In 1930, Julius Evola launched the periodical La Torre which was subsequently shut down by the Fascist government of Italy. This was just after the publication of the Italian edition of Pagan Imperialism, but before Revolt against the modern World. This essay, Noi Antimoderni is from the inaugural issue. While there is nothing unexpected here, it sets the scene for his subsequent works. The translation will appear in two parts. See Part Two →
Commentaries are marked off with a green bar.
In many ways today, a dark threat, understood in an always more precise sense, looms over the entire civilization of the West. In the crisis, without insisting on this or that special form, but rather on the structure of the entire modern world, it seems to foretell the symptoms of the end of a world, the decline of a culture.
While Rene Guenon, analyzes the imbalance and discomfort characteristic of this era, he, in fact, shows how its characteristics are precisely those of the Dark or Iron Age, foretold by ancient traditions.
There are two important points to keep in mind:
- The so-called crisis is entwined in the very structure of the modern world. It is not a question of fixing a limited problem, winning an election, or purging the West of some group or form of thought.
- Its characteristics can be known in advance by those who understand cosmic cycles. Everything that happens does so for a reason, by following certain principles, or rather, by the denial and neglect of real principles.
Spengler indicates how today there is in existence a fatally inflexible law, for which, like any organism, each civilization, after its rise and prospering, its fall and its petrification into a lifeless barbaric grandeur follow.
After Netzsche, Keyserling, Kalergi indict the immoralism and the irrealism of the European soul, while Benda notes the treason of the intellectuals, the enslavement of the classes that were the legacy of a spiritual tradition, due to passion and political hatred.
In fact, ancient certitudes totter everywhere, principles are uncertain everywhere, traditions are lost, spirits are divided, and dark, uncontrollable, and irrational forces impel and overwhelm men and society, playing with them through ideas, interests and passions that they delude themselves into pursuing.
Haven’t we had enough kvetching and jeremiads? We know things are awry, so what is the point of indulging in criticisms of this injustice or that stupid policy? There is a time for righteous anger and a time for sober reflection. Pace this critique, there must be men who stand above them.
- They know the ancient certitudes.
- They are certain about their principles.
- They seek to recover their traditions.
- Their spirits are unified in solidarity each other and continuity with their ancestors.
- They are aware of the dark and chaotic forces within themselves and learn to master them.
Those who insist on simple or one-dimensional answers will get lost here.
That civilization, of which the Modern man was so proud, and in the name of which he believed the myth of progress and had marched to the conquest of the world, that civilization is now faced with a reductio ad absurdum, and with a reversal of the values which it had claimed for itself.
Having thrown itself into the conquest of matter, it served its purpose only at the cost of materializing the spirit, of excluding any higher form of life, of amalgamating individuals in the tyranny of collective bodies, we would almost say subhumans in their lack of face, rationality, and light, in their subjection to energies that from time to time, as though galvanizing with a temporary life fearful of dead or automated bodies. It hurls them against each other.
The Christian attempt to give the West a religious tradition can only be considered a failure. Nostalgia, as shown in spirits like Maritain, Guenon, or Berdyaev, turn to the feudal and Catholic Middle Ages, putting aside perhaps the insurmountable distance between then and now, when Europe really had begun to organize itself under the two great symbols of Action and Contemplation. What does it matter that Christianity (without realizing it) served as a vehicle for the transmission of a Transcendent Wisdom, prior to every age, and that the Church in its Rites, Symbols and Dogma conserved its deposit, if for some time now, there has been no consciousness corresponding to it?
Evola’s criticism is misguided here. There is no question of returning to the material conditions of a bygone age, but rather of recovering its essence. Maritain became infected with modernist ideas. Berdyaev, although not a Traditionalist per se, was nevertheless a man of Tradition. He called for a new Middle Ages. Guenon had a deeper understanding of Tradition and was beyond certain prejudices, as he adhered to a strict intellectuality.
It matters quite a bit if Christendom was the bearer of a Transcendent Wisdom. At the very least, it provides us with an understanding of Tradition that is “close to home” in space and time. The exercise of extracting the Traditional elements from the thought, rites, symbols, and dogmas is very valuable and less prone to misunderstanding than the abstract study of Asian traditions. Conversely, we are dubious about the claim of any man to be a Traditionalist if he cannot recognize Tradition in those elements.
We agree that for quite some time, there has been no consciousness of such a Tradition in the visible representatives of Christianity today. A fortiori, the Middle Ages are an embarrassment to them, and the pagan and Traditional elements in it were explicitly rejected by the Reformation. Hence, those of a nostalgic bent are disappointed and are forced to hold many mental reservations.
However, Evola’s assertion that the Middle Ages were never conscious of the Traditional element is simply absurd. A Tradition, by its very nature, requires a conscious elite to maintain it, and when that is lost, the Tradition is lost. It cannot run mechanically or automatically. Thus, Guenon’s explanation that Christianity was originally an esoteric movement makes more sense. He points to The Divine Comedy as an initiatory poem, as well as other writings from the period. This is not to defend Christianity, but rather the notion of Tradition itself, as well as the intelligence and integrity of our European ancestors.
Christianity today is no longer of value to people than as a small faith and morality that everyone professes and everyone betrays; it is mediocre and bourgeois in Catholicism, weakened and stimulating practical achievements in the social rigour in Protestantism? It is only this regard that those who speak of Tradition and of the Return to Tradition, in fact, know even less of those who deny what Tradition is.
Here Evola goes for the low lying fruit, repeating what has been said by others ad nauseum. At least he only takes a paragraph to do so. What is the value of criticizing the worst elements rather than the appreciating the best? In Ancient Greece and Rome, the bulk of the population consisted of serfs, slaves, and outcastes. Does he judge paganism by their superstitions or by the few priest-kings and warriors? Always remember there are different castes and types of men, who embody a Tradition to a greater or lesser degree. We should always look to the greatest exponents.
Henri Massis, who brought up the symbol of the Defence of the West and raised the alarm against the asianization of the Latin world, in reality, does not know what the East is nor what could be of value in the West as a principle of reintegration. He does not know how much of what he denies is in what he affirms, nor how much of what he affirms is in what he denies. We then are silent about everything that for some time we proclaimed concerning traditions and traditionalism, whether on this or that basis, those who exalting a Vatican Rome, others a Masonic Rome, or a Mazzinian and Giobertian Rome, who, raising strange taboos to the right and the left, launching attacks in the void, preparing with wordiness and the most implausible mess. Here, as elsewhere, the confusion of tongues is complete; the power of diagrams, formulas, and words, that, as entities created by Magic, no longer depending on those who created them, is almost without limit.
Neither is sufficient. An amorphous need to escape to the Ahrimanic embrace of materialism, no longer meeting those supports that were given by the surviving traditions only on the assumption of interior and living relationships, has created an even more dangerous perversion in the unbalanced Western soul: neo-spiritualism.
From the various revivals of a suspect mysticism to the introduction of always more counterfeit exotic doctrines; from the newest spiritualistic superstition to the morbid interest in the problems and complications of the unconscious and psychoanalysis; from Intuitionism and Surrealism to the various messianic forms and to pseudo-religious and pseudo-occultists of the 1700s that swarmed at the margins of Protestantism; from humanitarian and universalistic ideologies to those of a Religion of Life and a Superman who, strange to say, almost always ends in associations of women and sub-men: from all of these forms a common meaning is revealed.
It is the unraveling of the European soul, it is its self-release, its escape.
Diverted by an insane drive for liberation, it evades the real, not for a super-real, but rather for a sub-real and a pre-real in which the sense of individuality is dissolved, and a cloudy, ecstatic coalescence with sub-human forces abolishes the law of pure action and clear vision.
With the void left by the loss of the Tradition in the Middle Ages, many false and counterfeit traditions rush in. No point to belabour them … you see them them as counterfeits or not. The reference to Ahriman is interesting, the result of his time with the Anthroposophists in the Ur and Krur groups.
As we would expect he opposes the path of ecstasy in favour of pure action and clear vision. The former follows the latter, lest we forget.
Precisely my point, and good that you mentioned also about the dangers of delving too deeply or for too long in darkness, death and doom; still, the black phase (nigredo) must be gone through, and although it is certainly not meant to be “therapy”, this kind of stuff can help get one through it successfully.
Yet, there is also a very sidereal and high contents in harsh and aggressive metal music also, which I forgot to mention in my last post. Listen to these, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtlnsjVDV4c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTp4k-iAGFo
I can’t really personally stand even reggae (it’s too sluggish for this juggernaut), and my honours are certainly with you regarding rap!
Good quote about Yohanan the Baptist; every swallowed and transmuted locust is one less to tease the men and women of the apocalypse.
Boreas, with respect to something we were talking about on another thread, I read someone post this on facebook that is relevant to the points you were making:
The gospel teaches that Yohanan the Baptist lived in the wilderness and that he ate “locusts and wild honey.” According to the Kabbalah, the “locusts” represent admixed and dark forces, and the ability of the prophet to devour and transmute them, and the “wild honey” represents divine forces, and the ability of the prophet to receive and integrate them, and embody them. In the Yeshua Messiah we are also called to this “diet,” empowered in the very same spiritual work so long as we live in this wilderness. Peace be with you!
By the way that film I mentioned, Lilja 4 Ever, is an example of something extremely dark in the field of arts that is definitely intended to prevent further manifestation of the horrors conveyed, a good case with respect to the point you were making. It is a long while since a film affected me so profoundly, it’s not all Lord of the Rings and Faerie Tales in this house, not by a long way, although we all know that fairy tales were originally meant to terrify children into being good, not walking off with wolves, understanding the hardships of life and so on. Getting ahead and ‘being saved’ is all about beauty and goodness isn’t it……all the hard lessons that no-one will ever get used to learning, The Little Mermaid should come with a mental health warning 🙂
yes, it is tricky, especially when you don’t know someone, hence my checking in about possible upsets (I can be quite blunt, mainly I make myself laugh and not necessarily anyone else!). But regarding that comment I was not actually ‘worried’ but it would be very complicated to convey why I was feeling beyond confirming I was very amused! However I can be a nervous type of person at times – highly strung you might say – so it is not surprising if you wondered if I really WAS worried!!
@Boreas, I went through a heavy metal phase when I was about 13 and shall never, ever return. However, I do think Led Zeppelin are an amazing band, one of the best ever, even though they’re a bunch of lefthanders, well Jimmy Page at least. There’s an extremely readable biography by Peter Levanda called Stairrway to Heaven, covering the whole band, which I really enjoyed. Levanda has also written equally gripping books on Hitler’s Occult War – Unholy Alliance. Other than Led Zep a bit of Deep Purple is fine, same for ACDC, I’m not entirely writing off the genre, but I really prefer……D I S C O (the Studio 54 and Paradise Garage kind 🙂 ), world music, reggae, house, chillout stuff and things of that ilk. Some people call it ‘girly music’, although the best DJs are usually men
Point 2 you make I agree is valid in terms of catharsis, but there is also a danger of dark music or whatever invoking dark forces, as is the intention of the artist in many cases. In the same way you hear atonal rap music now, which is truly repulsive in most cases – I can’t see this having any kind of good effect on listeners and the same goes for the worst kind of death metal, which can really be very sinister.
About Heavy Metal and dark imagery in general, there are at least three things that need to be said:
1) For once, Heavy Metal – together with fantasy literature and cartoons, for example – has in itself a lot of hero imagery and archetypes, together with massive bombastic musical intervalls perfectly comparable to classical music. The first mentioned is the expression of suppressed archetypical realities, the second an expression of an active genius manifesting through new channels. If Paganini, Mozart etc. were living today, they’d just might be heavy, death, dark or black metal musicians; if any of the classical artists were alive today, they’d be making album covers for the first ones.
2) Thinking more “occultly”, going through dark shadows and shady tunnels in one’s mind and thought and channelling them through one’s musical and artistic expression, can actually PREVENT them happening in the lower spheres of manifestation: if something is not gone through in the soul and spiritual levels, it will come up through the lowest possible channel; everyone knows this.
3) Read the first quote on the right by J. Evola.
Of course there are low manifestations and high manifestations and a lot of variety in the message being sent and delivered in heavy metal etc., but many “old time traditionalists” have not understood perfectly well the fact that in these times every possible way to deliver a message about something else than simple answers must be used, even if the arrow many times misses its right target and so on. There’s alot more to this.
An example that came first to my mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zguCFjHyVeM
The lyrics are “pure esoterism”, and the music is in reality quite elaborate, technical and skillful. (Crystal Mountain = The third chakra = “the city of diamonds” etc.
Charlotte,
You haven’t upset me at all. Just wasn’t quite sure of the tone of the comment, which yes, is one of the downsides to communication on the net.
but I don’t want to upset any of you by being irreverant, I just think it’s helpful to get off the cloud now and again – one thing I learned early on about God is he/she has a fantastic sense of humour. How else do we bear the tragic onslaught?
Matt I am joking also I promise, this little lot gave me a great attack of the giggles earlier today and I was happy to prove the Father’s heavy metal credentials lol! 🙂
But yes, emailing/forums make joking around potentially more contentious as one can’t hear tone or see body language to judge how something is meant. For the record, I’m not too easily offended and never sarcastic, although I AM hyper sensitive and don’t stand much on ceremony!
“And since when were mysteries ‘masculine’ OR ‘feminine’??”
I think that whole quote in Hoo’s comment was from Evola’s writings (though not completely certain). It was most likely referring to the cthnonic, mother cults in the Mediterranean region during ancient times.
I don’t understand why Fr. Provotorov in traditional orthodox priest robes is worrying? If you’re referring to my comment, it was all just in good fun and sarcasm.
‘There is the option that if someone posts some content he might not necessarily be promoting that content, but perhaps for some other purpose’
yes of course, as I did with the Georgia Guidestones, just to draw attention to the ‘problem’.
But what is this ‘feminine luxury’ you’re on about – the greatest luxuriators I know are all men, by a square mile! And men are far more interested in money than women. The richest man I know (which is absoultely loaded) told me point blank that men are only interested in ‘food, money and sex’, not necessariy in that order. Actually I think he was rather unfair on his own sex, but still, a grain of truth nonetheless. The luxuriating of women tends to spring from having to please men, but members of both sexes like a massage or whatever from time to time, or a drop of fine wine.
As for the spiritualists, mystics etc, your list conveniently omitted the like of Rudolf Steiner (for heaven’s sake!) and Gurdjieff, plus poets of the calibre of Rumi, Hafiz and Omar Khayyam – all spiritual, visionary, sensuous….feminine…..brilliant and so on. You’re allowed to forget the likes of Crowley, Leadbetter, Mathers, Waite and all the other million billion male ‘spiritualists’ the world has spawned.
And since when were mysteries ‘masculine’ OR ‘feminine’??
There is the option that if someone posts some content he might not necessarily be promoting that content, but perhaps for some other purpose. For example a thing could be posted as an example, a cultural artifact, to exhibit symptoms of a larger trend, if not also to stimulate thought.
Why is “our” civilization so “heavy”? Why are Russians so “heavy”? Why are some people clumsier than other people? Might symptoms of heaviness be related to the classification of something as Telluric or Chthonic?
“…the man who exhausts his life and time in business and the search for wealth, a wealth that, to a large extent, only serves to pay for feminine luxury, caprices, vices and refinements, has conceded to the woman the privilege and even the monopoly of dealing with ‘spiritual’ things. And it is precisely in this civilisation that we see a proliferation of ‘spiritualist’, spiritistic, mystic sects, in which the predominance of the feminine element is already significant in itself (the main one, the theosophical sect, was purely and simply created and managed by women, Blavatsky, Besant and, finally, Bailey). But it is for a much more important reason that the new spiritualism appears to us as a sort of reincarnation of the ancient feminine mysteries : it is the formless escapism in confused suprasensual experiences, the promiscuity of mediumism and spiritualism, the unconscious evocation of truly ‘infernal’ influences…”
Why are body modifications (e.g. piercings) typically a feature of some cultures rather than others?
From the Doom Metal band Novoy Zavet’s album ‘Apocalypse’
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=2211193
any more doubters still in the house?
No? Good.
Actually no, I’m enjoying this – here’s an Iron Maiden cover, notice ANY similarities whatsoever?
Iron Maiden Cover
from the Encyclopaedia Metallum:
http://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Vladislav_Provotorov/97423
he’s even on a death metal album cover!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_Kem_Ty%3F
Here resteth my case, heh heh
@Matt, that is even more worrying lol, I stand by the original assessment!
I prefer this one of his, but they all seem to be very dark….
http://01varvara.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/fr-vladislav-provotorov-the-flagellation-1994/
Then again, life in Russia IS very dark. I do enjoy Russian films although I watched one a couple of nights ago (eastern European, anyway) that was probably the most upsetting film I’ve ever seen, it was so sad. Lilya 4 Ever….recommend you don’t watch it if you want to sleep easy that night – I know I didn’t
Hello Uberman, he might have impeccable credentials but I still don’t like it, it’s too sci-fi for my taste, but maybe I need to see an original to appreciate fully….all the same it DOES look heavy metal! My cousin is a first-class tatoo artist (and heavy-metallist by default) and his style is very similar.
“And why should it be that among the greatest mystics only the women, Saint Ignatius Loyola excepted, have been visionaries? Think about Catherine of Siena, Marie of the Incarnation, Mechtilde of Hackborn, Elizabeth of Schoenau, Julian of Norwich and others. For the most part, like oceans or tidal pools, women keep their vital secrets. ~ Evan S Connell, Points for a Compass Rose
http://02varvara.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/fr-vladislav-provotorov-e1276719652327.jpg
Fr. Provotorov is so heavy metal.
Charlotte you’ll be interested to know that (Fr) Vladislav Provotorov is a priest and “is the rector of Annunciation of the Holy Godbearer parish in the village of Pavlovskaya Sloboda in Istra Raion of Moscow Oblast.”
(…)
“In his technique, Provotorov is a disciple of the Italian Renaissance masters, whose art he carefully and lovingly studied for many years. On the other hand, his work is suffused with Russian culture; many strong threads bind him with fantasies of Gogol, the “abyss” of Dostoevsky, and the apocalyptic visions of Blok, Bely, and Leonid Andreyev. He calls himself a realist, but a special kind, a “fantasist”.”
Not so much “heavy metal” then eh?
Try this:
yes! a real one! with arms, legs, eyes and everything!!
What a woman you are woman.
If only, Boreas – yes, I would like to return to those lands, show me a fool that wouldn’t!
“Hoo your recent taste in imagery is not so great, do you also like heavy metal ‘music’?”
Can’t help it Charlotte: do you wish to live only in the lands of joy and abundance? 😉
Hoo your recent taste in imagery is not so great, do you also like heavy metal ‘music’?
“The Tower of Babel” by Vladislav Provotorov
http://02varvara.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/fr-vladislav-provotorov-the-tower-of-babel-1989-e1276303743933.jpg
Well said, Avery. Evola was right and had superior knowledge on many things, but he forgot or did not fully understand – maybe because of his “personal equation” which led to his errors also (manipura again) – the three things Christ brought to the world with the fulfillment of his own Great Work: Unity, Love (ultimate compassion and loving-wisdom) and the embodiment of the Spirit from the highest realms into the deepest recesses of matter.
Recommended reading: Matt. 12, the whole chapter
As for Evola’s approach to Christendom, he strikes me as the epitome of European alienation. With alienation comes spiritual destruction, so Evola looks for a more ancient and mysterious spirit. His firm resolution to embrace both tradition and Europe without also embracing Christianity is the struggle behind much of his work.
“The so-called crisis is entwined in the very structure of the modern world. It is not a question of fixing a limited problem, winning an election, or purging the West of some group or form of thought… We know things are awry, so what is the point of indulging in criticisms of this injustice or that stupid policy?”
A spot-on point that people know intuitively, and are being taught to forget by the media. Politics is one of the blasts that a culture unleashes into the world, like the corona of the Sun. It is an epiphenomenon and attacking who sits on the throne at the moment, on the basis of your cultural reaction to him, is the farthest thing from orienting yourself as an actor within your culture at large.