Radu Iliescu, Asupra ideii cã numai o singurã religie ar fi adevãratã, cu o aplicatie pe cazul crestinismului, (text integral)

Tentatiile cãrora trebuie sã le facã fatã credinciosul sunt numeroase si pot îmbrãca nenumãrate forme: de la cele mai vizibil la cele mai subtile, de la cele usor de cunoscut ca ispite la cele cu aparentã nobilã, dezinteresatã, gratuitã. Fãrã teamã de a ne însela, pe acestea din urmã le considerãm ca fiind cu mult mai pernicioase. Este usor sã respingi furtul, crima, dorinta de a poseda ceea ce apartine aproapelui, dar câti dintre noi stiu exact în ce constã idolatria? Câti se conformeazã injonctiunii de a face binele în asa fel încât “sã nu stie stânga ce face dreapta”, iar dintre cei ce o fac, câti stiu semnificatia deplinã a gestului? Câti stiu cã nu numai cã nu te poti închina concomitent si lui Dumnezeu si lui mamonna, dar nici ne-închinarea nu este imaginabilã în vreun chip (altfel spus, neutralitatea spiritualã, expectativa neimplicatã nu este cu putinta)? Si încã toate acestea sunt mici, fatã de… obisnuitul pãcat al buricelii. Amuzantã uneori dar cel mai adesea nu, buriceala (sau nombrilismul, dacã am vrea cu vreun pret sã trecem starea profanã care câstigã din ce în ce mai mult teren în epoca noastrã de degenerare intelectualã. Teologic vorbind, ne aflãm în fata vechiului pãcat al trufiei, însă subspecia buricelii beneficiazã de un camuflaj care îi conferã o atractie si o formã de rezistentã superioare.

Element activ în relatia dintre mamã si fãt, imediat dupã nastere buricul devine martorul mut al perioadei intrauterine a fãtului, rolul lui încheindu-se, rãmânând eventual cel estetic, în cazul acelor rare tãieturi a cordonului ombilical fãcute de o mânã sigurã la momentul potrivit. Undeva la nivelul cel mai vizibil al anatomicului, el este amintirea vie a unei conexiuni întrerupte, rememorând asadar o dependentã, dar si începutul independentei celui ce a renuntat la placentã pentru hrana ingeratã bucal, sau la rigoare intravenos. Vital cândva, acum cu mult mai putin important ca orice organe ce functioneazã, ombilicul necesitã mai putinã grijã ca o unghie ce trebuie tãiatã din când în când, iar cei mai multi dintre noi trãiesc linistiti fãrã grija acestei pãrti care a murit la câteva clipe dupa nasterea noastrã. Valoarea simbolicã a Omphalosului este cea de Centru, lui îi corespund Kaaba islamicã, Templul lui Solomon si alte burice în jurul cãrora graviteazã traditiile sfinte. Nimic mai normal ca unei realitãti spirituale ordonatoare sã-i corespundã un apendice anatomic steril si inutil, pentru cã, nu-i asa? cele ce sunt mari sus trebuie sã fie vrednice de dispretuit aici jos.

Buriceala e pãcatul asociat acestei corespondente simbolice pe care fiecare o purtãm în noi. Este forma debilizatã si dez-vrãjitã pe care o ia ideea de Omphalos în momentul în care deviazã spre grotesc si spre ridicol. Buricitul a pierdut reperele, el nu trãieste cu ochii atintiti spre Centrul spiritual, el se ia pe sine drept centru. Renuntarea la placentã nu este ritul de initiere la viata extrauterinã, este revolutia lui, pe care si-o arogã dar nu si-o asumã. În mod trist, buriceala nu este ateism, ci o relatie pseudo-spiritualã activã, care necesitã implicatia subiectului ei si îi conferã în schimb satisfactii pe care acesta le apreciazã si le cautã cu frenezie. Si asta pentru cã elementele necesare spiritualitãtii autentice sunt cu toate incluse în ecuatie, mai putin unul, care este maimutãrit, care doar pare, dar nu este: Centrul.

Problema are multe fatete, pe care în van ne-am burici (!) sã le epuizãm în cele câteva rânduri ce le vom asterne. Ne multumim s-o surprindem în forma pretentiei de a participa la singura religie adevãratã care a existat vreodatã (cu o aplicatie pe crestinism). În forma originară, pretentia de a fi nãscut în “singura religie adevãratã” este una din constantele oricãrei teologii, si într-o bunã mãsurã face parte din ceea ce am numi adevãrurile eficiente ale mântuirii: trebuie sã fii convins cã religia în care esti nãscut este adevãratã ca aceasta sã fie efectiv o cale spre Paradis şi spre Dumnezeu. În economia oricãrei deveniri spirituale autentice, accentuarea pe adevãr vs. minciunã (cãreia noi îi preferãm ortodoxie vs. heterodoxie) introduce o judecată de valoare inevitabilă. Orice religie autenticã, ce are la bazã o Revelatie, care s-a constituit într-o Traditie, cu dogme, ritualuri si exegezã, nu poate supravietui asaltului relativismului (“merge oricum”). Pânã aici, nimic anormal. Buriceala începe atunci când reprezentanţii acestei religii încep sã se pretindã drept beneficiarii unici ai singurei religii adevãrate (aruncând în mod deschis asupra celorlalte forme traditionala acuza falsului, a contrafacerii). Si încã, atâta vreme cât e vorba de pãstrarea unei identitãti puse în pericol, aceastã pretentie mai poate avea un sens practic (desi putem vorbi deja de o minciunã pusã în slujba unui scop nobil, actiune discutabilã, dat fiind faptul cã o traditie ce trebuie apãratã este deja în suferintã).

Sã zicem cã cineva cedeazã tentatiei de a se burici sustinând, nici mai mult nici mai putin cã singura religie adevãratã este crestinismul. Fireste, subîntelegând în mod explicit cã celelalte religii sunt contrafaceri, pretentii spirituale vane, mincinoase. Acest lucru revine la a spune cã buricul lui este Adevãrat, în timp ce celelalte burice sunt contrare Adevãrului. Remarcãm dintru început cã acest mod de a pune problema este el însusi riscant, pentru cã opereazã cu categorii metafizice “tari”: Adevãr vs. non-adevãr, în locul dihotomiei clasice: ortodoxie vs. heterodoxie. Dacã s-ar fi mers pe aceastã din urmã cale, cu mult mai riguroasã, problema ar fi cãzut, pentru cã într-adevãr fiecare religie este la nivel exoteric heterodoxã în raport cu celelalte, relatie reciprocã în toate situatiile particulare. Si atunci expunerea noastrã s-ar fi oprit aici, pentru cã este un lucru de la sine înteles cã exoterismul unui hindus sau a unui musulman este de neînteles pentru exoterismul crestin, la fel cum si acesta este strãin primilor – iar aceastã stare de fapt este normalã si nu facem decât s-o aprobãm. Însã pânã la a considera cã cel ce are de partea lui Adevãrul este unul dintre ei (cu alte cuvinte, a extinde afirmatia si la nivel esoteric), iar ceilalti sunt niste mincinosi, e cale lungã: pret de un buric inflamat!

Nu vom nega satisfactiile nebãnuite care decurg din pretentia de a avea cel mai frumos, mai destept si mai verosimil buric de sub soare! Dar sã vedem fundamentul acestei stări si consecintele care decurg, pentru cã, nu-i asa?, dupã roade se cunosc toti pomii, cum ne-a învãtat Iisus Hristos cã se pot distinge profetii mincinosi de adevãratii profeti. Vom afirma fãrã ocolisuri: la baza acestei maladii ombilicale larg rãspândite se aflã ignoranta Celuilalt. Nu necunoasterea purã, preferabilã, pentru cã cel putin cel care e ignorant pânã la capãt are sansa ca într-o zi sã cunoascã adevãrul, nu! ci îngrãmãdirea de idei-de-a-gata preluate din almanahuri, adoptarea de prejudecãti sentimentale fãcute pentru linistirea gospodinelor, acumularea de fraze-prefabricate pentru concursuri-cu-premii-televizate, cum ar fi: musulmanii îl resping pe Iisus, hindusii sunt niste închinãtori la idoli, africanii sunt niste canibali, aztecii fãceau jertfe umane, budistii sunt de fapt niste atei. Douã rânduri, atât, nimic mai mult, si buriceala e gata: în comparatie cu ei, noi crestinii suntem plini de mistere, Dumnezeu a venit pentru noi, s-a rãstignit pentru pãcatele noastre, a murit pe cruce, a înviat, si la Apocalipsã ne va ierta pe noi, cei care am avut inteligenta sã-l alegem pe El. Fireste, dacã teologia Celuilalt încape în mai putin de un rând, buricitul e generos cu el însusi si e gata sã sacrifice pânã la trei rânduri pentru teologia lui, singura adevãratã, nu?

În realitate, dacã ignoranta buricitului n-ar fi singurul lucru vast de care dispune, el ar gãsi în chiar teologia crestinã argumente suficiente pentru a admite existenta adevãrului Celuilalt (am în vedere o acceptare formalã, necerându-se nimãnui sã distingã între ortodoxiile si heterodoxiile unor religii pe care nu le practicã si asupra cãrora nu poate avea decât o aprehensiune teoreticã, dar si aceste distinctii sunt la îndemâna celui ce depãseste nivelul prejudecãtilor si se intereseazã cu seriozitate). Vom proceda noi însine la câteva reduceri la absurd, presupunând de fiecare datã cã singura religie adevãratã este crestinismul, iar celor ce li se va pãrea prolixã acumularea de demonstratii care sfârsesc toate prin a arãta natura lamentabilã a tezei de la care plecãm, le cerem scuze dinainte: cu sigurantã, rareori ni s-a arãtat ceva mai usor de demontat, pe mãsura ignorantei larg rãspândite pe care buriceala o presupune.

Începem cu implicatia teologicã presupusã de credinta cã singura religie adevãratã este crestinismul. Datã fiind perioada temporalã dintre alungarea din Paradis a perechii primordiale si sacrificiul hristic, este firesc sã ne întrebãm ce s-a petrecut cu generatiile de oameni care au trãit între aceste douã evenimente si au murit privati de Sfintele Taine ale crestinismului (singurele capabile sã mântuie în cazul în care pretentia de la care am pornit este valabilã)? Ei bine, acestia ar fi ratat cu totii mântuirea, inclusiv Abraham, Ilie si ceilalti profeti biblici, morti cu totii nebotezati, neîmpãrtãsiti, nespovediti si fãrã sã fi participat vreodatã la un Sf. Maslu. Si asta pentru cã tuturor Dumnezeu le-ar fi pus o conditie peste putinta lor: aceea de a fi crestini. Ajungem la rezultatul absurd conform cãreia Divinitatea ar fi cerut oamenilor imposibilul, asadar premiza de la care am pornit este ea însãsi falsã (este evident faptul cã Dumnezeu nu poate concomitent sã-si iubeascã fãptura si sã-i cearã ceva ce depãseste posibilitãtile obiective ale muritorilor precrestini).

Versiune a demonstratiei de mai sus: ce se petrece cu ne-crestinii care au fost contemporani cu Revelatia hristica si constituirea crestinismului dar mesajul evanghelic nu a strãbãtut spatiile pânã la ei – s-au mântuit si sunt ei capabili sã se mântuie? Dacã premiza este adevãratã, acestia umplu cu totii Infernul fãrã discriminare. Remarcãm cã mesajul crestin a fost rãspândit dintru început în Palestina romana si mai apoi în restul Imperiului, o suprafatã neglijabilã a globului terestru. Asadar, o bunã parte din umanitate a fost privatã fizic de el: chinezii, hindusii, africanii, australienii si populatiile amerindiene. Adãugãm eschimosii, cerându-ne scuze pentru neamurile nenumãrate pe care le-am ignorat. Lipsit de mijloacele unei propagãri planetare, crestinismul s-a rãspândit din om în om, prin apostoli care au bãtut drumurile cu piciorul si nu cu TGV-ul, care au vorbit unor grupuri mici de oameni si nu pe stadioane sau în show-uri televizate. Ajungem la aceeasi concluzie de mai sus: cã Dumnezeu ar fi cerut sã fie crestini celor ce n-au intrat în contact cu mesajul hristic cu care erau contemporani, si aceasta este un alt fel de a spune cã Dumnezeu este nedrept. Din nou, concluzie absurdã, pe mãsura premizei de la care am plecat!

Corolar: s-ar putea obiecta cã astãzi Cuvântul lui Hristos pătrunde în toate casele datoritã televiziunii si presei. Deja, dupã absurditatea la care am ajuns mai sus, ne simtim îndreptãtiti sã respingem si aceastã obiectie, care asociazã inventiile radioului si a televiziunii cu Evanghelia, punându-le nu în relatia instrument-mesaj, ci pe picior de egalitate (mergând pânã la a conditiona-o pe aceasta din urmã de un eventual suport propagandistic agresiv si cu totul nepotrivit). Un lucru sare în ochi: dacã Dumnezeu ar fi vrut ca religia crestinã sã fie universalã, Iisus s-ar fi nãscut sub luminile reflectoarelor de la CNN. Sigur, este autoflatantã buriceala de a pune umilele noastre jucãrii în slujba rãspândirii unui mesaj divin, dar Dumnezeu a preferat ca Iisus sã se nascã în liniste într-un grajd, între un asin si un bou, departe de orice loviturã mediaticã.

Pe scurt, aducem împotriva falsei teze a “religiei adevãrate” argumentul teologic: dacã mântuirea ar fi conditionatã în exclusivitate de conditia crestinã, Adam si Eva ar fi plecat din Paradis botezati, cununati, cu duhovnicul lângã ei. A gândi cã generatii de oameni înainte de venirea lui Hristos, si alte generatii dupã el au fost private de relatia eficace cu Divinitatea într-un mod impus abuziv de Dumnezeu este totuna cu a formula o ofensã adusã Divinitãtii, asa cum am arãtat mai sus.

Vom presupune din nou cã singura religie adevãratã este crestinismul, pentru a desfãsura ceea ce numim argumentul gnoseologic. Dacã premiza noastrã este adevãratã, trebuie sã admitem cã tot ce a fost înaintea crestinsimului este automat fals, iar tot ceea ce se aflã în afara sferei sale este neapãrat fals de asemeni. Astfel, dupã izgonirea din Paradis perechea primordialã si urmasii ei au trãit într-o minciunã necoruptã (deja acest lucru este imposibil, dar admitem cu generozitate si aceastã posibilitate, pentru a nu întrerupe demonstratia înaintea epuizãrii ultimelor consecinte pe care punctul de plecare le implicã). Primele întrebãri îsi fac deja aparitia: dar Avraam? Cunoasterea lui este adevãratã: cum este cu putintã ca într-o umanitate decãzutã un om sã aibã perceptia corectã a divinului? Dar Lot? Cum era cu putintã ca într-o cetate decãzutã Lot sã fie totusi un om drept? Dupã care criterii drepte? Dar Noe? Dar ceilalti patriarhi? Trebuie cumva sã considerãm cã Biblia aduce inventarul exhaustiv al oamenilor drepti, deci a-normali într-o lume în care minciuna e legea imbatabilã?

Deja pornind de la premiza noastrã, cu textul biblic în mânã, avem nu una, ci douã probleme. Prima: cum este cu putintã ca niste ne-crestini (deci prin definitie mincinosi) sã aibã o relatie corectã cu divinitatea (Seth, Noe, Lot, Avraam)? A doua: cum este cu putintã ca singura religie adevãratã (conform premizei) sã-si facã loc într-o lume în care sensul adevãrului lipseste prin definitie? Deja prima problemã anuleazã premiza prin revelarea absurdului ei: dacã un ne-crestin poate beneficia de atentia lui Dumnezeu, deja crestinismul nu mai este conditia necesarã în relatia cu divinitatea. Ne vom îndrepta atentia spre a doua problemã, ceva mai stufoasã.

Asadar, cum este cu putintã ca singura religie adevãratã sã pãtrundã realmente pe pãmânt? Remarcãm deja cã folosirea antinomiei “tare” Adevãr vs. non-adevãr ne impune sã considerãm fãrã discernãmânt întreaga perioadã pre-crestinã ca fiind falsã, nu doar mostenirea romanã sau a Greciei antice, dar si cea iudaicã (si, fireste, tot ce a precedat-o). Mai precis, valoarea spiritualã a unui Protagoras, a unui Socrates, a unui Platon, a unui Plotin este redusã la zero, iluzorie, fum. Întreg simbolismul hermetic este si el pe cale de consecintã anulat, fantasmogorizat. În aceeasi masinã de tocat pusã în miscare de premiza noastrã intrã otova: profetii biblici, tablele lui Moise si cam tot Vechiul Testament en gros, ca sã nu ne mai pierdem în detalii.

Cum stau însã lucrurile: valoarea spiritualã a lui Platon si a lui Aristotel a fost recunoscutã de crestinism si preluatã în teologia scolasticã medievalã, singura formã de gândire cu continut metafizic explicit care a existat în ultimii douã mii de ani pe teritoriul european. Vechiul Testament este unul dintre fundamentele crestinismului. Gândirea hermeticã medievalã are rãdãcini grecesti si romane, multe dintre detaliile decurgând din ea fiind preluate de crestinism (un singur exemplu: Sfântul Prelat roman poartã în timpul liturghiei… caduceul lui Hermes, cu cei doi serpi care se încolãcesc de-al lungul lui, dar si titlul spiritual al împãratului roman: Pontifex Maximus). Suprem paradox: Iisus Hristos, cel care a stat si stã la baza crestinismului, Fecioara Maria, apostolii, au fost cu totii iudei, au respectat Legea lui Moise si au îndeplinit idealurile religioase. Ajungem la o absurditate manifestã: începãtorii crestinismului ar fi respectat ritualurile si dogmele unei religii false, pentru cã precrestine.

Este clar cã si de aceastã datã premiza ne-a dus într-un loc pe mãsura ei, gresit. Mai facem o încercare: sã presupunem cã, într-un mod ilogic cel care pretinde pentru crestinism Adevãrul integral ar concede iudaismului o fractie din acesta, nu dintr-o generozitate, ci în scopul “pregãtirii adevãrului crestin”. Asta ar fi totuna cu a afirma cã iudaismul nu este o religie mântuitoare, ci o semi-religie, o creatie spiritualã pe jumãtate, o pre-creatie în vederea crestinismului. Înfãtisarea acestei ipostaze presupune cã Dumnezeu face lucrurile pe jumãtate, ceea ce este o ofensã adusã Lui. Dacã, dimpotrivã, ajungem la concluzia cã iudaismul a fost o religie mântuitoare pânã la aparitia crestinismului si a încetat sã fie una odatã cu acesta, revine la a spune cã Dumnezeu a coborât Revelatia în douã perioade diferite, în douã forme diferite, si din nou asistãm la contrazicerea tezei de la care am pornit, cãci dacã douã lucruri sunt cu putintã, multiplicitatea indefinitã este cu putintã, nefiind nici o ratiune în sine suficient de solidã pentru a o opri. Desigur, nu vom trata aici aspectul particular al existentei a douã cãi mântuitoare concomitent sau succesiv, fiind preocupati doar cu existenta lor purã si simplã.


Este nu numai gresit sã considerãm cã doar o singurã religie este adevãratã, dar însãsi pretentia de Adevãr (în sensul ultim) este nepotrivitã. Iisus spunea unui bãrbat care l-a numit “bun” cã numai Dumnezeu este Bun. Cum ar putea atunci o religie sã se pretindã adevãratã, când numai Dumnezeu este Adevãrat? Asupra acestui punct vom reveni cu prilejul ultimei demonstratii, cea metafizicã. Considerãm mult mai eficace sã înlocuim paradigma adevãr vs. neadevãr cu ortodoxie vs. heterodoxie. Spunem deci cã o religie ortodoxã este o cale efectivã a omului spre mântuire (deci implicit spre Adevãr), în timp ce orice heterodoxie este o rãtãcire, o cale închisã. Nu trebuie sã se creadã cã am sustine buriceste cã singura ortodoxie este crestinismul (în ansamblu sau în anumite pãrti), în timp ce non-crestinismul ar fi heterodox. Pur si simplu sustinerea unei astfel de teze ar fi reiterarea ignorantei despre care vorbeam la începutul acestui eseu.

În realitate, degenerescenta spiritualã (amplificarea tendintelor heterodoxe) din imperiul roman era cunoscutã de autoritãtile religioase ale acestuia în bunã parte, iar asteptarea unei înnoiri este manifestã. În plus, lucru care poate pãrea curios si respinge orice buricãraie, se stia cu precizie cã o nouã epocã spiritualã va porni de la nasterea unei Fecioare. Druizii ridicau statui lui Virgo Paritura, Fecioara ce avea sã nascã. În Egloga IV, 40 î.H., Virgil se referã la una dintre profetiile Sibilei din Cumae: jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna. În Est, trei crai-magi vãd steaua de la Betleem si se grãbesc sã aducã omagiile lor Pruncului. Fost-au ei zoroastrieni, hindusi, taoisti? Nu vom sti niciodatã. Ce conteazã e cã adevãrul era cunoscut, prezent în lume cu mult înaintea crestinismului, în traditii diferite de acesta. Cea care a beneficiat în mod direct a fost Europa, pentru simplul motiv cã aceastã parte a lumii a avut nevoie de noua Revelatie. Salutul celor trei crai-magi este simbolic: celelalte religii au omagiat nasterea noului Avatara, si atât. Neavând nevoie de o reînnoire spiritualã, nu au apelat la ea. Desigur, cele spuse de noi sunt împotriva scrierilor dezgustãtoare ale apologetilor crestini (ei însisi contrazisi de atentia pe care ulterior crestinismul a manifestat-o pentru platonismul grec), si nu ne vom dezice de dispretul pe care îl avem pentru buricelile lor (observãm în practic cã trebuie sã le fi pãrut foarte nobil acestora sã aducã Omphalosului crestin jertfa buricului personal, de care acesta fireste cã nu avea nevoie; crestinismul s-ar fi putut lipsi si el de afirmatiile false fãcute în numele lui).

Un aspect care ar cere nesfârsite dezvoltãri celor insuficient cunoscãtori dar care este foarte clar pentru cei cu un parcurs adecvat este argumentul traditionalist. Este vorba de constatarea faptului cã toate religiile au produs în mod esential acelasi tip societar: civilizatia traditionalã (în opozitie cu modernitatea, care a produs societatea modernã, cu varianta postmodernã). Nu vom intra în detalii, vom observa doar cã în acest punct, a admite în continuare cã existã o singurã religie adevãratã implicã pe de o parte afirmatia cã Adevãrul si non-adevãrul produc acelasi tip de efect (absurd!), iar pe de altã parte cã non-adevãrul este capabil sã producã efecte opuse (din nou, absurd!). Pentru a nu observa rezultatele ilogice la care am ajuns, ar trebui sã facem efortul de a considera cã Adevãrul si non-adevãrul sunt în fond identice, ceea ce ar anula din nou premiza. Argumentul traditionalist este la fel de eficace ca si cele dinaintea lui.

Ce a fost de zis, am zis deja. Trei argumente au demonstrat deja invaliditatea pretentiei cã o anume religie ar fi adevãratã (în ocurentã crestinismul). Adãugãm în final si demonstratia metafizicã, cea mai clarã dintre toate, care în absenta oricãrei informatii ar fi putut refuta teza falsã de care ne-am ocupat. Vom presupune din nou cã singura manifestare a Divinitãtii ar fi crestinismul (si implicit toate celelalte religii ar fi iluzorii, dacã nu deschis mincinoase). Avem aici douã posibilitãti: fie Dumnezeu nu putea decât sã adopte aceastã manifestare, dintr-o limitare a naturii proprii peste care nu putea trece (Dumnezeu fiind deci crestin), fie Dumnezeu ar fi putut sã se manifeste în orice alt fel, dar a preferat din niste ratiuni obscure sã se reveleze sub forma crestinã. Cele douã posibilitãti vor fi analizate succesiv.

Deja sare în ochi faptul cã prima ipotezã (Dumnezeu s-ar fi revelat sub forma crestinã pentru cã ar fi fost El însusi crestin) ne duce la negarea atributului omnipotentei divine. Un Dumnezeu limitat dintr-o privintã oarecare nu mai poate fi concomitent si Atotputernic. Asadar, ne aflãm într-un impas: încercând sã concepem un Dumnezeu crestin sfârsim prin a mutila si putinul pe care-l putem cunoaste despre natura Sa. Ipoteza s-a dovedit fãrã întârziere falsã.

A doua ipotezã este la fel de nefastã punctului nostru de plecare: dacã Dumnezeu nu este crestin, dar s-a revelat sub forma crestinã pentru cã aceasta a fost vointa Sa, din ratiuni obscure nouã, atunci ajungem paradoxal la a considera aceastã formã ca lipsitã de continuitate în raport cu divinul, adicã exact contrariul premizei de la care am plecat. Si în realitate chiar asa si este! În raport cu Dumnezeu crestinismul este ignobil, ca orice altã religie, prin lipsã de mãsurã comunã: Esenta nu este datoare cu nimic formei pe care o îmbracã, în timp ce forma este datoare cu absolut totul. Esenta este imuabilã si eternã, în timp ce forma este contingentã si degenerativã. Asadar, a presupune cã Dumnezeu nu este crestin dar s-a manifestat ca atare din ratiuni obscure asazã crestinismul pe pozitia lui: una dintre posibilitãtile divine, în numãr infinit. Si nu existã nici o ratiune pentru a spune cã o posibilitate le exclude automat pe celelalte (fãrã a nega natura divinã). Q.E.D.

Ce se întâmplã dacã, în ciuda demonstratiei de mai sus, ne încãpãtânãm sã considerãm cã singura religie adevãratã este totusi crestinismul (si niciuna dintre celelalte)? Asta ar implica si pretentia cã dogmele crestine sunt “reale”, adicã izbutesc sã surprindã realitatea fãrã rest, altfel spus Dumnezeu chiar e Treimea cea de o fiintã, în timp ce Trimurti hindusã si Tien-Ti-Huen taoistã sunt automat pretentii false. Or, în acest caz, în care crestinismul ar fi capabil sã cuprindã dogmatic toate adevãrurile ultime, fãrã a lãsa nimic pe dinafarã sau la dispozitia altor religii, atunci ne-am confrunta cu ipoteza incredibilã a unei religii care sã-l detinã în exclusivitate pe Dumnezeu, prizonier câmpului ei conceptual – câmp care ar fi automat chiar Dumnezeu, pentru cã douã lucruri deplin identice sunt de cu neputintã de conceput: crestinismul ar fi chiar Dumnezeu, si invers, Dumnezeu ar fi chiar crestinismul!!! Din însãsi formularea ei, pretentia de a avea o religie adevãratã este una otrãvitã si cu neputintã de împlinit: o religie la fel de adevãratã ca si Dumnezeu ar fi un al doilea Dumnezeu, lucru inacceptabil din punct de vedere metafizic: El este Unic, cum infinitul nu coexistã altui infinit.

Dacã, dimpotrivã, admitem cã, asemeni oricãrei religii, dogmele crestinismului sunt adevãruri suportabile în termenii nostri lumesti, care cuprind din natura divinã atât cât avem nevoie pentru a ne mântui si, dintr-o nefericire datoratã neputintei instrumentelor noastre, nimic mai mult, atunci buriceala ia sfârsit. Crestinismul cuprinde asadar partea lui din Adevãr, la fel cum si celelalte religii ortodoxe au forma efectivã de care au nevoie în drumul lor spre divin. În raport cu toate Revelatiile, suntem norocosi sã putem accede la ele; în raport cu Dumnezeu, toate Revelatiile sunt absolut obscene. Orice religie dã viermuielii noastre sens deplin, dar în raport cu Divinitatea fiecare religie în parte nu valoreazã mai mult decât o coajã de nucã pe care binecuvântarea Lui a venit spre noi. Pentru cei care refuzã tentatia îmburicirii, pentru cei al cãror mat mort a fost restaurat în Omphalos activ, religiile înceteazã sã fie altceva decât sunt de fapt: golgotele pe care ne urcãm anevoie crucile, sau pietrele pe care înscriem urma piciorului gol înainte de a porni în al-mirâj, sau copacii sub care ne asezãm jurând sã nu-i pãrãsim înainte de a gãsi iluminarea, sau lovitura peste ceafã cu care maestrul fixeazã în noi satori, sau… Pentru cã pânã la urmã, nu existã nici un zeu, doar Dumnezeu…

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Julius Evola, The Meaning and Context of Zen, (excerpt)

From "Lo Zen," Roma, Fondazione Julius Evola, Quaderni di testi evoliani, nº 15, 1981. English trans. by Guido Stucco, Holmes Publishing Group, 1994.

We know the kind of interest Zen has evoked even outside specialized disciplines, since being popularized in the west by D.T. Suzuki through his books Introduction to Zen Buddhism and Essays in Zen Buddhism. This popular interest is due to the paradoxical encounter between East and West. The ailing West perceives that Zen has something "existential" and surrealistic to offer. Zen's notion of a spiritual realization, free from any faith and any bond, not to mention the mirage of an instantaneous and somehow gratuitous "spiritual breakthrough", has exercised a fascinating attraction on many Westerners. However, this is true, for the most part, only superficially. There is a considerable difference between the spiritual dimension of the "philosophy of crisis", which has become popular in the West as a consequence of its materialistic and nihilist development, and the spiritual dimension of Zen, which has been rooted in the spirituality of the Buddhist tradition. Any true encounter between Zen and the West, presupposes, in a Westerner, either an exceptional predisposition, or the capability to operate a metanoia. By metanoia I mean an inner turnabout, affecting not so much one's intellectual "attitudes", but rather a dimension which in every time and in every place has been conceived as a deeper reality.

Zen has a secret doctrine and not to be found in scriptures. It was passed on by the Buddha to his disciple Mahakassapa. This secret doctrine was introduced in China around the sixth century C.E. by Bodhidharma. The canon was transmitted in China and Japan through a succession on teachers and "patriarchs". In Japan it is a living tradition and has many advocates and numerous Zendos ("Halls of Meditation").

As far as the spirit informing the tradition is concerned, Zen may be considered as a continuation of early Buddhism. Buddhism arose as a vigorous reaction against the theological speculation and the shallow ritualism into which the ancient Hindu priestly caste had degraded after possessing a sacred, lively wisdom since ancient times. Buddha mad tabula rassa of all this: he focused instead on the practical problem of how to overcome what in the popular mind is referred to as "life's suffering". According to esoteric teachings, this suffering was considered as the state of caducity, restlessness, "thirst" and the forgetfulness typical of ordinary people. Having followed the path leading to spiritual awakening and to immortality without external aid, Buddha pointed the way to those who felt an attraction to it. It is well known that Buddha is not a name, but an attribute or a title meaning "the awakened One", "He who has achieved enlightenment", or "the awakening". Buddha was silent about the content of his experience, since he wanted to discourage people from assigning to speculation and philosophizing a primacy over action. Therefore, unlike his predecessors, he did not talk about Brahman (the absolute), or about Atman (the transcendental Self), but only employees the term nirvana, at the risk of being misunderstood.

Some, in fact, thought, in their lack of understanding, that nirvana was to be identified with the notion of "nothingness", an ineffable and evanescent transcendence, almost bordering on the limits of the unconscious and of a state of unaware non-being. So, in a further development of Buddhism, what occurred again, mutatis mutandi, was exactly the situation against which Buddha had reacted; Buddhism became a religion, complete with dogmas, rituals, scholasticism and mythology. It eventually became differentiated into two schools: Mahayana and Hinayana. The former was more grandiose in metaphysics an Mahayana eventually grew complacent with its abstruse symbolism. The teachings of the latter school were more strict and to the point, and yet too concerned about the mere moral discipline which became increasingly monastic. Thus the essential and original nucleus, namely the esoteric doctrine of the enlightenment, was almost lost.

At this crucial time Zen appeared, declaring the uselessness of these so-called methods and proclaiming the doctrine of satori. Satori is a fundamental inner event, a sudden existential breakthrough, corresponding in essence to what I have called the "awakening". But this formulation was new and original and it constituted a radical change in approach. Nirvana, which had been variously considered as the alleged Nothingness, as extinction, and as the final end result of an effort aimed at obtaining liberation (which according to some may require more than one lifetime), now came to be considered as the normal human condition. By these lights, every person has the nature of Buddha and every person is already liberated, and therefore, situated above and beyond birth and death. It is only necessary to become aware of it, to realize it, to see within one's nature, according to Zen's main expression. Satori is like a timeless opening up. On the one hand, satori is something sudden and radically different from all the ordinary human states of consciousness; it is like a catastrophic trauma within ordinary consciousness. On the other hand, satori is what leads one back to what, in a higher sense, should be considered as normal and natural; thus, it is the exact opposite of an ecstasis, or trance. It is the rediscovery and the appropriation of one's true nature: it is the enlightenment which draws out of ignorance or out of the subconscious the deep reality of what was and will always be, regardless of one's condition in life. The consequence of satori is a completely new way to look at the world and at life. To those who have experienced it, everything is the same (things, other beings, one's self, "heaven, the rivers and the vast earth"), and yet everything is fundamentally different. It is as if a new dimension was added to reality, transforming the meaning and value. According to the Zen Masters, the essential characteristic of the new experience is the overcoming of every dualism: of the inner and outer; the I and not I; of finitude and infinity; being and not-being; appearance and reality; "empty" and "full"; substance and accidents. Another characteristic is that any value posed by the finite and confused consciousness of the individual, is no longer discernible. And thus, the liberated and the non-liberated, the enlightened and the non-enlightened, are yet one and same thing. Zen effectively perpetuates the paradoxical equation of Mahayana Buddhism, nirvana-samsara, and the Taoist saying "the return is infinitely far". It is as if Zen said: liberation should not be looked for in the next world; the very world is the next world; it is liberation and it does not need to be liberated. This is the point of view of satori, of perfect enlightenment, of "transcendent wisdom" (prajnaparamita)

Basically, this consciousness is a shift of the self's center. In any situation and in any event of ordinary life, including the most trivial ones, the ordinary, dualistic and intellectual sense of one's self is substituted with a being who no longer perceives an "I" opposed to a "non-I", and who transcends and overcomes any antithesis. This being eventually comes to enjoy a perfect freedom and incoercibility. He is like the wind, which blows where it wills, and like a naked being which is everything after "letting go" -abandons everything, embracing poverty.

Zen, or at least mainstream Zen, emphasizes the discontinuous, sudden and unpredictable character of satori disclosure. In regard to this, Suzuki was at fault when he took issue with the techniques used in Hindu schools such as Samkya and Yoga. These techniques were also contemplated in early Buddhist texts. Suzuki employed the simile of water, which in a moment turns into ice. He also used the simile of an alarm, which, as a consequence of some vibration, suddenly goes off. There are no disciplines, techniques or efforts, according to Suzuki, which by themselves may lead one to satori. On the contrary, it is claimed that satori often occurs spontaneously, when one has exhausted all the resources of his being, especially the intellect and logical faculty of understanding. In some cases satori it is said to be facilitated by violent sensations and even by physical pain. Its cause may be the mere perception of an object as well as any event in ordinary life, provided a certain latent predisposition exists in the subject.

Regarding this, some misunderstandings may occur. Suzuki acknowledged that "generally speaking, there are no indications on the inner work preceding satori". However, he talked about the necessity of first going through "a true baptism of fire". After all, the very institution of the so-called "Halls of Meditation" (Zendo), where those who strive to obtain a satori submit themselves to a regimen of life which is partially analogous to that of some Catholic religious orders, bespeaks the necessity of a preliminary preparation. This preparation may last for several years. The essence of Zen seems to consist in a maturation process, identical to the one in which one almost reaches a state of an acute existential instability. At that point, the slightest push is sufficient to produce a change of state, a spiritual breakthrough, the opening which leads to the "intuitive vision of one's nature". The Masters know the moment in which the mind of the disciple is mature and ready to open up; it is then that they eventually give the final, decisive push. This push may sometimes consist of a simple gesture, an exclamation, in something apparently irrelevant, or even illogical and absurd. This suffices to induce the collapse of the false notion of individuality. Thus, satori replaces this notion with the "normal state", and one assumes the "original face, which one had before creation". One no longer "chases after echoes" and "shadows".

This under some aspects brings to mind the existential theme of "failure", or of "being shipwrecked" (das Scheitern, in Kierkegaard and in Jaspers). In fact, as I have mentioned, the opening often takes place when all the resources of one's being have been exhausted and one has his back against the wall. This can be seen in relation to some practical teachings methods used by Zen. The most frequently employed methods, on an intellectual plane, are the koan and the mondo. The disciple is confronted with a saying or with questions which are paradoxical, absurd and sometimes even grotesque and "surrealistic". He must labor with his mind, if necessary for years, until he has reached the extreme limit of all his normal faculties of comprehension. Then, if he dares proceed further on that road he may find catastrophe, but if he can turn the situation upside down, he may achieve metanoia. This is the point where satori is usually achieved.

Zen's norm is that of absolute autonomy; no gods, no cults, no idols. To literally empty oneself of everything, including God. "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him", a saying goes. It is necessary to abandon everything, without leaning on anything, and then to proceed forward, with one's essence, until the crisis point is reached. It is very difficult to say more about satori, or to compare it with various forms of initiatory mystical experience whether Eastern or Western. One is supposed to spend only the training period in Zen monasteries. Once the disciple has achieved satori, he return to the world, choosing a way of life that fits his need. One may think of satori as a form of transcendence which is brought to immanence, as a natural state, in every form of life.

The behavior which proceeds from the newly acquired dimension, which is added to reality as a consequence of satori, may well be summarized by Lao Tzu's expression: "To be the whole in the part". In regard to this, it is important to realize the influence which Zen has exercised on the Far-Eastern way of life. Zen has been called "the samurai's philosophy," and it had also been said that "the way of Zen is identical to the way of archery," or to the "way of the sword". This means that any activity in one's life, may be permeated by Zen and thus be elevated to a higher meaning, to a "wholesomeness" and to an "impersonal activity". This kind of activity is based on a sense of the individual's irrelevance, which nevertheless does not paralyze one's actions, but which rather confers cam and detachment. This detachment, in turn, favors an absolute and "pure" undertaking of life, which in some cases reaches extreme and distinct forms of self-sacrifice and heroism, inconceivable to the majority of Westerners (e.g. the kamikaze in WWII).

Thus, what C.G. Jung claims is simply ridiculous, namely that Psychoanalysis, more than any other Western school of thought, is capable of understanding Zen. According to Jung, satori coincides with the state of wholeness, devoid of complexes or inner splitting, which psychoanalytic treatment claims to achieve whenever the intellect's obstructions and its sense of superiority are removed, and whenever the conscious dimension of the soul is reunited with the unconscious and with "Life". Jung did not realize that the methods and presuppositions of Zen, are exactly the opposite of his own. There is no "subconscious", as a distinct entity, to which the conscious has to be reconnected; Zen speaks of a superconscious vision (enlightenment, bodhi or "awakening"), which actualizes the "original and luminous nature" and which, in so doing, destroys the unconscious. It is possible though, to notice similarities between Jung's view's and Zen', since they both talk about the feeling of one's "totality" and freedom which is manifested in every aspect of life. However, it is important to explain the level at which these views appear to coincide.
Once Zen found its way to the West, there was a tendency to "domesticate" and to moralize it, playing down its potential radical and "antinomian" (namely, antithetical to current norms) implications, and by emphasizing the standard ingredients which are held so dear by "spiritual" people, namely love and service to one's neighbor, even though these ingredients have been purified in an impersonal and non-sentimental form. Generally speaking, there are many doubts on the "practicability" of Zen, considering that the "doctrine of the awakening" has an initiatory character.

Thus, it will only be able to inspire a minority of people, in contrast to later Buddhist views, which took the form of a religion open to everyone, for the most part a code of mere morality. As the re-establishment of the spirit of early Buddhism, Zen should have strictly been an esoteric doctrine. It has been so as we can see by examining the legend concerning its origins. However, Suzuki himself was inclined to give a different account; he emphasized those aspects of Mahayana which "democratize" Buddhism (after all, the term Mahayana has been interpreted to mean "Great Vehicle", even in the sense that it extends to wider audiences, and not just to a few elect). If one was to fully agree with Suzuki, some perplexities on the nature and on the scope of satori may arise. One should ask whether such an experience merely affects the psychological, moral or mental domain, or whether it affects the ontological domain, as is the case in every authentic initiation. In that event, it can only be the privilege a very restricted number of people.

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William Grimstad, The Lord of the World, (full text)

It's hard to think of an "occult" topic, other than Atlantis or "flying saucers" or the Bermuda Triangle, that has been the subject of more irresponsible writing and spurious research than has the vexed subject of Agartha.

For obscure but seemingly inborn psychological reasons, the idea of a sort of hidden pope coordinating all the secret activities of the world from an underground kingdom in the vastness of the Himalayas has a recurring glamour.

Starting with a 19th century traveller and romancer named Louis Jacolliot, the line of such superficial commentary slides to a reductio ad absurdum in the fantasies of "pop" mystic Robert Charroux: "There are four entrances to Agartha: one between the paws of the sphinx at Gizeh, another on the Mont-Saint Michel, a third..."

Even so deadly serious a purveyor of metaphysic wisdom as Helena Blavatsky waxes faintly ridiculous in her solemn revelations of supposed huddles with spooky "Eastern masters" such as Koot Hoomi of the "Great White Lodge." Ditto for her Theosophical Society followers, Annie Besant and Alice Bailey, together with an unknown legion of spin-offs among today's vendors of what has irreverently been called "kharma cola."

What is surprising, however, in view of this prolonged flood of fluff, is that there have been a number of sober and closely reasoned explorations of the curious lore, both ancient and modern, that has given rise to the Agartha mythos. By far the most important of these is "Le Roi du Monde," a 1927 study by the great French student of symbolism and ancient Aryan religions, Rene Guenon.

Guenon is not what we today might call a "user friendly" writer. All of his books are as short on colour and personalising touches as they are marked by rigorous economy and reduction to essentials. Because of this "density," they demand a rather high involvement by the reader, and fortunately the English edition of The Lord of the World has been graced with a fluent translation that is far superior to the pedestrian rendering of his magnum opus, The Reign of Quantity.

An example of the care that has gone into this volume may be seen in the presentation of its title. Although the literal meaning of "Roi" is "king" it was felt that "lord" would better evoke the author's idea of a simultaneous spiritual and temporal authority.

For some reason, the Agartha theme has been highly stimulating to the Gallic imagination. Guenon's book takes as its starting point the two earlier works: Mission de l'Inde by a certain Saint Yves d'Alveydre, and the better known Beasts, Men and Gods, by a French academician and political writer of this century, Ferdinand Ossendowski.

Guenon always seemed able to draw upon vast - presumably initiatic - sources of profound information into the sundry arcane topics to which he turned his attentions. He appears to have set out here to amplify Saint Yves's brief early-day account, and to clarify Ossendowski's often rather superficial observations.

Both men were travellers recounting what they had been told about a mysterious centre of power reputed to exist somewhere among the deserts and mountains of Central Asia. Saint Yves concluded that this place had inherited the authority of the universal lawgiver, Manu, a "cosmic intelligence that reflects pure spiritual light and formulates the law ("Dharma") appropriate to the conditions of our world and our cycle of existence," as Guenon puts it.

However, the Lord of the World as such is not "Manu," but rather a sort of prime minister who mediates "Dharma" into the affairs of mankind. His title, Guenon informs us, is Brahmatma, "sustainer of souls in the spirit of God." Or he also may be known as Chakravarti, which in Hindi signifies "He who makes the wheel turn." As Ossendowski was told by a lama:

"The Lord of the World is in touch with the thoughts of all those who direct the destiny of mankind... He knows their intentions and their ideas. If these are pleasing to God, the Lord of the World favours them with his invisible aid. But if they are displeasing to God, He puts a check on their activities."

As for Agartha, it is a locus usually referred to as underground, or something quite specifically located in a vast network of caves. This very likely is metaphorical, since the name Agartha itself means "inaccessible" or "inviolable."

However, Ossendowski accepts the literal truth of the subterranean tradition. He reports that "a Soyot from near the Lake of Nogan Kul showed me the smoking gate that serves as the entrance," but admits elsewhere that "no one knows where this place is. One says Afghanistan, others India."

Agartha then, strictly speaking, would represent more of a condition of this supreme centre on earth than its actual location. Traditionally, the centre withdrew from accessibility about six thousand years ago, with the onset of the degenerate era of the Kali-Yuga. With this topic, Guenon begins his extraordinary symbological odyssey, taking up where the earlier writers leave off.

Guenon was profoundly steeped in the ancient Aryan literature of the Vendanta, one of whose chief tenants is that of the four ages of Yugas. These are: Krita-Yuga, Age of Bronze, and Kali-Yuga, the Age of Iron, or Dark Age.

The last terminal era of smoke, ruin and blood is under domination of the death goddess Kali, and it is marked by the final degradation and dissolution of humanity. The Hindu sages believe that the world is now approaching the very abyss of the Kali-Yuga. One of the major themes of Guenon's many books is to chart exactly how this process is coming to its dire fruition, chiefly through the spread of philosophical materialism and maniacal enshrinements of quantity over quality via modern science, technology and industry.

Only with the catastrophic end of this epoch, fast approaching in the view of Guenon, can the great cycle begin anew and Agartha and its Lord of the World reappear before mankind.

The Agartha story would remain an interesting footnote to Asian folklore were it not that the legend has so many unexpected points of contact with the chief arcana of the Western mystery tradition. It is these that Guenon, with his unique combination of immense erudition and gemlike conciseness, has brilliantly summarised within this surprisingly modest compass.

Most obvious, of course, would be the ageless theme of "inner earth" beings. This has exercised human imaginings from Orpheus in Hades through the medieval alchemists and Rosicrucians to modern enthusiasts of the "hollow earth" ideas of Richard Shaver and Raymond Bernard. The Lord of the World represents the obvious epitome, and quite possibly the real point of origin, for these.

Guenon's list of other major themes tied in one way or another to Agartha is long: the Spear of Longinus and the Holy Grail - the Arthurian legends - Monsalvat pilgrimage centre - the "Great Beast 666" - the Knights Templar - Freemasonry - Tibetan lore - the mysterious land of Tula or Thule, which was so bizarrely commemorated in the enigmatic Thule Gesellschaft (Thule Society) that gave rise to the National Socialist movement in Germany.

Indeed, the fateful swastika symbol itself, we are told, is intimately connected to the tradition as the virtual emblem of the Lord of the World:

"... This centre constitutes the fixed point known symbologically to all traditions as the "pole" or axis around which the world rotates. This combination is normally depicted as a wheel in Celtic, Chaldean, and Hindu traditions. Such is the true significance of the swastika, seen world-wide, from the Far East to the Far West, which is intrinsically the "sign of the Pole."

Guenon finds Manu and his deputy the Lord of the World reflected in the Shekinah and Metatron of Kabbalistic mysticism, the latter being similarly styled "Prince of the World," and the "celestial Pole."
However, it is the shadowy figure of Melchizedek that both connects the Judeo-Christian tradition with Agartha, and brings Guenon's work right up to the present in relation to one of today's most controversial phenomena of popular psychology.

Melchizedek, the supposed ancient king of what is now Jerusalem, appears a number of times in the Old and New Testaments.

Guenon writes:

"Melchizedek, or more precisely Melki-Tsedeq, is none other than the title used by Judeo-Christian tradition to denote the function of the "Lord of the World." We have hesitated before publishing this information which explains one of the most enigmatic passages of the Hebrew Bible, but, having decided to treat the issue of the Lord of the World, concluded it could hardly he passed over in silence..."
Melki-Tsedeq is thus both king and priest. His name means "king of justice" and he is also king of Salem, that is of "Peace," so again we find "Justice" and "Peace" the fundamental attributes pertaining to the "Lord of the World."

In the 1940's, ethereal "foo fighters" reportedly dogged Allied aircraft over Germany. An obscure aviator called, Kenneth Arnold galvanised a curiously receptive world media corps, and coined an unfortunate phrase, with his story of strange aircraft "like flying saucers" in the skies near Seattle, Washington.
Since that time, the unidentified flying object phenomenon has see-sawed in the public consciousness, with periodic waves of public sightings followed by stony denials from government and intense ridicule from a small cadre on the periphery of the scientific community. Most of these latter scoffers appear not to be true working scientists, but mainly journalists with strong ties to the aerospace industry and to government-controlled space programs.

The upshot of this often ferocious debunking process has been that only a few genuine scientific researchers have had the hardihood to delve into the extremely "messy" UFO business. One of the more perceptive of those who have is the French-born mathematician and computer researcher Jacques Vallee.
After a series of books examining the UFO phenomenon from a mechanistic perspective, Vallee's thinking, like that of virtually all serious UFO students, appears to have evolved in the direction of pondering less the troubled reality of the "saucers" and more the effect that their appearances - and allied cultism - seem to be having on the public.

In his study, called Messengers of Deception, Vallee makes telling observations on how damaging the long siege of UFO hijinks has been to the public's formerly unquestioning faith in rationalism and its self-chosen priesthood, the scientific community.

There is much independent evidence that something like this is happening, and on a far broader scale than Marilyn Ferguson has examined the spectrum of opinion-molding esoteric cultism in the Western World. Her work indicates a broad decline in popular regard for the basic positivist-rationalist credo.
The implications of this for the present "pluto-technocratic" world order are serious indeed. But more to our purposes is what Ferguson reveals (and does not reveal) about the comparatively small number of guiding personalities at the top of the far-flung "Aquarian" pyramid. We are left wondering - From whom do they get their marching orders?

For Vallee, however, this is a side issue. The greater part of his unusual book if taken up with a subject that is clearly of huge perplexity to the author, because he found it interwoven with UFO matters worldwide. Eventually, it even began involving itself in his own life.

It is both a cult phenomenon, expressed in a maze of grouplets of unstable people that come and go, and beyond this, a more elusive and seemingly international coordinating centre of some kind. Its name, Vallee tells us, is the Order of Melchizedek.

His research reveals earlier Melchizedek traces in the now obsolete Roman Catholic Tridentine Mass, in the senior priesthood of the Mormon Church, and in rituals of certain elite sects of Freemasons. Vallee is let to speculate on the connections, if any.

Rene Guenon was mainly known in his day as a student of Oriental religions and of traditional philosophies. However, future readers will come to value still more his incredibly deep insights into the cosmic art of symbolism. In his Apercu sur l'Initiation, Guenon has written:

"The true basis of symbolism is, as we have said, the correspondence linking together all orders of reality, binding them one to the other, and consequently extending from the natural order as a whole to the supernatural order. By virtue of this correspondence, the whole of Nature is but a symbol."
Vallee shows an unconscious drift in this same direction that also is visible in the work of many other scientists now in this day of the "Tao of Physics" when a researcher like Murray Gell-Mann can win a Nobel Prize for applying concepts like "charm" to the increasingly bewildering vagaries of so-called subatomic particles.

Vallee's major field is computer information theory, and by the end of Messengers of Deception, he concludes that what the UFO phenomenon and its allied Melchizedekian sects really signify is, not visits by interplanetary astronauts, but a maddeningly subtle sort of "reality game" that is being played from somewhere unknown as a "control system" (his words) over the attitudes of large groups of diverse people.

The ultimate question, Vallee opines, comes down to the real nature of energy and information:
"I have always been struck...by the fact that energy and information are one and the same thing under two different aspects. Our physics professors teach us this; yet they never draw the consequences..."
If energy and information are related, why do we only have one physics, the physics of energy? Where is the physics of information? Is the old theory of Magic relevant here? Are the writings of Paracelsus with his concept of "signatures," an important source of information?

His implied answer: Yes.

To all of which, Guenon probably would have given one of those inimitable Gallic shrugs as if to say "what has taken you so long?," then parenthetically suggesting the more precise word symbolism for Vallee's information.

Practically everyone who has looked into the role of clandestine control groups behind the scenes of everyday political and social "reality" eventually has arrived at the question: Is there some central authority above the diverse Trilateralists, Zionists, Freemasons, KGB/CIAS, central banks, multinational cartels, and other furtive power blocs at work shaping our world?

Is there, to address the issue raised by this book, a living, breathing Lord of the World? Ferdinand Ossendowski had no doubt of it, recounting reports that the Brahmatma had visited Buddhist festivals in Siam and India in recent times, displaying the emblem of a golden apple surmounted by a lamb.
Unfortunately, Guenon does not categorically answer this key question himself. He appears to wish to leave us with the more implicit image of the Lord of the World as a sort of vast, panhistorical construct of diverse symbol textures.

But perhaps, as Jacques Vallee's trend of thought would suggest, there really might be some place in the world at which idea and energy inter-convert. That may be as close as we in this troubled era, with our rigidly linear mental habits, can approach to the ramparts of long-hidden Agartha.

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Abrasax, The Gnostic Vision of Aquarianism

The age of Aquarius is upon us — or so we are told. There is a great period of change ahead, and then a golden age. Man will be transformed and peace and love will reign forever. The lion and the lamb shall lie down together and the universe will be reconciled.

This is the mythology of the new age, the ‘bubblegum’ astrology being peddled in the pages of most so-called ‘spiritual magazines available at news stands. With some variation it is found across the board in spiritualistic, theosophical, esoteric and new age organisations. According to their ‘vision’, mankind waits, perhaps with a little apprehension, for the dawning of the golden age. While many new age prophets pepper their yarns with warnings and predictions of peril, the general trend is to suggest these changes are short term and are avoidable if mankind "changes vibration". If only we can all "work together" to circumvent the "evil ahead" and then march hand in hand into the golden age.

The problem with this scenario is that it is based on pseudo esotericism, crass commercial ‘new-ageism’ and ‘feel good’ religion. It has little or no basis in the traditions of world religions and directly contradicts what authentic esotericism and occultism says on the matter. To understand how this model took hold, we need to return to the end of the nineteenth century.


Evolution, Spiritual, Physical and Technological

Towards the end of the nineteenth century a revolution took place in scientific thinking. Many unsung prophets heralded the evolutionary viewpoint before Charles Darwin, but it was Darwin himself who presented the theory at a significant historical moment in time, and the world was shaken. Science was transformed and our whole perspective on reality changed overnight.

What most of us do not consider is that this rediscovered theory had a far greater effect than in the realm of science. The concept of evolution became the new paradigm and was adapted into every field and discipline. The study of religion, for example, appropriated evolution to explain the slow process by which man developed from "primitive" faiths through polytheism to see the light of day in monotheism (or rationalism, depending on the school of thought). Christianity may have rejected the outward physical evolution of man, but nevertheless it was influenced and effected by this model that suggested the Western, white, technologically advanced, Christian culture was the pinnacle of progress.

Slowly, but surely, this model also found its way into esoteric thinking. Rejecting the official scientific line, Theosophy and its many derivatives developed their own modified evolutionary process whereby ‘root races’ slowly climbed through aeons of change to land in the modern world. This doctrine, as expounded by Madame Blavatsky and others, became the model of nineteenth and twentieth century occult thought — Man was evolving, growing, and developing into ‘Godhood’. Blavatsky’s voluminous work The Secret Doctrine was hard to fathom and difficult to decipher. With the help of those who followed in her footsteps, these ideas were carefully moulded and explained so that any evolutionary doubt was thrown aside as new ‘theosophical’ and spiritual works spewed forth heralding the new age, the coming Maitreya and the "final stage of man’s transformation". From Rudolf Steiner to the Rosicrucian ramblings of Max Hiendel, from Teilhard de Chardin to various forms of modern Christian mysticism, evolution has been posited as God moving man towards self awareness.

In the 1960s the new age movement jumped in where angels feared to tread, and without restraint or common sense, heralded the incoming new age of Aquarius. They tell us that light and love is just around the corner and since it did not make it in the sixties it will manifest around the year 2000. Sure, there will be some hiccups, but these negative events are all part of our evolutionary trek to divinity.

Esotericists and magicians are just as gullible. Orgiastic Thelem-ites heralded the Aeon of Horus in 1904 and are now waiting for the new epoch of truth as represented by Maat. Whether they are more conservative and accept Aleister Crowley’s four aeons or go for the neo-Theosophical seven as represented in the work of Kenneth Grant, they, too, see history as progressing towards a new period of awakening. Secret Chiefs (a little more obscure than Theosophy’s Mahatmas) are manipulating world history so that mankind will be brought to the brink of destruction and then awakened.

The sad fact about all this is that the model of ‘evolutionary development is really an outgrowth (corruption may be more correct) of the rationalist/scientific ‘progress’ worldview that started last century. It has little to do with the mystical or religious traditions or genuine esotericism, for that matter, but is a modification of them by an artificial and destructive paradigm. If we critically consider the various models of time as found in world religions, a very different perspective arises.


Time as a Linear Process

The model of lineal time is best illustrated in the teachings of ancient Israel, Christianity and Islam. Each posits a beginning in time and suggests a cataclysm of some form or another at the climax of that period. However, this model is not ‘horizontal’, so to speak, but degenerative. If we take the Christian model, man had some sort of ‘fall’, the world is destroyed by water for its wickedness, and at the climax of time, the world again becomes so decadent it must be purified by fire.

This lineal approach is the basis of much of Western religion and is essentially entropic. Mankind is not evolving but degenerating. While elements of this lineal model can lead to fundamentalism of all forms, it is the essential core of much ‘Biblical’ and ‘Quranic’ thinking. Even if we give some credence to such things as Christian reconstructionism (the world must be converted so Jesus can return), the pragmatic realism is otherwise. Mankind will not convert, awaken or work together mankind is heading for destruction. This is the core message of the various forms of Christian prophecy and is also found in other prophetic systems such as those of Nostradamus.


The Cycles of Time

The Eastern model of time is cyclic, best illustrated in the Vedic Yugas. In this model we move through the ages of Gold, Silver, Copper and Iron, and then back to Gold again. A few things must be clearly noted in this model. Unlike Theosophy and other systems, the Yuga model does not posit a cosmos of slow evolutionary and involutionary cycles. We do not move back from Iron to Copper etc., but swing right back to the Gold age after a climatic end. Therefore, while the Vedic Yuga system is cyclic, it is also primarily degenerative!

The prophecies regarding the Age of the Wolf (Iron age) in the Vedas are frightening and intense, equal to anything found in the Book of Revelation or Nostradamus. While there may be some debate on the nature of cycles in the Vedas (dualism vs. non-dualism), it is quite clear that mankind has been on a downward spiral since the very beginning. There is no upward spiral. We reach the darkest point in the ‘Kali Yuga’ (the current period of time) and spirituality becomes so superficial that even the heights of mystical practice cannot reach base level golden age esotericism. Mankind will destroy itself in an orgy of violence and destruction and only those who have battled to achieve awareness will survive.


The Age of Aquarius

The traditional models of time as found in the teachings of ancient Israel, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are profoundly degenerative. There are many variations, such as the Mayan system, which suggests multiple cataclysms throughout a long and tortured cycle of ages. And, once again, there is a momentous end that triggers a final consummation of the cycle and a return to the golden age.

The age of Aquarius must be seen in this context; it is not the dawning of a new epoch, nor a time of universal reconciliation. It is the climax of the darkest age when mankind will utterly self-destruct. The light of Aquarius only touches the souls of a small number of initiates who will sustain the ‘Mysteries’ during this period of pseudo esotericism and counter initiation.

When we combine the lineal and cyclic models together, we can obtain an accurate, if disturbing, overview of the end of time. In astrological terms, the Aquarian age is the period when Saturn reigns, Saturn being the great tester and destroyer. If you prefer more modern astrology, Uranus is attributed in the place of Saturn, Uranus being the lord of the abyss, dispersion and decimation.

There is a return to the first principle or the world of light, but only after most of mankind and all matter has been destroyed. It is as though a black hole must be forged into which everything is consumed and from that darkness a new seed will awaken.


They Saw the Future

Proponents of the new age tend to co-opt prophets, laying claim to Nostradamus and St. Malachy, as well as many other seers and psychics. Taking Nostradamus and St. Malachy as examples, neither would have considered themselves ‘new age’. Nostradamus was a mystic and Hermeticist; St. Malachy remained a loyal Catholic all his life. Their prophecies do not fit the mould. Nostradamus may have suggested a millennial age of peace, but this is long into the future. His prophecies for the immediate future were for mayhem, with the ‘King of Terror’ due in 1999. Nostradamus saw the present period as one of pain and suffering, not enlightenment. Certainly the golden age will come, but not until two thirds of humanity has perished! So much for the slow and steady awakening/enlightenment of mankind!

In the year 1999 and seven months From the sky will descend a great terrifying King He will bring back to life the Great King ANGOLMOIS Before and after, Mars reigns happily. -- Nostradamus, The Centuries, Quatrain X.72

The year of the great seventh number accomplished It will appear at the time of the games of slaughter: Not far from the great millennial age When the buried will go out from their tombs. -- Nostradamus, The Centuries, Quatrain X.74

St. Malachy also gave predictions of doom ranging from the fall of the Vatican to world war. Neither of these predictions are really of a ‘new age’ character. New-ager’s attempts to reinterpret the ‘Prophets’ even resort to claiming Nostradamus channelled more up-to-date versions of his quatrains! The fact is that the traditional view of the age of Aquarius involves most of humanity ending up six foot under.


Counter Initiation

The biggest danger in this current period is that trends in spirituality are what Rene Guenon prophetically called "counter initiatic". They represent Kali Yuga distortion, corruption and substitutes.

It is time we saw the new age, paganism, anarchic occultism and related stupidities for what they are: dark attempts to sustain control over the minds of mankind until the climax of the Iron age. The "dominions and principalities" that embody this age shape and manipulate consciousness in such a way that real Gnosis becomes difficult. Language even loses meaning and esotericism becomes reduced to the level of street-side fortune-telling.

The beauties of ancient paganism, as embodied in the rites of Eleusis, Orphism and Platonism, are replaced with naked housewives dancing round a fire, worshipping Gaia. Gnosticism with its complex hierarchy and intellectual speculation is replaced with Jungian naval gazing and soppy, liberal social justice Christianity. The challenges of Hindu and Buddhist Tantra are replaced with politically correct sexual sensitivity and occult sex guides that read like marriage counselling journals. The majesty of Hermeticism and Alchemy is replaced with "do it yourself" spell-books published as pulp paperbacks.


Cosmic Superimposition

The nature of our present dark age is in some sense even more dire than most realise. As a real appreciation of the mystical and esoteric is lost and rationalism and fundamentalism take hold, our vision of the world reduces to that of "three dimensions". Most of humanity "perceive" and conceptualise the world in materialistic terms. They do not see the cosmic battle that is going on around them on the subtler planes. Whether the cosmic conspiracy is seen in terms of various alien races, the Council on Foreign Relations, demons and walk-ins, mind control or dark gods, these images are all symbols of deeper and more profound conflicts that, while occurring all around us, are invisible to rationalist or materialist perception.

Indeed, we are in a dark age, one that is even more dark due to the fact that most people are convinced they have more light and are heading for awakening. It is a bit like cooking a crab: put it in boiling water and it will escape, slowly turn up the temperature and it will not realise it is being cooked. Mankind is being slowly boiled alive. Our consciousness is being dulled and numbed by counter initiatory traditions, consumer culture and pseudo-academia. Without any awakening, most of mankind is slowly passing into the night without ever achieving any measure of spiritual illumination.

The Gnostic view of time and our present condition is confronting and may even seem repugnant, and yet it is the only paradigm that accurately answers the questions plaguing modern man. If you do not agree with our appraisal of the human condition, spend some time looking objectively at the world around you and then realise the sad but honest truth about the time in which we live.

"The Sacral has disappeared from the daily reality of the modern world, and it is completely obvious that we live in the End of Times, but the Sacral has not vanished (since it could not vanish theoretically, as it is eternal), but was transferred to a nightly, invisible projection, and is now ready to come down on human physical cosmos in a terrible apocalyptic moment of apogee of history, at a point, when the world that forgot about its spiritual nature and disowned it, will be forced to meet with it in a brutal flash of Revelation." -- Jean Parvulesco

Abrasax is the nom-de-plume of a well known Australia esotericist. He is senior researcher at the Institute for Gnostic Studies and works in the fields of esotericism, traditionalism and the interfaces between politics, religion and mysticism.

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Bibliography Victor Danner

Ibn 'Ata'illa's Sufi aphorisms. (Kitab al-hikam). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973, 1984.

The book of wisdom: Ibn ´Ata' Illah. Intimate conversations / Kwaja Abdullah Ansari. New York: Paulist press, 1978 / London: SPCK, 1979.

The Islamic tradition: an introduction. Amity, N.Y.: Amity House, 1988.

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Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Symbols, (full text)

SYMBOLS [1] and signs, whether verbal, musical, dramatic or plastic, are means of communication. The references of symbols are to ideas and those of signs to things. One and the same term may be symbol or sign according to its context: the cross, for example, is a symbol when it represents the structure of the universe, but a sign when it stands for crossroads. Symbols and signs may be either natural (true, by innate propriety) or conventional (arbitrary and accidental), traditional or private. With the language of signs, employed indicatively in profane language and in realistic and abstracted art, we shall have no further concern in the present connection. By “abstracted art” we mean such modern art as willfully avoids recognisable representation, as distinguished from “principial art”, the naturally symbolic language of tradition.

The language of traditional art—scripture, epic, folklore, ritual, and all the related crafts—is symbolic; and being a language of natural symbols, neither of private invention, nor established by conciliar agreement or mere custom, is a universal language. The symbol is the material embodiment, in sound, shape, colour or gesture as the case may be, of the imitable form of an idea to be communicated, which imitable form is the formal cause of the work of art itself. It is for the sake of the idea, and not for its own sake, that the symbol exists: an actual form much be either symbolic - of its reference, or merely an unintelligible shape to be liked or disliked according to taste.

The greater part of modern aesthetics assumes (as the words “aesthetic” and “empathy” imply) that art consists or should consist entirely of such unintelligible shapes, and that the appreciation of art consists or should consist in appropriate emotional reactions. It is further assumed that whatever is of permanent value in traditional works of art is of the same kind, and altogether independent of their iconography and meaning. We have, indeed, a right to say that we choose to consider only the aesthetic surfaces of the ancient, oriental, or popular arts; but if we do this, we must not at the same time deceive ourselves so as to suppose that the history of art, meaning by “history” an explanation in terms of the four causes, can be known or written from any such a limited point of view.

In order to understand composition, for example, i.e. the sequence of a dance or the arrangement of masses in a cathedral or icon, we much understand the logical relation of the parts: just as in order to understand a sentence, it is not enough to admire the mellifluent sounds but necessary to be acquainted with the meanings of separate words and the logic of their combinations. The mere “lover of art” is not much better than a magpie, which also decorates its nest with whatever most pleases its fancy, and is contented with a purely “aesthetic” experience. So far from this, it must be recognized that although in modern works of art there may be nothing, or nothing more than the artist’s private person, behind the aesthetic surfaces, the theory in accordance with which works of traditional art were produced and enjoyed takes it for granted that the appeal to beauty is not merely to the senses, but through the senses to the intellect: here “Beauty has to do with cognition”; and what is to be known and understood is an “immaterial idea” (Hermes), a “picture that is not in the colours” (Lankavatara Sutra), “the doctrine that conceals itself behind the veil of the strange verses” (Dante), “the archetype of the image, and not the image itself “ (St. Basil). “It is by their ideas that we judge of what things ought to be like” (St. Augustine).

It is evident that symbols and concepts—works of art are things conceived, as St. Thomas says, per verbum in intellectu–-can serve no purpose for those who have not yet, in the Platonic sense, “forgotten”. Neither do Zeus nor the stars, as Plotinus says, remember or even learn; “memory is for those that have forgotten”, that is to say, for us, whose “life is a sleep and a forgetting”. The need of symbols, and of symbolic rites, arises only when man is expelled from the Garden of Eden; as means, by which a man can be reminded at later stages of his descent from the intellectual and contemplative to the physical and practical levels of reference. We assuredly have “forgotten” far more than those who first had need of symbols, and far more than they need to infer the immortal by its mortal analogies; and nothing could be greater proof of this than our own claims to be superior to all ritual operations, and to be able to approach the truth directly. It was as signposts of the Way, or as a trace of the Hidden Light, pursued by hunters of a supersensual quarry, that the motifs of traditional art, which have become our “ornaments”, were originally employed. In these abstract forms, the farther one traces them backward, or finds them still extant in popular “superstition”, agricultural rites, and the motifs of folk-art, the more one recognises in them a polar balance of perceptible shape and imperceptible information; but, as Andrae says (Die ionische Saule, Schlusswort), they have been more and more voided of content on their way down to us, more and more denatured with the progress of “civilisation”, so as to become what we call “art forms”, as if it had been an aesthetic need, like that of our magpie, that had brought them into being. When meaning and purpose have been forgotten, or are remembered only by initiates, the symbol retains only those decorative values that we associate with “art”. More than this, we deny that the art form can ever have had any other than a decorative quality; and before, long we begin to take it for granted that the art form must have originated in an “observation of nature”, to criticise it accordingly (“That was before they knew anything about anatomy”, or “understood perspective”) in terms of progress, and to supply its deficiencies, as did the Hellenistic Greeks with the lotus palmette when they made an elegant acanthus of it, or the Renaissance when it imposed an ideal of “truth to nature” upon an older art of formal typology. We interpret myth and epic from the same point of view, seeing in the miracles and the Deus ex machina only a more or less awkward attempt on the part of the poet to enhance the presentation of the facts; we ask for “history”, and endeavour to extract an historical nucleus by the apparently simple and really naive process of eliminating all marvels, never realising that the myth is a whole, of which the wonders are as much an integral part as are the supposed facts; overlooking that all these marvels have a strict significance altogether independent of their possibility or impossibility as historical events.

[1] A derivative of sumballo (Greek) especially in the senses “to correlate”, “to treat things different as though they were similar”, and (passive) “to correspond”, or “tally”.

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Bibliography Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Ahammiyat-i tahqiq dar falsafah-'i Islami dar 'asr-i hazir [Importance of Studying Islamic Philosophy Today] Tehran: SN, 196-?.

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Three Muslim Sages: Avicenna, Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1964, Delmar: Caravan, 1964, 1976.

Ideals and Realities of Islam. New York: Praeger, 1966, 1967, Boston: Beacon P, 1966, 1972, 1975, London: Allen & Unwin, 1966, 1975, 1979, 1985, 1988, 1990, London:
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Islamic Studies: Essays on Law and Society, the Sciences, and Philosophy and Sufism. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1967.

Science and Civilization in Islam. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968, New York: New American Library, 1968, 1970, Cambridge: ITS, 1987.

The Encounter of Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man.London: Allen & Unwin, 1968, 1976, 1990.

Ma'arif-i Islami dar jahan-i mu'asir [Islamic philosophy in the modern world]. Tehran: Shirkat-i sahami-i kitabha-yi Jibi, 1969.

Islamic Philosophy in Contemporary Persia: A Survey of Activity during the Past Two Decades Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 1972.

Sufi Essays. New York: Schoders Books, 1972, 1977, London: G Allen and Unwin, 1972, London: Unwin, 1980 [Living Sufism], Albany: SUNY P, 1991.

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Rumi and the Sufi Tradition. Tehran: RCD Cultural Institute, 1974.

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Religion and the Order of Nature, New York: Oxford UP, 1975.

Islam and the Plight of Modern Man. London: Longman, 1975.

With William C Chittick. An annotated bibliography of Islamic Science. Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1975.

With Roloff Beny. Persia, Bridge of Turquoise. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975
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Science and Technology in Islam. London: Science Museum, 1976.

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Sadr al-Din Shirazi and his Transcendent Theosophy: Background, Life and Works.

Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1978.

Islamic Life and Thought. Albany: SUNY P, 1981.

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Muhammad: Man of Allah. London: Muhammadi Trust, 1982, Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1995.

Philosophy, Literature and Fine Arts. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982.

The Essential Writings of Frithjof Schuon. Amity, NY: Amity House, 1986, Shaftesbury: Element, 1991.

Traditional Islam in the Modern World. London and New York: Kegan Paul, 1987, London: Routledge, 1990.

Islamic Art and Spirituality. Albany, SUNY Press, 1987, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, Tehran: NP, 1997.

Islamic Spirituality: Foundations. New York: Crossroad, 1987.

With Hamid Dabashi and Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr. Shi'ism: Doctrines, Thought and Spirituality, Albany: SUNY P, 1988.

With Hamid Dabashi and Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr. Expectation of the Millennium: Shi'ism in History. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989.

Religion of the Heart: Essays Presented to Frithjof Schuon on his Eightieth Birthday Washington: Foundation for Traditional Studies, 1991, 1997.

Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations. New York: Crossroad, 1991, 1997.

A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World. Chicago: Kazi, 1993, Cambridge: ITS, 1993.

The Need for a Sacred Science. Albany: SUNY P, 1993, Richmond: Curzon, 1993.

Islam and the Challenge of the 21st Century. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1993.

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Religion and the Order of Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996.

With Oliver Leaman. History of Islamic Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

With Sajjad S. Haider. Love, Virtues and Commandments: An Interfaith Perspective. NP: Library of Islam, 1997.

Al-As'Ilah wa'l-ajwibah / Questions and Answers: Including the Further Answers of Al-Biruni and Al-Ma'sumi's Defense of Ibn Sina. NP, 1997.

Poems of the Way. NP, 1998.

The Spiritual and Religious Dimensions of the Environmental Crisis. London: Temenos Academy, 1999.

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Julius Evola, On the Secret of Degeneration, (excerpt)

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 consists 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 the 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 all the 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 lies 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.

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Bibliography Sachiko Murata

The Tao of Islam: a sourcebook on gender relationships in Islamic thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

With William C. Chittick, The vision of Islam. New York: Paragon House, 1994.

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Troy Southgate, Julius Evola: A Radical Traditionalist, (full text)

1. REVOLUTION-COUNTER-REVOLUTION - TRADITION

In the opening chapter of his work, Evola can be forgiven for appearing to sound like a typical Catholic fundamentalist. According to the Baron, socio-political subversion (eversio) was introduced into Europe for the first time with the 1789 and 1848 revolutions. Catholic writers like Chesterton, Belloc and a whole array of popes and cardinals would agree with him. Indeed, Evola even suggests that the term ‘reactionary’ should be adopted by those who realise the true extent to which the forces of liberalism, Marxism and democracy are advancing their secret agenda. We are informed that if this term had not been so furiously rejected by the conservative opponents of revolution, our European nations would have been relatively more salvageable. But now that several decades have passed since the book was first published, had the author still been alive he may well have been surprised to learn that his ideas have found significant expression within the ranks of those who have become known as ‘conservative revolutionaries’. For Evola, therefore, perhaps the apparently conflicting terminology in this phrase would have been a misnomer. On the contrary, it was used throughout the twentieth century by men such as Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Michael Walker, Armin Mohler and Otto Strasser. In fact Evola tells us himself that ‘conservative revolution’ should not be connected with the term ‘reaction’ because the former has distinctly positive and energetic connotations. Revolution in this sense, he admits, simply means restoring order and thus avoiding entirely its chaotic antithesis. He even defines revolution (revolutio) - not as a departure from prevailing trends - but as a return to origins. Thus revolution, in his evaluation of the term, indicates a replenishment of that which has gone before.
But the word "conservative" can also be very misleading. Evola argues that "it is necessary to first establish as exactly as possible what needs to be 'preserved'". He is also under no illusion that capitalists have long used this term with which to advance the interests of their own class, rather than "committing themselves to a stout defence of a higher right, dignity, and impersonal legacy of values, ideas and principles." This suggests a kind of aristocratic benevolence, a chivalric sense of duty and sacrifice. Evola also believes that the State must not concern itself with economic matters, rather assuming a transcendent role in opposition to the class-oriented obsessions of both the bourgeoisie and Marxists alike. Furthermore, he tells us, "what really counts is to be faithful not to past forms and institutions, but rather to principles of which such forms and institutions have been particular expressions." So, therefore, the success of tradition lies in our ability to create new forms from the etymological drawing-board which inspired those of the past, a process which works its way down through the generations as though divinely inspired. In other words it is not the transitory or - in the case of historical personality cults - even the idolatrous facets which are of value, but those which are everlasting and permanent. Indeed, Evola pours scorn upon the very term ‘historical’ because such matters rise above and beyond the whole notion of history altogether. Mircea Eliade has discussed this idea at length in The Myth of The Eternal Return [Princeton, 1991], echoed here by Evola: "These principles are not compromised by the fact that in various instances an individual, out of weakness or due to other reasons, was able to actualise them or to even implement them partially at one point in his life rather than another." The designers and schemers of the modern age, of course, dismiss these aspects as having been a consequence of the period in which they were apparently expressed. So therefore tradition and historicism are totally irreconcilable. The author’s own homeland also comes in for some criticism, with Evola firmly believing that Italy has no material or ideological connection with tradition and that her only hope lies in a spiritual renewal.

Returning to the dangers of revolution - at least in the purely negative sense as defined above - we are reminded of the more positive, Hegelian analysis: "the negation of the negation." In other words, eradicating that which in itself has been the great eradicator is a worthwhile objective. On the other hand, Evola is being slightly pedantic when he criticises the adoption of the "revolutionary spirit," lest it sound too progressive or wild. His denunciation of the unfulfilling legend of technological advancement, however, is very accurate indeed: "Those who are not subject to the predominant materialism of our times, upon recognising 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." Indeed, there are many such examples, all of which contend either blindly or knowingly that the past must be eradicated for the good of the present. This, says Evola, is "history’s demolition squad." It is rather surprising, therefore, to consider that in his youth Evola offered his support to Italian Futurism. Not, of course, that Marinetti’s pledge to raze libraries and museums to the ground was ever designed to be an attempt to destroy the perennial essence which always transcends the purely anachronistic. The contentious issue of Fascism is also tackled by Evola and is here regarded as being valid only when it concords with tradition. To stand vigorously in favour of Fascism simply for its own sake, is akin to the fulminating negativity inherent within many of its anti-fascist opponents.


2. SOVEREIGNTY - AUTHORITY - IMPERIUM

According to Evola, "every true political unity appears as the embodiment of an idea and a power, thus distinguishing itself from every form of naturalistic association or 'natural right', and also from every societal aggregation determined by mere social, economic, biological, utilitarian, or eudemonistic factors." He goes on to point out that, for the Romans at least, the very idea of an imperium of sovereign power was something perceived to be highly sacred. This functioned by way of a mystical trinity comprised of the Leader (auctoritas), the Nobility (gens) and the State (res publica). Evola-s interpretation of the imperium is certainly supported by those historians who - like Edward Gibbon and Oswald Spengler - have allowed the Holy Roman Empire its own unique and symbolic niche in both time and space. That it prevailed until its disastrous collapse at Constantinople in 1453, of course, is demonstrative of the way in which the very idea of imperium survived the various cycles of history in which it found itself. Evola also reminds us of De Maistre-s assertion that a "power and authority that are not absolute, are not real authority or real power" at all.

The author then turns his mind to judicial matters, stating that, whenever the State rises above the merely temporal laws of the nation, it assumes the role of an independently organic entity. In other words, Evola is basically suggesting that in cases of national emergency, for example, the State can flex its muscles and prove just how transcendent it really is by overriding the laws of the judiciary. This notion will fill the average supporter of democracy and egalitarianism with some horror, but Evola is referring to a central principle of authoritative order rather than advocating that a fascist dictatorship rule over the masses with an iron fist (although he does suggest that a temporary dictatorship can often get things back on track). Indeed, this is rather similar to the way Cicero analyses Natural Law and the fact that it only applies to those who seek to transgress its permanently entrenched codes.

Evola also refutes the idea that power should rise up to the State from the grass roots, for example in the way that Muammar al-Qathafi explains the concept in The Green Book. As far as he is concerned, the State is not the expression or embodiment of the people at all. This "political domain is defined through hierarchical, heroic, ideal, anti-hedonistic, and, to a degree, even anti-eudemonistic values that set it apart from the order of naturalistic and vegetative life." But this is almost like a paradox. If the State completely transcends the ordinary functions of what most people consider to be the role of a State, then surely Evola-s vision is one of anarchic authority? Evola may have disagreed with the use of the term "anarchy," but surely the State for him is more mystical than fully tangible in the purely ordinary sense? By this, I am implying that the State is present as a guiding authority at the helm of a nation or empire, but absent in terms of the way it is perceived by most people. Anarchy, of course, does not mean that authority is non-existent, it simply refers to the absence of rule. Therefore Evola-s concept of the mystical State may well be altogether detached from the socio-economic version which writers like Peter Kropotkin (The State: Its Historic Role), Michael Bakunin (Marxism, Freedom & The State) or Herbert Spencer (The Man Versus The State) have gone to such great lengths in order to analyse and dissect. Evola makes a profound distinction between the political and social aspects of the State, arguing that it emanates from a specific family (gens) and thus rejecting the idea that states can arise from the naturalistic plane. At first, this appears to be a contradiction in terms, because, surely, the family is a naturalistic phenomenon? On the contrary, Evola is referring to an altogether different interpretation of the term "family," that of the Mannerbunde (or all-male fraternity). Given the nature of the Mafia, of course, Italians should find it that much easier to appreciate the subtle differences in terminology. Evola was also a Freemason and wrote extensively on the Mithraic sun-cult, both prime examples of the Mannerbunde and possessing deep initiatic qualities which - by way of a series of trials and degrees - take the male apprentice way beyond his maternalistic upbringing on the exoteric plane. Thus a significant change takes place both within the man himself and the way he is then perceived by others. But this interpretation is not designed to leave women out of the equation, it simply states that whilst men are the natural frequenters of the mystical, or political, domain, women are the pivotal masters of society. It lies completely "under the feminine aegis." Those readers who are familiar with Evola-s Revolt Against The Modern World [Inner Traditions, 1995] will grasp the higher significance of what Evola is trying to say. Indeed, in the present work he summarises these metaphysical concepts thus: "The common mythological background is that of the duality of the luminous and heavenly deities, who are the gods of the political and heroic world on the one hand, and of the feminine and maternal deities of naturalistic existence, who were loved by the plebeian strata of society on the other hand. Thus, even in the ancient Roman world, the idea of State and of imperium (i.e., of the sacred authority) was strictly connected to the symbolic cult of the virile deities of heaven, of light and of the super-world in opposition to the dark region of the Mothers and the chthonic deities." If we follow Evola-s line of thinking, we soon arrive at the medieval idea of the divine right of kings. This, he tells us, was a development which - contrary to the earlier imperium - was not consolidated "by the power of a rite." Traditional Catholics would disagree wholeheartedly with this conclusion, at least right up until the Reformation and Henry VIII-s well-documented break with Rome. And if the divine right of kings is one step removed from the imperium, the next logical stage of decline is that of Socialism and the demos; which Evola describes as "the degradation and contamination of the political principle." Furthermore, he argues, "[b]oth democracy and socialism ratify the shift from the masculine to the feminine and from the spiritual to the material and the promiscuous."

Evola is often portrayed by his opponents as a "fascist," but it may surprise many of them to learn that he relegates "romantic and idealistic" concepts such as the nation, the homeland, and the people to the purely naturalistic and biological level. These issues, he contends, have replaced a political principle that is representative of a far higher and more penetrating tradition. By refusing to accept the legitimacy of feudalism or the authority of the Holy Roman Empire, he argues, nation-states tried to create their own pockets of authority. Thus, the struggle between popes and princes, kings and noblemen, led a vast centralisation of power which was epitomised by the Third Estate. This is where Evola returns to what he perceives as the crucial - and destructive - role played by the 1789 French Revolution, whereby the final vestiges of tradition were erased from the face of Europe. The process was aided by the 1848 Revolution and the onslaught of the First World War, pitting nation against nation in the name of "patriotism." Furthermore, he says, elevating a national identity or geographical territory to a kind of mystical status completely erodes both authority and sovereignty. Nations are associated with female terminology - Motherland, for example - and therefore "attributed to the Great Mother in ancient plebeian gynecocracies and in societies that ignored the virile and political principle of the imperium." Evola goes on to compare the political unit of the nation with the position of the soul in comparison to the body. In other words, it assumes an "inner form," which totally goes beyond the popular understanding of the way a nation is defined. It is true, after all, that nations do not arise purely by themselves and so the hidden - spiritual - component is the true guiding force. The nation is only perceived as an independent entity with a life of its own once the political aspect has been significantly weakened: "From the political class understood as an Order and a Mannerbund a shift occurs to to the democratic ruling classes who presume to 'represent' the people and who acquire for themselves the various offices or positions of power by flattering and manipulating the masses." This, according to Evola, is due to the lack of real men in contemporary society and - paying his respects to Carlyle in the prrocess - he goes on to warn us that we live in a "world of domestics that yearns to be ruled by a pseudo-hero.' Indeed, there is little doubt that the parliamentary system, for example, never fails to deviate from the idea of the nation as myth, despite the fact that the political sphere is never regarded as being sovereign in itself. Evola attacks universal suffrage because he sees it as the consequence of "the degradation of the ruling class." It is certainly a fact that the reforms of the nineteenth century were achieved at the expense of the ruling classes, but, from an Evolian perspective, the scales were tipped at both ends. The consequence of this formative episode in European history, modern democracy, saw the true political unit replaced with a corrupt and bastardised system based entirely on materialism.

But what of those nations which have actually followed the political principle to the letter? We are informed by Evola that the nation will always be potentially compromised, whilst "on the one side stand the masses, in which, besides changing feelings, the same elementary instincts and interests connected to a physical and hedonistic plane will always have free play; and on the other side stand men who differentiate themselves from the masses as bearers of a complete legitimacy and authority, bestowed by the Idea and by their rigorous, impersonal adherence to it. The Idea, only the Idea, must be the true fatherland for these men: what unites and sets them apart should consist in adherence to the same idea, rather than to the same land, language, or blood." This is a pretty bold statement, given that Evola is usually - and wrongly - associated with certain elements of the Far Right. Perhaps this is why the Assassins and their Knights Templar contemporaries found that they had so much in common? That which is most important, therefore, is not one-s adherence to a nation or a race - which instantly means that one must love, respect and work for the best interests of his compatriots without question - but one-s loyalty and fidelity to the very essence and spirit of tradition. In Evola-s own words: "The true task and the necessary premise for the rebirth of the 'nation' and for its renewed form and conscience consists of untying and separating that which only apparently, promiscuously, or collectively appears to be one entity, and in re-establishing a virile substance in the form of a political elite around which a new crystallisation will occur." This, of course, is very different to the sheep-like mentality of most nationalist groups. One only has to look at the recent revival in England of a pseudo-patriotism built upon the most base and plebeian values of modern culture. Aligning oneself with existing national stereotypes, of course, is hardly making an attempt to transcend the sterile values which are embraced by the masses. The Idea that Evola talks about is based upon "strength and clarity, rather than 'idealism' and sentimentality." The nation has to be integrated with the political, so that the whole concept is raised to a much higher level by replacing the degenerative ruling classes with a new, elite aristocracy of cadres.


3. PERSONALITY - FREEDOM v HIERARCHY

In this chapter the author begins by attacking liberalism, the chief scourge behind the French Revolution. Many have tried to define liberalism, including Traditional Catholics like Pope Pius XI [Quadragesimo Anno], Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre [They Have Uncrowned Him], Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany [What Is Liberalism?] and Rev. Fr. Stephen P. DeLallo [The Sword of Christendom], although today the word is wrongly associated with anarcho-capitalists and right-wing libertarians. So how does Evola define the term?: "The essence of liberalism is individualism. The basis of its error is to mistake the notion of the person with that of the individual and to claim for the latter, unconditionally and according to egalitarian premises, some values that should rather be attributed solely to the former, and then only conditionally. Because of this transposition, these values are transformed into errors, or into something absurd and harmful." Egalitarianism - another mainstay of the 1879 Revolution - is completely dismissed by Evola due to its fundamentally ridiculous belief in the equality of all individuals. It not only relegates the person to the level of a mere part within the broader egalitarian mass, which Evola rightly shows to be a contradiction in terms, it obliterates human diversity by suggesting that no one person is significantly different to another. From the judicial perspective, of course, it is surely wrong to establish a form of fake "justice" by ensuring that everybody is legally bound in an unjust manner. It is also entirely out of step with Natural Law. Evola explains: "the lower degrees of reality are differentiated from the higher ones because in the lower degrees a whole can be broken down into many parts, all of which retain the same quality (as in the case of the parts of a non-crystallised mineral, or those parts of some plants and animals that reproduce themselves by parthenogenesis); in the higher degrees of reality this is no longer possible, as there is a higher organic unity in them that does not allow itself to be split without being compromised and without its parts entirely losing the quality, meaning, and function they had in it." When Evola speaks of parthenogenesis, of course, he is referring to those invertebrates and lower plants which engage in a form of sterile self-reproduction. The allegedly "free" individual, therefore, is considered to be inorganic and much lower than its organic superior. Meanwhile, the true person is he who continues to remain "unequal" due to his own distinct features and abilities. Natural individuation is not the same as crass individualism. At the same time, however, Evola does not infer that everyone deserves the "right" to be regarded as a person. Thus, he dispels the liberal myth that all of us possess some form of "human dignity" regardless of who we are. In fact there are several different levels of dignity each contained within a just and specific hierarchy. So once again, Evola is dismissing the egalitarian idea of a "universal right," brotherhood of equality or an automatic entitlement of some kind. In times gone by, however, "'peers' and 'equals' were often aristocratic concepts: in Sparta, the title homoioi ('equals') belonged exclusively to the elite in power (the title was revoked in cases of misconduct)."

Moving on, the notion of freedom - a favourite catchword of those engaged in the struggle between classes - is regarded in the same manner. It is something we enjoy as a consequence of who we are as a person, rather than simply because we happen to be a member of humanity. Evola remarks that freedom does not come in any one form, but is actually multifarious and homogenous. He goes on to suggest that the freedom "to do" is quite different from the freedom "for doing." Indeed, whilst the former has to function within a controlled and standardised system of liberal "equality" (which inevitably leads, therefore, to one class disregarding the freedoms of others), the latter has more in common with Aleister Crowley-s often-misunderstood expressions "do as thou wilt" and "every man and woman is a star." In other words, by possessing the freedom "to do," one can follow one-s own unique course and act in accordance with one-s true nature.

So how does the individual relate to society as a whole? Tradition accords with the ultimate supremacy of the individual, or what Ernst Junger has defined elsewhere as "the anarch" or "sovereign individual" [see Eumeswil, Quartet, 1993]. Evola even puts the sovereignty of the person before the State, because he views people not "as they are conceived by individualism, as atoms or a mass of atoms, but people as persons, as differentiated beings, each one endowed with a different rank, a different freedom, a different right within the social hierarchy based on the values of creating, constructing, obeying, and commanding. With people such as these it is possible to establish the true State, namely an anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and organic State." This vision, however, depends upon the advancement of the person through various stages of individuation and self-awareness. Natural inequality, therefore, will lead to an organic structure of society at the very helm of which stands the "absolute individual." This figurehead, says Evola, is completely different to the mere concept of the individual because it encapsulates that which is most qualitative within man. The "absolute individual" is fundamentally opposed to the concept that society itself is the ultimate manifestation of humanity. It is the sheer pinnacle of a transcendental sovereignty which represents the synthesising nature of the imperium. Moreover, of course, the idea can become manifest within the framework of the nation and seems defiantly opposed to present trends like globalisation and multi-racialism: "Thus, it is a positive and legitimate thing to uphold the right of the nation in order to assert an elementary and natural principle of difference of a given human group over and against all the forms of individualistic disintegration, international mixture and proletarisation, and especially against the mere world of the masses and pure economy." To achieve this process, Evola declares that the State must be established from the nation itself.

But if one is seeking to fully align himself with the principles of Evolian thought, a person who is free in the true sense of the word must never be constrained by national, racial or family ties. This does not imply that he should actively seek to turn himself against them, on the contrary, the importance is to follow one-s own path. Indeed, this course - which must lead towards the creation of the New Man - requires great discipline and understanding. Many who try, however, will fall by the wayside: "he who does not have the capability to dominate himself and to give himself a code to abide by would not know how to dominate others according to justice or how to give them a law to follow. The second foundation is the idea. previously upheld by Plato, that those who cannot be their own masters should find a master outside of themselves, since practising the discipline of obeying should teach these people how to master their own selves." People are therefore different, although Evola does make a distinction between the ruthlessness of "natural selection" and that of respect. In ancient societies the people who were most respected and admired were those with special abilities and qualities, not simply animalistic strength and brute force. The secret, of course, is to ensure that "power is based on superiority and not vice versa." It is certainly not necessary to bludgeon people into submission in order to get them to respect true leadership and ability. In the light of what Evola really thinks about such matters, therefore, you have to wonder why on earth Evolian Tradition was ever compared to Fascist totalitarianism in the first place.

The fact that Evola so openly acknowledges that there are various stations in life will outrage liberals, Marxists and advocates of democracy alike. But he is, nevertheless, absolutely correct. Forcing people to accord with a societal conglomeration which has been enshrined in law by a coterie of dogmatists and architectural levellers, is simply not allowing people to discover and thus accomplish their true destinies. Evola believes that historical events have often been determined by the manner in which "the inferior" - which is not used in a derogatory sense - regard their "superior" counterparts. Indeed, to believe that humanity can somehow be subjected to a form of international utilitarianism is naive and misguided in the extreme. Humans are prone to "emotional or irrational motivation" and, inevitably, this will usually be the dominant factor which shapes the course of their lives. The Evolian - and, thus, traditional - approach to organisation lies in what is described as the "anagogical function" of the State and its latent ability to both engender and co-ordinate the individual-s sacrificial capacity to ally himself with a higher principle. The success of man-s organisational capacity, therefore, is not based purely on economics or prosperity but depends on whether the organic hierarchical balance has been maintained effectively. Within the liberal system, of course, the balance is upset by the fact that he "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." Liberalism, therefore, may appear to defend freedom but it is actually a means of subverting it altogether. Marxism functions in the same way and both ideologies stem - once again - from the French Revolution: "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." Fascism, by falsely claiming to restore the traditional equilibrium, actually worsened the situation by initiating a crude and materialistic form of totalitarianism.
The worst example of liberalism is its dependence upon economic exploitation. Evola charts the decline of economic stability from the death of the feudal system - when "the organic connection . . . 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" - and the onset of the Napoleonic Code, right through to the desanctification of property and the arrival of the unscrupulous capitalist. So what, according to Evola, is the role of the traditionalist in light of the modern evils which were unleashed over two hundred years ago? Our response must be founded upon a return to origins: "To go back to the origins means, plainly and simply, to reject anything 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."


4. ORGANIC STATE v TOTALITARIANISM

Evola now attempts to make a distinction between the totalitarian and organic State. The democracies have gone to great lengths in order to portray the traditional State "in a heinous way," ensuring that opponents of democracy are instantly equated with brutality and fascism. Totalitarianism, being a relatively modern word, is inevitably applied to past systems in a purely retrospective manner. Evola, however, seeks to approach the question of totalitarianism by examining the way in which the term is actually defined by the democracies. Therefore whenever the author refers to the more positive aspects of "totalitarianism," these components are said to accord with the organic State: "A State is organic when it has a centre, and this centre is an idea that shapes the various domains of life in an efficacious way; it is organic when it ignores the division and the autonomisation of the particular and when, by virtue of a system of hierarchical participation, every part within its relative autonomy performs its own function and enjoys an intimate connection with the whole." It is not difficult to see how this differs fundamentally with the individualism and liberalism of the modern age. Evola rightly points out that more traditional societies were even able to accommodate a loyal opposition. In stark contrast to the representative party system of today, the early English Parliament was far more pluralist and was often heard to refer to "His Majesty-s Most Loyal Opposition."

But the organic State also had a spiritual or religious dimension, whereby the political was formulated in accordance with a more penetrating and unitary outlook. This, says Evola, is what makes the organic synonymous with the traditional. In the minds of the liberals and the communists, of course, this healthy approach to former societies and a more pluralist style of organisation inevitably means that tradition is wrongly equated with "fascism." Evola, on the other hand, is able to counter this fraudulent analogy by explaining that "totalitarianism merely represents the counterfeited image of the organic ideal. It is a system in which unity is imposed from the outside, not on the basis of the intrinsic force of a common idea and an authority that is naturally acknowledged, but rather through direct forms of intervention and control, exercised by a power that is exclusively and materially political, imposing itself as the ultimate reason for the system." Having lived through Mussolini-s Italy, of course, Evola was more than aware of the shortcomings relating to the Corporate State. Totalitarian dictatorship also fails to accept the organic chain that runs between the upper and lower poles of traditional society, replacing pluralism, decentralisation and participation with the fuhrer-princip. Furthermore, the totalitarian State "engenders a kind of sclerosis, or a monstrous hypertrophy of the entire bureaucratic-administrative structure." The Orwellian ministries of Nazi Germany spring to mind, becoming "all-pervasive, replacing and suppressing every particular activity, without any restraints, due to an insolent intrusion of the public sphere into the private domain, organising everything into rigid schemes." But these characteristics are not a purely modern phenomenon, on the contrary, as Oswald Spengler notes in The Decline of the West [Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 73]: "the great cultures accomplish their majestic wave-cycles. They appear suddenly, swell in splendid lines, flatten again and vanish, and the face of the waters is once more a sleeping waste." Thus, a similar pattern emerged during the death-throes of Persia and Greece and, according to Edward Gibbon: "the demise of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long." [The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chatto & Windus, 1960, p. 524-5]. Similarly, Evola likens the degenerative process to a living organism: "after enjoying life and movement, a stiffening sets in when they die that is typical of a body turning into a corpse. This state, in turn, is followed by the terminal phase of disintegration."

The way in which the organic or traditional State is perceived is also important. Fascism and Marxism tend to lead to blind statism, but Evola believes that the organic State must be granted a degree of "Statolatry." In other words, rather than seeking to worship the State for its own sake, "[t]here is a profound and substantial difference between the deification and absolutisation of what is profane and the case in which the political reality derives its legitimisation from reference points that are also spiritual and somehow transcendent." This is the difference between the materialist and the spiritual, the totalitarian and the organic. The spiritual element acts like a societal adhesive, binding together the unitary whole to which the people are willingly attached without coercion or repression. In contemporary Western societies it is considered normal in certain occupations and ceremonies to undertake an oath. But despite being a remnant of the distant past, the oath today has been stripped of its sacred implications and has become empty, meaningless and contractual. This is because the State and various other national institutions have become a merely temporal form of authority, rendering the more spiritual expressions of verbal fidelity completely irrelevant. The gulf between the contractual and the traditional is demonstrated by the way in which the "Official Secrets Act" is designed to secure the loyalty of the individual to the State. In feudal times, of course, the intrinsically transcendent nature of the oath became manifest by way of the sacramenum fidelitatis. This was infinitely more binding than giving one-s allegiance to a company, an institution or a squadron.

But when the traditional State is said to represent a unitary organism it must not be compared, warns Evola, to the humanistic vision epitomised by Hegel-s "Ethical State." Indeed, when Hegel perceives the individual to be part of a universal code of ethics, he is looking at humanity through rose-tinted spectacles. The unworkable liberalism which pervades this idealistic interpretation will only lead to one thing: totalitarianism in the name of "tradition" and "order." Therefore the "ethical" State inevitably leads to the "fascist" State, with the destructive multi-party system being replaced with an even more dangerous one-party dictatorship. Muammar al-Qadhafi, whose vision of the "organic" State conflicts with that proposed by Evola and other traditionalists, defines the party thus: "It is the modern dictatorial instrument of governing. The party is the rule of a part over the whole" [The Green Book, Tripoli, 1977, p. 11]. On this point Evola agrees, suggesting that once the party has ascended to power it simply tries to advance the interests of its own faction. It is therefore divisive and threatens the stability of that which must be unitary and transcendent. The solution to this problem, it seems, lies in the re-establishment of an elite suited to maintaining the balance of sovereignty and authority. Evola suggests that this can be done from within by both installing and enduring a period of interregnum, although National-Anarchists prefer to advocate the foundation of new decentralised communities on the periphery from which elite cadres recreate the very essence of true aristocracy.


5. BONAPARTISM - MACHIAVELLIANISM - ELITISM

Bonapartism is a rather unusual term and one which Evola borrows from R. Michels, author of the 1915 work Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Michels demonstrates how representative democracy and "government of the people" leads to the control of the State by a self-interested minority. This view is echoed by J. Burnham in The Machiavellians, who explains that the so-called "will of the people" is eventually superseded by the domination of a bureaucratic clique. Thus Bonapartism begins with a popular demand for more freedom and equality and ends in the totalitarian "dictatorship of the proletariat." Evola likens this process to a people who have catastrophically "led and disciplined themselves." After the decline of its aristocratic nobility, ancient Greece witnessed the same systematically repressive phenomenon. Power simply became detached from a higher, spiritual authority, leading to fear and brutality. Evola then turns to Otto Weininger, who once "described the figure of the great politician as one who is a despot and at the same time a worshipper of the people, or simultaneously a pimp and a whore." Indeed, by seeking to appeal to the masses the modern leader easily commands their respect and adulation. Not in the way that traditional societies gave their loyalty to the organic State, however, because instead of engendering a healthy diversity between the various levels (not classes) of society Bonapartism forces the politician to become a "man of the people." Therefore he is perceived as a common man, rather than as someone exceptionally transcendent and symbolic. This, Weininger called "mutual prostitution." Authority is perfectly useless unless it is attached to a central idea which runs throughout the social fabric and acts as a point of reference. This affects the individual because one "is restricted not so much in this or that exterior freedom (which is, after all, of little consequence) but rather in the inner freedom - the ability to free himself from his lowest instincts." Bonapartism - which Evola interprets here as a political, rather than militaristic, term - is equated with dictatorship because this is the logical result of its democratic ethos. It completely erodes the traditional values of human existence, refusing to "distinguish clearly between the symbol, the function, and the principle, on the one hand, and man as an individual, on the other." Instead, it rejects "that a man be valued and recognised in terms of the idea and principle he upholds" and simply views man in terms of "his action upon the irrational forms of the masses." Similarly, Evola points out the errors which began with Social-Darwinism and consequently found expression in Nietzsche-s concept of the Superman (Ubermensch): "most people, even when they admit the notion of aristocracy in principle, ultimately settle for a very limited view of it: they admire an individual for being exceptional and brilliant, instead of for being one in whom a tradition and a special 'spiritual race' shine forth, or instead of whose greatness is due not to his human virtues, but rather to the principle, the idea, and a certain regal impersonality that he embodies."

Machiavellianism - despite its frequent portrayal as an aristocratic notion - is also a highly individualist philosophy. Indeed, although the concept of The Prince rejects democracy and the masses, it makes the fatal mistake of encouraging power and authority to reside in the hands of man. In other words, man is himself the be all and end all of Machiavellian doctrine. Such men are not connected to a chain of Tradition, they are merely interested in deploying their political capabilities to advance their own interests. His very position is maintained by lies, deceit and manipulation, becoming a rampant political monster to which everything must be methodically subjected. This is clearly very different to the way in which traditional aristocracies functioned and indicates that Machiavellianism is a consequence of the general decline. True elitism, argues Evola, degenerates in four stages: "in the first stage the elite has a purely spiritual character, embodying what may be generally called -divine right-. This elite expresses an iddeal of immaterial virility. In the second stage, the elite has the character of warrior nobility; at the third stage we find the advent of oligarchies of a plutocratic and capitalistic nature, such as they arise in democracies; the fourth and last elite is that of the collectivist and revolutionary leaders of the Fourth Estate."


6. WORK: THE DEMONIC NATURE OF THE ECONOMY

When Evola discusses the "demonic nature of the economy," we are instantly reminded of the capitalist free market and communism-s deterministic assessment of man as economic unit (homo economicus). In the modern age economic forces have become the new gods of Mammon, creating a dangerous and cataclysmic antithesis to the spiritual aspirations of the ancient world. We have already examined how Evola warns against the lack of hierarchical authority, and in this chapter he demonstrates how both capitalism and Marxism have completely subverted the organic nature of our whole existence: "as long as we only talk about economic classes, profit, salaries, and production, and as long as we believe that real human progress is determined by a particular system of distribution of wealth and goods, and that, generally speaking, human progress is measured by the degree of wealth or indigence - then we are not even close to what is essential." Thus work and the modern economy are depicted as the penultimate goals of human endeavour, rather than man accepting that his natural interests must lie ultimately in the satisfaction of his own material needs. This is not to suggest that food, clothing and shelter are the most important facets of human existence, simply that they are the most basic prerequisites of all. Man also needs to be satisfied both spiritually and as part of a structure which: "neither knows nor tolerates merely economic classes and does not know the division between -capitalists- and -proletarians-; an order solely in terms of which are to be defined the things worth living and dying for. We must also uphold the need for a true hierarchy and for different dignitaries, with a higher function of power installed at the top, namely the imperium." But this vision is hardly being fulfilled today. Everything is geared towards economic production and, inevitably, wage-slavery. Evola does not believe in the formulation of a new economic theory, instead he explains that the current obsession with economic matters can only decline once people change their attitudes completely: "What must be questioned is not the value of this or that economic system, but the value of the economy itself." This is a fundamental part of National-Anarchist thinking, too, a total rejection of the Left-Right spectrum which, once again, ever since the French Revolution has imposed upon us a wholly superficial antithesis between two allegedly opposed economic ideologies. Those so-called "backward" nations which, thus far, have avoided economic development are said by Evola to "enjoy a certain space and a relative freedom." By seizing upon the issue of class, Marxists have deliberately obscured the components of the ancient world by smearing them with an economic grime. In traditional societies, of course, the economy was simply one area within an all-encompassing hierarchical structure. Terms like "capitalist" and "proletarian" did not exist and class struggle was redundant: "Even in the domain of the economy, a normal civilisation provides specific justification for certain differences in condition, dignity, and function." Marxism, says Evola, did not come about due to the need for a resolution to the social question, on the contrary, Marxism itself has exacerbated the problem by creating the myth of the class system. In traditional 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." Leninists, Trotskyists and other advocates of the class struggle will recoil in horror at this statement, but Evola is denouncing the materialist desires of the common economic agitator rather than supporting the aspirations of the "ruling class." Indeed, economic determinism is considered to be unhealthy and detrimental because "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." There is little doubt, therefore, that the appliance of the economic worldview comes at a great cost. Evola implores us to express our real selves and to unleash our true potential. Each of us has a different function and a unique position to fulfil. Class conflict, therefore, is a diversion which has been thrust in the path of the unitary and the organic. In terms of the way in which we approach work, Evola tells us that an American attempt to extract more labour from a Third World workforce by doubling their wages, was met with "a majority of the workers cutting their working hours in half." Compare this traditionalist attitude with that of the modern-day office or factory worker who perpetually competes for overtime with his colleagues. Indeed, whilst traditional societies are merely interested in satisfying their basic needs, those in the West endure increasingly long hours, exhaustion, bad diets and severe health problems in their pursuit for computers, televisions and cars. Evola notes that, prior to the rise of the mercantile economy and the gradual evolution of capitalism, "the acquisition of external goods had to be restricted and that work and the quest for profit were justifiable only in order to acquire a level of wealth corresponding to one-s status in life: this was the Thomist and, later, the Lutheran view." Work was always designed to satisfy man-s basic needs and provide him with the time he needed in order to pursue more worthy and meaningful pursuits. But when the acquisition of wealth becomes such an obsession that it imprisons the individual within an economic straightjacket, something is clearly very wrong indeed. Success, therefore, is not determined by the credit in one-s bank account or the growth of industry and technology, it relates to the way in which an individual is able to progress in a more spiritual sense. Living in accordance with one-s own intrinsic nature (dharma) is far preferable to pushing oneself beyond the boundaries of normal behaviour through greed and materialism. This trend is epitomised by the restless nature of the capitalistic economy and its exploitative pursuit of new global markets. In the knowledge, of course, that once it has run its inevitable course the lack of available resources will herald its total collapse.

The emergence of capitalism has often been equated with the Protestant work ethic, and is here dismissed by Evola for the simple reason that labour has been transformed from a means of subsistence to an end in itself. It is not only the Right who are obsessed with work, of course, it is the Left too. One thinks of endless marches organised by the likes of Militant Labour and the Socialist Workers Party, during which the only objective is to enslave the proletariat to the employment system: "The most peculiar thing is that this superstitious and insolent cult of work is proclaimed in an era in which the irreversible and relentless mechanisation eliminates from the main varieties of work whatever in them still had a character of quality, art, and the spontaneous unfoldment of a vocation, turning it into something inanimate and devoid of even an immanent meaning." Evola sees this process as the very proletarianisation of life itself. There are certain parallels here with Richard Hunt-s advocation of the "leisure society," in which man can rediscover the natural and qualitative values of his existence. But Evola warns his readers that we must not "shift to a renunciatory, utopian, and miserable civilisation," but rather "clear every domain of life of insane tensions and to restore a true hierarchy of values."

But whilst the individual is inadvertently eroding his own freedoms by viewing work as the ultimate goal in life, the State is also endangering its own existence through the encroaching scarcity of resources to which increasing productivity leads. Evola argues that the way forward lies in "autarchy," and that "it is better to renounce the allure of improving general social and economic conditions and to adopt a regime of austerity than to become enslaved to foreign interests or to become caught up in world processes of reckless economic hegemony and productivity that are destined to sweep away those who have set them in motion." On this point, however, Evola is perhaps forgetting that the decline of capitalistic economies is inevitable and therefore it is futile to postpone their collapse by implementing a policy of protectionism. This strategy may indeed enable a country to stave off the effects of an impending economic catastrophe, but given that all capitalist systems rely on the internationalist system, this simply would not work in the long term.


7. HISTORY - HISTORICISM

Evola now turns his attention to the way in which history is so often presented as a religious tenet of the modern age, representing the switch from a world of being towards that of a world of becoming. Indeed, whilst the former relates to an organic and stable form of civilisation, the latter denotes a chaotic and constantly evolving process in which "rationalist, scientific, and technological civilisation" acts as the pied piper of our rapid decline. Rationalism was perceived by Hegel as reality itself. Likewise, reality is also rational. But traditional values, says Evola, cannot be analysed or defined in this way because they are based on something far beyond the comprehension of mere philosophy. Historicism often regards those episodes which it cannot account for as "anti-historical." This has been said of historical phenomena which appear to obstruct the process of development in accordance with the rationalist worldview. This is why historicists and modernists are fond of portraying conservatives - in the true sense of the word - as "reactionaries" and enemies of progress. Furthermore, it is not men who make history at all. Traditionalists like Evola have learnt to recognise and accept the transcendental forces which are never taken into consideration by rationalist historians: "only an obsolete 'historicism' can be so presumptuous to reduce everything to a linear development." Indeed, both Marxism and Christianity adopt this method and the cyclical nature of the universe is therefore ignored.


8. CHOICE OF TRADITIONS

Whilst the word "tradition" is used to describe Evola-s cosmological stance against the modern world (and that of certain other Traditionalists like Guenon, Nasr and Schuon), he also accepts that during certain key periods of his existence man has often used a series of more commonly known traditions in order to act as a unifying force. These forms of tradition relate to specific "suggestions and catchphrases" which are used to revitalise or regenerate a civilisation, although they can often assume a very "non-traditional" form. Using the example of Italy, Evola points out that professional subversives from the ranks of liberalism, communism and Freemasonry have distorted certain words to ensure that they are equated with patriotism and national pride. So to disagree with their objectives, therefore, is to invoke accusations of "treachery" and "disloyalty." This makes it rather difficult for traditionalists to adopt traditions of their own without incurring the systematically-engineered confusion that sometimes accompanies them. Due to the fact that national traditions are associated with the historical realities of a country-s particular development, attempting to place such terminology in its true context will inevitably lead to the adoption of the modern view that a country-s tradition is based upon its whole history. This is why Evola recommends the deconstruction of the mythology which surrounds national patriotism itself. Italian pride consists in glorifying the Italian Commune, the Renaissance and the Risorgimento. French patriotism is based upon the principles of the French Revolution and the upheavals of 1848 which followed it. An atmosphere of petty-nationalism and xenophobia also fuels the flames of justification for the two destructive world wars which decimated Europe. Revolution and conflict is based on the struggle between diametrically-opposed ideas or economies, not upon racial or national antagonism. Evola suggests that Frederick I, for example, fought against the Italians because he saw it as his imperial duty and not because he simply happened to despise the Italian people or wished to subvert them to his will. Ironically enough, Frederick was committed to the re-establishment of Roman law and many Italians even fought alongside him. This completely demolishes the idea that the aforementioned episodes in Italian history were somehow "patriotic." The importance of struggle is characterised by the idea and not by the perceived national loyalties of those involved. Think of those Englishmen who fought in Hitler-s SS, for example, or the Muslims who travelled from around the world in order to fight against the Americans in modern-day Afghanistan. The "traditions" of those who are committed to the obliteration of the ancient world, then, are highly questionable and - at the very least - intrinsically selective.

By charting the progress of the Italian Renaissance through to its logical conclusion, the so-called Enlightenment, Evola demonstrates that "in the same sense in which Renaissance Italy becomes the mother of geniuses and artists, it also becomes the forerunner of subversion. And just as the communes represent the first rebellion against an alleged political despotism, the civilisation of the Renaissance likewise represents the 'discovery of man' and of freedom of the spirit in the creative individual, as well as the principle of the intellectual emancipation that constitutes the 'basis of human progress'." The Risorgimento is not dissimilar in that it represented a paradoxical alliance between Masonry and patriotism: "The representatives of what at the time was still traditional Europe regarded liberalism and Mazzinianism in the same way as today-s liberal and democratic parties regard communism; the truth is that the subversive intentions of the former were not much different from the latter-s, the main difference being that liberalism and Mazzinianism employed the national and patriotic myth at the early stages of the disintegrating action." The Risorgimento, therefore, was a pseudo-tradition and at the very root of its secret machinations lay the destruction of Tradition itself. The Carbonari was not fighting "Austria" at all, it was engaged in a bitter attempt to topple the Austrian dynasty and, thus, one of the final vestiges of Tradition in Europe. But this is not to suggest that the House of Austria had an impeccable track record. On the contrary, along with Russia and Germany its primary importance lay in opposing the rise of liberalism and modernism. This is demonstrated by the spirit of unity which permeates a letter sent to Wilhelm I by Bismarck in 1887: "The struggle today is not so much between Russians, Germans, Italians, and French, but rather between revolution and monarchy. The Revolution has conquered France, affected England, and is strong in Italy and in Spain. There are only three emperors who can oppose it . . . An eventual future war will have less the character of a war between governments, but more so that of a war of the red flag against the elements of order and preservation." Beneath the surface of all dynasties, churches and governments, of course, lie the denizens of the single idea and the common struggle. A contemporary example on a far smaller scale, perhaps, is the tactical support offered by Alexander Dugin-s eurasianists to Vladimir Putin-s government. The main point of this chapter, however, is the undermining of the popular fantasies which surround national "traditions." Once we can stop focusing on the kind of nationalism served up by the historicists, therefore, it will be easier to accept the validity of an Idea.


9. MILITARY STYLE - -MILITARISM- - WAR

Evola tells us that militarism is the enemy of democracy. This divergence of beliefs came about as soon as economics had replaced things like Prussianism and the Order of Teutonic Knights. Modern democracy, having originated in England, has led to the rise of a society in which "the primary element is the bourgeois type and the bourgeois life during times of peace; such a life is dominated by the physical concern for safety, well-being, and material wealth, with the cultivation of letters and the arts serving as a decorative frame." It is the bourgeoisie who are presently in control of the State and, despite the absence of a militaristic spirit in modern society, whenever an "international crisis" looms on the horizon they have no qualms about using militaristic techniques in order to advance their own interests. This is precisely the same form of shameless hypocrisy which usually regards warfare as "something materialistic and soulless." But Evola makes a distinction between the soldier and the warrior. Indeed, whilst the former is a paid mercenary who sees warfare purely as a means of self-enrichment, the latter is a specific aristocratic caste which is altogether superior to the bourgeoisie. In the present atmosphere soldiers are used to maintain "the peace," although in reality capitalism uses its Establishment shock-troops to crush its opponents and maintain its own position on the economic ladder. This means that the mercenary is employed by the merchant class, rather than a warrior caste "with its own spirituality, values, and ethics" playing an active role in the nature of the State. But Evola is not suggesting that "the military must manage the affairs of the State . . . but rather that virtues, disciplines, and feelings of a military type acquire pre-eminence and a superior dignity over everything that is of a bourgeois type." Furthermore, he does not believe in the control of one-s everyday affairs by a military clique: "Love for hierarchy; relationships of obedience and command; courage; feelings of honour and loyalty; specific forms of active impersonality capable of producing anonymous sacrifice; frank and open relationships from man to man, from one comrade to another, from leader to follower - all these are the characteristic living values that are predominant in the aforementioned view." Evola follows this up by explaining that external warfare compliments that occurring within the self. This is the spiritual battle which is waged by the individual in defiance of his own shortcomings, described by Evola in Revolt Against the Modern World as the "big holy war" and the "little holy war"; a jihad which is fought upon two fronts. This also has important similarities to the Hermetic concept "as above, so below." War against one-s enemies is a macrocosm of that taking place within the individual. For the man who is born to be a warrior, this kind of asceticism becomes a way of life. It is not a form of mindless violence in which death and destruction become the central pillars of one-s very existence, it is "the calm, conscious, and planned development of the inner being and a code of ethics; love of distance; hierarchy; order; the faculty of subordinating the emotional and individualistic element of one-s self to higher goals and principles, especially in the name of honour and beauty." Herein lies the difference between the soldier and the warrior.

The decline of the warrior ethos, according to Evola, is due to the fact that democracies have diminished the importance of the political in favour of the social. Previously, of course, Evola had referred to the Mannerbund or all-male fraternity. Without this vital heroic element, the modern State has inevitably become very inferior when compared to those of the past like Sparta. Western society is now in the hands of the bourgeoisie and lacks that key ingredient of atmospheric tension which acts as a safeguard against complacency and deterioration. Evola is not implying that warfare and struggle are eternal concepts, but simply that the individual must seek out the active life in opposition to the pacifism and decay that comes with "peace." Therefore "the nations in which such premises are sufficiently realised will be not only the ones better prepared for war, but also the ones in which war will acquire a higher meaning." By sheer contrast, the democracies now claim to be fighting against war itself and use a force of their own in a purely defensive capacity. The ranks of those who fight however, are filled not with the bourgeoisie but with the paid mercenaries of the army and police. These soldiers do not fight for an idea or a higher principle, but for "material well-being, economic prosperity, a comfortable and conformist existence based on one-s work, productivity, sports, movies, and sexuality." Modern warfare is also based upon the war of the machine, rather than on the physical or spiritual combat of warriors. This leads to a complex and technological manifestation of the heroic ideal, rather than offering the prospective warrior a just cause for which to fight. Evola attacks the manipulative propaganda and lies which have been used throughout the process of modern warfare, something which leads to the relativisation and systematic repackaging of the "cause" itself. But what does Evola say about the attitude and motivation of the true warrior?: "A warrior tradition and a pure military tradition do not have hatred as the basis of war. The need to fight and even to exterminate another people may be acknowledged, but this does not entail hatred, anger, animosity, and contempt for the enemy. All these feelings, for a true soldier, are degrading: in order to fight he need not be motivated by such lowly feelings, nor be energised by propaganda, smoky rhetoric and lies." These elements have only come to the fore since the natural warrior caste was replaced by an army of enlisted mercenaries drawn from the ranks of society at large. Mussolini once wrote about the spirit of the trenches in which class divisions were eradicated in the name of a common cause, but Evola believes that today the masses have to be deceived before they will agree to fight for the ruling class. Modern conflicts are irrational, too, in that they are artificially constructed in order to justify the ever-increasing expansion of capitalism. The wars of the past were quite different, in that they had a sovereign quality as the necessary determining force for the deployment of what Evola describes as "[c]learly defined goals." Perhaps the antithesis of the just war is the very irrationalism which lies at the core of the ultimate form of modern combat we know today as nuclear war.


10. TRADITION - CATHOLICISM - GHIBELLINISM

Catholicism is perceived by many to be the pinnacle of Tradition. Evola accepts that it contains many Traditional aspects, but goes on to say that in order to be seen as a legitimate form of authority and sovereignty it must become fully integrated within the sphere of Tradition itself. Catholicism alone is inadequate and represents only a minimal current of a far wider Tradition. Here, Evola opts to discuss the implications of this fact in both a political and contemporary context, despite using examples from the past.

Religion falls into various categories and cannot match the supreme and unitary nature of Tradition. In fact religion is simply an exoteric version of a deeper, esoteric undercurrent. Christianity, for example, panders to the masses, whilst Tradition is reserved for the spiritual elite: "In effect, nobody with a higher education can really believe in the axiom 'There is no salvation outside the Church' (nulla salus extra ecclesiam), meaning the great civilisations that have preceded Christianity (the still-existing millennia-old non-European traditions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, and even relatively recent ones such as Islam) have not known the supernatural or the sacred, but only distorted images and obscure 'prefigurations' and that they amount to mere 'paganism', polytheism, and 'natural mysticism'." This statement would undoubtedly arouse in the more "traditional" Catholic a feeling of revulsion and anger, perhaps even accusations of "ecumenicalism." However, Evola is not advocating the unification of all religions, but the acceptance that there is a common Tradition which lies in each. He goes on to say that for a Catholic "to persist in the sectarian and dogmatic exclusivism about this matter would amount to being in the same predicament of one who wished to defend the views of physics and astronomy found in the Old Testament, which have been made obsolete by the current state of knowledge on these matters." Catholicism, then, is only "traditional" in the sense that certain aspects tend to accord with Tradition itself. The same can be said of Islam or Judaism.

We now turn our attention to the centuries-old debate concerning Catholicism and Ghibellinism. The Ghibellines (like their Guelph rivals) were a political force in northern and central Italy between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. These opposing groups began in Germany as partisans in a struggle for the throne of the Holy Roman Empire between two dynastic houses: the Welfs on the one hand (who were dukes of Saxony and Bavaria), and the Hohenstaufens on the other (who were rulers of Swabia). During the thirteenth century the Welf leader, Otto of Brunswick, was involved in a fratricidal struggle for the imperial crown against Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, and the all-German battle soon moved south to Italy. The name Guelph is derived from Welf, whilst Ghibelline is a corruption of Waiblingen, an area of land belonging to the emperors of Hohenstaufen. According to the Ghibelline view of the world, as elucidated by Evola, "the Empire was an institution of supernatural origin and character, like the Church. It had its own sacred nature, just as, during the Middle Ages, the dignity of the kings themselves had an almost priestly nature (kingship being established through a rite that differed only in minor detail from Episcopal ordination). On this basis, the Ghibelline emperors - who were the representatives of a universal and supranational idea, embodying a lex animata in terris (a living law on earth) - opposed the hegemonic claims of the clergy and claimed to have only God above themselves." The struggle between the Ghibellines and the clergy is usually discussed in political terms, but was actually a form of spiritual combat waged at the very highest level. Humanity, during the medieval period, was caught between two distinct paths: action and contemplation. Evola tells us that this relates to the Empire and the Church respectively: "Ghibellinism more or less claimed that through the view of earthly life as discipline, militia, and service, the individual can be led beyond himself and reach the supernatural culmination of human personality through action and under the aegis of the Empire. This was related to the character of a non-naturalistic but 'providential' institution acknowledged in the Empire; knighthood and the great knightly Orders stood in relation to the empire in the same way in which the clergy and the ascetic Orders stood in relation to the Church." This sounds like an analogy of the political soldier, but Evola is keen to demonstrate that such Orders "were based on an idea that was less political than ethical-spiritual, and partially even ascetic, according to an asceticism that was not cloistered and contemplative, but rather of a warrior type. In this last regard, the most typical example was constituted by the Order of Knights Templar, and in part by the Order of the Teutonic Knights." This subject is discussed at length in Evola-s Revolt Against The Modern World, during which the author explained how the Emperor waged a calculated holy war against the pro-Guelphist clergy and how even the Crusades became an active consolidation of the imperial idea; just as the Empire had been in times of peace. The Ghibellines, he said, were engaged in an occult struggle "against papal Rome that was waged by Rome itself" (p.300). Indeed, the head of the Church is known as pontifex maximus; a title which is taken directly from the leaders of early Rome. Indeed, according to Evola the Emperor Julian opposed Christianity due to its "upholding of an anarchical doctrine; with the excuse of paying homage to God alone, they refused to give him homage in the person of those who, as legitimate leaders of men, were his representatives on earth and drew from him the principle of their power. This, according to Celsus, was an example of impiety."

Evola-s whole point is that in ancient times the religious clergy were answerable to the Emperor himself; not simply from a political perspective, but also in a theological capacity: "It was only during the Middle Ages that the priest nourished the ambition, not of being king, but of being the one to whom kings are subject. At that time, Ghibellinism arose as a reaction, and the rivalry was rekindled, the new reference point now being the authority and the right reclaimed by the Holy Roman Empire." But this does not presuppose that religion must be at the service of the State like those of "a Masonic, anti-clerical character," on the contrary, this leads to totalitarianism and the Concordats which were conveniently arranged in both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The separation of the spiritual and political spheres is epitomised by the Christian maxim "render unto Caesar what is Caesar-s and unto God what is God-s," something which was quite unknown in ancient times. Needless to say, throughout history the Catholic Church has played a very large role in secular affairs by using politics as a mere wing of the religious establishment. Although in the later Middle Ages the Church did recognise the divine right of kings, Evola considers these "atheistic" monarchs to have been at the forefront of the liberal ideas which later found expression in the French Revolution of 1789. Once the State had vacated the domain of the spirit and become secular, however, it turned against the Church. But this was different to the rebellion of the Ghibellines, because this current "did not pursue the subjection of spiritual authority to temporal powers, but rather upheld, vis-Þ-vis the exclusivist claim of the Church, a value and a right for the State, different from those that are proper to an organisation with a merely human and material character." However, lest one wrongly imagine that Evola somehow wishes to revive the Ghibelline struggle against the Church, the author carefully points out that the key point is to resist the secular State in all its forms. Only in this way can politics be ascribed to a higher level.

Catholicism today is in great decline. Not least because it is always forced to compromise with the prevailing ideologies among which it finds itself. Liberalism is gradually eroding the last vestiges of Catholic tradition in the same way that it is eating away at the edifice of Tradition in general. The likes of the Protestant Reformation and Vatican II have taken their toll, and we now see modernist popes tolerating bastardised currents like Liberation Theology, supporting the burgeoning New World Order and kneeling before the might of International Zionism. Evola tells us that "the decline of the modern Church is undeniable because she gives to social and moral concerns a greater weight that what pertains to the supernatural life, to asceticism, and to contemplation, which are essential reference points of religiosity." It is certainly not fulfilling any kind of meaningful role, either: "For all practical purposes, the main concerns of Catholicism today seem to turn it into a petty bourgeois moralism that shuns sexuality and upholds virtue, or an inadequate paternalistic welfare system. In these times of crisis and emerging brutal forces, the Christian faith should devote itself to very different tasks." In the medieval period the Church possessed a more traditional character, but only due to the fact that it had appropriated so many Classical elements and, by way of Aristotle, lashed them firmly to the theological mast being constructed by Thomas Aquinas during the thirteenth century. Catholicism, however, will never reconcile itself with the problem of how to deal with politics and the State because it relies upon separation and dualism. Tradition, on the other hand, is integralist and unitary.

Evola notes that certain individuals and groups have sought to incorporate the more traditional aspects of Catholicism within the broader and far more encompassing sphere of Tradition itself. Evola-s French philosophical counterpart, Rene Guenon, for example. Catholics, however, are far too dogmatic and would merely seek to make Tradition "conform" to their own spiritual weltanschauung. This, says Evola, is "placing the universal at the service of the particular." Furthermore, of course, the anti-modernists who are organised in groups such as The Society of St. Pius X and the Sedavacantist fraternity do not speak with the full weight and authority of the Church. They are, therefore, powerless because "the direction of the Church is a descending and anti-traditional one, consisting of modernisation and coming to terms with the modern world, democracy, socialism, progressivism, and everything else. Therefore, these individuals are not authorised to speak in the name of Catholicism, which ignores them, and should not try to attribute to Catholicism a dignity the latter spurns." Evola suggests that because the Church is so inadequate, it should be abandoned and left to its ultimate doom. He concludes by reiterating the fact that a State which does not have a spiritual dimension is not a State at all. The only way forward, he argues, is to "begin from a pure idea, without the basis of a proximate historical reference" and await the actualisation of the Traditional current.


11. REALISM - COMMUNISM - ANTI-BOURGEOISIE

Intellectuals are often attracted to communism because it claims to be anti-bourgeois, despite communism itself claiming to despise the intellectual for his bourgeois origins. According to Evola, however, this is misleading and such people are deluding themselves. Evola also accepts that the word "bourgeois" relates to far more than economics; something representing a specific cultural niche in which everything is "empty, decadent, and corrupt." The role of the traditionalist must be to overcome these materialist concepts. Indeed, the perennial attraction of communism indicates that it would be a big mistake to combat Marxist values with a "bourgeois mentality and spirit, with its conformism, psychological and romantic appendices, moralism, and concerns for a petty, safe existence in which a fundamental materialism finds its compensation in sentimentality and the rhetoric of the great humanitarian and democratic worlds - all this has only an artificial, peripheral, and precarious life." This is why conservatism has always been so ineffective, and why the adoption of a true anti-bourgeois spirit is so essential in the ongoing replenishment of Tradition. For Evola, the solution lies in realism.

In its efforts to overcome the unreality of bourgeois society, Marxism simply relegates the individual to an even lower level. This results in the systematic spawning of homo economicus, a process in which "we go toward what is below rather than above the person." It represents a collective reduction of the human type, rather than a raising of the individual consciousness. So how does Evola-s realism differ from the kind of "neo-realism" advocated by left-wing philosophers such as Sartre? The latter, of course, brings human existence into line with transient concepts such as psychoanalysis. This is achieved by creating a kind of psycho-collectivisation, whereby man-s various personality traits are said to originate from below. Evola, on the other hand, accepts "that existence acquires a meaning only when it is inspired by something beyond itself." Therefore the political, economic and psychological aspects of Marxism are identical and adhere to a decidedly false sense of "realism."

Given the confusion which has been generated by the Marxists and their misleading interpretation of "realism," perhaps another solution is needed to counteract the unreality of the bourgeoisie; one which seeks to go higher, rather than lower? Evola explains: "It is possible to keep a distance from everything that has only a human and especially subjectivist character; to feel contempt for bourgeois conformism and its petty selfishness and moralism; to embody the style of an impersonal activity; to prefer what is essential and real in a higher sense, free from the trappings of sentimentalism and from pseudo-intellectual super-structures - and yet all this must be done by remaining upright, feeling the presence in life of that which leads beyond life, drawing from it precise norms of behaviour and action." This means that a new breed of individuals must bear the task of combining strong anti-Marxism with a committed opposition to bourgeois society: "Lenin himself said that a proletarian, left to himself, tends to become a bourgeois." It is therefore not necessary to become a communist in order to reject the trappings of conformity and sterility, although the shortcomings of Fascism and its well-documented reliance upon the bourgeoisie suggests that it, too, is incapable of providing real solutions to the problem. Evola also notes that "[e]ven those who call themselves monarchists can only conceive of a bourgeois king."

I have already discussed how communists harbour an ironic grudge towards the intellectual, but Evola demonstrates that the only answer to the intellectual/anti-intellectual debate is to put forward a third option: the Weltanschauung, or worldview. This is "based not on books, but on an inner form and a sensibility endowed with an innate, rather than acquired, character." In other words, a mentality which does not remain fixed in the mind or submerged in theories, but realised in a more practical sense through the deployment of the will. Thought alone is incapable of taking on a life of its own or significantly changing anything. Here we return to the traditional idea of an organic civilisation which is expressed not by culture, but through a deeper understanding of eternal values. Thus, intellectualism and culture are merely used to express the more fundamental worldview, not designed to evolve into determining characteristics of humanity in their own right: "this is sheer illusion: never before as in modern times was there such a number of men who are spiritually formless, and thus open to any suggestion and ideological intoxication, so as to become dominated by psychic currents (without being aware of it in the least) and of manipulations belonging to the intellectual, political, and social climate in which they live." The worldview of which Evola speaks, of course, is Tradition. This represents the basic impetus which must beat firmly within the heart of all those who wish to bring to an end the contaminating era of the bourgeoisie.

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