INTRODUCTION
"An irreligious time which coincides exactly with the idea of a
world-city is a time of decline. True. But we have not chosen this time. We
cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of Civilisation.
Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our
realising that though we may lie to ourselves about
it we cannot evade it." "We are born into this time and must bravely
follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold
on to the last position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier
whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption
of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is
greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the
one thing that can not be taken from a man." (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of
the West)
"The only thing that matters today is the activity of those who can
‘ride the wave’ and remain firm in their principles, unmoved by any concessions
and indifferent to the fevers, the convulsions, the superstitions, and the
prostitutions that characterize modern generations. The only thing that matters
is the silent endurance of a few, whose impassible presence as ‘stone guests’
helps to create new relationships, new distances, new values, and helps to
construct a pole that, although it will certainly not prevent this world
inhabited by the distracted and restless from being what it is, will still help
to transmit to someone the sensation of the truth – a sensation that could
become for them the principle of a liberating crisis." (Julius Evola)
"The possibilities still available in the last times concern only a
minority and may be distinguished as follows. Besides the great ‘currents’ of
the world there are still individuals who are rooted in terra firma. Generally
speaking, they are unknown people who shun the spotlight of modern popularity
and culture. They live on spiritual heights; they do not belong to this
world…by virtue of these people, Tradition is present despite all; the flame
burns invisibly and something still connects the world to the superworld…There are an increasing number of individuals
who experience a confused yet real need for liberation, though they do not know
in the name of what. To orient these people…to lead them to see the truth and
sharpen their will to join the ranks of the first type of people is what can
still be done…this is the only justification for tangible action that can be
carried out by men of Tradition living in the modern world, in a milieu with
which they have no connection. In order for the abovementioned to be successful
it is necessary to have ‘watchers’ at hand who will bear witness to the values
of Tradition in ever more uncompromising and firm ways, as the antitraditional forces grow in strength." (Julius Evola)
"There is a superior unity of all those who despite all, fight in
different parts of the world the same battle, lead the same revolt, and are the
bearers of the same intangible Tradition. These forces appear to be scattered
and isolated in the world, and yet are inexorably connected by a common essence
that is meant to preserve the absolute ideal of the Imperium
and to work for its return." (Julius Evola)
"Although the Kali Yuga is an age of great destruction, those who live
during it and manage to remain standing may achieve fruits that were not easily
achieved by men living in other ages." (Julius Evola)
"Those who will be successful in overcoming all these obstacles and in
triumphing over the hostility of an environment opposed to all spirituality
will doubtless be few in number; but, once again, it is not numbers that count
here, for this is a realm where the laws are quite other than those of matter. There
is therefore no occasion for despondency; and even where there is no hope of
achieving any visible result before the collapse of the modern world through a
catastrophe, that would still not be a valid reason to refrain from embarking
upon a work extending in scope far beyond the present time. Those who may feel
tempted to give way to discouragement should remind themselves that nothing
accomplished within this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and
darkness can enjoy no more than a specious and purely ephemeral triumph, that
every kind of partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute
towards the great equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately
prevail against the power of truth; for their motto they should take the one
adopted in former times by certain initiatory organizations in the West: Vincit omnia Veritas."
(Rene Guenon, Crisis of the Modern World)
Life here on earth cannot be viewed as a coincidence. Moreover, it
should not be regarded as something we can either accept or reject at will, nor
as a reality that imposes itself on us, before which we can only remain
passive, or display an attitude of obtuse resignation. Rather, what arises in
some people is the sensation that earthly life is something to which, prior to
our becoming terrestrial beings, we have committed ourselves, both as an
adventure and as a mission or a chosen task, undertaking a whole set of
problematic and tragic elements as well. (Julius Evola,
Etica aria, p. 24)
It is the attitude of a man who can choose the hardest road, fight even when he
knows that the battle is materially lost and live up to the words of the
ancient saga, ‘Loyalty is stronger than fire!’ Through him the traditional idea
is asserted, that it is the sense of honor and of shame – not halfway measures
drawn from middle class moralities – that creates a substantial, existential
difference among beings, almost as great as between one race and another race.
If anything positive can be accomplished today or tomorrow, it will not come
from the skills of agitators and politicians, but from the natural prestige of
men both of yesterday but also, and more so, from the new generation, who
recognize what they can achieve and so vouch for their idea. (Julius
Evola, Spengler e “Il tramonto dell’Occidente” (Quaderni di testi
Evoliani, no. 14) (Rome, 1981).)
"A lot will now depend on how the individual can form his
experience of battle: on whether he is able to accept heroism and sacrifice as
a catharsis, as a means to liberation and inner awakening. This inward,
invisible deed of our warriors has nothing to do with gestures or grand words,
but it will be of decisive significance not only for the eventual victorious
conclusion of this stormy time's events, but also for giving form and meaning
to the Order that will arise from victory. This new man will vanquish
everything tragic, obscure, and chaotic in himself,
and will constitute the start of a new development in the time to come. According
to ancient Aryan tradition, such heroism on the part of the best men can work
as an evocation, and re-establish the contact between the world and the higher
world that has been weakened for centuries." (Julius Evola)
"Before the vision of the Iron Age, Hesiod
exclaimed: 'May I have not been born in it!' But Hesiod,
after all, was a Pelasgic spirit, unaware of a higher
vocation. For other natures there is a different truth; to them applies the
teaching that was also known in the East: although the Kali Yuga is an age of
great destructions, those who live during it and manage to remain standing may
achieve fruits that were not easily achieved by men living in other ages."
(Julius Evola)
"These truths must penetrate the soul: there is no place to go, nothing to
ask for, nothing to hope for, nothing to fear. The world is free: goals and
reasons, ‘evolution’, fate or providence – all that is fog, an invention by
beings who did not yet know how to walk on their own and needed crutches and
supports. Now you will be left to yourself. You must perceive yourself as a
center of strength and know the action that is no longer dictated by this or
that object, but for the sake of itself." (Julius Evola)
"Modern man has not only to fight against materialism, but must also
defend himself from the snares and allures of false supernaturalism. His
defence will be firm and effective only if he is
capable of returning to the origins, of assimilating the ancient traditions,
and then of relying upon the ascesis to carry out the
task of re- establishing his inner condition. For it is through this that these
traditions will reveal to him their deepest and perennially real content and
show him, step by step, the path." (Julius Evola,
Doctrine of Awakening)
"What may be called the tendency to ‘popularization’…in other words, the
pretension to put everything ‘within the reach of all’, to which attention has
already been drawn as being a consequence of ‘democratic’ conceptions, amounts
in the end to a desire to bring all knowledge down to the level of the lowest
intelligences." (Rene Guenon)
"There are two ways to surpass the bourgeois order…the first possibility
leads lower still towards collectivist humanity with proletarian values…The
second possibility is to fight the bourgeois order in order to rise above it. The
new man will be anti-bourgeois, but on the basis of a superior, heroic and
aristocratic conception of existence..whoever
can only fight the left in the name of idols, of a life style or the mediocre
conformist morality of a bourgeois, has lost the battle in advance. The man who
had held himself upright through the purifying fire which has devastated his
life – such a man, just as he refuses to be the instrument of a pseudo
reaction, so he will be attached to forces and ideals that are superior to the
bourgeois world and the era of economics. By such an attachment, he will create
his line of defense and consolidate the positions from where, at the opportune
moment, he will move to action and reconstruction." (Orientamenti,
Julius Evola)
"By now you should understand what the main task of our Art is:
detach yourself from the humid substance that you are made of, and be
regenerated in the solar strength. Be transformed into a ‘being who is’, or
into a breathing center, freed from the bonds of sublunar
natures. You must wear out the thirst, the fever, and the endless and dark
yearning for existence. This is the condition for going beyond the law of
men." (Ercole Quadrelli,
Gruppa di
"The Initiate is a being who has learned how to take control of the totality
of the cravings and deficiencies which urge him internally. He has learned how
to resist them, and has the power to say NO, and how to break their law and how
to develop a new life without them." (Julius Evola)