The first translation of any of Julius Evola’s works into English was published in the prestigious Indian journal The Visva-Bharati Quarterly (Vol. V, Part IV, New Series, 1940), founded by the Nobel prize winning writer and poet, Rabindranath Tagore. Ananda K Coomaraswamy [AKC] wrote a brief introduction, which follows below, and the translation of the chapter “Man and Woman” from Revolt against the Modern World was made by his wife, Luisa Runstein. A few of Evola’s essays appeared in the British journal East and West in the 1950s, but the full translation of Revolt did not appear in English until 1995.
For obvious reasons, Evola’s book could receive more understanding in India than in the West. The modern deracinated Westerner is ignorant of his own past. Hence he can discern nothing recognizable in Evola’s “remarkable presentation and exposition of Traditional doctrine” (AKC), which was characteristic not only of Indian civilization, but also of ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Instead, he remains smug in the “pretenses” of the modern world.
AKC did point out a serious error due to Evola’s misunderstanding of a text from the Aitareya Brahmana (VIII, 27, Page 341 of Arthur Keith’s translation). In a Hindu wedding ceremony, the groom says to his bride:
I am that, you are this, this you are, that I am; I am sky, you are earth.
When the King chooses his Purohita, i.e., the priest who offered sacrifices for the king since the gods would not accept those of the king directly, the purohita recites the groom’s part to the king. Hence, in this regard, the priest is masculine in respect to the king. Evola assumed just the opposite, which led to the unfortunate characterization of the priesthood as lunar and regality as solar. Although this quotation was removed from subsequent editions of Revolt, this error persisted in Evola, even if inconsistently and ambiguously. This is AKC’s note on that topic:
We refer in particular to the citation of the conjugal rajnah purohita-varana-mantram with which the priest takes the king as consort, saying, “I am sky, you are earth”. Evola, inverting the roles of the king and priest, does so in a way that it was with these words that the king directed to the selected priest and consequently that the priest was to obey the king! The true relations were recognized by the first Sanskrit scholars (Oldenberg, for example), by Guenon in Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power, by Hocart in The Castes and were recently discussed in a very recent article on the various aspects of Hindu regality (Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government, 1942).
AKC’s introduction to the translation follows.
Revolt against the Modern World, which contains the chapter titled “Man and Woman”, whose translation follows, constitutes perhaps the most significant among the numerous works of the Italian philosopher Julius Evola. Evola’s “Revolt” is, fundamentally, the affirmation of the universal metaphysical doctrine that has given form to traditional social institutions: thus this study treats social hierarchy (“caste”), the meaning of regality and empire, the relationship between the sexes, the mystery of rites, and from the same point of view interprets history and makes a destructive criticism of the pretenses of modern “civilization”.
The book is not without defects: in particular he exalts beyond measure the importance of regality in relation to the priesthood (Kshatriya in relation to Brahma, raja in relation to Brahman), even erroneously interpreting Hindu texts to support his theses on this point. In addition, of everything amiss in a work of this type, in which the “serenity” of the heroic element results so rightly emphasized, he clearly shows an anti-Semitic prejudice, as can be seen in the superfluous characterization of Freud as a Jew. Nevertheless, this book constitutes a remarkable presentation and exposition of Traditional doctrine and could well serve as an introductory text for the student of anthropology and as a guide for Indology, especially for anyone who is interested in Hindu mythology and does not understand that, in the words of Evola, “the passage from mythology to religion constitutes a humanist decadence.”
The chapter “Man and Woman” was chosen for translation because of its clear, uncompromising, and, we can add, dense peroration of the principles, that are reflected in the institutions and ideals, such as that of sati, that are no longer comprehensible and that certainly are no longer held dear, not even as memories by our politicians and reformers who, “whether by force or consent, were led to the accept the models of the West”.
That last quotation is from Peaks and Lamas, by Marco Pallis. AKC also provided ten footnotes to the translation, all but one of which supported the text with references to relevant passages in Hindu texts. The exception addressed Evola’s claim that absolute “dedication” in love is typical for the woman in relation to the man. Giovanni Monastra describes AKC’s objection:
That, according to Coomaraswamy, is true in the limits in which the husband constitutes for the wife the “symbol of God”. But, under the traditional aspect, in his turn the man also in relation to Divinity assumes a “feminine” role, rendering love with total dedication, without entailing any degradation, something different from what Evola means. Not even man can, therefore, be considered self-centered: the “internal sufficiency” which is mentioned in Revolt is a relative fact, not to be absolutized.
“he clearly shows an anti-Semitic prejudice, as can be seen in the superfluous characterization of Freud as a Jew”
Going on and on and on about the errors of european man is fine, but merely mentioning that Freud was jewish is prejudice.
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Friends, I hereby acknowledge all the participants of this thread that i will be referring to and using the information contained herein, in a Conference paper I am preparing. Due acknowledge will be cited in the paper also.
Regards,Sati Shankar
“What is this supposed to mean?”
That he scorched himself in the solar plexus. The Sun burns and kills as much as it illuminates and gives light and life. Solar heroes have transcended all this to a supra-personal plane and that is why they shine without burning.
The Hero donned his solar face,
Departed from his holy place,
Armed and ready for a magic battle,
To defend and exalt his sacred cattle.
The phalanx of warriors will he lead,
The Gods to determine who shall bleed,
Ten thousand men all decked for war,
Rich in spirit, in money poor.
The women cry and halt their men,
Sayeth fair Charlotte “We rather you remain in our love’s den,”
“That leader of yours is too like Helios,”
“Aye”, affirmeth a wizened sage, “I’ve said so many a time; too serious!”
But the fathers scoff at this hesitation,
“This world is for us procrastination!,”
“Your priority is procreation,”
“We are concerned with a higher calling,”
“Our enemies to see a-falling!”
In bursteth a champion, his name was HOO,
“Wenches, save your chatter for the kitchen or the loo.”
“On the morrow we commence our tour,”
“You are my lovers, but my destiny is Gornahoor.”
By night the chariots pass the wall,
After a day of feasting at the town hall.
The women gather to make solemn sacrifice.
Noble sun appeareth, come morning,
Cold as ice.
Wow, mysterious kitchen talk about the planetary spheres, that’s impressive….and there was I thinking it mainly centred on bread and circuses 🙂
‘Now a voice so fair, ascending,
Fills the air with love unending,
Rises on the silver moonbeams
Woven from Apollo’s sun streams.
‘”Bold Orion, Starman leaping,
How my heart for you is beating.
I have set you there so thy fame
Lights the path of this, the sky-train!”
‘Next she calls with gentle words
The creatures of her wooded world,
Speaks to them with tender charm
To keep the slightest safe from harm.
‘“Sweet you are as honey, bee.
Bear and Stag, come follow me.
Jump with me across the river.”
Seeks she souls with bow and quiver.
Then the Goddess steps up on it –
Disc of night, the lamp of dreamers –
As the steeds with hooves of onyx
Take to flight with sweet Selene.
´The brahmaa caste is habitually thought of in the West as a “sacerdotal” caste. This is true only up to a certain point. In the Vedic origins the type of Brahman or “sacrificer” bears little resemblance to that of the “priest” as our contemporaries think of him: he was, rather, a figure both virile and awful and, as we have said, a kind of visible incarnation in the human world of the superhuman (bhu-deva). Furthermore, we often find in the early texts a point where the distinction between the brahma——the “sacerdotal” caste——and the ksatram or rajam——the warrior or regal caste——did not exist; a feature that we see in the earliest stages of all traditional civilizations, including the Greek, Roman, and German. The two types only began to differ in a later period, this being another aspect of the process of regression that we have mentioned.´ [Evola, “The Doctrine of Awakening” p. 28]
The apparent opposition between the caste of the red color and the caste of the white color is surpassed by the color of purple.
“It is always a king, a being crowned with a royal color, the purple, the final color of the hermetico-alchemical opus, and with the royal and solar metal, gold, that constitutes, as we have said, the center of all this symbolism. ” [The Hermetic Tradition]
[Angolmois]”Evola is too solar, I have said this many times”
What is this supposed to mean? So what if you’ve said it many times? What about the solar heroes—— Mithras, Hercules, Jason, Apollo, Horus?
The discussions here often resemble the kitchen talks of women.
The male and female, king and priest,and the warrior, there is a mutual,(if this term can be used) overlap,one emerges from the other without any superiority of the either,…’the Priest is the King himself, who appoints the Priest(Purohita)….,without any numerical ordering…the opposing relation between as denoted is a conventional one,’not chronological or real order of coming into being’, Fro example,the Son creates the Father as much as the Father the son…’there can be no paternity without a filiation and vice versa,and that is what is meant by the ‘opposit relation’.The perspective of tradition has to emerge, as it does, from within which leads onto its whole.
I read Evola’s work extensivly, but never ”about” him. This little text begs question then : where else did he misread or made errors ? Personnally, after reading him and myths (either Edda, Saint Graal, Gilgamesh, etc.) I seems to end to the same conclusion as he did : superiority of the Regal Divinity over both priest and warrior caste. Am I wronged ? If so, could someone tell me where to read something that would clarify all this ?
Excellent sleuthing here. Evola’s writing on Japan is similar; he intuits the entire metaphysical structure of the traditional Japanese nation, and indeed I am laboring to get his work translated over here, but sometimes his readings of specific elements are mistaken for lack of cultural context. I at first thought of Evola as a writer who is “right even when he is wrong”, but I now realize that he can be wrong sometimes and still successfully communicate a powerful idea.