{"id":2577,"date":"2011-06-26T22:26:24","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T02:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=2577"},"modified":"2022-06-26T17:30:54","modified_gmt":"2022-06-26T21:30:54","slug":"the-degeneration-of-the-ancient-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=2577","title":{"rendered":"The Degeneration of the Ancient City"},"content":{"rendered":"

The traditional sacred king was himself of a divine nature and the “gods” were his peers; he was, like them, of “celestial” stock, he had the same blood as they; he was thus a centre, an affirmative, free, and cosmic principle. ~ Julius Evola, Pagan Imperialism<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tradition, Family, Property<\/h2>\n

Whenever Julius Evola<\/strong> refers to Paganism, he means the Religion of the Ancient City<\/a>, whose tripodal support was Tradition, Family, and Property<\/strong>. The City was hierarchically arranged under the leadership of the King, and under him, the leaders of the tribes, clans, and families. The religion was based on ancestor worship. The citizen\u2019s day and year was structured around the religious rituals of the levels of the hierarchy, which included his own role as priest in his own household. The nature gods that we incorrectly identify as paganism were secondary, although there were temples to Zeus, Apollo, and so on, depending on the city. But even then, they were restricted to the city and had no universal significance.<\/p>\n

Pietas<\/i> (piety) was the highest virtue and meant the duties owed to the gods, the cities, the king, the heads of the hierarchies, which had to be scrupulously observed to avoid becoming ritually impure. A citizen did not make a major decision without first checking the omens. Evola describes their spiritual attitude:<\/p>\n

There is no room in it for passion, nor for its antithesis, nor for “effort”, and even less for “humanity” and “feeling”. It starts from absolute centres without hatred, without craving and without pity; from a calmness which terrifies and immobilises; from a level of “creative indifference” superior to every opposition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

The families maintained these traditions generation after generation and the purpose of the laws of the city was to ensure the continuation of the traditional rites. Wealth was measured in terms of property, not money.<\/p>\n

Revolt of the Aristocracy<\/h2>\n

The Greeks themselves referred to the period of the Kings as their “Golden Age<\/strong>“. Evola emphasizes that the king himself was a semi-divine figure, which was not an abstraction or a mere honorific title:<\/p>\n

the principle of divine right must be understood concretely and not in a formal and conventional manner: it must be understood in the sense that an actually deified being, as person — beyond any convention and any exterior acknowledgement from another authority — showing an extra-human nature, has the true and legitimate right to rule.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As such, the king was priest, since he was the link to the gods; he was also chief warrior and magistrate, since only he had the passionless indifference to arbitrate the claims of competing tribes or families. Over the course of centuries, perhaps because the king no longer displayed such priestly powers, the aristocracy began to challenge the power of the king. The king was stripped of his political powers, but he could not be removed from his role as Chief Priest. This led to the development of a separate priestly caste while the rule of the city was transferred to a Senate formed by the leading oligarchs.<\/p>\n

Revolt of the Clients<\/h2>\n

Only the families who could trace their source back to a pater<\/i> had a religion, that is, they had the prayers, rites, sacrifices and so on, which were held in secret. However, there were other families, called clients (vassals), which had no pater, hence no religion. They would participate in the rites of the family they were attached to. They did the labour for the family, though they had no rights to property of their own, certainly no civil rights as we would understand them today.<\/p>\n

Over time, the role of the clients changed. They may have lost their religion, as their priest may have lost his power, the omens proved false, the sacrifices ineffective. Horizontally, the clients of different families could congregate, forming a separate class within the city. Then vertically, when the army was divided into centuries rather than families, clients would find themselves in different divisions from the pater, diminishing his authority. The client, thus, became a power bloc. At times they could align with the king against the aristocracy, at other times with the plebs.<\/p>\n

Revolt of the Plebs<\/h2>\n

Around the city, there developed a population of outsiders, with no family, tradition, or religion. These plebs consisted of alien migrants looking for work (the clients were not numerous enough to do all the servile work of the families), bastard children of the families, clients who escaped from the family, exiles from other cities, and so on.<\/p>\n

Following the stages of the degeneration of the city, the status of the plebs changed due, in part, to their mere numbers. The change from a property to a money based economy also changed their situation, since they could become wealthy as artisans, traders, and so on, apart from landed property. Wealth began to replace family, blood and tradition as the symbol of status in the city. Whereas property was sacred and could not be mortgaged in the ancient city, money could be loaned at interest.\n<\/p>\n

This represents the ultimate decline of the city. Although the families continued their private worship (Evola claimed that even in the Rome of his day, there were still families that maintained a hearth), they effectively lost control of the city. It was no longer hierarchically arranged, but stratified into classes with constantly shifting alliances. The king was no more, money was supreme, the meaning of the ancient laws forgotten. Democracy became the accepted form of government and the plebs even led religious rites, thus debasing the hereditary priesthood.<\/p>\n

The Religion of the Plebs<\/h2>\n

Lacking fathers and ancestors to worship, the plebs are without religion. That is why Tomberg could write that the lowest classes are atheists. A pleb may try to make himself a god, redolent of the enthronement of the goddess Reason of the French revolution. More typically, lacking hearths of their own, they would attach themselves to the temples of the nature gods. Thus what we today want to recognize as paganism, viz., the cult of the Olympic gods and goddesses (or their Roman counterparts), was actually the religion of the underclass. This is why Evola held the neo-pagans of his (and our) time in utter contempt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the ancient religion continued to be practiced, it was really an empty formalism. The ancestral gods were forgotten, and the nature gods became the norm; they belonged to the universe, not a particular family or city. Wandering poets spread this new religion.<\/p>\n

In this milieu, the philosophers could be more public. Thus, Pythagoras<\/strong> brought back the idea of a Supreme Being, Anaxagoras<\/strong> understood the God-Intelligence reigning over all men, the Logos as the cosmic order was taught by Hearaclitus<\/strong>. Zeno<\/strong>, the Stoic, believed in a universal God of the entire human race and the idea of a State for them. Plato<\/strong> and Aristotle<\/strong> sought to understand the structure of man and the state. Such self-doubt would have had no place in the Ancient City.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h2>\n

We have made the barest presentation, since our purpose is not to write history, but rather to understand the principles behind events; we encourage our readers to check out the history books reading them in the light of their understanding of metaphysics and tradition.<\/p>\n

The errors of the so called new right, alternative right, neo-pagans, and similar anti-traditional movements that claim to represent the \u201cright\u201d should be quite obvious at this point. The degeneration of castes is a process inherent in any civilization and is not caused from the outside. We have absolutely demonstrated that the decline of the city happened centuries before Jews or Christians were in any way implicated. These are some of the errors of the non-traditional right:<\/p>\n