Continuing the theme of men and women and their symbolism: He stands for otherworldly pursuits; she stands for worldly passions. Worldliness is impossible without the presence of women; monasticism demands the absence of women. Man is the soul. Woman is the flesh. He is the cause. She is the manifestation. He is the self, pure awareness, and the true identity of our being. She is the energy, the matrix, in which the self is enmeshed. Since he is the self, he is the subject who experiences life and she is the object who is experienced in life. She owes her existence to him. He owes his identity to her. He creates, sustains, and destroys her. She enables him to preserve, propagate, indulge, and realize himself. Just as man and woman are complementary, so are spiritual and material realities. Hence, when God is represented, Hindus choose not male or female but both male and female. In Hindu temples, therefore, God is always associated with the Goddess. In Vishnu temples one finds Lakshmi. In Krishna temples one finds Radha. In Rama temples one finds Sita. In Shiva temples one finds Shakti. Without either there is neither.

After truly diving into Evola's work, it is my observation that many in our circles - even in these smaller spiritual and intellectual circles - simply do not grasp what Evola says. They do not understand what he wrote or why he did so. The bigger picture which he paints is invisible before their eyes.

Evola's writings are nothing like a holy book or spiritual guide, which if we are being honest is a characterization they get labeled with all to often. If anything his writings show how one might better read holy books, and how one might possibly write guides on spirituality.

Evola's practically mythic reputation as some master of esotericism is so off-the-mark it is insulting to his legacy, which seems increasingly obvious to me to be the single greatest attempt ever made to exotericize spirituality.

"In those areas in which Tradition retained all of its vitality the dynamic succession of sacred kings represented an axis of light and of eternity within the temporal framework, the victorious presence of the supernatural in the world, and the 'Olympian' component that transfigures the demonic element of chaos and bestows a higher meaning to state, nation, and race. Even in the lower strata of society, the hierarchical bond created by a conscious and virile devotion was considered a means to approach, and to participate in, the supernatural.
In fact, invested with authority from above, the simple law acted as a reference and a support that went beyond mere human individuality for those who could not light the supernatural fire for themselves. In reality, the intimate, free, and effective dedication of one's entire life to traditional norms, even when a full understanding of their inner dimension was not present to justify such an adherence, was enough to acquire objectively a higher meaning; through obedience, faithfulness, and action in conformity with traditional principles and limitations an invisible force shaped such a life and oriented it toward that supernatural axis that in others (in those privileged few at the top of the hierarchy) existed as a state of truth, realization, and light. In this manner, a stable and lively organism was formed that was constantly oriented toward the overworld and sanctified in power and in act according to its hierarchical degrees in the various domains of thinking, feeling, acting, and struggling. Such was the climate of the world of Tradition."

- Julius Evola in Revolt Against the Modern World

As regards procreation, Aristotle wrote, “The male represents the specific form; the female represents the matter, being passive insofar as she is female, whereas the male is active.” This polarity recurs in the concepts of ancient Greek philosophy, having its origin in the mysteries and being applied to various forms that nowadays are no longer understood in their original, living meaning. The male is form, the female is matter. “Form” here means the power that determines and arouses the principle of motion, development, becoming. “Matter” means the material and instrumental cause of all development, the pure indeterminate capability, the substance or power that, being devoid of form in itself, can take up any form, and which in itself is nothing but can become everything when it has been awakened and fecundated. The Greek word for matter does not mean, therefore, either the matter of the organism or that of physical nature in general…In Pythagorean terms this is also the principle of the Dyad (of the binary, of the Two); it is opposed to the One and is presented by Plato as déuteron or that which is always the “other,” being related to the receiving place, khṓa, of being and to the “mother” or “foster-mother” of becoming.

[...]The representations of ascetic and Apollonian manhood must be deemed still higher than Heracles with the symbolism of his labors, which emphasize heroic manhood and, to some extent, resistance to the dominion of women. Here we can consider Shiva as a connecting element, as the god of a cult and not as a metaphysical principle; if, on the one hand, in the Alexandrine period, he was taken to be the same as Dionysus, god of the orgiastic rites, on the other hand, he was also thought of as the great ascetic of the high peaks. He had a wife, Parvati, but was not held in bondage by her, for he was able to strike with lightning the god of love, Kama, when the latter sought to awaken in him desire of need, privation, thirst, and dependence. (In Hindu myth, Kama was revived by Shiva through the intercession of divinities, such as Rati, who personify forms of pure erotic experience, free of conditional qualities.)

Above all the ascetic struggles, manhood, next, has a typical symbol in Heruka, whose severe and imposing heroic beauty is sometimes even frightening. He is the naked divinity and shining scepter-bearer of the Hindu Tibetan pantheon; here nakedness expresses a meaning opposed to that of female ultimate nakedness and represents pure being in itself, the “purity” or dominating uranic simplicity which is dangerous for woman (to see man in such “nakedness” may signify that she will lose him forever, which is another well known theme in the saga). But Shiva often already had the same attribute, namely digambara or “the naked one.

Therefore, to go back to Hellenic themes, the series can have as its upper limit the Apollonian manifestation of pure manhood. Here Apollo is the embodiment of Olympian nous (perception) and of unchangeable uranic light, freed from the earthly element and also from his connection with goddesses in some spurious historical varieties of his worship. At this level Apollo, as the god of “pure form,” was conceived without a mother and was “born by himself,” ametor (without a mother) and autophues (self-growing), being the Doric god who “produced form geometrically.” (The determination of plastic matter is proper to the male and to form, whereas the indeterminate nature of plastic matter and the limitless, apeiron, belongs to the female.) In the opinion of Orestes, Apollo defends the principle opposed to that of motherhood without a husband but also to Demeter or Aphrodite womanhood. Orestes said that it is actually the father who generates a child, whereas the mother is only the “foster mother” of the child. This is the affirmation and corroboration of the relationship given in metaphysical terms between the everlasting male and the everlasting female. But in the Apollonian symbol there is something besides reaffirming order “according to justice” between the two principles, which takes us beyond the whole world of the Dyad.

- Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love

There has been such a reversal of roles that Hellenes are now barbarians and the barbarians Hellenes. . . [I]f a pretentious barbarian visited us and talked to people in Hellas or any part of our continent, he would treat the majority of the men not as asses but as of mulish stupidity. The greater part of the population know nothing of the world of nature or of what lies beyond it, the remainder think they know everything but do not in fact even know the route towards knowledge. Some claim to be philosophers and a great many more are anxious to learn. But the teachers sit with smug faces and long beards, looking pale and grim, with a frown, shabbily dressed. They dig up Aristotle from the underworld, from the depths of Hades, and give the impression of passing judgement on everything that he covered in a cloud of obscurity. When they ought to be expounding at length his confusing brevity, they give instead many brief explanations of the broad range of his researches. Our barbarian visitor is convinced that this is a childish game, gloats over our incompetence, and departs, with no addition to his knowledge but reduced to a state worse than ignorance.

— Michael Psellus, Oratoria minora 19.35-55

In the same vein perhaps we should learn how to learn from our past, and in our quest for Solar virtue not fall into the trap of summarizing the 'old ways' and busying ourselves reconstructing the meanings of the old symbolisms used by the ancients. This often comes from a place of Lunar sentimentalism about 'ancestral' elements and confusion about the use of naturalistic symbols, which came about naturally and circumstantially by and for the ancients themselves. This is a slippery slope that often results in accidentally substituting chthonic, telluric (from the Earth, materialistic, Lunar) forces for the eternal values the symbols actually represented. That is not at all to say one should not study the ancients, but rather, one should not dress up as and imitate them so to speak. 'Expounding at length [their] confusing brevity' to ascertain true meaning and not being content with platitudinal takeaways.

In lieu of resurrecting the spiritual language of the ancients, both literally in symbology and figuratively in specific rites, we must instead speak our own tongue. Evola when describing the 'primordial' aspect of the Solar invokes the 'Uranic' symbol of the primordial god Uranus, who is associated with the heavens, and together with his primordial Lunar counterpart Gaia fathered the Titans; he established cosmic order with absolute authority and virility (lost via his castration by his youngest son Chronos*). Perhaps this is what is missing that leads so many astray: a firm foundation on which to root Solar philosophy that is not subject to confusion by Gaian intercession. The divine Solar nature of cosmic order extending from above the heavens of the gods themselves, is perhaps this foundation. It is this that the more familiar and developed 'Apollonian' aspect of the Solar can be seen as built atop of; the 'Olympian' gods literally proceeding from the primordial as their grandchildren.

*The link to the timelessness of Tradition and the traditional worldview that was wholly antithetical to the modern notion of linear progression temporality should be obvious. That the primordial Solar is defeated via an act of castration by his youngest son Time, who was the only titan able to be convinced by his Mother Earth to overthrow his father, illuminates this. That it was done specifically with a sickle, an agricultural tool, is very interesting.