World Beyond World
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

A vision of the traditional world as being divided between the physical realm and a 'world beyond' that represents true liberation. The author asserts that physical life is meaningless unless it is oriented toward participating in this higher, metaphysical spirituality.

...nce that does not need to be spent in search of other things or people in order to be complete and justified. The traditional representations of this other region were solar symbols, heavenly regions, beings made of light or fire, islands, and mountain peaks. These were the two "natures." Tradition conceived the possibility of being born in either one, and also of the possibility of going from one birth to another, according to the saying: "A man is a mortal god, and a god is an immortal man."
The world of Tradition knew these two great poles of existence, as well as the paths leading from one to the other. Tradition knew the existence of the physical world and the totality of the forms, whether visible or underground, whether human or subhuman and demonic, of ὑπερκοσµία , a "world beyond this world." According to Tradition, the former is the "fall" of the latter, and the latter represents the "liberation" of the former. The traditional world believed spirituality to be something beyond life and death. It held that mere physical existence, or "living," is meaningless unless it approximates the higher world or that which is "more…
According to Tradition, every authority is fraudulent, every law is unjust and barbarous, every institution is vain and ephemeral unless they are ordained to the superior principle of Being, and unless they are derived from above and oriented "upward." The traditional world knew divine kingship. It knew the bridge between the two worlds, namely, initiation; it knew the two great ways of approach to the transcendent, namely, heroic action and contemplation; it knew the mediation, namely, rites...
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The Eternal Spirit
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

A summary of Kṛṣṇa’s teaching to Arjuna, emphasizing the immortality of the Spirit over the illusory nature of the physical body and the necessity of performing one's duty in battle.

...erms: "Prepare for war with peace in thy soul. Be in peace in pleasure and pain, in gain and in loss, in victory or in the loss of a battle. In this peace there is no sin." In other words: you will not stray from the supernatural direction by fulfilling your dharma as a warrior. The relationship between war and "the path to God" is present in the Gītā too, though the metaphysical rather than the ethical aspect is more heavily stressed: the warrior reproduces somewhat the deity's transcendence.
The teaching Kṛṣṇa imparts to Arjuna concerns first of all the distinction between what is pure and undying and that which, as a human and naturalistic element, only appears to exist: The unreal never is: the Real never is not. This truth indeed has been seen by those who can see the true. Interwoven in his creation, the Spirit is beyond destruction. No one can bring to an end the Spirit which is everlasting....If any man thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die....He does not die when the body dies ... these bodies have an end in their…
The consciousness of the irreality of what can be lost or caused to be lost as ephemeral life and as mortal body (the equivalent of the Islamic view that this life is just a sport and a pastime) is associated with the knowledge of that aspect of the divine according to which this aspect is an absolute power before which every conditioned existence appears as a negation; this power becomes naked and dazzles in a terrible theophany precisely in the act of destruction, in the act that "negates th...
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Initiation's Indelible Mark
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

The author asserts that initiation bestows an 'indelible mark' and objective power that is independent of human morality or merit, a concept echoed in the Catholic view of priestly dignity.

...se of this decadence, the ancient regal dignity was retained on a different plane than that of royal power, which by then had fallen into profane hands. This did not prevent temporal sovereigns in ancient times, however, from aspiring to achieve the dignity of an initiatory king, which was very different from the dignity that they actually enjoyed. Thus, for instance, when Hadrian and Antoninus were already Roman emperors, they received the title of "king" only after being initiated at Eleusis.
According to concordant testimonies, the quality bestowed by initiation is distinct from and unrelated to any human merit: all of the human virtues combined could not produce this quality, just as, to a certain extent, no human "sin" could affect it. An echo of this notion was preserved in the Catholic view according to which the priestly dignity, which is transmitted sacramentally, cannot be effaced by any moral sin committed by the person endowed with it, since it remains in that person as an indoles indelebilis, an "indelible mark" ("You are a priest forever," Ps. 110:4). Moreover, as in the case of the Mazdean notion of "glory" and of the…
In ancient China a distinction was made between those who were naturally endowed with "knowledge" and "virtue" (those who are capable of "fulfilling Heaven's law with calm and imperturbability and no help from the outside" are at the pinnacle, and are "perfected" and "transcendent" men) and those who achieved them "by disciplining themselves and by returning to the rites." The discipline (sieu-ki) that is suitable to the latter men and that is the equivalent of initiation was considered only as...
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Golden Age's Invisible Watchers
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

The author describes the Golden Age as an era of 'Being' where death was unknown and primordial men lived as gods, eventually transitioning into an invisible presence after their physical disappearance.

...rn, who corresponds to the Hellenic Kronos, is a subtle reference to this idea, since in his name we find the Aryan root sat , "being," together with the attributive ending urnus (as in nocturnus ). As far as the era of Being or of spiritual stability is concerned, we shall see below that in several representations of the primordial site in which this cycle unfolded it is possible to find the symbols of "terra firma" surrounded by waters, or of the "island," the mountain, or the "middle land."
As the age of Being the first era is also the era of the Living in the eminent sense of the word. According to Hesiod, death—which for most people is truly an end that bequeaths Hades—made its appearance only during the last two ages (the Iron and Bronze ages). During Kronos's Golden Age "mortal people lived as if they were gods" (ἱσóς τε θεoἰ) , and "no miserable old age came their way." That cycle ended, "but those men continue to live upon the earth [τοἰ μεν... εἰσι] " in an invisible way, "mantling themselves in dark mist and watching [ήέρα έσσαμένoι] over mortal men"; these words allude to the previously mentioned doctrine according to…
In the realm of Yima, the Persian king of the Golden Age, before the new cosmic events forced him to withdraw into a "subterranean" refuge (the inhabitants of which were thus enabled to evade the dark and painful destiny befallen the new generations), there was "neither disease nor death." Yima, "the brilliant, the most glorious of those yet to be born, the sunlike one of men," banished death from his kingdom. Just as in Saturn's golden kingdom, according to both Romans and Greeks, men and immo...
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Demonic Lucid Will
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

The author interprets the relentless logic of the Bolshevik revolution as a sinister sign of the end of a cycle, where dark forces manifest through lucid intellect and a strong will to power.

...eestablished limits, that the uprising of the masses inhabiting the ancient Russian empire, and the regime of terror aimed at frantically extirpating what was connected to the ruling classes, eventually occurred. Another characteristic trait was that while previous revolutions almost always escaped from the control of those who had started them and ended up devouring their "children," this happened only to a small degree in Russia, where a continuity of power and terror was firmly established.
Even though the logic of the red revolution did not hesitate to eliminate or remove those Bolsheviks who dared to venture outside the orthodox trajectory, and even though it had no regard for individuals and no scruples about the means to be employed for these removals, still, at the center of the revolution there were never relevant crises or oscillations. This is indeed a characteristic as well as sinister trait; it foreshadows an era in which the forces of darkness will no longer work behind the scenes but come out into the open, having found their most suitable incarnation in beings in whom daemonism teams up with a lucid intellect, a…
As far as the communist idea is concerned, anybody who forgets that there are two truths in communism is likely to be deceived. The first "esoteric" truth has a dogmatic and immutable character; it corresponds to the basic tenets of the revolution and is formulated in the writings and in the directives of the early Bolshevik period. The second is a changeable and "realistic" truth, which is forged case by case, often in apparent contrast with the first truth, and characterized by eventual comp...
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