In a nutshell, this is the sense of the system I uphold, in which on the one hand I sought to fuse the gnoseological problem and the ontological problem with the ethical problem and the problem of self-realisation or magical problem; on the other hand, to claim the value of the individual and to make him become conscious of his task and his cosmic dignity.

It is that which I recognize as truth, or, better said, it is that which I will as truth.

Before addressing the topic of initiation, Evola first summarizes his philosophy. First, he describes the initial state of the being.

we have in fact the simple state of the being that discovers itself, that is pure spontaneity, that does not own itself but simply is. Although a state of fullness and light for the “I” yet to be born, close to the point of the individual, it appears instead as darkness and death.

The being is not master of himself as an I, but passive. Initiation looks forbidding, but will be enlightenment for the twice-born. He recapitulates the three stages.

1. In a first moment, it is dissolved in the world of appearances and mere representations.
2. In a second moment it is felt as infinite passion, as the dark and silent pain of privation, as the indescribable crucifixion in the world of necessity.
3. But, born from it, the individual now assumes this death with joy; he is adequate to it; he knows that only his own supernatural value of ‘being made of possession” is its cause; he recognizes it as matter, from which only he will be able to drag the splendour of a life to an absolute reality.

Evola describes this process of initiation in more detail. The “being of possession” echoes back to Max Stirner; the being now “owns” himself. The “three worlds” is a reference to Taoism.

And then the darkness gradually is illumined, then the terrible flower of the absolute Individual rises from the abyss of necessity. He raises himself slowly into the starless sky, pulling himself from the fierce heat of what he devours in his power. Things and beings die in his vertiginous intensity and he gradually, irresistibly, becomes — he, tremendous in his purity, is “Master of Yes and No” and Ruler of the “three worlds”. And in him, a being of possession, a being that “burns and blazes”, the process of the universe will have its consummation or final perfection with his act.

In the second part of The Individual and the Becoming of the World, Evola distinguishes between the “religious attitude” and initiation. The former has these characteristics:

1. It believes that the world is fundamentally right from a principle of order, harmony, and goodness, and that everything opposed to it that is darkness, irrationality, indeterminateness, evil, either is illusion or something that must not be.
2. Consequently, it pushes such a principle back onto something “other than me” – to something transcendent. We say “consequently” since my actual experience is showing me a world totally different from one that is ordered and rational, I am not entitled to also admit the actual existence, alongside it, of a providential and rational world, unless I relate it to something that transcends me and to believe that this something exists.
3. If such a transcendent principle is intended to be the source of every reality, it must be said that the individual in himself is nothing and can be nothing. The “I” is annulled and its being is pushed back onto the other.

Evola contrasts that to the wisdom of the mysteries — of Buddha, Dionysus, Mithras, Hermes:

1. He faces up to reality, without veils, in its tragic, irrational, unprovidential nature.
2. He rejects the belief in the present existence of an optimistic order, and the necessity of postulating the transcendental, the God to guarantee it, and to explain how it can coexist with the order of existing things that contradict it.
3. Thus the gulf remains between titanic pessimism and Dionysianism, bridged by recognizing or not recognizing the moral right to existence of a regulated, just, and rational world. In the case of the affirmative, he asserts the concept of the individual as a sufficient power in himself, capable of saving not only himself but also everything that he is connected to and that, at bottom, is the reflexion of what he concretely is.