Part II ⇒

In La Tradizione Romana [The Roman Tradition], Guido De Giorgio dedicates a section to the question of the reestablishment of a traditional society. It includes four chapters: The Priests, The Warriors, The Workers, and The King. This is the first part of the chapter on the priests. De Giorgio provides some very precise indications which are very demanding and ought to be taken with some seriousness.

The general lines that are given here about a society established along the norms of a tradition truly such, can serve as the model and example for leading the current West to a normality that it has lacked for quite some time, which could, however, be gradually and prudently restored without great difficulties by the return to those principles and to that spirituality of thought and life that are indispensable to the very existence of men. Therefore it is a question of a general type according to which Europe could be oriented and hence the world with the necessary adaptations to change conditions of life while avoiding a violent and radical dissolution that would jeopardize, through its rapidity, the reintegration of a normal state.

If a return is possible, if a rectification is still possible to save the world from spiritual and material ruin, it entails a change of direction that must absolutely proceed from the inner to the outer and not otherwise. First of all, spiritual conviction of a similar change is necessary, and this conviction must be founded on a purely intellectual realization, i.e., without any sentimental infiltration whatsoever, of principles that rule a traditional society, and, since it would be useless and childishly utopian to believe that the entire people and the masses can achieve it through an instant process, it would be sufficient that a few at the beginning would constitute a formative nucleus with an increasingly more efficient operative irradiation leading up to the reintegration of a nearly perfect form. These few would be animated by a single force, that of truth, and guided by a single goal, that of making it triumph, and not to give in to any concession toward oneself of others, but to become true and proper centers of salvation for men misled and corrupted by centuries-old errors. If such men do exist, the return to normality would again be possible and the truth could still triumph over ignorance.

A change of this type entails the pure and simple rejection of all the prejudices that have debased Europe for centuries, of all the errors that the Anti-tradition has been amassing for hundreds of years to corrupt thought and life, impoverishing the mind and paralyzing those spiritual forces promoting the true and only good, the fruition of the Truth in a superhuman order where it alone resides and where it is necessary to have the courage and the strength to maintain it. These men could save Europe and the world, leading the people back into the great traditional channel, toward the light of those principles that are the very basis of existence. But a great energy is necessary to conquer pessimism and skepticism which are opposed to any reestablishment on the one hand, and superficial optimism, on the other, that considers apically reached that which is a simple degree of transition. Above all, great detachment is necessary, strict intellectuality, the absolute absence of that pseudo-mysticism so much in style at the present time where spirituality and sentimentality are equivalent, where enthusiasm and faith are placed on the same level, where the darkest and murkiest impulsiveness is believed to be an expression of strength, where the external is not only excessive, but tends to destroy the internal, where agenda kills true development, where finally all that is inferior and illegitimate is affirmed with an immodesty which the world has never known before now even in the most acute periods of decadence.

But above all, great courage would be necessary in these men and a great faith to conquer so much darkness of ignorance, to break up so many false bridges, to facilitate the return to the comprehension of the truth, to give back to thought its dignity and to life, its justification. Many currently in Europe are aware of the mud the world gets mired in every day, but their conviction is half-hearted and imperfect: it is more about a pessimistic and skeptical attitude than a true and proper conviction. None of those would be able to indicate the remedy or to show the way to return to true life, which, before all else, reconfirms the values of the spirit that are divine, but do not neglect the necessities of existence, orienting them along the purely traditional axis.

Every traditional society entails the organic allocation of labor and the assignment of tasks to various categories of men adapted to their nature and their possibilities. Even currently, in the agonal state of Europe and the world, this allocation exists, but it is false, arbitrary, unnatural, temporary, not founded on traditional norms, i.e., according to a strictly and purely hierarchical order that derives from the very meaning of the term [hierarkhia=high priest in Greek], whose sacred character should not elude anyone. Since every tradition is sacred, the allocation of labor must be imposed only from deference to the truth that is the divine order; therefore, the priests would stand at the apex of a traditional society, who are the bearers of the divine order, the divine knowledge. We could say Ascetics, but we prefer to preceding term because it better highlights the precise character of the nature and the office assigned to the bearers of supernatural truth. This caste includes those who do not participate in active life, who lack every responsibility of the profane, temporal order and are the leaders of traditional society, but in reality, through the very character of their mission, occupy a marginal place in respect to the practical act of existences, but one that is central, determinative and indicative for the maintenance and the development of traditional society. They are the poor of God, the voluntary renouncers of the world, the truth givers, the Spirit lovers, the last because the first, whose life is devoted to the realization of the great divine norms that constitute the traditional body. No confusion is possible regarding their nature and their missions which are of a purely spiritual order, without any worldliness, extending into the pure regions of the Spirit of God who governs the world invisibly.