Slaughter of the suitors by Odysseus and Telemachus, Campanian red-figure bell-krater, ca. 330 BCE

In Contest of Homer and Hesiod, it is alleged that the Roman Emperor Hadrian asked the Delphic Oracle about Homer's birthplace and parentage. The Oracle replied that Homer came from Ithaca and that Telemachus was his father by Epicasta, daughter of Nestor.

"As everybody knows, the doctrine of the Golden Age is part of the doctrine of the four ages, which testifies to the progressive spiritual involution unfolding in the course of history since very ancient times. All of these ages also have a morphological meaning and express a typical and universal form of civilization. Following the Golden Age, we encounter the Silver Age, which corresponds to a priestly and feminine rather than regal and virile type of spirituality: I have called it lunar spirituality, since the symbols of gold and silver have traditionally been in the same relationship as that between sun and moon. In this context, such correspondence is particularly revealing: the moon is the feminine star that, unlike the sun, no longer has in itself the principle of its own light. Hence the shift to a spirituality conditioned by mediation, namely, an extrovert spirituality characterized by an attitude of submission, of abandonment, of loving or ecstatic rapture. Here we find the root of the 'religious' phenomenon, from its theistic-devotional forms to its mystical ones.

Any insurgence of a wild and materialized virility against such spiritual forms characterizes the Bronze Age. This age is characterized by the degradation of the warriors' caste and by its revolt against him who represents the spirit, insofar as he is no longer the Olympian leader but only a priest. The Bronze Age is also marked by the unleashing of the principle proper to the warriors' caste, namely, pride, violence, war. The corresponding myth is the Titanic or Luciferian revolt, or the Promethean attempt to steal the Olympian fire. The age of 'giants,' or of the Wolf, or of the 'elemental beings;' is an equivalent figuration found in various traditions and in their fragments preserved in legends and epics of various peoples."

- Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail

"The last age is the Iron Age, or, according to the corresponding Hindu term, the Dark Age (Kali Yuga). This age includes every deconsecrated civilization, every civilization that knows and extols only what is human and earthly.
Against these forms of decadence there emerged the idea of a possible cycle of restoration, which Hesiod called the heroic cycle or age of heroes. Here we must employ the term heroic in a special, technical sense distinct from the usual meaning. According to Hesiod, the 'generation of heroes' was created by Zeus, that is to say, by the Olympian principle, with the possibility of reattaining the primordial state and thus to give life to a new 'golden' cycle.

But in order to realize this, which is only a possibility and no longer a state of affairs, it is first necessary to overcome both the 'lunar' spirituality and the materialized virility, namely, both the priest and the mere warrior or the Titan. These archetypes are found in the 'heroic' figures of almost every tradition. In the Hellenic-Achaean tradition, for instance, Heracles is described as a heroic prototype precisely in these terms; his perennial nemesis is Hera, the supreme goddess of the lunar-pantheistic cult. Heracles earns Olympian immortality after allying himself to Zeus, who is the Olympian principle, against the 'giants'; according to one of the myths of this cycle, it is through Heracles that the 'titanic' element (symbolized by Prometheus) is freed and reconciled with the Olympian element."

- Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail

For we should not occupy ourselves with all philosophers, or with all doctrines, but only with those philosophies that imbue us with piety and teach us about the gods

Emperor Julian

Consider lost all the time in which you do not think of divinity.

Sextus the Pythagorean

"First of all, it is necessary to show the proof and the confirmation of the virile qualification; thus in the epic and knightly symbolism we find a series of adventures, feats, and fights. This qualification should not become a limitation, a hubris, a closure of the 'I,' and it should not paralyze the capability of opening oneself up to a transcendent force, in function of which alone can the fire really become light and free itself. Second, such liberation should not signify a cessation of the inner tension; thus a further test consists in adequately reaffirming the virile quality on the supersensible plane. The consequence of this is the Olympian transformation or the achievement of that dignity which in initiatory traditions has always been designated as 'regal.' This is the decisive point that differentiates the heroic experience from every mystical evasion and from every pantheistic confusion; among the various symbols that may refer to this point is the symbolism of the woman.

In the Indo-Aryan tradition, every god—that is, every transcendent power—is joined with a bride, and the term śakti, 'bride,' also means 'power.' In the West, Wisdom (Sophia) and sometimes even the Holy Spirit were represented as a royal woman, while in Greek mythology, Hebe, the perennial Olympian youth, was given in marriage to Heracles as a wife. In Egyptian figurations, divine women offer to the kings a lotus, which is a symbol of a rebirth and the 'key of life.' Like the Iranian fravashi, the Nordic Valkyrie are a figuration of transcendental parts of warriors, the forces of their destinies and victories. The Roman tradition knew of a Venus Victrix who was credited with generating an imperial stock (Venus Genitrix); the Celtic tradition mentioned supernatural women who take warriors to mysterious islands to make them immortal with their love. Eve, according to an etymology of the name, means 'Life,' or 'the Living One.' Thus, without proceeding further with similar examples, which I have discussed elsewhere, I wish to emphasize that a very widespread symbolism has seen in the woman a vivifying and transfiguring power, through which it is possible to overcome the human condition."

- Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail

Man and woman together are mind and body. It takes both virility and fertility to create and nourish the soul. The union of man and woman creates life in the most base sense of lust; but in the highest romantic sense the greatest functions of both souls blossoms and bears the sweetest fruit of Life.

This is why sexual chastity and gender roles are central to traditional life. Disrespecting them brings nothing but disorder and destruction.

"What is a prohibitionist? Someone who is no longer European and, feeling that he himself no longer has the right to drink wine, wants to ban everyone else from drinking wine in order to destroy the Sacred." - Carl Schmitt