Julius Evola

Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola (Italian pronunciation:

[vola];[1] 19 May 1898 11 June 1974), better known
as Julius Evola (/duljs vol/), was an Italian
philosopher, painter, and esotericist. Evola regarded
his perspectives and spiritual values as aristocratic,
masculine, traditionalist, heroic and deantly reactionary.

honoric and local title of reverential politesse, "Baron".

Whether extrinsically of legal-ocial titular peerage,
literally baronial, the status of Evola and his ancestry is not currently known; in any event, the family was
culturally ultra-aristocratic and old-guard Catholic, and
this constituted the formation of his earliest personality (Evola himself would dismiss the matter as irrelevant
following his hyper-metaphysical world-view). During
his youth, he studied engineering and received excellent
grades, but did not complete his studies because he did
not want to be a bourgeois". In his teenage years he immersed himself in painting, which he considered to be
one of his natural talents, and literature including Oscar
Wilde and Gabriele d'Annunzio, and served as his rst
introduction to philosophers such as Nietzsche and Otto
Weininger. He served during World War I as an artillery
ocer on the Asiago plateau. After the war, attracted
to the avant-garde, Evola briey associated with Filippo
Marinetti's Futurist movement, but became a prominent
representative of Dadaism in Italy through his painting,
poetry, and collaboration on the shortly published journal, Revue Bleu. In 1922, after concluding that avantgarde art was becoming commercialized and stiened
into academic convention, he reduced his focus on artistic
expression such as painting and poetry.[6]

Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga,

a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites, spiritual oblivion and dissolution. To counter this and call
in a primordial rebirth, Evola presented his world of
Tradition. The core trilogy of Evolas works are generally regarded as Revolt Against the Modern World, Men
Among the Ruins, and Ride the Tiger. According to
one scholar, Evolas thought can be considered one of
the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the
twentieth century.[2] Much of Evolas theories and writings is centered on Evolas own idiosyncratic spiritualism
and mysticismthe inner life. The philosophy covered
themes such as Hermeticism, the metaphysics of war
and of sex, Tantra, Buddhism, Taoism, mountaineering,
the Holy Grail, the essence and history of civilisations,
decadence, and various philosophic and religious Traditions dealing with both the Classics and the Orient.
Evolas work was inuential on fascists and
neofascists,[3][4] though he was never a member of
the Italian National Fascist Party or the Italian Social
Republic and declared himself an anti-fascist.[5] He
regarded his position as that of a sympathetic right-wing
intellectual, saw potential in the movement and wished
to reform its errors, to a position in line with his own
views. One of his successes was in regard to the racial
laws; his advocacy of a spiritual consideration of race
won out in the debate in Italy, rather than a solely
biological reductionism concept popular in Germany.
Since World War II many Radical Traditionalist, New
Right, Conservative Revolutionary, fascist, and Third
Positionist groups have taken inspiration from him, as
well as several apolitical occultists, such as Thomas
Karlsson and Massimo Scaligero.

1
1.1

1.2 Entry into esotericism

Around 1920, his interests led him into spiritual,
transcendental, and supra-rational studies. He began
reading various esoteric texts and gradually delved deeper
into the occult, alchemy, magic, and Oriental studies, particularly Tibetan Lamaism and Vajrayanist tantric yoga.
He had also used hallucinogenic drugs to experience
altered states of consciousness during this period, but
later came to criticize such drugs in Ride the Tiger, as he
did not consider stimulation as a means to transcendence.
In 1927, along with other Italian esotericists, he founded
the Gruppo di Ur (the Ur Group). The groups aim was
to provide a soul to the burgeoning Fascist movement
of the time through the revival of an ancient Roman
Paganism.[7]

Biography

1.3 Relationship with Fascism

Early years

Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola was born in Rome to a Evola never joined Mussolinis National Fascist Party; he
Sicilian family of aristocratic cultural ethos correspond- considered himself an anti-fascist, and catalogued fascist
ing, in unknown degree of nobiliary legitimacy, to the squadristi as peasants.[5] Mussolini considered Evola one
1

1 BIOGRAPHY

of the hysterical fanatics who could serve the fascist his life.[11]
interests.[5] According to Daniel McCarthy:
Evola was one of a number of right-wing intellectuals
who opposed Benito Mussolini's Lateran Accords with
the Roman Catholic Church and rejected the Fascist
partys nationalism and its focus on mass movement mob
politics; he hoped to inuence the regime toward his own
variation on fascist racial theories and his Tradionalist
philosophy. Early in 1930, Evola launched La Torre [The
Tower], a bi-weekly review, to voice his conservativerevolutionary ideas and denounce the demagogic tendencies of ocial fascism; government censors suppressed
the journal and engaged in character assassination against
its sta (for a time, Evola retained a bodyguard of likeminded radical fascists) until it died out in June of that
year. From 1934 to 1943, he edited the cultural page of
Roberto Farinacci's journal Regime Fascista [The Fascist
Regime].

1.4 Post-World War II

After World War II, Evola continued his work in esotericism. He wrote a number of books and articles on
sexual magic and various other esoteric studies, including The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret
Way (1949), Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (1958), Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain
Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest (1974), The
Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries
(1977). He also wrote his two explicitly political books
Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reections of a Radical
Traditionalist (1953), Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual
for the Aristocrats of the Soul (1961), and his autobiograMussolini read Evolas Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race phy The Path of Cinnabar (1963).
(Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza) in August 1941, and met
with Evola to oer him his praise. Evola later recounted In the post-war years, Evolas writings were held in high
that Mussolini had found in his work a uniquely Roman esteem by members of the neo-fascist movement in Italy,
form of fascist racism distinct from that found in Nazi and because of this, he was put on trial from June through
Germany. With Mussolinis backing, Evola launched November 1951 on the charge of attempting to revive
the minor-journal Sangue e Spirito [Blood and Spirit]. Fascism in Italy. He was acquitted because he could prove
While not always in agreement with German racial the- that he was never a member of the Fascist party, and that
evidence to prove that
orists, Evola traveled to Germany in February 1942 and all accusations were made without
[12]
his
writings
gloried
Fascism.
Ride
the Tiger, Evolas
obtained support for German collaboration on Sangue e
last
major
work,
which
saw
him
examining
dissolution
[9]
Spirito from leading Nazi race theorists.
and subversion in a world in which God was dead, saw
Evola consistently and publicly criticized Fascism, but him rejecting the possibility of any political/collective rehas often been wrongly accused of being a Fascist him- vival of Tradition due to his belief that the modern world
self or a Fascist supporter, because he critiqued Fascism had fallen too far into the Kali Yuga for any such thing
from the right rather than from the left. When World to be possible. Instead of this and rather than advocatWar II broke out, he volunteered for military service in ing a return to religion as Rene Guenon had, he crafted
order to ght the Communists on the Russian front; he what he considered an apolitical manual for surviving and
was rejected because he had too many detractors in the ultimately transcending the Kali Yuga. This idea was
bureaucracy.[10] Italian Fascism went into decline when, summed up in the title of the book, the Tantric metaphor
during the midst of the war in 1943, Mussolini was de- of Riding the Tiger which in general practice, consisted
posed and imprisoned. Evola, although not a member of of turning things that were considered inhibitory to spirthe Fascist Party, and despite his apparent problems with itual progress by mainstream Brahmanical society for
the Fascist regime, was one of the rst people to greet example, meat, alcohol, and in very rare circumstances,
Mussolini when the latter was broken out of prison by sex were all employed by Tantric practitioners into a
Otto Skorzeny in 1943.
means of spiritual transcendence. The process that Evola
After the Italian surrender to the Allies on 8 September described involved potentially making use of everything
1943, Evola moved to Germany, where he spent the re- from modern music, hallucinogenic drugs, relationships
mainder of World War II, also working as a researcher with the opposite sex, and even substituting the atmoon Freemasonry for the SS Ahnenerbe in Vienna. The sphere of an urban existence for the Theophany that Tra[13]
research on Freemasonry resulted in a document titled ditionalists had identied in virgin nature.
Freimaurerei: Geschichte und Mythos [Freemasonry:
History and Myth], published by the Ahnenerbe in limited copies with his name as editor-in-chief.
It was Evolas custom to walk around the city during 1.5 Death
bombing raids in order to better 'ponder his destiny'. During one such raid, in March or April 1945, a shell fragEvola died unmarried, without children, on 11 June 1974
ment damaged his spinal cord and he became paralyzed
in Rome. His ashes were deposited in a hole cut in a
from the waist down, remaining so for the remainder of
glacier on Mt. Rosa.

2.2

Views on Christianity

Philosophy

Friedrich Nietzsche heavily aected Evolas thought.

However, Evola criticized Nietzsche for lacking the
transcendent element in his philosophy, thus ultimately
leading to the latters mental collapse in 1889. A reference point is needed according to Evola, and this point
cannot be reached with senses or logic but with transcendental experiences achieved through symbolism of the
heroic element in Man.[14]

2.1

Tradition

3
ences from the South.
In the Golden Age existed in the dominating elites, the
Divine Kings, a convergence of the two powers, namely
the spiritual principle and the royal principle. From the
Aryo-Hindu tradition, he sees the human type of the
Rajarshi as an embodiment of the Golden Age ideal and
quotes the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.4.11): This
is why nothing is greater than the warrior nobility; the
priests themselves venerate the warrior when the consecration of the king occurs. Evola argues that in the
Hindu tradition are plenty of instances of kings who already possess or eventually achieve a spiritual knowledge
greater than that possessed by the later-times degenerated brahmana. This is the case, for instance, of King
Jaivala, whose knowledge was not imparted by any priest,
but rather reserved to the warrior caste; also, in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (4.3.1) King Janaka teaches the
brahmana Yajnavalkya the doctrine of the transcendent
Self. Evola explains that, according to tradition, the primordial gnosis was handed down, starting from Ikshvaku,
in regal succession;[17] the same Sun Dynasty (suryavamsa) was connected with blue-eyed, fair-skinned[18]
Gautama Buddha's aristocratic Aryan family (Sutta Nipata, 3). In the laws of the second or Silver Age, the Laws
of Manu, the text states rulers do not prosper without
priests and priests do not thrive without rulers and that
the priest is said to be the root of the law, and the ruler
is the peak (11.321-2;11.83-4).

Evolas systematic and detailed references to ancient

and modern texts make it dicult to speak about inuences, though anities could exist between Evola and
Plato, Oswald Spengler, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
Arthur de Gobineau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Meister Eckhart, Homer, Jacob Boehme, Ren Gunon and several
Catholic thinkers like Juan Donoso Corts and Joseph de
Maistre. The Italian philosopher of history Giambattista
Vico provided Evola with the concepts of primordial
heroic law, natural heroic rights, and the meaning of
the Indo-European Latin term vir as indicative of wisdom, priesthood and kingship. Crucial to Evolas formulation of the idea of solar masculinity versus "chthonic
masculinity and matriarchal regression was the maverick 19th century Swiss scholar Johann Jakob Bachofen.
Other prominent, philosophically foundational inuences
for Evola include the ancient Aryo-Hindu scripture that 2.2 Views on Christianity
teaches the concept of detached violence, the Bhagavad
Gita, and the Aryan kshatriya sage Siddartha Gotama, the In reference to Christianity, Evola distinguished between
1) the mystical character of primitive Christianity and its
historical Buddha.[15]
later social history on the one hand, and 2) the primordialLike Gunon, he believed that mankind is living in the
Hyperborean elements and the decadent Judaic elements
Kali Yuga of the Hindu tradition, the Dark Age of un- on the other. In Revolt Against the Modern World, he asleashed, materialistic appetites. The Kali Yuga is the last serts in the symbolism of Christ are traces of a mysteric
of four ages, which form a cycle from the Satya Yuga or pattern:p:281 and Jesus saying in Matthew (11:12) conGolden Age through the Kali Yuga or the Hesiodic Iron cerning the violence suered by the kingdom of Heaven
Age. Evola argued that both Italian fascism and National and the revival of the Davidic saying: 'You are gods (John
Socialism held hope for a reconstitution of the primordial 10:34), belong to elements that exercised virtually no incelestial race.[16]
uence on the main pathos of early Christianity (Revolt,
For Evola, the word Tradition had a meaning very sim- :p:284 ). Evola states the Christian legend of the three
ilar to that of Truth. The doctrine of the four ages, a magi is an attempt to claim for Christianity a traditional
broad characterization of the attributes of Tradition and character in the superior sense I give to the term.[19]
their manifestations in traditional societies makes up the In the same work, Evola argues the Jewish notion of
rst half of Evolas major work Revolt Against the Mod- a Messiah and the Christian notion of Gods Kingdom,
ern World. In Revolt, he expounds according to the an- which many people believe to have greatly inuenced
cient texts that there is not one tradition, but two: an older the medieval imperial myth, are nothing but an echo
and degenerate tradition that is feminine, matriarchal, un- of the ancient and pre-Christian Aryo-Iranian concept
heroic, associated with the telluric negroid racial rem- of the Saoshyant as lord of a future, triumphal kingnants of Lemuria; and a higher one that is masculine, dom of the God of Light" and slayer of the Ahrimanic
heroic, "Uranian" and purely Aryo-Hyperborean in its dark forces.[20] Evola recalls the mysterious gure of the
origin. The latter one later gave rise to an ambiguous priest-king Melchizedek as a primary point of juncture
Western-Atlantic tradition, which combined aspects of with the primordial sacral-royal Tradition of the origins.
both through the historical Hyperborean migrations and Abraham receives an almost feudal spiritual investiture
their degenerating assimilation of exotic spiritual inu- from Melchizedek in the biblical episode of Genesis 14,

4
giving the mysterious priest-king tithes, thus symbolizing
the Abrahamic traditions implicit dependency (cf. St.
Paul: It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by
the superior, Hebrews 7:1-3). Evola often notes the role
of the regal religion according to Melchizedek in the
Ghibelline ideology (the medieval Italian faction supporting the Holy Roman Emperor against the papacy). Evola
nds the testimony of Eginhard signicant, who states
that after Charlemagne was consecrated and hailed with
the formula, Long life and victory to Charles the Great,
crowned by God, great and peaceful emperor of the Romans!" the pope prostrated himself (adoravit) before
Charles, according to the ritual established at the time of
the ancient emperors. Evola emphasizes how the Holy
Roman Emperor Sigismund (13681437), founder of the
militant-Catholic chivalric Order of the Dragon, continuing a long tradition of Christian-Roman and Byzantine
imperial dominance in religious matters, summoned the
Council of Constance in 1413, to be held 1414-18 in order to purify the clergy from schisms and anarchy.[21]
The Ghibelline conspiracy being the overwhelming of
the Vatican's spiritual authority with the secular power
of the city state. The internecine warfare led to an
apocalyptic interpretation by Russian Symbolists of Nietzsches appropriations.[22]

PHILOSOPHY

2.3 Paths to enlightenment

The path to enlightenment is the chief subject of a number of Evolas works. First and foremost is the Buddhist
ascesis as he rediscovered it following over two thousand
years of obstruction of the Buddhas teachings (The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts). He tries to show
the ways that allow a man to survive spiritually intact
in the modern age of obscuration and to achieve suprahuman liberation or transcendence. Evola based his interpretation of Buddhism on the original Pali Canon, rejected western interpretations of Buddhism as a humanitarian religion of compassion for all beings, held reincarnation as a false tenet not found in the original Pali Canon
and saw the Mahayana tradition as heterodox along with
certain aspects of Theravada.[23]

Even in his book Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain

Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest Evola discussed mountaineering as a possible approach or support
on the way of initiatic ascesis in which heroic action is
combined with specialized knowledge and training culminating in an initiation the climbing of the mountain. In
this way, and not as a sport or a recreation, mountaineering can be a spiritual quest, as the subtitle of the book
The classical Traditional polity is structured according to suggests.
a strict hierarchy of sociopolitical functions, where the
lower functions are concerned with mere matter and organic vitality and the ascending functions progressively 2.4 Ascesis and initiation
ruled by spirit. This order, in which powers of spirit correlate to societal status, Evola nds crystallized in the According to Julius Evola, tradition in its purest form enIndian caste system, the Republic of Plato, ancient Ira- compassed asceticism, which he described in The Docnian society, and the medieval hierarchical class divi- trine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery Acsions between peasants, burghers, nobility and the clergy cording to the Earliest Buddhist Texts as a discipline. He
and military religious orders. The involution through describes two basic and complementary types of ascetithe cycle of the ages was mirrored in the law of the re- cism that of action and that of contemplation. The asgression of the castes, from the primal heaven-born ceticism of action is personied by the warrior while that
kings to the deconsecrated slavish usurpers and race- of contemplation by the pure ascetic; he described Budless pariahs of the present. Evola saw the Ghibelline dhism as the highest form of the asceticism of contempladynasty of Hohenstauen emperors (11521271) as the tion, a form very suitable for the warrior in his preparation
Germanic champion of the primordial sacred regal- for inner and outer warfare.
ity in a renewed Holy Roman Empire. Once the solar, golden, sacred regality of the mythical rst age fell,
power devolved upon a lunar, silver, feminized priestly 2.5 Metaphysics of war
caste before an unconsecrated warrior nobility struggled
against it, announcing the Bronze Age. Then power In his Metaphysics of War, Evola describes how adaptshifts to the mercantile caste, represented by the Ital- ing the language of war can be a means through which
ian comune, Freemasonry, the Jewish nancial oligarchy the warrior can be called to a higher form of spiritual
of the Renaissance, and New World American Judeo- existence. Towards this aim he adopts the language of
Protestant plutocracy. By the beginning of the twentieth greater and lesser jihad, explaining how the greater jihad
century, organized labour and Marxist-Trotskyite sub- of spiritual struggle can help one transform oneself and
verters sought to transfer power to the last caste of slaves create a metaphysical basis for opposing modernity. He
or sudras, or the consumer-pariah, reducing all values to also explains how the use of spiritual language in warfare
matter, machines, dysgenic egalitarianism and the reign is metaphysically appropriate.
of abstract quantity.
Evola rejected pacism as it, according to the theory, was
materialistic and made people comfortable and weak in
their existence, while war breaks the routine of comfortable life and oers a transguring knowledge of life:

2.7

Politics

life according to death. Evola writes that war always has

an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value. In his works
Evola calls for the reawakening of heroic ideals and
spiritualism through war.

2.6

Metaphysics of sex

In The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way

and also Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics
of Sex, Evola described the practice of sexual magic as
an asceticism of action that allows one to achieve transcendent states through physical action, primarily sex. To
explain the metaphysics of sex, Evola cites the original
meaning of the word orgy as the state of inspired exaltation that began the initiatory process in the ancient
Greek mysteries. But when this exaltation of eros, itself
akin to other experiences of a supersensual nature, becomes individualized as a longing that is only carnal, then
it deteriorates and ends nally in the form constituted by
mere pleasure, or venereal lust.[24]
In his sexual philosophy, Evola followed the esoteric
Hindu and Buddhist schools in the teaching of retention
of semen as a means of ontological energization and ultimate self-mastery. "Virya, or spiritual manhood, if lost
or wasted results in death and if withheld and conserved
leads to life.[25] Evola considered Traditional chastity
as signifying control, limit, anti-titanic purity, overcoming of pride, and immaterial unshakability, rather than a
moralistic and sexuophobic concept.[26]
Evola considered sex the greatest magical force in nature, which through the magnetic polarity and complementary nature of the two sexes brings about the possibility of erotic transcendence. But, according to Evola
homosexuality...forms a complex problem from the point
of view of the metaphysics.[27]
Evola scorned modern pornography for being a scanty
source of erotic experience, denouncing it as dreadfully
squalid not only in the facts and scenes described, but in
its essence.[28]

2.7

Politics

There are contradictory views among scholars as to

Evolas political categorization and his possible reHe has
lationship with fascism and neofascism.
been described as a fascist intellectual,[29] a radical
traditionalist,[30] antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular,[31] and as having been the leading philosopher of Europes neofascist movement.[31]
Gregor writes that, Evola opposed literally every feature of Fascism.[32] A key dierence between Evolas
Traditionalism and Italian Fascism is Evolas rejection
of nationalism, which he viewed as a conception of the
modern West and not of a Traditional hierarchical social arrangement. Heinrich Himmler's SS kept a dossier

5
on him, and in dossier document AR-126 described him
as a reactionary Roman, with a secret goal of an
insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern
world, and recommended that the SS stop his eectiveness in Germany and provide no support to him.[33]
When he met with "esoteric Hitlerist" Miguel Serrano,
Evola denied that he was a fascist or Hitlerist, but rather
saw Metternich as a conservative ideal. Serrano himself was critical of Evola and saw him as an old-style
traditionalist.[34] Evolas rst published political work
was an anti-fascist piece in 1925, and he wrote a second in
1928.[35] Evola called Italys fascist movement a laughable revolution, based on empty sentiment and materialistic concerns. He opposed the futurism that Italian
fascism was aligned with, along with the plebeian nature of the movement.[36] In Revolt Against the Modern
World, Evola clearly cites Monarchism as his preferred
form of government, given that a Monarch would hold
spiritual principles above the State and enforce a hierarchy of warriors, priests, merchants and scholars which he
viewed as universal in traditional societies. Although he
never formally aligned himself with such school, one can
see strong similarities between Evolas thought and the
Conservative Revolutionary movement in Germany, such
as a traditionalist worldview rejecting a purely biological
concept of race and the 'self'.
Evola held that politics, like everything else in life, should
look upward and beyond the self. The main argument
against modern demagogic politics is its materialistic
focus and mentality, stemming from an inverted order of
castes. Accordingly, in modernity, due to what he calls
the regression of the castes, the once-preeminent warrior
caste (crystallized in the medieval military religious orders and ethical chivalry and its warrior code) has been
downgraded into the gures of the mere democratic soldier and mercenary, who are servants of the articial,
soulless needs of the now-dominant mercantile and industrial interests. As Evola states, Opposite to 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".[37]
On the meaning of his anti-'bourgeoisie' stance, Evola
stated:
We are anti-bourgeois not in the descending sense of
subversive collectivists but in the sense of opposing the
dominance of the lower manifestations of the modern
bourgeois spirit: eeminate materialism, commercialism, gangsterism, etc.). The bourgeois tendency has its
inevitable role in society, but must not be absolutized;
rather, the bourgeoisie must be puried, contained, its
values given their space but subordinated to superior values. We are anti-bourgeois because the bourgeois type,
while ranking above the proletarian, yet stands inferior

PHILOSOPHY

to the soldierly-heroic and spiritual-priestly orders. The zation that is held together by the principles of 'loyalty'
bourgeois type, compared to the sacral-warrior, only rep- and 'honor,' must form the basis of the new state. As
resents a lesser degree of progressive manhood.[38]
mentioned, Evola held the SS, which Himmler strove to
Evola attempted to inuence Italys fascist movement design according to the model of the Teutonic Order, to
in the conservative-revolutionary direction he believed be this elite.
it should go the direction of radical Traditionalism;
i.e. away from the esoteric modern Christian Church,
the bourgeoisie, and the masses. His eorts to inuence the regime were a failure, and he believed that by
not following his advice, Mussolinis party failed to fulll its function. He would maintain the view that a revolutionary movement, similar to Fascism but in harmony
with esoteric-tradition, was necessary for the return to
a higher form of civilization.[39] In the decade immediately following the war, Evola wrote two books which fall
loosely into the categories asceticism of action and asceticism of contemplation in their prescriptions for political action.

The castles of the SS Order, with their 'initiations,' the

emphasis on transcending the purely human element, the
prerequisite of physical valour, as well as the ethical requirements loyalty, discipline, deance of death, willingness to sacrice, unselshness strengthened Evola in
his conviction. He also was of the opinion that the ethics
of the SS were borrowed from the Jesuits.[40]

2.9 Race
A number of Evolas articles and books deal explicitly
with the subject of race. In February 1939, the Race Ofce in Italy had a nationalist, Mediterranean change of
personnel. The new President of High Council of Demography and Race, Giacomo Acerbo, replaced a nutrition professor. The political rise of Alberto Luchini, and
the institutionalized racists from May 1941, coincided
with Evolas school of thought.[41] The convergence of
the esoteric and metaphysical theories in Italy marked an
eective adoption of more Nordic radicalism in Blood
and Spirit.[42]

In Men Among the Ruins, Evola described a traditionalist

attitude possibly leading to a reactionary revolution
like what he had hoped Fascism could have been with the
right leaders. This attitude is a sort of asceticism of action calling for political action to reform current society in
a conservative-revolutionary / radical Traditional direction. But he also felt that the acceleration of modernity
following World War II's outcome and thus, the elimination of any truly opposing forces, made any such revolution rather impossible, unless the 'unforeseeable' imposes
A.J. Gregor comments: In the [German translation of
a radical change of circumstances.
Imperialismo pagano], Evola considered principled antiIn Ride the Tiger, he prescribed a so-to-speak apolitical
Semitism one of the essentials of a salvic 'racial rebirth'
asceticism of contemplation in which a man is advised to
in the modern world. Not only did Evola make a point of
act in the modern world, while remaining intellectually
identifying Karl Marx, one of the architects of the modand spiritually detached from and above it. He had come
ern world of materialism, inferiority, pretended equalto hold this view after coming to the conclusion that, in
ity, and cultural decay, as a Jew--but he spoke of a Jewhis view, the modern world was so decadent that a reish capitalistic yoke that obstructed every eort at racial
turn to a traditional civilization was impossible. Evola
regeneration[43] In Revolt Against the Modern World, he
argued that in order to survive in the modern world an ensaid that he considered himself to be a critic of the racist
lightened or dierentiated man should ride the tiger.
worldview by which he meant the theories of mainAs a man, by holding onto the tigers back, may survive
stream Nazis and others of his contemporaries. However,
the confrontation once the animal ends exhausted, so too
he wrote an introduction to an Italian language version of
might a man, by letting the world take him on its inexThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that alleges a Jewish
orable path, be able to turn the destructive forces around
conspiracy to run the world through control of the media
him into a kind of inner liberation.
and nance, and replace the traditional social order with
one based on mass manipulation.

2.8

Schutzstael

Evola was indierent as to whether the document was authentic or not. He classied it as a 'myth'. Myth here
does not have its contemporary connotation of a 'falsehood'. In Fascist parlance, myths were stories that, properly cultivated, were productive of a reality that an elite
desired, such as the mobilisation of the masses.[44] In
1937, a year after the publication of Giovanni Preziosi's
Italian edition in 1936, when it was claimed to be a ction, Evola wrote as follows:

In spite of all these negative aspects, there was something

in National Socialism that attracted Evola: the concept of
a state ruled by an Order, which he felt was embodied by
the SS. We are inclined to the opinion that we can see
the nucleus of an Order in the higher sense of tradition
in the 'Black Corps, he wrote in Vita Italiana on August 15, 1938. Again in Vita Italiana on August 1941
he wrote: Beyond the connes of the party and of any In short, he was unconcerned that could be a forgery, bepolitical-administrative structure, an elite in the form of cause that did not alter what he believed was the essential
a new 'Order'that is, a kind of ascetic-military organi- truth enciphered in the document.

2.9

Race

In his introduction to the 1938 Italian edition of the Protocols, Evola wrote that the tract had the value of a spiritual tonic, that Jews destroy every surviving trace of
true order and superior civilization, and that, above all,
in these decisive hours of western history, [the Protocols
tract] cannot be ignored or dismissed without seriously
undermining the front of those ghting in the name of
the spirit, of tradition, of true civilization.
For Evola this text represented a manipulation by occult
powers trying to hide behind the Jewish and Freemasonic
historical drive toward a merchant society soon to be replaced by the chaos of mass society which could eventually turn against both.[48]
Evola attributed to Jews, as well as to what he termed the
semitic spirit,[49] a corrosive eect on the Nordic race
(a race that was, in Evolas mythology, analogous to the
Nazis Aryans). Evola argued that not only Jews, but
even non-Jews Judaicized in their souls must be combated by a coherent, complete, impartial anti-Semitism
given the means to identify and combat the Jewish
mentality.[50] Evola supported the Nazi anti-Semitic
view that there was a hidden form of Jewish power and
inuence in the modern world; he thought this Jewish
power was a symptom of the modern worlds lack of
true aristocratic leadership. To some Evola was to the
right of Fascism, although he remained a non-combatant
theorist, he was identied with Mediterranean nationalist scholars who believed Jewishness and Italians were
incompatible.[51] Evola further held that Jewish people
denigrated lofty Aryan ideals (of faith, loyalty, courage,
devotion, and constancy) through a corrosive irony that
ascribed every human activity to economic or sexual motives ( la Marx and Freud).[52] In a 1938 article Evola accused Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Cesare Lombroso
of being proponents of Jewish materialistic culture in the
nineteenth century;[53] two years later, in an essay entitled
Jews and Mathematics, Evola characterized Judaism
as the antithesis of Aryan civilization, and broadly attacked a range of what he considered examples of Jewish
inuences, from Pythagoreanism to mathematics.[53] The
article was illustrated with pictures of notable Jews interspersed with classic anti-Semitic representations.[53]

7
fullled or deviant potentials manifest as by-products of
the true evolutionary process that man has led since the
beginning.[54]
Evola believed that a race of Nordic people, anciently
emanating from Golden Age Arctic Hyperborea, originally semi-immaterial and soft-boned, had played a
crucial founding role in Atlantis and the high cultures both
of the East and West. In Evolas eyes, half-remembered,
cryptic memories of a more-than-human race once existing in a northern paradise constitute the patrimony
of the traditions of many diverse peoples. In this occult
belief, Evola was additionally inuenced by Arctic Home
in the Vedas by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, which posited the
polar North as the original home of the white Ur-Aryan
tribes before their later separation into Western (Hellenic,
Roman, Celtic, Germanic) and Eastern (Iranian, IndoAryan) divisions.
According to Joscelyn Godwin's research: the basic outlines of Evolas prehistory resemble those of Theosophy,
with Lemurian, Atlantean, and Aryan root-races succeeding each other, and a pole-shift marking the transition
from one epoch to another.[55] Evolas dualism between
the Northern Light and the Southern Light, and also the
capture of the Atlanteans by the latter, is also found in
the writings of Theosophys co-founder Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky:
Victor A. Shnirelman, a cultural anthropologist and
ethnographer, has noted that cosmological racial ideas
also appear in the Neo-Theosophical writings of H. P.
Blavatskys one-time disciple Alice Bailey. Shnirelman
wrote that in Baileys teachings, Jews were depicted as
the 'human product of the former Solar system,' linked
with 'World Evil'"; he identied similar ideas in the
works of Bailey and Evola.[58]

The hierarchy of races is really a hierarchy of embodied spiritualities; the spirit, rather than ethnic substance,
determines culture; but at the same time race is the
biological memory of a certain spiritual orientation.
In order to describe what he called the lower, telluric,
Negroid races, he frequently made use of the term
Southern whereas to him higher races were Northern.
North and South are indicated as having simultaIn The Metaphysics of Sex (Inner Traditions, 1st US edi- neously metaphysical, geographical and anthropological
tion 1983, pps. 9-10), Evola discoursed on his philos- meanings:
ophy of de-evolutionary spiritual racism: Our starting
point will be not the modern theory of evolution but Evola quotes the Confucian Chung Yung (10.4) to reinthe traditional doctrine of involution. We do not be- force his point:
lieve the man is derived from the ape by evolution. We According to Evola, the more recent Northern, White and
believe that the ape is derived from man by involution. Indo-European peoples (despite racial mixing) implicitly
We agree with Joseph De Maistre that savage peoples preserved more of the primordial Arctic Hyperborean
are not primitive peoples, in the sense of original peo- blood-memory and are objectively spiritually superior to
ples, but rather the degenerating remains of more ancient the archaic, matter-obsessed degenerate remnants of the
races that have disappeared. We concur with the vari- races of the South. Evola saw the sign of the Hyperborean
ous researchers (Kohlbrugge, Marconi, Dacque, Westen- Tradition[59] and its antagonism with the forces of Antihofer, and Adlo) who have rebelled against the evolu- tradition in the Indian mythology surrounding the Vedic
tionary dogma, asserting that animal species evince the divinity Indra (cf. Thor), who is fair of cheek (Rig
degeneration of primordial mans potential. These un- Veda, I.9.3) and with his fair-complexioned friends

PHILOSOPHY

(I.100.18) annihilates the lawless black Dasyu, giving Hindu as well as the ancient Greek and Roman and the
protection to the Aryan color (III.34.9), blowing to noth- Germanic.[61] In fact, Evola publicly celebrated Italian
ingness the swarthy skin which Indra hates (IX.73.5). Fascism as a means to ensure and restore in a modern
On the demonic nature of the lower negroid races and decadent world white supremacy:
their degenerating remnants, Evola relies on an old AryoZoroastrian tradition that teaches negroids belonged to
the dark side owing to their alleged origin in the union
between a demon and a wicked witch: "Zohak, during
his reign, let loose a dev (demon) on a young woman,
and let loose a young man on a parik (witch). They performed coition with [the sight] of the apparition; the negro came into being through that [novel] kind of coition
(Bundahishn, XIVB).
Flowering forth in the Greek, pre-Celtic, Indo-Aryan,
Aryo-Persian, Armenic, Roman, Germanic, Tiwanaku,
Teotihuacn, early Chinese, Aztec-Nahua, Inca and rst
Egyptian dynasties representatives, with more or less ethnic but great spiritual purity, the Northern Light was
considerably lost to the Atlantean oshoot which deled
itself through spiritual integration into the spiritual lunar sphere of the world of the Mother or Earth of
the Southern Light and further miscegenation with bestial, dark Lemurian stocks. Revolt Against the Modern
World presents world-history to be the saga of dualistic
conict between the Northern Light and the Southern
Light": on one side stand the Uranian, patriarchal stocks
of purer Hyperborean lineage, climatically harshly conditioned and heroic-minded celebrators of the winter solstice; on the other stand the chthonic and titanized inferior
races and the spiritually/ethnically bastardized heirs of
the fallen Atlantean civilization captured by the Southern Light and its sacerdotal and naturalistic-pantheist religion of promiscuous vegetal and animal fertility.[60]

And if Fascist Italy, among the various Western nations

is the one which rst wished for a reaction against the
degeneration of the materialist, democratic and capitalist
civilisation, against the League of Nations ideology, there
are grounds for thinking, without even any scintilla of
chauvinistic infatuation, that Italy will be on the front line
among the forces which will guide the future world and
will restore the supremacy of the white race.[62] While
characterizing race as something hereditary and biological, Evola also claimed that race was not simply and linearly dened by mere skin color and the various other
hereditary factors. In other words, in addition to predominantly Aryan or, more broadly, Northern biology,
the initial necessary precondition for further racial differentiation, one must prove oneself spiritually Aryan.
The fact that in India the term Arya was the synonym of
dwija, twice-born or regenerated supports this point.
To him higher race implied something akin to suprahuman, spiritual caste. Evola wrote, the supernatural
element was the foundation of the idea of a traditional
patriciate and of legitimate royalty.
In 'Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and
Alain de Benoist,' Thomas Sheehan points out that Evola
prided himself on developing a theory of races that went
beyond the merely biological to the spiritual. What constitutes a superior race for Evola is the spiritual orientation of a given stock, the subsumption of the requisite
biological material (and that did mean the Aryan races)
under a qualitatively elevating form, namely reference to
the realm of the spirit. But in fact all that Evolas theory does is to promote biological-ethnic racism a step
higher. There are enough references in his works to the
'inferior, non-European races,' to the 'power of inferior
strata and races,' to disgusting 'Negro syncopations in
jazz, to 'Jewish psychoanalysis--and enough adulation of
the Aryansfor us to divine that Evolas 'spiritual' racism
may have had something other than disinterested Apollonian origins.

Evola cites Plato's description of the fall of Atlantis by

Atlantean miscegenation with humankind (Critias, 110c;
120d-e; 121a-b) and the biblical myth of the benei elohim,
the Sons of God catastrophically mixing with the daughters of men (Genesis 6: 4-13) as support for his esoteric,
Aryanist anthropogenesis. Evola interprets archeological
ndings of semi-human hominid fossils as not purely primordial but evidence of the mismating of the celestial
boreal race with inferior animalistic breeds as well, and
most often, as remnants of degenerating, bestialized races In Mussolinis Intellectuals, A. James Gregor discusses
Evolas racism as follows: "[In the German rendering
in their nal involutionary stages preceding extinction.
of Imperialismo pagano], Evola argues that it is out of
Just as Evola armed the natural hierarchy between difthe
creativity of an 'ur-Aryan' and 'solar-Nordic' blood
ferent individuals of the same race, so he armed a natthat world culture emerges. Conversely, culture decline
ural rank ordering of the dierent human races. As the
best-preserved remnants of the primordial celestial Hy- is a function of the feckless mixture of Aryan, with
lesser 'animalistic,' blood ... According to Imperialismo
perboreans, Evola armed the white race in its dierent
pagano,
the 'natural' and endogamous caste system of anbranches as the creator of the greatest planetary civilizatiquity
that
sustained the 'purity' of the culture-creating
tions:
'Hyperborean-Nordics slowly disintegrated over time unWe have to remember that behind the various caprices der the corrosive inuence of Semitic religion and the
of modern historical theories, and as a more profound 'Semitic spirit'.
and primordial reality, there stands the unity of blood
and spirit of the white races who created the greatest While Evola was clear about the relative insignicance of
civilizations both of the East and West, the Iranian and the physical attributes of race, he did acknowledge that

9
the 'original Hyperboreans,' which he was critically concerned, were probably 'dolichocephalic, tall and slender,
blond and blue-eyed'.[63] Evola held that the physical mixture of races, particularly between Aryans and races that
were 'alien' (i.e., non-Aryan), was always hazardous
but mixture between 'related' races might produce hybrid
vigor. Given his generous notion of what constituted an
Aryan race (Evola was convinced of the Hyperborean origins of most Europeans, the indigenous peoples of North
and South America, as well as those of the Indian subcontinent), those candidate races Evola considered to be
truly 'alien' were never explicitly cataloguedexcept in
terms of Semites and the deeply pigmented peoples of
sub-Saharan Africa.[64] What seemed eminently clear, for
all the qualiers, was that all the material races Evola
identied as capable of serving as hosts for the extrabiological and supernatural spiritual elements were purportedly biological descendents of the 'Aryan-Nordics of Hyperborea.

In such circumstances, the formative spiritual principle

that, in the ultimate analysis, governs the transcendent
'superhistory' of humankind might literally reconstitute
the individuals of the primordial creative race of Hyperborea. Evola sought to show that such an outcome would
not be essentially determined by biology, but by the cosmic spiritthat its formative inuence could transform
individuals into persons accommodating a properly corresponding soul and spiritto render them once again
'pure.'" Evola held racism at the core of his beliefs.[67]

For Evola, spiritual forces shaped races for their own inscrutable purposes. The notion that mutations, governed
from 'on high,' might be the source of raciation was a relatively common conviction among German esoterics.[66]
Geneticists, Evola argued, failed to provide a compelling
account of how mutations occur. He maintained, as a
consequence, that 'the cause is to be found elsewhere, in
the actions of a superbiological element not reducible to
the determinism of the physical transmission of genetic
materials.' The true cause of hereditary variation was to
be found 'rather by starting from another point of view
that aords one an entirely dierent set of laws than
those of empirical science.

discussion on the working classes and Negroes. Evola

notices that the mere word 'Negro' had connotations of
oensiveness in the left-wing atmosphere of the era.[72]
Evola opines that a true Rightist movement will not compromise with this sort of moralistic development.[73]

The eminent scholar of Fascism, Renzo De Felice, maintained that while Evolas spiritual, neo-idealist racial theories were wrong, they had a notable intellectual ancestry,
and Evola defended them in an honorable way: Evola
for his part 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 toIn the golden age, the celestial race was spiritualonly tally failing to see certain values, to refuse the German
gradually, over time, taking on material properties ... As aberrations and the ones modeled after them and to try
a necessary consequence of miscegenation, there was a to keep racism on a plane of cultural problems worthy of
continual and irreversible decline of the celestials in an- the name.[68]
cient times a tenuous revival under the Romans, and an- Christophe Boutin, in his major work on Evola, Politique
other by the Nordic-Germans during the course of the et Tradition: Julius Evola dans le sicle, 1898-1974 (Paris,
Holy Roman Empirebut by the time of the Renais- 1992), discusses Evolas views on racism and Negroes.[69]
sance, with its humanism, rationalism, universalism and Boutin mentions that in Evolas 1968 collection of essays,
its gradual submission to the theses of the equality of all LArco e la clava[70] there is a chapter on America Nehumans, humankind had entered the kali-yuga, the termi- grizzata, in which Evola criticizes the Telluric Negroid
nal age of 'obscurity,' the end of this current race cycle.
inuence on popular American culture, while acknowlEvola identies the Jews as providing a 'ferment of de- edging that there has been little actual miscegenation.
composition, dissolution and corruption' in antiquity;[65]
Evola also argues against American racial integration in
For Evola, given the fateful path traversed by history, this chapter. The unadulterated 1972 Italian edition of
there remained only one course for contemporary humanMen Among the Ruins ends with an appendix entitled
ity: an attempt at reconstitution of the primordial celestial Appendix on the Myths of our Time, of which number
race, amid the debris of previous race cycles, employing
4 is Taboos of our Times.[71] In this section Evola arthe racial remnants of the Hyperboreans.
gues that modern irrational taboos forbid an honest, frank

Given this supposition, Evola proceeded to argue that

Fascism or National Socialismwith their heroism, their
sacricial and ascetic ethic, their authoritarian and hierarchical order, together with their appeal to myth and
ritualprovided an environment compatible with the
'spirit' of the celestials. That might be enough to prompt
a cosmic, if gradual, reemergence of the celestial race.

3 Inuence
Evolas writings have continued to have an inuence both
within occult intellectual circles and in European far-right
politics. He is widely translated in French, Spanish and
partly in German. Amongst those he has inuenced are
Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi, GRECE, the Movimento
sociale italiano (MSI), Falange Espaola, Gaston Armand
Amaudruz's Nouvel Ordre Europen, Guillaume Faye,
Pino Rauti's Ordine Nuovo, Troy Southgate, Alain de
Benoist, Michael Moynihan, Giorgio Freda, the Nuclei
Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei),
Eduard Limonov, Forza Nuova, CasaPound Italia and

10

the Conservative Peoples Party of Estonia. Famed author Herman Hesse was an admirer of Evola, calling him
A very dazzling and interesting, but also very dangerous author. Giorgio Almirante referred to him as our
Marcuseonly better.[74] According to one leader of
the neofascist black terrorist Ordine Nuovo, Our work
since 1953 has been to transpose Evolas teachings into
direct political action.[75] The now defunct French fascist group Troisime Voie was also inspired by Evola.[76]
Jonathan Bowden, English political activist and chairman
of the New Right, spoke highly of Evola and his ideas and
gave lectures on his philosophy. German psychotherapist
Karlfried Graf Drckheim based part of his initiatory
therapy on Evolas work.[77]
Evolas work heavily inuences Thomas Steiner, the German intellectual.
Evolas work is available in the United States through
publisher Inner Traditions. He has also gained some
attention in Russia, where some of his work has been
analyzed by Alexander Dugin and others from a nationalistic Russian view, and is also popular among
Monarchists with a view of an imperial Moscow as the
"Third Rome", but few translations of some of his shorter
texts. His work is also available in translation in the U.K.,
Spain, Poland, Scandinavia, Finland, Romania, Hungary,
Mexico, Argentina, and Turkey where his Revolt Against
the Modern World was published in 2006. In 2010 Revolt Against the Modern World was published in Brazil by
a small traditionalist group, in an edition limited to 100
copies.
In addition to Evolas political inuence on right-wing
radical-conservatives, black terrorist (neofascist) factions and traditionalist groups worldwide, he has also considerably inuenced followers of certain occult traditions.
Milo Yiannopoulos has cited Evolas works as being part
of the alt-right philosophy.[78]

Selected books and articles

Arte Astratta, posizione teorica (1920)
La parole obscure du paysage intrieur (1920)
Saggi sull'idealismo magico (1925)
L'individuo e il divenire del mondo (1926)
L'uomo come potenza (1927)
Teoria dell'individuo assoluto (1927)
Imperialismo pagano (1928; English translation:
Heathen Imperialism, 2007)
Introduzione alla magia (1927-1929; 1971; English
translation: Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus, 2001)
Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto (1930)

SELECTED BOOKS AND ARTICLES

La tradizione ermetica (1931; English translation:

The Hermetic Tradition: Symbols and Teachings of
the Royal Art, 1995)
Maschera e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo:
Analisi critica delle principali correnti moderne verso
il sovrasensibile (1932)
Rivolta contro il mondo moderno (1934; second edition: 1951; English translation: Revolt Against the
Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order
in the Kali Yuga, 1995)
Tre aspetti del problema ebraico (1936; English
translation: Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem,
2003)
Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina
dell'Impero (1937; English translation: The Mystery
of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the
Spirit, 1997)
Il mito del sangue. Genesi del Razzismo (1937)
Indirizzi per una educazione razziale (1941; English
translation: The Elements of Racial Education 2005)
Sintesi di dottrina della razza (1941; German translation: Grundrisse der Faschistischen Rassenlehre,
1943)
Die Arische Lehre von Kampf und Sieg (1941; English translation: The Aryan Doctrine of Battle and
Victory, 2007)
Gli Ebrei hanno voluto questa Guerra (1942)
La dottrina del risveglio (1943; English translations:
The Doctrine of Awakening: A Study on the Buddhist Ascesis, 1951; The Doctrine of Awakening: The
Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest
Buddhist Texts, 1995)
Lo Yoga della potenza (1949; English translation:
The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret
Way, 1992)
Orientamenti, undici punti (1950)
Gli uomini e le rovine (1953; English translation:
Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reections of a
Radical Traditionalist, 2002)
Metasica del sesso (1958; English translations: The
Metaphysics of Sex, 1983; Eros and the Mysteries of
Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, 1991)
L'Operaio nel pensiero di Ernst Jnger (1960)
Cavalcare la tigre (1961; English translation: Ride
the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of
the Soul, 2003)

11
Il cammino del cinabro (1963; second edition, 1970;
English translation: The Path of Cinnabar: An Intellectual Autobiography, 2009)

[8] Political Violence and Terror, quoted in McCarthy, Daniel

(201-07-25) Whats Worse Than Leviathan, The American Conservative

Il Fascismo. Saggio di una analisi critica dal punto

di vista della destra (1964; second edition, 1970;
English translation: Fascism Viewed from the Right,
2013)

[9] Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London:

Routledge, 2002.

L'arco e la clava (1968)

Raga blanda , Composizioni 1916-1922 (1969)
Il taoismo (1972; English translation: Taoism: The
Magic, the Mysticism, 1994)
Meditazioni delle vette (1974; English translation:
Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as
Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest, 1998)
Il Fascismo visto dalla destra; Note sul terzo Reich
(1974; English translation: Notes on the Third Reich,
2013)
Ultimi scritti (1977)
La via della realizzazione di s secondo i misteri
di Mitra (1977; English translation: The Path of
Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries,
1994, ISBN 1-55818-228-4)

[10] Hansen, 2002

[11] Stucco 1992, xiii
[12] Evola - Autodifesa/Self-Defence in appendix to Men
Among the Ruins: Post-War Reections of a Radical Traditionalist 1953
[13] Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of
the Soul. Inner Traditions, 2003.
[14] Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-5, Thus Spoke Zarathustra), Nietzsches major work that denied the existence of
God, and repudiated Christian ethics, despising democratic idealism.
[15] Evola, The Path of Cinnabar, 1963
[16] A. James Gregor, Mussolinis Intellectuals: Fascist Social
and Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
[17] cf. Bhagavadgita, 4. 1-2
[18] Chuan Zhi (17 July 2001). Ancient Wisdom: The Blue
Lotus. Archived from the original on 19 August 2014.
Retrieved 22 April 2015.

Lo Zen (1981; English translation: Zen: The Religion

of the Samurai, 1993)
[19] The Mystery of the Grail, :p:45

Un Maestro dei tempi moderni: Ren Gunon (1984; [20] The Mystery of the Grail, :p:39
English translation: Rene Guenon: A Teacher for
[21] Nietzsche (1888c) Der Antichrist, 1895; trans. W. KaufModern Times, 1994)[79]
Metaphysics of War: Battle, Victory and Death in the
World of Tradition (2007)

Footnotes

[1] Rai DOP

[2] Ferraresi, Franco. The Radical Right in Postwar Italy,
Politics & Society, 1988 16:71-119, Pg. 84
[3] Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 19141945
Down to the time of his death in 1974, Evola stood as
the leading intellectual of neofascism and/ or the radical
right in all Europe.
[4] Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics
of Identity By Nicholas Goodrick-Clark
[5] A. James Gregor and Andreas Umland. "Dugin Not a Fascist?" (6 texts). Erwgen-Wissen-Ethik, 2005.

mann as The Antichrist, in The Portable Nietzsche, New

York: Viking, 1954.

[22] Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (2000), p.

631-2.
[23] The doctrine of awakening: the attainment of self-mastery
according to the earliest Buddhist texts. Inner Traditions
/ Bear & Co, 1995
[24] The Metaphysics of Sex, p.48
[25] The Metaphysics of Sex, p.219
[26] The Mystery of the Grail, p.80
[27] The Metaphysics of Sex, p.62
[28] The Metaphysics of Sex, 4
[29] Blamires, Cyprian, and Paul Jackson. World Fascism: a
historical encyclopedia, vol 1, Santa Barbara, CA, 2006.
p. 208.

[6] G.Evola, Il Camino del Cinabro, 1963

[30] Packer, Jeremy. Secret agents popular icons beyond

James Bond. New York, NY: Lang, 2009. p 150.

[7] Isotta Poggi. Alternative Spirituality in Italy. In: James

R. Lewis, J. Gordon Melton. Perspectives on the New Age.
SUNY Press, 1992. Page 276.

[31] Atkins, Stephen E.. Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups . Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 2004. p 89.

12

[32] Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use

and Abuse of Social Science. Cambridge University Press,
2006. p 93.
[33] H.T. Hansen, A Short Introduction to Julius Evola in
Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, p xviii.
[34] Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press 2002, p.337)
[35] Gregor, A James The Search for Neofascism: The Use
and Abuse of Social Science Cambridge University Press,
2006. p 86.
[36] The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social
Science. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p 86.
[37] Men Among the Ruins: Post-war reections of a Radical
Traditionalist, Inner Traditions, Vermont, 193-204

5 FOOTNOTES

[51] Francesco Cassata, A destra del fascismo: prolo politico

di Julius Evola (Bollato Boringhieri, 2003); Gianni Scipione Rossi, il razzista totalitario": Evola a leggenda
dell'antisemittismo spirituale (Rome: Rubettino, 2007)
[52] Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker
Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, p.309
[53] Zimmerman, Joshua D. (2005). Jews in Italy Under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945. New York: University of
Cambridge Press. p. 139. ISBN 0-521-84101-1. OCLC
56876639.
[54] . For a complete biography of Julius Evola, see Francesco
Cassata, A destra del fascismo. Prolo politico di Julius
Evola (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003).
[55] Arktos, 60
[56] Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, p. 274.
[57] iThe Secret Doctrine p. 400.

[38] Men Among the Ruins, 217-224

[39] Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy (London:
Routledge, 2003), 233-287. Gillette believes the fascist
theorists were on a spectrum so wide they follow idiosyncrasies of individual proponents
[40] Dr. H. T. Hansen in Julius Evolas Political Endeavors
introduction to Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reections of a Radical Traditionalist (1953)
[41] On these two projects, see Cassata, La Difesa della
razza. Politica, ideologia e immagine del razzismo
fascista, 7982.
[42] see: the inuence of the Maa in southern Italy over the
Vatican during World War Two, 1939-42
[43] Mussolinis Intellectuals, 200-201
[44] A. James Gregor, Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship, 1979, pp.44
[45] J. Evola, Il Mistero del Graal e la tradizione ghibellina
dell'Impero, Laterza, Bari 1937 p.182.
[46] Evola says also that this was precisely Preziosis own view.
It should also be noted that in speaking of a 'Masonic'
conspiracy in such texts, 'Masonic' was often a code word
for a secret lobby containing prominent secularized Jewish
businessmen. The point is underscored by a recent controversy in Italy where a priest used the word 'MasonicJewish lobby' and, in reaction to a public outcry, subsequently changed the reference to 'Masonic', which however retains the old ambiguity in Fascist usage.

[58] Shnirelman, Victor A. (1998), 'Russian Neo-pagan Myths

and Antisemitism', in ACTA (Analysis of Current Trends
in Antisemitism) no. 13, a special research unit of SICSA
(The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of
Antisemitism), Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
[59] Revolt, 245
[60] Rene Guenon: The starting-point given to the year that
one can call normal, as being in direct conformity with
primordial tradition, is the winter solstice"; Traditional
Forms and Cosmic Cycles, 24
[61] The Doctrine of Awakening, 14
[62] Il Problema della supremazia della razza bianca [The
Problem of the Supremacy of the White Race], Lo Stato,
1936
[63] Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza, 67
[64] Evola, 'Psicologia criminale ebraica,' Difesa della Razza
2, no. 18, 3235; Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza, 74, 237
[65] Evola, Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza, 160; Rivolta contro
il mondo moderno, 314
[66] Pauwels and Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians, 400
5
[67] Paul Furlong, The Social and Political Thought of Julius
Evola, London: Routledge, 2011
[68] Storia degli Ebrei Italiani sotto il Fascismo, or The History
of Italian Jews under Fascism (Milan, 1977), 465
[69] Boutin, 197200

[47] 'Don Gelmini, prima attacca poi rettica,' in La Repubblica05/08/2007

[70] Milan, 1968, revised 1971

[48] Evola, Men Among the Ruins, 1953

[71] Gli uomini e le rovine, Rome, 1953, revised 1967, with the
new appendix, 1972

[49] A. James Gregor. Mussolinis Intellectuals: Fascist Social

and Political Thought. Princeton University Press, 2005.

[72] Boutin, 276

[50] Quoted in Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy,

Routledge, 2002.

[73] The Inner Traditions English translation suppressed

Evolas appendix, ironically bearing out Evolas thoughts
on the taboos of our times.

13

[74] Thomas Sheehan. Italy: Terror on the Right. The New

York Review of Books, Volume 27, Number 21 & 22, January 22, 1981

Furlong, Paul (2011), Introduction to the Social and

Political Thought of Julius Evola London: Routledge.

[75] Quoted in Ferraresi, Franco. The Radical Right in Postwar Italy. Politics & Society. 1988 16:71-119. (p.84)

Godwin, Joscelyn (1996), Arktos: The Polar Myth

in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival (Kempton,
IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, ISBN 0-93281335-6), 57-61.

[76] Institute of Race relations. The far Right in Europe: a

guide. Race & Class, 1991, Vol. 32, No. 3:125-146
(p.132).
[77] Victor Trimondi, Karlfried Graf Drckheim
[78] Bokharia, Allum (March 29, 2016). An Establishment
Conservatives Guide To The Alt-Right. Breitbart. Retrieved October 20, 2016.
[79] Bibliograa di J. Evola. Fondazione Julius Evola. Retrieved 25 April 2015.

References

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Godwin, Joscelyn (2002), Julius Evola, A Philosopher in the Age of the Titans, TYR: Myth
CultureTradition Volume 1 (Atlanta, GA: Ultra
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Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2001), Black Sun:
Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of
Identity (New York: New York University Press,
ISBN 0-585-43467-0, ISBN 0-8147-3124-4, ISBN
0-8147-3155-4), 52-71.

Aprile, Mario (1984), Julius Evola: An Introduction to His Life and Work, The Scorpion No. 6
(Winter/Spring): 20-21.

Grin, Roger (1985), Revolts against the Modern

World: The Blend of Literary and Historical Fantasy
in the Italian New Right, Literature and History 11
(Spring): 101-123.

Bolton, Kerry (1997), Julius Evola Above the

Ruins, The Nexus, # 10.

Grin, Roger (1995) (ed.), Fascism (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-289249-5), 317-318.

Coletti, Guillermo (1996), Against the Modern

World: An Introduction to the Work of Julius
Evola, Ohm Clock No. 4 (Spring): 29-31.

Hansen, H. T. (1994), A Short Introduction to

Julius Evola, Theosophical History 5 (January):
11-22; reprinted as introduction to Evola, Revolt
Against the Modern World, (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1995).

Coogan, Kevin (1998), Dreamer of the Day: Francis

Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International
(Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, ISBN 1-57027-0392).
De Benoist, Alain. Julius Evola, ractionnaire radical et mtaphysicien engag. Analyse critique de
la pense politique de Julius Evola, Nouvelle Ecole,
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Drake, Richard H. (1986), 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 (University of
California Press, ISBN 0-520-05605-1) 61-89.
Drake, Richard H. (1988), Julius Evola, Radical
Fascism and the Lateran Accords, The Catholic
Historical Review 74: 403-419.
Drake, Richard H. (1989), The Children of the
Sun, in The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism
in Contemporary Italy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-35019-0), 114-134.
Faerraresi, Franco (1987), Julius Evola: Tradition,
Reaction, and the Radical Right, European Journal
of Sociology 28: 107-151.

Hansen, H. T. (2002), Julius Evolas Political Endeavors, introduction to Evola, Men Among the Ruins, (Vermont: Inner Traditions).
Moynihan, Michael (2003), Julius Evolas Combat
Manuals for a Revolt Against the Modern World,
in Richard Metzger (ed.), Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult (The Disinformation Company, ISBN 0-9713942-7-X) 313320.
Rees, Philip (1991), Biographical Dictionary of the
Extreme Right Since 1890 (New York: Simon &
Schuster, ISBN 0-13-089301-3), 118-120.
Sedgwick, Mark (2004) Against the Modern World:
Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History
of the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press,
ISBN 0-19-515297-2).
Sheehan, Thomas (1981) Myth and Violence: The
Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist, Social Research, 48 (Spring): 45-83.
Stucco, Guido (1992), Translators Introduction,
in Evola, The Yoga of Power (Vermont: Inner Traditions), ix-xv.

14

Stucco, Guido (1994), Introduction, in Evola, The

Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic
Mysteries, Zen: The Religion of the Samurai, Rene
Guenon: A Teacher for Modern Times, and Taoism:
The Magic, the Mysticism (Edmonds, WA: Holmes
Publishing Group)
Stucco, Guido (2002). The Legacy of a European
Traditionalist: Julius Evola in Perspective. The Occidental Quarterly 3 (2), pp. 2144.
Wasserstrom, Steven M. (1995), The Lives of
Baron Evola, Alphabet City 4 + 5 (December): 8489.
Watereld, Robin (1990), 'Baron Julius Evola and
the Hermetic Tradition', Gnosis 14, (Winter): 1217.

External links
JuliusEvola.net, contains pictures of Evola, his
paintings and a large text archive
Evola As He Is, a collection of previously unpublished texts
Julius Evola: Tradionalist Visionary, website of the
Julius Evola Society

EXTERNAL LINKS

15

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