Jump to content

Julius Evola: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
No edit summary
revolt against the modern world, also, text as it stands represents the opinion of scholars and reliable sources, omitting these constitutes valdalism
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Infobox philosopher
{{Infobox philosopher
| name = Julius Evola
| name = Julius Evola
| image = File:Julius Evola.png
| image = Julius Evola.png
| caption = Evola circa 1920
| caption = Evola during 1920s
| birth_name = Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola
| birth_name = Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1898|5|19|df=yes}}
| birth_date = {{birth date|dm=y|1898|5|19}}
| birth_place = [[Rome]], [[Kingdom of Italy]]
| birth_place = [[Rome]], [[Kingdom of Italy|Italy]]
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1974|6|11|1898|5|19|df=yes}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|dm=y|1974|6|11|1898|5|19}}
| death_place = Rome, [[Italian Republic]]
| death_place = Rome, [[Italy]]
| death_cause = [[Respiratory disease|Respiratory]]-[[Liver disease|hepatic]] problems
| influences = [[Siddhartha Gautama]], [[St. Athanasius]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], [[Plato]], [[Oswald Spengler|Spengler]], [[René Guénon|Guénon]], [[Joseph de Maistre|de Maistre]], [[Juan Donoso Cortes|Donoso Cortes]], [[Ernst Jünger|Jünger]], [[Oscar Wilde|Wilde]], [[Carlo Michelstaedter|Michelstaedter]], [[Gottfried Benn|Benn]], [[Giambattista Vico|Vico]], [[Tristan Tzara|Tzara]], [[Otto Weininger|Weininger]], [[Max Stirner|Stirner]], [[Bachofen]], [[Laozi]], [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky|Dostoevsky]], [[Meister Eckhart|Eckhart]], [[Novalis]], [[Dmitry Merezhkovsky|Merezhkovsky]], [[Giovanni Papini|Papini]], [[George Gurdjieff|Gurdjieff]], [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]
| nationality = [[Italian nationality law|Italian]]
| influenced = [[Hermann Hesse|Hesse]], [[Miguel Serrano|Serrano]], [[Michael Moynihan (journalist)|Moynihan]], [[Eduard Limonov|Limonov]], [[Aleksandr Dugin|Dugin]], [[Alain de Benoist|Benoist]], [[Giorgio Almirante|Almirante]], [[Massimo Scaligero|Scaligero]], [[Mircea Eliade|Eliade]], [[Roberto Saviano|Saviano]], [[Jocelyn Godwin|Godwin]], [[Marguerite Yourcenar|Yourcenar]], [[Francis Parker Yockey|Yockey]], [[Varg Vikernes|Vikernes]], [[Giuseppe Tucci|Tucci]], [[Daniel Pinchbeck|Pinchbeck]], [[Thomas Karlsson|Karlsson]]
<!-- | religion = [[Spiritual but not religious|Irreligious spiritualism]]<ref>{{cite web|title=L’ateismo mistico e anti-italiano di Julius Evola|author=Piero Vassallo|publisher=Riscossa Cristiana|date=15 June 2014}}</ref>-->
| occupation = philosopher, writer, painter
| notable_works = ''[[Theory of the Absolute Individual]]'' (1927)<br>''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]'' (1934)<br>''[[Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race]]'' (1941)
| movement = [[Traditional School]]<br>[[Rationalism]]
| era = [[20th-century philosophy|20th century]]
| notableworks = ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]'', ''[[Men Among the Ruins]]'' and ''[[Ride the Tiger]]''
| region = [[Western philosophy]]
| school_tradition = [[Traditionalist School|Traditionalism]]<br>[[Actual idealism]]
| institutions = [[School of Fascist Mysticism]]
| main_interests = [[History]], [[religion]], [[esotericism]]
| notable_ideas = [[Fascist mysticism]], [[spiritual racism]]
| influences = {{hlist|[[Siddhartha Gautama]]|[[Laozi]]|[[St. Athanasius]]|[[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]]|[[Plato]]|[[Giovanni Papini|Papini]]|[[Oswald Spengler|Spengler]]|[[René Guénon|Guénon]]|[[Joseph de Maistre|de Maistre]]|[[Juan Donoso Cortes|Donoso Cortes]]|[[Ernst Jünger|Jünger]]|[[Oscar Wilde|Wilde]]|[[Carlo Michelstaedter|Michelstaedter]]|[[Gottfried Benn|Benn]]|[[Giambattista Vico|Vico]]|[[Tristan Tzara|Tzara]]|[[Otto Weininger|Weininger]]|[[Max Stirner|Stirner]]|[[Fyodor Dostoyevsky|Dostoevsky]]|[[Meister Eckhart|Eckhart]]|[[Novalis]]|[[Dmitry Merezhkovsky|Merezhkovsky]]|[[George Gurdjieff|Gurdjieff]]}}
| influenced = {{hlist|[[Hermann Hesse|Hesse]]|[[Miguel Serrano|Serrano]]|[[Michael Moynihan (journalist)|Moynihan]]|[[Eduard Limonov|Limonov]]|[[Aleksandr Dugin|Dugin]]|[[Alain de Benoist|de Benoist]]|[[Pino Rauti|Rauti]]|[[Massimo Scaligero|Scaligero]]|[[Mircea Eliade|Eliade]]|[[Roberto Saviano|Saviano]]|[[Jocelyn Godwin|Godwin]]|[[Marguerite Yourcenar|Yourcenar]]|[[Francis Parker Yockey|Yockey]]|[[Varg Vikernes|Vikernes]]|[[Aleksey Levkin|Levkin]]|[[E. Christian Kopff|Kopff]]|[[Richard B. Spencer|Spencer]]|[[Giuseppe Tucci|Tucci]]|[[Daniel Pinchbeck|Pinchbeck]]|[[Thomas Karlsson|Karlsson]]}}
| website = {{URL|http://www.fondazionejuliusevola.it/}}
}}
}}
'''Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola''' ({{IPA-it|ˈɛːvola}};<ref>[http://www.dizionario.rai.it/poplemma.aspx?lid=61429&r=90351 Rai DOP]</ref> 19 May 1898 &ndash; 11 June 1974), better known as '''Julius Evola''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|ʤ|u|l|j|ə|s|_|ɛ|ˈ|v|oʊ|l|ə}}), was an [[Italy|Italian]] [[philosopher]], painter, and [[esotericism|esotericist]]. Evola regarded his perspectives and spiritual values as [[aristocracy (class)|aristocratic]], [[masculine]], [[traditional]]ist, [[heroism|heroic]] and defiantly [[reactionary]].
[[Baron]] '''Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola''' ({{IPA-it|ˈɛːvola}};<ref>[http://www.dizionario.rai.it/poplemma.aspx?lid=61429&r=90351 Rai DOP]</ref> 19 May 1898 &ndash; 11 June 1974), better known as '''Julius Evola''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|ʤ|u|l|j|ə|s|_|ɛ|ˈ|v|oʊ|l|ə}}), was an Italian [[philosopher]], painter, and [[esotericism|esotericist]].


Evola has been described as "one of the most influential fascist racists in Italian history."<ref name="Aaron Gillette 2002"/> He was admired by [[Benito Mussolini]]<ref name=HorowitzMussolini>Horowitz, Jason. "[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists]". [[New York Times]], February 2017</ref>, and continues to influence contemporary [[fascism|fascist]] and [[neofascist]] movements<ref>Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996 </ref><ref name="ReferenceA">Nicholas Goodrick-Clark. ''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity''. NYU Press, 2001</ref>, and [[Russia]]n political scientist and sometime [[Vladimir Putin]] advisor [[Aleksander Dugin]]<ref name=standard>[http://www.weeklystandard.com/putins-rasputin-endorses-trump/article/2001344 Zubrin, Steve. "Putin's Rasputin Endorses Trump", The Weekly Standard]</ref><ref name=Meyer>Meyer, Henry and Ant, Onur. "The One Russian Linking Putin, Erdogan and Trump", Bloomberg [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-03/who-is-alexander-dugin-the-man-linking-putin-erdogan-and-trump]</ref> cites Evola's influence. [[President]] [[Donald Trump]]'s chief adviser [[Steve Bannon]], in a speech at the Vatican, noted Evola's influence on the [[Traditionalist School|Traditionalist]] movement and [[Eurasianism]] favored by Dugin and the alt-right.<ref name=Bannon/>
Evola believed that mankind is living in the ''[[Kali Yuga]]'', a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites, spiritual oblivion and dissolution. To counter this and call in a [[Palingenesis|primordial rebirth]], Evola presented his world of [[Tradition]]. The core trilogy of Evola's works are generally regarded as ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]'', ''[[Men Among the Ruins]]'', and ''[[Ride the Tiger]]''. According to one scholar, "Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century."<ref>Ferraresi, Franco. "The Radical Right in Postwar Italy," ''Politics & Society'', 1988 16:71-119, Pg. 84</ref> Much of Evola's theories and writings is centered on Evola's own idiosyncratic [[spiritualism]] and [[mysticism]]—the inner life. The philosophy covered themes such as [[Hermeticism]], the [[metaphysics]] of [[war]] and of [[sex]], [[Tantra]], [[Buddhism]], [[Taoism]], [[mountaineering]], the [[Holy Grail]], the essence and history of [[civilisations]], [[decadence]], and various philosophic and religious Traditions dealing with both the [[Classics]] and the [[Oriental studies|Orient]].

According to one scholar, "Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century."<ref>Ferraresi, Franco. "The Radical Right in Postwar Italy," ''Politics & Society'', 1988 16:71-119, Pg. 84</ref> Many of Evola's theories and writings were also centered on his idiosyncratic [[mysticism]] and esoteric religious studies<ref name="Furlong 2011" />, accordingly, he influenced apolitical esotericists as well.
Evola's work was influential on [[fascism|fascists]] and [[neofascists]],<ref>Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 Down to the time of his death in 1974, Evola stood as the leading intellectual of neofascism and/ or the radical right in all Europe.</ref><ref>Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity By Nicholas Goodrick-Clark</ref> though he was never a member of the Italian [[National Fascist Party]] or the [[Italian Social Republic]] and declared himself an anti-fascist.<ref name="acad">A. James Gregor and Andreas Umland. "[http://ku-eichstaett.academia.edu/AndreasUmland/Papers/87021/Dugin_Not_a_Fascist_A_Debate_with_A._James_Gregor_6_texts_ Dugin Not a Fascist?]" (6 texts). ''Erwägen-Wissen-Ethik'', 2005.</ref> He regarded his position as that of a sympathetic [[right-wing politics|right-wing]] intellectual, saw potential in the movement and wished to reform its errors, to a position in line with his own views. One of his successes was in regard to the [[Italian Racial Laws|racial laws]]; his advocacy of a spiritual consideration of race won out in the debate in Italy, rather than a solely [[scientific racism|biological reductionism]] concept popular in Germany. Since [[World War II]] many [[Traditionalist School|Radical Traditionalist]], [[New Right]], [[Conservative Revolutionary]], fascist, and [[Third Positionist]] groups have taken inspiration from him, as well as several apolitical occultists, such as [[Thomas Karlsson]] and [[Massimo Scaligero]].


==Biography==
==Biography==


===Early years===
===Early years===
Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola was born in Rome to a [[Sicily|Sicilian]] family of minor aristocracy. He was occasionally attributed with the title "Baron". Little is known about his early upbringing except that he considered it irrelevant. Evola studied engineering in Rome and was involved in the Italian social and artistic [[Futurism|Futurist]] movement until he broke with a leading figure. He joined the artillery as an officer in the First World War. Returning to civilian life, Evola was a painter and poet in the [[Dada|Dada]] movement.<ref name ="Furlong 2011">Paul Furlong, ''The Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola''. London: Routledge, 2011. ISBN 9780203816912</ref>{{rp|3}}<ref name="Evola, Cinabro">Julius Evola, Il Camino del Cinabro, 1963</ref>
Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola was born in Rome to a [[Sicily|Sicilian]] family of aristocratic cultural ethos corresponding, in unknown degree of "nobiliary legitimacy", to the honorific and local title of reverential politesse, "[[Baron]]". Whether extrinsically of "legal-official" titular peerage, literally "baronial", the status of Evola and his ancestry is not currently known; in any event, the family was culturally ultra-aristocratic and old-guard Catholic, and this constituted the formation of his earliest personality (Evola himself would dismiss the matter as irrelevant following his hyper-metaphysical world-view).{{citation needed|date=September 2015}} During his youth, he studied [[engineering]] and received excellent grades, but did not complete his studies because he "did not want to be a [[bourgeoisie|bourgeois]]". In his teenage years he immersed himself in painting, which he considered to be one of his natural talents, and literature including [[Oscar Wilde]] and [[Gabriele d'Annunzio]], and served as his first introduction to philosophers such as [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]] and [[Otto Weininger]]. He served during [[World War I]] as an [[artillery]] [[military officer|officer]] on the [[Asiago plateau]]. After the war, attracted to the [[avant-garde]], Evola briefly associated with [[Filippo Marinetti]]'s [[Futurism (art)|Futurist]] movement, but became a prominent representative of [[Dada]]ism in Italy through his painting, poetry, and collaboration on the shortly published journal, ''[[Revue Bleu]]''. In 1922, after concluding that avant-garde art was becoming [[commercialized]] and stiffened into academic convention, he reduced his focus on artistic expression such as painting and poetry.<ref>G.Evola, ''Il Camino del Cinabro'', 1963</ref>


Evola's early philosophical influences included [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Otto Weininger]], [[Carlo Michelstaedter]], and [[Max Stirner]].<ref>Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman. ''Fascism: Post-war fascisms''. Taylor & Francis, 2004. p. 219</ref>
===Entry into esotericism===
Around 1920, his interests led him into [[Spirituality|spiritual]], [[Transcendence (religion)|transcendental]], and "supra-rational" studies. He began reading various [[esoteric]] texts and gradually delved deeper into the occult, [[alchemy]], [[magic (paranormal)|magic]], and [[Oriental]] studies, particularly [[Tibet]]an [[Lamaism]] and [[Vajrayana|Vajrayanist]] [[tantra|tantric]] [[yoga]]. He had also used [[hallucinogenic drugs]] to experience [[altered states of consciousness]] during this period, but later came to criticize such drugs in ''[[Ride the Tiger]]'', as he did not consider stimulation as a means to transcendence.


===Esotericism===
In 1927, along with other Italian esotericists, he founded the ''[[Gruppo di Ur]]'' (the [[Ur]] Group). The group's aim was to provide a "soul" to the burgeoning Fascist movement of the time through the revival of an ancient Roman [[Paganism]].<ref>Isotta Poggi. "Alternative Spirituality in Italy." In: James R. Lewis, J. Gordon Melton. ''Perspectives on the New Age.'' SUNY Press, 1992. Page 276.</ref>
A mountaineer, Evola described the experience a source of revelatory spiritual experience. After his return from the war, Evola experimented with drugs and magic until, around age 23, Evola considered suicide. He says he avoided suicide thanks to a revelation he had while reading an early Buddhist text. The text dealt with shedding all forms of identity other than absolute transcendence.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> Evola would later publish the text ''The Doctrine of Awakening'', which he regarded as a repayment of his debt to the doctrine of [[Buddha]] for saving him from suicide.<ref name=forum/>


Subsequently Evola developed the doctrine of "magical idealism", which held that "the Ego must understand that everything that seems to have a reality independent of it is nothing but an illusion, caused by its own deficiency." For Evola, this ever-increasing unity with the absolute involved expanded participation in the absolute individual understood as unconstrained liberty, and therefore unconditioned power.<ref name="Furlong 2011" />
===Relationship with Fascism===
Evola never joined Mussolini's [[National Fascist Party]]; he considered himself an anti-fascist, and catalogued fascist squadristi as peasants.<ref name="acad"/> Mussolini considered Evola one of the "hysterical fanatics" who could serve the fascist interests.<ref name="acad"/> According to Daniel McCarthy:


[[Thomas Sheehan (academic)|Thomas Sheehan]] noted in ''Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist'',
{{cquote|At one point, [[Benito Mussolini|il Duce]] or one of his underlings asked Evola why he hadn’t joined the Fascist Party proper. Evola replied that the continued existence of the party proved the failure of fascism. After all, if the state had become all and absorbed all lesser allegiances, how could there be such a thing as a “party,” which, as the word indicates, represents a partial or special interest?<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=-efGhmaRw4cC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=evola+party+state+fascist+mussolini&source=bl&ots=qzSv6KlbOF&sig=5RjinHTxSrM154FSk6uACiut5C0&hl=en&ei=FxUpTsP8B8PFgAf1mKz5Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=evola%20party%20state%20fascist%20mussolini&f=false Political Violence and Terror], quoted in McCarthy, Daniel (201-07-25) [http://www.amconmag.com/mccarthy/2011/07/25/whats-worse-than-leviathan/ What's Worse Than Leviathan], ''[[The American Conservative]]''</ref>}}


{{blockquote|What Evola has done is to actualize and exaggerate a tendency that is implicit in all Western philosophies based on the primacy - indeed, the possibility - of an intellectual intuition. He repudiates dialogistic, discursive reasoning (logos, ratio), not because he favors a descent to the irrational, but because he affirms, along with Aristotle, the superiority of the supra-rational.<ref>Thomas Sheehan. ''Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist''. Social Research, XLVIII, 1 (Spring, 1981). 45-73, on p. 54</ref>}}
Evola was one of a number of [[right-wing]] intellectuals who opposed [[Benito Mussolini]]'s [[Lateran Accords]] with the [[Roman Catholic Church]] and rejected the Fascist party's [[nationalism]] and its focus on [[mass movement]] mob politics; he hoped to influence the regime toward his own variation on fascist racial theories and his "Tradionalist" philosophy. Early in 1930, Evola launched ''[[La Torre]]'' (The Tower), a bi-weekly review, to voice his [[Conservative Revolutionary movement|conservative-revolutionary ideas]] and denounce the [[demagogic]] tendencies of official fascism; government censors suppressed the journal and engaged in [[character assassination]] against its staff (for a time, Evola retained a bodyguard of like-minded radical fascists) until it died out in June of that year. From 1934 to 1943, he edited the cultural page of [[Roberto Farinacci]]'s journal ''Regime Fascista'' (The Fascist Regime).


Evola was introduced to esotericism by the early supporter of fascism Arturo Reghini, who sought to promote a "cultured magic" opposed to Christianity. Reghini introduced Evola to the traditionalist [[René Guénon]]. In 1927, Reghini and Evola, along with other Italian esotericists, founded the ''[[Gruppo di Ur]]'' (the [[Ur]] Group). The purpose of this group was to attempt to bring the members' individual identities into such a superhuman state of power and awareness that they would be able to exert a magical influence on the world. The group employed techniques from Buddhist, Tantric, and rare Hermetic texts.<ref>Nevill Drury. ''The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 Entries on the Mystical and Occult Traditions''. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 2004. p. 96</ref> The group aimed to provide a "soul" to the burgeoning Fascist movement of the time through the revival of ancient Roman [[Paganism]], and influence the fascist regime through esotericism.<ref>Isotta Poggi. "Alternative Spirituality in Italy." In: James R. Lewis, J. Gordon Melton. ''Perspectives on the New Age.'' SUNY Press, 1992. Page 276.</ref><ref name="Furlong 2011" /> Articles on occultism from the Ur Group were later published in the text ''Introduction to Magic''.<ref>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 89</ref><ref>Gary Lachman. ''Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen''. Quest Books, 2012. p. 215</ref>
Mussolini read Evola's ''[[Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race]]'' (''Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza'') in August 1941, and met with Evola to offer him his praise. Evola later recounted that Mussolini had found in his work a uniquely Roman form of fascist [[racism]] distinct from that found in [[Nazi Germany]]. With Mussolini's backing, Evola launched the minor-journal ''Sangue e Spirito'' (Blood and Spirit). While not always in agreement with German racial theorists, Evola traveled to Germany in February 1942 and obtained support for German collaboration on ''Sangue e Spirito'' from leading Nazi race theorists.<ref>Aaron Gillette. ''Racial Theories in Fascist Italy.'' London: Routledge, 2002.</ref>


Reghini's support of Freemasonry would however prove a bone of contention for Evola; accordingly, Evola broke with Reghini in 1928.<ref name="Furlong 2011" />
Evola consistently and publicly criticized Fascism, but has often been wrongly accused of being a Fascist himself or a Fascist supporter, because he critiqued Fascism from the right rather than from the left. When [[World War II]] broke out, he volunteered for military service in order to fight the [[Communists]] on the [[Russia]]n front; he was rejected because he had too many detractors in the bureaucracy.<ref>Hansen, 2002</ref> Italian Fascism went into decline when, during the midst of the war in 1943, Mussolini was deposed and imprisoned. Evola, although not a member of the [[Fascist Party]], and despite his apparent problems with the Fascist regime, was one of the first people to greet Mussolini when the latter was broken out of prison by [[Otto Skorzeny]] in 1943.


Evola wrote prodigiously on Eastern mysticism, tantra, [[hermeticism]], the myth of the [[holy grail]] and western esotericism.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> German Egyptologist and esoteric scholar Florian Ebeling has noted that Evola's text ''The Hermetic Tradition'' is viewed as an "extremely important work on Hermeticism" in the eyes of esoteric adherents.<ref>Florian Ebeling. ''The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times''. Cornell University Press, 2007. p. 138</ref> The psychologist [[Carl Jung]] described this text as a "detailed account of Hermetic philosophy"<ref name=Jung1>C. G. Jung. ''Psychology and Alchemy''. Routledge, 2014. p. 228</ref>, and cited Evola as an authority for his contention that alchemy referred in actually to psychic rather than pseudochemical processes.<ref name=Jung2>C. G. Jung. ''Psychology and Alchemy''. Routledge, 2014. p. 242</ref>
After [[Armistice of Cassibile|the Italian surrender to the Allies]] on 8 September 1943, Evola moved to [[Germany]], where he spent the remainder of World War II, also working as a researcher on [[Freemasonry]] for the [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] ''[[Ahnenerbe]]'' in [[Vienna]]{{citation needed|date=May 2015}}. The research on Freemasonry resulted in a document titled ''Freimaurerei: Geschichte und Mythos'' (Freemasonry: History and Myth), published by the Ahnenerbe in limited copies with his name as editor-in-chief.{{citation needed|date=April 2015}}


Evola's subsequent text ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]'' accepted as valid mythology of an ancient [[Golden Age]]. He attempted to convey the features of his idealized traditional society, and he argued that modernity represented a serious decline from such a society. He argued in that in the postulated Golden age, religious and temporal power were united, and that society was not founded on rule by priests, but by warriors expressing spiritual power - accordingly he saw in mythology evidence of the alleged superiority of the West over the East. Moreover, he claimed that the traditional elite had the ability to access power and knowledge through a hierarchical version of magic which differed utterly from lower, "superstitious and fraudulent", forms of magic.<ref name="Furlong 2011" />
It was Evola's custom to walk around the city during [[bombing raid]]s in order to better 'ponder his destiny'. During one such raid, in March or April 1945, a [[Shell (projectile)|shell]] fragment damaged his [[spinal cord]] and he became [[paralysis|paralyzed]] from the waist down, remaining so for the remainder of his life.<ref>Stucco 1992, xiii</ref>


Evola's text ''The Mystery of the Grail'' discarded the Christian interpretations of the mythical [[Holy Grail]], maintaining instead that the Grail "symbolizes the principal of an immortalizing and transcendent force connected to the primordial state and remaining present in the very period of ... involution or decadence ... The mystery of the Grail is a mystery of a warrior initiation." He held that the Ghibellines, as opponents of the Guelf merchants and partisans of the [[Catholic Church]] who fought against them for control of Northern and central Italy in the thirteenth century, had within them residual influences of pre-Christian Celtic and Nordic initiatic traditions representing the Grail myth. He also held that the Guelf victory against the Ghibellines represented a regression of the castes, since the merchant caste took over from the warrior caste.<ref name=Sedgwick/> In the epilogue to this text Evola argued that the [[Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory]] forgery the [[Protocols of Zion]], regardless of whether it was authentic or not, was a cogent representation of modernity.<ref name=Barber>Richard W. Barber. ''The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief''. Harvard University Press, 2004</ref> Historian [[Richard Barber]] stated that in this book, "Evola mixes rhetoric, prejudice, scholarship, and politics into a strange version of the present and future, but in the process he brings together for the first time interest in the esoteric and in conspiracy theory which characterize much of the later Grail literature."<ref name=Barber/> The Nazi Grail seeker [[Otto Rahn]] admired Julius Evola.<ref name=Rahn/>
===Post-World War II===
After World War II, Evola continued his work in esotericism. He wrote a number of books and articles on [[sexual magic]] and various other esoteric studies, including ''[[The Yoga of Power|The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way]]'' (1949), ''[[Eros and the Mysteries of Love|Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex]]'' (1958), ''[[Meditations on the Peaks|Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest]]'' (1974), ''[[The Path of Enlightenment|The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries]]'' (1977). He also wrote his two explicitly political books ''[[Men Among the Ruins|Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist]]'' (1953), ''[[Ride the Tiger|Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul]]'' (1961), and his autobiography ''[[Il Cammino del Cinabro|The Path of Cinnabar]]'' (1963).


In ''The Doctrine of Awakening'', Evola argued that the [[Pāli Canon]] could be held to represent true Buddhism.<ref name=forum/> His interpretation of Buddhism is that it was intended to be anti-democratic, that it revealed the essence of an "aryan" tradition that had become corrupted and lost in the West, and that it coud be interpreted in such a way as to reveal the superiority of a warrior caste.<ref name=forum/> [[Harry Oldmeadow]] described Evola's work on Buddhism as exhibiting Nietzschean influence.<ref>Harry Oldmeadow. ''Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions''. World Wisdom, Inc, 2004. p. 369</ref> However, Evola criticized Nietzsche's anti-ascetic prejudice.<ref name=forum>T. Skorupski. ''The Buddhist Forum, Volume 4''. Routledge, 2005</ref> The book "received the official approbation of the Pāli [text] society", and was published by a reputable Orientalist publisher.<ref name=forum/> Evola later confessed that he was not a Buddhist, and that his text was meant to balance his earlier work on the Hindu ''tantras''.<ref name=forum/> In ''Tantric Buddhism in East Asia'', Richard K. Payne, Dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, argued that Evola manipulated Tantra in the service of right wing violence, and that the emphasis on "power" in ''The Yoga of Power'' gave insight into his mentality.<ref>Richard K. Payne. ''Tantric Buddhism in East Asia''. Simon and Schuster, 2006. p. 229</ref>
In the post-war years, Evola's writings were held in high esteem by members of the [[neo-fascist]] movement in Italy, and because of this, he was put on trial from June through November 1951 on the charge of attempting to revive [[Fascism]] in Italy. He was acquitted because he could prove that he was never a member of the Fascist party, and that all accusations were made without evidence to prove that his writings glorified Fascism.<ref>Evola - "Autodifesa/Self-Defence" in appendix to ''Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist'' 1953</ref>
''Ride the Tiger'', Evola's last major work, which saw him examining dissolution and subversion in a world in which [[God is dead|God was dead]], saw him rejecting the possibility of any political/collective revival of Tradition due to his belief that the modern world had fallen too far into the [[Kali Yuga]] for any such thing to be possible. Instead of this and rather than advocating a return to religion as [[Rene Guenon]] had, he crafted what he considered an apolitical manual for surviving and ultimately transcending the Kali Yuga. This idea was summed up in the title of the book, the Tantric metaphor of "Riding the Tiger" which in general practice, consisted of turning things that were considered inhibitory to spiritual progress by mainstream [[Brahmanical]] society — for example, meat, alcohol, and in very rare circumstances, sex — were all employed by Tantric practitioners into a means of spiritual transcendence. The process that Evola described involved potentially making use of everything from modern music, hallucinogenic drugs, relationships with the opposite sex, and even substituting the atmosphere of an urban existence for the [[Theophany]] that Traditionalists had identified in virgin nature.<ref>''Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul''. Inner Traditions, 2003.</ref>


Gregor sources the text ''Meditations on the Peaks'' for Evola's definition of spirituality as "actually what has been successfully actualized and translated into a sense of superiority which is experienced inside by the soul, and a noble demeanor, which is expressed in the body."<ref>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. pp. 101-102</ref>
===Death===
Evola died unmarried, without children, on 11 June 1974 in Rome. His ashes were deposited in a hole cut in a [[glacier]] on [[Mt. Rosa]].{{Citation needed|reason=According to Tom Sunic, Evola's ashes were scattered over the Adriatic sea|date=September 2016}}


The elitist aspects of [[Nietzsche]]'s writings heavily affected Evola's thought. However, Evola criticized Nietzsche for lacking the "transcendent element" in his philosophy. A reference point is needed according to Evola, and this point cannot be reached with senses or logic. Transcendental experiences and spiritual racism supply this reference point, achieved through the heroic element in Man.<ref name="Aaron Gillette 2002">Aaron Gillette. ''Racial Theories in Fascist Italy.'' London: Routledge, 2002.</ref>
==Philosophy==
[[Friedrich Nietzsche]] heavily affected Evola's thought. However, Evola criticized Nietzsche for lacking the "transcendent element" in his philosophy, thus ultimately leading to the latter's mental collapse in 1889. A reference point is needed according to Evola, and this point cannot be reached with senses or logic but with transcendental experiences achieved through symbolism of the heroic element in Man.<ref>''Also Sprach Zarathustra'' (1883-5, ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]]''), Nietzsche's major work that denied the existence of God, and repudiated Christian ethics, despising democratic idealism.</ref>


===Tradition===
===Racism===
Evola has been described as "one of the most influential fascist racists in Italian history."<ref name="Aaron Gillette 2002"/> [[Benito Mussolini]] read Evola's ''[[Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race]]'' (''Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza'') in August 1941, and met with Evola to offer him his praise. Evola later recounted that Mussolini had found in his work a uniquely Roman form of fascist [[racism]] distinct from that found in [[Nazi Germany]]. With Mussolini's backing, Evola launched the minor journal ''Sangue e Spirito'' (Blood and Spirit). While not always in agreement with German racial theorists, Evola traveled to Germany in February 1942 and obtained support for German collaboration on ''Sangue e Spirito'' from "key figures in the German racial hierarchy."<ref name="Aaron Gillette 2002"/>
Evola's systematic and detailed references to ancient and modern texts make it difficult to speak about influences, though affinities could exist between Evola and [[Plato]], [[Oswald Spengler]], [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain]], [[Arthur de Gobineau]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Meister Eckhart]], [[Homer]], [[Jacob Boehme]], [[René Guénon]] and several [[Catholic]] thinkers like [[Juan Donoso Cortés]] and [[Joseph de Maistre]]. The Italian philosopher of history [[Giambattista Vico]] provided Evola with the concepts of primordial [[epic hero|heroic]] law, "natural heroic rights", and the meaning of the [[Indo-European]] [[Latin]] term ''vir'' as indicative of "wisdom, priesthood and kingship." Crucial to Evola's formulation of the idea of "solar masculinity" versus "[[chthonic]] masculinity" and [[matriarchal]] regression was the maverick 19th century Swiss scholar [[Johann Jakob Bachofen]]. Other prominent, philosophically foundational influences for Evola include the ancient Aryo-Hindu scripture that teaches the concept of "detached violence", the ''[[Bhagavad Gita]]'', and the [[Aryan]] [[kshatriya]] sage Siddartha Gotama, the historical [[Gautama Buddha|Buddha]].<ref>Evola, "The Path of Cinnabar", 1963</ref>


Evola expanded racism to include racism of the body, soul and spirit, giving primacy to the latter alleged factor, and asserting that "races only declined when their spirit failed."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> According to Wolff,
Like Guénon, he believed that mankind is living in the [[Kali Yuga]] of the [[Hindu]] tradition, the Dark Age of unleashed, materialistic appetites. The Kali Yuga is the last of four ages, which form a cycle from the [[Satya Yuga]] or [[Golden Age]] through the Kali Yuga or the [[Hesiod]]ic [[Iron Age]]. Evola argued that both Italian fascism and [[National Socialism]] held hope for a reconstitution of the primordial "celestial race."<ref>[[A. James Gregor]], ''Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.</ref>


{{blockquote|Evola's ‘totalitarian’ or ‘spiritual’ racism was no milder than Nazi biological racism. It actually implied far greater consequences because it discriminated not only against the Jews, but all representatives of the modern western world. Evola's ambition was to elaborate an Italian version of racism and antisemitism, one that could be integrated into the Fascist project to create a New Man. Placed in an Italian context, Evola's totalitarian racism was supposed to contribute to a ‘purification process’ that would precede this new type of human being.<ref name=Wolff/>}}
For Evola, the word Tradition had a meaning very similar to that of Truth. The doctrine of the four ages, a broad characterization of the attributes of Tradition and their manifestations in traditional societies makes up the first half of Evola's major work ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]''. In ''Revolt'', he expounds according to the ancient texts that there is not one tradition, but two: an older and degenerate tradition that is [[feminine]], [[matriarchal]], unheroic, associated with the [[wikt:telluric|telluric]] [[negroid]] racial remnants of [[Lemuria (continent)|Lemuria]]; and a higher one that is [[masculine]], [[epic hero|heroic]], "[[Uranian]]" and purely [[Aryo-Hyperborean]] in its origin. The latter one later gave rise to an ambiguous [[Western world|Western]]-[[Atlantic]] tradition, which combined aspects of both through the historical [[Hyperborean]] migrations and their degenerating assimilation of exotic spiritual influences from the South.


Like [[René Guénon]], he believed that mankind is living in the [[Kali Yuga]] of the [[Hindu]] tradition, the Dark Age of unleashed, materialistic appetites. The Kali Yuga is the last of a four age cycle. Evola argued that both Italian fascism and [[National Socialism|Nazism]] held hope for a reconstitution of the "celestial" [[Aryan race]].<ref name=intellectuals>[[A. James Gregor]], ''Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.</ref> He drew on mythology of super-races and their decline, particularly alleged [[hyperborea]]ns, and maintained that traces of their influence could be felt in Indo-European man, which he nevertheless felt devolved from those alleged higher forms.<ref name="Furlong 2011" />
In the [[Golden Age]] existed in the dominating elites, the "Divine Kings", a convergence of the two powers, namely the spiritual principle and the royal principle. From the Aryo-Hindu tradition, he sees the human type of the [[Rajarshi]] as an embodiment of the Golden Age ideal and quotes the [[Brihadaranyaka Upanishad]] (1.4.11): "This is why nothing is greater than the warrior nobility; the priests themselves venerate the warrior when the consecration of the king occurs." Evola argues that in the Hindu tradition are plenty of instances of kings who already possess or eventually achieve a spiritual knowledge greater than that possessed by the later-times degenerated [[brahmana]]. This is the case, for instance, of [[King Jaivala]], whose knowledge was not imparted by any priest, but rather reserved to the warrior caste; also, in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (4.3.1) King [[Janaka]] teaches the brahmana [[Yajnavalkya]] the doctrine of the transcendent Self. Evola explains that, according to tradition, the primordial [[gnosis]] was handed down, starting from [[Ikshvaku (Hinduism)|Ikshvaku]], in regal succession;<ref>cf. [[Bhagavadgita]], 4. 1-2</ref> the same [[Sun Dynasty]] (''surya-vamsa'') was connected with [[Eye color#Blue|blue-eyed]], [[Light skin|fair-skinned]]<ref>{{cite web|author1=Chuan Zhi|title=Ancient Wisdom: The Blue Lotus|url=http://www.hsuyun.org/index.php/essays/essays-from-clergy/all-by-chuanzhi/50-ancientwisdom.html|accessdate=22 April 2015|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140819082233/http://www.hsuyun.org/index.php/essays/essays-from-clergy/all-by-chuanzhi/50-ancientwisdom.html|archivedate=19 August 2014|date=17 July 2001}}</ref> [[Gautama Buddha]]'s aristocratic Aryan family ([[Sutta Nipata]], 3). In the laws of the second or Silver Age, the [[Laws of Manu]], the text states "rulers do not prosper without priests and priests do not thrive without rulers" and that "the priest is said to be the root of the law, and the ruler is the peak" (11.321-2;11.83-4).


{{blockquote|In 1942, in the course of the Second World War, Fascist intellectuals published excoriating criticism of Evola’s racism. There were reviews of ''Sintesi di dottrina della razza'' that entirely dismantled the complex structure of Evola’s exposition. The argument was made that if the ''spirit'' of humankind were Evola’s concern, and there were Jews, or perhaps blacks, who displayed the heroic and sublime properties of the Hyperboreans, what difference did it make if that spirit were housed in “non-Aryan bodies”? Of what conceivable importance were physical properties when the real concern is with spirituality? In one of Fascism’s most important theoretical journals, Evola’s critic pointed out that many Nordic-Aryans, not to speak of Mediterranean Aryans, fail to demonstrate any Hyperborean properties. Instead, they make obvious their materialism, their sensuality, their indifference to loyalty and sacrifice, together with their consuming greed. How do they differ from “inferior” races, and why should anyone wish, in any way, to favor them?<ref>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 106</ref>}}
===Views on Christianity===
In reference to [[Christianity]], Evola distinguished between 1) the [[Christian mysticism|mystical character]] of [[primitive Christianity]] and its later social history on the one hand, and 2) the primordial-Hyperborean elements and the decadent [[Jewish Christian|Judaic elements]] on the other. In ''Revolt Against the Modern World'', he asserts "in the symbolism of Christ are traces of a mysteric pattern"{{rp|p:281}} and "Jesus' saying in [[Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] (11:12) concerning the violence suffered by the kingdom of Heaven and the revival of the [[Davidic]] saying: 'You are gods' ([[Gospel of John|John]] 10:34), belong to elements that exercised virtually no influence on the main pathos of early Christianity" (''Revolt'', {{rp|p:284}}). Evola states "the Christian legend of the [[Biblical Magi|three magi]] is an attempt to claim for Christianity a traditional character in the superior sense I give to the term."<ref>''The Mystery of the Grail'', {{rp|p:45}}</ref> In the same work, Evola argues "the Jewish notion of a [[Messiah]] and the Christian notion of [[God's Kingdom]], which many people believe to have greatly influenced the medieval imperial myth, are nothing but an echo of the ancient and pre-Christian [[Aryo-Iranian]] concept" of the [[Saoshyant]] as "lord of a future, triumphal kingdom of the [[Ahura Mazda|God of Light]]" and "slayer of the [[Ahriman]]ic dark forces".<ref>''The Mystery of the Grail'', {{rp|p:39}}</ref> Evola recalls the mysterious figure of the priest-king [[Melchizedek]] as a primary point of juncture with the primordial sacral-royal Tradition of the origins. [[Abraham]] receives an almost [[feudal]] spiritual [[investiture]] from Melchizedek in the biblical episode of [[Genesis 14]], giving the mysterious priest-king [[tithes]], thus symbolizing the Abrahamic tradition's implicit dependency (cf. [[Paul the Apostle|St. Paul]]: "It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior", [[Epistle to the Hebrews|Hebrews 7:1-3]]). Evola often notes the role of the "regal religion according to Melchizedek" in the [[Ghibelline]] ideology (the medieval Italian faction supporting the [[Holy Roman Emperor]] against the [[papacy]]). Evola finds the testimony of [[Eginhard]] significant, who states that after [[Charlemagne]] was consecrated and hailed with the formula, "Long life and victory to Charles the Great, crowned by God, great and peaceful emperor of the Romans!" the pope "prostrated himself (''adoravit'') before Charles, according to the ritual established at the time of the ancient emperors." Evola emphasizes how the [[Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor|Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund]] (1368–1437), founder of the militant-Catholic chivalric [[Order of the Dragon]], continuing a long tradition of Christian-Roman and [[Byzantine]] imperial dominance in religious matters, summoned the [[Council of Constance]] in 1413, to be held 1414-18 in order to purify the clergy from schisms and anarchy.<ref>Nietzsche (1888c) ''Der Antichrist'', 1895; trans. [[Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)|W. Kaufmann]] as ''[[The Antichrist (book)|The Antichrist]]'', in ''The Portable Nietzsche'', New York: Viking, 1954.</ref> The Ghibelline conspiracy being the overwhelming of the [[Holy See|Vatican]]'s spiritual authority with the secular power of the city state. The internecine warfare led to an [[apocalypticism|apocalyptic]] interpretation by [[Russian Symbolists]] of Nietzsche's appropriations.<ref>''Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', (2000), p. 631-2.</ref>


Of the Jews, Evola endorsed the views provided by [[Otto Weininger]], and viewed Jews as corrosive and anti-traditional, though he described [[Adolf Hitler]]'s more fanatical anti-Semitism as a paranoid idée fixe which damaged the reputation of the Third Reich.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> In this conception, "The Jews were stigmatized, not as representatives of a biological race, but as the carriers of a world view, a way of being and thinking—simply put, a spirit—that corresponded to the ‘worst’ and ‘most decadent’ features of modernity: democracy, egalitarianism and materialism."<ref name=Wolff/> He did, however, believe that one could be "Aryan", but have a "Jewish" soul, just as one could be "Jewish", but have an "Aryan" soul.<ref>Gary Lachman. ''Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen''. Quest Books, 2012. p. 217</ref> Among such Jews of "sufficiently heroic, ascetic, and sacral" character to fit the latter category were, in Evola's view, Otto Weininger and [[Carlo Michelstaedter]].<ref name=vitiated>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 105</ref>
The classical Traditional polity is structured according to a strict hierarchy of [[sociopolitical]] functions, where the lower functions are concerned with mere matter and organic vitality and the ascending functions progressively ruled by spirit. This order, in which powers of spirit correlate to societal status, Evola finds crystallized in the [[Indian caste system]], [[the Republic of Plato]], ancient Iranian society, and the [[estates of the realm|medieval hierarchical class divisions]] between [[peasants]], [[Medieval bourgeoisie|burghers]], [[nobility]] and the [[clergy]] and [[military religious orders]]. The involution through the cycle of the ages was mirrored in the law of the regression of the castes, from the primal "heaven-born" kings to the deconsecrated slavish usurpers and raceless pariahs of the present. Evola saw the [[Ghibelline]] dynasty of [[Hohenstauffen]] emperors (1152–1271) as the [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] champion of the primordial "sacred regality" in a renewed [[Holy Roman Empire]]. Once the solar, golden, sacred regality of the mythical first age fell, power devolved upon a lunar, silver, feminized priestly caste before an unconsecrated warrior nobility struggled against it, announcing the Bronze Age. Then power shifts to the mercantile caste, represented by the Italian [[comune]], [[Freemasonry]], the Jewish financial oligarchy of the [[Renaissance]], and [[New World]] American Judeo-Protestant [[plutocracy]]. By the beginning of the twentieth century, organized labour and [[Marxist]]-[[Trotskyite]] subverters sought to transfer power to the last caste of slaves or [[sudras]], or the consumer-pariah, reducing all values to matter, machines, [[dysgenic]] [[egalitarianism]] and the reign of abstract quantity.


Evola otherwise spoke of "inferior non-European races"<ref>Kevin Coogan. ''Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International''. Autonomedia, 1999. p. 314</ref> and as noted by Merkl, "Evola was never prepared to discount the value of blood altogether, and he later wrote: "a certain balanced consciousness and dignity of race can be considered healthy, especially if one thinks of where we are going in our time with the exaltation of the negro and all the rest, with the anticolonialist psychosis, and with the 'integrationist' fanaticism: all parallel phenomena in the decline of Europe and the West.""<ref>Peter H. Merkl. ''Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations''. University of California Press, 1986. p. 85</ref> In ''Mussolini's Intellectuals'', [[A. James Gregor]] stated that: "[In the German rendering of Imperialismo pagano, ''Heidnischer Imperialismus''], Evola argues that it is out of the creativity of an 'ur-Aryan' and 'solar-Nordic' blood that world culture emerges. Conversely, culture decline is a function of the feckless mixture of Aryan, with lesser, 'animalistic' blood."<ref name=intellectuals/>
===Paths to enlightenment===
The path to enlightenment is the chief subject of a number of Evola's works. First and foremost is the Buddhist ascesis as he rediscovered it following over two thousand years of obstruction of the Buddha's teachings (''[[The Doctrine of Awakening|The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts]]''). He tries to show the ways that allow a man to survive spiritually intact in the modern age of obscuration and to achieve supra-human liberation or transcendence. Evola based his interpretation of Buddhism on the original [[Pali Canon]], rejected western interpretations of Buddhism as a humanitarian religion of compassion for all beings, held reincarnation as a false tenet not found in the original Pali Canon and saw the Mahayana tradition as heterodox along with certain aspects of Theravada.<ref>The doctrine of awakening: the attainment of self-mastery according to the earliest Buddhist texts. Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1995</ref>


In ''Revolt against the Modern World]]'', Evola developed a "general objective law: the law of the regression of the castes", claiming that "[t]he meaning of history from the most ancient times is this: the gradual decline of power and type of civilization from one to another of the four castes - sacred leaders, warrior nobility, bourgeoisie (economy, "merchants") and slaves - which in the traditional civilizations corresponded to the qualitative differentiation in the principal human possibilities."<ref name="Furlong 2011" />
Even in his book ''[[Meditations on the Peaks|Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest]]'' Evola discussed [[mountaineering]] as a possible approach or support on the way of initiatic ascesis in which heroic action is combined with specialized knowledge and training culminating in an initiation — the climbing of the mountain. In this way, and not as a sport or a recreation, mountaineering can be a "spiritual quest," as the subtitle of the book suggests.


As noted by Furlong,
===Ascesis and initiation===
According to Julius Evola, tradition in its purest form encompassed asceticism, which he described in ''[[The Doctrine of Awakening|The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts]]'' as a discipline. He describes two basic and complementary types of asceticism — that of action and that of [[contemplation]]. The asceticism of action is personified by the warrior while that of contemplation by the pure ascetic; he described Buddhism as the highest form of the asceticism of contemplation, a form very suitable for the warrior in his preparation for inner and outer warfare.


{{blockquote|It was this caste-based perspective that was developed in the 1930s and during the war in Evola's extensive writings on racism; for Evola, the core of racial superiority lay in the spiritual qualities of the higher castes, which expressed themselves in physical as well as in cultural features but were not determined by them. The law of the regression of castes places racism at the core of Evola's philosophy, since he sees an increasing predominance of lower races as directly expressed through modern mass democracies.<ref name="Furlong 2011" />}}
===Metaphysics of war===
In his ''[[Metaphysics of War]]'', Evola describes how adapting the language of war can be a means through which the warrior can be called to a higher form of spiritual existence. Towards this aim he adopts the language of greater and lesser [[jihad]], explaining how the greater jihad of spiritual struggle can help one transform oneself and create a metaphysical basis for opposing modernity. He also explains how the use of spiritual language in warfare is metaphysically appropriate.


Furlong noted Evola's frequent use of the term "Aryan" to denote the nobility imbued with traditional spirituality prior to the end of World War II, after which he used it very rarely.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> Wolff noted that:
Evola rejected pacifism as it, according to the theory, was materialistic and made people comfortable and weak in their existence, while war breaks the routine of "comfortable life" and offers a transfiguring knowledge of life: "life according to death". Evola writes that war always has an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value. In his works Evola calls for the "reawakening of heroic ideals" and spiritualism through war.


{{blockquote|From 1945 the issue of race disappeared from Evola's writings. Nonetheless his ongoing intellectual concerns remained unchanged: anthropological pessimism, elitism and contempt for the weak. The doctrine of the Aryan-Roman ‘super-race’ was simply restated as a doctrine of the ‘leaders of men’, while the Ordine Fascista dell'Impero Italiano was simply relabelled the Ordine, or ‘male society’: no longer with reference to the SS, but to the mediaeval Teutonic Knights or the Knights Templar, already mentioned in Rivolta.<ref name=Wolff/>}}
===Metaphysics of sex===
In ''[[The Yoga of Power|The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way]]'' and also ''[[Eros and the Mysteries of Love|Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex]]'', Evola described the practice of sexual magic as an asceticism of action that allows one to achieve transcendent states through physical action, primarily sex. To explain the metaphysics of sex, Evola cites the original meaning of the word "orgy" as "the state of inspired exaltation that began the initiatory process in the ancient Greek mysteries. But when this exaltation of eros, itself akin to other experiences of a supersensual nature, becomes individualized as a longing that is only carnal, then it deteriorates and ends finally in the form constituted by mere "pleasure, or venereal lust".<ref>''The Metaphysics of Sex'', p.48</ref>


===Anti-Feminism===
In his sexual philosophy, Evola followed the esoteric Hindu and Buddhist schools in the teaching of retention of semen as a means of ontological energization and ultimate self-mastery. "[[Virya]], or spiritual manhood, if lost or wasted results in death and if withheld and conserved leads to life".<ref>''The Metaphysics of Sex'', p.219</ref> Evola considered Traditional chastity as signifying "control, limit, anti-titanic purity, overcoming of pride, and immaterial unshakability, rather than a moralistic and sexuophobic concept".<ref>''The Mystery of the Grail'', p.80</ref>


Julius Evola believed that relations between the sexes needed to be rectified. He held that modern notions of sex as an instrument of passion were a degeneration of the use of sex as a means of ordering and spiritual initiation, by which an elite could reproduce itself not quantitavely, but qualitatively. In this context he held that the alleged higher qualities expected of a man of a particular race were not those expected of a woman of the same race - that male principles are accentuated between races, while those of women are more alike and less differentiated. He held that "just relations between the sexes" involved women acknowledging their inequality with men.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> Evola regarded matriarchy and goddess religions as a symptom of decadence, and preferred a hyper-masculine, warrior ethos.<ref>J. Gordon Melton, Martin Baumann. ''Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, 2nd Edition [6 volumes]: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices''. ABC-CLIO, 2010. p. 1085</ref>
Evola considered sex "the greatest magical force in nature", which through the magnetic polarity and complementary nature of the two sexes brings about the possibility of erotic transcendence. But, according to Evola homosexuality...forms a complex problem from the point of view of the metaphysics.<ref>"The Metaphysics of Sex", p.62</ref>


[[Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke]] noted the fundamental influence of [[Otto Weininger]]'s male supremacist book ''[[Sex and Character]]'' on Evola's dualism of male-female spirituality. According to Goodrich-Clarke, "Evola's celebration of virile spirituality was rooted in Weininger's work, which was widely translated by the end of the First World War."<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
Evola scorned modern [[pornography]] for being a "scanty source" of erotic experience, denouncing it as "dreadfully squalid not only in the facts and scenes described, but in its essence".<ref>''The Metaphysics of Sex'', 4</ref>


Evola's views on sexuality were dealt with at length in his text ''Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex'', which he referred to as the principal book he published in the post-war period.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> This book remains popular among many [[New Age]] adherents.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Conner |first1=Randy P. |last2=Sparks |first2=David Hatfield |last3=Sparks |first3=Mariya |date=1997 |title=Cassell's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Lore |publisher=Cassell |page=136}}</ref>
===Politics===


===Elitism and Relationship with Fascism===
There are contradictory views among scholars as to Evola's political categorization and his possible relationship with [[fascism]] and [[neofascism]]. He has been described as a "fascist intellectual,"<ref>Blamires, Cyprian, and Paul Jackson. World Fascism: a historical encyclopedia, vol 1, Santa Barbara, CA, 2006. p. 208.</ref> a "radical traditionalist,"<ref>Packer, Jeremy. Secret agents popular icons beyond James Bond. New York, NY: Lang, 2009. p 150.</ref> "antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular,”<ref name="Atkins, Stephen E. 2004. p 89">Atkins, Stephen E.. Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. p 89.</ref> and as having been "the leading philosopher of Europe's neofascist movement."<ref name="Atkins, Stephen E. 2004. p 89"/> [[A. James Gregor|Gregor]] writes that, "Evola opposed literally every feature of Fascism."<ref>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 93.</ref> A key difference{{Citation needed|date=June 2015}} between Evola's Traditionalism and Italian Fascism is Evola's rejection of [[nationalism]], which he viewed as a conception of the modern West and not of a Traditional hierarchical social arrangement. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s [[SS]] kept a dossier on him, and in dossier document AR-126 described him as a "reactionary Roman," with a secret goal of "an insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world," and recommended that the SS "stop his effectiveness in Germany" and provide no support to him.<ref>H.T. Hansen, "A Short Introduction to Julius Evola" in Evola, ''Revolt Against the Modern World'', p xviii.</ref> When he met with "[[esoteric Hitlerist]]" [[Miguel Serrano]], Evola denied that he was a fascist or Hitlerist, but rather saw [[Metternich]] as a conservative ideal. Serrano himself was critical of Evola and saw him as an "old-style traditionalist."<ref>Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. ''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity''. New York University Press 2002, p.337)</ref> Evola's first published political work was an anti-fascist piece in 1925, and he wrote a second in 1928.<ref>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science'' Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 86.</ref> Evola called Italy's fascist movement a "laughable revolution," based on empty sentiment and materialistic concerns. He opposed the [[futurism]] that Italian fascism was aligned with, along with the "plebeian" nature of the movement.<ref>The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 86.</ref> In ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]],'' Evola clearly cites Monarchism as his preferred form of government, given that a Monarch would hold spiritual principles above the State and enforce a hierarchy of warriors, priests, merchants and scholars which he viewed as universal in traditional societies. Although he never{{Citation needed|date=June 2015}} formally aligned himself with such school, one can see strong similarities between Evola's thought and the [[Conservative Revolutionary movement]] in Germany, such as a traditionalist worldview rejecting a purely biological concept of race and the 'self'.
Julius Evola has been described as a "fascist intellectual,"<ref>Blamires, Cyprian, and Paul Jackson. World Fascism: a historical encyclopedia, vol 1, Santa Barbara, CA, 2006. p. 208.</ref> a "radical traditionalist,"<ref>Packer, Jeremy. Secret agents popular icons beyond James Bond. New York, NY: Lang, 2009. p 150.</ref> "antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular,”<ref name="Atkins, Stephen E. 2004. p 89">Atkins, Stephen E.. Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. p 89.</ref> and as having been "the leading philosopher of Europe's neofascist movement."<ref name="Atkins, Stephen E. 2004. p 89"/>. Julius Evola wrote for fascist journals, and helped develop Mussolini's manifesto of racism. Yet, while acknowledging Evola's place among fascist intellectuals, his racism, his anti-semitism and his antipathy towards democracy<ref>Gregor, A James. "Julius Evola, Fascism, and Neofascism" [https://www.scribd.com/document/323527503/A-James-Gregor-Julius-Evola-Fascism-and-Neofascism]</ref>, [[A. James Gregor|A James Gregor]] wrote that "Evola opposed literally every feature of Fascism".<ref>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 93.</ref> In a trial in 1951, Evola, who denied being a Fascist, referred to himself as a ‘superfascist’.<ref name=Wolff/> Paul Furlong wrote that "The complete Evola held views that it is fair, if somewhat summary, to categorise as elitist, racist, anti-semitic, misogynist, anti-democratic, authoritarian, and deeply anti-liberal."<ref name="Furlong 2011" />


A difference between Evola's Traditionalism and Italian Fascism is Evola's rejection of [[nationalism]], which he viewed as a conception of the modern West and not of a Traditional hierarchical social arrangement. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s [[SS]] kept a dossier on him, and in dossier document AR-126 described him as a "reactionary Roman," with a secret goal of "an insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world," and recommended that the SS "stop his effectiveness in Germany" and provide no support to him.<ref>H.T. Hansen, "A Short Introduction to Julius Evola" in Evola, ''Revolt Against the Modern World'', p xviii.</ref> When he met with "[[esoteric Hitlerist]]" [[Miguel Serrano]], Evola denied that he was a fascist or Hitlerist, but rather saw [[Metternich]] as a conservative ideal. Serrano himself was critical of Evola and saw him as an "old-style traditionalist."<ref>Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. ''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity''. New York University Press 2002, p.337)</ref> Evola's first published political work was an anti-fascist piece in 1925, and he wrote a second one in 1928.<ref>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science'' Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 86.</ref> Evola called Italy's fascist movement a "laughable revolution," based on empty sentiment and materialistic concerns. He opposed the [[futurism]] that Italian fascism was aligned with, along with the "plebeian" nature of the movement.<ref>The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 86.</ref>
Evola held{{Citation needed|date=June 2015}} that politics, like everything else in life, should look upward and beyond the [[Self (philosophy)|self]]. The main argument against modern "demagogic" politics is its materialistic focus and mentality, stemming from an inverted order of castes. Accordingly, in modernity, due to what he calls the ''regression of the castes'', the once-preeminent warrior caste (crystallized in the medieval [[military religious orders]] and ethical [[chivalry]] and its [[warrior code]]) has been downgraded into the figures of the mere democratic soldier and mercenary, who are servants of the artificial, soulless needs of the now-dominant mercantile and industrial interests. As Evola states, "Opposite to the 'soldier' was the type of the warrior and the member of the [[feudal]] [[noblesse d'épée|aristocracy]]; the caste to which this type belonged was the central nucleus in a corresponding social organization. This caste was not at the service of the bourgeois class but rather ruled over it, since the class that was protected depended on those who had the [[right to arms|right to bear arms]]".<ref>Men Among the Ruins: Post-war reflections of a Radical Traditionalist, Inner Traditions, Vermont, 193-204</ref>


In 1928 Evola wrote the text ''Pagan Imperialism'', a violent attack on Christianity which proposed the transformation of Fascism into a system consonant with ancient Roman values and the ancient Mystery traditions, and which proposed that Fascism transform itself into a vehicle for re-instating the caste-system and aristocracy of antiquity. This text was a diatribe in the name of Fascism against the Catholic Church, which nevertheless led to Evola being criticized by the Fascist regime, as well as by the Vatican itself. [[A. James Gregor]] argued that this text was an attack on Fascism as it stood at the time of writing, but noted that [[Benito Mussolini]] made use of it in order to threaten the Vatican with the possibility of an "anti-clerical Fascism" for political advantage.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /><ref name=gregorpagan>Gregor, A James ''The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science''. Cambridge University Press, 2006. pp. 89-91</ref> [[Aleksandr Dugin]] translated the 1933 version of Evola’s ''Pagan Imperialism'' into Russian in 1981 and distributed it in samizdat.<ref>Marlene Laruelle. ''[https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/OP294.pdf Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?]'' Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. OCCASIONAL PAPER #294. p. 10</ref>
On the meaning of his anti-'bourgeoisie' stance, Evola stated:


Evola developed a complex line of argument, synthesizing and adapting the spiritual orientation of writers favored by fascists such as [[René Guénon]] with the political concerns of the European [[Authoritarianism|Authoritarian]] Right.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> Evola hoped to influence [[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini]]'s regime toward his own variation on fascist racial theories and his "Tradionalist" philosophy. Early in 1930, Evola launched ''La Torre'' (The Tower), a bi-weekly review, to voice his [[Conservative Revolutionary movement|conservative-revolutionary ideas]] and denounce the [[demagogic]] tendencies of official fascism; government censors suppressed the journal and engaged in [[character assassination]] against its staff (for a time, Evola retained a bodyguard of like-minded radical fascists) until it died out in June of that year. From 1934 to 1943, he edited the cultural page of [[Roberto Farinacci]]'s journal ''Regime Fascista'' (The Fascist Regime).{{cn|date=February 2017}}
We are "anti-bourgeois" not in the descending sense of [[subversive]] collectivists but in the sense of opposing the dominance of the lower manifestations of the modern bourgeois spirit: effeminate materialism, commercialism, [[gangsterism]], etc.). The bourgeois tendency has its inevitable role in society, but must not be absolutized; rather, the bourgeoisie must be purified, contained, its values given their space but subordinated to superior values. We are anti-bourgeois because the bourgeois type, while ranking above the proletarian, yet stands inferior to the soldierly-heroic and spiritual-priestly orders. The bourgeois type, compared to the sacral-warrior, only represents a lesser degree of progressive manhood.<ref>''Men Among the Ruins'', 217-224</ref>


Finding Italian Fascism too compromising, Evola began to seek recognition in the [[Third Reich]], where he lectured from 1934 onward. He held hope in the Nazi SS, though took issue with Nazi populism and biological materialism. SS authorities rejected Evola's ideas as supranational, aristocratic, and thus reactionary.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Nevertheless, the [[Sicherheitsdienst]] helped Evola acquire arcane occult and Masonic texts during World War II.<ref name=Rahn/><ref name=forum/>
Evola attempted to influence Italy's fascist movement in the conservative-revolutionary direction he believed it should go — the direction of radical Traditionalism; i.e. away from the esoteric modern [[Christianity|Christian]] [[Roman Catholic Church|Church]], the [[bourgeoisie]], and the masses. His efforts to influence the regime were a failure, and he believed that by not following his advice, Mussolini's party failed to fulfill its function. He would maintain the view that a revolutionary movement, similar to Fascism but in harmony with "esoteric-tradition", was necessary for the return to a higher form of civilization.<ref>Aaron Gillette, "Racial Theories in Fascist Italy" (London: Routledge, 2003), 233-287. Gillette believes the fascist theorists were on a spectrum so wide they follow idiosyncrasies of individual proponents</ref> In the decade immediately following the war, Evola wrote two books which fall loosely into the categories "asceticism of action" and "asceticism of contemplation" in their prescriptions for political action.{{Citation needed|date=March 2011}}


Italian Fascism went into decline when, in 1943, Mussolini was deposed and imprisoned. Evola, although not a member of the [[Fascist Party]], and despite his apparent problems with the Fascist regime, was one of the first people to greet Mussolini when the latter was broken out of prison by [[Otto Skorzeny]] in 1943.<ref>Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman. ''Fascism: Post-war fascisms''. Taylor & Francis, 2004. p. 223</ref> It was Evola's custom to walk around the city during [[bombing raid]]s in order to better 'ponder his destiny'. During one such raid, in March or April 1945, a [[Shell (projectile)|shell]] fragment damaged his [[spinal cord]] and he became [[paralysis|paralyzed]] from the waist down, remaining so for the remainder of his life.<ref>Stucco 1992, xiii</ref>
In ''[[Men Among the Ruins]]'', Evola described a traditionalist attitude — possibly leading to a reactionary revolution — like what he had hoped Fascism could have been with the right leaders. This attitude is a sort of asceticism of action calling for political action to reform current society in a conservative-revolutionary / radical Traditional direction. But he also felt that the acceleration of modernity following [[World War II]]'s outcome and thus, the elimination of any truly opposing forces, made any such revolution rather impossible, unless the 'unforeseeable' imposes a radical change of circumstances.


After WWII, Evola's writing evoked interest among the neo-fascist right.<ref name=Wolff/> Evola was considered, especially after 1945, as the most important Italian theoretician of the [[Conservative Revolutionary Movement|Conservative Revolution]].<ref name=Wolff/>
In ''[[Ride the Tiger]]'', he prescribed a so-to-speak apolitical asceticism of contemplation in which a man is advised to act in the modern world, while remaining intellectually and spiritually detached from and above it. He had come to hold this view after coming to the conclusion that, in his view, the modern world was so decadent that a return to a "traditional" civilization was impossible. Evola argued that in order to survive in the modern world an enlightened or "differentiated man" should "ride the tiger". As a man, by holding onto the tiger's back, may survive the confrontation once the animal ends exhausted, so too might a man, by letting the world take him on its inexorable path, be able to turn the destructive forces around him into a kind of inner liberation.


In May, 1951, Evola was arrested and charged with promoting the revival of the Fascist Party, and of glorifying Fascism. Defending himself at trial, Evola stated that his work belonged to a long tradition of anti-democratic writers who certainly could be linked to fascism—at least fascism interpreted according to certain (Evolian) criteria—but who certainly could not be identified with Fascism, namely, the Fascist regime under Mussolini. Evola then declared that he was not a Fascist but a ‘superfascist’. He was acquitted.<ref name=Wolff>Wolff, Elisabetta Cassini. "[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2016.1243662 Evola's interpretation of fascism and moral responsibility]", Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 50</ref>
===Schutzstaffel===
In spite of all these negative aspects, there was something in National Socialism that attracted Evola: the concept of a state ruled by an Order, which he felt was embodied by the [[Schutzstaffel|SS]]. "We are inclined to the opinion that we can see the nucleus of an Order in the higher sense of tradition in the 'Black Corps," he wrote in ''Vita Italiana'' on August 15, 1938. Again in ''Vita Italiana'' on August 1941 he wrote: "Beyond the confines of the party and of any political-administrative structure, an elite in the form of a new 'Order'—that is, a kind of ascetic-military organization that is held together by the principles of 'loyalty' and 'honor,' must form the basis of the new state." As mentioned, Evola held the SS, which Himmler strove to design according to the model of the [[Teutonic Order]], to be this elite.


Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm describe Evola's primary political texts during this time period as ''Orientamenti'' and ''Men Among the Ruins''.<ref>Egil Asprem, Kennet Granholm. ''Contemporary Esotericism''. Routledge, 2014. p. 245</ref> Evola's occult ontology exerted influence over post-war fascism and neo-fascism.<ref name="Aaron Gillette 2002" /> Nevertheless, Evola attempted to dissociate himself from totalitarianism, preferring the conception of the "organic" state which he put forth in his text ''Men Among the Ruins''.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> Evola sought to develop a strategy for the implementation of a "conservative revolution" in post World War II Europe.<ref name="Furlong 2011" /> He rejected nationalism, advocating instead for a European ''Imperium'', which he desired to be expressed in various forms according to local conditions, but be "organic, hierarchical, anti-democratic, and anti-individual."<ref name="Furlong 2011" />
The castles of the SS Order, with their 'initiations,' the emphasis on transcending the purely human element, the prerequisite of physical valour, as well as the ethical requirements – loyalty, discipline, defiance of death, willingness to sacrifice, unselfishness – strengthened Evola in his conviction. He also was of the opinion that the ethics of the SS were borrowed from the Jesuits.<ref>Dr. H. T. Hansen in "Julius Evola's Political Endeavors" introduction to "Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist" (1953)</ref>


Wolff attributes extreme-right terrorist actions in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s to the influence of Julius Evola.<ref name=Wolff/>
===Race===


===Post-World War II===
A number of Evola's articles and books deal explicitly with the subject of race. In February 1939, the Race Office in Italy had a nationalist, "Mediterranean" change of personnel. The new President of High Council of Demography and Race, Giacomo Acerbo, replaced a nutrition professor. The political rise of Alberto Luchini, and the institutionalized racists from May 1941, coincided with Evola's school of thought.<ref>On these two projects, see Cassata, "La Difesa della razza." Politica, ideologia e immagine del razzismo fascista, 79–82.</ref> The convergence of the esoteric and metaphysical theories in Italy marked an effective adoption of more Nordic radicalism in Blood and Spirit.<ref>see: the influence of the Mafia in southern Italy over the Vatican during World War Two, 1939-42</ref>


After World War II, Evola continued his work in esotericism. He wrote a number of books and articles on [[sexual magic]] and various other esoteric studies, including ''The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way'' (1949), ''Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex'' (1958), ''Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest'' (1974) and ''The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries'' (1977). He also wrote his two explicitly political books ''Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist'' (1953), ''Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul'' (1961), and his autobiography ''The Path of Cinnabar'' (1963).
A.J. Gregor comments: "In the [German translation of ''Imperialismo pagano''], Evola considered principled anti-Semitism one of the essentials of a salvific 'racial rebirth' in the modern world. Not only did Evola make a point of identifying [[Karl Marx]], one of the architects of the modern world of materialism, inferiority, pretended equality, and cultural decay, as a Jew--but he spoke of a ''Jewish capitalistic yoke'' that obstructed every effort at racial regeneration"<ref>''Mussolini's Intellectuals'', 200-201</ref> In ''Revolt Against the Modern World'', he said that he considered himself to be a critic of the "racist worldview" by which he meant the theories of mainstream Nazis and others of his contemporaries. However, he wrote an introduction to an [[Italian language]] version of ''[[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'', that alleges a Jewish [[Conspiracy (political)|conspiracy]] to run the world through control of the media and finance, and replace the traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation.


''Ride the Tiger'' was Evola's last major work. Wolff noted that in this text,
Evola was indifferent as to whether the document was authentic or not. He classified it as a '[[mythology|myth]]'. "Myth" here does not have its contemporary connotation of a 'falsehood'. In Fascist parlance, ''myths'' were stories that, properly cultivated, were productive of a reality that an elite desired, such as the mobilisation of the masses.<ref>A. James Gregor, ''Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship'', 1979, pp.44ff</ref> In 1937, a year after the publication of [[Giovanni Preziosi]]'s Italian edition in 1936, when it was claimed to be a fiction, Evola wrote as follows:


{{blockquote|Evola argued that the fight against modernity was lost. The only thing a ‘real man’ could just do was to ride the tiger of modernity patiently: ‘Thus the principle to follow could be that of letting the forces and processes of this epoch take their own course, keeping oneself firm and ready to intervene when “the tiger, which cannot leap on the person riding it, is tired of running”. He chose, in other words, a sort of inner journey and ‘inner emigration’ from the world—using an expression borrowed from Heidegger—that removed him completely from active political engagement. However, he did not exclude the possibility of action in the future.<ref name=Wolff/>}}
{{cquote|Whether or not the controversial ''Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion'' are false or authentic does not affect the symptomatic value of the document in question, that is, the fact, that many of the things that have occurred in modern times, having taken place after their publication, effectively agree with the plans assumed in that document, perhaps more than a superficial observer might believe.<ref>J. Evola, ''Il Mistero del Graal e la tradizione ghibellina dell'Impero'', Laterza, Bari 1937 p.182.</ref><ref>Evola says also that this was precisely Preziosi's own view. It should also be noted that in speaking of a 'Masonic' conspiracy in such texts, 'Masonic' was often a code word for a secret lobby containing prominent secularized Jewish businessmen. The point is underscored by a recent controversy in Italy where a priest used the word 'Masonic-Jewish lobby' and, in reaction to a public outcry, subsequently changed the reference to 'Masonic', which however retains the old ambiguity in Fascist usage.</ref><ref>'Don Gelmini, prima attacca poi rettifica,' in ''La Repubblica''05/08/2007</ref>}}


However, Wolff also noted that "as Anna Jellamo declared in 1984, Evola's apoliteia in Ride the Tiger was in truth only ‘an adjustment and improvement’ to his ‘warrior theory’."<ref name=Wolff/> Furlong considers this text, in the context of his work contemporary to its writing, as a proposition that a potential elite immunize itself from modernity as they attempt to rebel against it via "right wing anarchism."<ref name="Furlong 2011" />
In short, he was unconcerned that could be a forgery, because that did not alter what he believed was the essential truth enciphered in the document.


===Death===
In his introduction to the 1938 Italian edition of the ''Protocols'', Evola wrote that the tract had "the value of a spiritual [[wikt:tonic|tonic]]," that Jews "destroy every surviving trace of true order and superior civilization," and that, "above all, in these decisive hours of western history, [the ''Protocols'' tract] cannot be ignored or dismissed without seriously undermining the front of those fighting in the name of the spirit, of tradition, of true civilization."
Evola died unmarried, without children, on 11 June 1974 in Rome.{{Citation needed|reason=According to Tom Sunic, Evola's ashes were scattered over the Adriatic sea|date=September 2016}}

For Evola this text represented a manipulation by [[occult]] powers trying to hide behind the Jewish and Freemasonic historical drive toward a merchant society soon to be replaced by the chaos of "mass society" which could eventually turn against both.<ref>Evola, ''Men Among the Ruins'', 1953</ref>

Evola attributed to Jews, as well as to what he termed the "semitic spirit,"<ref>A. James Gregor. ''Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought.'' Princeton University Press, 2005.</ref> a corrosive effect on the "Nordic" race (a race that was, in Evola's mythology, analogous to the Nazi's "Aryans"). Evola argued that not only Jews, but even non-Jews "Judaicized in their souls" must be combated by a "coherent, complete, impartial" anti-Semitism given the means to "identify and combat the Jewish mentality."<ref>Quoted in Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy, Routledge, 2002.</ref> Evola supported the Nazi anti-Semitic view that there was a hidden form of Jewish power and influence in the modern world; he thought this Jewish power was a symptom of the "modern" world's lack of true aristocratic leadership. To some Evola was "to the right of Fascism", although he remained a non-combatant theorist, he was identified with "Mediterranean nationalist" scholars who believed Jewishness and Italians were incompatible.<ref>Francesco Cassata, "A destra del fascismo: profilo politico di Julius Evola (Bollato Boringhieri, 2003); Gianni Scipione Rossi, "il razzista totalitario": Evola a leggenda dell'antisemittismo spirituale (Rome: Rubettino, 2007)</ref> Evola further held that Jewish people denigrated lofty "Aryan" ideals (of faith, loyalty, courage, devotion, and constancy) through a "corrosive irony" that ascribed every human activity to economic or sexual motives (à la Marx and Freud).<ref>Kevin Coogan, ''Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International'', p.309</ref> In a 1938 article Evola accused [[Sigmund Freud]], [[Karl Marx]], and [[Cesare Lombroso]] of being "proponents of Jewish materialistic culture in the nineteenth century;<ref name="Zimmerman139">{{Cite book
| author = [[Joshua D. Zimmerman|Zimmerman, Joshua D.]]
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| editor =
| title = Jews in Italy Under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945
| origyear =
| month =
| url = https://books.google.com/?id=8WGZ0MWIgUwC&printsec=frontcover#PPA139,M1
| format =
| accessdate =
| edition =
| series =
| date =
| year = 2005
| publisher = University of Cambridge Press
| location = New York

| isbn = 0-521-84101-1
| oclc = 56876639
| doi =
| id =
| pages = 139
| chapterurl =
| quote =
| ref =
}}</ref> two years later, in an essay entitled "Jews and Mathematics," Evola characterized Judaism as the antithesis of "Aryan civilization," and broadly attacked a range of what he considered examples of Jewish influences, from [[Pythagoreanism]] to [[mathematics]].<ref name="Zimmerman139"/> The article was illustrated with pictures of notable Jews interspersed with classic anti-Semitic representations.<ref name="Zimmerman139"/>

In ''The Metaphysics of Sex'' (Inner Traditions, 1st US edition 1983, pps. 9-10), Evola discoursed on his philosophy of de-evolutionary spiritual racism: "Our starting point will be not the modern theory of evolution but the traditional doctrine of involution. We do not believe the man is derived from the ape by evolution. We believe that the ape is derived from man by involution. We agree with [[Joseph De Maistre]] that savage peoples are not primitive peoples, in the sense of original peoples, but rather the degenerating remains of more ancient races that have disappeared. We concur with the various researchers (Kohlbrugge, Marconi, Dacque, Westenhofer, and Adloff) who have rebelled against the evolutionary dogma, asserting that animal species evince the degeneration of primordial man's potential. These unfulfilled or deviant potentials manifest as by-products of the true evolutionary process that man has led since the beginning."<ref>. For a complete biography of Julius Evola, see Francesco Cassata, A destra del fascismo. Profilo politico di Julius Evola (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003).</ref>

Evola believed that a race of "Nordic" people, anciently emanating from [[Golden Age]] [[Arctic]] [[Hyperborea]], originally semi-immaterial and "soft-boned", had played a crucial founding role in [[Atlantis]] and the high cultures both of the East and West. In Evola's eyes, half-remembered, cryptic memories of a "more-than-human race" once existing in a "northern paradise" constitute the patrimony of the traditions of many diverse peoples. In this occult belief, Evola was additionally influenced by ''Arctic Home in the Vedas'' by [[Bal Gangadhar Tilak]], which posited the polar North as the original home of the white Ur-Aryan tribes before their later separation into Western ([[Greeks|Hellenic]], [[Ancient Rome|Roman]], [[Celts|Celtic]], [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]]) and Eastern ([[Iranian peoples|Iranian]], [[Indo-Aryans|Indo-Aryan]]) divisions.

According to [[Joscelyn Godwin]]'s research: "the basic outlines of Evola's prehistory resemble those of [[Theosophy]], with [[Lemuria (continent)|Lemurian]], [[Atlantis|Atlantean]], and [[Aryan]] root-races succeeding each other, and a pole-shift marking the transition from one epoch to another".<ref>''Arktos'', 60</ref> Evola's dualism between the Northern Light and the Southern Light, and also the capture of the Atlanteans by the latter, is also found in the writings of Theosophy's co-founder [[Helena Petrovna Blavatsky]]:

{{cquote|The Atlanteans [gravitated] toward the Southern Pole, the pit, cosmically and terrestrially -- whence breathe the hot passions blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is."<ref>Blavatsky, ''[[The Secret Doctrine]]'', p. 274.</ref>}}

{{cquote|Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much connected with and influence right and left hand magic."<ref>i''[[The Secret Doctrine]]'' p. 400.</ref>}}

[[Victor A. Shnirelman]], a [[cultural anthropologist]] and [[ethnography|ethnographer]], has noted that cosmological racial ideas also appear in the [[Neo-Theosophy|Neo-Theosophical]] writings of H. P. Blavatsky's one-time disciple [[Alice Bailey]]. Shnirelman wrote that in Bailey's teachings, "Jews were depicted as the 'human product of the former Solar system,' linked with 'World Evil'"; he identified "similar ideas" in the works of Bailey and Evola.<ref>[[Victor A. Shnirelman|Shnirelman, Victor A.]] (1998), '[http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/13shnir.html Russian Neo-pagan Myths and Antisemitism]', in ''ACTA'' ([[Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism]]) no. 13, a special research unit of ''[[Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism|SICSA]]'' (The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism), [[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]].</ref>

The hierarchy of races is really a hierarchy of embodied spiritualities; the spirit, rather than ethnic substance, determines culture; but at the same time race is the biological "memory" of a certain spiritual orientation. In order to describe what he called the lower, [[wikt:telluric|telluric]], [[Negroid]] races, he frequently made use of the term "Southern" whereas to him higher races were "Northern." "North" and "South" are indicated as having simultaneously [[Metaphysics|metaphysical]], geographical and [[anthropological]] meanings:

{{cquote|Especially during the period of the long icy winter, it was natural that in the northern races the experience of the Sun, of Light, and of Fire itself should have acted in a spiritually liberating sense. Hence natures which were [[Uranian]]-solar, [[Twelve Olympians|Olympian]] or filled with celestial fire would have developed much more from the sacral symbolism of these races than from others. Moreover, the rigor of the climate, the sterility of the soil, the necessity for hunting, and finally the need to emigrate across unknown seas and continents would naturally have molded those who preserved that spiritual experience of the Sun, of the luminous sky, and of fire into the temperament of warriors, of conquerors, of navigators, so as to favor that synthesis between spirituality and virility of which characteristic traces are preserved in the Aryan races (''Revolt'', p. 208).}}

Evola quotes the [[Confucian]] [[Chung Yung]] (10.4) to reinforce his point:

{{cquote|To teach with kindly benevolence, not to lose one's temper and avenge the unreasonableness of others, that is the virile energy of the South that is followed by the well-bred man. To sleep on a heap of arms and untanned skins, to die unflinching and as if dying were not enough, that is the virile energy of the North that is followed by the brave man.}}

According to Evola, the more recent Northern, White and [[Proto-Indo-Europeans|Indo-European peoples]] (despite racial mixing) implicitly preserved more of the primordial Arctic [[Hyperborean]] blood-memory and are objectively spiritually superior to the archaic, matter-obsessed degenerate remnants of the races of the South. Evola saw the sign of the Hyperborean Tradition<ref>''Revolt'', 245</ref> and its antagonism with the forces of Antitradition in the Indian mythology surrounding the [[Rigvedic deities|Vedic]] divinity [[Indra]] (cf. [[Thor]]), who is "fair of cheek" ([[Rig Veda]], I.[http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv01009.htm 9].3) and with his "fair-complexioned friends" (I.[http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv01100.htm 100].18) annihilates the lawless black [[Dasyu]], "giving protection to the Aryan color" (III.[http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv03034.htm 34].9), blowing to nothingness "the swarthy skin which Indra hates" (IX.[http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv09073.htm 73].5).

On the "demonic" nature of the lower [[negroid]] races and their degenerating remnants, Evola relies on an old Aryo-[[Zoroastrian]] tradition that teaches negroids belonged to the dark side owing to their alleged origin in the union between a [[demon]] and a wicked witch: "[[Zohak]], during his reign, let loose a dev (demon) on a young woman, and let loose a young man on a parik (witch). They performed [[coition]] with [the sight] of the apparition; the negro came into being through that [novel] kind of coition" ([[Bundahishn]], [http://www.avesta.org/mp/grb12.htm XIVB]).

Flowering forth in the [[Ancient Greece|Greek]], pre-[[Celts|Celtic]], [[Indo-Aryans|Indo-Aryan]], Aryo-[[Persian Empire|Persian]], [[Armenians|Armenic]], [[Ancient Rome|Roman]], [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]], [[Tiwanaku]], [[Teotihuacán]], early [[China|Chinese]], [[Aztec]]-[[Nahua peoples|Nahua]], [[Inca]] and first [[Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]] dynasties' representatives, with more or less ethnic but great spiritual purity, the "Northern Light" was considerably lost to the Atlantean offshoot which defiled itself through spiritual integration into the spiritual lunar sphere of the world of the "Mother" or "Earth" of the "Southern Light" and further [[miscegenation]] with bestial, dark [[Lemuria (continent)|Lemurian]] stocks. ''Revolt Against the Modern World'' presents world-history to be the saga of dualistic conflict between the "Northern Light" and the "Southern Light": on one side stand the Uranian, [[patriarchal]] stocks of purer Hyperborean lineage, climatically harshly conditioned and heroic-minded celebrators of the [[winter solstice]]; on the other stand the [[chthonic]] and [[Titan (mythology)|titanized]] inferior races and the spiritually/ethnically bastardized heirs of the fallen Atlantean civilization captured by the "Southern Light" and its sacerdotal and naturalistic-[[pantheist]] religion of promiscuous vegetal and animal fertility.<ref>[[Rene Guenon]]: "The starting-point given to the year that one can call normal, as being in direct conformity with primordial tradition, is the winter solstice"; ''Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles'', 24</ref>

Evola cites [[Plato]]'s description of the fall of Atlantis by Atlantean [[miscegenation]] with humankind ([[Critias]], 110c; 120d-e; 121a-b) and the [[Bible|biblical]] myth of the ''benei elohim'', the [[Sons of God]] catastrophically mixing with the "daughters of men" ([[s:Bible (King James)/Genesis#Chapter 6|Genesis 6]]: 4-13) as support for his esoteric, [[Aryanist]] [[anthropogenesis]]. Evola interprets [[archeological]] findings of semi-human [[hominid]] fossils as not purely primordial but evidence of the mismating of the celestial boreal race with inferior animalistic breeds as well, and most often, as remnants of degenerating, bestialized races in their final involutionary stages preceding extinction.

Just as Evola affirmed the natural hierarchy between different individuals of the same race, so he also affirmed a natural rank ordering of the different human races. As the best-preserved remnants of the primordial celestial Hyperboreans, Evola affirmed the white race in its different branches as the creator of the greatest planetary civilizations:

"We have to remember that behind the various caprices of modern historical theories, and as a more profound and primordial reality, there stands the unity of blood and spirit of the white races who created the greatest civilizations both of the East and West, the Iranian and Hindu as well as the ancient Greek and Roman and the Germanic".<ref>''The Doctrine of Awakening'', 14</ref>
In fact, Evola publicly celebrated Italian Fascism as a means to ensure and restore in a modern decadent world [[white supremacy]]:

"And if Fascist Italy, among the various Western nations is the one which first wished for a reaction against the degeneration of the materialist, democratic and capitalist civilisation, against the League of Nations ideology, there are grounds for thinking, without even any scintilla of chauvinistic infatuation, that Italy will be on the front line among the forces which will guide the future world and will restore the supremacy of the white race".<ref>"Il Problema della supremazia della razza bianca" [The Problem of the Supremacy of the White Race], ''Lo Stato'', 1936</ref>
While characterizing race as something hereditary and biological, Evola also claimed that race was not simply and linearly defined by mere skin color and the various other hereditary factors. In other words, in addition to predominantly "Aryan" or, more broadly, "Northern" biology, the initial necessary precondition for further racial differentiation, one must prove oneself spiritually "Aryan". The fact that in India the term [[Arya]] was the synonym of [[dwija]], "twice-born" or "regenerated" supports this point. To him higher race implied something akin to supra-human, spiritual caste. Evola wrote, "the supernatural element was the foundation of the idea of a traditional patriciate and of legitimate royalty."

In 'Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist,' Thomas Sheehan points out that "Evola prided himself on developing a theory of races that went beyond the merely biological to the spiritual. What constitutes a superior race for Evola is the spiritual orientation of a given stock, the subsumption of the requisite biological material (and that did mean the Aryan races) under a qualitatively elevating form, namely reference to the realm of the spirit. But in fact all that Evola's theory does is to promote biological-ethnic racism a step higher. There are enough references in his works to the 'inferior, non-European races,' to the 'power of inferior strata and races,' to disgusting 'Negro syncopations' in jazz, to 'Jewish psychoanalysis'--and enough adulation of the Aryans—for us to divine that Evola's 'spiritual' racism may have had something other than disinterested Apollonian origins."

In ''Mussolini's Intellectuals'', [[A. James Gregor]] discusses Evola's racism as follows: "[In the German rendering of ''Imperialismo pagano''], Evola argues that it is out of the creativity of an 'ur-Aryan' and 'solar-Nordic' blood that world culture emerges. Conversely, culture decline is a function of the feckless mixture of Aryan, with lesser 'animalistic,' blood ... According to ''Imperialismo pagano'', the 'natural' and endogamous caste system of antiquity that sustained the 'purity' of the culture-creating 'Hyperborean-Nordics' slowly disintegrated over time under the corrosive influence of Semitic religion and the 'Semitic spirit'.

While Evola was clear about the relative insignificance of the physical attributes of race, he did acknowledge that the 'original Hyperboreans,' which he was critically concerned, were probably 'dolichocephalic, tall and slender, blond and blue-eyed'.<ref>''[[Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race|Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza]]'', 67</ref> Evola held that the physical mixture of races, particularly between Aryans and races that were 'alien' (i.e., non-Aryan), was always hazardous — but mixture between 'related' races might produce hybrid vigor. Given his generous notion of what constituted an Aryan race (Evola was convinced of the Hyperborean origins of most Europeans, the indigenous peoples of North and South America, as well as those of the Indian subcontinent), those candidate races Evola considered to be truly 'alien' were never explicitly catalogued—except in terms of Semites and the deeply pigmented peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.<ref>Evola, 'Psicologia criminale ebraica,' ''Difesa della Razza'' 2, no. 18, 32–35; ''Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza'', 74, 237</ref> What seemed eminently clear, for all the qualifiers, was that all the material races Evola identified as capable of serving as hosts for the extrabiological and supernatural spiritual elements were purportedly biological descendents of the 'Aryan-Nordics' of Hyperborea.

In the golden age, the celestial race was spiritual—only gradually, over time, taking on material properties ... As a necessary consequence of [[miscegenation]], there was a continual and irreversible decline of the celestials in ancient times a tenuous revival under the Romans, and another by the Nordic-Germans during the course of the [[Holy Roman Empire]]—but by the time of the Renaissance, with its humanism, rationalism, universalism and its gradual submission to the theses of the equality of all humans, humankind had entered the ''kali-yuga'', the terminal age of 'obscurity,' the end of this current race cycle. Evola identifies the Jews as providing a 'ferment of decomposition, dissolution and corruption' in antiquity;<ref>Evola, ''Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza'', 160; ''Rivolta contro il mondo moderno'', 314</ref> For Evola, given the fateful path traversed by history, there remained only one course for contemporary humanity: an attempt at reconstitution of the primordial celestial race, amid the debris of previous race cycles, employing the racial remnants of the Hyperboreans.

For Evola, spiritual forces shaped races for their own inscrutable purposes. The notion that mutations, governed from 'on high,' might be the source of raciation was a relatively common conviction among German esoterics.<ref>Pauwels and Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians, 400–5</ref> Geneticists, Evola argued, failed to provide a compelling account of how mutations occur. He maintained, as a consequence, that 'the cause is to be found elsewhere, in the actions of a superbiological element not reducible to the determinism of the physical transmission of genetic materials.' The true cause of hereditary variation was to be found 'rather by starting from another point of view that affords one an entirely different set of laws' than those of empirical science.

Given this supposition, Evola proceeded to argue that Fascism or National Socialism—with their heroism, their sacrificial and ascetic ethic, their authoritarian and hierarchical order, together with their appeal to myth and ritual—provided an environment compatible with the 'spirit' of the celestials. That might be enough to prompt a cosmic, if gradual, reemergence of the celestial race. In such circumstances, the formative spiritual principle that, in the ultimate analysis, governs the transcendent 'superhistory' of humankind might literally reconstitute the individuals of the primordial creative race of Hyperborea. Evola sought to show that such an outcome would not be essentially determined by biology, but by the cosmic spirit—that its formative influence could transform individuals into persons accommodating a properly corresponding soul and spirit—to render them once again 'pure.'" Evola held racism at the core of his beliefs.<ref>Paul Furlong, "The Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola", London: Routledge, 2011</ref>

The eminent scholar of Fascism, [[Renzo De Felice]], maintained that while Evola's spiritual, neo-idealist racial theories were wrong, they had a notable intellectual ancestry, and Evola defended them in an honorable way: "Evola for his part completely refused any racial theorizing of a purely biological kind, which went so far as to draw to himself the attacks and sarcasms of a Landra, for example. This does not mean that the 'spiritual' theory of race is acceptable, but it had at least the merit of not totally failing to see certain values, to refuse the German aberrations and the ones modeled after them and to try to keep racism on a plane of cultural problems worthy of the name".<ref>''Storia degli Ebrei Italiani sotto il Fascismo'', or ''The History of Italian Jews under Fascism'' (Milan, 1977), 465</ref>

[[Christophe Boutin]], in his major work on Evola, ''Politique et Tradition: Julius Evola dans le siècle, 1898-1974'' (Paris, 1992), discusses Evola's views on racism and [[Negroes]].<ref>Boutin, 197–200</ref> Boutin mentions that in Evola's 1968 collection of essays, ''L’Arco e la clava''<ref>Milan, 1968, revised 1971</ref> there is a chapter on "America Negrizzata," in which Evola criticizes the "Telluric" Negroid influence on popular American culture, while acknowledging that there has been little actual [[miscegenation]]. Evola also argues against American [[racial integration]] in this chapter. The unadulterated 1972 Italian edition of ''Men Among the Ruins'' ends with an appendix entitled "Appendix on the Myths of our Time," of which number 4 is "Taboos of our Times".<ref>''Gli uomini e le rovine'', Rome, 1953, revised 1967, with the new appendix, 1972</ref> In this section Evola argues that modern irrational taboos forbid an honest, frank discussion on the working classes and Negroes. Evola notices that the mere word 'Negro' had connotations of offensiveness in the left-wing atmosphere of the era.<ref>Boutin, 276</ref> Evola opines that a true Rightist movement will not compromise with this sort of moralistic development.<ref>The Inner Traditions English translation suppressed Evola's appendix, ironically bearing out Evola's thoughts on the "taboos of our times."</ref>


==Influence==
==Influence==
Evola's writings have continued to have an influence both within occult intellectual circles and in European far-right politics. He is widely translated in French, Spanish and partly in German. Amongst those he has influenced are [[Miguel Serrano]], [[Savitri Devi]], [[GRECE]], the [[Italian Social Movement|Movimento sociale italiano]] (MSI), [[Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista|Falange Española]], [[Gaston Armand Amaudruz]]'s [[New European Order|Nouvel Ordre Européen]], [[Guillaume Faye]], [[Pino Rauti]]'s [[Ordine Nuovo]], [[Troy Southgate]], [[Alain de Benoist]], [[Michael Moynihan (journalist)|Michael Moynihan]], [[Giorgio Freda]], the [[Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari]] (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei), [[Eduard Limonov]], [[New Force (Italy)|Forza Nuova]], [[CasaPound|CasaPound Italia]] and the [[Conservative People's Party of Estonia]]. Famed author [[Herman Hesse]] was an admirer of Evola, calling him "A very dazzling and interesting, but also very dangerous author". [[Giorgio Almirante]] referred to him as "our [[Herbert Marcuse|Marcuse]]&mdash;only better."<ref>Thomas Sheehan. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7178 Italy: Terror on the Right]. ''The New York Review of Books'', Volume 27, Number 21 & 22, January 22, 1981</ref> According to one leader of the neofascist "black terrorist" [[Ordine Nuovo]], "Our work since 1953 has been to transpose Evola’s teachings into direct political action."<ref>Quoted in Ferraresi, Franco. "The Radical Right in Postwar Italy." ''Politics & Society''. 1988 16:71-119. (p.84)</ref> The now defunct French fascist group [[Third Way (France)|Troisième Voie]] was also inspired by Evola.<ref>Institute of Race relations. "The far Right in Europe: a guide." ''Race & Class'', 1991, Vol. 32, No. 3:125-146 (p.132).</ref> [[Jonathan Bowden]], English political activist and chairman of the [[New Right (UK)|New Right]], spoke highly of Evola and his ideas and gave lectures on his philosophy. German psychotherapist [[Karlfried Graf Dürckheim]] based part of his "initiatory therapy" on Evola's work.<ref>[http://www.trimondi.de/Zen-Buddhismus/Duerckheim.htm Victor Trimondi, "Karlfried Graf Dürckheim"]</ref>
The Italian Fascist leader [[Benito Mussolini]] and the Nazi Grail seeker [[Otto Rahn]] admired Julius Evola.<ref name=HorowitzMussolini/><ref name=Rahn>Nigel Graddon. ''Otto Rahn and the Quest for the Grail: The Amazing Life of the Real Indiana Jones''. SCB Distributors, 2013</ref> After World War II, Evola's writings continued to influence many European far-right political, racist and neo-fascist movements. He is widely translated in French, Spanish and partly in German. Amongst those he has influenced are the American Blackshirts Party (who are not white nationalist), [[Miguel Serrano]], [[Savitri Devi]], [[GRECE]], the [[Italian Social Movement|Movimento sociale italiano]] (MSI), [[Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista|Falange Española]], [[Gaston Armand Amaudruz]]'s [[New European Order|Nouvel Ordre Européen]], [[Guillaume Faye]], [[Pino Rauti]]'s [[Ordine Nuovo]], [[Troy Southgate]], [[Alain de Benoist]], [[Michael Moynihan (journalist)|Michael Moynihan]], [[Giorgio Freda]], the [[Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari]] (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei), [[Eduard Limonov]], [[New Force (Italy)|Forza Nuova]], [[CasaPound|CasaPound Italia]], [[Tricolor Flame]] and the [[Conservative People's Party of Estonia]].{{cn|date=February 2017}} [[Giorgio Almirante]] referred to him as "our [[Herbert Marcuse|Marcuse]]&mdash;only better."<ref>Thomas Sheehan. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7178 Italy: Terror on the Right]. ''The New York Review of Books'', Volume 27, Number 21 & 22, January 22, 1981</ref> According to one leader of the neofascist "black terrorist" [[Ordine Nuovo]], "Our work since 1953 has been to transpose Evola’s teachings into direct political action."<ref>Quoted in Ferraresi, Franco. "The Radical Right in Postwar Italy." ''Politics & Society''. 1988 16:71-119. (p.84)</ref> The now defunct French fascist group [[Third Way (France)|Troisième Voie]] was also inspired by Evola.<ref>Institute of Race relations. "The far Right in Europe: a guide." ''Race & Class'', 1991, Vol. 32, No. 3:125-146 (p.132).</ref> [[Jonathan Bowden]], English political activist and chairman of the [[New Right (UK)|New Right]], spoke highly of Evola and his ideas and gave lectures on his philosophy. Evola has also influenced today's [[Alt-right]] movement and [[Vladimir Putin]] advisor [[Aleksander Dugin]].<ref name=standard/><ref name=Meyer/> [[President]] [[Donald Trump]]'s chief adviser [[Steve Bannon]] noted Evola's influence on the [[Eurasianism]] movement.<ref name=Bannon>Feder, J. Lester. "This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World", BuzzFeed 2016 [https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world]</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html|title=Taboo Italian Thinker Is Enigma to Many, but Not to Bannon|last=Horowitz|first=Jason|date=2017-02-10|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=2017-02-10|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

Evola's work heavily influences Thomas Steiner, the German intellectual.


The novelist and essayist [[Marguerite Yourcenar]] of the [[Académie française]], paid homage to Evola's text ''The Yoga of Power'', writing her opinion of "the immense benefit which a receptive reader may gain from an exposition such as Evola's"<ref>Marguerite Yourcenar. ''Le temps, ce grand sculpteur'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). p. 201</ref>, and concluded that "the study of The Yoga of Power is particularly beneficial in a time in which every form of discipline is naively discredited."<ref>Marguerite Yourcenar. ''Le temps, ce grand sculpteur'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). p. 204</ref>
Evola's work is available in the United States through publisher [[Inner Traditions - Bear & Company|Inner Traditions]]. He has also gained some attention in [[Russia]], where some of his work has been analyzed by [[Alexander Dugin]] and others from a nationalistic Russian view, and is also popular among [[Monarchism|Monarchists]] with a view of an imperial Moscow as the "[[Third Rome]]", but few translations of some of his shorter texts. His work is also available in translation in the [[U.K.]], [[Spain]], [[Poland]], [[Scandinavia]], [[Finland]], [[Romania]], [[Hungary]], [[Mexico]], [[Argentina]], and [[Turkey]] where his ''Revolt Against the Modern World'' was published in 2006. In 2010 ''Revolt Against the Modern World'' was published in [[Brazil]] by a small traditionalist group, in an edition limited to 100 copies.


The psychologist [[Carl Jung]] favorably cited Evola's work on Hermeticism.<ref name=Jung1/><ref name=Jung2/> German psychotherapist [[Karlfried Graf Dürckheim]] based part of his "initiatory therapy" on Evola's work.<ref>[http://www.trimondi.de/Zen-Buddhismus/Duerckheim.htm Victor Trimondi, "Karlfried Graf Dürckheim"]</ref> Famed author [[Herman Hesse]] in a private letter described Evola's text ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]'' as "really dangerous."<ref name=Sedgwick>Mark Sedgwick. ''Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century''. Oxford University Press, 2009</ref>
In addition to Evola's political influence on right-wing radical-conservatives, "black terrorist" (neofascist) factions and traditionalist groups worldwide, he has also considerably influenced followers of certain occult traditions. [[Milo Yiannopoulos]] has cited Evola's works as being part of the [[alt-right]] philosophy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/|title=An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right|accessdate=October 20, 2016|work=[[Breitbart]]|first=Allum|last=Bokharia| date=March 29, 2016}}</ref>


==Selected books and articles==
==Selected books and articles==
*''Arte Astratta, posizione teorica'' (1920)
{{Refbegin|2}}
*''[[Arte Astratta, posizione teorica]]'' (1920)
*''[[La parole obscure du paysage intérieur]]'' (1920)
*''[[La parole obscure du paysage intérieur]]'' (1920)
*''[[Saggi sull'idealismo magico]]'' (1925)
*''[[Saggi sull'idealismo magico]]'' (1925)
Line 227: Line 141:
*''L'uomo come potenza'' (1927)
*''L'uomo come potenza'' (1927)
*''[[Teoria dell'individuo assoluto]]'' (1927)
*''[[Teoria dell'individuo assoluto]]'' (1927)
*''Imperialismo pagano'' (1928; English translation: ''[[Heathen Imperialism]]'', 2007)
*''Imperialismo pagano'' (1928; English translation: ''Heathen Imperialism'', 2007)
*''Introduzione alla magia'' (1927-1929; 1971; English translation: ''[[Introduction to Magic|Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus]]'', 2001)
*''Introduzione alla magia'' (1927-1929; 1971; English translation: ''Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus'', 2001)
*''[[Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto]]'' (1930)
*''[[Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto]]'' (1930)
*''La tradizione ermetica'' (1931; English translation: ''[[The Hermetic Tradition|The Hermetic Tradition: Symbols and Teachings of the Royal Art]]'', 1995)
*''La tradizione ermetica'' (1931; English translation: ''The Hermetic Tradition: Symbols and Teachings of the Royal Art'', 1995)
*''[[Maschera e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo: Analisi critica delle principali correnti moderne verso il sovrasensibile]]'' (1932)
*''[[Maschera e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo: Analisi critica delle principali correnti moderne verso il sovrasensibile]]'' (1932)
*''Rivolta contro il mondo moderno'' (1934; second edition: 1951; English translation: ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World|Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga]]'', 1995)
*''Rivolta contro il mondo moderno'' (1934; second edition: 1951; English translation: ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World|Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga]]'', 1995)
*''Tre aspetti del problema ebraico'' (1936; English translation: ''[[Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem]]'', 2003)
*''Tre aspetti del problema ebraico'' (1936; English translation: ''[[Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem]]'', 2003)
*''Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero'' (1937; English translation: ''[[The Mystery of the Grail|The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit]]'', 1997)
*''Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero'' (1937; English translation: ''[[The Mystery of the Grail|The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit]]'', 1997)
*''[[Il mito del sangue. Genesi del Razzismo]]'' (1937)
*''Il mito del sangue. Genesi del Razzismo'' (1937)
*''Indirizzi per una educazione razziale'' (1941; English translation: ''[[The Elements of Racial Education]]'' 2005)
*''Indirizzi per una educazione razziale'' (1941; English translation: ''The Elements of Racial Education'' 2005)
*''[[Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race|Sintesi di dottrina della razza]]'' (1941; German translation: ''Grundrisse der Faschistischen Rassenlehre'', 1943)
*''[[Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race|Sintesi di dottrina della razza]]'' (1941; German translation: ''Grundrisse der Faschistischen Rassenlehre'', 1943)
*''Die Arische Lehre von Kampf und Sieg'' (1941; English translation: ''[[The Aryan Doctrine of Battle and Victory]]'', 2007)
*''Die Arische Lehre von Kampf und Sieg'' (1941; English translation: ''The Aryan Doctrine of Battle and Victory'', 2007)
*''[[Gli Ebrei hanno voluto questa Guerra]]'' (1942)
*''Gli Ebrei hanno voluto questa Guerra'' (1942)
*''La dottrina del risveglio'' (1943; English translations: ''The Doctrine of Awakening: A Study on the Buddhist Ascesis'', 1951; ''[[The Doctrine of Awakening|The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts]]'', 1995)
*''La dottrina del risveglio'' (1943; English translations: ''The Doctrine of Awakening: A Study on the Buddhist Ascesis'', 1951; ''The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts'', 1995)
*''Lo Yoga della potenza'' (1949; English translation: ''[[The Yoga of Power|The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way]]'', 1992)
*''Lo Yoga della potenza'' (1949; English translation: ''The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way'', 1992)
*''[[Orientamenti, undici punti]]'' (1950)
*''Orientamenti, undici punti'' (1950)
*''Gli uomini e le rovine'' (1953; English translation: ''[[Men Among the Ruins|Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist]]'', 2002)
*''Gli uomini e le rovine'' (1953; English translation: ''Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist'', 2002)
*''Metafisica del sesso'' (1958; English translations: ''The Metaphysics of Sex'', 1983; ''[[Eros and the Mysteries of Love|Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex]]'', 1991)
*''Metafisica del sesso'' (1958; English translations: ''The Metaphysics of Sex'', 1983; ''Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex'', 1991)
*''L'«Operaio» nel pensiero di [[Ernst Jünger]]'' (1960)
*''L'«Operaio» nel pensiero di Ernst Jünger'' (1960)
*''Cavalcare la tigre'' (1961; English translation: ''[[Ride the Tiger|Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul]]'', 2003)
*''Cavalcare la tigre'' (1961; English translation: ''Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul'', 2003)
*''Il cammino del cinabro'' (1963; second edition, 1970; English translation: ''[[The Path of Cinnabar|The Path of Cinnabar: An Intellectual Autobiography]]'', 2009)
*''Il cammino del cinabro'' (1963; second edition, 1970; English translation: ''The Path of Cinnabar: An Intellectual Autobiography'', 2009)
*''Meditazioni delle vette'' (1974; English translation: ''Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest'', 1998)
*''Il Fascismo. Saggio di una analisi critica dal punto di vista della destra'' (1964; second edition, 1970; English translation: ''[[Fascism Viewed from the Right]]'', 2013)

*''[[L'arco e la clava]]'' (1968)
==See also==
*''Raâga blanda , Composizioni 1916-1922'' (1969)
* [[Occultism and the far right]]
*''Il taoismo'' (1972; English translation: ''[[Il Taoismo|Taoism: The Magic, the Mysticism]]'', 1994)
*''Meditazioni delle vette'' (1974; English translation: ''[[Meditations on the Peaks|Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest]]'', 1998)
*''Il Fascismo visto dalla destra; Note sul terzo Reich'' (1974; English translation: ''[[Notes on the Third Reich]]'', 2013)
*''[[Ultimi scritti]]'' (1977)
*''La via della realizzazione di sé secondo i misteri di Mitra'' (1977; English translation: ''[[The Path of Enlightenment|The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries]]'', 1994, ISBN 1-55818-228-4)
*''Lo Zen'' (1981; English translation: ''[[Zen: The Religion of the Samurai]]'', 1993)
*''Un Maestro dei tempi moderni: René Guénon'' (1984; English translation: ''[[Rene Guenon: A Teacher for Modern Times]]'', 1994)<ref>{{cite web|title=Bibliografia di J. Evola|url=http://www.fondazionejuliusevola.it/Biblio.htm|website=[[Fondazione Julius Evola]]|accessdate=25 April 2015}}</ref>
*''[[Metaphysics of War|Metaphysics of War: Battle, Victory and Death in the World of Tradition]]'' (2007)
{{Refend}}


==Footnotes==
==Footnotes==
Line 266: Line 172:
==References==
==References==
*Aprile, Mario (1984), "Julius Evola: An Introduction to His Life and Work," ''The Scorpion'' No. 6 (Winter/Spring): 20-21.
*Aprile, Mario (1984), "Julius Evola: An Introduction to His Life and Work," ''The Scorpion'' No. 6 (Winter/Spring): 20-21.
*[[Kerry Bolton|Bolton, Kerry]] (1997), "Julius Evola — Above the Ruins," ''The Nexus'', # 10.
*Coletti, Guillermo (1996), "Against the Modern World: An Introduction to the Work of Julius Evola," ''Ohm Clock'' No. 4 (Spring): 29-31.
*Coletti, Guillermo (1996), "Against the Modern World: An Introduction to the Work of Julius Evola," ''Ohm Clock'' No. 4 (Spring): 29-31.
*Coogan, Kevin (1998), ''Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International'' (Brooklyn, NY: [[Autonomedia]], ISBN 1-57027-039-2).
*Coogan, Kevin (1998), ''Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International'' (Brooklyn, NY: [[Autonomedia]], ISBN 1-57027-039-2).
Line 282: Line 187:
*Griffin, Roger (1995) (ed.), ''[[Fascism (book)|Fascism]]'' ([[Oxford University Press]], ISBN 0-19-289249-5), 317-318.
*Griffin, Roger (1995) (ed.), ''[[Fascism (book)|Fascism]]'' ([[Oxford University Press]], ISBN 0-19-289249-5), 317-318.
*Hansen, H. T. (1994), "A Short Introduction to Julius Evola," ''Theosophical History'' 5 (January): 11-22; reprinted as introduction to Evola, ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]'', (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1995).
*Hansen, H. T. (1994), "A Short Introduction to Julius Evola," ''Theosophical History'' 5 (January): 11-22; reprinted as introduction to Evola, ''[[Revolt Against the Modern World]]'', (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1995).
*Hansen, H. T. (2002), "Julius Evola's Political Endeavors," introduction to Evola, ''[[Men Among the Ruins]]'', (Vermont: Inner Traditions).
*Hansen, H. T. (2002), "Julius Evola's Political Endeavors," introduction to Evola, ''Men Among the Ruins'', (Vermont: Inner Traditions).
*[[Michael Moynihan (journalist)|Moynihan, Michael]] (2003), "Julius Evola's Combat Manuals for a Revolt Against the Modern World," in [[Richard Metzger]] (ed.), ''Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult'' ([[The Disinformation Company]], ISBN 0-9713942-7-X) 313-320.
*[[Michael Moynihan (journalist)|Moynihan, Michael]] (2003), "Julius Evola's Combat Manuals for a Revolt Against the Modern World," in [[Richard Metzger]] (ed.), ''Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult'' ([[The Disinformation Company]], ISBN 0-9713942-7-X) 313-320.
*[[Philip Rees|Rees, Philip]] (1991), ''[[Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890]]'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-13-089301-3), 118-120.
*[[Philip Rees|Rees, Philip]] (1991), ''[[Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890]]'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-13-089301-3), 118-120.
*[[Mark Sedgwick|Sedgwick, Mark]] (2004) ''Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century'' (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515297-2).
*[[Mark Sedgwick|Sedgwick, Mark]] (2004) ''Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century'' (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515297-2).
*Sheehan, Thomas (1981) "Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and [[Alain de Benoist]]," ''Social Research'', 48 (Spring): 45-83.
*Sheehan, Thomas (1981) "Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and [[Alain de Benoist]]," ''Social Research'', 48 (Spring): 45-83.
*Stucco, Guido (1992), "Translator's Introduction," in Evola, ''[[The Yoga of Power]]'' (Vermont: Inner Traditions), ix-xv.
*Stucco, Guido (1992), "Translator's Introduction," in Evola, ''The Yoga of Power'' (Vermont: Inner Traditions), ix-xv.
*Stucco, Guido (1994), "Introduction," in Evola, ''[[The Path of Enlightenment|The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries]]'', ''[[Zen: The Religion of the Samurai]]'', ''[[Rene Guenon: A Teacher for Modern Times]]'', and ''[[Taoism: The Magic, the Mysticism]]'' ([[Edmonds, WA]]: Holmes Publishing Group)
*Stucco, Guido (1994), "Introduction," in Evola, ''The Path of Enlightenment|The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries'', ''Zen: The Religion of the Samurai'', ''Rene Guenon: A Teacher for Modern Times'', and ''Taoism: The Magic, the Mysticism'' ([[Edmonds, WA]]: Holmes Publishing Group)
*Stucco, Guido (2002). [http://toqonline.com/archives/v2n3/TOQv2n3Stucco.pdf "The Legacy of a European Traditionalist: Julius Evola in Perspective"]. ''The Occidental Quarterly'' '''3''' (2), pp.&nbsp;21–44.
*Stucco, Guido (2002). [http://toqonline.com/archives/v2n3/TOQv2n3Stucco.pdf "The Legacy of a European Traditionalist: Julius Evola in Perspective"]. ''The Occidental Quarterly'' '''3''' (2), pp.&nbsp;21–44.
*Wasserstrom, Steven M. (1995), "The Lives of Baron Evola," ''Alphabet City'' 4 + 5 (December): 84-89.
*Wasserstrom, Steven M. (1995), "The Lives of Baron Evola," ''Alphabet City'' 4 + 5 (December): 84-89.
*[[Robin Waterfield|Waterfield, Robin]] (1990), 'Baron Julius Evola and the Hermetic Tradition', ''[[Gnosis]]'' 14, (Winter): 12-17.
*[[Robin Waterfield|Waterfield, Robin]] (1990), 'Baron Julius Evola and the Hermetic Tradition', ''[[Gnosis]]'' 14, (Winter): 12-17.
*{{cite web|title=Bibliografia di J. Evola|url=http://www.fondazionejuliusevola.it/Biblio.htm|website=Fondazione Julius Evola|accessdate=25 April 2015}}


{{Commons category}}
==External links==
{{Commonscat}}
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Wikiquote}}
*[http://www.juliusevola.net/ JuliusEvola.net], contains pictures of Evola, his paintings and a large text archive
*[http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id3.html Evola As He Is], a collection of previously unpublished texts
*[http://www.juliusevola.com Julius Evola: Tradionalist Visionary], website of the [[Julius Evola Society]]


{{Julius Evola}}
{{Julius Evola}}

Revision as of 18:27, 11 February 2017

Julius Evola
Evola during 1920s
Born
Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola

(1898-05-19)May 19, 1898
DiedJune 11, 1974(1974-06-11) (aged 76)
Rome, Italy
Cause of deathRespiratory-hepatic problems
NationalityItalian
Notable workTheory of the Absolute Individual (1927)
Revolt Against the Modern World (1934)
Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race (1941)
Era20th century
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolTraditionalism
Actual idealism
InstitutionsSchool of Fascist Mysticism
Main interests
History, religion, esotericism
Notable ideas
Fascist mysticism, spiritual racism
Websitewww.fondazionejuliusevola.it

Baron Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola (Italian pronunciation: [ˈɛːvola];[1] 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974), better known as Julius Evola (/ˈuljəs ɛˈvlə/), was an Italian philosopher, painter, and esotericist.

Evola has been described as "one of the most influential fascist racists in Italian history."[2] He was admired by Benito Mussolini[3], and continues to influence contemporary fascist and neofascist movements[4][5], and Russian political scientist and sometime Vladimir Putin advisor Aleksander Dugin[6][7] cites Evola's influence. President Donald Trump's chief adviser Steve Bannon, in a speech at the Vatican, noted Evola's influence on the Traditionalist movement and Eurasianism favored by Dugin and the alt-right.[8]

According to one scholar, "Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century."[9] Many of Evola's theories and writings were also centered on his idiosyncratic mysticism and esoteric religious studies[10], accordingly, he influenced apolitical esotericists as well.

Biography

Early years

Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola was born in Rome to a Sicilian family of minor aristocracy. He was occasionally attributed with the title "Baron". Little is known about his early upbringing except that he considered it irrelevant. Evola studied engineering in Rome and was involved in the Italian social and artistic Futurist movement until he broke with a leading figure. He joined the artillery as an officer in the First World War. Returning to civilian life, Evola was a painter and poet in the Dada movement.[10]: 3 [11]

Evola's early philosophical influences included Friedrich Nietzsche, Otto Weininger, Carlo Michelstaedter, and Max Stirner.[12]

Esotericism

A mountaineer, Evola described the experience a source of revelatory spiritual experience. After his return from the war, Evola experimented with drugs and magic until, around age 23, Evola considered suicide. He says he avoided suicide thanks to a revelation he had while reading an early Buddhist text. The text dealt with shedding all forms of identity other than absolute transcendence.[10] Evola would later publish the text The Doctrine of Awakening, which he regarded as a repayment of his debt to the doctrine of Buddha for saving him from suicide.[13]

Subsequently Evola developed the doctrine of "magical idealism", which held that "the Ego must understand that everything that seems to have a reality independent of it is nothing but an illusion, caused by its own deficiency." For Evola, this ever-increasing unity with the absolute involved expanded participation in the absolute individual understood as unconstrained liberty, and therefore unconditioned power.[10]

Thomas Sheehan noted in Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist,

What Evola has done is to actualize and exaggerate a tendency that is implicit in all Western philosophies based on the primacy - indeed, the possibility - of an intellectual intuition. He repudiates dialogistic, discursive reasoning (logos, ratio), not because he favors a descent to the irrational, but because he affirms, along with Aristotle, the superiority of the supra-rational.[14]

Evola was introduced to esotericism by the early supporter of fascism Arturo Reghini, who sought to promote a "cultured magic" opposed to Christianity. Reghini introduced Evola to the traditionalist René Guénon. In 1927, Reghini and Evola, along with other Italian esotericists, founded the Gruppo di Ur (the Ur Group). The purpose of this group was to attempt to bring the members' individual identities into such a superhuman state of power and awareness that they would be able to exert a magical influence on the world. The group employed techniques from Buddhist, Tantric, and rare Hermetic texts.[15] The group aimed to provide a "soul" to the burgeoning Fascist movement of the time through the revival of ancient Roman Paganism, and influence the fascist regime through esotericism.[16][10] Articles on occultism from the Ur Group were later published in the text Introduction to Magic.[17][18]

Reghini's support of Freemasonry would however prove a bone of contention for Evola; accordingly, Evola broke with Reghini in 1928.[10]

Evola wrote prodigiously on Eastern mysticism, tantra, hermeticism, the myth of the holy grail and western esotericism.[10] German Egyptologist and esoteric scholar Florian Ebeling has noted that Evola's text The Hermetic Tradition is viewed as an "extremely important work on Hermeticism" in the eyes of esoteric adherents.[19] The psychologist Carl Jung described this text as a "detailed account of Hermetic philosophy"[20], and cited Evola as an authority for his contention that alchemy referred in actually to psychic rather than pseudochemical processes.[21]

Evola's subsequent text Revolt Against the Modern World accepted as valid mythology of an ancient Golden Age. He attempted to convey the features of his idealized traditional society, and he argued that modernity represented a serious decline from such a society. He argued in that in the postulated Golden age, religious and temporal power were united, and that society was not founded on rule by priests, but by warriors expressing spiritual power - accordingly he saw in mythology evidence of the alleged superiority of the West over the East. Moreover, he claimed that the traditional elite had the ability to access power and knowledge through a hierarchical version of magic which differed utterly from lower, "superstitious and fraudulent", forms of magic.[10]

Evola's text The Mystery of the Grail discarded the Christian interpretations of the mythical Holy Grail, maintaining instead that the Grail "symbolizes the principal of an immortalizing and transcendent force connected to the primordial state and remaining present in the very period of ... involution or decadence ... The mystery of the Grail is a mystery of a warrior initiation." He held that the Ghibellines, as opponents of the Guelf merchants and partisans of the Catholic Church who fought against them for control of Northern and central Italy in the thirteenth century, had within them residual influences of pre-Christian Celtic and Nordic initiatic traditions representing the Grail myth. He also held that the Guelf victory against the Ghibellines represented a regression of the castes, since the merchant caste took over from the warrior caste.[22] In the epilogue to this text Evola argued that the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory forgery the Protocols of Zion, regardless of whether it was authentic or not, was a cogent representation of modernity.[23] Historian Richard Barber stated that in this book, "Evola mixes rhetoric, prejudice, scholarship, and politics into a strange version of the present and future, but in the process he brings together for the first time interest in the esoteric and in conspiracy theory which characterize much of the later Grail literature."[23] The Nazi Grail seeker Otto Rahn admired Julius Evola.[24]

In The Doctrine of Awakening, Evola argued that the Pāli Canon could be held to represent true Buddhism.[13] His interpretation of Buddhism is that it was intended to be anti-democratic, that it revealed the essence of an "aryan" tradition that had become corrupted and lost in the West, and that it coud be interpreted in such a way as to reveal the superiority of a warrior caste.[13] Harry Oldmeadow described Evola's work on Buddhism as exhibiting Nietzschean influence.[25] However, Evola criticized Nietzsche's anti-ascetic prejudice.[13] The book "received the official approbation of the Pāli [text] society", and was published by a reputable Orientalist publisher.[13] Evola later confessed that he was not a Buddhist, and that his text was meant to balance his earlier work on the Hindu tantras.[13] In Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, Richard K. Payne, Dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, argued that Evola manipulated Tantra in the service of right wing violence, and that the emphasis on "power" in The Yoga of Power gave insight into his mentality.[26]

Gregor sources the text Meditations on the Peaks for Evola's definition of spirituality as "actually what has been successfully actualized and translated into a sense of superiority which is experienced inside by the soul, and a noble demeanor, which is expressed in the body."[27]

The elitist aspects of Nietzsche's writings heavily affected Evola's thought. However, Evola criticized Nietzsche for lacking the "transcendent element" in his philosophy. A reference point is needed according to Evola, and this point cannot be reached with senses or logic. Transcendental experiences and spiritual racism supply this reference point, achieved through the heroic element in Man.[2]

Racism

Evola has been described as "one of the most influential fascist racists in Italian history."[2] Benito Mussolini read Evola's Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race (Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza) in August 1941, and met with Evola to offer him his praise. Evola later recounted that Mussolini had found in his work a uniquely Roman form of fascist racism distinct from that found in Nazi Germany. With Mussolini's backing, Evola launched the minor journal Sangue e Spirito (Blood and Spirit). While not always in agreement with German racial theorists, Evola traveled to Germany in February 1942 and obtained support for German collaboration on Sangue e Spirito from "key figures in the German racial hierarchy."[2]

Evola expanded racism to include racism of the body, soul and spirit, giving primacy to the latter alleged factor, and asserting that "races only declined when their spirit failed."[5] According to Wolff,

Evola's ‘totalitarian’ or ‘spiritual’ racism was no milder than Nazi biological racism. It actually implied far greater consequences because it discriminated not only against the Jews, but all representatives of the modern western world. Evola's ambition was to elaborate an Italian version of racism and antisemitism, one that could be integrated into the Fascist project to create a New Man. Placed in an Italian context, Evola's totalitarian racism was supposed to contribute to a ‘purification process’ that would precede this new type of human being.[28]

Like René Guénon, he believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga of the Hindu tradition, the Dark Age of unleashed, materialistic appetites. The Kali Yuga is the last of a four age cycle. Evola argued that both Italian fascism and Nazism held hope for a reconstitution of the "celestial" Aryan race.[29] He drew on mythology of super-races and their decline, particularly alleged hyperboreans, and maintained that traces of their influence could be felt in Indo-European man, which he nevertheless felt devolved from those alleged higher forms.[10]

In 1942, in the course of the Second World War, Fascist intellectuals published excoriating criticism of Evola’s racism. There were reviews of Sintesi di dottrina della razza that entirely dismantled the complex structure of Evola’s exposition. The argument was made that if the spirit of humankind were Evola’s concern, and there were Jews, or perhaps blacks, who displayed the heroic and sublime properties of the Hyperboreans, what difference did it make if that spirit were housed in “non-Aryan bodies”? Of what conceivable importance were physical properties when the real concern is with spirituality? In one of Fascism’s most important theoretical journals, Evola’s critic pointed out that many Nordic-Aryans, not to speak of Mediterranean Aryans, fail to demonstrate any Hyperborean properties. Instead, they make obvious their materialism, their sensuality, their indifference to loyalty and sacrifice, together with their consuming greed. How do they differ from “inferior” races, and why should anyone wish, in any way, to favor them?[30]

Of the Jews, Evola endorsed the views provided by Otto Weininger, and viewed Jews as corrosive and anti-traditional, though he described Adolf Hitler's more fanatical anti-Semitism as a paranoid idée fixe which damaged the reputation of the Third Reich.[5] In this conception, "The Jews were stigmatized, not as representatives of a biological race, but as the carriers of a world view, a way of being and thinking—simply put, a spirit—that corresponded to the ‘worst’ and ‘most decadent’ features of modernity: democracy, egalitarianism and materialism."[28] He did, however, believe that one could be "Aryan", but have a "Jewish" soul, just as one could be "Jewish", but have an "Aryan" soul.[31] Among such Jews of "sufficiently heroic, ascetic, and sacral" character to fit the latter category were, in Evola's view, Otto Weininger and Carlo Michelstaedter.[32]

Evola otherwise spoke of "inferior non-European races"[33] and as noted by Merkl, "Evola was never prepared to discount the value of blood altogether, and he later wrote: "a certain balanced consciousness and dignity of race can be considered healthy, especially if one thinks of where we are going in our time with the exaltation of the negro and all the rest, with the anticolonialist psychosis, and with the 'integrationist' fanaticism: all parallel phenomena in the decline of Europe and the West.""[34] In Mussolini's Intellectuals, A. James Gregor stated that: "[In the German rendering of Imperialismo pagano, Heidnischer Imperialismus], Evola argues that it is out of the creativity of an 'ur-Aryan' and 'solar-Nordic' blood that world culture emerges. Conversely, culture decline is a function of the feckless mixture of Aryan, with lesser, 'animalistic' blood."[29]

In Revolt against the Modern World]], Evola developed a "general objective law: the law of the regression of the castes", claiming that "[t]he meaning of history from the most ancient times is this: the gradual decline of power and type of civilization from one to another of the four castes - sacred leaders, warrior nobility, bourgeoisie (economy, "merchants") and slaves - which in the traditional civilizations corresponded to the qualitative differentiation in the principal human possibilities."[10]

As noted by Furlong,

It was this caste-based perspective that was developed in the 1930s and during the war in Evola's extensive writings on racism; for Evola, the core of racial superiority lay in the spiritual qualities of the higher castes, which expressed themselves in physical as well as in cultural features but were not determined by them. The law of the regression of castes places racism at the core of Evola's philosophy, since he sees an increasing predominance of lower races as directly expressed through modern mass democracies.[10]

Furlong noted Evola's frequent use of the term "Aryan" to denote the nobility imbued with traditional spirituality prior to the end of World War II, after which he used it very rarely.[10] Wolff noted that:

From 1945 the issue of race disappeared from Evola's writings. Nonetheless his ongoing intellectual concerns remained unchanged: anthropological pessimism, elitism and contempt for the weak. The doctrine of the Aryan-Roman ‘super-race’ was simply restated as a doctrine of the ‘leaders of men’, while the Ordine Fascista dell'Impero Italiano was simply relabelled the Ordine, or ‘male society’: no longer with reference to the SS, but to the mediaeval Teutonic Knights or the Knights Templar, already mentioned in Rivolta.[28]

Anti-Feminism

Julius Evola believed that relations between the sexes needed to be rectified. He held that modern notions of sex as an instrument of passion were a degeneration of the use of sex as a means of ordering and spiritual initiation, by which an elite could reproduce itself not quantitavely, but qualitatively. In this context he held that the alleged higher qualities expected of a man of a particular race were not those expected of a woman of the same race - that male principles are accentuated between races, while those of women are more alike and less differentiated. He held that "just relations between the sexes" involved women acknowledging their inequality with men.[10] Evola regarded matriarchy and goddess religions as a symptom of decadence, and preferred a hyper-masculine, warrior ethos.[35]

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke noted the fundamental influence of Otto Weininger's male supremacist book Sex and Character on Evola's dualism of male-female spirituality. According to Goodrich-Clarke, "Evola's celebration of virile spirituality was rooted in Weininger's work, which was widely translated by the end of the First World War."[5]

Evola's views on sexuality were dealt with at length in his text Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, which he referred to as the principal book he published in the post-war period.[10] This book remains popular among many New Age adherents.[36]

Elitism and Relationship with Fascism

Julius Evola has been described as a "fascist intellectual,"[37] a "radical traditionalist,"[38] "antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular,”[39] and as having been "the leading philosopher of Europe's neofascist movement."[39]. Julius Evola wrote for fascist journals, and helped develop Mussolini's manifesto of racism. Yet, while acknowledging Evola's place among fascist intellectuals, his racism, his anti-semitism and his antipathy towards democracy[40], A James Gregor wrote that "Evola opposed literally every feature of Fascism".[41] In a trial in 1951, Evola, who denied being a Fascist, referred to himself as a ‘superfascist’.[28] Paul Furlong wrote that "The complete Evola held views that it is fair, if somewhat summary, to categorise as elitist, racist, anti-semitic, misogynist, anti-democratic, authoritarian, and deeply anti-liberal."[10]

A difference between Evola's Traditionalism and Italian Fascism is Evola's rejection of nationalism, which he viewed as a conception of the modern West and not of a Traditional hierarchical social arrangement. Heinrich Himmler's SS kept a dossier on him, and in dossier document AR-126 described him as a "reactionary Roman," with a secret goal of "an insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world," and recommended that the SS "stop his effectiveness in Germany" and provide no support to him.[42] When he met with "esoteric Hitlerist" Miguel Serrano, Evola denied that he was a fascist or Hitlerist, but rather saw Metternich as a conservative ideal. Serrano himself was critical of Evola and saw him as an "old-style traditionalist."[43] Evola's first published political work was an anti-fascist piece in 1925, and he wrote a second one in 1928.[44] Evola called Italy's fascist movement a "laughable revolution," based on empty sentiment and materialistic concerns. He opposed the futurism that Italian fascism was aligned with, along with the "plebeian" nature of the movement.[45]

In 1928 Evola wrote the text Pagan Imperialism, a violent attack on Christianity which proposed the transformation of Fascism into a system consonant with ancient Roman values and the ancient Mystery traditions, and which proposed that Fascism transform itself into a vehicle for re-instating the caste-system and aristocracy of antiquity. This text was a diatribe in the name of Fascism against the Catholic Church, which nevertheless led to Evola being criticized by the Fascist regime, as well as by the Vatican itself. A. James Gregor argued that this text was an attack on Fascism as it stood at the time of writing, but noted that Benito Mussolini made use of it in order to threaten the Vatican with the possibility of an "anti-clerical Fascism" for political advantage.[10][46] Aleksandr Dugin translated the 1933 version of Evola’s Pagan Imperialism into Russian in 1981 and distributed it in samizdat.[47]

Evola developed a complex line of argument, synthesizing and adapting the spiritual orientation of writers favored by fascists such as René Guénon with the political concerns of the European Authoritarian Right.[10] Evola hoped to influence Mussolini's regime toward his own variation on fascist racial theories and his "Tradionalist" philosophy. Early in 1930, Evola launched La Torre (The Tower), a bi-weekly review, to voice his conservative-revolutionary ideas and denounce the demagogic tendencies of official fascism; government censors suppressed the journal and engaged in character assassination against its staff (for a time, Evola retained a bodyguard of like-minded radical fascists) until it died out in June of that year. From 1934 to 1943, he edited the cultural page of Roberto Farinacci's journal Regime Fascista (The Fascist Regime).[citation needed]

Finding Italian Fascism too compromising, Evola began to seek recognition in the Third Reich, where he lectured from 1934 onward. He held hope in the Nazi SS, though took issue with Nazi populism and biological materialism. SS authorities rejected Evola's ideas as supranational, aristocratic, and thus reactionary.[5] Nevertheless, the Sicherheitsdienst helped Evola acquire arcane occult and Masonic texts during World War II.[24][13]

Italian Fascism went into decline when, in 1943, Mussolini was deposed and imprisoned. Evola, although not a member of the Fascist Party, and despite his apparent problems with the Fascist regime, was one of the first people to greet Mussolini when the latter was broken out of prison by Otto Skorzeny in 1943.[48] It was Evola's custom to walk around the city during bombing raids in order to better 'ponder his destiny'. During one such raid, in March or April 1945, a shell fragment damaged his spinal cord and he became paralyzed from the waist down, remaining so for the remainder of his life.[49]

After WWII, Evola's writing evoked interest among the neo-fascist right.[28] Evola was considered, especially after 1945, as the most important Italian theoretician of the Conservative Revolution.[28]

In May, 1951, Evola was arrested and charged with promoting the revival of the Fascist Party, and of glorifying Fascism. Defending himself at trial, Evola stated that his work belonged to a long tradition of anti-democratic writers who certainly could be linked to fascism—at least fascism interpreted according to certain (Evolian) criteria—but who certainly could not be identified with Fascism, namely, the Fascist regime under Mussolini. Evola then declared that he was not a Fascist but a ‘superfascist’. He was acquitted.[28]

Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm describe Evola's primary political texts during this time period as Orientamenti and Men Among the Ruins.[50] Evola's occult ontology exerted influence over post-war fascism and neo-fascism.[2] Nevertheless, Evola attempted to dissociate himself from totalitarianism, preferring the conception of the "organic" state which he put forth in his text Men Among the Ruins.[10] Evola sought to develop a strategy for the implementation of a "conservative revolution" in post World War II Europe.[10] He rejected nationalism, advocating instead for a European Imperium, which he desired to be expressed in various forms according to local conditions, but be "organic, hierarchical, anti-democratic, and anti-individual."[10]

Wolff attributes extreme-right terrorist actions in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s to the influence of Julius Evola.[28]

Post-World War II

After World War II, Evola continued his work in esotericism. He wrote a number of books and articles on sexual magic and various other esoteric studies, including The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way (1949), Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (1958), Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest (1974) and The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries (1977). He also wrote his two explicitly political books Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (1953), Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul (1961), and his autobiography The Path of Cinnabar (1963).

Ride the Tiger was Evola's last major work. Wolff noted that in this text,

Evola argued that the fight against modernity was lost. The only thing a ‘real man’ could just do was to ride the tiger of modernity patiently: ‘Thus the principle to follow could be that of letting the forces and processes of this epoch take their own course, keeping oneself firm and ready to intervene when “the tiger, which cannot leap on the person riding it, is tired of running”. He chose, in other words, a sort of inner journey and ‘inner emigration’ from the world—using an expression borrowed from Heidegger—that removed him completely from active political engagement. However, he did not exclude the possibility of action in the future.[28]

However, Wolff also noted that "as Anna Jellamo declared in 1984, Evola's apoliteia in Ride the Tiger was in truth only ‘an adjustment and improvement’ to his ‘warrior theory’."[28] Furlong considers this text, in the context of his work contemporary to its writing, as a proposition that a potential elite immunize itself from modernity as they attempt to rebel against it via "right wing anarchism."[10]

Death

Evola died unmarried, without children, on 11 June 1974 in Rome.[citation needed]

Influence

The Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini and the Nazi Grail seeker Otto Rahn admired Julius Evola.[3][24] After World War II, Evola's writings continued to influence many European far-right political, racist and neo-fascist movements. He is widely translated in French, Spanish and partly in German. Amongst those he has influenced are the American Blackshirts Party (who are not white nationalist), Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi, GRECE, the Movimento sociale italiano (MSI), Falange Española, Gaston Armand Amaudruz's Nouvel Ordre Européen, Guillaume Faye, Pino Rauti's Ordine Nuovo, Troy Southgate, Alain de Benoist, Michael Moynihan, Giorgio Freda, the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei), Eduard Limonov, Forza Nuova, CasaPound Italia, Tricolor Flame and the Conservative People's Party of Estonia.[citation needed] Giorgio Almirante referred to him as "our Marcuse—only better."[51] According to one leader of the neofascist "black terrorist" Ordine Nuovo, "Our work since 1953 has been to transpose Evola’s teachings into direct political action."[52] The now defunct French fascist group Troisième Voie was also inspired by Evola.[53] Jonathan Bowden, English political activist and chairman of the New Right, spoke highly of Evola and his ideas and gave lectures on his philosophy. Evola has also influenced today's Alt-right movement and Vladimir Putin advisor Aleksander Dugin.[6][7] President Donald Trump's chief adviser Steve Bannon noted Evola's influence on the Eurasianism movement.[8][54]

The novelist and essayist Marguerite Yourcenar of the Académie française, paid homage to Evola's text The Yoga of Power, writing her opinion of "the immense benefit which a receptive reader may gain from an exposition such as Evola's"[55], and concluded that "the study of The Yoga of Power is particularly beneficial in a time in which every form of discipline is naively discredited."[56]

The psychologist Carl Jung favorably cited Evola's work on Hermeticism.[20][21] German psychotherapist Karlfried Graf Dürckheim based part of his "initiatory therapy" on Evola's work.[57] Famed author Herman Hesse in a private letter described Evola's text Revolt Against the Modern World as "really dangerous."[22]

Selected books and articles

  • Arte Astratta, posizione teorica (1920)
  • La parole obscure du paysage intérieur (1920)
  • Saggi sull'idealismo magico (1925)
  • L'individuo e il divenire del mondo (1926)
  • L'uomo come potenza (1927)
  • Teoria dell'individuo assoluto (1927)
  • Imperialismo pagano (1928; English translation: Heathen Imperialism, 2007)
  • Introduzione alla magia (1927-1929; 1971; English translation: Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus, 2001)
  • Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto (1930)
  • La tradizione ermetica (1931; English translation: The Hermetic Tradition: Symbols and Teachings of the Royal Art, 1995)
  • Maschera e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo: Analisi critica delle principali correnti moderne verso il sovrasensibile (1932)
  • Rivolta contro il mondo moderno (1934; second edition: 1951; English translation: Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga, 1995)
  • Tre aspetti del problema ebraico (1936; English translation: Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem, 2003)
  • Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero (1937; English translation: The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit, 1997)
  • Il mito del sangue. Genesi del Razzismo (1937)
  • Indirizzi per una educazione razziale (1941; English translation: The Elements of Racial Education 2005)
  • Sintesi di dottrina della razza (1941; German translation: Grundrisse der Faschistischen Rassenlehre, 1943)
  • Die Arische Lehre von Kampf und Sieg (1941; English translation: The Aryan Doctrine of Battle and Victory, 2007)
  • Gli Ebrei hanno voluto questa Guerra (1942)
  • La dottrina del risveglio (1943; English translations: The Doctrine of Awakening: A Study on the Buddhist Ascesis, 1951; The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts, 1995)
  • Lo Yoga della potenza (1949; English translation: The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way, 1992)
  • Orientamenti, undici punti (1950)
  • Gli uomini e le rovine (1953; English translation: Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist, 2002)
  • Metafisica del sesso (1958; English translations: The Metaphysics of Sex, 1983; Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, 1991)
  • L'«Operaio» nel pensiero di Ernst Jünger (1960)
  • Cavalcare la tigre (1961; English translation: Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul, 2003)
  • Il cammino del cinabro (1963; second edition, 1970; English translation: The Path of Cinnabar: An Intellectual Autobiography, 2009)
  • Meditazioni delle vette (1974; English translation: Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest, 1998)

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Rai DOP
  2. ^ a b c d e Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London: Routledge, 2002.
  3. ^ a b Horowitz, Jason. "Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists". New York Times, February 2017
  4. ^ Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996
  5. ^ a b c d e Nicholas Goodrick-Clark. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. NYU Press, 2001
  6. ^ a b Zubrin, Steve. "Putin's Rasputin Endorses Trump", The Weekly Standard
  7. ^ a b Meyer, Henry and Ant, Onur. "The One Russian Linking Putin, Erdogan and Trump", Bloomberg [1]
  8. ^ a b Feder, J. Lester. "This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World", BuzzFeed 2016 [2]
  9. ^ Ferraresi, Franco. "The Radical Right in Postwar Italy," Politics & Society, 1988 16:71-119, Pg. 84
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Paul Furlong, The Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola. London: Routledge, 2011. ISBN 9780203816912
  11. ^ Julius Evola, Il Camino del Cinabro, 1963
  12. ^ Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman. Fascism: Post-war fascisms. Taylor & Francis, 2004. p. 219
  13. ^ a b c d e f g T. Skorupski. The Buddhist Forum, Volume 4. Routledge, 2005
  14. ^ Thomas Sheehan. Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist. Social Research, XLVIII, 1 (Spring, 1981). 45-73, on p. 54
  15. ^ Nevill Drury. The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 Entries on the Mystical and Occult Traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 2004. p. 96
  16. ^ Isotta Poggi. "Alternative Spirituality in Italy." In: James R. Lewis, J. Gordon Melton. Perspectives on the New Age. SUNY Press, 1992. Page 276.
  17. ^ Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 89
  18. ^ Gary Lachman. Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen. Quest Books, 2012. p. 215
  19. ^ Florian Ebeling. The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times. Cornell University Press, 2007. p. 138
  20. ^ a b C. G. Jung. Psychology and Alchemy. Routledge, 2014. p. 228
  21. ^ a b C. G. Jung. Psychology and Alchemy. Routledge, 2014. p. 242
  22. ^ a b Mark Sedgwick. Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press, 2009
  23. ^ a b Richard W. Barber. The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. Harvard University Press, 2004
  24. ^ a b c Nigel Graddon. Otto Rahn and the Quest for the Grail: The Amazing Life of the Real Indiana Jones. SCB Distributors, 2013
  25. ^ Harry Oldmeadow. Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions. World Wisdom, Inc, 2004. p. 369
  26. ^ Richard K. Payne. Tantric Buddhism in East Asia. Simon and Schuster, 2006. p. 229
  27. ^ Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. pp. 101-102
  28. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wolff, Elisabetta Cassini. "Evola's interpretation of fascism and moral responsibility", Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 50
  29. ^ a b A. James Gregor, Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
  30. ^ Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 106
  31. ^ Gary Lachman. Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen. Quest Books, 2012. p. 217
  32. ^ Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 105
  33. ^ Kevin Coogan. Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International. Autonomedia, 1999. p. 314
  34. ^ Peter H. Merkl. Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations. University of California Press, 1986. p. 85
  35. ^ J. Gordon Melton, Martin Baumann. Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, 2nd Edition [6 volumes]: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices. ABC-CLIO, 2010. p. 1085
  36. ^ Conner, Randy P.; Sparks, David Hatfield; Sparks, Mariya (1997). Cassell's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Lore. Cassell. p. 136.
  37. ^ Blamires, Cyprian, and Paul Jackson. World Fascism: a historical encyclopedia, vol 1, Santa Barbara, CA, 2006. p. 208.
  38. ^ Packer, Jeremy. Secret agents popular icons beyond James Bond. New York, NY: Lang, 2009. p 150.
  39. ^ a b Atkins, Stephen E.. Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. p 89.
  40. ^ Gregor, A James. "Julius Evola, Fascism, and Neofascism" [3]
  41. ^ Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 93.
  42. ^ H.T. Hansen, "A Short Introduction to Julius Evola" in Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, p xviii.
  43. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press 2002, p.337)
  44. ^ Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 86.
  45. ^ The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 86.
  46. ^ Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. pp. 89-91
  47. ^ Marlene Laruelle. Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right? Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. OCCASIONAL PAPER #294. p. 10
  48. ^ Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman. Fascism: Post-war fascisms. Taylor & Francis, 2004. p. 223
  49. ^ Stucco 1992, xiii
  50. ^ Egil Asprem, Kennet Granholm. Contemporary Esotericism. Routledge, 2014. p. 245
  51. ^ Thomas Sheehan. Italy: Terror on the Right. The New York Review of Books, Volume 27, Number 21 & 22, January 22, 1981
  52. ^ Quoted in Ferraresi, Franco. "The Radical Right in Postwar Italy." Politics & Society. 1988 16:71-119. (p.84)
  53. ^ Institute of Race relations. "The far Right in Europe: a guide." Race & Class, 1991, Vol. 32, No. 3:125-146 (p.132).
  54. ^ Horowitz, Jason (2017-02-10). "Taboo Italian Thinker Is Enigma to Many, but Not to Bannon". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
  55. ^ Marguerite Yourcenar. Le temps, ce grand sculpteur (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). p. 201
  56. ^ Marguerite Yourcenar. Le temps, ce grand sculpteur (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). p. 204
  57. ^ Victor Trimondi, "Karlfried Graf Dürckheim"

References

  • Aprile, Mario (1984), "Julius Evola: An Introduction to His Life and Work," The Scorpion No. 6 (Winter/Spring): 20-21.
  • Coletti, Guillermo (1996), "Against the Modern World: An Introduction to the Work of Julius Evola," Ohm Clock No. 4 (Spring): 29-31.
  • Coogan, Kevin (1998), Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, ISBN 1-57027-039-2).
  • De Benoist, Alain. "Julius Evola, réactionnaire radical et métaphysicien engagé. Analyse critique de la pensée politique de Julius Evola," Nouvelle Ecole, No. 53–54 (2003), pp. 147–69.
  • Drake, Richard H. (1986), "Julius Evola and the Ideological Origins of the Radical Right in Contemporary Italy," in Peter H. Merkl (ed.), Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations (University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-05605-1) 61-89.
  • Drake, Richard H. (1988), "Julius Evola, Radical Fascism and the Lateran Accords," The Catholic Historical Review 74: 403-419.
  • Drake, Richard H. (1989), "The Children of the Sun," in The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-35019-0), 114-134.
  • Faerraresi, Franco (1987), "Julius Evola: Tradition, Reaction, and the Radical Right," European Journal of Sociology 28: 107-151.
  • Furlong, Paul (2011), Introduction to the Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola London: Routledge.
  • Godwin, Joscelyn (1996), Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, ISBN 0-932813-35-6), 57-61.
  • Gelli, Frank (2012), Julius Evola: The Sufi of Rome
  • Godwin, Joscelyn (2002), "Julius Evola, A Philosopher in the Age of the Titans," TYR: Myth—Culture—Tradition Volume 1 (Atlanta, GA: Ultra Publishing, ISBN 0-9720292-0-6), 127-142.
  • Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2001), Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, ISBN 0-585-43467-0, ISBN 0-8147-3124-4, ISBN 0-8147-3155-4), 52-71.
  • Griffin, Roger (1985), "Revolts against the Modern World: The Blend of Literary and Historical Fantasy in the Italian New Right," Literature and History 11 (Spring): 101-123.
  • Griffin, Roger (1995) (ed.), Fascism (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-289249-5), 317-318.
  • Hansen, H. T. (1994), "A Short Introduction to Julius Evola," Theosophical History 5 (January): 11-22; reprinted as introduction to Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1995).
  • Hansen, H. T. (2002), "Julius Evola's Political Endeavors," introduction to Evola, Men Among the Ruins, (Vermont: Inner Traditions).
  • Moynihan, Michael (2003), "Julius Evola's Combat Manuals for a Revolt Against the Modern World," in Richard Metzger (ed.), Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult (The Disinformation Company, ISBN 0-9713942-7-X) 313-320.
  • Rees, Philip (1991), Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 (New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-13-089301-3), 118-120.
  • Sedgwick, Mark (2004) Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515297-2).
  • Sheehan, Thomas (1981) "Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist," Social Research, 48 (Spring): 45-83.
  • Stucco, Guido (1992), "Translator's Introduction," in Evola, The Yoga of Power (Vermont: Inner Traditions), ix-xv.
  • Stucco, Guido (1994), "Introduction," in Evola, The Path of Enlightenment|The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries, Zen: The Religion of the Samurai, Rene Guenon: A Teacher for Modern Times, and Taoism: The Magic, the Mysticism (Edmonds, WA: Holmes Publishing Group)
  • Stucco, Guido (2002). "The Legacy of a European Traditionalist: Julius Evola in Perspective". The Occidental Quarterly 3 (2), pp. 21–44.
  • Wasserstrom, Steven M. (1995), "The Lives of Baron Evola," Alphabet City 4 + 5 (December): 84-89.
  • Waterfield, Robin (1990), 'Baron Julius Evola and the Hermetic Tradition', Gnosis 14, (Winter): 12-17.
  • "Bibliografia di J. Evola". Fondazione Julius Evola. Retrieved 25 April 2015.

Template:Julius Evola