In the conclusion to the essay, Julius Evola brings up the question of the future elite who will restore Tradition. This will take place in several steps. First of all, Evola tries to clear up the inevitable misunderstandings when people first here the word. He is not speaking of what are commonly considered the elite in the world. Evola singles out the so-called intellectuals who are active even today in formulating global policies in politics, finance, or war. The true elite will understand metaphysical doctrine.

The first task is to initiate a process of “psychic detoxification”, which will include the elimination of the myths that drive the modern world, which have already been described. The reintegration of the personality will reverse the lower impulses of the subconscious, putting them under the higher parts of one’s being. A smaller group will work in private, developing their spiritual understanding. They will not, at this point, take part in any direct political action.

The transformation of this group in its depths will act as a catalyst, or perhaps leaven, in the environment, gradually infusing new transformative ideas. Once again, Evola makes clear that the will to carry out this project cannot be found on the human level, but only from a higher source. When the will is developed, the elite will make themselves known. True to form, Evola invokes the scepter, the regal sign, to identify the elite. Traditionally, it is the priest who is the bridge between the human and super-human worlds. We have to assume he means a Priest-King as existed in the early paganism of the Ancient City. The action of this priesthood will lead more men to metaphysical understanding, thus re-establishing a hierarchy. Note that “wind” is also the symbol for the Spirit.

Obviously, Evola cannot provide the specifics, since he is not part of the elite. Tradition doesn’t end with Guenon and Evola. Hence, it is now more important to be very clear about metaphysical doctrines and not get lost in the fog of idle speculations instead of the clarity of true knowledge. The silent paths must be trodden, even if covered over with growth. Once again, Evola points out that this elite will be intransigent, intolerant, without compromise, unlike the libertarianism of the New Right. After all, truth cannot compromise with error and still remain the truth.

We now bring up the problem of the true elite. An elite of spiritual leaders, not of hypnotizers and arbitrary rulers of irrational collective forces, will be those who will be able to preside over a cycle of a still higher order, a metaphysical cycle. But in such regard, the possibilities of misunderstandings are endless. Today, in fact, we hear everywhere talk of the elite, and isn’t there perhaps a dauber of printing paper of a certain rank who is presumed qualified to take part in it and thereby guide the endangered ship of Western civilization? So it is necessary to declare in the most pedantic way that it is not in the least about what today can be imagined and proposed as elite by most people, and less than ever is it about pale international group of intellectuals more or less in style, as rich in narcissistic and exhibitionistic complexes as poor in true doctrine. While on one hand in the widest strata of Western nations, we should foster a general job of psychic detoxification, of destruction of the myths, of reintegration of the personality and start toward a new active realism, and, on the other hand, a smaller group should make itself capable of treading the silent, secret paths of traditional metaphysical knowledge. Outside of any visible organizations and independently of any immediate goal, this group will enucleate those qualities, will prepare the forces, and will reach a new seriousness, a new depth, a new solar virility, in the face of which every art will signify vanity, every speculation a pointless game of impotent abstractions, every vulgar politician an obscure mechanism, every variety of frenzy of action, which recent times have produced, a deleterious opiate. Only on such a basis will the word nobility reacquire in this elite its supreme and original significance, its hard, arid, absolute splendor.

The action of this elite, first of all, will be what the chemists call catalytic, i.e.:  a transformative action through its presence. It will act as an invisible ferment and as the center of a crystallization of influences of a new type. The whole problem lies in seeing if these influences will succeed in saturating an environment, i.e., of compenetrating and orienting the new world of form, clarity, personality, and active realism in its deepest roots, preventing it from making itself the principle and end in itself. By that, we clearly mean something different from the passage from one “vision of the world” to another, the fruitless turning of a sick insomniac from one side to another. We mean a change fulfilled in the blood, or rather more in one’s depths than in the blood, as a remembrance, as an awakening, as a transcendent liveliness. The will to something higher will then arise, and will make itself absolute, even if it contains exteriorly rigid and tempered forms like steel, a will higher than anything things and men alone can ever produce. It is at this point that the elite will also manifest themselves visibly, they will take on with sturdy hands the direction of every force, they will be the bearer of a scepter. Bridges will be thrown beyond the humanly conditioned. New links will restore the action and knowledge of beings who live below their metaphysical potentiality. The strongest forces of life and death will turn to be present at the center, as the axis, flame, and light of new solar civilizations. An integral hierarchy will reestablish itself. The free wind from the heights will pass once again over new great currents of men of races.

These, naturally are liminal points, a bird’s eye view—and no one should believe that with them the practical importance of reconstructive movements have risen against the final forms of collective decadence and demagogic mysticism—above all the fascist one—whether in the least disowned. But from a higher point of view, i.e., in the super-political sphere, in a world of fogs and uncertain flashes, as in the current one, only the pinnacle that towers over above contingencies and tempests can, in spite of their distance, provide the right orientation. In truth, only intolerance for every compromise and every limitation and the spiritual courage of absolute perspectives will distinguish the new group, the group of those who can bear witness to a spiritual vocation and to whom the tasks and the responsibility of the future reconstruction will be restored.

⇐ Part IV