The image of a regality in a state of sleep or apparent death, however, is akin to that of an altered, wounded, paralyzed regality, in regard not to its intangible principle but to its external and historical representatives. Hence the theme of the wounded, mutilated, or weakened king who continues to live in the inaccessible center, in which time and death are suspended.
Without repeating what I have discussed elsewhere, in order to give a general and universalized idea of the context being discussed I will mention some typical forms in which this symbolism was expressed in ancient times.
In the Hindu tradition we encounter the theme of Mahakasyapa, who sleeps in a mountain but will awaken at the sound of shells at the time of the new manifestation of the principle that previously manifested itself in the form of Buddha. Such a period is also that of the coming of a Universal Ruler (cakravartin) by the name of Samkha. Since samkha means "shell," this verbal assimilation expresses the idea of the awakening from sleep of the new manifestation of the King of the World and of the same primordial tradition that the above-mentioned legend conceives to be enclosed (during the intermediate periods of crisis) in a shell. An analogous Iranian tradition refers to the hero Kereshaspa, who, having been wounded by an arrow while he was immersed in a state of slumber (here we find again the same symbolism), survives in a lethargic state through the centuries, being nurtured by the fravashi (like the wounded Arthur, who is tended by women expert in healing techniques); he will combe back to life at the time of Saoshyant's advent and will fight on his side. Saoshyant is the lord of a future, triumphal kingdom of the God of Light and the slayer of the Ahrimanic dark forces: the Jewish notion of a Messiah and the Christian notion of God's Kingdom, which many people believe to have greatly influenced the medieval imperial myth, are nothing but an echo of this ancient and pre-Christian Aryo-Iranian concept.
I must refer here as well to the doctrine of the Kalki-avatara in relation to the story of Parasu-Rama, one of the typical figurations of the heroic representative of the primordial Olympian-Hyperborean tradition. When the forefathers of the Aryan colonizers of India were still inhabiting a northern seat, this figure allegedly slew with his battle-axe some rebellious warriors and even his own mother guilty of some crime: these are symbols of the double overcoming that I previously (at the end of Chapter 7) declared to characterize the "heroic" spirit - namely, the overcoming of a degraded virility and of a spirituality that shifted to a feminine-maternal tutelage according to an involution and a process of degradation (especially when we consider that its action occurred in a period between the Silver or Lunar Age (the so-called Treta Yuga) and the Bronze or Titanic Age(the so-called Dvapara Yuga).
Parasu-Rama never died, but withdrew to a mountain named Mahendra to live as an ascetic. When the right time comes, in conformity with the cyclical laws, a new manifestation from above will occur (Kalki-avatara) in the form of a sacred king who will triumph over the Dark Age. Kalki is symbolically thought to be born in Sambhala, one of the names that in the Hindu and Tibetan traditions designated the sacred Hyperborean center. His spiritual teacher is Parasu-Rama, and after being initiated into the sacred sciences he receives the regal investiture. From Siva he receives a white winged horse (which in the legend is so important that it came to be identified with Kalki himself), an omniscient parrot, and a bright sword. Recall that Arthur is believed to return one day on a white horse and that this symbol also plays a famous part in the Revelation of Saint John the Divine; recall also Excalibur, the lost sword that Arthur will one day yield again and that from time to time emerges from the bottom of a lake.
Led by the parrot, Kalki wins the favors of the woman; he marries Padma or Padmavati, a king's daughter whom no man could ever have, since every time someone fell in love with her he was transformed by divine will into a woman - a symbol with a profound meaning. Kalki and his warriors cross on foot a wide sea, which magically turns into stone as they walk over it. Finally he reaches his birthplace, Sambhala, which he finds so transformed and wonderful as to mistake it for the dwelling place of Indra, the king of the gods and the god of the heroes. Sambhala is a symbol of the new manifestation of the forces of the primordial center; in it we find again the representatives of the solar and lunar dynasties, the kings Maru and Deva, who thanks to the power of their ascetic practices remained alive in the Himalayas through the ages of the world, up to the most recent Dark Age. Here the Himalayas are conceived as the region in which the primordial age lasts forever. Finally a last battle takes place, which is Kalki's struggle against the Dark Age, personified by the goddess Kali and by the two chiefs of the demons, Koka and Vikoka; this struggle is very hard, since these demons can resurrect each other and return to fight as soon as they hit the ground. In the end, however, Kalki will prevail.
Further on, I will discuss in greater detail the symbolic elements found in this story, in case the reader has not understood their full meaning. Here I have simply wished to introduce some references in order to contextualize from an intertraditional perspective the imperial myth of the new manifestations of the regnum and to prevent the expressions that this myth had during the Middle Ages from being read separately from each other, especially in a unilateral dependence on Christian beliefs. After all, many people thought that the Roman world, in its imperial and pagan phase, signified the beginning of a new Golden Age, the king of which, Kronos, was believed to be living in state of slumber in the Hyperborean region. During Augustus's reign, the Sibylline prophecies announced the advent of a "solar" king, a rex a coelo or ex sole missus, to which Horace seems to refer when he invokes the advent of Apollo, the Hyperborean god of the Golden Age. Virgil too seems to refer to this rex when he proclaims the imminent advent of a new Golden Age, of Apollo, and of heroes. Thus, Augustus conceived his symbolic "filiation" from Apollo; the phoenix, which is found in the figurations of Hadrian and of Antoninus, is in strict relation to this idea of a resurrection of the primordial age through the Roman Empire. The foreboding of Rome's connection with the suprahistorical and metaphysical principle of the imperium may, after all, be considered the basis of the very theory of Rome's persistence and aeternitas, provided one is aware of the previously mentioned process of transposition of that which is proper to this principle to one of its specific embodiments in history.
During the Byzantine age, the imperial myth received from Methodius a formulation that revived, in relation to the legend of Alexander the Great, some of the themes already considered. Here again, we find the theme of a king believed to have died, who awakens from his sleep to create a new Rome; after a short reign, the people of Gog and Magog, to whom Alexander had blocked the path, rise up again, and the "last battle" takes place.
This same idea will be revived and amply developed during the Ghibelline Middle Ages. The awaited, hidden emperor, who never died and who withdrew to an invisible or inaccessible center, is here transformed into one of the major representatives of the Holy Roman Empire: Charlemagne, Frederick I, or Frederick II. The complementary theme of a devastated or sterile kingdom awaiting renewal finds its equivalent in the theme of the Dry Tree. The Dry Tree, associated with the seat of the Universal Ruler, will blossom again at the time of a new imperial manifestation and of the victory against the forces of the Dark Age that are represented, in conformity to the new biblical and Christian religion, by the people of Gog and Magog, who will launch their attack at the time of the advent of the Antichrist.
The Christian reading of these ancient symbols, however, does not preclude the image of Frederick II or of Arthur asleep on a mountain, or of the latter's knights leading a charge from the top of that mountain, from being associated with ancient pagan-Nordic views, namely, with Valhalla, the mountain dwelling of Odin, leader of the "divine heroes," or with the host of the souls of slain warriors, handpicked by women (the Valkyrie). This host can be described both as the Wildes Heer and as the mystical army that, led in battle by Odin, will fight the last battle against the "elemental beings."
This legend appears with countless variations during the golden age of Western chivalry and Ghibellinism. In the prophetic excitement caused by the coming of a "third Frederick," the legend finds a proper conclusion in the enigmatic formula of the emperor who is both alive and not alive: Oculus eius morte claudet abscondita supervivetque, sonabit et in populis: vivit, non vivit, uno ex pullis pullique pullorum superstite [His eye shuts and loses sight with death, but it survives and will sing among the people. He lives and does not live, one with the sprouting branches and yet standing apart from the new shoots.] "He lives and does not live": the Sibylline formula encompasses the mystery of medieval civilization at its twilight. The wounded king, the king asleep, the king who has died though he appears to be alive and who is alive though he appears to be dead, are equivalent or convergent themes that we will find again in the Grail cycle. These themes acquire a particular power of suggestion and liveliness at the final moment of the West's supreme effort to reconstruct itself according to a great civilization that was spiritually virile and traditionally imperial.
-Julius Evola, Chapter 10 from The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit. Translated from the Italian by Guido Stucco. Inner Traditions: Rochester, Vermont. 1997
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