Revolt Against the Modern World By Julius Evola Original Italian Edition 1934 Revised 1951, 1970 Inner Traditions International 1995 (Translation by Guido Stucco) 375 Pages, $29.95 ISBN 0-89281-506-X

Summary & Notes on the Author Traditional Spirituality State, Kingship, Empire Castes and Traditional Economics Traditional Time and Space Historical Decay A Mythological World History Degenerate Religions The Decline of Antiquity Church versus Empire The Post-Medieval Collapse The End of this World A Critique and Anathema

The Post-Medieval Collapse The Middle Ages had been the real Renaissance, of the Roman ideal. The period we call the Renaissance was the beginning of decline. It borrowed from only the decadent phase of antiquity. The decline occurred in the life of the mind as well as in politics. Modern natural science is directed at mere prediction. Thus, by definition, it is concerned with the inessential. The knowledge it produces cannot lead to spiritual liberation. After the end of the medieval ecumene, kings became secular rulers, often mere warriors. The post-medieval divine right of kings was not comparable to the Empire's sacred regality. Divine right kings were, nominally, the secular arm of the Church. The universal Church itself became national churches. The sovereignties of the new sovereign states were like the schisms that created the new churches, except that the sovereignties denied any higher authority. France in particular had sought to undermine the Empire, and then to suppress its own, internal, feudal diversity. It was thus natural that the empowered Third Estate made the Revolution in France first, the penultimate step before the collectivist state. Metternich was the last great European. His Holy Alliance would have been a league of divine-right monarchs against the equally international phenomenon of the revolution. However, a new Templarism was what was needed, not pledges to invade any country that showed revolutionary tendencies. In reality, there is no resource in the modern world to halt the descent: “Through the concept of 'tradition,' nationalism aims at consolidating a collective dimension by placing behind the individual the mythical, deified, and collectivized unity of 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.” The overthrow of the remains of tradition in the French Revolution unleashed subhuman forces that have a life of their own. Dark elemental forces now use the higher faculties of isolated individuals to impose obsessive possession on them. The French Revolution, whatever else might be said about it, was Romantic and chaotic. The Russian Revolution, in contrast, was all logic. The demonic forces can now move in the open, “one of the most salient characteristics of the terminal point of every cycle.” The First World War was almost a clash of estates, of the warrior aristocracies of the Central Powers against the bourgeois Allies. In different ways, so was the Second World War. The meaning of that war is that such opposition is no longer possible. In the Cold War, both sides represent the Fourth Estate, the lowest caste. America and Russia are fundamentally convergent. The esoteric core of Marxism is not economic, but the rejection of the transcendent. However, what Russia (under the USSR) seeks to do by crude force happens spontaneously in America. In America there is the opposite of the Golden Age. America is a civilization of pure technique. Man in America is controlled by mechanisms he cannot control. American religion is harnessed to social causes and economic success. The supernatural, though much cultivated on the spiritualist side by American women, is actually thought to undermine religion. There is universal collectivist conformism, especially among the nonconformists. The mass mental state produced by Jazz is characteristic of the last age. Evola tells us that both America and Russia show warning signs of the Nameless Beast, a term he does not define here. Next

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Copyright © 2002 by John J. Reilly