Who does not wish to have breathed into him the Socratic frenzies sung by Plato in the Phaedrus) that by the oarlike movement of wings and feet he may quickly escape from here, that is, from this world where he is laid down as in an evil place, and be carried in speediest flight to the heavenly Jerusalem. We shall be possessed, fathers, we shall be possessed by these Socratic frenzies, which will so place us outside of our minds that they will place our mind and ourselves in God. We shall be possessed by them if we have first done what is in us to do. Then Bacchus the leader of the muses, in his own mysteries, that is, in the visible signs of nature, will show the invisible things of God to us as we philosophize, and will make us drunk with the abundance of the house of God. In this house, if we are faithful like Moses, holiest theology will approach, and will inspire us with a twofold frenzy. We, raised up into the loftiest watchtower of theology, from which, measuring with indivisible eternity the things that are, will be, and shall have been, and looking at their primeval beauty, shall be prophets of Phoebus, his winged lovers, and finally, aroused with ineffable charity as with fire, placed outside of ourselves like burning Seraphim, filled with divinity, we shall now not be ourselves, but He himself who made us.

The sacred names of Apollo, if anyone examines their meanings and hidden mysteries, will sufficiently show that that god is no less philosopher than prophet. Since Ammonius has followed this up sufficiently, there is no reason why I should handle it in another way.

…I have always been so desirous of this truth and so much in love with it that, abandoning all care of public and private affairs, I gave my whole self over to the leisure of contemplating, from which no disparaging of the envious, no curses from the enemies of wisdom, have been able so far or will be able later to frighten me away. Philosophy herself has taught me to weigh things rather by my own conscience than by the judgments of others, and to consider not so much whether I should be badly spoken of as whether I myself should say or do anything bad. In fact, I was not ignorant, most reverend fathers, that this disputation of mine will be as pleasant and enjoyable to all you who delight in good arts and have wished to honor it with your most august presence, as it will be heavy and burdensome to many others; and I know that there are some who have condemned my undertaking before this, and who condemn it now under many names. Thus there are usually no fewer, not to say more, growlers who carry on well and in a holy way against virtue, than there are who do so wickedly and wrongly against vice.

There are some who do not disapprove of this type of exercise, but who do not approve of it at all in my case, because I at my age, in only my twenty-fourth year, have dared, in the most famous city, in the largest assembly of the most learned men, in the apostolic senate, ro propose a disputation on the sublime mysteries of Christian theology, on the loftiest questions of philosophy, on unknown teachings. Others who give me leave to dispute are unwilling to give me leave to dispute about nine hundred questions, saying in slander that the proposal was made as needlessly and ambitiously as it was beyond my powers.

…But to return to the review of the topics of my disputation, we have advanced our opinion on the interpretation of the poems of Orpheus and Zoroaster. Orpheus is read almost wholly in Greek, Zoroaster partly in Greek, but more completely in Chaldaean. Both are believed to be the fathers and founders of ancient wisdom. I am silent about Zoroaster, who is frequently mentioned by the Platonists, always with the greatest veneration. Jamblichus the Chalcidean writes that Pythagoras had the Orphic theology as the model after which he molded and formed his own philosophy. In fact, they say that the words of Pythagoras are called holy only because they flowed from the teachings of Orpheus: thence as from their primal source flowed the secret doctrine of numbers, and whatever Greek philosophy had that was great and sublime. But, as was the practice of ancient theologians, Orpheus covered the mysteries of his doctrines with the wrappings of fables, and disguised them with a poetic garment, so that whoever reads his hymns may believe there is nothing underneath but tales and the purest nonsense. I wished to say this so that it may be known with what labor, with what difficulty I dug out the hidden meanings of a secret philosophy from the calculated meshes of riddles and from hiding-places in fables, especially with no help from the work and industry of other interpreters in such a weighty, abstruse, and unexplored field.

And still these dogs of mine bark that I have heaped up minutiae and trifles for a display of many questions, as if the questions were not all those which are doubtful and most controversial, with which the principal schools struggle; as if I did not advance many utterly unknown and untried questions to those very people who criticize mine and believe themselves the most eminent of philosophers.

…But certainly (though I shall say something neither modest nor in accord with my character), I shall say, because the envious force me to speak, detractors force me, that I wished by this assembly of mine to show not that I know many things, but that I know things which many people do not know.

So that the fact itself may now be made evident to you, most venerable fathers, so that my discourse may no longer delay your desire, most excellent doctors, whom not without great delight I see ready and equipped, awaiting battle (may it be happy and fortunate), let us now, as by a trumpet summons, engage hands in combat.

— Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio de hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486)

An interesting aspect to add to our still-undeveloped ideas about American spiritual races. I do not feel prepared to write on it yet but one must admit a presence of the native spirit deep in American lore. Historically - moreso in Colonial times but also frontier/Western - this sprit was adopted by many a European American. However it seems to have failed to penetrate into the greater culture being diametrically opposed to the Semitic, urban, capitalist spirit that came to define America. Perhaps one could say a semi-related trace of it lives on in the Mestizo spirit of true 'cowboy culture' or in the backwoods of the South as an inspiration, a nostalgia for the life of the nativized frontiersmen who died out as soon as the frontier itself did.

The red Indians were proud races with their own style, their own dignity, sensibility and forms of religiosity; not without justification, a traditionalist writer, F. Schuon, spoke of the presence in their being, of something ‘𝘢𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳’.

And we will not hesitate to assert that had it been their spirit — in its best aspects and on an appropriate plane — to appreciably imbue the human material thrown into the ‘American melting pot’, the level of American civilisation would probably be higher.

~ Evola

Monologue 41: On the mountains

The mountains are vast and the nights are dark. Yet the man, summoning every drop of his courage that he can muster, steps forth and explores the unforgiving elements that surrounds him. He, determined and powered by the spirit to be, embraces the deathly cold air. Indeed, he embraces and even welcomes, with open arms, death itself.

Such is life and such is living.

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news

John Muir

In our eternal touch with the nature
We see communions of life and death
We see their joyous inseparable unity
We learn that life is as beautifull as death

John Muir

MEHR ALS LEBEN

“All too often people forget that spirituality is essentially a way of life and that its measure does not consist of notions, theories, and ideas that have been stored in one’s head.

Spirituality is actually 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.

From this perspective it is possible to appreciate a discipline which, although it may concern the energies of the body, will not begin and end with them but will become instead the means to awakening a living and organic spirituality.

This is the discipline of a superior inner character.”

- Evola, “Meditations on the Peaks”

(Photo from Sharptop Mountain, Winter Solstice)

This profound dimension of the spirit, which perceives itself as infinite, self-transcending, and beyond all manifest reality, is reawakened and shines forth—even though not entirely consciously-in the “insanity”of those who, in increasing numbers and without a specific reason, dare to challenge the mountain heights, led by a will that prevails over fears, exhaustion, and the primitive instincts of prudence and self-preservation.

Feeling left with only one’s resources, without help in a hopeless situation, clothed only in one’s strength or weakness, with no one to rely upon other than one’s self; to climb from rock to rock, from hold to hold, from ridge to ridge, inexorably, for hours and hours; with the feeling of the height and of imminent danger all around; and finally, after the harsh test of calling upon all one’s self-discipline, the feeling of an indescribable liberation, of a solar solitude and of silence; the end of the struggle, the subjugation of fears, and the revelation of a limitless horizon, for miles and miles, while everything else lies down below-in all of this one can truly find the real possibility of purification, of awakening, of the rebirth of something transcendent.

- Julius Evola, Meditations on the Peaks

The Germanic view of the forest is a similar act of Aryan spirituality. Jünger's Forest Passage obviously echoes an ancient tradition in which a man is to throw himself into the perils of nature, not to 're-wild' himself, but to overcome himself and nature. I would imagine the Greeks and Phoenicians had a similar view of sailing the seas, likewise perhaps the Steppe peoples of their conquering of the plains from far beyond one horizon to far beyond the other. Evola saw significance in this view of distance to the point that it became a key definition in the worldview of traditional man.

The vertical peaks reaching to the infinite skies and the forests of similarly tall upright trees point to transcendence. 'To see the forest for the trees' acquires a deeper meaning when one sets out to overcome the forest which is constituted by these vertical peaks. The 'infinite' horizons of the seas and the plains also represent transcendence. Of being the true self within boundless space versus becoming some construction of the ego, especially one within the bounds of finite time.

Impelled by time, a Brahmana named Kalki Vishnuyasha will be born. He will possess great energy, intelligence and prowess. He will be born at a village called Shambhala in a blessed Brahmana family. As soon as thought of, vehicles, weapons, warriors, and arms and armors will be at His command. He will be the imperial sovereign, ever victorious by the strength of His virtue. He will restore order and peace in this world, overcrowded with creatures and contradictory in its laws. That effulgent and greatly intelligent Brahmana will destroy all things. He will be the destroyer of all and He will be the maker of a new Yuga [Satya-Yuga]. That twice-born one surrounded by the Brahmanas, will exterminate all the low and despicable mlecchas wherever they will be found.

Mahabharatra (Vana Parva, 190.93-97)

But this is also a bit of a step too far in the opposite direction, as Schuon begins his The Meaning of Race thusly:

"Caste takes precedence over race because spirit has priority over form; race is a form while caste is a spirit. Even Hindu castes, which were in origin purely Indo-European, cannot be limited to a single race: there are Tamil, Balinese and Siamese brahmin. It is not possible, however, to hold that race is something devoid of meaning apart from physical characteristics, for, if it is true that formal constraints have nothing absolute about them, forms must nonetheless have their own sufficient reason; if races are not castes,2 they must all the same correspond to human differences of another order, rather as differences of style may express equivalence in the spiritual order while also marking divergencies of mode."

Evola further reinforces this view in Revolt Against the Modern World:

"The Middle Ages knew nationalities but not nationalisms. Nationality is a natural factor that encompasses a certain group of common elementary characteristics that are retained both in the hierarchical differentiation and in the hierarchical participation, which they do not oppose. Therefore, during the Middle Ages, castes, social bodies, and orders were articulated within various nationalities, and while the types of the warrior, noble, merchant, and artisan conformed to the characteristics of this or of that nation, these articulations represented at the same time wider, international units. Hence, the possibility for the members of the same caste who came from different nations to understand each other better than the members of different castes within the same nation. Modern nationalism represents, with regard to this, a movement in the opposite direction."

Nietzsche wrote "I write in order to be misunderstood". This means "I write so that the inferior man who agrees with me will only become more inferior, true to his nature, and that the superior man who agrees with me will become even more superior, true to his nature."

"I am a decadent: but I am also its antithesis."
~ Nietzsche, Ecce Homo