the destined hills of Rome,”24 which was also Evola’s and Reghini’s am-
bition, in the sense of their Pagan Imperialism. But the Catholic Church,
which Mussolini needed for his regime, naturally did not want a pagan
Rome. This led to the Lateran Accords of 1929 between the Vatican and
Mussolini, exploding this dream of the Group of Ur.
The Group of Ur was fundamentally concerned not just with self-
transformation and integration into the transcendental realm but also
with the resultant higher dignity and freedom. An actual ontological
change of state (initiation) was necessary for obtaining the intended iden-
tity with God (deification). Connected with this was the achievement of an
59
Julius Evola and Tradition
59
unbroken continuum of consciousness, which ideally would even extend
beyond (bodily) death.
The integral tradition
It was also through Reghini that in the mid- 1920s Evola came into contact
with the idea of the “integral tradition” in the sense of the French esoteri-
cist René Guénon, where “integral” distinguishes it from simple tradition
as the preservation of old customs and mores. Evola was quickly seized by
the idea, but he differed from Guénon in his active and combative char-
acter. He saw himself as belonging to the warrior or Kshatriya caste, and
not, like Guénon, as a contemplative Brahmin. This activist attitude also
explains Evola’s controversial effort as an esotericist to influence practical
politics. The fruit of Evola’s intensive study of the integral tradition is what
is probably his best- known book, Revolt Against the Modern World ( Rivolta
contro il mondo moderno).25 The book is in two parts: part 1 sets out the
theoretical principles and explains what constitutes the integral tradition;
part 2 offers an “occult” history of the world.
Evola presents the integral tradition as a universal and timeless
(perennial) Weltanschauung, whose origin lies in the transcendent, be-
yond humans, peoples, and history. It is primordial, unitive, and all-
encompassing. All metaphysical worldviews and important religions
derive from it. Since the integral tradition claims a “divine” origin, it is also
the final authority for its adherents; it cannot be questioned, never alters,
and sets the absolute norm that everything should follow. It is clearly de-
termined from “above.” The modern world, in the form of Western civi-
lization and technology, which rests on merely material, physiochemical
bases and is thus determined from “below,” is seen as the exact contrary
of this tradition.
The integral tradition, never perfectly realizable on Earth and thus only
an ideal to be striven for, rests on strictly hierarchical thinking, whereby
the highest rank approaches the transcendent. The stages descend through
progressive materialization. From this hierarchy of the absolute primacy
of everything spiritual, there inevitably derive a series of incompatible
contrasts with modernity, dominated as it is by the idea of equality. For ex-
ample, the leadership in a traditional society can belong only to someone
who can act as link to transcendence, for only “there” can the meaning and
purpose of such a society be found. A priest- king corresponds most closely
to this idea of a leader:
6
0
60
C L A S S I C T H I N K E R S
Every traditional society is characterized by the presence of
beings who, by virtue of the innate or acquired superiority over
the human condition, embody within the temporal order the
living and efficacious presence of a power that comes from above.
One of these types of beings is the pontifex . . . Pontifex means
“builder of bridges” . . . connecting the natural and supernatural
dimensions. . . . In the world of Tradition the most important foun-
dation of authority and of the right of kings and chiefs, and the
reason why they were obeyed, feared and venerated, was essentially
their transcendent and nonhuman quality.26
vision of humans according to their inner capability of approaching tra-
ditional spirituality and transmitting it, clearly manifested in the Hindu
caste system. Further characteristics of the traditional world are the pre-
dominance of ritual, initiation, and consecration, together with com-
pletely different concepts of time and space, considered not quantitatively
but qualitatively, according to their affinity with transcendence.
The second part of Revolt Against the Modern World describes the
“decline” from an originally spiritual and traditional culture down to
the modern world. Thus, following Greco- Roman and Vedic reports,
Evola speaks of a hyperborean center that was localized in prehistoric
times in the Arctic, and where Nordic “god- men” ruled until “Cosmic”
catastrophes forced them to leave their homeland, thereby spreading
their upward- directed (“heavenward”), solar, and heroically masculine
view of life throughout most of the world. On the other side there had
arisen the downward- directed (“earthward”), lunar, and matriarchal
cultures of the southern peoples, leading to warfare but also to misceg-
enation with northerners. The influence of Jakob Bachofen is evident
here, though Evola turned his worldview completely upside down.27
Over descending cycles, the solar element in the West is said to have lost
more and more of its power. A final flickering of tradition is still detectable
in medieval Catholicism, because this leaned less towards Christian hu-
mility than towards a sacred imperialism.28 For Evola, the Renaissance and
especially the French Revolution mark further stages of decline. Modernity
would finally plunge into collectivism, anarchy, and materialism, as al-
ready prophesied in Indian scriptures ( Vishnu- purāṇa). World history thus
appears not as evolution but as devolution, to the point of the Iron or Dark
Age ( kālī- yuga) of today. A true restoration of tradition would be possible
61
Julius Evola and Tradition
61
only after the utter collapse of the modern world. There can be no gradual
transition between traditional and modern culture because they are utterly
separate and have developed entirely different concepts of time, value, and
the sacred.
The much-
honored German expressionist poet Gottfried Benn,
reviewing Revolt Against the Modern World, called it “an epochal book.
Whoever has read it will be changed.”29
Politics
Evola’s political philosophy is understandable only through his premise
of the primacy of the transcendent, as mentioned earlier. It rests on
hierarchical thinking and finds its expression in the “organic state,” as
presented in Evola’s chief political work, Men Among the Ruins ( UGli
uomini e lerovine, 1952).30 Its presupposition is a center resting on tran-
scendent principles, which— in contrast to totalitarianism— permeates
&
nbsp; all elements of the state from above to below due to its higher spiritual
power alone. As in Plato, the first duty of the state is to lead citizens to
higher goals.
At the same time, Evola took issue with the concept of the nation, since
this was determined merely by biological and cultural parameters; in-
stead, he advocates a spiritual- monarchical empire. The core ideas of this
work were already summarized for Evola’s closest adherents in his short
book Orientations ( Orientamenti).31
Evola’s first political essay appeared in 1925 in the anti- Fascist news-
paper Lo Stato Democratico ( The Democratic State), and already had all the
ingredients that would mark his later political works: first, opposition to
democracy, since this depended on quantity, not on quality, and lacked the
spiritual element. But it also opposed the ruling Fascist regime as being
too “populist” and likewise devoid of any spirituality. He called the Fascist
revolution a “caricature of a revolution” ( ironia di rivoluzione). Evola wrote
all this in the hope of reforming a Fascism striving for strict control, and of
being able to correct it in the direction of his pagan, spiritual, and imperial
idea. It was a project that could never succeed.
Italian Fascism had arisen from the often violent “Fasci italiani
di combattimento” (Italian battle groups), founded in 1919, which
transformed into a political party in 1921. In 1922 there came the trium-
phal “March on Rome,” whereupon it formed a coalition government with
conservatives and nationalists. Mussolini, who had originally belonged to
6
2
62
C L A S S I C T H I N K E R S
the Socialist Party, became prime minister, and in 1925 a single- party dic-
tatorship was established.
In 1928 Evola’s Pagan Imperialism was published, as a polemical fo-
cusing of his political views. The book caused lively controversy, especially
in the Vatican, whose influence Evola had sharply criticized. After the
end of the Group of Ur, Evola founded the journal La Torre ( The Tower),
which was closed down after only six months. The cause was his attacks
on Mussolini’s campaign for increasing the birthrate and his uncompro-
mising attitude to the “plebeian” regime.
Evola abroad
Seeing no further possibility for himself and his political ideas in Fascist
Italy, Evola undertook extensive journeys throughout Europe to meet
representatives of political directions that matched his own sacral, ho-
listic, antiliberal and anti- Bolshevist positions. Among them were rep-
resentatives of Germany’s “Conservative Revolution” and the founder of
Romania’s Iron Guard, Corneliu Codreanu.32 While visiting Romania,
Evola came into contact with Mircea Eliade, the historian of religion and
philosopher, who had early on embraced some of Evola’s ideas and with
whom he remained in contact later.
Evola also met the political theorist Carl Schmitt and the poet Gottfried
Benn, and gave lectures in Germany. He met Schmitt several times, and
letters to him even exist from the postwar era. Evola followed Schmitt’s
ideas closely,33 but their outlooks were too different to allow for a reciprocal
influence, not least because of Schmitt’s Catholicism. Evola appreciated
Schmitt, both because they belonged to the same tradition of conserva-
tive thinkers and also because they were linked by their esteem for the
antiliberal political philosopher Juan Donoso Cortés.
Evola and Ernst Jünger seem never to have met. Evola wanted to
translate Jünger’s The Worker ( Der Arbeiter), because he saw the “worker”
as an elemental force against bourgeois society. However, he did not
agree with some aspects of the work and settled for an adaptation of
it, supplied with his own commentaries.34 Evola certainly did not agree
with the later works in which Jünger turned more to humanistic and
democratic ideas.35 Although Evola translated Spengler’s The Decline of
the West into Italian in 1957, he wrote that Spengler’s writing influenced
him in no way and criticized Spengler for his lack of a metaphysical
standpoint.36
63
Julius Evola and Tradition
63
It was mainly the apparent leanings of National Socialism toward the
Germanic past and to ancient symbols, as well as its emphasis on loyalty,
discipline, and readiness for sacrifice, that led Evola to a closer approach
to Germany and especially to the SS, which he admired— at least to begin
with— as a spiritual warrior order. A claim from Italian police reports that
Evola was acquainted with Heinrich Himmler, who was fascinated by old
German esoteric teachings and wanted to lead the SS as a chivalric order,
is unconfirmed. There is however evidence that he was in contact with the
Ahnenerbe (Research Community for Ancestral Heritage), the research in-
stitute founded by Himmler and the völkish ideologist Herman Wirth. The
point of contention was above all the Führer Principle, which, in Evola’s
view, lacked any legitimacy from a transcendent authority, referred only to
the people, and consequently had to act in a demagogic fashion. Evola also
opposed the purely biological racial principle, as well as the whipping- up
of nationalist feelings.37
Evola’s attempt to gain a corrective influence over German politics via
the SS was a complete failure. Already in 1938 an SS document described
Evola, because of his divergent views, as a “reactionary Roman and a fan-
tasist,” together with the directive to observe his subsequent activity. With
that, his efforts for a sacralized politics failed in Germany, as they had
in Italy.
Evola’s racial doctrines
In the mid- 1930s another chance occurred for Evola to gain political influ-
ence. Mussolini expressed himself in positive terms about Evola’s thesis
of a “spiritual” racism and invited him for discussions. Evola had applied
his holistic concept of man as consisting of body, soul, and spirit to ra-
cial doctrine, and spoke of a bodily race, a soul race, and a spiritual race.
These would not necessarily coincide in the same individual. As Evola
wrote in July 1931, “The preservation or restoration of racial unity (in its
narrow sense) may be everything in an animal. But it is not so in man.”38
Mussolini wanted to use Evola’s racial doctrine as a counterweight to the
“materialistic and biological” racism of National Socialism, but the project
failed because resistance in both countries was too strong.
Evola’s anti- Semitism requires discussion. He saw the Jews as a symbol
of the materialistic and economic domination of humanity, as conceived
by the German sociologist Werner Sombart.39 The early influence of Otto
Weininger, with his dictum “Judaism is the spirit of modern life,” now
6
4
64
C L A S S I C T H I N K E R S
came to fruition.40 After his suicide in 1903, Weininger had acquired a
worldwide circle of admirers, including Jews. Evola’s anti- Semitism was
&nb
sp; neither religious nor primarily biological. In emotional moments he often
repudiated his own guidelines, though. He expressed himself positively
on orthodox Judaism and especially Kabbalah, and ensured that his eso-
teric book- series Horizons of the Spirit ( Orizzonti dello spirito) would pub-
lish the great Jewish scholar of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem.
The postwar period
After the downfall and arrest of Mussolini in 1943 and his subsequent
rescue by German troops, Evola was present as interpreter at discussions
between Mussolini and Hitler at Hitler’s headquarters in Rastenburg, East
Prussia (now Kętrzyn, Poland). The resulting Salò Republic, however, ful-
filled Evola’s expectations even less than the original Fascist state that had
now collapsed.41 As American troops were marching on Rome in 1944,
Evola fled to Vienna. His relations with individual Fascist leaders were
well known, and toward the end of the Fascist regime he had also been
in contact with the Nazi Security Service ( Sicherheitsdienst).42 The nature
of these contacts remains unexplained. In Vienna he planned to write a
Secret History of Secret Societies, probably having access to the documents
that the German authorities had seized from Masonic lodges. This plan,
however, was not realized.
During one of the final bombing raids on Vienna in 1945, Evola suffered
a serious spinal injury, which caused him to be confined in a wheelchair to
the end of his life. After three years in Austrian and Italian hospitals and
sanatoria he returned to Rome, where he resumed his activity as a writer.
Beside his own writing, Evola was obliged by financial need to extensive
activity as a translator. This included, among others, works by Gustav
Meyrink, Mircea Eliade, Arthur Avalon, D. T. Suzuki, Oswald Spengler,
Gabriel Marcel, Otto Weininger, and Ernst Jünger.
Soon after his return to Rome, Evola became the spiritual focus
of a group of mostly young followers, who tried to emulate his sharply
formulated spiritual and political views. In April 1951 he was accused of
being the “intellectual instigator” of secret neo- fascist terrorist groups,
and of “glorifying Fascism.” After six months in custody he was acquitted.
Evola died in 1974, appreciated only by a few, in a small Roman apart-