The Sun-Eagle Spirituality
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

The author expresses admiration for the American Indian as a complete human type whose dignity and heroism are rooted in a profound, solar spirituality.

...hands of a few groups of European adventurers. The vital and inner potential of these cycles had been depleted for a long time, and thus we cannot verify any subsistence or revival of the ancient spirit in the times following the conquest. Nevertheless, morainic fragments of the ancient heritage endured for a longer time in the spirit and in the race of some North American stocks. In these tribes too, the heroic element was altered, thus generating forms of unprecedented cruelty and harshness.
Nevertheless, for the most part, it is possible to subscribe to the view of Frithjof Schuon, who spoke about the singularly complete human type of the American Indian: his dignity, his pride, his moral uprightness and strength, his generosity and his heroism, which are all dimensions of an inner beauty represented both by the sun and by the eagle, command our respect and bespeak a spirituality without which these virtues would appear unintelligible and lacking a sufficient reason.
Asimilar situation can be verified during the late Neolithic in Europe, with regard to warrior stocks that may appear somewhat barbaric when compared to the societies of a Demetrian and priestly type that they swept away, subdued, or absorbed. In these stocks, notwithstanding a certain involution, there are visible traces of the formative action of the previous cycle of Nordic spirituality; this is also the case, as I will try to document, of the epigones of several northern people during the...
2
Inner vs Outer War
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

An explanation of the Islamic concept of 'holy war,' where the external military struggle (lesser jihad) serves as a ritualized expression and means for the internal spiritual struggle (greater jihad).

...ldes Heer eventually became identified, was the army the god needed in order to fight against the ragna-rokkr, the "twilight of the gods" that has been approaching for a very long time. It is written: "There is a very large number of dead heroes in Valhalla, and many more have yet to come, and yet they will seem too few when the wolf comes." What has been said so far concerns the transformation of the war into a "holy war." Now I wish to add some specific references found in other traditions.
In the Islamic tradition a distinction is made between two holy wars, the "greater holy war" ( el-jihadul-akbar ) and the "lesser holy war" ( el-jihadul-ashgar ). This distinction originated from a saying ( hadith ) of the Prophet, who on the way back from a military expedition said: "You have returned from a lesser holy war to the greater holy war." The greater holy war is of an inner and spiritual nature; the other is the material war waged externally against an enemy population with the particular intent of bringing "infidel" populations under the rule of "God's Law" (al-Islam). The relationship between the "greater" and the "lesser holy…
Originally, orthodox Islam conceived a unitary form of asceticism: that which is connected to the jihad or "holy war." The "greater holy war" is man's struggle against the enemies he carries within. More exactly, it is the struggle of man's higher principle against everything that is merely human in him, against his inferior nature and against chaotic impulses and all sorts of material attachments. This is expressly outlined in a text of Aryan warrior wisdom: "Know Him therefore who is above r...
Continue reading →
3
Greece's Crepuscular Glory
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

A reflection on the 'Greek Middle Ages' as the true peak of Hellenic culture, contrasting its heroic Olympian spirituality with the later, 'crepuscular' period of classical philosophy.

...t collapsed, thought gradually became a reason unto itself, losing all transcendent and superrational references—until it eventually culminated in modern Rationalism and Kantian Criticism. Here I will mention in passing another aspect of the "humanistic" upheaval found in Greece: the development of the arts and literature in a hypertrophic, profane, and individualistic sense. When compared to the strength of the origins, this development should be regarded as a degeneration and disintegration.
The peak of the ancient world is found wherever, next to a coarseness of external forms, an intimately sacral reality was translated without expressionism into the greatness of a clear and free world. Thus, the best period of Hellas corresponds to the so-called Greek Middle Ages, characterized by its epos and ethos , and by its ideals of Olympian spirituality and heroic transfiguration. The civilized and philosophical Greece, "Mother of the arts," which the moderns admire so much and completely empathize with, was a crepuscular Greece.
This was clearly perceived by those people who still retained the same virile spirit of the Achaean era in a pure state, that is, by the original Romans; see for instance in the writings of Cato (234–149 B.C. ) the expressions of contempt for the new breed of "philosophers" and men of letters. In many ways, the Hellenization of Rome, under this aspect of humanistic and almost enlightened development promoted by poets, literatary types, and scholars, was a prelude of its own decadence. Generally...
2
Natural Rights as Fiction
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

The author rejects the concept of 'natural rights' as a modern fiction, arguing that nature has no inherent spiritual value unless it is consecrated and ordered from above by a traditional state.

...Olympian and Uranian principles are related to the chthonic and "infernal" world; or as "idea," "form," or νο ς, are related to "matter," "nature," or ὕλὴ ; or as the luminous, masculine, differentiating, individualizing, and life-giving principle is related to the unsteady, promiscuous, and nocturnal feminine principle. Between these two poles there is a deep tension, which in the traditional world was resolved in the sense of a transfiguration and of the establishment of an order from above.
Thus, the very notion of "natural rights" is a mere fiction, and the antitraditional and subversive use of that is well documented. There is no such thing as a nature that is "good" in itself and in which the inalienable rights of an individual, which are to be equally enjoyed by every human being, are preformed and rooted. Even when the ethnic substance appears to be somewhat "well defined," in other words, when it presents some elementary forms of order, these forms (unless they are residues and traces of previous formative actions) do not have a spiritual value in and of themselves unless by participating in a higher order, such as when…
In the end, the demos's substance is always demonic (in the ancient, non-Christian, and amoral sense of the word); it always requires a catharsis or a liberation before it can act as a force ( δύναμις ) and as the material of a traditional political system, and before it can favor the development of a differentiated and hierarchical order of dignity over and beyond a naturalistic substratum. In this regard we shall see that the main principle upon which the differentiation between people and t...
Continue reading →
6
Arctic Uranian Source
Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World

A vision of a primordial Arctic homeland as the original source of the 'Uranian' tradition, preserved in the myths and symbols of various later civilizations.

...symbol was reality and the reality a symbol and history and metahistory were not two separated parts but rather two parts reflecting each other. This is precisely the point in which it is possible to enter into the events conditioned by time. Allegedly, according to tradition, in an epoch of remote prehistory that corresponds to the Golden Age or Age of Being, the symbolical island or "polar" land was a real location situated in the Arctic, in the area that today corresponds to the North Pole.
This region was inhabited by beings who by virtue of their possession of that nonhuman spirituality (characterized by gold, "glory," light, and life) that in later times will be evoked by the abovementioned symbolism, founded the race that exemplified the Uranian tradition in a pure state; this race, in turn, was the central and most direct source of the various forms and manifestations this tradition produced in other races and civilizations. The memory of this Arctic seat is the heritage of the traditions of many people, both in the form of real geographical references and in symbols of its function and its original meaning; these symbols…
For this reason there is often a confusion of memories, names, myths, and locations, but a trained eye will easily detect the single components. It is noteworthy to emphasize the interference of the Arctic theme with the Atlantic theme, of the mystery of the North with the mystery of the West, since the latter succeeded the original traditional pole as the main seat. We know that owing to an astrophysical cause; that is, to the tilting of the terrestrial axis, in every era there has been a chan...
Continue reading →
1