The direction in which we may find awakening and liberation, the direction of initiation, is vertical and has nothing to do with the course of history. ~ Julius Evola

Spirituality in the Modern World

I spent some time tonight, actually too much time, checking out on Amazon various books on spirituality, mostly obscure, that have been recommended to me. Without passing judgment on books I have not read, I did notice a disconcerting similarity among them. First, there is always the claim by the author for his or her spiritual realization, usually with a laundry list of initiations or teachers from an incompatible collection of traditions, usually Tibetan Buddhism, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Vedanta, and so on. Second, there is an assumption of universality in that anyone by following the advice in the book can come to a similar state of spiritual realization. Third, is the objection to dogma in any form while not seeing the implicit dogmas in their own formulation. Fourth, is the lack of understanding of the heroic task of asserting the cosmos against the forces of chaos. Chaos is deemed not to exist since any claim to a higher order is considered judgmental.

Closely related, is the most egregious, which is the concession to modernity. Every dogma of modernity is accepted, particularly the fruits of cultural Marxism. For example, there is a gnostic group that used to have an order for men, based on Templar type virtues, and a separate order for women to develop their particular gifts. But now, they admit, the orders are open to either gender as a reflection of the times. Whatever side you are on in regard to that decision, the fundamental point is that it is based on feminism and egalitarianism, which have totally secular roots. What sort of authentic spirituality judges itself on the basis of secular standards? One should simply skip the costume drama and join the enlightenment.

The Antidote

The organization of the Ancient City is utterly different from modern liberal societies. For the liberal today, it is simply incomprehensible. Committed to the social contract theory, she cannot understand how men and women in a “state of nature” could agree to such an arrangement. Yet, from the antique viewpoint, there is no such “state of nature”, but rather the primordial state, which is supra-human. Hence, its social hierarchy is considered, if not divinely inspired, then established but the very nature of things. Further, there is no distinction between “is” and “ought”, as man, too, in his willing is subject to that nature. This, the liberal opposes by inserting a wedge; by questioning everything, she creates a second reality of thought whose purpose and intention is to replace the divine law.

So, what would a book of spirituality based on the ancient city look like? Just to recap. The city is structured around rites and rituals honoring founders and ancestors. Implicit in this is the understanding of fate and cosmic law that dictates those rites. The members of the three castes are initiated into those rites, which in reality is their mystery religion. At a later time, as the force of the rites is felt less, mythos and logos arise. The law is attributed to the word of a god and then with the rise of the philosophers, the gods are dispensed with and the law is expressed as Logos. Fundamentally, however, mythos and logos see their function is explicating the implicitly understood dogmas of the city. With modernity, the Logos is separated from its source and becomes free floating thought, or ideology. This process will be dealt with in a later post.

Since no one reading this blog has been initiated, we have to resort to a sort of Hermetic meditation, and imaginatively place ourselves in its midst. There are those today who claim to understand the spirituality for “our” people, usually in the form of the recovery of the period of Mythos. However, this shows no understanding of origins. Leaving aside the disputed question of who actually belongs, in terms of race of the body, such a position shows a lack of understanding of the Ancient City. Recall that there are the twice-born caste members who are initiated, but there are also the clients who are not. That is, the members of the caste would follow an esoteric mystery religion, but the clients (or serfs) would follow the rites of their patron family as an exoteric religion.

The clients, then, would be attracted to the exoteric forms of polytheistic worship of the Olympic type gods (or their Roman and German counterparts). Thus, we regard the frequent calls of neo-pagans to Thor worship, and the like, as contemporary manifestations of the serf mentality.

Mystery Religion

In From Religion to Philosophy, F. M. Cornford describes the nature of mystery religion, focusing on the later cult of Dionysus which transcends any particular city. Nevertheless, the pattern would have been similar in earlier stages. Here is Cornford’s characterization, which matches Evola’s frequent descriptions of the man-god.

Because the province of a Mystery God is always, primarily, the human society from which he immediately springs, it is possible for him to remain human as well as divine. In this lies the secret of the vitality of mystical religions. The characteristic rite is sacramental, an act of communion and reunion with the daemon. Its effect may be conceived under two complementary aspects: either as enthusiasm…or ecstasy

Discounting Cornford’s secular viewpoint, we can instead understand ecstasy as man rising above the prison of his individuality to a super-individual state, to become immortal and divine. As he writes: “God can enter into man, and man can become God.” The mystery God is attached to his group, thus resists incorporation into the universalist Olympians. Hence,

A mystery religion is necessarily monotheistic … Teaching the unity of all life, it disposes of polytheism by the doctrine that all the Gods are only diverse shapes of one divine principle, one nature with many names.

It is this specificity of the mystery God, tied to a particular people, which is the surd in all new age schemes. Cornford stumbles onto an interesting dichotomy here. On the one hand, New Age spirituality wants to jump straight to the “one divine principle” and the “one nature with many names”. Yet without a mystery God, they are left holding the bag of many names, with little understanding of the one nature or divine principle.

Next: Spirituality and the spiritual race.
Note: Those who wish to understand enthusiasm (or enstasy) and ecstasy from a Hermetic point of view should read the relevant section in Meditations on the Tarot.