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

Castes and Traditional Economics The traditional world had three or four castes. In India, they were the brahmana, kstriya, vaisya, and sudra. They corresponded, roughly, to the European feudal classes of clergy, nobility, burghers, and servants. More primitively, however, the priestly and warrior functions were united in a single caste. The caste system establishes natural justice; everyone “decides” before birth to incarnate the qualities that make them fit for one caste rather than another. Those in the lower castes were connected to the transcendent by their loyalty to their superiors. Note that this was not personal devotion; traditional loyalty is impersonal, just as the transcendent is nonhuman. The form provided by the caste system is an instance of “creative limitation.” The decay of the system is one of the marks of the Kali Yuga. Work in traditional societies was not work in our sense of the term. All activities, from the sacred sciences to the inferior professions, had their mysteries, anagogic elements that looked upward. The mysteries were preserved by guilds, which eschewed competition and monopoly. The only people who “worked' were slaves, whose activities had no transcendent element. That was what “work” meant. By this definition, the modern West is the civilization of slavery par excellence. Next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Copyright © 2002 by John J. Reilly