These are the first four of the eight tools of the occult war identified by Julius Evola. For readers unfamiliar with the philosophical currents of Evola’s time, “positive” is usually called “scientific” today, at least in English. He also criticizes the philosophies of life (e.g., certain Germans, perhaps even Nietzsche as “life-affirming”), becoming (Bergson, Whitehead), and absolute spirit (Hegel, Gentile).

As other manifestations of subversive forces, he goes on to mention a dilettantish “traditionalism” (which is rampant today) and even zoological racism (the “hipster racism” or “race realism” of today). Then there are all the New Age movements, which have only multiplied in the past 75 years. They hide the true Tradition and can be identified by their preoccupation with strange and unusual phenomena, rather than true spirituality; Evola calls them demonic. We can add a certain fascination with the dark and the ugly, that some today want to identify with Tradition.

This is one topic that I hope will lead to many comments, discussing, identifying, and clarifying these tools of the subversive forces.

The Positivist Suggestion

It is necessary to get used to thinking that the so-called “positive” mode of doing history and of considering events is somewhat less a spontaneous product and prejudice typical of a very limited mentality, than a suggestion spread methodically in modern culture by anti-traditional forces, with the purpose of “covering” their action. Whoever believes that history is simply made by men and determined exclusively by economic, political, and social factors sees nothing else. And it is exactly such a world that “sees nothing else” that is needed by whoever wants to act clandestinely. A civilization dominated by the “positivistic” prejudice offers the ideal condition for an action developing along the “third dimension”:  and this is exactly the case of the current civilization.

Previously, we mentioned besides “positivistic” interpretations, those having as their basis abstract ideas of becoming”, of “life”, or even of the “Spirit”. In that we can consider a case of the application of a second tool of the occult war, which is:

The Tactic of the Surrogates

It is followed, every time that the danger of an “awakening” is manifested and the energies seek to turn beyond the plan dominated by ideas, in the operation of which the occult game of the forces of subversion can easily take place. In the case now mentioned, these confused ideas of “becoming”, “life”, “absolute Spirit”, etc., in fact, are only a decoy thrown at those no longer satisfied with positivistic patterns, and those whose gaze does not bring itself where it should. From the fog of such ideas, the field of action remains so well covered, as by the dark night of “positivistic” agnosticism.

The “tactic of the surrogates” develops, however, in a much more characteristic and effective way under the form of:

Tactic of Falsifying Substitution

This is what we are talking about. When the effects of destructive action, appearing even on the material plane and giving rise to clearly visible phenomena, exhibit a degree hot enough to provoke a reaction, this reaction confusedly seeks symbols and myths to serve as the base for an engine of reconstruction, and can also find it legitimate and consistent with its goal. It is almost always about symbols and points of reference that, in their historical aspect, remaining in the traditional past, recalled from atavistic depths through the forces of an organism that feels itself threatened by final destruction. In these cases, the occult war does not take place with a direct action, i.e., not by opposing such symbols, but ensures that they do not circulate and are not worth falsifying or counterfeiting, inasmuch as the reaction either remains limited, or diverted, or even overturned in an opposite direction, on which they naturally move on to apply the same influences present in the evil against which they wanted to act and in the decadence, from which they wanted to rise up from and believed in good faith to be rising up from.

This tactic can develop in diverse domains, in the political as well as in the spiritual camp, and seems today to have a totally special efficiency. It is worth looking at an example.

The most typical is constituted by “traditionalism”. The vague aspiration of a return to tradition, i.e., to a hierarchical and qualitative order centered in a transcendent spirituality and in an elite of its qualified and legitimate representatives, is diverted to in the form of “traditionalism”, i.e., of vague assumptions of a dilettantish, or militant, character that confuses Tradition with custom and the routine, that leads into a narrow-minded particularism, that stops at given, handed-down forms, and knows nothing of their spirit. In such a way, they present an easy game to their adversaries and provide a good decoy to those who, through the false goal of anti-traditionalism, bring their true blow against tradition and foment new developments of revolutionary subversion. So the reaction remains contained and the maneuver leads successfully to prearranged goals. What, in certain extremist circles, the idea of race threatens to become because of some assumptions in terms of zoological materialism, as so even the Nordic-Aryan idea and even the pagan idea, come back to a conjuncture of the type. It is about ideas that, if they were understood and represented in accordance with their true nature and their ancient spiritual and traditional content, could certainly carry out a creative and healing action within the limits of some peoples of the North. As they appear instead in the circles already indicated, first of all because of a lack of principles, then because of a profound incomprehension and deformation of the ancient “Aryan” world, and finally through the tyranny of immediate interests and irrational impulses, make us suspect the effect of a distorting action of the type indicated. In relation to the new Italy, one should make every effort that something of the type does not occur in certain re-evocations of Romanity. The idea of ancient Rome certainly exists among those who today could have the greatest reconstructive efficacy: it is necessary to see that this efficacy is not paralyzed by means of the reconstituted facsimiles or by mere rhetorical resurrections, or by academic, erudite, archeological and even simply juridical, political assumptions, to which naturally elude completely the central strength and soul of the Roman symbol.

Tactic of Reversal

The secret forces of worldwide subversion knew perfectly that the fundamental premise of order to be destroyed was the supernatural element, spirit conceived not as a philosophical abstraction, but rather as a higher reality and as the means of a process of transcendent integration of the personality. The limited influence that, in such a regard, the Catholic tradition could still have (here we cannot stop to analyze the means to come to that conclusion), the subversive forces had to try in every way to ensure that every new contemporary aspiration toward the supernatural, developing outside of the dominant religion, became distorted and paralyzed. The whole of what can be called neo-spiritualism, with allusion to the various theosophical, spiritist, Orientalizing, and “occultistic” sects can be considered the effect of one such maneuver. In all that, again, it is a question almost exclusively of deformation, counterfeits, and distortions of spiritual doctrine, due to the least qualified persons, who in this respect, seem often to be subjected to a truly demonic influence.

The consequent outcome is twofold. First of all, it provided an easy way of extending the general discredit into which those counterfeits had to fall, to the doctrines in themselves, with which they were practically put in condition of no longer damaging. We can mention that, in recent times, the maneuver has even employed political factors: and there are some circles that, in good faith, are able to see only “Masonry” (something that was made the synonym of revolutionary, anti-Christianity or international subversion) wherever one speaks of secret associations of esoteric symbols, even when such references lead back to ancient traditions, whose original spirit and aristocratic nature everyone should note.

In the second place, because of poorly understood theories and false practices, they are joined to channel all the forces that, constricted by the suffocating stranglehold of materialism and yearning for something extra-natural, not toward the supernatural, but rather toward the subnatural, i.e., the subconscious, mediumship, and, in general, toward a world that, far from representing an integration of the personality, can only propitiate its collapse and disintegration, as much by making of it the tool of some of the darkest “influences”. So with neo-spiritualism the danger constituted by true spirituality was contained and reduced to an almost inessential minimum.

⇐ Introduction to the Occult War   Part III of the Occult War ⇒