A Short Introduction to Julius Evola
H. T. Hansen[1]
Julius Evola (1898–1974) is still relatively unknown to the English-speaking world, even in the traditional circles surrounding René Guénon, of whom he was his leading Italian representative. The major reason for this is that until recently little of Evola’s work had been translated into English. This situation is being remedied by Ehud Sperling, president of Inner Traditions International. In addition to Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex published in 1983, Inner Traditions has also brought out two of Evola’s most important books, The Yoga of Power, on Tantrism, and The Hermetic Tradition, on alchemy. Following Revolt Against the Modern World, Inner Traditions will also republish Evola’s masterful work on Buddhist asceticism, The Doctrine of Awakening.[2]
Evola received some recent attention in Gnosis magazine, where Robin Waterfield attempted to present a well-balanced view of him, which drew immediate protest.[3] Evola’s known sympathies for Italian Fascism and National Socialism, to which we will return in this article, were recalled. There is also Richard H. Drake’s essay “Julius Evola and the Ideological Origins of the Radical Right in Contemporary Italy,” which contributed a great deal to Evola’s negative image in the English-speaking world, and Thomas Sheehan’s “Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist."[4] That Evola, on the other hand, had been from his youth in constant personal contact and correspondence with Mircea Eliade and the famous Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci, is less well known.
But who actually was Julius Evola? His career was many-sided: As a philosopher he belongs among the leading representatives of Italian Idealism; as a painter and poet he is counted as one of the founders of Italian Dadaism; as a cultural historian and critic of our times, in addition to his Revolt Against the Modern World, he also translated Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, as well as Bachofen, Weininger, and Gabriel Marcel; as a patron of literature he was the publisher and translator of Ernst Jünger and Gustav Meyrink, whom he introduced into Italy; to some he might appear as an éminence grise in politics, for Mussolini apparently wanted to implement some of Evola’s ideas to create more freedom from the restrictions of National Socialism, and today, as then, right- and even some left-wing groups adopt him against his intentions; his important activities in the UR Group and many of his books testify to his understanding of alchemy and magic, and it is reported that Mussolini stood in considerable awe of Evola’s “magical powers.”
Ultimately, no definite answer to the question of who he was can readily be given, for Evola was apparently (to others) all of these things and yet (to himself) none of them. He saw himself as a member of the kṣatriya or “warrior” class, who goes his way heedless of the praise or blame of others while simply wanting to do “what must be done, without thinking of success or failure.” Only one thing was of primary importance: the “Above.” For him transcendence was the be-all and end-all. From above derived all reasons for what happens below, and everything below must in turn be aligned to the above. Every thought and thing had to be judged as to whether it led upward. Only this resolute striving for the true foundation of all things can explain Evola’s many nearly incomprehensible judgments and outlooks. His first aim was to turn toward transcendence and be liberated from Earth. Hence his constant attacks on “chthonic” religions, because they are terrestrial cults and not celestial religions. In these terrestrial cults, the Earth is the “Great Mother” and she alone has priority since she gives protection and help. Heaven, which in practically all cultures is regarded as male because it makes the womb of the earth fertile through the sun and rain, is therefore in those cults nearly insignificant beside her. And if one worships the earth, striving upward for heavenly transcendence is of no avail. Evola’s path, however, is neither a search for consolation nor an abandonment of the self to the mother goddess with its consequent loss of the self. For Evola the earthly is not the path that leads to active liberation, to “awakening.” On the contrary, it strengthens the “sleep” in which one gropes to return to the mother’s womb. Evola values only the continuum of consciousness, the enduring presence, and the awakening of the thousand eyes as the essentials for achieving liberation.
What Joscelyn Godwin wrote about René Guénon is also true of Evola’s esoteric work:
Mystical experience and religious devotion are certainly intrinsic elements of the spiritual path, but as Guénon never tired of emphasizing, the ultimate realization of a human being is through knowledge.
Some may find this whole approach too intellectual, but they cannot deny that the Traditionalist’s discipline of metaphysics cuts like a razor through the sloppy thinking and sentimentality prevalent among “New Age” types. It sets standards of integrity against which other spiritual teachings either stand or fall. It assumes from the outset that the absolute truth has always been there for the finding, so it has no time for the fumblings of Western philosophy, so-called, nor for a science whose basic dogma is that man is still searching for the truth. And it incidentally forces a revaluation of all the modern ideals that most North Americans take for granted, such as individualism, equality, evolution and progress. One looks at the world with new eyes once one has passed through a Traditionalist re-education.[5]
Since the chthonic or “Earth” religions go hand in hand with mother cults and their feminine leadership, Evola saw every matriarchal culture as further evidence of “deterioration.” It was neither misogyny nor “patriarchism” that led him to this, but simply an intense striving for liberation from earthly bondage. In his eyes this liberation is all that matters; everything else is meaningless alongside it. To achieve this goal, no sacrifice is too great for him. Even one’s own death becomes a “triumphal death,” insofar as one is aware of it as a sacrifice undergone for this liberation. Who perishes in battle in this spirit is “godly,” because for him the outer struggle is merely a symbol for the inner struggle against enslavement to earth. It is only from such a viewpoint that today we can grasp Evola’s acceptance of the Hindu practice of satī. He sees it as the highest of devotions, precisely because it places perfect purity of purpose ahead of mere greed for life.
So asceticism is for Evola not a woeful and painful stifling of unlived passion, but simply a “technique” for setting the self free, a conscious step undertaken because one is aware of the Higher. He does not trust in grace and waiting, but wants to liberate himself through his own power. Consciousness therefore precedes unconsciousness, and to avoid any misunderstanding, Evola sharply differentiates the idea of higher consciousness from lower consciousness. A crystal-clear wakefulness characterizes the first, and surrender and self-sacrifice the latter. This is why Evola so often warns us about spiritualism and the usual “occult streams.” These, he maintains, quoting Guénon, are even more dangerous than materialism. “Because of its primitivity and intellectual short-sightedness,” materialism protected men from their own unconsciousness. In this regard, Guénon pointed out that rationalism, materialism, and positivism at first blocked the way for men to what lay above them, whereupon the occult streams now open them to what lies below them. And of course, this is why Evola also fights against the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung, both of whom demand that one open oneself to the unconscious, allowing it to act, so as to receive clues for the meaning of unconscious phenomena. Here we must emphasize that Evola’s path is not intended to be psychotherapeutic. On the contrary, his path demands the absolute mental health of a person who has already reached “individuation.” He puts it in these words: “In most cases today the personality is an exercise, something not yet in existence, which one must first strive to acquire.” If we cannot overcome the problems of this life, how can we hope to be ready for the much greater problems of Life and what lies beyond it?
Such emphasis on the “above” and on “reaching upward” helps to explain Evola’s constant reference to “high” and” low,” “pure” and “impure.” Higher is simply that which bears “more transcendence” in itself or strives toward it. This is the only thing that justifies his positive evaluation of authority and the original priest-kings. Since they stood in immediate touch with the “overworld,” it was only natural that they should command others who were more earth-arrested. According to Evola the entire Indian caste system, from brāhmaṇa to śūdra, was based in ancient times on this hierarchy of participation in the Absolute. And in aristocratic Rome, the patricians, who were in charge of the rites pertaining to the overworld, therefore ruled the plebeians, who worshiped earthly gods and mother goddesses.
That ideas of “high” and “low” are relative and ultimately invalid is clear enough. Nor does Evola endorse dualism. Such “hierarchical” evaluations may be necessary in our world, which demands clear-cut ideas if we wish to express ourselves clearly, but for Evola the key to Life beyond life, to initiation—that is, to the beginning, to the origin—is precisely the ultimate oneness of above and below, spirit and matter (as well as spiritual and worldly power), subject and object, myth and history, inner and outer, and thereby also word and deed. According to Evola this unity that does not recognize “other” was the sign of the original, the “godly” man. For this man, looking inward was the same as looking outward, and every “word” through the “magic imagination” was simultaneously the fulfillment of the imagined. As it was said of the ancients: they still knew the “true names” of things. Thought was visually perfect and hence one with the will.
Let us turn to another aspect of Evola’s weltanschauung with which we are already acquainted from Hinduism, namely, the idea of involution as opposed to evolution. Not upward development but downward disintegration characterizes Evola’s picture of history. We are engaged not in climbing but in sliding. For most of us this thought is so strange that an immediate “instinctual” negative reaction is rather natural. We might reject the idea of involution in the same way that Darwin’s theory of evolution, which originated the belief in progress in the first place, was “instinctively” rejected in the last century. Evola took these thoughts of involution from Guénon’s traditional worldview. The fundamental key to understanding this view is quite clear, for here again Evola sees the struggle as being between “above” and “below,” between “higher” or “Uranian” (Uranus in Greek mythology is the personification of heaven, the principle of divine origination) and “lower” or “chthonic” peoples, whereby in the course of time the matter-bound “sons of the earth” became stronger and stronger and the “portion of transcendence” became ever more trivialized. So it is only a question then of choosing from which “ideological” standpoint one is to consider history, whether to regard it as Evola does—as involution—or as evolution along with the moderns, for whom scholarly and material achievements are more important than spiritual liberation.
For this reason Evola’s thinking goes very much against the spirit of the times, which sees his position as a challenge and naturally declares war on it. Are not many of our most cherished beliefs and universally unquestioned opinions about democracy, monarchy, the caste system, slavery, and the emancipation of women unequivocally attacked by it? Before countering that attack, however, we should remember to cast an eye over exactly the same attitudes that have prevailed for millennia in many societies (in Japan up to 1945). Even Dante’s De monarchia breathes this spirit.
Evola’s rebukes spare no one—not even those who would be his bravest disciples. Since he does not regard himself as master, he can recognize no student. His thinking cannot be considered a teaching because he did not invent it; no one invented it; the Tradition has a transcendental origin. Evola wants only to lay down a “testimony” written for those who are “different”—l’uomo differenziato—those who are of the type that does not belong to this time.
Evola especially rejects “intellectuals” who, to be sure, frequently treasure his work, but for the wrong reason: their interest is purely of the intellect and therefore superficial. The understanding that Evola wants requires a fundamental inner change before anything else. Only then will it become an inner experience and bring with it knowledge and power simultaneously. He was well acquainted with the dangers of intellectualism, for he himself had been an engineering student, acquitting himself with the highest grades. He broke off his studies just before his doctorate, however, because he “did not wish to be bourgeois, like his fellow students.” He said again and again that he valued qualities of character that were much higher than abstract intellect or “empty,” that is, nontranscendental, artistic creativity. Both are but pretexts to entrench the ego in its own devices.
Nor was it of great importance for Evola whether the perfect world that he described had ever existed or would exist. The idea behind it, the principle for which the traditional world is always striving, was enough for him. That in practice this principle was fulfilled only in form, or not even that, was immaterial, for as long as the principle remained recognizable, at least the possibility of self-transcendence for men continued to present itself. In this sense one can speak of a “utopia,” in which the idea is worth more than its puritanical realization. And this argument is valid not only for the traditional world but also for the modern. For religion, neighborly love, and democracy are likewise utopias in this sense. Nor has “utopia” here any negative overtones, for without its incredibly strong suggestive power no one would strive for a hyperbiological goal.
Later on Evola also rejected the idea of involving himself in recreating this traditional world today. He wanted, as we have said, only to transmit a “testimony,” so that some, who “stand outside this world,” could have a fixed point.
Nor can we reproach him for not mourning the past. Past and future are much the same to him; only the traditional principles are important, and these stand clearly outside time and space. That these were lasting principles he never doubted in the least. Therefore; in Cavalcare la tigre (Ride the Tiger), his main book for the “others,” for those “who are different,” he stressed that this “different” person should not turn his back on the world. On the contrary, he should seat himself on the very back of this ferocious, predatory world and rush forward with him. For as long as one keeps sitting on top of the running beast, one need not fear its claws and teeth. When the beast then becomes tired and weak from its wild running and lies down, one can then overcome it. “Manage so that what you can do nothing against, also can do nothing against you,” and “you can do anything as long as you are sure that you can do without it,” were his expressions.
We can correctly ascribe one danger to Evola’s work that is not necessarily his fault. Since he is always talking about the grandiose, that which is stirring and noble, and never of the bondings of compassion and love, he could easily be mistaken for a seeker of the superman and the Titans. But that is exactly what Evola wants to avoid. He distinguishes quite carefully between the path of the hero and the path of the Titan. It is not the thought of power derived from the strengthening of the ego that Evola preaches, but on the contrary, the transcendence of the ego. Ordinary individuality must be dissolved. That is what is necessary in the struggle for freedom from bondage and the overcoming of passion. As long as one continues to strive for (true and unusurped) power ( śakti), one neither has it nor can use it. In order to acquire it, one must be able to put oneself beyond it, to be free of it. As Evola says in the introduction to his three-volume work on magic ( Introduzione alla magia), power is feminine. She comes to the strongest. Just as the waters around the bridge piles thrust and accumulate, so power collects around those who stand independently and are unconcerned about it. The power-greedy ego must be conquered and turned to something infinitely greater than itself.
Evola was born on May 19, 1898, the son of a noble Sicilian family, and had a strong, dogmatically Catholic upbringing. When he was still very young he joined the circle of rebellious poets around Marinetti (founder of Futurism) and Papini, who fascinated him with their iconoclastic, revolutionary outlook. Papini brought him into contact with all the new directions of art and streams of fashion, but also with Oriental wisdom and especially with Meister Eckhart. After voluntary war service as an officer candidate in the artillery, which left him untouched because of lack of any significant military action, Evola began to occupy himself with occult teachings. Drug experiences (to which he never returned) certainly gave him new ideas, but they also intensified an already present crisis so that he voluntarily planned to end his life.
His urge for the Absolute had crossed over to an urge for disintegration. In this he seems to have been influenced by his greatest models, namely Otto Weininger and Carlo Michelstaedter, for both had committed suicide early in their lives. Michelstaedter, in particular, had demonstrated both the insignificance and illusion of this world and this life with its continual longing for something that can never be satisfied. Here also is the origin of Evola’s striving for self-sufficiency, independence from everything, and self-liberation. But a passage from the Buddhist Pali canon saved him from the catastrophe. This passage in the Majjhima Nikāya (1.1) says that whoever believes that extinction is extinction, understands extinction as extinction, thinks of extinction, truly believes extinction to be extinction and rejoices in extinction, that person does not know extinction.
Evola’s involvement with Dadaism goes back to his relationship with its founder Tristan Tzara, who wanted to establish a new vision of the world rather than merely an avant-garde art movement. His aim was absolute liberation through the complete turning around of all logical, ethical, and aesthetic categories. He sought the union of order and disorder, of ego and non-ego, of yea- and nay-saying. Evola saw Dadaism therefore as the self-liberation through art into a higher freedom.
A “philosophical” period followed, which lasted until 1927. It led to the writing of three main books. These works follow the track laid down by the strong influence of Nietzsche and Stirner and were mainly directed against the then fascist “court philosophers” such as Giovanni Gentile.
But contacts with Theosophy, which he soon sharply condemned, and especially John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon) also fall in this period.[6] An especially profound influence on him was Arturo Reghini, who was in fact the one who introduced him to the Western tradition. This led to the famous UR Group, with its “magic as science of the ego.” “Magic” was understood to be the active taking up of a traditional initiation practice, and profound studies of alchemy, Buddhism, and Taoism complemented his practical experiences in the UR Group.
But along with these interests Evola was also looking for “an arena open to more opportunities,” namely, politics. He wanted to create a spiritual foundation in the prevailing climate of the New Order, Fascism, and to strengthen what in his eyes were the positive possibilities in bringing back the idea of the ancient Roman Empire while avoiding its negative traits (totalitarianism, the emphasis on the masses). He set about doing this by first creating the periodical La Torre, which after ten issues had to be put on the shelf. By order of Mussolini no print shop was allowed to print it any longer. Evola’s criticism therein had been belligerent. After being reminded that Mussolini thought otherwise about something he wrote, “Tanto peggio per Mussolini” (Too bad for Mussolini). At this time, therefore, in spite of his sympathies for Fascism, he was obliged to move about Rome with bodyguards.
Here we find ourselves in the middle of the key question as to why Evola suffers from a negative image—not only in the English-speaking world—despite many of his opponents’ appreciation for his esoteric works. For starters, there is his undoubted sympathy for Fascism, National Socialism and racism, but let us also make some distinctions. First, there is the spirit of the times to take into consideration, under whose spell authors more famous than Evola, such as Ezra Pound and Knut Hamsun, also fell. In his defense, on no account must we forget Evola’s numerous critical newspaper articles written during the entire Fascist epoch, inclusive of wartime, an accomplishment that under a totalitarian regime demanded personal courage by anyone’s standards. Of course a comprehensive study of this question is not possible here. But a couple of original quotations from those times should suffice to indicate the direction of Evola’s criticism. (A study conducted to that end is the lengthy introduction to the German edition of Evola’s major political work: Uomini e rovine (Men Amidst Ruins). Evola’s criticism naturally consisted mainly of the fact that he failed to see in Fascism any spiritual root or direction toward the transcendent: the “plebeian,” the “bourgeois,” the “bureaucratic” elements were simply too strong.
As early as 1925 (Fascism in Italy was by then already in power), Evola had written in the antifascist magazine Lo Stato Democratico (no. 17) in reference to Fascism: “if one considers the type of (our actual) ruler and state that should truly embody the principle of freedom, then they present themselves as mere caricatures and grotesque parodies.” And he makes his attitude clear in the very first issue of La Torre under the title “Identity Card”:
Our magazine was not created to “whisper” something to Fascism or into the ear of M. P. Mussolini, for neither Fascism nor Mussolini would know what to do with it. Rather, our publication was created for the purpose of defending principles, which for us will always be the same absolutely, independently, whether we are in a communistic, anarchistic, or republican regime.
Then Evola discusses the principles of hierarchy, of the need to anchor everything in the transcendental, and of spiritual imperial thought. He goes further—highlighting in italics: “To the extent that Fascism follows these principles and defends them, to exactly that same extent can we consider ourselves to be fascist. And that is all.”
We have failed to mention that Evola was never a member of the Fascist Party. But exactly because he did not see his ideas fulfilled in Fascism, he turned to National Socialism, which in his opinion seemed of much more consequence, as it continued to speak, rhetorically at least, of its own spiritual roots, of holy runes, and so on. But here as well, Evola failed to find what he sought, for it was precisely the masses that stood as a point of reference at the center of Nazism and not the transcendent state or empire. A quote from “Orizzonte Austriaco” in the Fascist newspaper Lo Stato (January 1935) states this unequivocally:
Nationalistic Socialism has clearly renounced the ancient, aristocratic tradition of the state. It is nothing more than a semi-collective nationalism that levels everything flat in its centralism, and it has not hesitated to destroy the traditional division of Germany into principalities, lands and cities, which have all enjoyed a relative autonomy. (22–29)
At the time Evola was repeatedly on lecture tours in Germany, and he was observed by the SS, who kept a dossier on him in the Correspondence Administration Department of Himmler’s personal staff. In this dossier document number AR-126 says of him:
The ultimate and secret goal of Evola’s theories and projects is most likely an insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world, which is foreign to the idea of nobility. Thus the first German impression, that he was a “reactionary Roman,” was correct: His overall character is marked by the feudal aristocracy of old. His learnedness tends toward the dilettante and pseudoscientific.
Hence it follows that National Socialism sees nothing to be gained by putting itself at the disposal of Baron Evola. His political plans for a Roman-Germanic Imperium are utopian in character and moreover likely to give rise to ideological entanglements. As Evola has also only been tolerated and hardly supported by Fascism, there is not even a tactical need to assist him from our side. It is therefore suggested:
1. Not to give any concrete support of Evola’s present efforts to establish a secret international order and a special publication intended for that purpose.
2. To stop his public effectiveness in Germany, after this lecture series, without deploying any special measures.
3. To prevent him from advancing to leading departments in party and state.
4. To have his propagandistic activity in neighboring countries carefully observed.
In response to this report, a short letter of August 11, 1938 (letter no. AR-83), puts it laconically: “Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler has taken note of the opinions expressed in the report on Baron Evola’s lectures and strongly agrees with the ideas and proposals set forth in the final paragraph.”
To put a period to the question of Evola and Fascism there is an important impartial voice. Renzo de Felice, an authority on Fascism and Mussolini, writes in Der Faschismus: Ein Interview (Stuttgart, 1977): “Who is Evola? It was no accident that he was an outsider during the entire era of Fascism, that he never held a position in the Fascist Party … and the Fascists themselves, at least many of them, criticized and mistrusted him.”
In Evola’s comments on the racial question we must also make distinctions. In particular, he introduces a new three-part classification of race that distinguishes between race of body (which is the usual bare-bones notion of race), race of soul (the character, style of living, emotional attitude toward the environment and society), and race of spirit (type of religious experience and attitude toward “traditional” values). Therefore, as Mussolini expressed it on the occasion of an encounter with Evola, this classification was comparable to Plato’s division of the population into three groups: the broad masses, the warriors, and the wise men.[7]
Because the race of the spirit is the one that is most difficult to understand and even Evola himself did not always define it the same way, we will quote from his article “L’equivoco del razzismo scientifico” (The Misunderstanding of Scientific Racism):
We would like to make it clear that to us spirit means neither frivolous philosophy nor “Theosophy,” nor mystical, devotional withdrawal from the world, but is simply what in better times the wellborn have always said were the marks of race: namely, straightforwardness, inner unity, character, courage, virtue, immediate and instant sensitivity for all values, which are present in every great human being and which, since they stand well beyond all chance-subjected reality, they also dominate. The current meaning of race, however, which differs from the above by being a construction of “science” and a piece out of the anthropological museum, we leave to the pseudointellectual bourgeoisie, which continues to indulge in the idols of nineteenth-century Positivism.[8]
Evola’s views on race made him well known in Italy for the first time, but they also brought him into opposition with the government. No less than Guido Landra, the powerful leader of the race studies section of the Folk Culture Ministry, copublisher of the official newspaper La difesa della razza (The Defense of Race), and coauthor of the official Fascist “race manifesto” of 1938, criticized Evola sharply:
And that is the weakest point in Evola’s teaching: that an Aryan can have the soul of a Jew or vice-versa. And that therefore unfair measures could be taken against a Jew, even though he might possess the soul of an Aryan—this seems to us theoretically untenable. The practical acceptance of such a principle would have terrible consequences for racism, and certainly be of exclusive benefit to the Jew.[9]
As the leading theoretician of race, Landra roundly condemned Evola’s views in the government paper: “[and] that article ‘Misunderstanding of Scientific Racism’ by Evola, is the outstanding document of and monument to the present campaign, which has been unleashed against racism in Italy.”[10]
Evola’s position on the merely biological understanding of race is evident in this quote from 1931:
The error of certain extreme “racists” who believe that the return of a race to its ethnic purity ipso facto also means rebirth for a people, rests exactly on this: they deal with men as if they were dealing with the racially pure or pure-blood caste of a cat or a horse or a dog. The preservation or restoration of the racial unity (taking its narrowest meaning) can mean everything when you deal with an animal. But with men it is not so … it would be far too easy if the simple fact of belonging to one race that has been kept pure, already conferred, without being or doing anything else, some “quality” in the higher sense.[11]
Let us examine Evola and Judaism. On the one hand, there are really incriminating statements of Evola’s concerning individual Jews and he even, among other things, republished the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose spurious character he must have known. In this regard he is quite in step with the style of the times. Evola was judging thereby not the Jewish people as such, whose spiritual attainments, such as the Kabbalah, he esteemed highly, but only “Judaism” as a “spiritual direction” when he alleged that it was from that we had been led to the despised modern times.
But even here Evola does not go blindly ahead; rather, he makes a distinction. For example, in his booklet Tre aspetti del problema ebraico (Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem) he writes:
… in the concrete course of development of modern civilization the Jew can be seen as a power, who collectively with others has worked to create our “civilized,” rationalistic, scientistic, and mechanistic modern decadence, but on no account can he be marked as its single, far-reaching cause. To believe such a thing would be very stupid. The actual truth is that one would rather fight against personified powers than against abstract principles or universal phenomena, because you can also fight them practically. So the world had turned en masse against the Jew, as he seemed to show in his being a typical form that one finds, however, in much wider regions and even in nations that are practically untouched by Jewish immigration.[12]
And in his introduction to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion he says (p. xix): “We must say at once that in this matter we personally cannot follow a certain fanatical anti-Semitism, especially that which sees the Jews everywhere as deus ex machina and by which one finally leads oneself into a kind of trap.”
And in 1942 he wrote in his abovementioned article “L’equivoco del razzismo scientifico”:
For it is useless to try to conceal it from ourselves: this very day, people are asking themselves if, in the end, the Jew is not being presented as a kind of scapegoat, because there are so often cases, in which the qualities that our doctrine ascribes to the Jew, also impertinently pop up in 100% “aryan” stock-market speculators, profiteers, price-hikers, parvenus and—why not—even journalists, who do not hesitate to use the most twisted and treacherous means purely for polemics.
And there is also the impartial keynote of the historian of Fascism Renzo de Felice, who confirms the above:
We see ourselves compelled to state in the cultural sector, as well as in the political, that from a certain point of view, the most worthy of respect were those who were confirmed racists. Thereby, however, we do not mean—let this be clearly understood—a Landra or a Cogni, those pallid and obsequious vestals of Nazi racism, but an Evola, an Acerbo, each of whom had his own way that he followed to the very end, in dignity and even in earnestness. And that, contrary to the many who chose the way of the lie, abusing and smoke-screening each and every cultural and moral value… . Evola for his part also completely refused any racial theorizing of a purely biological kind, which went so far as to draw to himself the attacks and sarcasms of a Landra, for example. This does not mean that the “spiritual” theory of race is acceptable, but it had at least the merit of not totally failing to see certain values, to refuse the German aberrations and the ones modeled after them and to try to keep racism on a plane of cultural problems worthy of the name.[13]
These few quotations should suffice to shed some light on Evola’s outlook.
In 1945, while Evola was living in Vienna and working through the SS-confiscated archives and documents of Freemasonry and various magical groups, he was so severely wounded in a Russian bombing attack that he remained paralyzed to the end of his life. During air attacks, Evola had the habit of not going to the bomb shelters, but instead working in his office or walking about the streets of Vienna. He wanted, as he said, “calmly to question his fate.”
After several years’ hospital stay in Austria and then in Italy (the war had ended in the meantime) Evola returned to his native city, Rome. Apparently he left his dwelling only once and was promptly arrested by the police on charges of “glorification of Fascism” and “intellectually inciting secret combat troops” in 1951. After several months of examination, however, the trial ended with a complete acquittal. In his famous self-defense (published by the Fondazione Julius Evola in Rome, undated) he indicated that the same incriminating statements could also be found in Aristotle, Plato, and Dante, and that they would also have to be charged.
Nevertheless, he still continued to be visited by right-wing young people and addressed as “maestro.” But Evola always declined to occupy himself with everyday politics and concerned himself only with fundamental principles. His late work, Cavalcare la tigre (Rome and Milan, 1961), even calls for an apoliteia— for an attitude that goes against politics by placing itself spiritually above the political. Evola’s later books include his work on original Buddhism, The Doctrine of Awakening (1943; first English edition, London, 1951), a strongly ascetic work written amid the chaos of World War II that speaks for his withdrawal from the politics of that time. His Metaphysics of Sex appeared in Rome in 1958. A critical analysis of Fascism and Nazism from the point of view of the right, Il Fascismo (Rome, 1964), a book on the German poet Ernst Jünger, some collections of essays, and finally his autobiography, Il cammino del cinabro (Milan, 1963), mark the limit of his work.
In this introduction, although we have been able to provide only a few details, it can be seen than an evaluation of Evola, who published in all twenty-five books, approximately three hundred longer essays, and more than one thousand newspaper and magazine articles, is not an easy task. Lately it has been pointed out, for example by Giano Accame in Il Fascismo immenso e rosso (Rome, 1990), that Evola’s thinking bears a strong resemblance to the fundamental observations of Herbert Marcuse (Evola was much earlier, however), which may explain the new interest in Evola in leftist circles. In recent times a number of dissertations in various universities in Italy and France have also been written about him.
The Austrian poet Joseph Roth described Franz Grillparzer as “an anarchistic individualistic reactionary.” By way of conclusion, I would like to suggest the same as a description that is also quite fitting for Evola.
Translated from the German by E. E. Rehmus
Footnotes
1. A version of this article, translated by E. E. Rehmus, first appeared in Theosophical History 5 (January 1994): 11–22, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editor.
Dr. Hansen, a native of Austria, studied law and received his Ph.D. in 1970. After working in the export trade, he has, since 1989, been exclusively engaged in writing book introductions and translating works in esotericism and philosophy. He is also a partner in the Ansata Verlag in Interlaken, Switzerland, one of the foremost publishers of the esoteric in the German-speaking world. Apropos this article, Dr. Hansen knew Julius Evola personally and has also devoted many years to researching Evola’s life and writings.
2. The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way, trans. Guido Stucco (Rochester, Vt., 1992); The Hennetic Tradition: Symbols and Teachings of the Royal Art, trans. E. E. Rehmus (Rochester, Vt., 1995); The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts, trans. H. E. Musson (1951; reprint, Rochester, Vt., 1995).
3. “Baron Julius Evola and the Hermetic Tradition,” Gnosis 14, (winter 1990): 12–17.
4. Richard H. Drake, “Julius Evola and the Ideological Origins of the Radical Right in Contemporary Italy,” in Peter H. Merkl, ed., Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations (Berkeley, Calif., 1986); Thomas Sheehan, “Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist,” Social Research 48: 45–73.
5. Gnosis 7 (spring 1988): 23–24.
6. A comprehensive study of Evola’s involvement with Theosophy is planned for a future issue of Theosophical History.
7. Mussolini consulted Evola about counterbalancing the Nazi pure-body-and-blood racial idea with Evola’s soul-spirit view, which was more in line with his own thinking.
8. Vita Italiana 30 (September 1942).
9. Vita Italiana 31 (February 1943): 151.
10. La difesa della razza 6 (November 1942): 20.
11. Vita Nova (July 1931).
12. Tre aspetti del problema ebraico (Rome, 1936).
13. Storia degli Ebrei Italiani sotto il Fascismo (History of Italian Jews under Fascism [Milan, 1977]): 465.