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| Julius Evola | |
|---|---|
| Evola in the early 1940s | |
| Born | Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola 19 May 1898 Rome, Kingdom of Italy |
| Died | 11 June 1974 (aged 76) Rome, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Education | Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci, Rome (no degree) |
| Notable work | Revolt Against the Modern World (1934) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophyWestern esotericism |
| School | Perennialism Traditionalism Italian Fascism |
| Institutions | School of Fascist Mysticism |
| Main interests | Comparative religionEsotericismHermeticismMetaphysicsHistoryPolitical philosophySymbologyMythology |
| Notable ideas | Fascist mysticismspiritual racismtranscendental realismmagical idealism |
| showInfluences | |
| showInfluenced | |
| Website | fondazionejuliusevola.it |
Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola (/ɛˈvoʊlə/; Italian: [ˈɛːvola];[1] 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974), better known as Julius Evola, was an Italian philosopher, poet, and painter whose esoteric worldview featured antisemitic conspiracy theories[2][3] and the occult. He has been described as a “fascist intellectual”,[4] a “radical traditionalist“,[5] “antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular”,[6] and as “the leading philosopher of Europe’s neofascist movement”.[6]
Evola is popular in fringe circles, largely because of his metaphysical, magical, and supernatural beliefs – including belief in ghosts, telepathy, and alchemy[7] – and his traditionalism. He termed his philosophy “magical idealism”. Many of Evola’s theories and writings were centered on his hostility toward Christianity and his idiosyncratic mysticism, occultism, and esoteric religious studies,[8][9][10][page needed] and this aspect of his work has influenced occultists and esotericists. Evola also justified male domination over women as part of a purely patriarchal society, an outlook stemming from his traditionalist views on gender, which demanded women stay in or revert to what he saw as their traditional gender roles, where they were completely subordinate to male authority.[11][12]
According to the scholar Franco Ferraresi, “Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radical and consistent anti-egalitarian, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and anti-popular systems in the 20th century”. It is a singular, though not necessarily original, blend of several schools and traditions, including German idealism, Eastern doctrines, traditionalism, and the all-embracing Weltanschauung of the interwar conservative revolutionary movement with which Evola had a deep personal involvement.[13] Historian Aaron Gillette described Evola as “one of the most influential fascist racists in Italian history”.[14]
Evola admired SS head Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, whom he once met.[15] Autobiographical remarks by Evola allude to his having worked for the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party.[16][17] During his trial in 1951, Evola denied being a fascist and instead referred to himself as “superfascista” (lit. ’superfascist’). Concerning this statement, historian Elisabetta Cassina Wolff wrote that “It is unclear whether this meant that Evola was placing himself above or beyond Fascism”.[18]
Evola has been called the “chief ideologue” of Italy’s radical right after World War II.[19] He continues to influence contemporary traditionalist and neo-fascist movements.[19][20][21]
Life
Giulio Cesare Evola was born in Rome,[22] the son of Vincenzo Evola (born 1854)[23] and Concetta Mangiapane (born 1865).[24] Both his parents had been born in Cinisi, a small town in the Province of Palermo on the north-western coast of Sicily. The paternal grandparents of Giulio Cesare Evola were Giuseppe Evola and Maria Cusumano. Giuseppe Evola is reported as being a joiner in Vincenzo’s birth record. The maternal grandparents of Giulio Cesare Evola were Cesare Mangiapane, reported as being a shopkeeper in Concetta’s birth record, and his wife Caterina Munacó. Vincenzo Evola and Concetta Mangiapane were married in Cinisi on 25 November 1892.[25] Vincenzo Evola is reported as being a telegraphic mechanic chief, while Concetta Mangiapane is reported as being a landowner. Giulio Cesare Evola had an elder brother, Giuseppe Gaspare Dinamo Evola, born in 1895 in Rome,[26] Following a slight variation on the Sicilian naming convention of the era, as the second son, Giulio Cesare Evola was partly named after his maternal grandfather.
Evola has been often been reported as being a baron,[27] probably in reference to a purported distant relationship with a minor aristocratic family, the Evoli, who were the barons of Castropignano in the Kingdom of Sicily in the late Middle Ages.[28]
Little is known about Evola’s early upbringing except that he considered it irrelevant. He studied engineering at the Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci in Rome, but did not complete his course, later claiming this was because he “did not want to be associated in any way with bourgeois academic recognition and titles such as doctor and engineer.”[8]: 3 [29]
In his teenage years, Evola immersed himself in painting—which he considered one of his natural talents—and literature, including Oscar Wilde and Gabriele d’Annunzio. He was introduced to philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Otto Weininger. Other early philosophical influences included Carlo Michelstaedter and Max Stirner.[30]
In the First World War, Evola served as an artillery officer on the Asiago plateau. He was attracted to the avant-garde, and after the war he briefly associated with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti‘s Futurist movement. Through his painting and poetry, and through work on the short-lived journal Revue Bleue, he became a prominent representative of Dadaism in Italy. In 1922, after concluding that avant-garde art was becoming commercialized and stiffened by academic conventions, he reduced his focus on artistic expression such as painting and poetry.[29][non-primary source needed]
Evola was arrested in April 1951 by the Political Office of the Rome Police Headquarters and charged on suspicion that he was an ideologist of the militant neofascist organization Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria (FAR). Evola was defended by Prof. Francesco Carnelutti. On November 20, 1951, Evola was acquitted of all charges.[31]
Evola died on 11 June 1974 in Rome from congestive heart failure.[32][33]
Writing career
Christianity
In 1928, Evola wrote an attack on Christianity titled Pagan Imperialism, which proposed transforming fascism into a system consistent with ancient Roman values and Western esotericism. Evola proposed that fascism should be a vehicle for reinstating the caste system and aristocracy of antiquity. Although he invoked the term “fascism” in this text, his diatribe against the Catholic Church was criticized by both Mussolini‘s fascist regime and the Vatican itself. A. James Gregor argued that the text was an attack on fascism as it stood at the time of writing, but noted that Mussolini made use of it to threaten the Vatican with the possibility of an “anti-clerical fascism”.[8][34]: 89–91 On account of Evola’s anti-Christian proposals, in April 1928 the Vatican-backed right wing Catholic journal Revue Internationale des Sociétés Secrètes published an article entitled “Un Sataniste Italien: Julius Evola”, accusing him of satanism.[35][36]
In his The Mystery of the Grail (1937), Evola discarded Christian interpretations of the Holy Grail and wrote that it
symbolizes the principle of an immortalizing and transcendent force connected to the primordial state … The mystery of the Grail is a mystery of a warrior initiation.[37]
He held that the Ghibellines, who had fought the Guelph for control of Northern and Central Italy in the thirteenth century, had within them the residual influences of pre-Christian Celtic and Nordic traditions that represented his conception of the Grail myth. He also held that the Guelph victory against the Ghibellines represented a regression of the castes, since the merchant caste took over from the warrior caste.[38][page needed] In the epilogue to this book, Evola argued that the fictitious The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, regardless of whether it was authentic or not, was a cogent representation of modernity.[39][40] The historian Richard Barber said,
Evola mixes rhetoric, prejudice, scholarship, and politics into a strange version of the present and future, but in the process he brings together for the first time interest in the esoteric and in conspiracy theory which characterize much of the later Grail literature.[41]
Buddhism
In his The Doctrine of Awakening (1943), Evola argued that the Pāli Canon could be held to represent true Buddhism.[42] His interpretation of Buddhism is that it was intended to be anti-democratic. He believed that Buddhism revealed the essence of an “Aryan” tradition that had become corrupted and lost in the West. He believed it could be interpreted to reveal the superiority of a warrior caste.[42] Harry Oldmeadow described Evola’s work on Buddhism as exhibiting a Nietzschean influence,[43] but Evola criticized Nietzsche’s anti-ascetic prejudice. Evola claimed that the book “received the official approbation of the Pāli [Text] Society”, and was published by a reputable Orientalist publisher.[42] Evola’s interpretation of Buddhism, as put forth in his article “Spiritual Virility in Buddhism”, is in conflict with the post-WWII scholarship of the Orientalist Giuseppe Tucci, who argues that the viewpoint that Buddhism advocates universal benevolence is legitimate.[44] Arthur Versluis stated that Evola’s writing on Buddhism was a vehicle for his own theories, but was a far from accurate rendition of the subject, and he held that much the same could be said of Evola’s writing on Hermeticism.[45] Ñāṇavīra Thera was inspired to become a bhikkhu from reading Evola’s text The Doctrine of Awakening in 1945 while hospitalized in Sorrento.[42]
Modernity
Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World (1934) promotes the mythology of an ancient Golden Age which gradually declined into modern decadence. In this work, Evola described the features of his idealized traditional society in which religious and temporal power were created and united not by priests, but by warriors expressing spiritual power. In mythology, he saw evidence of the West’s superiority over the East. Moreover, he claimed that the traditional elite had the ability to access power and knowledge through a hierarchical magic which differed from the lower “superstitious and fraudulent” forms of magic.[8][page needed] Evola insists that only “nonmodern forms, institutions, and knowledge” could produce a “real renewal … in those who are still capable of receiving it.”[45] The text was “immediately recognized by Mircea Eliade and other intellectuals who allegedly advanced ideas associated with Tradition.”[18] Eliade was one of the most influential twentieth-century historians of religion, a fascist sympathizer associated with the Romanian Christian right wing movement Iron Guard.[10][46] Evola was aware of the importance of myth from his readings of Georges Sorel, one of the key intellectual influences on fascism.[10][page needed] Hermann Hesse described Revolt Against the Modern World as “really dangerous.”[38]
During the 1960s Evola thought the right could no longer reverse the corruption of modern civilization.[47] E. C. Wolff noted that this is why Evola wrote Ride the Tiger, choosing to distance himself completely from active political engagement, without excluding the possibility of action in the future. He argued that one should stay firm and ready to intervene when the tiger of modernity “is tired of running.”[18] Goodrick-Clarke notes that, “Evola sets up the ideal of the ‘active nihilist’ who is prepared to act with violence against modern decadence.”[48]
Other writings
In the posthumously published collection of writings, Metaphysics of War, Evola, in line with the conservative revolutionary Ernst Jünger, explored the viewpoint that war could be a spiritually fulfilling experience. He proposed the necessity of a transcendental orientation in a warrior.[49]
From 1934 to 1943 Evola was also responsible for ‘Diorama Filosofico’, the cultural page of Il Regime Fascista, a daily newspaper owned by Roberto Farinacci.[50] He would also contribute during the same period to Giovanni Preziosi magazine La vita italiana.[51]
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has written that Evola’s 1945 essay “American ‘Civilization'” described the United States as “the final stage of European decline into the ‘interior formlessness’ of vacuous individualism, conformity and vulgarity under the universal aegis of money-making.” According to Goodrick-Clarke, Evola argued that the U.S. “mechanistic and rational philosophy of progress combined with a mundane horizon of prosperity to transform the world into an enormous suburban shopping mall.”[48]
Evola translated some works of Oswald Spengler and Ortega y Gasset to Italian.[52][53]
Occultism and esotericism
Around 1920, Evola’s 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 Tantric yoga. A keen mountaineer, Evola described the experience as a source of revelatory spiritual experiences. After his return from the war, Evola experimented with hallucinogens and magic.
When he was about 23 years old, Evola considered suicide. He claimed that he avoided suicide thanks to a revelation he had while reading an early Buddhist text that dealt with shedding all forms of identity other than absolute transcendence.[8] Evola would later publish the text The Doctrine of Awakening, which he regarded as a repayment of his debt to Buddhism for saving him from suicide.[42][page needed]
Evola wrote prodigiously on Eastern mysticism, Tantra, hermeticism, the myth of the Holy Grail and Western esotericism.[8][page needed] German Egyptologist and esoteric scholar Florian Ebeling has noted that Evola’s The Hermetic Tradition is viewed as an “extremely important work on Hermeticism” in the eyes of esotericists.[54] Evola gave particular focus to Cesare della Riviera’s text Il Mondo Magico degli Heroi, which he later republished in modern Italian. He held that Riviera’s text was consonant with the goals of “high magic” – the reshaping of the earthly human into a transcendental ‘god man’. According to Evola, the alleged “timeless” Traditional science was able to come to lucid expression through this text, in spite of the “coverings” added to it to prevent accusations from the church.[55] Though Evola rejected Carl Jung‘s interpretation of alchemy, Jung described Evola’s The Hermetic Tradition as a “magisterial account of Hermetic philosophy”.[55] In Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, the philosopher Glenn Alexander Magee favored Evola’s interpretation over that of Jung’s.[56] In 1988, a journal devoted to Hermetic thought published a section of Evola’s book and described it as “Luciferian.”[57]
Evola later confessed that he was not a Buddhist, and that his text on Buddhism was meant to balance his earlier work on the Hindu tantras.[42] Evola’s interest in tantra was spurred on by correspondence with John Woodroffe.[58] Evola was attracted to the active aspect of tantra, and its claim to provide a practical means to spiritual experience, over the more “passive” approaches in other forms of Eastern spirituality.[59] In Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, Richard K. Payne, Dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, argued that Evola manipulated Tantra in the service of right wing violence, and that the emphasis on “power” in The Yoga of Power gave insight into his mentality.[60]
Evola advocated that “differentiated individuals” following the Left-Hand Path use dark violent sexual powers against the modern world. For Evola, these “virile heroes” are both generous and cruel, possess the ability to rule, and commit “Dionysian” acts that might be seen as conventionally immoral. For Evola, the Left Hand path embraces violence as a means of transgression.[9]: 217
According to A. James Gregor Evola’s definition of spirituality can be found in Meditations on the Peaks: “what has been successfully actualized and translated into a sense of superiority which is experienced inside by the soul, and a noble demeanor, which is expressed in the body.”[34]: 101–102 Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola’s “rigorous New Age spirituality speaks directly to those who reject absolutely the leveling world of democracy, capitalism, multi-racialism and technology at the outset of the twenty-first century. Their acute sense of cultural chaos can find powerful relief in his ideal of total renewal.”[48] Thomas Sheehan wrote that to “read Evola is to take a trip through a weird and fascinating jungle of ancient mythologies, pseudo-ethnology, and transcendental mysticism that is enough to make any southern California consciousness-tripper feel quite at home.”[61]