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

Traditional Spirituality The traditional world is timeless. It is never perfectly realized in history. It depends from its relationship to an impersonal transcendent. Evola gives these as the salient features of those societies that embodied tradition most perfectly: “The traditional world knew divine kingship. It knew the bridge between the two worlds, namely, initiation; it knew the two great ways of approaching the transcendent, namely, heroic action and contemplation. It knew the moral foundation, namely, the traditional law and the caste system; and it knew the political earthly symbol, namely, the empire” The key to tradition, the defining feature of the traditional world, was the experiential knowledge of the two natures: high and low, being and becoming, supernatural and natural. The natural included the human and the subhuman, which included the demonic and the dark underworld. The traditional world had no ethics. It had no theory of any kind. Realities corresponded to symbols of the transcendent. Actions corresponded to rites mandated by it. These rites encompassed the whole of human existence. There was no progress; there was no learning. There was only adherence to the primordial archetypes. The only change that could occur in history was decay. Evola's system is characterized by polarities that are called “masculine” and “feminine.” The masculine is supernatural, the feminine natural. The masculine is still and self-subsistent; the feminine is reactive and dependent. “Spiritual virility” is a feature of societies that most closely accord with tradition. The “Fall” of original sin can be likened to the loss of masculine self-sufficiency. Women approach the transcendent through mediation. The roles of lover and mother correspond to asceticism and war for the male. This is why the harem in traditional society was comparable to a nun's cloister. The harem ideal was devotion to a man, devotion so great that it excluded jealousy. In traditional society, reciprocal love was regarded as inferior. For the woman, such a relationship would include a measure of masculine egotism. For the man, such love would require the surrender of some portion of masculine independence. Sati, the Hindu practice of widow-burning, was a commendable way of achieving transcendence. It was pure action, taken without regard to object or means. One may note that these views do not quite contradict Evola's endorsement of chivalry. The traditional ascetic was above the castes, as the pariah was below them. The ascetic seeks direct contact with the transcendent, through the path of action or the path of contemplation. Western contemplation, except in its neoplatonic forms, was defective, because it sought to mortify desire. The true contemplative moves beyond desire; he does not desire even the liberation he seeks. This liberation is not the dissolution of the self, but of the contingencies that bind the self. The goal of contemplation thus rises above mere theism to a state that is like the sun compared to theism's moon. The goal is the experiential knowledge of a substance beyond all form, a substance barren and absolute. One might say that the liberated self becomes God; one might also say that the liberated self moves beyond God. Active asceticism takes the form of war, which is only natural for a society in which every action is a ritual. War reenacts the victory of masculine, solar, Olympian order against lunar, Titanic chaos. This is true even in defeat, since traditions all over the world speak about the special place in paradise for the warrior who dies with a proper orientation to the transcendent. However, the achievement of the transcendent in that manner is not just for the casualties of the Lesser Holy War of combat. Combat supplies a context for the Greater Holy War within each warrior, because warriors must cultivate indifference to fate. Sacred games were also a manifestation of the path of action. The exultation of victory made the daemon visible, and so presented an opportunity for the victor to create an immortal “body of light,” which we will consider below. Religion as we know it was almost absent from traditional society: “The hyperrealistic world that was substantiated with pure and sheer action was replaced with a subreal and confused world of emotions, imaginations, hopes, and fears…” The gods were not independent of men, but were at most symbols or numena. Ideally, the highest caste was both regal and sacral. They controlled the numena. The high gods of ancient Egypt were threatened with destruction, if they failed to do what the priests asked of them. It was degeneration that made the gods into anthropomorphic beings, who might love men and whom men might love in return. The primordial magical system was devoid of morality. Even when the soul was purged, the rite was more in the nature of a medical procedure than of Christian repentance. Natural man consists of an ego, a demon and a shadow. The demon, sometimes called the “double,” is the foundation of most people. It is what we share with our ancestral stock. The ego is ephemeral. The personalities of ordinary dissolve people after death, leaving the shadow, which fades away in due course. The demon returns to the ancestral source, in effect being eaten by the infernal powers. Then it suffers impersonal reincarnation as the foundation of new human beings of the same lineage. Often in traditional societies, the aristocratic cult seeks liberation from the ancestral totems, but the popular cult simply facilitates the desire of the chthonic forces to incarnate in human beings. There are two paths after death. One is the path of the god, the solar path, which leads to the dwelling of the immortals. The other is the path of the ancestors, the lunar path, which leads to dissolution and Niflheim, the house of the chthonic deities. Failing the trial in the afterlife brings the second death. However, initiates do have the possibility of turning their demon into an immortal “body of light.” Their souls are united with Brahma. Next

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Copyright © 2002 by John J. Reilly