The counterpart of these traits is often a lack of character, the tendency to get excited and become drunk with words: verbosity, a flaunted and conventional sense of honor, susceptibility, concern for appearances but with little or no substance. The expression "Pobre in palabras pero in obras largo" [Poor of words but rich in deeds], which characterized the ancient Spanish aristocratic type, should be compared with Moltke's characterization: "Talk little, do much, and be more than you appear to be"; all this points to the "Roman" style.The Mediterranean man often shares with the so-called "desert race" (a psychological-anthropological classification by Clauss, probably the effect of the presence within him of some elements of this race) an intense, explosive, and changeable temperament, tied to circumstances and also flaring up; an immediacy and the power of desire or affection in the emotional life; and random intuitions in the intellectual life. A style of psychological equilibrium and a sense of measure are not his strength. Although he is always cheerful, enthusiastic, and optimistic in appearance, especially when he is in the company of other people, in reality the Mediterranean type experiences sudden psychological lows, and discovers dark and hopeless inner visions that make him anxiously shun solitude and return to exteriority, noisy social interactions, effusions, and passionateness.While acknowledging this, in an eventual rectification we should not proceed by mere antitheses. Nietzsche's saying: "! evaluate a man by his power to delay his reactions" may certainly act as a general basic principle against disorderly impulsivity and "explosiveness." Nietzsche himself warned against every morality that tends to dry up every impetuous current of the human soul instead of channeling it. The capability of control, equilibrium, continuity in feeling and in willing must not lead to a withering and mechanization of one's being, as seems to be the case with some negative traits of the central-European and Anglo-Saxon man. What matters is not to suppress passion and to give to the soul a beautiful, regulated, and homogeneous, though flat form; but rather to organize one's being in an integral way around the capability of recognizing, discriminating, and adequately utilizing the impulses and the lights that emerge from one's deep recesses. It cannot be denied that passion is predominant in many Mediterranean Italian types, but this disposition does not amount to a defect, but rather to an enrichment, provided it finds its correlative in a firmly organized life.A more negative element of the Mediterranean type is sentimentality. Here we should distinguish between sentimentality and true feeling, the former being a degeneration and rhetorical form of the latter. The former plays a predominant role in various expressions typical of the Mediterranean soul. As an example we could adduce a number of sugary songs; the success and the echo they have in the popular soul, despite their patent insincerity, are significative.The Mediterranean man is always inclined to defend himself, just as the Nordic man tends to judge himself. The former is alleged to be more indulgent with himself than with others, and to be reluctant to examine the hidden motives of his inner life under a clear and objective light. This opposition is rather unilateral. Generally speaking, we should not ignore the dangers inherent in morbid introspection: I am thinking here of the line that leads to psychoanalysis and to the psychology of some of Dostoyevsky's characters on the one hand, and to certain complexes of guilt or existential anguish on the other. A style of simplicity and sincerity, first of all toward one's soul, is essential for a superior human type, as is the natural precept of being strict with oneself but understanding and cordial with others. Specific connections with the racial factor subsist only in part in this regard.We should instead consider the importance that sex has for the Mediterranean type. The sexualization of morality on the one hand, and the turning of women and sex almost into an obsession on the other, are not just typically "Mediterranean" traits, since in the latter we can recognize one of the general phenomena of every degenerating civilization. We cannot deny, however, the emphasis that this inclination receives in the average Mediterranean-Southern type, in contrast with what was proper to the best Roman ethics, which assigned to women and to love their rightful place, neither too high nor too low. Roman ethics pointed to the really fundamental values for a clear and virile formation of character and life, without adopting puritanical moralisms.Generally speaking, in Italy the relationships between the two sexes present a far from satisfactory aspect. Southern "temperament" with its primitive features, or with its up-to-date type of the Latin lover; an existing complex of bourgeois prejudices, with hypocrisies, inhibitions, conventionalisms; and a cheap and widespread corruption—all this is far from a line of clarity, sincerity, freedom, and courage. This theme would require a special analysis, but this is not the proper context for it, as it affects more general problems than those of the Mediterranean typology.Having briefly outlined these opposite elements of style, we should recall that they represent two limits. The qualities of the "Roman" type represent the positive limit of dispositions hidden in the best parts of our people, just as the qualities characterized as "Mediterranean" correspond to the negative limit and the less noble part of it; these limits are also found as components in other peoples, especially in the "Latin" group. However, we must realize that too many times behaviors resembling the "Mediterranean" type have been identified, especially abroad, as typically Italian, and that the "Mediterranean" component appears to have prevailed overall in Italian life following World War II.And yet, a trend in the opposite direction would not be inconceivable under certain conditions. Only this trend could create the basis for a new State and a new society, for there is no doubt that formulas, programs, and institutions are of little help when there is no human substance, at least in the dominating elite. In every man there are various possibilities, at least in principle, that can be traced to primordial legacies. While in the best moments of our history we recognize the Aryan-Roman component, in periods of crisis and concealment we can detect the emergence and prevalence of what we have conventionally called the "Mediterranean" component; I said "conventionally" because it consists rather of Mediterranean debris and residues, influences of non-European races that have almost no history, or products of ethnic decay and erosion.In the rectifying and formative action the key role will always be played by the political myth, in Sorel's sense of a galvanizing idea-force. The myth reacts on the environment, implementing the law of elective affinities: it awakens, frees, and imposes those possibilities of single individuals and the environment to which they correspond, while the others are silenced or neutralized. The selection can obviously take place in reverse, according to the nature of the myth. Thus, the communist and democratic myths appeal to what is most promiscuous and degraded in modern man; the corresponding movements owe their success to the mobilization of such elements through the inhibition of every different, higher possibility and sensibility.If a rectification occurred, obviously we would not be able to see results overnight. Besides the above-mentioned condition, consisting of the presence of a political myth capable of creating a given climate, and a specific human ideal, what is needed is a persistent action for a sufficiently long period, stronger than the relapses and eventual reemergences of the opposite possibilities. As is well known, during the Fascist era Italy attempted to start similar developments, whose most serious concern, though it was felt only by a minority, was to increasingly transform a "Mediterranean" Italy into a "Roman" Italy. An adequate integrating counterpart could have been the initial separation of Italy from her "Latin sisters" and a reapproach to the German people, beyond the plane of mere political concerns.It goes without saying that considering the contemporary climate in Italy, with its democratic nadir and its Marxist intoxication, it would be purely utopian to suggest similar ideas again. This obviously does not affect their intrinsic and normative value, as well as the value of other "outdated" ideas. Their "outdatedness" could disappear only at the point of a rupture and a reaction from within, which quite often take place in almost organic terms at the end of dissolutive processes.JULIUS EVOLA
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Jünger: from 'Conservative Revolutionary' to Sluggishly Liberal & Humanistic

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Jünger: from 'Conservative Revolutionary' to Sluggishly Liberal & Humanistic(from "The Path of Cinnabar")[...]
The other work I completed in this period was The Figure of the 'Worker' in the Thought of Ernst Jünger (L’operaio' nel pensiero di Ernst Jünger), which was published in 1960 by the editor A. Armando (head of the publishing house ‘Avio’). Someone had drawn my attention to a book published in the years between the two World Wars, a book entitled The Worker: Dominion and Gestalt (Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt). Its author, Ernst Jünger, was already well-known at the time thanks to various works which - by contrast to the defeatist and pacifist literature prevalent in the aftermath of the war - emphasized the potentially positive and spiritual aspects of modern warfare. On this account, Jünger had even been labelled the 'anti-Remarque'. Nor was Jünger a mere writer: having joined the Foreign Legion in his youth, he had later volunteered to fight in the First World War, where he was repeatedly wounded and was awarded the highest military honors. Following the collapse of Imperial Germany, Jünger was held in high esteem in nationalist and combat circles, and soon emerged as one of the representatives of the ‘Conservative Revolution' - the term I already used to describe those circles which I came to appreciate and collaborate with in central Europe.The starting point of Jünger's analysis in The Worker is the fact that modern warfare has unleashed elementary forces (where 'elementary forces' is used as it might be when talking of nature). Such elementary forces, Jünger argues, are related to that which is 'material'; i.e., to technical devices possessing an enormous destructive power (here the author speaks of 'material battles'). In the case of modern warfare, it is as if a non-human force had been awakened by man from which the individual soldier cannot escape: a force he must rather face by attempting to stand up to the very machines he serves, spiritually as well as physically. This is only possible if the individual takes on a new form of being by forging a new human type capable of grasping the absolute meaning of existence in a context that would prove destructive for any other person. In order to achieve such a goal, the character, ideals, myths, values and worldview of the bourgeois world must be transcended.Jünger had sought to apply his analysis of modern 'total war' to the context of modern existence in general: for the rise of technology and mechanization, Jünger argued - and the various phenomena which this rise entails - will lead to a similar unleashing of 'elementary forces' and destructive, frightening processes, whereby the tools of science and technology, which man has created to conquer nature, will backfire. Jünger here examined similar issues to those he had examined with regard to modern warfare. Having ascertained the impossibility both of relying on previous norms and values, and of avoiding the process underway, Jünger pointed to the need for developing a new human type capable of actively facing destruction: capable, that is, of being the perpetrator rather than the victim of destruction.Destruction, according to Jünger, would thus have to be accepted as a means to overcome what is merely human: as the means to attain a new 'heroic sense of reality' which would replace hedonism and the pursuit of happiness as the chief driving force of life. This heroic sense of reality and impersonality would contribute to differentiate humanity once more, while transcending the antitheses and problems of the bourgeois world and its degenerate features. The new type of man destined to stand out physically from the rest as a new 'figure' in world history - a figure destined to act as the centre, foundation and ruler of the technical age - Jünger termed the 'worker' (der Arbeiter) - hence the title of his book. No doubt, Jünger ought to have chosen a better term, for his 'worker' does not describe a social class - the working class - nor does it have anything to do with the Leftist idea of the industrial proletariat. Rather, Jünger's term 'worker' refers to a broad human type which shares certain traits with both the ascetic and the warrior, and affirms its way of being with detachment and clarity in all aspects of life. In his book, Jünger describes the present age as an age of transition (something, he suggests, in between a museum and a construction yard), and outlines various prospects for the future role of the 'worker', not least in the realm of politics. Jünger here defends the ideal of hierarchy and talks in terms of a new Order. As this Order is described by Jünger as being both 'Spartan' and Prussian, as reminiscent of both the Jesuits and the Communist elites, it is clear that what the author has in mind are the values that have surfaced in the past, and are surfacing today among movements which are situated on the opposite side of the political spectrum, yet share a rejection of bourgeois and democratic values.I had long wished to make Jünger's book known in Italy by publishing its translation. Yet in reading Jünger's work again, I realized that a mere translation would not have sufficed: for the book mixes many interesting sections with others that might confuse the inexperienced reader (for they refer to certain past events in Germany, while lacking any reference to other issues of dramatic importance for the present). Besides, Jünger's book presented certain editorial difficulties. I therefore abandoned the idea of a mere translation and opted for a synthesis of Jünger's theories. While I made extensive use of Jünger's own writing in my study, in order to develop a more critical and interpretive framework, I avoided quoting the extraneous or spurious parts of Jünger's book, and attempted to emphasize its most essential and relevant points. As for my own critical contribution to Jünger's theory, I pointed out that the sense of euphoria and prosperity that pervades the 'Western' world today would seem to have deprived the figure of the 'worker' of those alarming conditions necessary to its affirmation. And yet, I noted, there is no doubt another side to our 'Atomic Age' or 'Second Industrial Revolution': for the times of peace we are living in show all the signs of being an armistice. Besides, the necessary conditions for the rise of the 'worker' will continue to exist not externally, but in the form of internal acts of destruction and elementary forces in revolt against the current order (particularly if this order has been rationally, perfectly planned). If I ever criticized Jünger in my book, it was rather for his ambivalent description of the 'worker': for such a figure runs the risk of merely expressing a form of activism and self-development devoid of any transcendent character capable of engendering new and legitimate hierarchies. On the other hand, the attainment of a superior dimension of this kind is not a likely prospect; for the younger generations are increasingly coming to reflect the kind of worldview and perspective favored by modern science: a perspective that lies at the basis of modern technology (and thus of our own twilight civilization), and which denies the very possibility of transcendence.
In The Worker (as well as in a more recent book entitled At the Wall of Time), Jünger has mentioned the as-yet unperceived 'metaphysics' that lie at the basis of the world of machines and technology, and that will one day surface and come to prevail. Other authors have recently voiced similar ideas: a notable example is that of Pauwels and Bergier in Le matin des magiciens - a book that has attracted quite a lot of attention. Similar ideas, however, strike me as mere whims - unless the term 'metaphysical' is here understood in its literal meaning of 'that which lies beyond the physical' - in which case the emergence of non-physical forces might be seen to refer to the affirmation of a mechanistic and technological world: a 'daemonic' rather than truly 'metaphysical' event. Thus, in the conclusion to my book on Jünger's theories, I suggested that without an actual 'mutation' - in the sense the word possesses in the field of biology and genetics, where it refers to the development of new species - the figure of the 'worker', provided it ever comes into being, will hardly prove any different from the Communist ideal of the worker in materialist and collectivist terms. Here, I also remarked that the very use of the term 'worker' is questionable, for the idea of the 'worker' chiefly pertains to the fourth and final caste. It is revealing, therefore, that 'job' is a term so frequently used today that it even describes - and hence debases - activities which have nothing to do with the idea of a job - something I frequently emphasized in my own writing.On the other hand, over the years Jünger has come to distance himself from the book I had introduced to the Italian public, and has abandoned his original views. While the most recent writing of Jünger has significantly contributed towards his fame as a writer and man of letters, on a spiritual level it reflects a lapse: both for its merely literary and aesthetic nature, and because it betrays the influence of ideas of a different, and often antithetical sort from the ones that inform The Worker and other early books of Jünger. It is as if the spiritual drive that Jünger had derived from his life in the trenches of the First World War, and applied on an intellectual level, had gradually run out. Besides, not only did Jünger play no significant role during the Second World War, but it also appears that, when in service in occupied France, he got in touch with those members of the Wehrmacht who in 1944 attempted to murder Hitler. Jünger, therefore, should be numbered among those individuals who first subscribed to 'Conservative Revolutionary' ideas but were later, in a way, traumatized by the National Socialist experience, to the point of being led to embrace the kind of sluggishly liberal and humanistic ideas which conformed to the dominant attempt 'to democratically reform' their country; individuals who have proven incapable of distinguishing the positive side of past ideas from the negative, and of remaining true to the former. Alas, this incapability to discern is, in a way, typical of contemporary Germany (the land of the 'economic miracle').
The following book I wrote, Ride the Tiger, partly returns to the issue of the 'worker', which it develops and integrates. [...]JULIUS EVOLA
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Liberalism & Totalitarianism: Degrees of the same Disease

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Liberalism & Totalitarianism: Degrees of the same Disease(from "Men Among the Ruins")[...]
Coming back to liberalism, I wish to say that it represents the antithesis of every organic doctrine. Since according to liberalism the primary element is the human being regarded not as person, but rather as an individual living in a formless freedom, this philosophy is able to conceive society merely as a mechanical interplay of forces and entities acting and reacting to each other, according to the space they succeed in gaining for themselves, without the overall system reflecting any higher law of order or meaning. The only law, and thus the only State, that liberalism can conceive has therefore an extrinsic character in regard to its subjects. Power is entrusted to the State by sovereign individuals, so that it may safeguard the freedoms of the individuals and intervene only when these freedoms clash and prove dangerous to one another. Thus, order appears as a limitation and a regulation of freedoms, rather than as a form that freedom itself expresses from within, as freedom to do something, or as freedom connected to a quality and a specific function. Order, namely the legal order, eventually amounts to an act of violence because, practically speaking, in a liberal and democratic regime a government is defined in terms of a majority; thus, the minority, though composed of "free individuals," must bow and obey.The specter that most terrifies liberalism today is totalitarianism. It can be said that totalitarianism may arise as a borderline case out of the presuppositions of liberalism, rather than out of those of an organic State. As we shall see, in totalitarianism we have the accentuation of the concept of order uniformly imposed from the outside onto a mass of mere individuals who, lacking their own form and law, must receive one from the outside, be introduced in a mechanical, all-inclusive system, and avoid the disorder typical of a disorganized and selfish expression of partisan forces and special-interest groups.
Events have recently led toward a similar solution, after the more or less idyllic view proper to the euphoric phase of liberalism and of laissez-faire economy has turned out to be simply a fancy. I am referring here to the view according to which a satisfactory social and economic equilibrium allegedly arises out of the conflict of particular interests: almost as if a preestablished harmony à la Leibniz would take care of ordering everything for the better, even when the single individual cares only for himself and is freed from every bond.Thus, not only ideally, but historically too, liberalism and individualism are at the beginning and at the origin of the various interconnected forms of modern subversion. The person who becomes an individual, by ceasing to have an organic meaning and by refusing to acknowledge any principle of authority, is nothing more than a number, a unit in the pack; his usurpation evokes a fatal collectivist limitation against himself. Therefore, we go from liberalism to democracy: and then from democracy to socialist forms that are increasingly inclined toward collectivism. For a long time Marxist historiography has clearly recognized this pattern: it has recognized that the liberal revolution, or the revolution of the Third Estate, opened a breach and contributed to erode the previous traditional sociopolitical world and to pave the way to the socialist and communist revolution; in turn, the representatives of this revolution will leave the rhetorics of the "immortal principles" and the "noble and generous ideas" to naive and deluded people. Since every fall is characterized by an accelerated motion, it is not possible to stop halfway. Within the system of the predominant ideologies in the West, liberalism, having absolved its preliminary task of disintegration and disorganization, has quickly been set aside—thus, the claim of some of its contemporary epigones to be able to contain Marxism, which represents the last link in the chain of causes, rings hollow indeed and is indicative of lack of wisdom.There is a saying from Tacitus that summarizes in lapidary style what has happened since the "liberal revolution": Ut imperium evertant, libertatem praeferunt; si perventerint, liberatem ipsam adgredientur—that is, "in order to overthrow the State (in its authority and sovereignty: i.e., imperium) they uphold freedom; once they succeed, they will turn against it too." Plato said: "Probably, then, tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy—from the height of liberty, I take it, the fiercest extreme of servitude." Liberalism and individualism played merely the role of instruments in the overall plan of world subversion, to which they opened the dams.Thus, it is of paramount importance to recognize the continuity of the current that has generated the various political, antitraditional forms that are today at work in the chaos of political parties: liberalism, constitutionalism, parliamentary democracy, socialism, radicalism, and finally communism and Soviet-ism have emerged in history as degrees or as interconnected stages of the same disease. Without the French Revolution and liberalism, constitutionalism and democracy would not have existed; without democracy and the corresponding bourgeois and capitalist civilization of the Third Estate, socialism and demagogic nationalism would not have arisen; without the groundwork laid by socialism, we would not have witnessed the advent of radicalism and of communism in both its national and proletarian-international versions. The fact that today these forms often appear either to coexist or to be in competition with each other should not prevent a keen eye from noting that they sustain, link, and mutually condition each other, being only the expression of different degrees of the same subversion of every normal and legitimate institution. It necessarily follows that, when these forms clash, the one that will prevail will be the most extreme, or the one located on the lowest step. The beginning of the process is to be traced to the time when Western man broke the ties to Tradition, claiming for himself as an individual a vain and illusory freedom: when he became an atom in society, rejecting every higher symbol of authority and sovereignty in a system of hierarchies. The "totalitarian" forms that are emerging are a demonic and materialistic counterfeit of the previous unitary political ideal, and they represent "the greatest and most savage slavery," which, according to Plato, arose out of formless "freedom."
Economic liberalism, which engendered various forms of capitalist exploitation and of cynical, antisocial plutocracy, is one of the final consequences of the intellectual emancipation that made the individual solutus—that is, lacking the inner, self-imposed bond, function, and limit that are found instead in every organic system's general climate and natural hierarchy of values. Moreover, we know that in more recent times, political liberalism has become little more than a system at the service of laissez-faire—namely, economic liberalism—in the context of a capitalist-plutocratic civilization; from this situation new reactions arose, pushing everything lower and lower, to the level of Marxism.The above-mentioned connections are also visible in the special sector of property and wealth, especially when we consider the meaning of the change that occurred within it, following the institutions created by the French Revolution. By denouncing everything in the economic world that was still inspired by the feudal ideal as a cruel regime based on privileges, the organic connection (displayed mainly in various feudal systems) between personality and property, social function and wealth, and between a given qualification or moral nobility and the rightful and legitimate possession of goods, was broken. It was the Napoleonic Code that made "property" neutral and "private" in the inferior and individualistic sense of the word; with this code, property ceased to have a political function and bond. Moreover, property was no longer subject to an "eminent right," nor tied to a specific responsibility and social rank and subject to a "higher right." In this context, rank signified the objective and normal consecration in a hierarchical system that the superior one, as well as the personality formed and differentiated by a supra-individual tradition and idea, receives. Property, and wealth in general, no longer had any duties before the State other than in fiscal terms. The subject of property was the pure and simple "citizen," whose dominant concern was to exploit the property without any scruples and without too much regard for those traditions of blood, family, and folk that had previously been a relevant counterpart of property and wealth.It was only natural that in the end the right to private property came to be disputed; whenever there is no higher legitimization of ownership, it is always possible to wonder why some people have property and others do not, or why some people have earned for themselves privileges and social preeminence (often greater than those in feudal systems), while lacking something that would make them stand out and above everybody else in an effective and sensible manner. Thus the so-called "social question," together with the worn-out slogan "social justice," arose in those conditions where no differentiation is any longer visible other than in terms of mere "economic classes" (wealth and property having become "neutral" and apolitical; every value of difference and rank, of personality and authority having been rejected or undermined by processes of degeneration and materialization; the political sphere having been deprived of its original dignity). Thus, subversive ideologies have successfully and easily unmasked all the political myths that capitalism and the bourgeoisie have employed, in the absence of any superior principle, in order to defend their privileged status against the push and final violation by the forces from below.Again, we can see that the various aspects of the contemporary social and political chaos are interrelated and there is no real way to effectively oppose them other than by returning to the origins. To go back to the origins means, plainly and simply, to reject everything that in any domain (whether social, political, or economic) is connected to the "immortal principles" of 1789, as a libertarian, individualistic, and egalitarian thought, and to oppose it with the hierarchical view, in the context of which alone the notion, value, and freedom of man as person are not reduced to mere words or excuses for a work of destruction and subversion.JULIUS EVOLA
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Method of the True Dominators of History vs. Progressivism

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Method of the True Dominators of History vs. Progressivism(from "Men Among the Ruins")[...]
We already know what the true foundation of progressivism is: the mirage of technological civilization, the lure exercised by some undeniable material and industrial progress that, however, is appreciated without paying much attention to its negative drawbacks, which often affect other, more important and valuable domains of human life. Those who are not subject to the predominant materialism of our times, upon recognizing the only context in which it is legitimate to speak of progress, will be on guard against any orientation in which the modern "myth of progress" is reflected. In ancient times the matter was very clear. In Latin, the word denoting subversion was not revolutio (which had a different meaning, as I have explained before) but rather seditio, or eversio, or civilis perturbatio, or rerum publicarum comnmutatio. Thus, the term "revolutionary," in its modern meaning, was rendered with circumlocutions such as rerum novarum studiosus, or fautor, namely one who aims at and promotes new things. According to the traditional Roman mentality, "new things" were automatically regarded as negative and subversive.Thus, in regard to "revolutionary" ambitions it is necessary to clear the misunderstanding and to choose between the two aforementioned opposing positions, which determine two likewise opposing styles. Again, on the one hand there are those who acknowledge the existence of immutable principles for every true order and who abide by them, not allowing themselves to be swept along by events. Such people do not believe in "history" and in "progress" as mysterious super-ordained entities, but instead attempt to dominate the forces of the environment and lead them back to higher, stable forms: according to them, this is what embracing reality amounts to. On the other hand there are those who, having been "born yesterday," have nothing in the past, who believe only in the future and are committed to a groundless, empirical, and improvised action, deluding themselves that they are able to direct events without knowing or acknowledging anything that rises above the plane of matter and contingency; such people devise many systems, the end result of which will never be an authentic order, but instead a more or less manageable disorder. The "revolutionary" vocation belongs to this second line of thought, even when it does not directly serve the interests of unadulterated subversion. In this context, the lack of principles is supplied with the myth of the future, through which some dare to justify and sanctify recent destructions that have occurred, since in their view they were necessary in order to move ahead and to achieve new and better horizons (any trace of which, I am afraid, it is difficult to point out).Once things are clearly seen in these terms, it is necessary to thoroughly examine one's "revolutionary" ambitions, all the while aware that if these ambitions are kept within their legitimate limits, one would then be a part of history's demolition squad. Those who are still standing upright in this world of ruins are at a higher level; their watchword is Tradition, according to the dynamic aspect I have just made evident. When circumstances change, when crises occur, when new factors come into play, where the previous dams begin to crack, these people know how to retain their sangfroid and are capable of letting go of what needs to be abandoned in order that what is truly essential may not be compromised. These people know how to move on, upholding in an impassive way the forms that are proper to the new circumstances, knowing how to assert themselves through them; their goal is to reestablish and maintain an immaterial continuity and avoid a groundless and adventurous course of action. This is the method of the true dominators of history, which is very different from and more virile than that of the merely "revolutionary."
[...]JULIUS EVOLA
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Misunderstandings of the New "Paganism"

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Misunderstandings of the New "Paganism"(from "Sintesi di Dottrina della Raza")It is perhaps appropriate to point out the misunderstandings that are current at the moment in some radical circles, who believe that a solution lies in the direction of a new paganism. This misunderstanding is already visible in the use of terms such as "pagan" and "pagandom". I myself, having used these expressions as slogans in a book that was published in Italy in 1928, and in Germany in 1934, have cause for sincere regrets.Certainly the word for pagan or heathen, paganus, appears in some ancient Latin writers such as Livy without an especially negative tone. But this does not alter the fact that with the arrival of the new faith, the word paganus became a decidedly disparaging expression, as used in early Christian apologetics. It derives from pagus, meaning a small town or village, so that paganus refers to the peasant way of thinking: an uncultured, primitive, and superstitious way. In order to promote and glorify the new faith, the apologists had the bad habit of elevating themselves through the denigration of other faiths. There was often a conscious and often systematic disparagement and misrepresentation of almost all the earlier traditions, doctrines, and religions, which were grouped under the contemptuous blanket-term of paganism or heathendom.To this end, the apologists obviously made a premeditated effort to highlight those aspects of the pre-Christian religions and traditions that lacked any normal or primordial character, but were clearly forms that had fallen into decay. Such a polemical procedure lead, in particular, to the characterization of whatever had preceded Christendom, and was hence non-Christian, as necessarily anti-Christian.One should consider, then, that "paganism" is a fundamentally tendentious and artificial concept that scarcely corresponds to the historical reality of what the pre-Christian world always was in its normal manifestations, apart from a few decadent elements and aspects that derived from the degenerate remains of older cultures.Once we are clear about this, we come today to a paradoxical realization: that this imaginary paganism that never existed, but was invented by Christian apologists, is now serving as the starting-point for certain so-called pagan circles, and is thus threatening for the first time in history to become a reality -- no more and no less than that.What are the main traits of today's pagan outlook, as its own apologists believe and declare them to be? The primary one is the imprisonment in Nature. All transcendence is totally unknown to the pagan view of life: it remains stuck in a mixture of Spirit and Nature, in an ambiguous unity of Body and Soul. There is nothing to its religion but a superstitious deification of natural phenomena, or of tribal energies promoted to the status of minor gods. Out of this there arises first of all a blood- and soil-bound particularism. Next comes a rejection of the values of personality and freedom, and a condition of innocence that is merely that of the natural man, as yet unawakened to any truly supra-natural calling. Beyond this innocence there is only lack of inhibition, "sin," and the pleasure of sinning. In other domains there is nothing but superstition, or a purely profane culture of materialism and fatalism. It is as though only the arrival of Christianity (ignoring certain precursors which are dismissed as insignificant) allowed the world of supra-natural freedom to break through, letting in grace and personality, in contrast to the fatalistic and nature-bound beliefs ascribed to "paganism," bringing with it a catholic ideal (in the etymological sense of universality) and a healthy dualism, which made it possible to subjugate Nature to a higher law, and for the "Spirit" to triumph over the law of flesh, blood, and the false gods.These are the main traits of the dominant understanding of paganism, i.e., of everything that does not entail a specifically Christian world-view. Anyone who possesses any direct acquaintance with cultural and religious history, however elementary, can see how incorrect and one-sided this attitude is. Besides, in the early Church Fathers there are often signs of a higher understanding of the symbols, doctrines, and religions of preceding cultures. Here we will give only a sampling.What most distinguished the pre-Christian world, in all its normal forms, was not the superstitious divinization of nature, but a symbolic understanding of it, by virtue of which (as I have often emphasized) every phenomenon and every event appeared as the sensible revelation of a supra-sensible world. The pagan understanding of the world and of man was essentially marked by sacred symbolism.Moreover, the pagan way of life was absolutely not that of a mindless innocence, nor a natural abandonment to the passions, even if certain forms of it were obviously degenerate. It was already aware of a healthy dualism, which is reflected in its universal religious or metaphysical conceptions. Here we can mention the dualistic warrior-religion of the ancient Iranian Aryans, already discussed and familiar to all; the Hellenistic antithesis between the "two natures," between World and Underworld, or the Nordic one between the race of the Ases and the elementary beings; and lastly the Indo-Aryan contrast between sams'ra, the "stream of forms," and m(o)kthi, "liberation" and "perfection."On this basis, all the great pre-Christian cultures shared the striving for a supra- natural freedom, i.e., for the metaphysical perfection of the personality, and they all acknowledged Mysteries and initiations. I have already pointed out that the Mysteries often signified the reconquest of the primordial state, the spirituality of the solar, Hyperborean races, on the foundation of a tradition and a knowledge that were concealed through secrecy and exclusivity from the pollutions of an environment already in decay. We have also seen that in the Eastern lands, the Aryan quality was already associated with a "second birth" achieved through initiation. As for natural innocence as the pagan cult of the body, that is a fairy-tale and not even in evidence among savages, for despite the inner lack of differentiation already mentioned in connection with races "close to nature," these people inhibit and constrict their lives though countless taboos in a way that is often stricter than the morality of the so-called "positive religions." And as for that which seems to the superficial view to embody the prototype of such "innocence," namely the classical ideal, that was no cult of the body: it did not belong on that side of the body-spirit duality, but on the other side. As already stated, the classic ideal is that of a Spirit that is so dominant that under certain favorable spiritual conditions it molds Body and Soul to its own image, and thereby achieves a perfect harmony between the inner and the outer.Lastly, there is an aspiration away from particularism to be found everywhere in the "pagan" world, to which was due the imperial summons that marked the ascending phase of the Nordic-derived races. Such a summons was often metaphysically enhanced and refined, and appeared as the natural consequence of the expansion of the ancient sacred state-concept; also as the form in which the victorious presence of the "higher world" and the paternal, Olympian principle sought to manifest itself in the world of becoming. In this respect we might recall the old Iranian concept of Empire and of the "King of kings," with its associated doctrine of the hvareno (the "celestial glory" with which the Aryan rulers were endowed), and the Indo-Aryan tradition of the "World-king" or cakravarti, etc., right up to the reappearance of these signifiers in the "Olympian" assumptions of the ancient Roman idea of State and Empire. The Roman Empire, too, had its sacred contents, which were systematically misunderstood or undervalued not only by Christendom, but also by the writers of "positive" history. Even the Emperor-cult had the sense of a hierarchical unity at the top of a pantheon, which was a series of separate territorial and ancestral cults belonging to the non-Roman peoples, which were freely respected so long as they kept within their normal boundaries. Finally, concerning the "pagan" unity of the two powers, spiritual and temporal, this was very far from meaning that they were fused. As a "solar" race understood it, it expressed the superior rights that must accrue to the spiritual authority at the center of any normal state; thus it was something quite different from the emancipation and "supremacy" of a merely secular state. If we were to make similar amendments in the spirit of true objectivity, the possibilities would be overwhelming.JULIUS EVOLA
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Modern Music's Primitivism & Ecstatic Possibilities
as a Challenge that Demands the Right Response

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Modern Music's Primitivism & Ecstatic Possibilities
as a Challenge that Demands the Right Response(from "Ride the Tiger")[...]
The enormous and spontaneous spread of jazz in the modern world shows that meanings no different from those of the physico-cerebral "classical" music, which superseded nineteenth-century bourgeois melodrama and pathos, have in fact thoroughly penetrated the younger generation. But there are two sides to this phenomenon. Those who once went crazy for the waltz or delighted in the treacherous and conventional pathos of melodrama, now find themselves at ease surrounded by the convulsive-mechanical or abstract rhythms of recent jazz, both "hot" and "cool," which we must consider as more than a deviant, superficial vogue. We are facing a rapid and central transformation of the manner of listening, which is an integral part of that complex that defines the nature of the present. Jazz is undeniably an aspect of the resurfacing of the elemental in the modern world, bringing the bourgeois epoch to its dissolution. Naturally, the young men and women who like to dance to jazz today do so simply "for fun" and are not concerned with this; yet the change exists, its reality unprejudiced by its lack of recognition, since its true meaning and possibilities could only be noted from the particular point of view employed by us in all of our analyses.Some have included jazz among the forms of compensation that today's man resorts to when faced with his practical, arid, and mechanical existence; jazz is supposed to provide him with raw contents of rhythm and elemental vitality. If there is any truth in this idea, we must consider the fact that to arrive at this, Western man did not create original forms, nor utilize elements of European folk music, which, for example in the rhythms of southeastern Europe (Romanian or Hungarian), has a fascination and an intensity comprising not only rhythm but also authentic dynamics. He instead looked for inspiration in the patrimony of the lower and more exotic races, the Negroes and mulattoes of the tropical and subtropical zones.According to one of the scholars of Afro-Cuban music, Fernando Ortiz, all the primary elements of modern dance actually have these origins, including those whose origins are obscured by the fact that they have come through Latin America. One can deduce that modern man, especially North American man, has regressed to primitivism in choosing, assimilating, and developing a music of such primitive qualities as Negro music, which was even originally associated with dark forms of ecstasy.In fact, it is known that African music, the origin of the principal rhythms of modern dances, has been one of the major techniques used to open people up to ecstasy and possession. Both Alfons Dauer and Ortiz have rightly seen the characteristic of this music as its polyrhythmic structure, developed in such a way that the static [on-beat] accents that mark the rhythm constantly act as ecstatic [off-beat] accents; hence the special rhythmic figures that generate a tension intended to "feed an uninterrupted ecstasy.' The same structure has been preserved in all so-called syncopated jazz. These syncopations are like delays that tend to liberate energy or generate an impulse: a technique used in African rites to induce possession of the dancers by certain entities, the Orisha of the Yoruba or the Loa of the Voodoo of Haiti, who took over their personalities and "rode" them. This ecstatic potential still exists in jazz. But even here there is a process of dissociation, of abstract development of rhythmic forms separated from the whole to which they originally belonged. Thus, given the desacralization of the environment and the nonexistence of any institutional framework or corresponding ritual tradition, any suitable atmosphere or appropriate attitude, one cannot expect the specific effects of authentic African music with its evocative function; the effect always remains a diffuse and formless possession, primitive and collective in character.This is very apparent in the latest forms, such as the music of the so-called beat groups. Here the obsessive reiteration of a rhythm prevails (similar to the use of the African tom-tom), causing paroxysmal contortions of the body and inarticulate screams in the performers, while the mass of the listeners joins in, hysterically shrieking and throwing themselves around, creating a collective climate similar to that of the possessions of savage ritual and certain Dervish sects, or the Macumba and the Negro religious revivals.The frequent use of drugs both by performers of this music and by the enraptured young people is also significant, causing a true, frenetic "crowd mentality," as in beat or hippie sessions in California involving tens of thousands of both sexes.Here we are no longer concerned with the specific compensation that one can find in syncopated dance music as the popular counterpart and extension of the extremes reached, but not maintained, by modern symphonic music; we are concerned with the semi-ecstatic and hysterical beginnings of a formless, convoluted escapism, empty of content, a beginning and end in itself. Hence, it is completely inappropriate when some compare it to certain frenetic, collective, ancient rites, because the latter always had a sacred background.Quite apart from similar extreme and aberrant forms, one can still consider the general problem of all these methods that provide elemental, ecstatic possibilities, which the differentiated man, not the masses, can use in order to feed that particular intoxication described earlier, which is the only nourishment he can existentially draw from an epoch of dissolution. The processes of recent times tend precisely toward these extremes; and whereas some of the present youth merely seek to dull their senses and to use certain experiences merely for extreme sensations' others can use such situations as a challenge that demands the right response: a reaction that arises from "being."JULIUS EVOLA
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Modern Nationalism, the Masses & the Democracy of the Dead

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Modern Nationalism, the Masses & the Democracy of the Dead(from "Revolt Against The Modern World")[...]
From what has been said previously it is possible to see that in modem society the opposite direction is prevailing, that is, the direction of regress toward the collective rather than progress toward the universal, with the single individual becoming increasingly unable to have a meaning other than as a function of something in which he ceases to have a personality. This becomes increasingly evident as the world of the Fourth Estate approaches. Thus, modern nationalism may be regarded as at best a transition phase.It is necessary to distinguish between nationality and nationalism. The Middle Ages knew nationalities but not nationalisms. Nationality is a natural factor that encompasses a certain group of common elementary characteristics that are retained both in the hierarchical differentiation and in the hierarchical participation, which they do not oppose. Therefore, during the Middle Ages, castes, social bodies, and orders were articulated within various nationalities, and while the types of the warrior, noble, merchant, and artisan conformed to the characteristics of this or of that nation, these articulations represented at the same time wider, international units. Hence, the possibility for the members of the same caste who came from different nations to understand each other better than the members of different castes within the same nation.Modem nationalism represents, with regard to this, a movement in the opposite direction. Modem nationalism is not based on a natural unity, but on an artificial and centralizing one. The need for this type of unity was increasingly felt at the same time as the natural and healthy sense of nationality was lost and as individuals approached the state of pure quantity, of being merely the masses, after every authentic tradition and qualitative articulation was destroyed. Nationalism acts upon these masses through myths and suggestions that are likely to galvanize them, awaken elementary instincts in them, flatter them with the perspectives and fancies of supremacy, exclusivism, and power. Regardless of its myths, the substance of modem nationalism is not an ethnos but a demos, and its prototype always remains the plebeian one produced by the French Revolution.This is why nationalism has a double face. It accentuates and elevates to the state of absolute value a particularistic principle; therefore, the possibilities of mutual understanding and cooperation between nations are reduced to a bare minimum, without even considering the forms of leveling guaranteed by modem civilization. What seems to continue here is the same tendency through which the arising of national states corresponded to the disintegration of the European ecumene. It is well known that in Europe during the nineteenth century, nationalism was synonymous with revolution and acted in the precise sense of a dissolution of the surviving supernational organisms and a weakening of the political principle of "legitimate" sovereignty in the traditional sense of the word. Yet, when considering the relationships between the whole and the single individual as personality, what emerges in nationalism is an opposite aspect, namely, the cumulative and collectivizing element. In the context of modem nationalism what emerges is the previously mentioned inversion; the nation, the homeland, becomes the primary element in terms of being a self-subsisting entity that requires from the individual belonging to it an unconditional dedication, as if it were a moral and not merely a natural and "political" entity. Even culture stops being the support for the formation and elevation of the person and becomes essentially relevant only by virtue of its national character. Thus in the most radical forms of nationalism, the liberal ideal and the ideal of "neutral culture" undergo a crisis and are regarded with suspicion, though from the opposite perspective to the one in which liberalism and the neutral, secular, and apolitical culture appeared as a degeneration or as a crumbling in comparison to previous organic civilizations.Even when nationalism speaks of "tradition," it has nothing to do with what used to go by that name in ancient civilizations; it is rather a myth or fictitious continuity based on a minimum common denominator that consists in the mere belonging to a given group. Through the concept of "tradition," nationalism aims at consolidating a collective dimension by placing behind the individual the mythical, deified, and collectivized unity of all those who preceded him. In this sense, Chesterton was right to call this type of tradition "the democracy of the dead." Here the dimension of transcendence, or of what is superior to history, is totally lacking.According to these aspects, it can be said that modem nationalism on the one hand confirms the renunciation of the pursuit of the upwards-oriented direction and the unification through what is supernatural and potentially universal, while on the other hand it distinguishes itself only by virtue of a mere difference of degree from the anonymity proper to the ideal of the Fourth Estate with its "Internationals," bent, as a matter of principle, on perverting every notion of homeland and of the national state. In reality, wherever the people have become sovereign and the king or the leader is no longer considered as being "from above," or to be ruling "by God's grace," but instead "by the will of the nation" (even where the expression "to rule by God's grace" has been preserved, it amounts to an empty formula) - it is precisely at this point that the abyss that separates a political organism of a traditional type from communism is virtually overcome - the fracture has occurred, all the values have shifted and been turned upside down; at this point one can only wait for the final stage to be ushered in. Thus, it is more than for mere tactical purposes that the leaders of world subversion in the last form, as it has been embodied in Soviet communism, have as their main goal the excitement, nourishing, and supporting of nationalism even where nationalism, by virtue of being anticommunist, should at least in principle turn against them. They see far away, just like those who employed nationalism for their own purposes during the early revolution (i.e., liberalism) when they said "nation" but really meant "antitradition" or the denial of the principle of true sovereignty. They recognize the collective potential of nationalism, which beyond contingent antitheses will finally dispose of the organisms that it controls.Hence, the difference in degree between nationalism and the tendencies of a democratic and communitarian character that oppose the forces of particularism and spirit of division inherent in nationalism. In these tendencies the regressive phenomenon that is at the foundation of modem nationalism is also visible; at work in it is the impulse toward a wider agglomerate, leveled on a global scale. As Julian Benda said, the last perspective is that humanity, and not just a fraction of it, will take itself as the object of its cult.There is today a trend toward universal brotherhood; this brotherhood, far from abolishing the nationalist spirit and its particularisms and pride, will eventually become its supreme form, as the nation will be called Man and God will be regarded either as an enemy (1) or as an "inoperative fiction." When mankind becomes unified in an immense enterprise and accustomed to organized production, technology, division of labor, and "prosperity," despising any free activity oriented to transcendence, it will achieve what in similar currents is conceived as the ultimate goal of the true civilizing effort.(1) Proudhon had already declared that the true remedy does not consist in identifying mankind with God, but in proving that God, if he exists, is mankind’s sworn enemy.One final consideration concerning modem nationalism: while on the one hand it corresponds to a construction and an artificial entity, on the other hand, through the power of the myths and the confusing ideas that are evoked in order to hold together and galvanize a given human group, this entity remains open to influences that make it act according to the general plan of subversion. Modem nationalisms, with their intransigence, blind egoism and crude will to power, their antagonisms, social unrest and the wars they have generated have truly been the instruments for the completion of a destructive process: the shift from the age of the Third Estate to that of the Fourth Estate; in so doing they have dug their own graves.
[...]JULIUS EVOLA
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Nietzsche:
Confused Thirst for Eternity that Runs Through his Works
can be Retained of his Views

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Nietzsche:
Confused Thirst for Eternity that Runs Through his Works
can be Retained of his Views(from "Ride the Tiger")[...]
Later we shall examine the specific themes of existentialism. For now, we shall see what can be retained of Nietzsche's views, not as a nihilist but as one who thought that he had left nihilism behind him, and thus created the premises for a higher existence and a new state of health.Once the idols have fallen, good and evil have been surpassed, along with all the surrogates of the old God, and the mist has lifted from one's eyes, nothing is left to Nietzsche but "this world," life, the body; he remains "faithful to the earth." Thereupon, as we know, the theme of the superman appears. "God is dead, now we want the superman to come." The superman will be the meaning of the earth, the justification of existence. Man is "a bridge, not a goal," "a rope stretched between the brute and the superman, a rope stretched above an abyss."This is not the place for a deep analysis of the manifold and divergent themes that crystallize in Nietzsche's work around this central motif. The essential can be spelled out as follows.The negative, destructive phase of Nietzsche's thought ends with the affirmation of immanence: all transcendent values, systems of ends and of higher truths, are interpreted as functions of life. In its turn, the essence of life - and more generally of nature - is the will to power. The superman is also defined as a function of the will to power and domination. One can see from this that Nietzsche's nihilism stops halfway. It sets up a new table of values, including a good and an evil. It presents a new ideal with dogmatic affirmation, whereas in reality this ideal is only one of many that could take shape in "life," and which is not in fact justified in and of itself, without a particular choice and without faith in it. The fact that the fixed point of reference set up beyond nihilism lacks a true foundation so long as one insists on pure immanence is already apparent in the part of Nietzsche's thought that deals with historical criticism and sociology. The entire world of "higher" values is interpreted there as reflecting a "decadence." But at the same time these values are seen as the weapons of a hidden will to power on the part of a certain human group, which has used them to hamper another group whose life and ideals resemble those of the superman. The instinct of decadence itself is then presented as a special variety of the will to power. Now, it is obvious that in function of a mere will to power, all distinctions vanish: there are no more super- men or sheep-men, neither affirmers nor negators of life. There is only a variety of techniques, of means (far from being reducible to sheer physical force), tending to make one human class or another prevail; means that are indiscriminately called good in proportion to their success. If in life and the history of civilization there exist phases of rise and decline, phases of creation and destruction and decadence, what authorizes us to ascribe value to one rather than to the others? Why should decadence be an evil? It is all life, and all justifiable in terms of life, if this is truly taken in its irrational, naked reality, outside any theology or teleology, as Nietzsche would have wished. Even "anti-nature" and "violence against life" enter into it. Once again, all firm , ground gives way.Nietzsche moreover wanted to restore its "innocence" to becoming by freeing it from all finality and intentionality, so as to free man and let him walk on his own feet - the same Nietzsche who had justly criticized and rejected evolutionism and Darwinism because he could see that the higher figures and types of life are only sporadic and fortuitous cases. They are positions that man gains only in order to lose them, and they create no continuity because they consist of beings who are more than usually exposed to danger and destruction. The philosopher himself ends with a finalistic concession when, in order to give meaning to present-day humanity, he proposes the hypothetical future man in the guise of the superman: a goal worth dedicating oneself to, and even sacrificing oneself and dying for. Mutatis mutandis, things here are not very different from the Marxist-communist eschatology, in which the mirage of a future human condition after the worldwide revolution serves to give meaning to everything inflicted on the man of today in the areas controlled by this ideology. This is a flagrant contradiction of the demands of a life that is its own meaning. The second point is that the pure affirmation of life does not necessarily coincide with the will to power in the strict, qualitative sense, nor with the affirmation of the superman.Thus Nietzsche's solution is only a pseudo-solution. A true nihilism does not spare even the doctrine of the superman. What is left, if one wants to be radical and follow a line of strict coherence, and what we can accept in our investigations, is the idea that Nietzsche expressed through the symbol of the eternal return. It is the affirmation, now truly unconditional, of all that is and of all that one is, of one's own nature and one's own situation. It is the attitude of one whose self-affirmation and self-identity come from the very roots of his being; who is not scared but exalted by the prospect that for an indefinite repetition of identical cosmic cycles he has been what he is, and will be again, innumerable times. Naturally we are dealing with nothing more than a myth, which has the simple, pragmatic value of a test of strength. But there is another view that in fact leads beyond the world of becoming and toward an eternalization of the being. Nietzsche differs little from Neoplatonism when he says: "For everything to return is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being."And also: "To impose the character of being upon becoming is the supreme test of power." At its base, this leads to an opening beyond immanence unilaterally conceived, and toward the feeling that "all things have been baptized in the font of eternity and beyond good and evil." The same thing was taught in the world of Tradition; and it is incontestable that a confused thirst for eternity runs through Nietzsche's works, even opening to certain momentary ecstasies. One recalls Zarathustra invoking "the joy that wills the eternity of everything, a deep eternity" like the heavens above, "pure, profound abyss of light."JULIUS EVOLA
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Occult War

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Occult War(from "Men Among the Ruins")Various causes have been adduced to explain the crisis that has affected and still affects the life of modern peoples: historical, social, socioeconomic, political, moral, and cultural causes, according to different perspectives. The part played by each of these causes should not be denied. However, we need to ask a higher and essential question: are these always the first causes and do they have an inevitable character like those causes found in the material world? Do they supply an ultimate explanation or, in some cases, is it necessary to identify influences of a higher order, which may cause what has occurred in the West to appear very suspicious, and which, beyond the multiplicity of individual aspects, suggest that there is the same logic at work?The concept of occult war must be defined within the context of the dilemma. The occult war is a battle that is waged imperceptibly by the forces of global subversion, with means and in circumstances ignored by current historiography.The notion of occult war belongs to a three-dimensional view of history: this view does not regard as essential the two superficial dimensions of time and space (which include causes, facts, and visible leaders) but rather emphasizes the dimension of depth, or the "subterranean" dimension in which forces and influences often act in a decisive manner, and which, more often than not, cannot be reduced to what is merely human, whether at an individual or a collective level.Having said that, it is necessary to specify the meaning of the term subterranean. We should not think, in this regard, of a dark and irrational background which stands in relation to the known forces of history as the unconscious stands to consciousness, in the way the latter relationship is discussed in the recently developed "Depth Psychology." If anything, we can talk about the unconscious only in regard to those who, according to the three-dimensional view, appear to be history's objects rather than its subjects, since in their thoughts and conduct they are scarcely aware of the influences which they obey and the goals that they contribute toward achieving. In these people, the center falls more in the unconscious and the pre-conscious than in the clear reflected consciousness, no matter what they - who are often men of action and ideologues - believe. Considering this relation, we can say that the most decisive actions of the occult war take place in the human unconscious. However, if we consider the true agents of history in the special aspects we are now discussing, things are otherwise: here we cannot talk of the subconscious or the unconscious, since we are dealing with intelligent forces that know very well what they want and what are the means most suited to achieve their objectives.The third dimension of history should not be diluted in the fog of abstract philosophical or sociological concepts, but should rather be thought of as a "backstage" dimension where specific "intelligences" are at work.An investigation of the secret history that aspires to be positivist and scientific should not be too lofty or removed from reality. However, it is necessary to assume as the ultimate reference point a dualistic scheme not dissimilar from the one found in an older tradition. Catholic historiography used to regard history not only as a mechanism of natural, political, economic, and social causes, but also as the unfolding of divine Providence, to which hostile forces are opposed.These forces are sometimes referred to in a moralistic fashion as "forces of evil," or in a theological fashion as the "forces of the Anti-Christ." Such a view has a positive content, provided it is purified and emphasized by bringing it to a less religious and more metaphysical plane, as was done in Classical and Indo-European antiquity: forces of the cosmos against forces of chaos. To the former correspond everything that is form, order, law, spiritual hierarchy, and tradition in the higher sense of the word; to the latter correspond every influence that disintegrates, subverts, degrades, and promotes the predominance of the inferior over the superior, matter over spirit, quantity over quality. This is what can be said in regard to the ultimate reference points of the various influences that act upon the realm of tangible causes, behind known history. These must be taken into account, though with some prudence. Let me repeat: aside from this necessary metaphysical background, let us never lose sight of concrete history.
[...]When measured against that of their disguised opponents, the mentality of the great majority of modern men of action appears to be quite primitive. The latter concentrate their energies on what is tangible and "concrete", and are unable to perceive the interplay of concordant actions and reactions, causes and effects, beyond a very limited and almost always coarsely materialistic horizon.The deeper causes of history - here we can refer to both those that act in a negative sense and those that may act in an equilibrating and positive sense - operate prevalently through what can be called "imponderable factors," to use an image borrowed from natural science. These causes are responsible for almost undetectable ideological, social and political changes, which eventually produce remarkable effects: they are like the first cracks in a layer of snow that eventually produce an avalanche. These causes almost never act in a direct manner, but instead bestow to some existing processes an adequate direction that leads to the designated goal. Thus, men and groups who believe they are pursuing something willed by themselves become the means through which something different is realized and made possible: it is precisely in this that a super-ordained influence and meaning are revealed. This was noticed by Wundt, who talked about the "heterogeneity of the effects", and by Hegel as well, who introduced the notion of the List der Vernunft (cunning of reason) in his philosophy of history; however, neither of these thinkers was able to fruitfully develop his intuitions. Unlike what happens in the domain of physical phenomena, an insightful historian encounters several instances where the "causal" explanation (in the deterministic, physical sense) is unsatisfactory, because things do not add up and the total does not equal the sum of the apparent historical factors - almost as if someone adding five, three, and two ended up not with ten, but with fifteen or seven. This differential, especially when it appears as a differential between what is willed and what has really happened, or between ideas, principles, and programs on the one hand and their effective consequences in history on the other, offers the most valuable material for the investigation of the secret causes of history.Methodologically speaking, we must be careful to prevent valid insights from degenerating into fantasies and superstition, and not develop the tendency to see an occult background everywhere and at all costs. In this regard, every assumption we make must have the character of what are called "working hypotheses" in scientific research - as when something is admitted provisionally, thus allowing the gathering and arranging of a group of apparently isolated facts, only to confer on them a character not of hypothesis but of truth when, at the end of a serious inductive effort, the data converge in validating the original assumption. Every time an effect outlasts and transcends its tangible causes, a suspicion should arise, and a positive or negative influence behind the stages should be perceived. A problem is posited, but in analyzing it and seeking its solution, prudence must be exercised. The fact that those who have ventured in this direction have not restrained their wild imaginations has discredited what could have been a science, the results of which could hardly be overestimated. This too meets the expectations of the hidden enemy.This is all I have to say concerning the general premises proper to a new three- dimensional study of history. Now let us return to what I said earlier on. After considering the state of society and modern civilization, one should ask if this is not a specific case that requires the application of this method; in other words, one should ask whether some situations of real crisis and radical subversion in the modern world can be satisfactorily explained through "natural" and spontaneous processes, or whether we need to refer to something that has been concerted, namely a still unfolding plan, devised by forces hiding in the shadows.In this particular domain, many red flags have gone up: too many elements have concurred to alarm the less superficial observers. In the middle of the past century, Disraeli wrote these significant and often quoted words: "The world is governed by people entirely different from the ones imagined by those who are unable to see behind the scenes." Malinsky and De Poncins, when considering the phenomenon of revolution, have remarked that in our age, where it is commonly acknowledged that every disease of the individual organism is caused by bacteria, people pretended that the diseases of the social body - revolutions and disorder - are spontaneous, self-generated phenomena rather than the effect of invisible agents, acting in society the way bacteria and pathogenic germs act in the organism of the individual [...]JULIUS EVOLA
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On the Dark Age

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On the Dark Age(from "Revolt Against the Modern World")[...]
In reference to what I previously said concerning what ancient traditions called the Dark Age (Kali Yuga), I will now describe some of the features of this age found in an ancient Hindu text, the Visnu Purana. I will put in brackets what I consider to be the contemporary applications.Outcastes and barbarians will be masters of the banks of the Indus, Darvika, the Chandrabhaga and Kashmir. These will all be contemporary rulers [of this age] reigning over the earth: kings [rulers] of violent temper ... They will seize upon the property of their subjects; they will be of limited power and will for the most part rapidly rise and fall; their lives will be short, their desires insatiable, and they will display but little piety. The people of various countries intermingling with them will follow their example ...The prevailing caste will be the Shudra ... Vaisyas will abandon agriculture and commerce and gain a livelihood by servitude or the exercise of mechanical arts [proletarization and industrialization] ... Kshyatrias instead of protecting will plunder their subjects: and under the pretext of levying customs will rob merchants of their property [crisis of capitalism and of private property; socialization, nationalization, and communism] ... Wealth [inner] and piety [following one's dharma] will decrease day by day until the whole world will be wholly depraved. Then property alone will confer rank [the quantity of dollars - economic classes]; wealth [material] will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation....Earth will be venerated but for its mineral treasures [unscrupulous exploitation of the soil, demise of the cult of the earth] ...Brahmanical clothes will constitute a Brahman ... weakness will be the cause of dependence [cowardice, death of fides and honor in the modern political forms] ... simple ablution [devoid of the power of the true rite] will be purification [can there really be anything more in the alleged salvation procured in the Christian sacraments?] ...In the Kali age men corrupted by unbelievers ... will say: "Of what authority are the Vedas? What are gods or Brahmans? ..."Observance of caste, order and institutes [traditional] will not prevail in the Kali age. Marriages in this age will not be conformable to the ritual, nor will the rules that connect the spiritual preceptor and his disciple be in force. ...A regenerated man will be initiated in any way whatever [democracy applied to the spiritual plane] and such acts of penance as may be performed will be unattended by any results [this refers to a "humanistic" and conformist religion] ... all orders of life will be common alike to all persons. ...He who gives away much money will be the master of men and family descent will no longer be a title of supremacy [the end of traditional nobility, advent of bourgeoisie, plutocracy]. ...Men will fix their desires upon riches, even though dishonestly acquired. ... Men of all degrees will conceit themselves to be equal with Brahmans [the prevarication and presumption of the intellectuals and modern culture]. ...The people will be almost always in dread of dearth and apprehensive of scarcity; and will hence ever be watching the appearances of the sky [the meaning of the religious and superstitious residues typical of modern masses]. ...The women will pay no attention to the commands of their husbands or parents.... They will be selfish, abject and slatternly; they will be scolds and liars; they will be indecent and immoral in their conduct and will ever attach themselves to dissolute men....
Men having deviated into heresy, iniquity will flourish, and the duration of life will therefore decrease. *Nevertheless, in the Visnu Purana there are also references to elements of the primordial or "Manu's" race that have been preserved in this Dark Age in order to be the seed of new generations; what appears again is the well-known idea of a new and final epiphany "from above":When the practices taught by the Vedas and the institutes of law shall nearly have ceased, and the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being who exists of his own spiritual nature in the character of Brahma, and who is the beginning and the end, and who comprehends all things, shall descend upon the earth. ...He will then reestablish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of the Kali age shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds of [new] human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age, or age of purity [primordial age].In the same text and chapter it is said that the stock from which this divine principal will be born lives in the village of Shambhala; Shambhala - as I previously suggested - refers to the metaphysics of the "center" and the "pole," to the Hyperborean mystery and the forces of primordial tradition.JULIUS EVOLA●* This prophecy appears to have been contradicted by facts, unless we distinguish the case in which a longer life is due to contact with that which transcends time from the case of artificial "devices" to prolong life (which is meaningless and just a parody of the first type of life), realized through the means of profane science and modern hygiene.
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On the Secret of Degeneration

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On the Secret of Degeneration(from "Deutsches Volkstum", Nr. 11, 1938)Anyone who has come to reject the rationalist myth of "progress" and the interpretation of history as an unbroken positive development of mankind will find himself gradually drawn towards the world-view that was common to all the great traditional cultures, and which had at its centre the memory of a process of degeneration, slow obscuration, or collapse of a higher preceding world. As we penetrate deeper into this new (and old) interpretation, we encounter various problems, foremost among which is the question of the secret of degeneration.In its literal sense, this question is by no means a novel one. While contemplating the magnificent remains of cultures whose very name has not even come down to us, but which seem to have conveyed, even in their physical material, a greatness and power that is more than earthly, scarcely anyone has failed to ask themselves questions about the death of cultures, and sensed the inadequacy of the reasons that are usually given to explain it.We can thank the Comte de Gobineau for the best and best-known summary of this problem, and also for a masterly criticism of the main hypotheses about it. His solution on the basis of racial thought and racial purity also has a lot of truth in it, but it needs to be expanded by a few observations concerning a higher order of things. For there have been many cases in which a culture has collapsed even when its race has remained pure, as is especially clear in certain groups that have suffered slow, inexorable extinction despite remaining as racially isolated as if they were islands. An example quite close at hand is the case of the Swedes and the Dutch.These people are in the same racial condition today as they were two centuries ago, but there is little to be found now of the heroic disposition and the racial awareness that they once possessed. Other great cultures seem merely to have remained standing in the condition of mummies: they have long been inwardly dead, so that it takes only the slightest push to knock them down. This was the case, for example, with ancient Peru, that giant solar empire which was annihilated by a few adventurers drawn from the worst rabble of Europe.If we look at the secret of degeneration from the exclusively traditional point of view, it becomes even harder to solve it completely. It is then a matter of the division of all cultures into two main types. On the one hand there are the traditional cultures, whose principle is identical and unchangeable, despite all the differences evident on the surface.The axis of these cultures and the summit of their hierarchical order consist of metaphysical, supra-individual powers and actions, which serve to inform and justify everything that is merely human, temporal, subject to becoming and to "history." On the other hand there is "modern culture," which is actually anti-tradition and which exhausts itself in a construction of purely human and earthly conditions and in the total development of these, in pursuit of a life entirely detached from the "higher world."From the standpoint of the latter, the whole of history is degeneration, because it shows the universal decline of earlier cultures of the traditional type, and the decisive and violent rise of a new universal civilization of the "modern" type.A double question arises from this.First, how was it ever possible for this to come to pass? There is a logical error underlying the whole doctrine of evolution: it is impossible that the higher can emerge from the lower, and the greater from the less. But doesn't a similar difficulty face us in the solution of the doctrine of involution? How is it ever possible for the higher to fall? If we could make do with simple analogies, it would be easy to deal with this question. A healthy man can become sick; a virtuous one can turn to vice. There is a natural law that everyone takes from granted: that every living being starts with birth, growth, and strength, then come old age, weakening, and disintegration. And so forth. But this is just making statements, not explaining, even if we allow that such analogies actually relate to the question posed here.Secondly, it is not only a matter of explaining the possibility of the degeneration of a particular cultural world, but also the possibility that the degeneration of one cultural cycle may pass to other peoples and take them down with it. For example, we have not only to explain how the ancient Western reality collapsed, but also have to show the reason why it was possible for "modern" culture to conquer practically the whole world, and why it possessed the power to divert so many peoples from any other type of culture, and to hold sway even where states of a traditional kind seemed to be alive (one need only recall the Aryan East).In this respect, it is not enough to say that we are dealing with a purely material and economic conquest. That view seems very superficial, for two reasons.In the first place, a land that is conquered on the material level also experiences, in the long run, influences of a higher kind corresponding to the cultural type of its conqueror. We can state, in fact, that European conquest almost everywhere sows the seeds of "Europeanization," i.e., the "modern" rationalist, tradition-hostile, individualistic way of thinking.Secondly, the traditional conception of culture and the state is hierarchical, not dualistic. Its bearers could never subscribe, without severe reservations, to the principles of "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" and "My kingdom is not of this world."For us, "Tradition" is the victorious and creative presence in the world of that which is "not of this world," i.e., of the Spirit, understood as a power that is mightier than any merely human or material one.This is a basic idea of the authentically traditional view of life, which does not permit us to speak with contempt of merely material conquests. On the contrary, the material conquest is the sign, if not of a spiritual victory, at least of a spiritual weakness or a kind of spiritual "retreat" in the cultures that are conquered and lose their independence.Everywhere that the Spirit, regarded as the stronger power, was truly present, it never lacked for means - visible or otherwise - to enable the entire opponent's technical and material superiority to be resisted. But this has not happened.It must be concluded, then, that degeneracy was lurking behind the traditional facade of every people that the "modern" world has been able to conquer.The West must then have been the culture in which a crisis that was already universal assumed its acutest form. There the degeneration amounted, so to speak, to a knockout blow, and as it took effect, it brought down with more or less ease other peoples in whom the involution had certainly not "progressed" as far, but whose tradition had already lost its original power, so that these peoples were no longer able to protect themselves from an outside assault.With these considerations, the second aspect of our problem is traced back to the first one. It is mainly a question of explicating the meaning and the possibility of degeneracy, without reference to other circumstances.For this we must be clear about one thing: it is an error to assume that the hierarchy of the traditional world is based on a tyranny of the upper classes.That is merely a "modern" conception, completely alien to the traditional way of thinking.The traditional doctrine in fact conceived of spiritual action as an "action without acting"; it spoke of the "unmoved mover"; everywhere it used the symbolism of the "pole", the unalterable axis around which every ordered movement takes place (and elsewhere we have shown that this is the meaning of the swastika, the "arctic cross"); it always stressed the "Olympian" spirituality, and genuine authority, as well as its way of acting directly on its subordinates, not through violence but through "presence"; finally, it used the simile of the magnet, wherein lies the key to our question, as we shall now see.Only today could anyone imagine that the authentic bearers of the Spirit, or of Tradition, pursue people so as to seize them and put them in their places - in short, that they "manage" people, or have any personal interest in setting up and maintaining those hierarchical relationships by virtue of which they can appear visibly as the rulers. This would be ridiculous and senseless.It is much more the recognition on the part of the lower ones that is the true basis of any traditional ranking. It is not the higher that needs the lower, but the other way round. The essence of hierarchy is that there is something living as a reality in certain people, which in the rest is only present in the condition of an ideal, a premonition, an unfocused effort.Thus the latter are fatefully attracted to the former, and their lower condition is one of subordination less to something foreign, than to their own true "self."Herein lays the secret, in the traditional world, of all readiness for sacrifice, all heroism, all loyalty; and, on the other side, of a prestige, an authority, and a calm power which the most heavily-armed tyrant can never count upon.With these considerations, we have come very close to solving not only the problem of degeneration, but also the possibility of a particular fall. Are we perhaps not tired of hearing that the success of every revolution indicates the weakness and degeneracy of the previous rulers? An understanding of this kind is very one-sided. This would indeed be the case if wild dogs were tied up, and suddenly broke loose: that would be proof that the hands holding their leashes had become impotent or weak.But things are arranged very differently in the framework of spiritual ranking, whose real basis we have explained above.This hierarchy degenerates and is able to be overthrown in one case only: when the individual degenerates, when he uses his fundamental freedom to deny the Spirit, to cut his life loose from any higher reference-point, and to exist "only for himself." Then the contacts are fatefully broken, the metaphysical tension, to which the traditional organism owes its unity, gives way, every force wavers in its path and finally breaks free.The peaks, of course, remain pure and inviolable in their heights, but the rest, which depended on them, now becomes an avalanche, a mass that has lost its equilibrium and falls, at first imperceptibly but with ever accelerating movement down to the depths and lowest levels of the valley. This is the secret of every degeneration and revolution.The European had first slain the hierarchy in himself by extirpating his own inner possibilities, to which corresponded the basis of the order that he would then destroy externally.If Christian mythology attributes the Fall of Man and the Rebellion of the Angels to the freedom of the will, then it comes to much the same significance. It concerns the frightening potential that dwells in man of using freedom to destroy spiritually and to banish everything that could ensure him a supra-natural value. This is a metaphysical decision: the stream that traverses history in the most varied forms of the traditional-hating, revolutionary, individualistic, and humanistic spirit, or in short, the "modern" spirit. This decision is the only positive and decisive cause in the secret of degeneration, the destruction of Tradition.If we understand this, we can perhaps also grasp the sense of those legends that speak of mysterious rulers who "always" exist and have never died (shades of the Emperor sleeping beneath the Kyffhäuser Mountain!). Such rulers can be rediscovered only when one achieves spiritual completeness and awakens a quality in oneself like that of a metal that suddenly feels "the magnet", finds the magnet and irresistibly orients itself and moves towards it. For now, we must restrict ourselves to this hint. A comprehensive explanation of legends of that sort, which come to us from the most ancient Aryan source, would take us too far.At another opportunity we will perhaps return to the secret of reconstruction, to the "magic" that is capable of restoring the fallen mass to the unalterable, lonely, and invisible peaks that are still there in the heights.JULIUS EVOLA
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René Guénon and the Guénonian Scholasticism

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René Guénon and the Guénonian Scholasticism(from "René Guénon: a Teacher for Modern Times")René Guénon should certainly be considered as a Master of our times. His contributions to the critique of the modern world and to the comprehension of the "world of Tradition", of symbols and of metaphysical teachings, are truly invaluable. I have been myself, for more than thirty years now, one of the very first writers to make Guénon known in Italy (and even in central Europe), by means of essays, translations and quotes. I remained in a cordial epistolary relationship with him almost until the time of his death. If, on the one hand, one hopes that Guénon's thought will exercise an adequate influence, on the other hand, one should beware of a danger, namely the emerging of a Guénonian "scholasticism." This kind of "scholasticism" consists in following passively just about every view ever formulated by Guénon, with a pedantic attitude, without any true investigation or discrimination, and with a real fear to make even the slightest change in the master's formulations.While it remains true that "originality" is definitely out of place in this domain, the influence of a teacher is truly effective not when it generates slavish and stereotypical repetitions, but when it generates the impulse for further developments, and, if necessary, for revisions, thanks to an abundance of perspectives. While an acknowledgment of what is valid and unique in Guénon's work is due, this should not prevent the observation of some of his limits, due to his "personal equation" and to his forma mentis. It is precisely this critical approach that leaves room for potentially fruitful work.The personal orientation of Guénon has essentially been intellectual and "sapiential." In all of his works, anything which is "existential" and practical, his personal experience, any specific directive facilitating the inner realization beyond pure doctrine, all this is almost nonexistent. Hence the danger of a Guénonian "scholasticism" (in the negative sense of the term), which can reduce everything to something which is both inoperative and abstract, despite the claims (without a proof) advanced by many followers of Guénon, of having attained a knowledge which should be "realizing" as well.The proof that such a danger is real, is given by the orientation taken by some Guénonian cliques of "strict observance." An example is also found in Italy, by the periodical "Review of Traditional Studies," which was started last year in Turin, and which imitates the French Guénonian periodical Études traditionnelles even in its editorial contents. The translations made in it of old articles written by Guénon, along with some texts or theoretical orientations, may be helpful. However the tone of this review is a pedantic one. One can frequently notice in it an academic inclination, namely the style of speaking ex cathedra and ex tripode in a final and pedagogical tone, and with an authority which no member of the editorial staff possesses, either because of spiritual stature or because of valid works being published. In this way, that contemptible "individualism" (one shudders only at hearing phrases such as "individual realization") finds a viable outlet; what in psychoanalysis is called Geltungstrieb has the possibility of affirming itself, under the cover of impersonality, whenever somebody puts on the air of being a spiritual "teacher."It is rather strange that I was the victim of such a "know-it-all" attitude in an essay featured on the fourth issue of this review. Since this essay was featured in the section called "Book Reviews," it would be natural to think that a recent book of mine had just been reviewed. That was not the case, as the book reviewed was The Doctrine of the Awakening (London, 1951), which was published twenty years ago, and is now out of print.Considering that this review was not limited to this book of mine, but that it takes issue with various ideas upheld by me in other places, the author of the review should have considered this book in the context of my entire production. The critic mistook open doors for massive walls, and vice versa, all the while displaying a partisan and tendentious spirit.This is not the place to set things right, since, among other things, that review does not deserve too much importance, and I would have to repeat considerations which I have already expounded several times in other places. I will therefore limit myself to say that the author of that book review is wrong in thinking that the special formulation given by Guénon to traditional teachings, on the basis of his "personal equation," is the only one possible and that it has the character of an absolute revelation, and that therefore everything which I thought I could and should have expounded in a different sense, is not as legitimate. The supremacy of contemplation ("knowledge") over action, upheld by Guénon, is disputable, since it is based on an arbitrary schematization of the two concepts, which bestows on action only negative attributes and on contemplation ("knowledge") positive ones. There is a traditional path of action as well as a path of knowledge, both being qualified to lead toward the objective of overcoming of the human condition. See for instance what Krishna said in the Bhagavad-Gita (Chapter 11) when he exalts the way of action by attributing to it his supreme form of manifestation.From a practical point of view, in order to prevent the growth of any "scholasticism," action must be granted the primacy. The traditional principle of post laborem scientia must be upheld; the specific practical and ascetical attitude of early Buddhism is the only adequate one. Today as never before, the challenge to the primacy of spiritual authority over regal authority constitutes a particular topic relative to a greater domain, and is the cause of the problem of establishing what are the most adequate traditional forms for the West, especially when the spiritual authority is abusively and unilaterally identified with that of a Brahmanic and priestly type. This is amply contradicted by all the main traditional civilizations. In China, ancient India, Japan, Egypt, Peru, Greece, and in old Nordic stocks, at the top of the hierarchy, one always finds sacred regality, and never a king subject to a priestly class; the early Ghibelline tradition, for instance, was inspired by these aspects of the primordial Tradition.In the initiatory domain, specific reservations must be made about the semi- bureaucratic view of initiation, as it was understood by Guénon. I am talking about the view which only takes into account the aggregation (which many times is totally inoperative) to "regular" organizations. These organizations in the modern world have either ceased to exist or are almost unreachable, or continue to exist in dead and even perverted forms (such as in Masonry, which is another area of my disagreement with Guénon).Guénon's initial evaluation of Buddhism was plagued by an astonishing lack of understanding. This evaluation was suppressed in the English edition of Orient et Occident (Paris, 1924); Guénon later modified it in part, by making some concessions to a "Brahmanic" version of Buddhism, which is truly a Buddhism evirated of the specific and valid elements it possessed at its inception.These specific elements concerned an autonomous way of realization. In this realization, the action of a qualified individual who strives to attain the Unconditioned, even by means of violent efforts is the necessary counterpart of the descent of a force from above, which does not need "initiatory bureaucracies."What Guénon had to say in an unfortunate essay concerning "The Need for a Traditional Exotericism," must also be rejected, since it offers dangerous incentives and alibis to a reactionary and petty-bourgeois conformism.The pedantic representatives of Guénonian scholasticism should rather strive to reach a deeper understanding of the true meaning of the Way of the Left Hand, which is not any less traditional than the Way of Right Hand, and which has the advantage of emphasizing the transcendent dimension proper of every truly initiatory realization and aspiration.An abstract and intellectualizing Guénonian scholasticism, typical of "research institutes," may well ignore the real meaning of the Way of the Left Hand. In our day and age, there is a deep and irreversible scission between the forms of the external life or traditional exoteric residues and any possible transcendent orientation. This gulf is deep and irreversible. Therefore, almost all of those who do not have the possibility or the vocation to completely detach themselves from the world, will find it very difficult to realize a "traditional" orientation in other terms than the ones which I have illustrated in my last book, Cavalcare la tigre [Riding the Tiger].I cannot refer here to other distortions which my critic's review in the Review of Traditional Studies was guilty of. As I have said, these are things which I have discussed in books and in articles which my critic either does not know or pretends to be unaware of.Let me give you one more instance of his lack of objectivity. He makes me say that when I reviewed Buddhist ethics I recommended the use of women as objects to those who are not capable to follow the precept of chastity. Never mind reading in my Metafisica del Sesso [Metaphysics of Sex / Eros and the Mysteries of Love] what I have said about sex and the possibilities which it affords; what I have written in the incriminating passage, provided it is properly understood, is that one should grant to a physical impulse toward sex the mere satisfaction which is also given to the need for food. In fact, any puritanical repression of this impulse could build inner tensions and intoxications which are notorious impediments to the spiritual life, or the cause of its pollution by means of "transpositions," as in the case of certain forms of Christian mysticism.I am told that the author of the review is a judge. I sincerely hope that in the court he will not demonstrate the same "objectivity" and lack of understanding which he displayed toward me throughout his criticisms.JULIUS EVOLA
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Sport in the Modern World

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Sport in the Modern World(from "Revolt Against The Modern World")[...] Regarding the degenerated forms of asceticism, I would like to point out the spirit of a phenomenon that is more properly connected to the plane of "work" (that is, of the fourth caste). The modem world knows a sublimated version of work in which the latter becomes "disinterested," disjoined from the economic factor and from the idea of a practical or productive goal and takes an almost ascetic form; I am talking about sport.Sport is a way of working in which the productive objective no longer matters; thus, sport is willed for its own sake as mere activity. Someone has rightly pointed out that sport is the "blue collar" religion. "Sport is a typical counterfeit of action in the traditional sense of the word. A pointless activity, it is nevertheless still characterized by the same triviality of work and belongs to the same physical and lightless group of activities that are pursued at the various crossroads in which plebeian contamination occurs.Although through the practice of sport it is possible to achieve a temporary evocation of deep forces, what this amounts to is the enjoyment of sensations and a sense of vertigo and at most, the excitement derived from directing one's energies and winning a competition without any higher and transfiguring reference, any sense of "sacrifice" or deindividualizing offering being present. Physical individuality is cherished and strengthened by sport; thus the chain is confirmed and every residue of subtler sensibility is suffocated.The human being, instead of growing into an organic being, tends to be reduced to a bundle of reflexes, and almost to a mechanism.It is also very significant that the lower strata of society are the ones that show more enthusiasm for sports, displaying their enthusiasm in great collective forms.Sport may be identified as one of the forewarning signs of that type of society represented by Chigalev in Dostoyevsky's The Obsessed, after the required time has elapsed for a methodical and reasoned education aimed at extirpating the evil represented by the "I" and by free will, and no longer realizing they are slaves, all the Chigalevs will return to experience the innocence and the happiness of a new Eden. This "Eden" differs from the biblical one only because work will be the dominating universal law.Work as sport and sport as work in a world that has lost the sense of historical cycles, as well as the sense of true personality, would probably be the best way to implement such a messianic ideal.Thus, it is not a coincidence that in several societies, whether spontaneously or thanks to the state, great sports organizations have arisen as the appendices of various classes of workers, and vice versa. [...]JULIUS EVOLA
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The Instruments of the Occult War

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The Instruments of the Occult War(from "Men Among the Ruins")[...]
For practical purposes, too, it is very important to recognize the instruments of the occult war, namely the means employed by the secret forces of global subversion to conceal their action, prevent their opponents' action, and continue to exercise their influence. I will now say something in this regard, drawing inspiration from some of the points developed by Rene Guénon, who was one of the most perceptive people in reference to the secret backgrounds of many upheavals of modern times.Let us begin with the tool of scientific suggestion. I believe the "scientific" method of considering events and history is more the consequence of a suggestion spread in modern culture by antitraditional forces in order to conceal their action than the natural orientation of a shortsighted mentality. Those who believe that history is made only by the men on the stage, and determined by the most evident economic, social, political, and cultural factors do not see and do not seek any other explanation; and yet this is exactly what every force operating in secret desires. A civilization dominated by the positivist prejudice offers the most fertile ground to an action arising from what I have called the "third dimension." In great part this is the case with modern civilization. It is a civilization rendered myopic and defenseless by the positivist, rationalist, and scientist prejudice. We have scarcely begun to expose all the ideas that remain as the basis of the modern mentality and education; these ideas are not so much errors and limitations as they are suggestions spread and promoted for precise reasons by antitraditional forces.I have already mentioned some nonpositivist views of the course of events that introduce various entities, such as the "absolute Spirit," or the élan vital, or "History." In this we can see an example of the possible application of a second instrument of the occult war, the tactic of replacement. This tactic is employed every time there is the danger of an awakening on the part of "history's objects," or when some ideas that facilitate the occult game of the forces of global subversion have lost their power of suggestion. In the above-mentioned case, such confused philosophical views act as a sort of bait for those who are unsatisfied with positivist views, so that their eyes may not look in the direction where they should. Due to the vagueness of these notions, the field is not any less concealed than by positivist blindness. People will play around with "philosophical ideas" while the plan continues to unfold.Often the tactic of replacement develops efficaciously in the form of a tactic of counterfeits. It may happen that after the effects of the destructive work reach the material plane, they become so visible as to provoke a reaction, and thus ideas and symbols are employed for a defense and a reconstruction. In the best scenario they are values of the traditional past, which come back to life thanks to this existential reaction of a society or civilization threatened by dissolution. Then the occult war is not waged in a direct manner; often attention is paid to promoting only distortions and counterfeits of these ideas. In this way, the reaction is contained, deviated, or even led in the opposite direction.Such a tactic may be employed in various domains, from the spiritual and cultural to the political. An example is given by "traditionalism." I have already discussed what the term tradition signifies in the higher sense of the word: it is the form bestowed by forces from above upon the overall possibilities of a given cultural area and specific period, through super-individual and even antihistorical values and through elites that know how to derive an authority and natural prestige from such values. In the present day it often happens that a confused desire to return to "tradition" is purposely channeled to the form of "traditionalism." The content of this "traditionalism" consists of habits, routines, surviving residues and vestiges of what once was, without a real understanding of the spiritual world and of what in them is not merely factual but has a character of perennial value. Thus, such nontraditional or, should we say, "traditionalist" attitudes offer an easy target to the enemy, whose attack mounted against traditionalism is only the opening barrage preceding an attack against Tradition itself: to this purpose the slogans of "anachronism," "anti-history," "immobilism," and "regression" are employed. Thus, reaction is paralyzed as the maneuver leads successfully to the preestablished goal.From the general plane it is easy to shift to particular cases, since recent history is full of them. Thus, in the political context, the Roman idea with its symbols, the "Aryan" idea, and the idea of the Empire or Reich—to all this the tactic of misleading substitutions and counterfeits has been applied with depreciable effects that cannot elude an attentive observer. Therefore, it is possible to understand the validity of the points I made in the first chapter.
Fourth, we must point out the tactic of inversion. Let us take a typical example. The secret forces of global subversion knew exactly that the basis of the order to be destroyed consisted in the supernatural element—that is, in the spirit— conceived not as a philosophical abstraction or as an element of faith, but as a superior reality, as a reference point for the integration of everything that is human.After limiting the influence that could be exercised in this regard by Christianity, through the spread of materialism and scientism, the forces of global subversion have endeavored to conveniently divert any tendency toward the supernatural arising outside the dominant religion and the limitation of its dogmas. So-called "neo-spiritualism," not only in its more deleterious spiritualist forms, but also in its pseudo-Eastern and occultist forms (not to mention the theories concerning the unconscious, the irrational, and so on), is greatly influenced by the tactic of inversion. Instead of rising toward what is beyond the person as a really supernatural element, here we remain in the subpersonal and in the infrarational, according to an inversion that quite often has sinister characteristics.The results achieved in this way are twofold. First, it was easy to extend the discredit that in numerous cases rightly affected these ideas to different ideas that might appear related, even though in their innermost essence they have nothing in common; thus, the latter genuine ideas are put in a condition to no longer pose a threat. A good part of what the West has learned about the East, outside the dry and sterile domain of philology and academic specialization, is often affected by this maneuver. The results seem to be for the most part something distorted; this severely limits the positive influence that various aspects of the legacy of ancient Eastern spirituality are liable to exercise, provoking the reaction of the most obtuse and inappropriate "defenses of the West." Another example lies in the milieus that, when it comes to symbols and esotericism, can think only of Masonry or Theosophy, even when the reference goes back to ancient and noble traditions that have nothing to do with the latter; the positivist and rationalist prejudice of a certain critical "culture" identifies all this as superstition and fantasy, thus completing the smear campaign. This is the case with examples of some militant Catholic apologetics that see only naturalism and pantheism in everything outside their perspective; these are misunderstandings and effects of an interplay of concordant actions and reactions, to which several representatives of Catholicism are liable.The second result does not concern the domain of ideas but rather the practical and concrete domain. The inverted tendencies toward the spiritual and the supernatural can favor the emergence of dark forces, and be resolved in a deceitful action against the human personality. Many reactions against rationalism and intellectualism lead exactly to this, especially the theories of the unconscious, which through psychoanalysis have either generated a well-established practice or encouraged various forms of morbid fascination.Another method is the tactic of ricochet. This occurs when the traditional forces being targeted take the initiative through an action against other traditional forces, an action that eventually ricochets back at its promoters. For instance, the secret forces of global subversion, through opportune infiltrations or suggestions, may induce the representatives of a certain tradition to believe that the best way to strengthen it consists of either undermining or discrediting other traditions. Those who do not realize what is going on and who, because of material interests, attack Tradition in like-minded people sooner or later must expect to see Tradition attacked in themselves, by ricochet. The forces of global subversion rely very much on this tactic; thus, they attempt in every possible way to cause any higher idea to give in to the tyranny of individual interests or proselytizing, prideful, and power-hungry tendencies. They know perfectly well that this is the best way to destroy every unity and solidarity and to favor a state of affairs in which their overall scheme will be implemented. They know well that there is an objective law of immanent justice and that "the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine," and thus they act accordingly; they wait for the fruits of these inconsiderable initiatives to mature and then they intervene.In the political domain, the case of every Machiavellian employment of revolutionary forces falls within this category. Shortsighted political leaders have often believed that to arouse or to support revolution in hostile nations is, in certain circumstances, an excellent means to benefit their own people. Without realizing it, or in becoming aware of it too late, they have obtained the opposite result. While they thought they were using the revolution as a means, it was the revolution that used them as tools; eventually, the revolution spread to other countries, catching up with the politicians who unleashed it and wiping them out. Modern history has been in part the theater of a subversion that has tragically spread in this way.Thus, we can never emphasize too much that unconditioned loyalty to an idea is the only possible protection from occult war; where such loyalty falls short and where the contingent goals of "real politics" are obeyed, the front of resistance is already undermined. The ricochet should be seen in an analogous context, in the case of "peoples' right to self-determination." This principle, after having been employed by modern democracies as an ideological instrument during World War II, eventually affected white peoples, thus putting an end to Europe's prestige and preeminence.When the secret forces of world subversion are fearful of exposure or realize that, due to special circumstances, the direction imparted from backstage has become obvious, at least in its major effects, they employ the scapegoat tactic. They try to shift the enemy's attention onto elements that are responsible only partially, or in a subordinated fashion, for their own wrongful deeds. A reaction is unleashed against those elements, which then become the scapegoats. Thus, after a pause, the secret front may resume its work, because its opponents believe they have identified the enemy and dealt with it. Talking about the Protocols, I have mentioned a possible example of such tactics in reference to the part attributed to Jews and Masons. Thus, we must beware of any unilaterality and never lose sight of the overall picture of the secret front.Let us now discuss the tactic of dilution, which constitutes a particular aspect of the "tactic of surrogates." The main example that I will now introduce must be prefaced with the following: the process that has led to the current crises has remote origins and has developed in several phases. In each of these phases the crisis was already present, though in a latent or potential form. The theory of "progress" may be regarded as one of the suggestions spread by the secret forces of world subversion so that attention would be diverted from the origins and the process of dissolution could proceed, carried forth by the illusion of the triumphs of technological-industrial civilization.The tragic events of recent times have provoked a partial awakening from this hypnosis. Many people have begun to realize that the march of so-called progress paralleled a race toward the abyss. Thus, to stop and return to the origins as the only way to restore a normal civilization has been the inspiring vision for many. Next, the occult front employed new means to prevent any radical reaction. Here, too, it employed the slogans of "anachronism" and "reactionary and retrograde forces"; then it caused the forces that aimed at a return to the origins to be led toward stages in which the crisis and the disease were present in less extreme forms, though still clearly visible.This trap worked as well. The leaders of world subversion naturally know that, once this is done, there is no longer a real danger: it is enough to wait and soon we will be back at the starting point, by following processes analogous to the ones that have already occurred, but now without the possibility of any resistance to the dissolution.There are many historical examples of this tactic, which should be rather instructive for those who hope to assume the initiative of a reconstructive action. As a first example, we should examine closely some traits of modern nationalism. We know about the revolutionary, subversive, and antihierarchical function that the collectivist-demagogic concept of "nation" has played against the previous forms of European civilization and political organization. The reference point of many people who have fought against the various internationals (especially against the communist International) has been the concept of the nation; care was rarely taken to define such a concept in a way that would no longer represent what needed to be opposed.In this regard, it will suffice to recall what I have said earlier about the opposition existing between popular nationalism and the spiritual nation, between national State and traditional State (see chapter 3). In the first case, nationalism has a leveling and antiaristocratic function; it is like the prelude to a wider leveling, the common denominator of which is no longer the nation, but rather the International.In the second case, the idea of the nation may serve as the foundation for a new recovery and an important first reaction against the internationalist dissolution; it upholds a principle of differentiation that still needs to be further carried through toward an articulation and hierarchy within every single people. But where the awareness of this opposition is lacking, as in indiscriminate nationalism, there is a danger of being subjected to the tactic of dilution: this danger, incidentally, has already occurred. It is in view of this—that is, of such a possible meaning of nationalistic orientation—that Soviet communism, while opposing nationalism as a counterrevolutionary phenomenon, favors and supports it in the non-Marxist areas inhabited by the "underdeveloped" peoples, who are the alleged victims of colonialism, waiting for further developments to lead to the stage in which it will be able to reap its fruits.

I will mention here two more examples of the tactic of dilution. The first concerns the socioeconomic domain and is connected to all the "national" and social- conformist versions of Marxism; it is the same disease in diluted form. This is also the case with "socializing" theories, which are Trojan horses to be introduced into the citadel, in order to conquer it not with a direct attack, but rather through a natural and inevitable inner development. The second example concerns the cultural domain. I have already discussed the meaning of psychoanalytical theories in the context of the modern subversion. Among those who are capable of a healthy discernment there has been a reaction against the coarsest forms of this pseudo-science, which correspond to pure or "orthodox" Freudianism. The tactic of dilution was employed again; the formulation and spread of a spiritualized psychoanalysis for more refined tastes was furthered.The result was that those who react against Freud and his disciples no longer do so against Jung, without realizing that what is at work here is the same inversion, though in a more dangerous form because it is subtler, and a contaminating exegesis ventures more decidedly into the domain of spirituality than in the case of Freud.Another tactic is the deliberate misidentification of a principle with its representatives. In many regards the decay of traditional institutions began with the corruption of their worldly representatives. The effective dissolution and destruction has been made possible by the confusion between principles and people; this is another weapon of the occult war. When the representatives of a given principle prove to be unworthy of it, the criticism of them extends immediately to the principle itself and is especially directed against it. Instead of acknowledging that some individuals are not at the level of the principle, and instead of requiring that they be replaced by qualified individuals, in order to restore a situation of normalcy, it is claimed that the principle itself is false, corrupt, or passé and that it should be replaced with a different principle. In almost every revolution this tactic has played a major role. It may also be characterized as that of portraying a crisis in the system as a crisis of the system. Examples of this kind are so prevalent that I hardly need mention them. The attack against monarchies and aristocracies has followed this path. Marxism has applied the same device, using the injustices of capitalism as a pretext in order to attack free-market economy and to proclaim a collectivist economy. In the spiritual domain the examples are numerous. The Lutheran Reformation used the corruption of the representatives of the Roman Church in order to question the principle of authority and many fundamental beliefs of the Catholic tradition, thus shifting over from people to principles.Finally, I wish to mention one more instrument of the secret war, though it refers to a very particular domain: the tactic of the replacing infiltrations. It is when a certain spiritual or traditional organization falls into such a state of degeneration that its representatives know very little of its true, inner foundation, or the basis of its authority and prestige.The life of such an organization may then be compared to the automatic state of a sleepwalker, or living body deprived of its soul. In a sense a spiritual "void" has been created that can be filled, through infiltrations, by other subversive forces. These forces, while leaving the appearances unchanged, use the organization for totally different purposes, which at times may even be the opposite of those that were originally its own. We should also not rule out the case where such infiltrated elements work for the destruction of the organization that they now control—for example, by creating new scandals, liable to give rise to serious repercussions. In this particular instance what is employed on the outside is the previously mentioned tactic of mistaking the representatives for the principle. Even the knowledge of this can cast light on many phenomena of the past and present. Having mentioned Masonry, it must be stated that the genesis of modern Freemasonry as a subversive force is due to this tactic of replacement and inversion that is exercised within some of the oldest organizations, which Masonry retained as mere vestiges, structures, symbols, and hierarchies, while the effective guiding influences have a different nature altogether.---------------------I hope that having limited myself to only a few examples and having primarily discussed principles will not prevent the reader from recognizing the multiple possibilities of application of those same principles in various spheres, for there is no sphere in which the occult war has not in some manner been undertaken and is not still being waged today.The most important sphere for the application of the knowledge of the weapons of the occult war is the inner one: the world of one's own thoughts. It is here that one needs to be on guard; it is here one should be able to recognize the subtle influences that try to suggest ideas and reactions to us in certain situations. If this can be accomplished, even if it is still not possible to identify the enemy in our midst, it would at least bar to him the main paths of his secret action.In what I have expounded there is neither philosophical speculation nor flight of fancy, but rather serious and positive ideas. I am firmly convinced that no fighter or leader on the front of counter-subversion and Tradition can be regarded as mature and fit for his tasks before developing the faculty to perceive this world of subterranean causes, so that he can face the enemy on the proper ground. We should recall the myth of the Learned Elders of the Protocols: compared to them, men who see only "facts" are like dumb animals. There is little hope that anything may be saved when among the leaders of a new movement there are no men capable of integrating the material struggle with a secret and inexorable knowledge, one that is not at the service of dark forces but stands instead on the side of the luminous principle of traditional spirituality.JULIUS EVOLA
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The Italians’ Half-Hearted Attempt at Revolution Ruined Fascism

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The Italians’ Half-Hearted Attempt at Revolution Ruined Fascism(from "The Path of Cinnabar")[...] The Fascist 'revolution' in Italy had only affected certain political bodies: even from a political perspective, it had only been a half-hearted attempt at revolution, which never led to the development of a coherent, systematic and uncompromising doctrine of the State. This is not the right place to discuss what elements of Fascism might have assumed a traditional character (and thus have acted not as something new, but as the specific adaptations of ideas reflecting the great, traditional politics of Europe); and what features of Fascism, on the contrary, were the worst (most notably: its promotion of 'totalitarianism' in place of 'organic statehood'; its ambition to embody a regime of the masses; its Napoleonic dictatorship and emphasis on the personal figure of the Leader; its half-hearted corporatism; its attempt to overcome the class divisions established by Marxism in the industrial and economic sphere by means of inefficient bureaucratic superstructures; the grotesque, insolent and pedagogic attitude of Gentile's 'ethical State’). In strictly cultural terms, however, the Fascist 'revolution' was simply a joke. All that was required in order to become a representative of Fascist 'culture' was to be a member of the Party and to pay formal, conformist tribute to the Duce. All else was more or less irrelevant.Mussolini once said that Party membership did not bestow intelligence. He also ought to have pointed out that intelligence, in itself, has nothing to do with the kind of spiritual education which Fascism sought to cultivate. Instead of starting from scratch, of ignoring fame and big names, instead of subjecting each intellectual candidate to a radical reassessment, Fascism, with provincial and bourgeois ambition, chose to welcome all the 'cultural representatives' of the bourgeoisie, as long as they could give proof of their formal (and irrelevant) adherence to the regime. This led to pathetic cases such as that of the Accademia d'Italia, the members of which were largely agnostic or anti-Fascist in their private beliefs. But the same is also true of many other men who were assigned prominent roles within the Fascist cultural establishment and media. It is not surprising, therefore, to find many of these gentlemen now donning a new uniform in democratic, anti-Fascist Italy.A particularly pathetic case is that of the so-called Istituto di Studi Romani (Institute of Roman Studies). As Rome had been chosen as the highest symbol of the Fascist 'revolution', it would only have been natural for the Fascist regime to foster a detailed, lively and systematic study of the values and expressions of Roman civilization (even if of a different and less extreme kind from the study I had personally presented in Pagan Imperialism). And yet, the Fascist regime made do with this clerical and bourgeois institute, which confined itself to formal semi- academic exercises in the fields of philology, archaeology, art history and the like. Ironically, it was overseas scholars - such as Bachofen, Altheim, W. Otto, Piganiol, Dumézil and Kerényi - who most contributed towards the Fascist myth of Rome. It with sarcasm that foreigners acquainted with my own defense of the Roman ideal discussed the only centre that Fascism had officially established to study the subject: the Institute I just mentioned, which, naturally enough, destined to survive the crisis of Fascism and to carry on its squalid activities in the anti-Fascist milieu of democratic Italy (which now mocks the Roman ideal, accusing it of fostering idle rhetoric).So much, then, for 'Fascist culture'. I will mention one more fact which illustrates how the editorial activities I pursued, even when under the kind of official protection I mentioned, were ignored by the mainstream press then, just as they are today (for the mainstream press has continued to ignore my work, even after the publication of Revolt Against the Modern World). Paradoxically, I elicited more interest overseas, where I was seen as the chief representative of a revolutionary culture (or, rather, of a revolutionary worldview and approach to history) - much to the chagrin of those people who dominated the cultural milieu of Italy and who had secured a place for themselves in the exclusive circuits of official culture. It is only natural, therefore, for the legacy of Fascist 'culture' to be non-existent. It is said that Fascism ruined the Italian people. Military issues notwithstanding, I would rather argue the opposite: that it is the Italians who ruined Fascism; for Italy proved incapable of providing the kind of people who might develop the superior potentialities of Fascism while neutralizing its negative aspects (and this, of course, not merely from the point of view of culture).JULIUS EVOLA
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The Neo-Pagan Trap
& its Superstitious Mysticism
based on the Glorification of
Immanence, of Life & Nature

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The Neo-Pagan Trap
& its Superstitious Mysticism
based on the Glorification of
Immanence, of Life & Nature(from "Sintesi di Dottrina della Raza")This having been said, there remains the real possibility of transcending certain aspects of Christianity. But one must be quite clear: the Latin term "transcendere" means literally leaving something behind as one rises upwards, and not downwards! It is worth repeating that the principal thing is not the rejection of Christianity: it is not a matter of showing the same incomprehension towards it as Christianity itself has shown, and largely continues to show, towards ancient paganism. It would rather be a matter of completing Christianity by means of a higher and an older heritage, eliminating some of its aspects and emphasizing other, more important ones, in which this faith does not necessarily contradict the universal concepts of pre-Christian spirituality.This, alas, is not the path taken by the radical circles we have mentioned. Many of these neo-pagans seem to have fallen into a trap deliberately set for them, often ending up by advocating and defending ideas that more or less correspond to that invented, nature-bound, particularistic pagandom, lacking light and transcendence, which was the polemical creation of a Christian misunderstanding of the pre-Christian world, and which is based, at most, on a few scattered elements of that world in its decline and devolution. And as if this were not enough, people often resort to an anti-Catholic polemic which, whatever its political justification, often drags out and adapts the old clichés of a purely modern, rationalist and enlightenment type that have been well-used by Liberalism, Democracy, and Freemasonry. This was also the case, to a degree, with H. S. Chamberlain, and it appears again in a certain Italian movement that has been trying to connect racial thinking with the "idealistic" doctrine of immanence.There is a general and unmistakable tendency in neo-paganism to create a new, superstitious mysticism, based on the glorification of immanence, of Life and Nature, which is in the sharpest contrast to that Olympian and heroic ideal of the great Aryan cultures of pre-Christian antiquity.It would indicate much more a turning towards the materialistic, maternal, and telluric side, if it did not exhaust itself in foggy and dilettantish philosophizing. To give an example, we might ask what exactly is meant by this "Nature," on which these groups are so keen? It is little use to point out that it is certainly not the Nature that was experienced and recognized by ancient, traditional man, but a rational construct of the French Encyclopedist period.It was the Encyclopedists who, with definitely subversive and revolutionary motives, made up the myth of Nature as "good," wise, and wholesome, in opposition to the rottenness of every human "Culture." Thus we can see that the optimistic nature-myth of Rousseau and the Encyclopedists marches in the same ranks as "natural right," universalism, liberalism, humanitarianism, and the denial of any positive and structured form of sovereignty. Moreover, the myth in question has absolutely no basis in natural history. Every honest scientist knows that there is no room for "Nature" in the framework of his theories, which have as their object the determination of purely abstract equivalences and mathematical relationships.As far as biological research and genetics are concerned, we can already see the disequilibrium that would occur the moment one held certain laws to be final, when they only apply to a partial aspect of reality. What people call "Nature" today has nothing to do with what nature meant to the traditional, solar man, or to the knowledge of it that was accessible to such a man thanks to his Olympian and regal position. There is no sign of this whatever in the advocates of this new mysticism.Misunderstandings of more or less the same kind arise regarding political thought. Paganism is here often used as the synonym for a merely worldly and yet exclusive concept of sovereignty, which turns the relationships upside-down. We have already seen that in the ancient states, the unity of the two powers meant something quite different. It provided the basis for the spiritualization of politics, whereas neo-paganism results in actually politicizing the spiritual, and thereby treading once again the false path of the Gallicans and Jacobins. In contrast, the ancient concept of State and Empire always showed a connection to the Olympian idea.What shall we think of the attitude that regards Jewry, Rome, the Catholic Church, Freemasonry, and Communism as more or less one and the same thing, just because their presuppositions differ from the plain thinking of the Folk? The Folk's thinking along these lines threatens to lose itself in the dark, where no differentiation is possible any more. It shows that it has lost the genuine feeling for the hierarchy of values, and that it cannot escape the crippling alternative of destructive internationalism and nationalistic particularism, whereas the traditional understanding of the Empire is superior to both these concepts.To restrict ourselves to a single example: Catholic dogmatism actually fulfills a useful preventive role by stopping worldly mysticism and suchlike eruptions from below from passing a certain frontier; it makes a strong dam that protects the area where transcendent knowledge and the genuinely supra-natural and non-human elements reign--or at least where they should reign. One may well criticize the way in which such transcendence and knowledge have been understood in Christianity, but one cannot cross over to a "profane" criticism that seizes on some polemical weapon or other, fantasizes over the supposed Aryan nature of the immanence- doctrine, of "natural religion," the cult of "life," etc., without really losing one's level: in short, one does not thereby attain the world of primordial beginnings, but that of the Counter-Tradition or the telluric and primitive modes of being. This would in fact be the very best way of re-converting those people with the best "pagan" talents to Catholicism!One must be wary of falling into the misunderstandings and errors that we have mentioned, which basically serve only to defend the common enemy. One must try to develop the capacity to place oneself at that level where didactic confusion cannot reach, and where all dilettantism and arbitrary intellectual activity are excluded; where one resists energetically every influence from confused, passionate desires and from the aggressive pleasure in polemics; where, finally and fundamentally, nothing counts but the precise, strict, objective knowledge of the spirit of the Primordial Tradition.JULIUS EVOLA
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The Real Outcome of World War II

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The Real Outcome of World War II(from "Revolt Against The Modern World")[...]
With World War I, the Russian Revolution, and World War II the decisive events of the last age are ushered in. In 1914 the central empires still represented within the Western world a remainder of the feudal and aristocratic Europe, despite the undeniable aspects of militaristic hegemonism and some questionable collusions with capitalism, especially in Wilhelm's Germany. The coalition against the central empires was expressly a coalition of the Third Estate against the residual forces of the Second; it was a coalition of nationalisms and the great democracies more or less inspired by the "immortal principles" of the French Revolution, which some people wanted to replicate on an international scale and which fact did not prevent the humanitarian and patriotic ideology from playing into the hands of a greedy and supremacist high finance. As few other times before, World War I displays the traits of a conflict not between states and nations, but rather between ideologies of different castes. The immediate and willfully pursued results of this war were the destruction of the German monarchy and Catholic Austria; the indirect results were the collapse of the Czars' empire, the communist revolution, and the establishment in Europe of a sociopolitical situation that was so chaotic and contradictory as to contain all the premises of a new conflagration.World War II was this new conflagration. In this war the ideological line-ups were not as precise as in the previous war. States like Germany and Italy that had appropriated the authoritarian and antidemocratic idea and had sided against leftwing forces, by their initially upholding in this war the right of "nations in need of living space" as they struggled against world plutocracy, almost appeared to espouse Marxism on the international plane by giving to the war they waged the meaning of an insurrection of the Fourth Estate against the great democracies in which the power of the Third Estate had been consolidated. But overall, and especially after the United States entered into the conflict, what appeared to be a prevalent ideology was one that had already shaped World War I, namely, the crusade of the democratic nations bent on "liberating" the people still enslaved to what were looked upon as "backward political systems,” (1) The latter was destined rapidly to become a mere facade with regard to new political alignments. In their alliance with the Soviet Union, which was willed in order to bring down the powers of the Axis, and in their persevering in a mindless radicalism, the democratic powers repeated the error of those who think they can employ with impunity and for their own purposes the forces of subversion. and who, by following a fatal logic, ignore the fact that when the forces representing two different degrees of subversion meet or clash, those corresponding to the higher degree will eventually prevail. In reality it can clearly be seen how, from the Soviet side, the "democratic crusade" had been conceived only as a preparatory stage in the global plans of communism. The end of the war marked the end of the hybrid alliance and the real outcome of World War II was the elimination of Europe as a main protagonist in world politics, the sweeping away of any intermediate form, and the opposition of America and Russia as supemational exponents of the forces of the Third and Fourth Estates, respectively.(1) With regard to the dubious ideological alignments during World War II, one should notice in the two powers of the Axis, Italy and Germany, the negative element proper to "totalitarianism" and the new forms of dictatorial "Bonapartism." With regard to the other power of the Triparfite Pact (Japan), it would have been interesting to see the results of an unprecedented experiment, that is, of an external "Europeanization" coupled with an internal retention of the traditional spirit of an empire of divine right. Concerning the appraisal of both positive and negative elements of Fascism, see my Il fascismo: saggio di una analisi ciltica dal punto di vista della Destra (Rome, 1964).It really does not matter what the outcome of an eventual conflict between these two powers will be. The determinisms of some kind of immanent justice are at work; in any event, the process will reach the end. A third world war in its social repercussions will eventually determine the triumph of the Fourth Estate, either in a violent way, or as an "evolution," or in both forms.There is more. On the plane of the political powers pursuing world domination. Russia and America appear today in an antagonistic relationship. And yet if one examines in their essence the dominant themes in both civilizations, and if their ideals are closely scrutinized as well as the effective transformations that, following a central tendency, all the values and the interests of life have undergone in both of them, then it is possible to notice a convergence and a congeniality. Russia and America appear as two different expressions of the same thing, as two ways leading to the formation of that human type that is the ultimate conclusion of the processes that preside over the development of the modem world. It may be worthwhile to focus briefly on these convergences. Not only as political convergences but also as "civilizations," Russia and America are like two ends of the same pair of pincers.. that are closing in from the East and the West around the nucleus of ancient Europe. which is too depleted in its energies and in its men to put up an effective resistance. The external conflicts, new crises, and new destructions will only be the means to definitely open the way for the varieties of the world of the Fourth Estate.
[...]JULIUS EVOLA
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The Secret Causes of History
& The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

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The Secret Causes of History
& The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion(from "Men Among the Ruins")[...]
The deeper causes of history—here we can refer to both those that act in a negative sense and those that may act in an equilibrating and positive sense— operate prevalently through what can be called "imponderable factors," to use an image borrowed from natural science. These causes are responsible for almost undetectable ideological, social, and political changes, which eventually produce remarkable effects: they are like the first cracks in a layer of snow that eventually produce an avalanche. These causes almost never act in a direct manner, but instead bestow to some existing processes an adequate direction that leads to the designated goal. Thus, men and groups who believe they are pursuing something willed by themselves become the means through which something different is realized and made possible: it is precisely in this that a super-ordained influence and meaning are revealed. This was noticed by Wundt, who talked about the "heterogeneity of the effects," and by Hegel as well, who introduced the notion of the List der Vernunft [Cunning of Reason] in his philosophy of history; however, neither of these thinkers was able to fruitfully develop his intuitions. Unlike what happens in the domain of physical phenomena, an insightful historian encounters several instances where the "causal" explanation (in the deterministic, physical sense) is unsatisfactory, because things do not add up and the total does not equal the sum of the apparent historical factors—almost as if someone adding five, three, and two ended up not with ten, but with fifteen or seven. This differential, especially when it appears as a differential between what is willed and what has really happened, or between ideas, principles, and programs on the one hand and their effective consequences in history on the other, offers the most valuable material for the investigation of the secret causes of history.Methodologically speaking, we must be careful to prevent valid insights from degenerating into fantasies and superstition, and not develop the tendency to see an occult background everywhere and at all costs. In this regard, every assumption we make must have the character of what are called "working hypotheses" in scientific research—as when something is admitted provisionally, thus allowing the gathering and arranging of a group of apparently isolated facts, only to confer on them a character not of hypothesis but of truth when, at the end of a serious inductive effort, the data converge in validating the original assumption. Every time an effect outlasts and transcends its tangible causes, a suspicion should arise, and a positive or negative influence behind the stages should be perceived. A problem is posited, but in analyzing it and seeking its solution, prudence must be exercised. The fact that those who have ventured in this direction have not restrained their wild imaginations has discredited what could have been a science, the results of which could hardly be overestimated. This too meets the expectations of the hidden enemy.This is all I have to say concerning the general premises proper to a new three- dimensional study of history. Now let us return to what I said earlier on. After considering the state of society and modern civilization, one should ask if this is not a specific case that requires the application of this method; in other words, one should ask whether some situations of real crisis and radical subversion in the modern world can be satisfactorily explained through "natural" and spontaneous processes, or whether we need to refer to something that has been concerted, a still unfolding plan devised by forces hiding in the shadows.In this particular domain, many red flags have gone up: too many elements have concurred to alarm the less superficial observers. In the middle of the past century, Disraeli wrote these significant and often quoted words: "The world is governed by people entirely different from the ones imagined by those who are unable to see behind the scenes." Malinsky and De Poncins, when considering the phenomenon of revolution, have remarked that in our age, where it is commonly acknowledged that every disease of the individual organism is caused by bacteria, people pretended that the diseases of the social body—revolutions and disorder— are spontaneous, self-generated phenomena rather than the effect of invisible agents, acting in society the way bacteria and pathogenic germs act in the organism of the individual.Disraeli, in the mid-nineteenth century, wrote:
The public does not realize that in all the conflicts within nations and in the conflicts between nations there are, besides the people apparently responsible for them, hidden agitators who with their selfish plans make these conflicts unavoidable. . . . Everything that happens in the confused evolution of peoples is secretly prepared in order to ensure the dominion of certain people: it is these people, known and unknown, that we must find behind every public event.
In this order of ideas, there is an interesting document known as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. I have discussed the nature and scope of this document in the introduction to its last Italian edition (Rome, 1937). Here I will only mention some fundamental points.This document was purported to be a protocol stolen from a secret Judeo- Masonic organization and allegedly reveals a plan that was devised and implemented with the subversion and the destruction of traditional Europe in mind.Regarding the authenticity of the Protocols a rabid and complex debate has erupted, which can be dismissed, however, by Guénon's correct observation that a truly occult organization, no matter what its nature, never leaves behind written documents or "protocols." Thus, in the most favorable hypothesis, the Protocols could have been the work of someone who had contacts with some representatives of this alleged organization.However, we cannot agree either with those who wish to dismiss this document as a vulgar mystification, forgery, and work of plagiarism. The main argument adduced by the latter is that the Protocols reproduce and paraphrase in many parts the ideas found in a short book written by a certain Maurice Joly during the period of Napoleon's Second Empire. Allegedly, mysterious provocateurs of the Czar's secret police were responsible for writing the Protocols.This argument is truly irrelevant: those who decry plagiarism should keep in mind that this is not a matter of a literary work or of copyright. For example, when a general writes a plan, he could employ previous materials and writings as long as they contain ideas fit for his purpose. This would be a case of plagiarism, but it would not affect at all the question of whether or not this plan has really been conceived and carried out.Cutting short all this—that is, leaving aside the issue of the "authenticity" of the document in terms of real protocols stolen from an international secret organization—the only important and essential point is the following: this writing is part of a group of texts that in various ways (more or less fantastic and at times even fictional) have expressed the feeling that the disorder of recent times is not accidental, since it corresponds to a plan, the phases and fundamental instruments of which are accurately described in the Protocols.Hugo Wast wrote: "The Protocols may well be a fake, but their predictions have been fulfilled in an amazing way." Henry Ford added: "The only comment that I can make about the Protocols is that they perfectly correspond to what is happening today. They were published sixteen years ago, and ever since then they have corresponded to the world situation and today they still dictate its rhythm." In a sense, we can speak of a prophetic premonition. In any event, the value of the document as a working hypothesis is undeniable: it presents the various aspects of global subversion (among them, some aspects that were destined to be outlined and accomplished only many years after the publication of the Protocols) in terms of a whole, in which they find their sufficient reason and logical combination.As I have said, this is not the place to engage in a detailed analysis of the text; it will suffice to recall the main points. First of all, the primary ideologies that are responsible for the modern disorder did not arise spontaneously, but have been evoked and supported by forces that knew they were false and had in mind only the latter's destructive and demoralizing effects. This would apply to democratic and liberal ideas; the Third Estate had purposely been mobilized to destroy the previous feudal and aristocratic society, while in a second phase the workers were mobilized to undermine the bourgeois.Another basic idea of the Protocols is that, despite all, the capitalist and the proletarian Internationals are in agreement, being almost two columns with distinct ideas but which act in unison at a tactical level in order to achieve the same strategy. Likewise, the economization of life, especially in the context of an industry that develops at the expense of agriculture, and a wealth that is concentrated on liquid capital and finance, proceeds from a secret design.

The phalanx of the modern "economists" followed this design, just as those who spread a demoralizing literature attack spiritual and ethical values and scorn every principle of authority. Among other things, mention is made of the success that the secret front achieved not only for Marxism, but for Darwinism and Nietzsche's nihilism as well. The Protocols at times even encourage the spread of anti-Semitism, while in other cases mention is made of the secret monopoly of the press and of the media in democratic countries as well as the power to paralyze or destroy the most prestigious banks. This power concentrates the rootless, financial wealth in a few hands, and through it controls peoples, parties, and governments.One of the most important objectives is to remove the support of spiritual and traditional values from the human personality, knowing that when this is accomplished it is not difficult to turn man into a passive instrument of the secret front's direct forces and influences. The counterpart of the action of cultural demoralization, materialization, and disorganization causes unavoidable social crises to grow increasingly worse and collective situations to grow increasingly desperate and unbearable; in this way, a final conflict will eventually be considered as the means to finally sweep away the last residual resistance.It is difficult to deny that such a "fiction" exposed at the beginning of this century has indeed reflected and anticipated much of what has taken place in the modern world, not to mention the predictions of what is in store for us. It is therefore no surprise that the Protocols received so much attention from those movements of the past that intended to react against and stem the currents of national, social, and moral dissolution in their own day and age.However, these movements often upheld dangerously unilateral positions, due to the lack of adequate discernment; this was a weakness that, again, has played into the enemy's hands.In relation to this, we must deal with the issue raised by this document concerning the leaders of the occult war. According to the Protocols, the leaders of the global plot are Jews who planned and undertook the destruction of the traditional and Christian European civilization in order to achieve the universal rule of Israel, or God's "chosen people."This is obviously an exaggeration. At this point we may even wonder whether a fanatical anti-Semitism, which always sees the Jew as a deus ex machina, is not unwittingly playing into the hands of the enemy.One of the means employed by the occult forces to protect themselves consists of directing their opponents' attention toward those who are only partially responsible for certain upheavals, thus concealing the rest of the story, namely a wider sequence of causes.It could be shown that even if the Protocols were a forgery perpetrated by provocateurs, nonetheless they reflect ideas very congenial to the Law and spirit of Israel.Second, it is true that many Jews have been and still are among the promoters of modern disorder in its more radical cultural expressions, whether political or social.This, however, should not prevent a deeper analysis, capable of exposing forces that may have employed modern Judaism merely as an instrument.After all, despite the fact that many Jews are among the apostles of the main ideologies regarded by the Protocols as instruments of global subversion (i.e., liberalism, socialism, scientism, and rationalism), it is also evident that these ideas would have never arisen and triumphed without historical antecedents, such as the Reformation, Humanism, the naturalism and individualism of the Renaissance, and the philosophy of Descartes. Such phenomena cannot be attributed to Judaism, but rather point to a wider web of influences.In the Protocols the concepts of Judaism and Masonry are interwoven; therefore, in the literature that this text spawned, mention is often made in careless terms of a Jewish-Masonic plot. Here caution must be exercised.While recognizing the Jewish predominance in many sectors of modern Masonry, as well as the Jewish origin of several elements in the Masonic symbolism and rituals, the anti-Semitic thesis, according to which Masonry has been the creation and tool of Israel, must be rejected. Modern Masonry (with this designation I allude essentially to the Freemasonry that developed since the creation of London's Grand Lodge in 1717) has undoubtedly been one of the societies that promoted the modern political subversions, and especially their ideological background. However, here too the danger is to be distracted by explaining everything with the action of ordinary Masonry.Among those who regard the Protocols as a forgery, there are some who have noticed that various ideas in this text are similar to those that have been implemented by centralizing and dictatorial regimes, so much so that the Protocols can be an excellent manual for those who wish to install a new Bonapartism or totalitarianism. This view is partially correct.This amounts to saying that the "occult war" should be conceived, from a positive point of view, within a wide and elastic context, and we should expose the part played in it by phenomena that are apparently contradictory and hardly reducible to the simplistic formula of a Jewish-Masonic global plot.Regardless of the role played by Jews and Masonry in the modern subversion, it is necessary to recognize clearly the real historical context of their influence, as well as the limit beyond which the occult war is destined to develop by employing forces that not only are no longer those of Judaism and of Masonry, but that could even totally turn against them.To realize this, consider the law of the regression of the castes, which I have employed as a hermeneutic tool in my Revolt Against the Modern World in order to assess the effective meaning of history.From a civilization led by spiritual leaders and by a sacred regality, a shift occurred to civilizations led by mere warrior aristocracies; the latter were eventually replaced by the civilization of the Third Estate. The last stage is the collectivist civilization of the Fourth Estate.When we reflect carefully on things, modern Judaism as a power (quite apart from the concomitant, widespread, and instinctive action of individual Jewish thinkers and writers) is inseparable from capitalism and finance, which fall within the civilization of the Third Estate. The same applies to modern Masonry, which prepared ideologically for and supported the advent of the Third Estate. Masonry still presents itself today as the custodian of the principles of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, its doctrines acting as a kind of secular religion of modern democracy; its militant action has revealed and continues to reveal itself along this line, openly or in semisecret ways.All this falls within the penultimate phase; this phase, the overall cycle of democratic and capitalist civilization of the Third Estate, will eventually usher in the last collectivist phase, to which it has inadvertently opened the way. It is therefore logical that the role of a central guiding force of global subversion in this last period will no longer be played by Judaism or Masonry and that the main current may turn against both of these groups, as if they were residues to be liquidated once and for all; after all, this can be seen in countries in which regimes controlled by the Fourth Estate (i.e., Marxist regimes) are beginning to be consolidated, even though Jews and Masons contributed to their advent.But then again, as far as the general radical Jewish-Masonic conspiracy thesis upheld in some milieus is concerned, the actual situation shows its inconsistency. It would be a real abandonment to fantasy to suppose that the leaders of the great conflicting powers — the United States, the USSR, and Red China — receive orders from an international center of Jews and Masons (almost nonexistent in China), and act accordingly in view of the same goal. Again, it is necessary to refer to a wider horizon of influences and to look elsewhere.
[...]JULIUS EVOLA
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Today's Spirituality is Decay & Unrelated to
World of Tradition or Dominating Elites of
an Organic & Qualitative Civilization

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Today's Spirituality is Decay & Unrelated to World of Tradition
or Dominating Elites of an
Organic & Qualitative Civilization(from "Ride the Tiger")[...]
According to Spengler, one of the phenomena that consistently accompanies the terminal phase of a civilization is the "second religiosity." On the fringes of structures of barbaric grandeur - rationalism, practical atheism, and materialism - there spring up sporadic forms of spirituality and mysticism, even irruptions from the super-sensible, which do not indicate a re-ascent but are symptoms of decay.Their expressions no longer take their stamp from the religion of the origins, from the severe forms inherited from the dominating elites who stood at the center of an organic and qualitative civilization (this being exactly what I call the world of Tradition). In the phase in question, even the positive religions lose any higher dimension; they become secularized, one-dimensional, and cease to exercise their original functions.The "second religiosity" develops outside them - often even in opposition to them - but also outside the principal and predominant currents of existence, and signifies, in general, a phenomenon of escapism, alienation, and confused compensation that in no way impinges seriously on the reality of a soulless, mechanistic, and purely earthly civilization. [...]One might also use an expression of Aldous Huxley, who speaks of a "self-transcendence downwards" as opposed to a "self-transcendence upwards."
[...]JULIUS EVOLA
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Tyranny of the Economy
& Pseudo-Antithesis between Capitalism & Marxism

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Tyranny of the Economy
& Pseudo-Antithesis between Capitalism & Marxism(from "Men Among the Ruins")[...]
All this is proof of the true pathology of our civilization. The economic factor exercises a hypnosis and a tyranny over modern man. And, as often occurs in hypnosis, what the mind focuses on eventually becomes real. Modern man is making possible what every normal and complete civilization has always regarded as an aberration or as a bad joke—namely, that the economy and the social problem in terms of the economy are his destiny.Thus, in order to posit a new principle, what is needed is not to oppose one economic formula with another, but instead to radically change attitudes, to reject without compromise the materialistic premises from which the economic factor has been perceived as absolute.What must be questioned is not the value of this or that economic system, but the value of the economy itself. Thus, despite the fact that the antithesis between capitalism and Marxism dominates the background of recent times, it must be regarded as a pseudo-antithesis. In free-market economies, as well as in Marxist societies, the myth of production and its corollaries (e.g., standardization, monopolies, cartels, technocracy) are subject to the "hegemony" of the economy, becoming the primary factor on which the material conditions of existence are based. Both systems regard as "backward" or as "underdeveloped" those civilizations that do not amount to "civilizations based on labor and production"— namely, those civilizations that, luckily for themselves, have not yet been caught up in the feverish industrial exploitation of every natural resource, the social and productive enslavement of all human possibilities, and the exaltation of technical and industrial standards; in other words, those civilizations that still enjoy a certain space and a relative freedom. Thus, the true antithesis is not between capitalism and Marxism, but between a system in which the economy rules supreme (no matter in what form) and a system in which the economy is subordinated to extra- economic factors, within a wider and more complete order, such as to bestow a deep meaning upon human life and foster the development of its highest possibilities. This is the premise for a true restorative reaction, beyond "Left" and "Right," beyond capitalism's abuses and Marxist subversion. The necessary conditions are an inner detoxification, a becoming "normal" again ("normal" in the higher meaning of the term), and a renewed capability to differentiate between base and noble interests. No intervention from the outside can help; any external action at best might accompany this process.In order to resolve the problem, it is necessary, first of all, to reject the "neutral" interpretation of the economic phenomenon proper to a deviated sociology. The very economic life has a body and soul of its own, and inner moral factors have always determined its meaning and spirit. Such spirit, as Sombart has clearly shown, should be distinguished from the various forms of production, distribution, and organization of economic goods; it may vary depending on individual instances and it bestows a very different scope and meaning on the economic factor. The pure homo oeconomicus is a fiction or the by-product of an evidently degenerated specialization. Thus, in every normal civilization a purely economic man—that is, the one who sees the economy not as an order of means but rather as an order of ends to which he dedicates his main activities—was always rightly regarded as a man of lower social extraction: lower in a spiritual sense, and furthermore in a social or political one. In essence, it is necessary to return to normalcy, to restore the natural dependency of the economic factor on inner, moral factors and to act upon them.Once this is acknowledged, it will be easy to recognize the inner causes in the actual world (which have the economy as their common denominator) that preclude any solution that does not translate into a steeper fall to a lower level. I have previously suggested that the uprising of the masses has mainly been caused by the fact that every social difference has been reduced to those that exist between mere economic classes and by the fact that under the aegis of antitraditional liberalism, property and wealth, once free from any bond or higher value, have become the only criteria of social differences. However, beyond the strict limitations that were established within the overall hierarchical system prior to the ascent of the economy, the superiority and the right of a class as a merely economic class may rightly be contested in the name of elementary human values. And it was precisely here that the subversive ideology introduced itself, by making an anomalous and degenerative situation into an absolute one and acting as if nothing else had previously existed or could exist outside economic classes, or besides external and unfair social conditions that are determined by wealth alone. However, all this is false, since such conditions could develop only within a truncated society: only in such a society may the concepts of "capitalist" and "proletarian" be defined. These terms lack any foundation in a normal civilization, because in such a civilization the counterpart constituted by extra-economic values portrays the corresponding human types as something radically different from what today is categorized as "capitalist" or "proletarian." Even in the domain of the economy, a normal civilization provides specific justification for certain differences in condition, dignity, and function.Moreover, in the contemporary chaos it is also necessary to acknowledge what is caused by an ideological infection. It is not entirely correct to say that Marxism arose and took hold because there was a real social question that needed to be addressed (at best this may have been the case during the early stages of the industrial revolution); the opposite is true—to wit, that for the most part the social question gains precedence in today's world only as a result of the presence of Marxism. The social question artificially arises through the concerted effort of agitators, those who are engaged in "rekindling class consciousness." Lenin did not assign to the Communist Party only the task of supporting "workers' movements" where they arose spontaneously, but rather the task of creating and organizing them everywhere and by every means. Marxism gives rise to the proletarian and class mentality where it previously did not exist, stirring excitement and creating resentment and dissatisfaction in those societies where the individuals still lived in the station allotted to them by life. In those societies an individual contained his need and aspirations within natural limits; he did not yearn to become different from what he was, and thus he was innocent of that Entfremdung ("alienation") decried by Marxism. Incidentally, we should recall that Marxism proposes to overcome this alienation through something worse—namely, the "integration (or, we should say, disintegration) of the person into a collective entity (i.e., the 'people,' or 'the party')."I am not espousing an "obscurantism" for the benefit of the "ruling classes"; as I have stated previously, I dispute the superiority and the rights of a merely economic class living in a materialistic fashion. Nevertheless, we need to side against the idea or myth of so-called social progress, which is another of the many pathological fixations of the economic era in general, and not the legacy of leftist movements alone. To this effect, the eschatological views of Marxism do not differ very much from the "Western" views of prosperity: both Weltanschauungen [worldviews] essentially coincide, as do their practical applications. In both Marxism and free-market economies we find the same materialistic, antipolitical, and social view detaching the social order and people from any higher order and higher goal, positing what is "useful" as the only purpose (understood in a physical, vegetative, and earthly sense); by turning the "useful" into a criterion of progress, the values proper to every traditional structure are inverted. In fact, we should not forget that the law, meaning, and sufficient reason for these structures have always consisted in references for man to something beyond himself and beyond the economy, wealth, or material poverty, all these things having only a secondary importance.Thus, it can legitimately be claimed that the so-called improvement of social conditions should be regarded not as good but as evil, when its price consists of the enslavement of the single individual to the productive mechanism and to the social conglomerate; or in the degradation of the State to the "State based on work," and the degradation of society to "consumer society"; or in the elimination of every qualitative hierarchy; or in the atrophy of every spiritual sensibility and every "heroic" attitude. Hegel wrote, "Happiness is not to be found in the history of the world [in the sense of material comfort and social prosperity]; even the few happy periods found here and there are like white pages." But even at an individual level, the qualities that matter the most in a man and make him who he is often arise in harsh circumstances and even in conditions of indigence and injustice, since they represent a challenge to him, testing his spirit; what a sad contrast it is when the human animal is granted a maximum of comfort, an equal share in a mindless and "bovine" happiness, an easy and comfortable life filled with gadgets, radio and TV programs, planes, Hollywood, sports arenas, and popular culture at the level of Reader's Digest.Again, spiritual values and the higher degrees of human perfection have nothing to do with either the presence or the absence of socioeconomic prosperity. The notion that indigence is always a source of abjection and vice—and that "advanced" social conditions represent its opposite—is the fairy tale told by materialistic ideologies, which contradict themselves when they uphold the other myth, according to which the "good guys" are on the side of the people and the oppressed workers and all the "bad guys" are to be found on the side of the wealthy classes, which are corrupt and exploitative. Both of these are fairy tales. In reality, true values bear no necessary relation to better or worse socioeconomic conditions; only when these values are put at the forefront is it possible to approximate an order of effective justice, even on the material plane.Among these values are: being oneself; the style of an active impersonality; love of discipline; and a generally heroic attitude toward life. Against all forms of resentment and social competition, every person should acknowledge and love his station in life, which best corresponds to his own nature, thus acknowledging the limits within which he can develop his potential; and should give an organic sense to his life and achieve its perfection, since an artisan who perfectly fulfills his function is certainly superior to a king who does not live up to his dignity.Only when such considerations have weight will this or that reform carried out on the socioeconomic plane be conceived and implemented without any negative consequence, according to true justice, without mistaking the essential for the accessory. Unless an ideological detoxification and a rectification of attitudes are carried out, every reform will be only superficial and fail to tackle the deeper roots of the crisis of contemporary society, to the advantage of subversive forces.
[...]JULIUS EVOLA
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Unlike the Jewish Tradition,
Political Freemasonry & Secular Judaism
are Merely Tools Subordinate to Vaster Influences

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Unlike the Jewish Tradition,
Political Freemasonry & Secular Judaism
are Merely Tools Subordinate to Vaster Influences(from "The Path of Cinnabar")
[...] The influence of Judaism on modern culture and society, by means of both international capitalism and by revolutionary, corrosive political agitation, can hardly be denied. In my work, I sought to prove that this influence has chiefly come from the secular side of Judaism, which abandoned the ancient Jewish tradition.Certain aspects of this ancient tradition were distorted and materialized by secular Judaism, allowing for the kind of instinctual outbreaks of a given human type that had previously been held in check. In fact, I held little against the Jewish tradition as such: in my studies of esotericism, I had frequently quoted the Kabbalah, ancient Hebrew texts and Jewish authors (not to mention my praise of Michelstaedter, himself a Jew, and my interest in the work of another Jew, Weininger, whose most important book I endeavored to publish in a new Italian edition).I discussed the development of Judaism as a corrosive force in one chapter of The Myth of Blood and in an article I published in the fifth volume of Research on the Jewish Question (Forschungen zur Judenfrage). Here, too, my chief emphasis lay on the inner race and on actual behavior.Finally, from a historical perspective, I denounced both the one-sidedness and the dangers of fanatical, visionary anti-Semitism - something I also stressed in my introduction to Preziosi’s edition of the well-known and much debated Protocols of the Elders of Zion.What I denounced, in other words, was the danger of believing that Judaism alone is enemy: such a belief I was even inclined to see as one of the tactics employed in what I described as the 'occult war', a tactic which makes the enemy focus on a limited' area in order to divert his attention from other areas, where the attack continues unnoticed.What was necessary, I argued, was rather to be aware of the occult front of global subversion and of the forces of anti-Tradition in their entirety - something I had adequately described in Revolt Against the Modern World.The ultimate framework of the Jewish question might be described as a metaphysical struggle protracted throughout the ages. Within such a framework, certain organizations - most recently, political Freemasonry, as well as secular Judaism - have merely played the role of tools subordinate to vaster influences. [...]JULIUS EVOLA
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• clear on Modernity