God makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares royal races: maturing them under a cloud which conceals their origin. They appear at length crowned with glory and honor; they TAKE their places; and this is the most certain sign of their legitimacy. The truth is that they arise as it were, of themselves, without violence on their part, and without marked deliberation on the other; it is a species of magnificent tranquility, not easy to express. Legitimate usurpation would seem to me the most appropriate expression (if not too bold), to characterize these kinds of origins, which time hastens to consecrate.
Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Superiority
Superiority does not rest on power, but power rests on superiority. To need power is impotence; the one who truly comprehends this will perhaps understand in what sense the path of renunciation (manly sacrifice that rests on 'not needing,' on 'having enough') can be a condition for the way to the highest power, and he will also grasp the hidden logic according to which ascetics, holy men and initiates suddenly and naturally manifest suggestive and supernatural powers that are stronger than any powers of men and things...
A true ruler, imperial by nature, is he who has access to this higher quantity of being, which automatically also means a different quality of being by which others are inflamed, attracted, overpowered without his even wanting them to be. It is he who imposes himself, so to speak, through his mere presence: like an embracing and threatening gaze that others are unable to resist; akin to that calm and relaxed greatness that magically stops even the armed man and the attacking beast; that immediately commands respect and the desire to obey, to sacrifice oneself, to search for the meaning of one's own truer life within this vaster life...And so it is he who can say at the zenith: 'I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE,' and thus give a unity, meaning, and justification to countless individuals, to that whole system of life's inferior determinisms that they did not have before. For the inferior person never lives his own life as perfectly as when he is certain that this existence has a center and a goal in something superior.
-Julius Evola, from "Men Among the Ruins"
A true ruler, imperial by nature, is he who has access to this higher quantity of being, which automatically also means a different quality of being by which others are inflamed, attracted, overpowered without his even wanting them to be. It is he who imposes himself, so to speak, through his mere presence: like an embracing and threatening gaze that others are unable to resist; akin to that calm and relaxed greatness that magically stops even the armed man and the attacking beast; that immediately commands respect and the desire to obey, to sacrifice oneself, to search for the meaning of one's own truer life within this vaster life...And so it is he who can say at the zenith: 'I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE,' and thus give a unity, meaning, and justification to countless individuals, to that whole system of life's inferior determinisms that they did not have before. For the inferior person never lives his own life as perfectly as when he is certain that this existence has a center and a goal in something superior.
-Julius Evola, from "Men Among the Ruins"
Thursday, November 27, 2008
The Enemy of Gold
The Scandinavian counts called their leader "the enemy of gold," since as a leader he was not allowed to keep any gold for himself, and also "the host of heroes," because of the pride he took in hosting his faithful warriors, whom he regarded as his compainions and equals, in his house. Even among the Franks prior to Charlemagne, participation in a particular mission occurred on a voluntary basis; the king invited people to participate, he appealed to them; at times the princes themselves proposed a course of action - in any event, there was neither "duty" nor impersonal "service," since everywhere there were free and highly personalized relationships of command and obedience, mutual understanding and faithfulness. Thus, the idea of free personality was the foundation of any unity and hierarchy. this was the "Nordic" seed from which the feudal system arose as the background to the new imperial idea.
"The prime obligation of the entourage's allegiance is to protect and guard him and
to credit their own brave deeds to his glory: the chieftain fights for victory, the
entourage for the chieftain." - Tacitus
Once the mission was accomplished, the original independence and pluralism were reestablished.
-Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World
"The prime obligation of the entourage's allegiance is to protect and guard him and
to credit their own brave deeds to his glory: the chieftain fights for victory, the
entourage for the chieftain." - Tacitus
Once the mission was accomplished, the original independence and pluralism were reestablished.
-Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Nordic Elements within the Indo Aryan civilization
1)The austere type of the ancient atharvan, the "lord of fire" he who first opened the paths through sacrifices, as well as the type of brahmana, he who dominates the brahman and the gods through his formulas of power.
2)The doctrine of the Absolute Self (atman) of the early Upanisadic period, which corresponds to the impassible and luminous principle of the Samkhya.
3)The virile and conscious asceticism oriented to the Unconditioned that also characterized the Buddhist doctrine of awakening.
4)The doctrine of pure action and heroism expounded in the Bhagavad Gita which was credited with a solar origin and a regal heritage.
5)The Vedic view of the world as order and law
6)The patriarchal right, the cult of fire, the symbolically rich ritual of the cremation of the dead, the caste system, the cult of truth and honor, the myth of the universal sacred sovereign
In all these elements we find the traditional poles of "action" and "contemplation" closely intertwined and elevated to a higher meaning.
2)The doctrine of the Absolute Self (atman) of the early Upanisadic period, which corresponds to the impassible and luminous principle of the Samkhya.
3)The virile and conscious asceticism oriented to the Unconditioned that also characterized the Buddhist doctrine of awakening.
4)The doctrine of pure action and heroism expounded in the Bhagavad Gita which was credited with a solar origin and a regal heritage.
5)The Vedic view of the world as order and law
6)The patriarchal right, the cult of fire, the symbolically rich ritual of the cremation of the dead, the caste system, the cult of truth and honor, the myth of the universal sacred sovereign
In all these elements we find the traditional poles of "action" and "contemplation" closely intertwined and elevated to a higher meaning.
-Julius Evola
The Transcendent Dimension - pt 2
forms in which the transcendent acts and manifests...
The cutting of all bonds, the intolerance of all limits, the pure and incoercible impulse to overcome without any determined goal, to always move on beyond any given state, experience, or idea, and naturally and even more beyond any human attachment to a given person, fearing neither contradictions nor destructions, thus pure movement, with all that implies of dissolution -advancing with a devouring fire that leaves nothing behind itself...
This is not the way of the man we have in mind, who has quite another constutition. A clean line of division must be drawn. But first it is useful to see what is to be expected in the case of those who remain on this side of the line, that is, in those who follow the way of immanence unflinchingly, without turning back, without lowering their level, but also without the capacity to reach the turning point that alone can make good their lack from the very start, of the quality I have indicated in the man of Tradition, in the man who is constitutionally not modern. Once they have entered on the way of absolute affirmation, and have mastered all those forms of "ascesis" and the activation of a higher intensity of life that we have mentioned, their only saving solution is in a conscious change of polarity; in the possibility that at a given point, in given situations or environments, by a kind of ontological rupture of level, their life would be turned upside down, as it were, and transformed into a different quality - the mehr leben [living more] would give place to a mehr-als-leben [more than living].
In the positive case, the result might be expressed as a transition from the plane of "Dionysus" to that of a spiritual superiority, known in antiquity under the Apollonian or Olympian symbol. It is of capital importance to recognize that this is the only solution that does not involve a regression, and that it is the antithesis of any solution of the religious or devotional type. The "conversion" of certain contemporaries who found themselves unable to sustain the tension of the nihilistic climate, or who faced the experiences in question superficially, as mere intellectuals, represent cases of surrender that are devoid of any interest for us.
Superior men find themselves in continual inner and outer peril.
The cutting of all bonds, the intolerance of all limits, the pure and incoercible impulse to overcome without any determined goal, to always move on beyond any given state, experience, or idea, and naturally and even more beyond any human attachment to a given person, fearing neither contradictions nor destructions, thus pure movement, with all that implies of dissolution -advancing with a devouring fire that leaves nothing behind itself...
This is not the way of the man we have in mind, who has quite another constutition. A clean line of division must be drawn. But first it is useful to see what is to be expected in the case of those who remain on this side of the line, that is, in those who follow the way of immanence unflinchingly, without turning back, without lowering their level, but also without the capacity to reach the turning point that alone can make good their lack from the very start, of the quality I have indicated in the man of Tradition, in the man who is constitutionally not modern. Once they have entered on the way of absolute affirmation, and have mastered all those forms of "ascesis" and the activation of a higher intensity of life that we have mentioned, their only saving solution is in a conscious change of polarity; in the possibility that at a given point, in given situations or environments, by a kind of ontological rupture of level, their life would be turned upside down, as it were, and transformed into a different quality - the mehr leben [living more] would give place to a mehr-als-leben [more than living].
In the positive case, the result might be expressed as a transition from the plane of "Dionysus" to that of a spiritual superiority, known in antiquity under the Apollonian or Olympian symbol. It is of capital importance to recognize that this is the only solution that does not involve a regression, and that it is the antithesis of any solution of the religious or devotional type. The "conversion" of certain contemporaries who found themselves unable to sustain the tension of the nihilistic climate, or who faced the experiences in question superficially, as mere intellectuals, represent cases of surrender that are devoid of any interest for us.
Superior men find themselves in continual inner and outer peril.
-Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Transcendent Dimension - Evola/Nietzsche
"Spirit is the life that cuts through life."
All the positive aspects of the way of the superman belong to these aspects:
1) The power to make a law for oneself
2) The power to refuse and not to act, when one is pressed to affirmation by a prodigious force and an enormous tension
3) The natural and free asceticism moved to test its own strength by guaging "the power of a will according to the degree of resistance, pain, and torment that it can bear in order to turn them to its own advantage"
4) The principle of not obeying the passions but of holding them on a leash: one must have them to the greatest degree, but held in check, and moreover, doing this with simplicity, not feeling any particular satisfaction thereby
5) The idea that the superior man is distinguished from the inferior by his intrepidity, by his defiance of unhappiness
6) The responding with incredulity to those who point the way to happiness in order to make man follow a certain behavior: "But what does happiness mean to us?"
7) The recognition that one of the ways to preserve a superior species of man is to claim the right to exceptional acts as attempts at victory over oneself and as acts of freedom...to assure oneself, with a sort of asceticism, a preponderance and a certitude of one's own strength of will, without refusing any privation
8) To affirm that freedom whose elements include keeping the distance which separates us, being indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privations, even to life itself, the highest type of the free man being seen in "he who always overcomes the strongest resistances
9) To denounce the insidious confusion between discipline and enfeeblement and holding that indulgence can only be objected to in the case of him who has no right to it, and when all the passions have been discredited thatnks to those who were not strong enough to turn them to their own advantage
10) To point the way of those who, free from all bonds, obeying only their own law, are unbending in obedience to it and above every human weakness
...all those aspects, in fine, in which, the superman is not the "blond beast of prey" and the heir to the equivocal virtus of Renaissance despots, but is also capable of generosity, quick to offer manly aid, of generous virtue, magnanimity, and superiority to his own individuality - all these are the positive elements that the man of Tradition also makes his own, but which are only comprehensible and attainable when "life" is "more than life," that is, through transcendence. They are values attainable only by those in whom there is something else, and something more, than mere life.
Julius Evola - Ride the Tiger, 48-50
All the positive aspects of the way of the superman belong to these aspects:
1) The power to make a law for oneself
2) The power to refuse and not to act, when one is pressed to affirmation by a prodigious force and an enormous tension
3) The natural and free asceticism moved to test its own strength by guaging "the power of a will according to the degree of resistance, pain, and torment that it can bear in order to turn them to its own advantage"
4) The principle of not obeying the passions but of holding them on a leash: one must have them to the greatest degree, but held in check, and moreover, doing this with simplicity, not feeling any particular satisfaction thereby
5) The idea that the superior man is distinguished from the inferior by his intrepidity, by his defiance of unhappiness
6) The responding with incredulity to those who point the way to happiness in order to make man follow a certain behavior: "But what does happiness mean to us?"
7) The recognition that one of the ways to preserve a superior species of man is to claim the right to exceptional acts as attempts at victory over oneself and as acts of freedom...to assure oneself, with a sort of asceticism, a preponderance and a certitude of one's own strength of will, without refusing any privation
8) To affirm that freedom whose elements include keeping the distance which separates us, being indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privations, even to life itself, the highest type of the free man being seen in "he who always overcomes the strongest resistances
9) To denounce the insidious confusion between discipline and enfeeblement and holding that indulgence can only be objected to in the case of him who has no right to it, and when all the passions have been discredited thatnks to those who were not strong enough to turn them to their own advantage
10) To point the way of those who, free from all bonds, obeying only their own law, are unbending in obedience to it and above every human weakness
...all those aspects, in fine, in which, the superman is not the "blond beast of prey" and the heir to the equivocal virtus of Renaissance despots, but is also capable of generosity, quick to offer manly aid, of generous virtue, magnanimity, and superiority to his own individuality - all these are the positive elements that the man of Tradition also makes his own, but which are only comprehensible and attainable when "life" is "more than life," that is, through transcendence. They are values attainable only by those in whom there is something else, and something more, than mere life.
Julius Evola - Ride the Tiger, 48-50
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