The primordial elite

Our chief purpose has been to show how the application of traditional data enables one to arrive by the most direct means at a solution of the questions confronting people today, to account for the present state of terrestrial mankind, and to form judgments about the nature of modern civilization that are based upon truth, and not merely upon a set of conventional rules or sentimental preferences(108).

...if men really came to understand what goes to make up the modern world that world would there and then cease to exist, because its existence, like that of ignorance itself and of everything that implies limitation, is a purely negative one: it has come into being solely through the denial of traditional and superhuman truth(109).

...The position then should be regarded in this wise: the elite still exists in the Eastern civilizations, and while admitting that its numbers are being continually reduced owing to modernist encroachments, it will nevertheless continue to exist until the end, because its presence is necessary for safeguarding the kernel of the tradition, which cannot be allowed to perish, and for ensuring the transmission of everything that is to be preserved. In the West, on the contrary, the elite no longer exists; one may ask oneself, therefore, whether it will become reconstituted there again before the end of our times, whether the Western world, that is to say, will have a part to play in this task of preservation and transmission, in spite of its deviation from the traditional path: if this is not to happen, then the result will be that Western civilization will have to die out in its entirety from lack of any surviving elements capable of contributing something towards the future, the last races of the traditional spirit having finally disappeared. The question, expressed in this way, may only be of secondary importance as far as the final result is concerned; nevertheless it offers a certain degree of interest from a relative point of view, which must be taken into account once one has agreed to consider the particular conditions of the period in which we are living. From the point of view of principle, it would be enough to remind oneself that the Western world, after all, forms a part of the whole from which it appears to have become separated at the beginning of the modern era and that, with the ultimate integration of the cycle, all the parts must come together again in one way or another; but this does not necessarily imply any prior restoration of the Western tradition, since the latter is able to be preserved simply in a state of permanent possibility at its source, regardless of the special form in which it may have clothed itself at any particular period. We can do no more than touch on this possibility, since to make it fully comprehensible it would be necessary to introduce the question of the relationship between the primordial tradition and subordinate traditions, which we cannot attempt to do here. This solution would be the most unfavourable one of all for the Western world regarded in itself, and the present state of that world makes one fear that this may indeed come about; nevertheless, as we have observed, there are various signs which allow one to conclude that all hope of a more favourable issue need not yet finally be abandoned.

There are at present more people in the West than one might suppose who are becoming conscious of what is lacking in their civilization; if their efforts are confined to more or less confused aspirations or to fruitless researches, if they sometimes even lose their way altogether, it is because they lack the true premises, which nothing else can ever replace, and possess no organization capable of supplying them with the indispensable doctrinal guidance. Here we are not referring, of course, to those who have been enabled to find this guidance in one or other of the Eastern traditions, and who therefore must be regarded, intellectually, as belonging outside the Western world; such persons, who moreover will necessarily remain exceptional cases, cannot form an integral part of a Western elite; they amount really to an extension of the Oriental elites, and they might one day become a connecting link between those elites and that of the West, once it had succeeded in establishing itself; but the latter, by definition as it were, can only become established as the result of initiative on the part of Westerners themselves, and therein lies the principal difficulty. This intitiative could take one of two forms only;: either the West will discover within itself the requisite means, by returning directly to its own tradition, which would amount to a kind of spontaneous reawakening of latent possibilities; or else various Western elements will complete the task of restoration with the aid of a certain knowledge of Eastern doctrines, which in this case, however, could not be absolutely direct knowledge, since those concerned would have to remain specifically Western; but it could come to them by means of an influence at second hand as it were, working through intermediaries such as those we have just mentioned. The first of these two hypotheses is a very improbable one since it implies the existence in the West of at least one rallying point where the traditional spirit has been preserved intact, and, as we have already pointed out, the existence of such a centre, in spite of assertions to the contrary, appears to be very much in doubt: it is therefore the second hypothesis that requires to be examined more closely.

Rene Guenon, from Crisis of the Modern World

A Study of Numbers - Foreword

Whenever our spirit or mind wishes to sift out from among the chaos of cosmic phenomena the truth, or at least the most "likely" reason for the being of things and their life, it needs a guide.

This need to simplify the world's appearance, to reduce it to a simple expression, may be the fact of our inability to extend our view beyond a certain limited horizon, an inability resulting from the imperfection of our sensory organization.

Whether this is so, or whether the world is really of so disorganized a complexity that it cannot be understood in its totality, amounts to the same thing. In any case, irrespective of whether or not the idea is accepted by people uninstructed in occult teachings, our sensory organization clearly seems to be imperfect. It is therefore capable of being perfected, though not by a "sensitive" completion of the senses, the sensory memory, or the natural mnemonic functions, but by a perfecting of consciousness. This latter requires the determination of "reactives" (senses), corresponding to the energetic activities and influences of the environment.

We lack direct consciousness of Space and Time. We can only know them indirectly by means of mass, force, and energy, and by the intermediary of phenomena which may be tested by one or another of our five senses. Human beings thus lack the two senses necessary for a knowledge of all causes. From this imperfection, of which we are always being made aware, the need is born to simplify. By this need everything is reduced to fundamental properties, without any attention ever being paid to the form of all the various effects of this universal organization. The result is that the science of numbers, the most wonderful guide to the continual creation of the universe, remains an enormous hypothesis. It will remain so as long as its use has not awakened in us the higher consciousness that usually escapes us, as long as we have not, by a deepened knowledge of things and their becoming, come to recognize numbers as truth, and as long, finally, as we have not experienced with our senses that the living relation of a cause to an effect is truer and more real than the effect could ever be.

Between a hypothesis and the truth exists a world; this world is the battlefield of reason and "emotion," which we define as the pure sensibility of the senses - an abstraction formed from actual sensation. In this world the "logical reverie" of the scientist and the ecstasy of the mystic meet; the first is analytic, the second synthetic, and both lead to the recognition of the science of numbers as the science of the basic laws of the universe, the science which fixes the proportions of the building, indicating the position of each stone and determining its moment of construction or destruction: the Architect's plan.

That there have been men who knew how to read this plan cannot - without doubting all history - be doubted. To cite but two examples, Plato testifies to the existence of a Pythagorean science, and Judaism attests to the truth of the Kabbalah.

To undertake the study of numbers in a fruitful manner, we believe it to be necessary to adopt the following general plan of study.

The five essential points, the basis of the study, will be observed in the following order:

1. Numbers, values and relations

2. The disengagement of numbers

3. The harmonic basis of numbers

4. The development of values

5. The establishment of harmony

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1. Numbers are expressed by the figures 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on, up to 10. Here one will note immediately the double nature attached to numbers. There are, to begin with, numbers in themselves, forming a qualitative relation between each other. This is the relation between unity and multiplicity, with a fixed quantity of degrees and variation. Following it, there is the quantitative relation which results from counting things and defining a quantitative relation between them.

In this qualitiative and quantitative function we may discern both the nature of numbers, their immanent, abstract life, and the value of numbers, their manifested, concrete life.

By the "abstract nature of numbers," I mean the vital bond that exists between things. By the "concrete nature of numbers," I mean the manifestation of life under its many material, accidental aspects: weight, density, color, etc.

These two aspects of the nature of numbers have a common function: succession, by which the past, the present, and simultaneity, as well as the future, are defined.

Everything, in all things, may therefore be traced back to numbers, which are the last (or first) manifestation of matter, and the first cause of the creative idea. By this fact numbers are but the ideal and concrete relationship in the universe. Hence they constitute the principle of life, the vital impulse of the cosmos.

2. To understand true succession in creation, one must know how the first, or abstract, nature of numbers develops - how multiplicity disengages utself from Unity.

It is obvious that the first Unity, the cause without a cause, is indivisible. There are not yet any halves, thirds, etc. It is the first Unity. Hence it is purely qualitative, without quantity.

This first Unity is always, although under different expressions, the idea of the absolute, of the eternal, of the indefinite. This idea contains contraries (i.e., the same nature twice, but opposed in its tendencies), because the idea of an Absolute can only exist as the perfect stabilization of two essentially contrary natures. This stabilization cannot, however, exist, since manifestation immediately follows from it. In the last analysis, it is this idea that is generally meant by the term "cause without a cause."

This double nature of the first, abstract One is the reason for the disengagement of multiplicity from Unity, as we observe it in nature, in each branch of a tree, or, indeed, in any natural phenomenon whatsoever.

Nature possesses, in itself, the tendency to make "the definite out of the indefinite."

The first One can therefore only create a multiplicity by qualitative addition, and never by multiplication, because multiplication is proper to procreation.

It is in this way, then, that 1 gives 1 and 1 or:

1

1 1

and is by this fact, three. The indivisible One makes the first divisible number. This number, in its abstract nature, is 2 and becomes 1 as a concrete and divisible unity. Such is the triple nature of the Creator and this Creator is One, but a One manifested. According to the mystical explanation of numbers, the Creator God is referred to as this One, because in it one finds the father, the son, and the spirit: the creative principle, the created son, and the spirit which binds them together.

This is how numbers disengage from the abstract One.

3. The common function which determines past, present, and future decomposes into these three times beginning from the moment that the first One - the first, indivisible, purely qualitative, purely abstract cause - distinguishes itself into the nine other numbers that thereafter will constantly accompany it. This first cause has potentially in it all future causes. Hence it presents another state, simultaneity, that comprises past, present, and future in a single Absolute. This is the fourth time.

By the coordination of these times, as well as by the diversity of the double nature of number, one obtains harmonies and dissonances, pure and mixed colors, and whole and fractioned weights.

This is the first reason for cosmic harmony.

4. This harmony is manifested in the complementary arrangement of harmonies and dissonances. This mutual "complementation" of two natures gives birth to new unities, which are then complex and whose base is abstract Unity. These new unities will be the origin of manifested numbers, and their quantitative nature. In this way, values develop.

5. Harmony can only reign in the world if multiplicity disengages itself from manifested, hence divisible, Unity.

This function is the same as that by which multiplicity disengages itself from the abstract One, but the act is now complicated by the fact of the preceding creation. What is creation in the abstract becomes the first procreation in the formative idea. This idea again procreates a second time; and then the concrete world is manifested, because only in it can what is procreated procreate in its turn.

-R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, from A Study of Numbers: A guide to the Constant Creation of the Universe. Translated from the French by Christopher Bamford. Inner Traditions International, Vermont. 1986

The Yoga of Power - Chapter 2

KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

Tantrism, in its emphasis on self-empowerment, recaptures and stresses what may be called "traditional knowledge" of a metaphysical rather than profane nature. This knowledge is witnessed from the very beginning not only in Hindu areas but also in other traditional civilizations of a higher kind, such as those that flourished before the advent of modern civilization. It will be useful to point out briefly the implications of this kind of knowledge.

India possessed a metaphysics based on "revelation" (akachani, shruti), a term that should be understood differently than in the context of monotheistic religions, in which it is assumed that the deity has bestowed special knowledge on humanity, who is thus a passive recipient, and that a given organization (e.g., the Christian church) is in charge of safeguarding divine revelation in the form of dogmas.

Shruti, however, corresponds to the exposition of what has been "seen" and revealed (made known) by certain individuals, the so-called rishi, whose high "stature" is at the basis of tradition. Rishi, from dric, "to see," means precisely "one who has seen." The Vedas, which are considered to be the foundation of the entire orthodox Hindu tradition, take their name from the word vid, meaning both "to see" and "to know," which is an eminent and direct kind of knowledge assimilated by analogy to the act of seeing. The ancient Western counterpart to this term is found in Hellas, where the notion of "idea," because of its root id, identical to the Sanskrit vid (hence Veda), suggests a knowledge based on seeing. Tradition in the form of shruti records and proposes what the rishi have "seen" directly, on a superindividual and superhuman plane. In its inner and essential aspect, the foundation of the entire Hindu metaphysics may be said to rest on this.

Regarding a knowledge that presents itself under these terms, the attitude to be taken is not different from that taken toward one who claims that in an unknown continent there are certain things, or toward a physicist expounding the results of his experiments. One may simply believe, relying on the authority and truthfulness of the interlocutor; or one may attempt to verify personally whether what has been said is true or not, in the first instance, by undertaking a trip, and in the second, by gathering all the elements necessary for reproducing the experiment oneself. These are the only two sensible attitudes to be taken regarding a rishi's claims, unless one intends to ignore anything related to metaphysics. This is not a matter of abstract concepts, of "philosophy" in the modern sense of the term, or of dogmas, but rather of material from which experiences can be derived, since tradition offers the means and singles out the disciplines with which it is possible to "verify," through personal and direct evidence, the reality of what has been communicated. It seems that in the Christian West the adoption of a similar experimental approach has been granted only to mysticism, since theology defined it as a cognitio experimentalis dei and described it as something that is beyond both mere faith and agnosticism. (Christian mysticism, however, should not be equated with the kind of knowledge I have been talking about, because its background is emotional rather than noetic, and religious rather than metaphysical).

The prevailing orientation of the Tantras runs on the same lines. They repeatedly affirm that a mere theoretical exposition of doctrine has no value whatsoever. What especially matters, according to them, is the practical method of self-fulfillment, the body of means and rituals through which certain hidden truths may be recognized. This is why Tantras wish to be referred to as sadhana-shastra - sadhana being derived from the root sadh, which means exerting will power, effort, training, or activity in the hope of achieving a given result. A Tantric author remarked: "At the present time the general public are ignorant of the principles of the Tantra Sastra. The cause of this ignorance is the fact that the Tantra Sastra is a Sadhana Sastra, the greater part of which becomes intelligible only through Sadhana."

It is therefore not enough to abide by the theory of the identity between the deeper self (atman) and the principle of the universe (brahman) and "to remain idle, vaguely thinking of the conscious ether." The Tantras deny the value of knowledge to this. In order to obtain true knowledge, one must be transformed by action; hence kriya, action, became the password. To this idea, Tantric Buddhism, or Vajrayana, gave a supple expression by employing the symbol of sexual union between the "effective way" (upaya) and knowing, in which the former plays the male role.

It should be noted that in the higher forms of Tantrism this point of view is even applied to cult and eventually not only to metaphysics, to the sacred and transforming knowledge, but also to knowledge of nature.

As far as cult (puja) is concerned, I shall discuss later the special role that it plays in Tantrism, together with the various evocations and ritual and magical identifications. Moreover, it is a Tantric notion that one cannot adore a god without "becoming" that god, which brings us back to experimentalism rather than to any religious dualism.

As far as the sciences of nature are concerned, we would have to go to great lengths to explain the opposition between "traditional" knowledge and knowledge of the so-called scientific, modern type. This is not just the view of Tantrism, since on this matter it followed previous traditions and in the process of developing its own cosmology and its doctrine of manifestation it borrowed, adapted, and developed their teachings and fundamental principles.

Briefly stated, here is the situation: According to the modern point of view (which in a Hindu perspective would be considered to be typical of the most advanced phase of the "dark age"), we can directly apprehend reality only through those aspects revealed to us by physical senses and by their extension, namely scientific instruments, or, according to the terminology proper to some philosophies, through its "phenomenic aspects." Positive sciences gather and organize data provided by sensory experiences, and only after having made a certain choice between them (excluding those with a qualitative character and essentially relying on those that are susceptible to measurement and "computation") does it inductively arrive at some knoledge and laws of an abstract and conceptual nature. To them, however, there no longer corresponds an intuition, an unmediated perception, or an intrinsic evidence. Their truth is indirect and conditioned, and it depends on experimental examination, which may eventually lead to a reshaping of the previous system.

In the modern world, in addition to science one encounters "philosophy," but only to find in it abstractions and a mere conceptual speculation, which is broken down into a discordant multiplicity of systems espoused by individual thinkers. This world of philosophy may be said to be eminently "unrealistic." The choice seems to be between these two alternatives: either a direct and concrete knowledge depending on the sense, or a knowledge that is presumed to be able to go beyond this "phenomenic" world of appearances, but that is still abstract, cerebral, merely conceptual, or hypothetical (scientific philosophies and theories).

This means that the ideal of "seeing," namely, of a direct form of knowledge verging on the heart of reality, despite having a noetic, objective character (an ideal that was still preserved in the medieval notion of intuitio intellectualis), has been set aside. It is interesting to notice that in the so-called European critical philosophy of Kant, intellectual intuition is still thought of as a faculty capable of apprehending not just the phenomena but the essences as well (the "thing in itself," the noumenon), and yet this capability is assumed to be precluded to man (just as scholastic philosophy had taught). That assumption was made in order to clarify, through antithesis, what according to Kant was the only knowledge available to man: mere sensory knowledge, scientific knowledge, whose abstract, nonintuitive character we have so far discussed, and which may show with a high degree of precision how forces of nature act, but not what they are.

In esoteric teachings, including the Hindu ones, such a limitation is considered to be surmountable. As we shall see, classical yoga in its various articulations (yoganga) may be said to offer the methods of a systematic overcoming of such a limitation. The bottom line is this: there is no such thing as a world of "phenomena," of perceptible forms, and behind it, an impenetrable, true reality: the essence. There is only one given reality, which is multidimensional; there is also a hierarchy of possible forms of human and superhuman experiences, in relation to which these various dimensions are progressively disclosed, until one is able to perceive directly the essential reality. The type or ideal of knowing, which is that of a direct knowledge (sakshastra, aparokshajnana) of a real experience and of an immediate evidence (anubhava), is always preserved in all these levels. As we previously stated, the common person, especially the one living in the end times, in the Kali Yuga, can enjoy such a knowledge only when it comes to physical and sensory reality. The rishi, the yogi, or the Tantric siddha can go beyond that reality, in the context of what may be called an integral and transcendental experimentalism. According to this point of view there is no such thing as a relative reality and, beyond it, an absolute, impervious reality, but rather a relative, conditioned method of perceiving the only reality, and an absolute method.

The immediate connection between this traditional epistemology and the main concerns of Tantrism is rather obvious. In fact, in this order of ideas, the way to any superior knowledge seems to be contingent upon one's self-transformation, an existential and ontological change of level, and therefore, upon action, sadhana. This conception contrasts with the general view offered by the modern world. Modern scientific knowledge, in its technical applications, confers to modern man multiple possibilities with impressive consequences on the practical and material plane, while leaving him, on a concrete plane, at the same level. For instance, if through modern science we happen to learn the approximate processes and constant laws of physical phenomena, our existential situation has still not changed a bit. In the first place, the fundamental elements of physics are nothing but differential functions and integrals, namely, abstract algebraic entities, of which, in a strict sense, we cannot claim to have either an intuitive image or a concept, since they are mere instruments of calculation ("energy," "mass," "cosmic constant," "curved space," are nothing but verbal symbols). Second, after we have "known" all this, our real relationship with phenomena still has not changed. The same applies to the scientist who elaborates knowledge of such a kind and even to one who develops innovative technology: fire will still burn him, organic modifications and passions will still trouble his soul, time will still dominate him with its laws, the sight of nature will still not speak to him, but it will mean to him less than it did to primitive man. This is because the scientific formation of modern civilized man entirely desacralizes the world and petrifies it in the ghost of sheer, mute appearances. These appearances, along with knowledge of the kind discussed so far, make room only for the aesthetic and lyrical emotions of poets and artists, which obviously have no scientific or metaphysical value, being merely subjective experiences.

The prevalent alibi of modern science is the claim to power; and that argument, in this context, deserves to be considered, since shakti as power, as well as siddhis (namely, powers), plays an important role in Tantrism and related currents. Modern science offers the proof of its validity through the positive results achieved, particularly by putting at man's disposal such a power that has, so it is claimed, no precedents in previous civilizations.

We are dealing here with a misconception of the term power, since no distinction is made between a relative, external, inorganic, conditioned power and true power. Obviously, all the opportunites offered by science and technology to people of the Kali Yuga are exclusively of the first type. Action produces results only because it conforms itself to given laws, which scientific research has pointed out, laws that action presupposes and obeys to the letter. The effect, therefore, is not directly connected to man, to the Self, or to his free will, as to its cause; between action and result there is a series of intermediaries that do not depend on the Self, and that are necessary in order to achieve what one wants. It is not just a matter of devices and machines, but of laws, of natural determinism that could go this way or that way, unintelligible in its essence; such mechanical power, is, after all, precarious.

In no way does it represent a possession of the Self, nor is it one of the Self's powers. What has been said about scientific knowledge applies as well: it does not change the human condition, the existential situation of an individual, nor does it presuppose or require any transformation of that kind. It is rather something added on, superimposed, which does not imply any self-transformation. No one claims that we show any real superiority when we are capable of doing this or that by availing ourselves of any technical means: we do not cease to be mere humans, not even as lords of atomic weapons who can disintegrate a planet by pushing a button. And worse yet, if as a consequence of any given cataclysm people living in the Kali Yuga were deprived of all their machines, in the greatest majority of cases they would probably find themselves in a worse predicament than uncivilized primitives do when facing the forces of nature and the elements. That is because machines and technology have atrophied their true strength. We may well say that modern man, by virtue of a diabolical mirage, has been seduced by the "power" he has at his disposal, and of which he is so very proud.

That which does not depend on the laws of nature, but which rather bends, changes, and suspends them, is a different kind of power. It is a direct acquisition of a few superior beings. The condition for such power and for the real knowledge I previously mentioned lies in the removal of the human condition, that is, of the limit represented by what the Hindus call "physical Self"(bhutatman, the elemental Self). The axiom of all yoga, of Tantric sadhana and analogous disciplines, corresponds to Nietzsche's saying "man is something that must be overcome," only taken more seriously. As is the case with initiation in a general sense, the human condition is not accepted as one's final destiny; it is intolerable to be merely mortal. Overcoming the human condition, in the framework of such disciplines, is in various degrees the condition for authentic power, for the acquisition of siddhis. To be precise, these siddhis do not represent the goal (to consider them as such is often reputed to be a deflection), but rather they are the natural consequence of an achieved superior existential and ontological status. Far from being something added on or extrinsic, they are a characteristic of a spiritual superiority (it is interesting to notice that the term siddhis, besides "extraordinary powers," means "perfections"). Therefore, they are always a personal achievement, and as such they cannot be transferred, nor are they "democratizable."

There is a deep hiatus separating the traditional and the modern world. The knowledge and powers pursued by the modern world are democratic, that is , available to anyone endowed with enough intelligence to achieve, through educational institutions, a knowledge of modern natural sciences. It is enough to gain through training a certain level of knowledge that does not involve the deepest nucleus of one's being in order to be able to correctly deploy technological means. A handgun will produce the same results in the hands of a lunatic, a soldier, or a great statesman; in the same sense, anyone can be transported in a few hours from one continent to another. We may well say that this "democracy" has been the leading principle in the systematic organization of modern science and technology. As we have seen, the real differentiation of beings is the condition for an inalienable knowledge and power, which cannot be transferred to others; they are exclusive and "esoteric," not artificially, but by virtue of their very nature. They represent exceptional peaks of achievement of which the whole of society cannot partake. What is open to society are only opportunities of an inferior kind, precisely those that have been developed in the late Kali Yuga, in a civilization that has no correspondence with previous ones. In the context of traditional civilizations, besides these material opportunities (the paucity of which was due to the lack of interest people had in them), artistic activities could be pursued by anyone who had any interest in them. Generally speaking, they were characterized by various ways of life essentially oriented toward higher planes of being. This spiritual climate has been maintained in more than one area until relatively recent times.

I thought it necessary, as a way of introduction, to expose these critical and theoretical principles in order to give the reader a sense of direction into the spiritual world we are about to enter. As we approach our subject matter, I will add two more considerations, the first, again, concerning the science of nature. As I have said, in the data furnished by common experience, modern science has found only the so-called first qualities, namely, extension and movement, to be useful for its own purposes. The so-called secondary qualities, such as the quality of things and phenomena, have been excluded as such and treated only from a psychological and subjective point of view. In reality, however, no object or phenomenon is directly experienced through extension and movement only, but is rather perceived together with other qualities. In India, a qualitative-psychological physics has been develped, with "atoms" and "elements" that consdier reality not merely under the species of extension and movement but rather according to various qualities corresponding to different senses; such are the mahabhuta, the paramanu, and the tanmantra. These principles of the natural order are not abstract apeculations but rather potential objects of a direct experience, while at the same time they retain the value of explanatory principles of the system on which the world is built. They can be perceived by the special faculties developed by yoga and by sadhana. Then we can see how there corresponds to them a meaning, a form of evidence or special enlightenment.

The perfect, liminal degree, in higher knowledge, is that in which being is identified with knowing, in which the contraposition between subject and object, between I and not-I (which is found in every form of modern scientific knowledge, constituting its methodological premise) is finally removed. Jnanayoga, in its last stage, aims at achieving this state, called samadhi. But if instead of turning to Patanjali's Yoga-Sutras we turn to Tantric metaphysics, the essence or bottom line of everything is shakti, or power; hence the connection with the doctrine of siddhis, of superhuman powers. We can also read in it about an alleged process in the world in which Shakti, after becoming explicit in the realm of the not-I and consequently becoming obfuscated and unconscious, gradually awakens, acquires a conscious form (chidrupini-shakti), unites with her principle or "male partner" (Shiva), and finally becomes one with him. As we shall see, according to Tantric hatha yoga, this process is repeated inside the practitioner. It forms the basis of a doctrine of certainty.

A Tantric commentator remarks that things are power and the "power of a thing does not wait for intellectual recognition." One may amuse oneself by calling the world an illusion, or think of it as unreal, but "karma," the force of action, will force him to believe in it." We can always ask of something, Why is it like this and not like something else? "In reality the Lord himself [Ishvara], would not elude these questions, which are the natural mark of ignorance." These problems come up as long as one remains in an extraneous or passive relatinship with Shakti's manifestations in the world. These problems end, the Tantric author claims, only when the individual, because of sadhana, activates in himself the Shiva principle, that is, the radiant and dominating counterpart of the primeval power. In him, there will then emerge a particular and suprarational kind of evidence and certainty, bound to a power. It is claimed concerning the fundamental requirement of practice: "Every Scripture is but a means. It is not useful to one who has not yet known the Devi [goddess = Shakti] and is not useful to one who has already known her." After all, it is an Upanishadic theme that "into blind darkness enter they that worship ignorance; into darkness greater than that, as it were, they that delight in knowledge," and that those who have studied, upon attaining true knowledge, "throw away books as if they were on fire."

The abovementioned polemical remark against those who think of the world as illusion was obviously aimed at that current of thought whose most extreme expression was represented by the Vedantic doctrine of Shankara. It is not meaningless, at this point, to see how that polemic was conducted. Vedanta claims that the only reality is that of the plain Absolute, in its formless and undetermined aspect, the so-called nirguna-brahman. Everything else, the world and all its manifestations, is "false," a mere product of the imagination (kalpana), a mere appearance (avastu): here is the well-known and much -abused concept of maya, of the world as maya. A hiatus is thus established: nothing unites the real, brahman, with the manifestation, the world. Between them there is not even an antithesis, since one is and the other is not.

In the polemics carried on by the Tantras, their orientation toward concreteness is confirmed. It is true that from the point of view of the Absoute, the manifestation cannot exist in and by itself, since there cannot be a being outside of Being. A question may be asked, however, as to what exactly is one who professes the doctrine of maya: if he is Brahman itself or one of the beings that exist in the realm of maya. As long as one remains a human, namely a finite and conditioned being, one certainly cannot be calle nirguna-brahman, which is the unchanging pure Absolute without determinations and forms. Therefore, such a person cannot be but maya, since outside of nirguna-brahman one finds only maya. But if that person - the extremist Vedantist - in his existential reality, as a human, a jiva, a living being, is maya, then everything that he claims will be but maya (appearance and falsehood), including hs theory according to which only nirguna-brahman is real while everything else is illusion and falsehood.

This argument, which employs a subtle dialectic, is unexceptionable. Tantras say that the world as we know it may be maya from the point of view of brahman and of the siddha, one who has completely overcome the human condition. But such is not the case from the point of view of every finite consciousness, in the experience of common people, to whom it is instead an indisputable reality that cannot be prescinded from. Until one perseveres in his condition, one is not authorized to call the world maya in the Vedantic sense of the word. In a commentary to the Isha-Upanishad, it is emphasized that by insisting on the doctrine of maya and on the absolute contradiction between the supreme principle and everything that is determined and endowed with form, the very possibility of yoga and sadhana would be compromised, since "it is impossible that something would be transformed into its own very contradiction."

"We are mind and body: if mind and body (inasmuch as they belong to the world of maya) are false, how can one hope to achieve through them that which is true?" Strictly speaking, the extremist Vedantic doctrine of maya would therefore deny to the individual the very possibility of elevating oneself toward the principle, since such a possibility of elevating oneself toward the principle, since such a possibility presupposes that between these two no hiatus exists (a relationship between not-being and being), but rather a certain continuity. That is why, because of its concern to establish the necessary premises of yoga and, generally speaking, of sadhana, the practice leading to realization, and in order to prevent any contemplative escapism, Tantrism formulated a doctrine of the "active brahman" that is no less metaphysical than Vedanta's. Tantrism accomplished this by introducing the notion of shakti and by reshaping the maya theory. In the following pages we will mainly deal with that doctrine.



-Julius Evola, from The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way

The Prince - Chapter 1

THE KINDS OF PRINCIPALITIES AND THE MEANS BY WHICH THEY ARE ACQUIRED

All states and all dominions that hold and have held power over men have been and are either republics or principalities. Principalities are either hereditary, in which case the family of the ruler has long been in power, or they are new. The new ones are either entirely new, as Milan was to Francesco Sforza, or they are, so to speak, members added to the hereditary possession of the prince who acquires them, as the Kingdom of Naples is to the King of Spain. The dominions thus acquired have been accustomed either to live under a prince or to be free; and they are acquired either by fortune or by ability.

-Machiavelli

Sir Tristram - Book 8 - Chapter 1

HOW SIR TRISTRAM DE LIONES WAS BORN, AND HOW HIS MOTHER DIED AT HIS BIRTH, WHEREFORE SHE NAMED HIM TRISTRAM.

It was a king that hight Meliodas, and he was lord and king of the country of Liones, and this Meliodas was a likely knight as any was that time living. And by fortune he wedded King Mark's sister of Cornwall; and she was called Elizabeth, that was called both good and fair. And at that time King Arthur reigned, and he was whole king of England, Wales, and Scotland, and of many other realms: howbeit there were many kings that were lords of many countries, but all they held their lands of King Arthur; for in Wales were two kings, and in the north were many kings; and in Cornwall and in the west were two kings; also in Ireland were two or three kings, and all were under the obeissance of King Arthur. So was the King of France, and the King of Brittany, and all the lordshiops unto Rome. So when this King Meliodas had been with his wife, within a while she waxed great with child, and she was a full meek lady, and well she loved her lord, and he her again, so there was great joy betwixt them. Then there was a lady in that country that had loved King Meliodas long, and by no mean she never could get his love; therefore she let ordain upon a day, as King Meliodas rode on hunting, for he was a great chaser, and there by an enchantment she made him chase an hart by himself alone till that he came to an old castle, and there anon he was taken prisoner by the lady that him loved. When Elizabeth, King Meliodas' wife, missed her lord, and she was nigh out of her wit, and also as great with child as she was, she took a gentlewoman with her, and ran into the forest to seek her lord. And when she was far in the forest she might no farther, for she began to travail fast of her child. And she had many grimly throes; her gentlewoman helped her all that she might, and so by miracle of Our Lady of Heaven she was delivered with great pains. But she had taken such cold for the default of help that there was none other bote. And when this Queen Elizabeth saw that there was none other bote, then she made great dole, and said unto her gentlewoman, When ye see my lord, King Meliodas, recommend me unto him, and tell him what pains I endure here for his love, and how I must die here for his sake for default of good help; and let him wit that I am full sorry to depart out of this world from him, therefore pray him to be friend to my soul. Now let me see my little child, for whom I have had all this sorrow. And when she saw him she said thus: Ah, my little son, thou hast murdered thy mother, and therefore I suppose, thou that art a murderer so young, thou art full likely to be a manly man in thine age. And by cause I shall die of the birth of thee, I charge thee, gentlewoman, that thou pray my lord, King Meliodas, that when he is christened let call him Tristram, that is as much to say as a sorrowful birth. And therewith this queen gave up the ghost and died. Then the gentlewoman laid her under an umbre of a great tree, and then she lapped the child as well as she might for cold. Right so there came the barons, following after the queen, and when they saw that she was dead, and understood none other but the king was destroyed.

-Sir Thomas Malory, from Le Morte D'Arthur

The Yoga of Power - Chapter 1

The Meaning and Origin of the Tantras

In the first few centuries of the Christian era, and in a more marked way around the fifth century A.D., a peculiar upheaval took place in the area in which the great Indo-Aryan civilization had grown: the appearnce, development, establishment, and diffusion of a new spiritual and religious trend, characterized by newer features when compared with the prevalent motifs of the previous period. This trend penetrated everywhere and heavily influenced what is generally called Hinduism: it affected yoga schools, post-Upanishadic speculation, and the cults of Vishnu and Shiva. In Buddhism it gave rise to a new current, the so-called Vajrayana (the "Way of the Diamond" or "Way of the Thunderbolt"). At last it joined with various forms of popular cults and magic practices on the one hand, and with strictly esoteric and initiatory teachings on the other.

This new current may be designated as Tantrism. In the end it led to a synthesis of all the main motifs of Hindu spirituality, finding a particular expression and vindicating its own version of the metaphysics of history. The terms Tantra (a word that often simply means "treatise," or "exposition," since it is derived from the root tan (which means "to extend" and also "to continue," "to develop")), and Agama (a word designating other texts of the same subject matter) have been understood to mean "what has proceeded," "that which has come down." The intent was to convey the idea that Tantrism represents an extension or a further development of those traditional teachings originally found in the Vedas and later articulated in the Brahmanas, the Upanishads, and the Puranas. That is why the Tantras have claimed for themselves the dignity befitting a "fifth Veda," that is, a further revelation beyond what is found in the traditional four Vedas. To this they added a reference to the doctrine of the four ages (yugas) of the world. It is claimed that the teachings, rites, and disciplines that would have been viable in the first age (the Krita or Satya Yuga, the equivalent of Hesiod's "golden age") are no longer fit for people living in the following ages, especially in the last age, the "dark age" (Kali Yuga, the "Iron Age," the "Age of the Wolf" in the Edda). Mankind in these later ages may find knowledge, a worldview, rituals, and adequate practices for elevating humans over and beyond their condition and for overcoming death (mrityun javate), not in the Vedas and in other strictly traditional texts, but rather in the Tantras and in the Agamas. It is stated therefore that only Tantric practices based on shakti (shakti-sadhana) are suitable and efficacious in our contemporary age: all the others are considered to be as powerless as a snake deprived of its poison.

Although Tantrism is far from rejecting ancient widsom, it is characterized by a reaction against (1) a hollow and stereotypical ritualism, (2) mere speculation or contemplation, and (3) any asceticism of a unilateral, mortifying, and penitential nature. It opposes to contemplation a path of action, of practical realization, and of direct experience. Its password is practice (sadhana, abhyasa). This runs on the lines of what may be designated the "dry way," resembling the original Buddhist doctrine of the awakening, with its reaction against a degenerated brahmanism and its dislike of speculations and hollow ritualism. One among the many Tantric texts remarks rather significantly:

It is a womanly thing to establish superiority through convincing arguments; it is a manly thing to conquer the world through one's power. Reasoning, argument, and inference may be the work of other schools [shastras]; but the work of the Tantra is to accomplish superhuman and divine events through the force of their own words of power [mantras].

And also:

The special virtue of the Tantra lies in its mode of Sadhana. It is neither mere worship [upasana] nor prayer. It is not lamenting or contrition or repentance before the Deity. It is the Sadhana which is the union of Purusha and Prakrti; the Sadhana which joins the Male Principle and the Mother Element within the body, and strives to make the attributed attributeless...This Sadhana is to be performed through the awakening of the forces within the body... This is not mere "philosophy," a mere attempt to ponder upon the husks of words, but something which is to be done in a thoroughly practical matter. The Tantras say: "Begin practicing under the guidance of a good Guru; if you do not obtain favorable results immediately, you can freely give it up."

Thus Tantras often employ an analogy taken from medicine: the efficacy of a doctrine, like a drug, is proved by the results it produces, and in this particular case, by the siddhis, or powers, that it grants. Another text says: "Yoga siddhis are not obtained by wearing yoga garments or by conversation about yoga, but only through tireless practice. This is the secret of success. there is no doubt about it."

In the previous quotation referring to the body, another important point was alluded to. The analysis of the last age, the "dark age" or Kali Yuga, brings to light two essential features. The first is that mankind living in this age is strictly connected to the body and cannot prescind from it; therefore, the only way open is not that of pure detachment (as in early Buddhism and in the many varieties of yoga) but rather that of knowledge, awakening, and mastery over secret energies trapped in the body. The second characteristic is that of the dissolution typical of this age. During the Kali Yuga, the bull of dharma stands on only one foot (it lost the other three during the previous three ages). This means that the traditional law (dharma) is wavering, is reduced to a shadow of its former self, and seems to be almost succumbing. During Kali Yuga, however, the goddess Kali, who was asleep in the previous ages, is now fully awake. I will write at greater length about Kali, a prominent Tantric goddess, in the following pages; for now, let us say that this symbolism implies that during the last age elementary, infernal, and even abyssal forces are untrammelled. The immediate task consists in facing and absorbing these forces, in taking the risk of "riding the tiger," to use a Chinese expression that may best describe this situation, or "to transform the poison into medicine," according to a Tantric expression. Hence the rituals and special practices of what has been named Left-Hand Tantrism, or the Path of the Left Hand (Vama marga), which despite some problematic aspects (orgies, use of sex, etc) represents one of the most interesting forms within the trend analyzed in this study.

It is therefore stated - and this is significant - that considering the situation of the Kali Yuga, teachings that were previously kept secret may now be revealed in different degrees, though a word of caution is issued concerning the danger they may represent for those who are not initiated. Hence what we have so far mentoned: the emergence, in Tantrism, of esoteric and initiatory teachings.

A third point must be emphasized. In Tantrism the passage from the ideal of "liberation" to that of "freedom" marks an essential change in the ideals and ethics of Hinduism. It is true that even previously the ideal of the jivanmukta had been known. The word means "one who is freed," that is, the one who has achieved the unconditioned, the sahaja, while alive, in his own body. Tantrism introduces a specification, however: to the existential condition of mankind living in the last age, it relates the overcoming of the antithesis between enjoymeent of the world and ascesis, or yoga, which is spiritual discipline aimed at liberation. "In the other schools - thus claim the Tantras - one excludes the other, but in the path we follow these opposites meet." In other words, a discipline is developed that allows one to be free and invulberable even while enjoying the world, or anything the world may offer. In the meantime, the world ceases to be seen in terms of maya - that is, pure appearance, illusion, or mirage -as is the case in Vedantic philosophy. the world is not maya but power. This paradoxical coexistence of freedom, or of the dimension of transcendence in one's self, and enjoyment of the world, of freely experimenting with the world's pleasures, carries the strictest relation with Tantrism's formula and main goal: the union of the impassive Shiva with the ardent Shakti in one's being and at all levels of reality.

This leads us to consider a further fundamental element of Tantrism, namely, Shaktism. In the complex movement called Tantrism, a central role was played by the emergence and predominance of the figure and of the symbol of a goddess or divine woman, Shakti, in its various epiphanies (especially under the forms of Kali and Durga). She may be either portrayed by herself, as the supreme principle of the universe, or reproduced under the species of multiple Shaktis, that is, female divinities who accompany male Hindu gods (who had enjoyed a greater autonomy in the previous era), and even various buddhas and bodhisattvas of late Buddhism. This marks the emergence in a thousand forms of the motif of divine couples, in which the feminine, Shaktic element enjoys a great role, to the point of becoming the predominant element in some of its currents.

Strictly speaking, this current (Shaktism) has archaic exogenous origins, and it traces its roots to an autochthonous spirituality that is visibly analogous to that of the protohistoric, pelasgic, and pre-Hellenic Mediterranean world; in fact, the Hindu "black goddesses" (such as Kali and Durga) and those worshiped in paleo-Mediterranean areas (Demeter Melaina, Cybele, Diana of Ephesus, and Diana of Tauris, including their Christian counterparts such as the "black Madonnas" and Saint Melaina) can be reduced to the same prototype. In this substratum, corresponding to India's Dravidian populations and, in part, to strata and cycles of older civilizations, such as that which was brought to light in various excavation sites at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (dating from 3000 B.C.), the cult of a Great Mother or Universal Mother (magna mater) was a central motif, and it recovered an importance practically unknown to the Aryan-Vedic tradition and to its essentially virile and patriarchical spirituality. This cult, which during the Aryan (Indo-European) conquest and colonization survived by going underground, reemerged in Tantrism, in the manifold variety of Shaktic Hindu and Tibetan divinities. The result was, on the one hand, the revivifying of what had been latent in popular classes and, on the other hand, the outlining of a Tantric worldview.

Metaphysically speaking, the divine couple corresponds to the two essential aspects of every cosmic principle: the god representing the unchanging dimension, the goddess representing the energy, the acting power of phenomena, and in a sense the dimension of immanence ("life" versus "being"). The appearance of Shaktism in the ancient Indo-Aryan world during the Kali Yuga may be considered a barometric sign of a shifting of perspectives; it speaks of an interest in "immanent" and active principles at work in the world, rather than of anything related to sheer transcendence.

Besides, the name of the goddess, Shakti, comes from the root shak ("to be able to," "to have the strength to act"), which means "power." On a speculative note, we may add that the view of the world that identifies in Shakti the supreme principle is also a view of the world as power. More so than others, the Tantrism of the Kashmir school, by associating this view to traditional speculations and by reformulating on this foundation the theory of cosmic principles (tattva) typical of Sankhya and the other darshanas, was responsible for developing a metaphysical synthesis of great value, more on which will be found later, and which constitutes the general background for the entire system of Tantric yoga and related disciplines. Here Shakti has almost completely lost her original maternal and gynocratic features and has assumed the metaphysical features of the primordial principle, thus becoming closely related to Upanishadic or Mahayana Buddhist doctrines, which derived from that principle a specifically activistic and energetic emphasis.

It is also understandable how Shaktism and Tantrism contributed, in Hindu and Tibetan areas, to the development of magical practices, often of an inferiour kind, which bordered on witchcraft; eventually, what frequently took place wasa reviviscence of practices and rituals proper of the previously mentioned pre-Indo-European substratum. As we shall see, however, these very same practices, often of an orgiastic and sexual nature, did not fail, in a Tantric milieu, to rise to a higher plane.

As for the rest, the various goddesses, modifications of the one Shakti, were differentiated in two kinds: the first, luminous and beneficial (e.g. Parvati, Uma, Lakshiami, Gauri); the second, frightful and dark, (Kali, Durga Bhairavi, Camunda). This differentiation is not precise, since the same goddess could assume either of the two aspects when reflecting the attitude of the devotee approaching her. In any event, the goddesses of the bright and prevalently maternal kind, who preserved their pre-Aryan nature, have become pivotal in those popular and devotional religious movements paralleling Tantrism, which shared with Tantrism an intolerance for a sterotypical ritualism and for mere speculation. People turned to devotion and to cult (bhakti and puja), in order to achieve emotional experiences (rasa) with mystical overtones. The natural consequence of this was that the Goddess in her bright aspect became the favorite reference point of the masses, coming to hold almost the same status that the "Mother of God" enjoys in Christian devotion. It must be noticed that this orientation was not a new phenomenon, since one of its roots was Vaishnavism (the cult of Vishnu). What was new, however, almost having the value of a barometric index, was its development and diffusion outside the lower classes of Indian society, to which it had so far been confined, and its blossoming into the so-called Way of Devotion, Bhaktimarga, which had in Ramanuja its chief representative. I have commented elsewhere on the analogies with Christian theism.

The properly Tantric goddesses, however, are the Shaktis of the Path of the Left Hand, mainly Kali and Durga. Under their aegis Tantrism becomes integrated with Shaivism, the cult of Shiva, while through the bright goddesses it encounters Vaishnavism and the Way of the Right Hand. It is claimed that even Shiva has no Vedic origins: in the Vedas one finds Rudra, who may be considered his equivalent, and who propitiated Shiva's reception in the Hindu pantheon. Rudra, the "Lord of Thunder," is a personification of the divinity in its destructive aspect, that of a "destructive transcendence"; therefore, in more practical terms he is the "god of death," the "slayer." Shaivism exalts Shiva, the embodiment of all the attributes of the supreme deity, as well as the creator portrayed in an awesome and highly symbolical icon, Nataraja, which is his dance representing the rhythm of both the creation and destruction of the worlds. In a Tantric context, Shiva, while preserving the features typical of pure transcendence, is usually asscoiated with a terrifying Shakti, such as Kali and Durga, who personify his own unrestrained and untameable manifestation. When Hinduism canonized the doctrine of trimurti (i.e., the three aspects of the one supreme principle, personified in three divinities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva), the meaning of the two ways, the Right Hand and Left Hand, became clear. The first element in the trimurti is Brahma, the creator god; the second is Vishnu, the god preserving creation and the cosmic order; and the third is Shiva, the destroyer(as a result of his transcendence acting on what is finite and conditioned). The Way of the Right Hand is under the aegis of the first two gods, or aspects of the divine, while the Path of the Left Hand is under the sign of the third God, Shiva. This is the way that essentially emerged from the encounter between Shaivism and Tantrism.

Summing up, we may consider typical of Tantric speculation a metaphysics and a theology of shakti, namely, of the Principle as power, or of the "active brahman." What comes next is the use of sadhana, the practice leading to self-realization. together with the metaphysics of shakti, we find an emphasis on the magical and empowering dimensions within a vast traditional and ritualistic heritage, which often led to the formulation of esoteric and initiatory teachings. In particular, the doctrine of the mantras, which evolved from a metaphysics of the word, was assimilated to Tantrism. The mantra came to be seen no longer primarily as a liturgical formula, prayer, or mystical sound, but rather as "word of power," gaining such an importance that Tantrism was sometimes referred to (especially in some questionable Tibetan Buddhist versions) as Mantrayana, the Way of Mantras. Practical concerns led to a strict connection between Tantrism and yoga. A specifically Tantric character is found particularly in hatha yoga (the "violent" yoga, for such is the literal meaning of the word, and not "physical" yoga or, even worse, "yoga of health"), understood as "yoga of the serpent's power," kundalini yoga, which is based on the awakening and employment, in view of one's liberation, of the primordial shakti immanent in the human organism. In this kind of yoga we find a science of the "occult corporeity," that is, the hyperphysical anatomy and physiology of the human organism, in the context of correlations between man and world, microcosm and macrocosm. Breathing and sex are considered to be the only two disciplines still available to mankind living in the Kali-Yuga. Sadhana is based on them. In yoga, strictly speaking, which carried on the vast majority of Patanjali's classical yoga, the emphasis is mainly on breathing, pranayama. Women, sex, and sexual magic play a major role in another sector of Tantrism in which, as it was already mentioned, even ancient practices of the dark pre-Aryan substratum were borrowed, transformed, integrated, and elevated to an initiatory plane. Especially in Siddhantachara and Kulachara, considered by authoritative texts such as the Kularnava-Tantra (11,7,8) and the Mahanirvana-Tantra (4:43-45, 15:179-80) to be the two highest and most esoteric schools of the Path of the Left Hand, the emphasis shifted from liberation to the freedom of the man-god, that is, one who has overcome the human condition and is beyond any law. The highest concern in this current is how to achieve the supreme state that is seen as the union of Shiva and Shakti, whose mating symbolizes the impulse of reuniting being (Shiva) with power (Shakti). Tantric Buddhism saw in the achievement of this unity the so-called mahasukhakaya, a "body" or a condition even higher than the dharmakaya itself, which is the cosmic root from which every awakened one, or buddha, derives.

----

Recently Tantrism has become well known in the West, and its importance within Hinduism acknowledged. Besides some scholarly monographs, the merit of acquainting the Western world with a vast material of texts and translations concerning Hindu Tantrism belongs to Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon is a pseudonum that he used when writing books together with Hindu scholars). W.Y. Evans-Wentz and the Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup are responsible for the translation of various texts of Tantric and Tibetan Buddhism, the so-called Vajrayana, that previously existed only in the form of codices and manuscripts. One should also mention the pioneering works of De la Vallee Poussin, of Von Glasenapp, G. Tucci, nad H. Hoffman, and especially the precious material concerning Tantrism in Mircea Eliade's superb work Yoga: Immortalite et liberte (Paris, 1954). Previously, outside the specialized circles of learned orientalists, Tantrism was relatively unknown and even portrayed under a sinister light (someone even referred to it as "the worst kind of black magic"). This happened because what had been known was considered excesses or deviations from this current, instead of authentic elements that clashed with the puritanical and "spiritualist" mentality of the time, thus causing scandals and outrage.

This presentation, in which I have tried to quote the original texts as often as possible (especially those published by Woodroffe), deals essentially with doctrinal and practial aspects of Tantrism. I have noticed that Tantrism appears to be a synthesis, or better, a supplement of previous teachings that were incorporated in Tantrism, so that this book may also provide the reader with an overview of Hindu tradition, although mainly from a Tantric perspective.

I have resolved not to add anything personal or arbitrary; however, since my task is not merely to expound but also to interpret esoteric knowledge, which in Tantrism plays a major role, I have been able to substantiate some elements, owing to my ability to read between the line of the texts, my personal experiences, and the comparisons I have established with parallel teachings found in other esoteric traditions. As for the methodological principle adopted in this book, I have adopted the guiding principle employed in my previous books: to maintain the same distance both from the two-dimensional, specialized findings typical of university-level and academic orientalism and from the digressions of our contemporary "spiritualists" and "occultists."

-Julius Evola

from The Yoga of Power-Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way. Translated by Guido Stucco. Inner Traditions International. Rochester, Vermont 1992.

The Lost Cause - Chapter 3

It is not unusual in countries of large extent for the tides of population and enterprise to change their directions and establish new seats of power and prosperity. But the change which in little more than a generation after the American Revolution shifted the numbers and enterprise of the country from the Southern to the Northern States was so distinctly from one side of a line to the other, that we must account such the result of certain special and well-defined causes. To discover these causes, and to explain that most remarkable phenomenon - the sharply-defined transfer of population, enterprise, and commercial empire from the South to the North - we shall pass rapidly in review a number of years in the history of the American States.

About the revolutionary period Virginia held the front rank of the States. Patrick Henry designated her as "the most mighty State in the Union." "Does not Virginia," exclaimed this orator, "surpass every State in the Union in the number of inhabitants, extent of territory, felicity of position, in affluence and wealth?" Her arms had been singularly illustrious in the seven years' war; and no State had contributed to this great contest a larger measure of brilliant and patriotic service. James Monroe, himself a soldier of the Revolution, declared: "Virginia braved all dangers. From Quebec to Boston, from Boston to Savannah she shed the blood of her sons."

The close of the Revolution was followed by a distress of trade that involved all of the American States. Indeed, they found that their independence, commercially, had been very dearly purchased: that the British Government was disposed to revenge itself for the ill-success of its arms by the most severe restrictions on the trade of the States, and to affect all Europe against any commercial negotiations with them. The tobacco of Virginia and Maryland was loaded down with duties and prohibitions; the rice and indigo of the Carolinas suffered similarly; but in New England the distress was out of all proportion to what was experienced in the more fortunate regions of the South, where the fertility of the soil was always a ready and considerable compensation for the oppression of taxes and commercial imposts. Before the Revolution, Great Britain had furnished markets for more than three-fourths of the exports of the eight Northern States. These were now almost actually closed to them. Massachusetts complained of the boon of independence, when she could no longer find a market for her fish and oil of fish, which at this time constituted almost wholly the exports of that region, which has since reached to such insolence of prosperity, and now abounds with the seats of opulence. The most important branch of New England industry - the whale fisheries - had almost perished; and driven out of employment, and distressed by an unkind soil, there were large masses of the descendants of the Puritans ready to move wherever better fortune invited them, and the charity of equal laws would tolerate them.

In these circumstances it is not surprising that, in the early stages of the Federal Republic, the South should have been reckoned the seat of future empire. there was a steady flow of population from the sterile regions of the North to the rich but uncultivated plains of the South. In the Convention that formed the Constitution Mr. Butler, a delegate from New England, had declared, with pain, that "the people and strength of America were evidently bearing southwardly and southwestwardly." As the sectional line was then supposed to run, there were only five States on the southern side of it: eight on the northern. In the House of Representatives the North had thirty-six votes; the South only twenty-nine. But the most persistent statement made in favour of the Constitution in Virginia and other Southern States, was, that though the North, at the date of this instrument, might have a majority in the representation, the increase of population in the South would, in the course of a few years, change it in their favour. So general and imposing was the belief that the Southern States were destined to hold the larger share of the numbers and wealth of America. And not without reason was such a prospect indulged at this time. The people of New England were then emigrating to Kentucky, and even farther to the South and Southwest. In vain the public men of the North strove to drive back the flow of population upon the unoccupied lands of Maine, then a province of Massachusetts. Land was offered there for a dollar an acre. But the inducement of even such a price was insufficient to draw the emigrant to the inhospitable regions of the Penobscot. There was the prosperous agriculture to tempt him that had made Virginia the foremost of the British colonies. There were the fertile and undulating prairie lands of Kentucky to invite and reward his labours. There were the fruitful vales of Frankland - a name then given to the western district of North Carolina - to delight his vision with the romances of picturesque prosperity. To these regions the Northern emigration flowed with steady progress, if not with the rapidity and spirit of a new adventure.

Virginia did not need the contributions of numbers or of capital moving from the North after the Revolution, to make her the foremost State of the Union. She was already so. In 1788, her population was estimated at more than half a million, and her military force at fifty thousand militiamen. Her early land system, in which the soil was cultivated by tenants, and thus most effectively divided for labour, had put her agricultural interest far above that of the other States, and during the colonial period had drawn to her borders the best class of population in America - that of the yeomanry of England. The Chesapeake was the chosen resort of the trader. Alexandria, then the principal commercial city of Virginia, was thought to hold the keys to the trade of a continent. The election of George Washington to the Presidency of the United States interrupted him in a project, by which he hoped to unite the Bay of Chesapeake, by her two great arms, the James and Potomac rivers, with the Ohio, and eventually to drain the commerce of the Lakes into the same great basin, and, extending yet further the vision of this enterprise, to make Alexandria the eastern depot of the fur trade. Everywhere was blazoned the prosperity of Virginia; and, indeed, in coming into the Union, many of her public men had said that she sacrificed an empire in itself for a common concern.

Of the decline of the South, after the early periods of the government, in population and industry, Virginia affords the most striking example. To show the general fact and to illustrate especially the decline of that State, we may take two pictures of Virginia, placing an interval between them of scarcely more than one generation of men.

At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, Virginia was in the heyday of prosperity. Here system of tenant farms spread before the eye a picture of thrifty and affluent agriculture. In 1800 she had a great West Indian and a flourishing European trade. She imported for herself and for a good part of North Carolina and, perhaps, of Tennessee. She presented a picture in which every element of prosperity combined with lively effect.

In 1829 it was estimated in her State Convention that her lands were worth only half what they were in 1817. Her slave property had proportionally declined, and negro men could be bought for one hundred and fifty dollars each. Her landed system had become extinct. Regions adapted to the growth of the grasses were converted into pasture lands. The busy farms disappeared; they were consolidated to make cattle-ranges and sheep-walks. Where once the eye was entertained with the lively and cheerful scenes of an abundant prosperity it looked over wasted fields, stunted forests of secondary growth of pine and cedar, and mansions standing partly in ruins or gloomily closed in tenantless silence.

The contrast between such prosperity and such decay, witnessed in every part of the South, though not perhaps to the extent displayed in Virginia, and taking place within a short and well-defined period of time, demands explanations and strongly invites the curiosity of the historical inquirer. And yet the explanation is easy when we regard obvious facts, instead of betaking ourselves to remote and refined speculations after the usual fashion of the curious, with respect to striking and remarkable phenomena.

It has been a persistent theory with Northern writers that the singular decline of the South in population and industry, while their own section was constantly ascending the scale of prosperity, is to be ascribed to the peculiar institution of negro slavery. but this is the most manifest nonsense that was ever spread on the pages of history. Negro slavery had no point of coincidence with the decline referred to; it had existed in the South from the beginning; it had been compatible with her early prosperity extending over the period of the Constitution; it had existed in Virginia when Virginia was most flourishing. But the fallacy of the anti-slavery argument is not only apparent in the light of the early history of America: examples in other parts of the world emphasize it, and add to the illustration. Cuba and Brazil are standing examples of the contributions of negro slavery to agricultural wealth and material prosperity; while on the other hand Jamaica affords the example of decline in these respects from the very abolition of this institution of labour.

The true causes of that sectional lapse, in which the South became by far the inferiour part of the American Union in every respect of material prosperity, will naturally be looked for in the peculiar history of that Union. We shall make this discovery of adequate causes in not more than two prominent considerations, having reference to the geographical and political history of the American States.

1. The Louisiana Purchase, although opposed by the North, on the ground that it was an acquisition to the territorial and political power of the South, was mainly instrumental in turning the scale of population as between the two sections. It opened the Mississippi River; turned the tide of emigration to its upper branches; opened a new empire - the Northwest, soon to become known as "the Great West;" and drew to these distant fields much of the numbers and wealth that had before tended to the South and Southwest for the rewards of enterprise.

2. But by far the more important cause of that decline we have marked in the South was the unequal legislation of Congress and the constant discrimination of the benefits of the Union as between the two sections of the country.

And here in this consideration it is not too much to say that we find the key to the whole political history of America. The great defect of the American Constitution was that it rested too much power upon the fluctuating basis of population. In the Convention that formed this instrument there were Southern members who made light of the Northern majority in representation. They thought the next census would set all right. But the Northern party understood the advantage of getting the control of the government in the outset; they strained every nerve to gain it; and they have never since relinquished it.

Population, where the soil is not too densely peopled, and yields a good average of production, is the obvious source of national wealth, which, in turn, increases population. This great productive power was thrown into the Northern scale. By the two measures, of the exclusion of slavery from the Territories and the interdiction of the slave trade, Congress turned the tides of population in favour of the North, and confirmed in the Northern majority the means of a sectional domination.

What effect this turn in the population had upon the political power of the South in the Union is at once seen in the startling changes of her representation in the lower house of Congress. The population of the South had, of course, largely increased, since the date of the Revolution; but it had not been able to keep up with the changes in the ratio of representation. This had been at first 33,000; in the censue of 1860, it was raised to 127,381. In the first House of Representatives, Virginia had ten members to six from New York; the proportion under the last census was, Virginia eleven to New York thirty. South Carolina, which originally had one-thirteenth of the popular representation in Congress, would ohnly return, under the census of 1860, four members in a house of two hundred and thirty-three. The representative power in the North had become enormously in excess, and whenever it chose to act unanimously, was capable of any amount of oppression upon the rival section.

Under this sectional domination grew up a system of protections and bounties to the North without parallel in the history of class legislation and of unequal laws in a common country. Virginia had accepted the Constitution in the hope that the General Government, having "power to regulate commerce," would lift the restrictions from her trade. This consideration was held out as a bribe for votes in the Convention. She was bitterly disappointed. In the Virginia Convention of 1822, Mr. Watkins Leigh declared: "Every commercial operation of the Federal Government, since I attained manhood, has been detrimental to the Southern Atlantic slaveholding, planting States."

The South had no protection for her agriculture. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the manufacturing interest was a very unimportant one in the country. But manufactures soon became a prominent and special branch of industry in the North; and a course of sectional legislation was commenced to exact from the South a large portion of the proceeds of her industry, and bestow it upon the North in the shape of bounties to manufacturers and appropriations in a thousand forms. "Protection" was the cry which came up from every part of the North. Massachusetts, although unwilling to be taxed on the importation of molasses, wanted protection for the rum she made from it, and contended that it should be fenced by high duties from a competition with the rum of Jamaica. Pennsylvania sought protection for her manufactures of steel and her paper mills. Connecticut had manufactures of woolens and manufactures of cordage, which she declared would perish without protection. New York demanded that every article should be protected that her people were able to produce. And to such clamours and demands the South had for a long time to submit, so helpless indeed that she was scarcely treated as a party to common measures of legislation. The foundation of the protective tariff of 1828 - "the bill of abominations," as it was styled by Mr. Calhoun - was laid in a Convention of Northern men at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and from this Convention were excluded all sections of the country intended to be made tributary under the act of Congress.

Of the tariff of 1828 Senator Benton remarked: "The South believed itself impoverished to enrich the North by this system; and certainly an unexpected result had been seen in these two sections. In the colonial state the Southern were the richer part of the colonies, and they expected to do well in a state of independence. But in the first half century after independence this expectation was reversed. The wealth of the Northern towns had become great cities, Southern cities had decayed or become stationary; and Charleston, the principal port of the South, was less considerable than before the Revolution. The North became a money-lender to the South, and Southern citizens made pilgrimages to Northern cities to raise money upon their patrimonial estates. The Southern States attributed this result to the action of the Federal Government - its double action of levying revenue upon the industry of one section of the Union and expending it in another - and especially to its protective tariffs."

Again, contrasting the condition of the South then with what it had been at the Revolutionary period, the same Senator remarked: "It is a tradition of the colonies that the South had been the seat of wealth and land, dispensing a baronial hospitality, and diffusing the felicity which themselves enjoyed; that all was life, and joy, and affluence then. And this tradition was not without similitude to the reality, as this writer can testify; for he was old enough to have seen (after the Revolution) the still surviving state of Southern colonial manners, when no traveller was allowed to go to a tavern, but was handed over from family to family through entire States; when holidays were days of festivity and expectation long prepared for, and celebrated by master and slave with music and feasting, and great concourse of friends and relations; when gold was kept in chests, after the downfall of Continental paper, and weighed in scales, and lent to neighbours for short terms without note, interest, witness, or security; and when petty litigation was at so low an ebb that it required a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as constable. The reverse of all this was now seen and felt - not to the whole extent which fancy or policy painted, but to extent enough to constitute a reverse, and to make a contrast, and to excite the regrets which the memory of past joys never fails to awaken."

The early history of the tariff makes a plain exhibition of the stark outrage perpetrated by it upon the Southern States. The measure of 11816 had originated in the necessities of a public revenue - for the war commenced against England four years before had imposed a debt upon the United States of one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. It was proposed to introduce into this tariff the incidental feature of "protection;" and it was argued that certain home manufactures had sprung up during the exigencies of the war, which were useful and deserving, and that they were likely to lapse under the sudden return of peace and to sink under foreign competition. A demand so moderate and ingenious the South was not disposed to resist. Indeed, it was recommended by John C. Calhoun himself, who voted for the bill of 1816. But the danger was in the precedent. The principle of protection once admitted maintained its hold and enlarged its demands; it was successively carried farther in the tariffs of 1820, '24, and '28. And in 1831, when it was shown by figures in Congress that the financial exigencies that had first called the tariff into existence had completely passed away, and that the government was, in fact, collecting about twice as much revenue as its usual expenditures required, the North still held to its demands for protection, and strenuously resisted any repeal or reduction of the existing tariff.

The demand of the South at this time, so ably enforced by Calhoun, for the repeal of the tariff, was recommended by the most obvious justice and the plainest prudence. It was shown that the public debt had been so far diminished as to render it certain that, at the existing rate of revenue, in three years the last dollar would be paid, and after three years there would be an annual surplus in the treasury of twelve or thirteen millions. But the North was insensible to these arguments, and brazen in its demands. The result of this celebrated controversy, which shook the Union to its foundations, was a compromise or a modification of the tariff, in which however enough was saved of the protective principle to satisfy for a time the rapacity of the North, and that through the demagogical exertions of Henry Clay of Kentucky, who courted Northern popularity, and enjoyed in Northern cities indecent feasts and triumphs for his infidelity to his section.

But the tariff of 1833 was a deceitful compromise, and its terms were never intended by the North to be a final settlement of the question. In 1842 the settlement was repudiated, and the duties on manufactures again advanced. From that time until the period of Disunion the fiscal system of the United States was persistently protective; the South continued to decline; she had no large manufactures, no great cities, no shipping interests; and although the agricultural productions of the South were the basis of the foreign commerce of the United States, yet Southern cities did not carry it on.

Nor was the tariff the only measure of Northern aggrandizement in the Union. Besides manufactures, the North had another great interest in navigation. A system of high differential duties gave protection to it; and this, of course, bore with peculiar hardship on the Southern States, whose commodities were thus burdened by a new weight put upon them by the hand of the General Government. In tariffs, in pensions, in fishing bounties, in tonnage duties, in every measure that the ingenuity of avarice could devise, the North exacted from the South a tribute, which it could only pay at the expense and in the character of an inferiour in the Union.

But in opposition to this view of the helplessness of the South and her inability to resist the exactions of the North, it may be said that the South had an important political alliance in the North, that she was aided there by the Democratic party, and that she thus held the reins of government during the greater portion of the time the tariffs alleged to be so injurious to her interests existed. And here we touch a remarkable fact in American politics. It is true that a large portion of the Democratic party resided in the North, and that many of the active politicians there pretended to give in their adhesion to the States Rights school of politics. But this Democratic alliance with the South was one only for party purposes. It was extravagant of professions, but it carefully avoided trials of its fidelity; it was selfish, cunning, and educated in perfidy. It was a deceitful combination for party purposes, and never withstood the test of a practical question. The Northern Democrat was always ready to contend against the Whig, but never against his own pocket, and the peculiar interests of his section. The moment economical questions arose in Congress, the Northern Democrat was on the side of Northern interests, and the Southern ranks, very imposing on party questions, broke into a scene of mutiny and desertion. It was indeed the weak confidence which the South reposed in the Democratic party of the North that more than once betrayed it on the very brink of the greatest issues in the country, and did more perhaps to put it at disadvantage in the Union than the party of open opposition.

It was through such a train of legislation as we have briefly described that the South rapidly declined in the Union, intended to be one of mutual benefits, was made a conduit of wealth and power to the North, while it drained the South of nearly every element of material prosperity.

-Edward Pollard, The Lost Cause, Chapter 3 - 1867

a cold, lucid, and complex heroism...

The essential is the leader's "upward" rather than "downward" reference: it is necessary that in him something superhuman and not-human shine forth, regardless of what form this element of "immanent transcendence" may assume.

In the first stage, the elite has a purely spiritual character, embodying what may generally be called "divine right." This elite expresses an ideal of immaterial virility. In the second stage, the elite has the character of a warrior nobility. At the third stage, we find the advent of oligarchies of a plutocratic and capitalist nature, such as they arise in democracies. The fourth and last elite is that of the collectivist and revolutionary leaders of the Fourth Estate.

The starting point should be a rejection of the principle formulated by Marxism which summarizes the entire subversion at work today: THE ECONOMY IS OUR DESTINY.

We must also uphold that beyond the economic sphere an order of higher political, spiritual, and heroic values has to emerge, an order that neither knows nor tolerates merely economic classes and does not know the division between "capitalists" and "proletarians"; an order solely in terms of which are to be defined the things worth living and dying for. We must also uphold the need for a true hierarchy and for different dignities, with a higher function of power installed at the top, namely the imperium.

The economic factor exercises a hypnosis and a tyranny over modern man. Modern man is making possible what every normal and complete civilization has always regarded as an aberration or as a bad joke - namely, that the economy and the social problem in terms of the economy are his destiny.

What must be questioned is not the value of this or that economic system, but the value of the economy itself.

In reality, true values bear no necessary relation to better or worse socioeconomic conditions...among these values are: being oneself, the style of an active impersonality; love of discipline; and a generally heroic attitude toward life.

Against all forms of resentment and social competition, every person should acknowledge and love his station in life, which best corresponds to his own nature; thus acknowledging the limits within which he can develop his potential.

Unless an ideological detoxification and a rectification of attitudes is carried out, every reform will be only superficial and fail to tackle the deeper roots of the crisis of contemporary society, to the advantage of subversive forces.

KEEP BACK BUT STAND FIRM.

The word to be used is action: action, not work, is what is performed by the leader, the explorer, the ascetic, the pure scientist, the warrior, the artist, the diplomat, the theologian, the one who makes or breaks a law, the one who is motivated by an elementary passion or guided by a principle.

A more open-minded outlook is able to recognize multiple and at times even contrasting possibilities in the history of a nation, possibilities that in some way reflect just as many "traditions." Such an outlook realizes the specific importance such an acknowledgment has from a practical point of view, as what is required is a choice of traditions, especially at turning points and in times of crisis (when it is necessary to react, command, and organize on the basis of a central idea the forces of a people who are wavering and falling apart. It is necessary to choose the ideas in one's past that are perceived as more congenial by the men who, at such times, are entrusted to begin a new cycle).

...the opposite of the soldier was the type of the warrior and the member of the feudal aristocracy; the caste to which this type belonged was the central nucleus in a corresponding social organization. This caste was not at the service of the bourgeois class but rather ruled over it, since the class that was protected depended on those who had the right to bear arms.

...love for hierarchy; relationships of obedience and command; courage; feelings of honor and loyalty; specific forms of active impersonality capable of producing anonymous sacrifice; frank and open relationships from man to man, from one comrade to another, from leader to follower...

Despite any antimilitaristic propaganda culminating in the shallow, spineless, and gutless "conscientious objectors," there is a heroic dimension in the Western soul that cannot be totally extirpated.

The civilization of the merchant and the bourgeois who extols only the "civic virtues" and who identifies the standard of values with material well-being, economic prosperity, a comfortable and conformist existence based on one's work, productivity, sports, movies, and sexuality causes the involution and extinction of the warrior type and the hero.

Mankind must come to terms with its creation and compete with it. This is impossible unless a new inner dimension is created, which, in the case of war, will manifest itself in the form of a cold, lucid, and complex heroism in which the romantic, patriotic, instinctive element is absent, and in which, beside a more specific technical presentation, we find a sacrificial disposition: man's capability to face, and even to love, the most destructive situations through the possibilities they afford. These possibilities, in their elementary character, offer him the chance to grasp what may be called the "absolute person."

It may be said that modern war will lead only to the transformation of the heroic disposition and that its increasingly technical nature will constitute a real test, so that this disposition may assume a quintessential form, be purified, and almost deindividualized, joining particular and complex forms of control, lucidity, and dominion. This purely spiritual and naked assumption of heroism is probably the only one that is still possible.

...We all possess a secret, wonderful ability to retreat from the vicissitudes of time into our innermost self, stripped of all outside influences, and there, in the shape of immutability, to contemplate the eternal in ourselves. This contemplation is the innermost and most unique experience, on which all and everything we know and believe about a supernatural world depends. Only this contemplation persuades us that something IS, while everything else to which we apply that term only APPEARS to be. It is different from all other sensual contemplation in that it can only be produced by freedom and is alien and foreign to all those whose freedom, overwhelmed by the thronging power of objects, barely suffices to bring forth consciousness. In this moment of contemplation, time and duration melt away from us:

We are not time, but rather time, or better yet, pure absolute eternity, is WITHIN US.

...Wither must we direct our hopes?

Toward new philosophers, we have no other choice; toward spirits strong and original enough to make a start on antithetical evaluations and to revalue and reverse "eternal values"...so as to make an end to that gruesome dominion of chance and nonsense that has hitherto been called "history" - the nonsense of the "greatest #" is only its latest form - for that a new kind of philosopher and commander will some time be needed...

-Julius Evola, from Men Amongst the Ruins

The Organic State Concept

The idea of the organic State is a traditional one, and thus we can say that every true State has always had a certain organic character.

A State is organic when it has a center, and this center is an idea that shapes the various domains of life in an efficacious way. A central idea, a symbol of sovereignty with a corresponding, positive principle of authority was their foundation and animating force.

The main thing that emerges in ancient forms is that unity in them did not possess a merely political character, but rather a spiritual and quite often religious one, the political domain apparently being shaped and upheld by an idea or a general view that was also articulated in thought, law, art, customs, cult, and the form of the economy.

A unitary spirit was manifested in a choral variety of forms, corresponding to the various possibilities of human existence; in this context, organic and traditional are more or less synonymous terms. The spirituality of the whole was that which occasioned the terminal and twilight phases of a given cycle of civilization.

Totalitarianism, though it reacts against individualism and social atomism, brings a final end to the devastation of what may still survive in a society from the previous "organic" phase: quality, articulated forms, castes and classes, the value of personality, true freedom, daring and responsible initiative, and heroic feats.

An organism of a superior type includes multiple functions retaining their specific character and a relative autonomy, all the while mutually coordinating and integrating each other, converging into a superior unity that never ceases to be ideally presupposed.

Thus, in an organic State we find both unity and multiplicity, gradation and hierarchy; we do not find the dualism of center and formless mass typical of a totalitarian regime. Totalitarianism, in order to assert itself, imposes uniformity. In the final analysis, totalitarianism rests and relies on the inorganic world of quantity to which individualistic disintegration has led, and not on the world of quality and personality.

The organic view presupposes something "transcendent" or "from above" as the basis of authority and comman, without which there would automatically be no immaterial and substantial connections of the parts with the center; no inner order of single freedoms; no immanence of a general law that guides and sustains people without coercing them; and no supra-individual disposition of the particular, without which every decentralization and articulation would eventually pose a danger for the unity of the whole system.

Where the meaning of what an oath is all about has been completely lost, how can one be willing or required to swear such an oath, if the State is nothing more than what modern "enlightened" ideologies claim it to be?

In a corporation, to expect one of the stockholders to sacrifice himself to any degree for the common good and, worse yet, in favor of another stockholder would be regarded as absurd.

Bonapartism - in this trend new forms of government emerge in which a small # of rulers or a leader pretend to represent the people and to speak and to act on behalf of them.

The figure of the great politician as one who is a despot and at the same time a worshipper of the people, or simultaneously a pimp and a whore, which is something people instinctively perceive.

He ignores the traditional principle according to which the wider the base is, the higher the pinnacle should be.

When he rises to power, the prestige of the Bonapartist leader depends on the fact that the masses perceive him to be close to them or as "one of us."

The nature of the principle on which auctoritas is based is very important, and acts as the test of the elective affinities and as a determinant factor in the process of crystallization. The process has an anagogica character and causes the integration of the individual when the center of the system, or its fundamental symbol, is such that it appeals to the higher faculties and possibilities of the human being and awakens and moves these faculties, acting as a reference point for them, in the adhesion and in the acknowledgment of the collectivity.

Thus, there is a substantial difference between the adhesion on which a political system of a warrior, heroic, or feudal type is based (the foundation of which is both sacred and spiritual) and the adhesion found in movements led by a tribune of the people, a dictator, or a "Bonapartist" leader.

We are still in the domain of forms of individualism and naturalism that are unable to formulate any doctrine of true legitimate authority. And yet most people, even when they admit the notion of aristocracy in principle, ultimately settle for a very limited view of it: they admire an individual for being exceptional and brilliant, instead of for being one in whom a tradition and a special "spiritual race" shine forth, or instead of whose greatness is due not to his human virtues, but rather to the principle, the idea, and a certain regal impersonality that he embodies.

-Julius Evola, from Men Amongst the Ruins, Organic State - Totalitarianism