The Heroic Magical Point of View

The heroic magical point of view that we have always held will not be abandoned; in reality it alone will constitute the point of reference and justification for the task of critique and examination...It is our intention to erect an unbreachable bulwark against the general decline of every value in life; our claim to know and point out vaster horizons, beyond the usual ones of humanity's small constructions; our proposal to stand firm on the ramparts, ready for both offense and defense, isolated and closed to any escape.
xxi

...crisis or radical upheaval is necessary. This is why it is necessary to set everything aside, and to become detached from everything. The mutation of one's deepest structure is the only thing that matters for the purposes of higher knowledge. This knowledge, which is at the same time wisdom and power, is essentially non-human; it can be achieved by following a way that presupposes the active and effective overcoming of the human condition.
3-4

This "divine" technique, traditional in the higher sense of the word affords real possibilities to those who, after the previously mentioned crisis find in themselves the strength and calmness to overcome it in a positive manner and to experience it as a catharsis and purification from everything that is merely human. Moreover, this science offers real possibilities to another category of beings, namely those few individuals in whom, in mysterious ways, an ancient legacy reemerges and grows again, almost like the instinct of another race that has disappeared in the course of millenia.
4

The human brain has already given all it had to offer. Now what matters is to make the whole body into an instrument of consciousness, which, by overcoming the limitation of the individual, must penetrate those vital layers where the dark and deep energies of a higher self are at work, until the entrance of the path leading to the "closed palace of the King" is found again.
5

All the exercises of inner development will be paralyzed unless one breaks the shell of limitations that daily life forms around one, and that still remains in the human subconscious even after a change of perspectives.
14

On this side are ignorant people, lacking Knowledge, pale, passive, intoxicated, whose lives are still outside and on this side of the Waters. On the other shore you will find virile men, heroic souls, awakened to disgust, to revolt, to the Great Awakening; having left one shore behind, they dare to face the current and the undertow, being led by their ever more firm, unshakeable will. Once there, they are known as "Survivors of the Waters," "Walkers on the Waters," "The Holy Race of the Free," "The Conquerors," "The Lords of Life and Salvation," "The Radiant Ones." They are the "Dragon Slayers," the "Dominators of the Bull," "Consecrated to the Sun," those who have been transformed through Ammon's power and wisdom.
19

Cut yourself free from the bonds of sensuality, intoxication, and passion: reduce yourself to a simplicity that wills.
20

This is an absolute vertigo in the spirit, which is vanquished only by the awareness of the self as an intangible, indestructible, tenacious, and victorious reality.
25

The hierarchy proceeds from "sign" to "sign," from "name" to "name" until it reaches a state of perfect superrational, intellectual vision, of full actualization or realization of the object in the Self and the Self in the object. This is a state both of power and of absolute evidence in regard to what is known; once this state is reached, every rationalization and speculation appears superfluous and every discussion meaningless.
27

...the ideal of power here is that of an action occurring not subject to natural laws, but above them; not among phenomena, but among the causes of phenomena, with the irresistibility and the right proper to him who is superior. And this superiority comes from having effectively disengaged himself from the human condition, and having achieved the intiatic awakening.
32

Read the sacred scriptures of every people on earth: through all of them runs the scarlet thread of the secret doctrine of awakening.

If you want to overcome death itself, whose armor is sleep, dream, and dullness, you must climb from one step of awakening to the next. Imagine: the lowest step of this heavenly ladder is called "genius." What name shall we then give to the highest ones? They remain unknown to the multitudes and are considered to be legend.
35

Then you will be able to perform miracles at will, without having to wait humbly like a whimpering slave for a cruel God to bestow his grace upon you, or strike your head off.
36

The key consists simply in becoming aware of one's "form of the Self" or of one's skin, even though, one may be asleep, in discovering the narrow crack through which consciousness slips between waking and deep sleep.

The struggle for immortality is a battle for the control over the sounds and ghosts that dwell in us; the waiting for our "Self" to become King is the waiting for the Messiah.
37

Nobody knows if you will be allowed to share in the prodigious forces once possessed by ancient prophets, or if you are destined to enter enternal peace. Our path leads to the threshhold of maturity. Once you arrive at it, you are also worthy of receiving that gift. In either case you will have become a phoenix: it is up to you to get there by force.

One of those who still have the key of magic has remained behind on earth, to seek and to rally those who have been called.

The only true immortal being is the awakened man. Stars and gods disapear; he alone endures and can achieve anything he wants. There is no God above him.

That which a religious man believes about God is nothing but a state that he himself could achieve, if he could only believe in himself. But he obtusely sets up obstacles over which he does not dare to jump. He creates an image to worship, instead of transforming himself into it.
40

By now you should understand what the main task of our Art is: detach yourself from the humid substance that you are made of, and be regenerated in the solar strength.
46

A relationship saturated by desire and love is, moreover, negative and dependent; it has the character of need. To turn it into the purely affirmative, central, and self-sufficient solar nature requires a qualitatitive leap and a daring that is very difficult for the mystic to achieve...

We do not need "to go outside" ourselves (ecstasy-displacement) but rather to return and take possession of the "seat of the center." The mystical light represents for us the "Higher Waters" in which your individuality must not diminish, but rather reawaken.
49

Keep in mind that for modern man, the Royal Path usually starts from the humid principle, even though immediately after, this water must be made dry and arid. A spiritual hunger or the despotic need to entirely own yourself often leads to the Way.
50

In the magical, dry, or solar way, you will create a duality in your being not in an unconscious and passive manner (as the mystic does), but consciously and willingly; you will shift directly on the higher part and identify yourself with that superior and subsistent principle, whereas the mystic tends to identify with his lower part, in a relationship of need and abandonment. Slowly but gradually, you will strengthen this "other" (which is yourself) and create for it a supremacy, until it knows how to dominate all the powers of the natural part and master them totally. What is required of you is a discipline of firmness and sobriety until an equilibrium is created, namely the quality of a life that owns itself and is free with regard to itself, cleansed from instincts and from obscure appetite of the natural being, in both flesh and mind. Only then will you be able to employ, usefully and in an auxiliary fashion, some "corrosive water" (an alchemical term denoting violent methods such as toxic substances, the use of wine and sex, suspension of breath, and so forth). By attacking the natural connections, these give the fixed and preestablished nucleus the possibility of expanding and bursting forth more energetically. However, if this nucleus were not already established, the "corrosive waters," by dissolution, would lead you not above but below the condition from which you first started.

The affirmative discipline is enhanced by transformations provoked by some direct method, upon which the entire being, ready and compliant, reaffirms itself, digests and is itself digested, leaving nothing behind. These leaps are faster rhythms in which you must be able to transform the slow tempo of your incarnated being, in the same way that a surfer rides a wave; wherever the wave goes, so does the surfer, thus rejoining himself, remaining affirmative, firm, and centered.

Then the solar and golden nature in you will be able to break the equilibrium and be the stronger one: the other nature (your Self, your Senses, and your mind) will be under your control. At that point you can even suspend them, make them inert, neutralized, fixed. This is Silence, the "extinction of mania," the dissolving of the fog. Then, in your clarified eye, the cyclical integral vision will shine forth; you will see your transcendent essence, the destiny of beings and of all things, and the "Kingdom of Those Who Are." You will grasp the mode of action in a pure stsate, and you will grasp the mode of immaterial motion that operates every space or body in a timeless, creative rapidity. The center in you will amalgamate with the universal, non-becoming nature, and will derive from it a divine strength that expresses itself through miraculous powers. You will be able to focus on the Knowledge of the Names and on the wedding with the letters. You will be initiated.
50-1

...one of the first and fundamental operations in the initiatic art: the transferring of the Sense of the Self into the region of the Heart, the center of the human being.

We add that, contrary to common opinion, according to the traditional teaching, everything that is mental, reflective, cerebral must be referred to the lunar, feminine, passive element; conversely, to the heart must be attributed the quality of the solar, masculine, and central element.
55

...especially for the operative aspects of magic, one needs to nourish a faculty defineable in these terms: to be oneself beyond oneself, in the terms of an elan, an active self-overcoming, and an affirmation that situates itself beyond one's individuality. In everyday life, heroism, heroic and even orgiastic intoxication, the pleasure of risking one's life, and even certain times of readiness for sacrifice are already signs pointing in this direction. The power of a life free from itself, capable of going beyond itself in this active form, is as important to magical and theurgical practice as the principles of absolute comman and absolute obedience copresent in oneself.
58

There are two paths: one leads to servitude, the other to liberation. Its principles are: "I am this" and "I am not this." Man is bonded by the former and liberated by the latter.
71

Every teaching of ours is illusory until it is translated into a practice and an action...slowly build up a strength inside you, similar to a lord whose glance instills silence, respect or confusion in the servants around him. This is our Gold.
72

At the center of yourself, like a spider that keeps under control all the strings of its web and their vibrations, let there be a calm self-control and a scrutinizing lucidity, purified and fearless, open to every voice.

For the magician it is imperative to escape in any possible way from the atmosphere of enslavement and intoxications that is the "soul of the earth"; to enter in a conscious contact with the world beyond, and to act from there, directing corresponding reactions and effects in real life.

Dare and be silent.

The strongest force is the will of man who knows what he wants. Set the goal, then, and never change it. After you have started never, ever quit, no matter what, because, as I have told you before, the path of Magic does not have "dead corners." One does not have to embark upon it, but once you have done so, there are only 2 alternatives: succeed or perish.
78

In the highest potency, the Word realizes itself fully and perfectly because it contains in itself the principle of every manifestation, actualizing itself in it with a linear correspondence betweeen the realizing will and the realized being.
80

In Greek, the verb "sym-ballo" (to reunite) and the analogous term "sym-bolon" (symbol) designate the act of reunion, while the synthesis indicates the result of this action. The dynamic character of the symbol is opposed to the static, immanent character of the synthesis. In regard to the effect of the action, the verb "sym-ballo" (to reunite) is opposed to the verb "dia-bollo" (to separate, oppose). The attribution of dynamic and magical virtues to symbols in order to overcome diabolical opposition and adversities is philologically obvious. And just as the symbol leads to a synthesis, its opposite, the "devil," is what leads to the opposite of synthesis, namely to analysis: in fact "ana-lysis" is solution, breaking down, dissolution, death.
84

There is an analogy between the physical and the metaphysical, between exteriority and interiority, and between man and cosmos. Because of this, man is potentially God, and the microcosm is potentially a macrocosm.
89

V.I.T.R.O.L - Visita interiora terrae, rectificando invenies occultam lapidem
(Visit the interior of the earth. By rectification you will find the hidden stone."
92

The vessel, the grasale or chalice of the Holy Grail, is in fact of "earth"; but "earth"...is the human body.
92

Mithras is he who assumes and dominates the taurine cosmic force that carries and moves all things. After being experienced in a magical projection or image, this supreme principle, in a second phase, is directly realized. The Mithraic nature, evoked and mastered through a new "bellowing," is "fixed" by the initiate. He commands it to remain, for the perfection of the state of him who is free from necessity, birth, and death.
101

From an initiatic point of view it must be said that one feels "Self" precisely because of the reflection of a superior principle...nous=the mind seen as an Olympian and incorruptible principle.
146

The intiatic mystery is precisely that of metamorphosis, of the passage from one species to another.
149

In order to achieve immortality it is necessary to burn every tendency that would urge one to assume this or that superhuman "seat"...If the struggle for immortality occurred in truly a magical context, the task would consist of resisting the beings whom one encounters...by generating, in their exact direction, a higher intensity than theirs.

What is capable of surviving death and being immortal is not the "soul" but the mind as nous, as a supernatural element....a body of incorruptible light.
149-50

sic nos non nobis - thus we are not for ourselves
155

Self-overcoming, aside from being the object of rites, is connected to a renewed, heroicized perception of the world and of life, not as an abstract concept of the mind, but as something that pulsates in the rhythm of one's own blood. It is the sensation of the world as power, or the sensation of the world as a sacrificial act. A great freedom, with action as the sole law.

You must perceive yourself as a center of strength and know the action that is no longer dictated by this or that object, but for the sake of itself. You will no longer be moved: detached, you will move. The objects around you will cease to be objects of desire for you - they will become objects of action.

...vision without reference points, having as its only direct object reality itself. Action awakened as an elementary thing, simple, unrestrained. Power of commanding and power of obeying, both absolute, to be quintessentialized in the way that is required for evocations and identifications, as for those immediate, immaterial encounters with "presences," in which some may ascend and disappear, powerful and invisible, while others precipitate into bodily forms.
156-7

...remember that by hating you decline. Hatred alters and it prevents you from controlling the influence of your opponent, worse yet it opens you to his own influence which you can instead know and paralyze, if you remain calm, without reacting...that force and purity over which nothing has power...detachment, silence, solitude...distance between human beings.

...To overcome the brotherly contamination, the need to love and to feel loved, to feel together, to feel equal and joined with others.

You will feel united only with those who are on your same path, which is not the human path, having no regard for human ways.
158

Life is a heroic affair of every moment, made of symbols, illuminations, commands, ritual, and sacrificial actions.
159

The word "passion" designates a passive state, whereas the magus is always active and victorious. A magus in love, or a jealous or a lazy magus is a contradiction in terms...

The "Great Magical Agent," the natural mediator of human omnipotence, cannot be enslaved and directed by anything other than a supernatural principle, which is an independent will.
161

Do violence to yourself. Do not do what you like, but what costs you: on principle, always take the path of greatest resistance.

The magical act is one of concrete fluidification of the will, or an immaculate, androgynous conception in which the fluidic force operates as a feminine principle in the creative realization under the inspiring and masculine action of the solar principle.

...in order to "dissolve" a "metal" it is necessary to make it red-hot, and then immerse it in water, excite, exasperate an instinct, an impulse, a desire and then abruptly, when its fulfillment is at hand, suspend it. At that point, the supersensible "eye" will see flashes come out of the lower centers and run snakelike toward the higher centers of the head, which by absorbing the former's strength begins to shine with a formidable light. This virtue of theirs is powerful and dry, it is the golden virtue of absolute command and of the absolute conception in magical realizations.
162

In solar or high magic, what is at work is a clean and superhuman science.

The magical act is the conception of a lightning-flash, a swift operation in which the mental power fixes the command or conception of the goal and unleashes against it the ignified fluidic force.
164

The more the realization is perfect, the more exalted, energetic, and absolute in their respective virtue are the two principles joined together by Hermes wand; the more calm, dry lucid, icy is the power of the Sun; the more ardent, vehement, and wild is the power of the ignified fluidic force (perfected mercury)fixed by the Sun. It is the conjunction and embrace of the two enemies on the same bed of the magical androgynous alliance: it is the great mystery of the Ars Regia that cannot be communicated to any outsider.
165

...success in magic is never the result of effort...Magic always operates in a simple and direct way, as an instantaneous force or as an irresistible and subtle fragrant force. This is why Lao-tzu says that the virtue of the Tao is "to act without acting." Thus the Hermeticists talke about the Work as a "woman's game" or as "child's play."

This is why it is improper to talk about "will" in magic, because will as conceived by men is characterized by tension, violence, rigidity or exactly the opposite features favorable to magical realizations. One needs to feel superior, not limited by obstacles, powerful and ready in spirit, dwelling in a state of perfect justice. This is the necessary basis for the calm, determined placing of the image, which is accurately defined in all its parts, in the mental light that needs to be ignified and gradually exalted until you reach the state of sympathy. It is in this state, as a pure act of spirit, that the sudden flash of "projection" needs to occur.
166

He gains the wonderful path produced by the intensity, the constancy, and the concentration of will; the wonderful path produced by the intensity, the constancy, and the concentration of effort; the wonderful path produced by the intensity, the constancy, and the concentration of the mind; the wonderful path produced by the intensity, the constancy, and the concentration of investigation, and as a fifth the heroic spirit. And this disciple, who has thus become heroic fifteenfold, is capable of liberation, is capable of awakening, is capable of attaining incomparable security.
177-8

If instead an inner attitude is created, such that the force does not encounter something rigid in us, but something similar to air, it will no longer find a hold and, at worse, spin around itself. The technique consists in waiting for the moment when it is possible to reaffirm oneself against the force to which one had previously left open the door, and little by little to absorb and transform it in oneself. Sometimes this is equivalent to offering oneself in a sort of sacrificial action, drawing from it a positive effect, an elevation, and an intensification.
184

The magical body is invulnerable and immortal; only what is composed and dependent is liable to alteration and corruption. This body can properly be called vajra, namely "diamond-thunderbolt," something almost adamantine, incorruptible, made of power and fulminating light.
201

...a natural process leads Western man in the precise direction of the counter-initiation. According to Evola, beginning with the Renaissance, Western man wanted to be "free" and autonomous, cutting off in rapid succession all the remaining contacts with the higher world and pursuing the path of immanence and the conquest of the physical world. But when the end result is not materialism and a material reality dominated by technology, the individual separated from the spiritual world tends to a sort of asceticism that consists in the overamplification of the dominating will and its freedom, thus forging the myth of the Superman. Thus, the individual can only align himself with the line of influence of the counter-initiation, and appearances in this direction (of unknowing "ascetics of evil") already exist and are very significant. Probably these are the ways with which the destiny of an entire civilization will be sealed.
241-2

...magic is conceived synonymous with the art of those who know how to reopen the path leading to the earthly paradise, in order to partake of the "Tree of Life" found at its center. This obviously refers to the restoration of that primordial state, reintegration of power, and contact with the "center" which constitutes the main goal of initiation as such.
258

*** regal tradition vs priestly tradition ***
...the figure of the magus retains in a highly visible way the ideal of spiritual virility, which is most essential for the higher type of the initiate or adept. The magus has always called to mind the ideal of a dominating superiority.

...if we see in the priest one who simply mediates the relationship between the human and divine worlds and if in the king (according to his original dignity) we recognize one who is instead a directly divine being, so that he represents with his mere presence a mediating function - then we must recognize that the regal tradition is much closer than the priestly tradition to the primordial tradition, and consequently to the supreme ideal of adeptship.

Now, if the magical dignity, as we have said, leads one to think spontaneously of a spiritual virility and a dominating superiority, then the relationship that it has with the tradition of initiatic regality becomes evident.

...It is irrelevant that the tradition of initiatic regality has long since disapeared as a source of adepts such as visible heads of people and states. The secret tradition of initiatic regality has existed and continues to exist in its proper place, alongside the tradition of initiation in general. It is no coincidence that Hermeticism speaks of a "Royal Art" and of a rex physicorum; that the Rosicrucians referred to an Imperator; and that even in the degenerate residues and counterfeits of modern Freemasonry there are dignities that are connected to the idea the "Holy Empire."

...what matters most is a spiritual race of warriors and heroes.
259-60

YOU MUST NOT SEEK POWER, IT IS POWER THAT MUST SEEK YOU.
261

- from Introduction to Magic - Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus - Julius Evola and the UR Group - Inner Traditions, Rochester, VT, 2001.