"One of the essential practices at all levels of tantra is to dissolve our ordinary conceptions of ourselves and then, from the empty space into which these concepts have disappeared, arise in the glorious light body of a deity: a manifestation of the essential clarity of our deepest being. The more we train to see ourselves as such a meditational deity, the less bound we will feel by life’s ordinary disappointments and frustrations. This divine self-visualization empowers us to take control of our life and create for ourselves a pure environment in which our deepest nature can be expressed."

Lama Yeshe

“If these forms of worship were only human customs and received their authority from our cultural habits, one might argue that the cults of the gods were inventions created by our thinking. But in fact the one invoked in sacrifices is a god, and he presides over these sacrifices, and a great number of gods and angels surround him. And every race on earth is allotted a common guardian by this god, and every temple is also allotted a particular guardian.” Iamblichus

I laugh at those who think they can damage me.

They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.

- Epictetus

Based within cringe.
Cringe within based.

"When the Bolshevik Revolution broke out, Ungern-Sternberg, a Russian officer, raised a small army in the East, the “Asian Calvary Division,” which was the last to be commanded by Russian troops after the defeat of Wrangel and Kolchak, and accomplished almost legendary exploits. With these troops, Ungern-Sternberg liberated Mongolia, then occupied by Chinese troops supported by Moscow; he made an extremely daring rescue of the Dalai Lama [Bogd Khan], who declared him the first prince and regent of Mongolia and gave him the noscript of priest.

Ungern-Sternberg entered relations not only with the Dalai Lama [in this case, Evola is referring to the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, with whom Ungern-Sternberg was in contact], but also with Asian representatives of Islam and personalities of traditional China and Japan. It seems that he cherished the idea of creating a great Asian empire, based on a transcendent and Traditional idea, to fight not only against Bolshevism but also against all of modern materialist civilization, of which Bolshevism was for him but the most extreme consequence. All of which leads one to think that Ungern-Sternberg, in this respect, was not simply following his own initiative, but rather was being directed by someone who was, so to speak, in the shadows.

Baron Ungern-Sternberg’s contempt for death exceeded all limits, and consequently he had a legendary invulnerability. Leader, warrior, and strategist, the “bloody baron” was at the same time equipped with a superior intellect and a vast culture, and, in addition, with a kind of clairvoyance: he had, for example, the ability to infallibly judge all those upon whom he fixed his gaze and to recognize in them, at the first glance, the spy, the traitor, or the man most qualified for a given station or function." - Julius Evola

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/32/6d/d8326d0fb24f99590eab4463153888cd.jpg

A mosaic depicting Dionysus on a leopard, from the floor in the ‘House of Dionysus’ at Pella, late 4th century BC, Pella

Thus when heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, making him worthy of being the ruler of men, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil.

It exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, removes his incompetence and perfects his soul.

~ Mencius

"What flows into you from myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level."

~C. S. Lewis

"After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear."

~J.R.R. Tolkien