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

A Mythological World History Today's primitives are degenerates. Their ways contain only fragments of the ways of the primordial people. Primordial man had knowledge directly from the transcendent. We cannot even recognize the traces of these superior races. The fall from this state is associated with natural catastrophe, perhaps at first a shift of the earth's axis, and accelerated through history by the mixture of the high races (among whom the Aryans were the last example) with the spiritually enslaved races of the world. History has gone through more than one great cycle. In this book, Evola bypasses the more ancient great cycles of Mu and Lemuria. He focuses on the great cycle now reaching its end, which began in the polar regions and passed through Atlantis. The Golden Age found tradition natural. Death was not natural then; the people of the Golden Age live still as invisible immortals. Words such as "incorruptible,” “solar,” “luminous,” and “bright" cluster about the Golden Age. The primordial lands are usually in the north, as the legends of Hyperborea, Shambhala and Aztlan attest. Legends of a primordial polar mountain symbolize spiritual stability. This Lost Island can be found in later ages only by chance, not by seeking for it directly. However, it is more than symbolic; it connects tradition with history and geography. The region of nonhuman spirituality was once real, in the Arctic. Northern eschatology often mixes memories of the end of the Golden Age with the expectation of a devastating “fimbul-winter” at the end of the current age. In fimbul winter, the sun was dimmed, and the ice spread. After the Golden Age ended, primordial men spread throughout the northern world, into Eurasia and the Americas, and also into Atlantis. They brought order to the peoples of those continents, some of them half-animals and others the degraded remnants of earlier cycles. Thus began the Silver Age, which was also the Age of Atlantis. That is why the Ones Who Never Die, from Quetzalcoatl to Heracles, live in the Atlantic paradises, such as Avalon and the Hesperides. As the expression “go West” testifies, that is the direction of initiation. Solstice feasts are remnants of the polar mentality, of the Northern Light of the Golden Age; equinoctial feasts recall the Southern Light, the lunar spirituality of the Silver Age. The later saw the beginning, at first in noble form, of devotional religion. This was characterized by spiritual mediation and of theism, of the move away from spiritual virility. The Western Paradise was often said to be ruled by a great queen. In religions of the Southern Light, there may be a hierarchy, but kings are subordinated to priests. The moon is seen as a “purified earth.” Toward the end, the Silver Age collapsed toward the promiscuous demon-possession of the autochthons. The Saturn of the Saturnalia, which recalls the transition, was actually a chthonic demon. The conflict grew between the luminous “deus” of the Indo-Europeans and the “al” of the south, the object of frenzied ecstasies. The North Light began to seem infernal. Wherever the degenerate form of the Silver Light appears, it involves goddesses like Isis, Asharat, Cybele, Tanit and Demeter. Here we find the images of the Mother and Child that come to us from the Neolithic. In the Demetrian context, the solar is just an emanation of the mother. Darkness becomes stronger than light. The gods themselves become mortal; only the feminine substrate is immortal. Burial is favored over cremation. Pantheism makes its appearance. The occult is linked with fatalism. When the spiritual becomes feminine, the masculine becomes material. Thus, violence and bellicosity have always been consistent with the spirituality of the mother; hence the chaos at the end of the Atlantean Age. The Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 and the Book of Enoch, the “giants” or “fallen ones,” were “people of the West.” Their miscegenation with the lesser races made possible the violence that ended the Atlantean Age. The worldwide stories of the Flood at the end of the Silver Age signify the occultation of nonhuman spirituality. The following Bronze Age, in Hesiod's nomenclature, was the age of the Titans. They were unjust, proud, violent, and eager for power. Titanic, Luciferian, and Promethean mean roughly the same thing in this context. New types of society arose in this era, which also appear in ours: Titanic Civilization proper rejects the feminized priesthood and seeks invisible power directly. Norse eschatology, which is as much historical as prophetic, indicates that the "giants” will destroy both the sun and moon, or both the polar and Demetrian spirituality. Another type of Bronze Age civilization was the Amazonian. There may or may not have been historical Amazonian societies, but the archetype is important. It signifies a disordered attempt to reinstate Demetrian dignity, as the Titanic was to reinstate spiritual virility. Amazonianism is the condition in which even feminine spirituality gives up on the spirit. Priests then don't want to be kings, but to dominate them. There was also Aphrodistic civilization, in which the mother becomes the hetaera and the son the lover. In such a culture, the virile principle appears as mere phallicism. Men become slaves to feminine magic. Society becomes violent, warlike even in its deities. Dionysian ecstasy becomes the highest spiritual possibility; at least it seeks to break the bonds of matter. The redeeming type of civilization that ended the Bronze Age was the Heroic. To some degree, it recalled the primordial age: “Indeed not all 'heroes' became immortal by escaping Hades; this is the fate of only some of them…the hero and the Titan belong to the same stock; they are the daring ones who undertook the same transcendent adventure, which can fail or succeed. [Those who succeed] are really capable of overcoming, thanks to an inner impulse toward transcendence, the deviations proper to the Titanic attempt to restore the primordial spiritual virility…” The other Titans and giants are those violent ones who “are taking [the Kingdom of Heaven] by storm” (Matt. 11:2). Evola fails to note that they go to Hades (1 Peter 3: 18-20). There can be a male-female dyad even in a heroic age, as we see with the cult of Athena, or the cult of chivalry. The woman permits the warrior to integrate his virile character on a higher plane. However, the hero must fight gynaecocracy. Heroes avoid or put an end to the snares of women, even in the case of Parsifal's mother, who opposed his quest and died of grief after he left. Parricide (presumably by destroying the man who serves the maternal interest) and incest can in fact signify spiritual autonomy. Next

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Copyright © 2002 by John J. Reilly