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