A fundamental metaphysical principle is the “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, that is, everything that comes into manifestation has an explanatory cause. The natural man believes he can explain the existence of something by its antecedent material causes, that is, solely in its horizontal dimension. The esoterist, on the other hand, knows that there is a vertical dimension.

So this is the question: How does the idea, or essence, of something become actual, or existent? Julius Evola, in his system of Magical Idealism, explains that it is Will that magically brings the idea of a thing into existence; in other words, the Will is the Sufficent Reason for the thing. Thus we see that it is the strongest wills that can manifest their ideas, visions, and projects in the “real” world.

Furthermore, Evola divides the Will into two categories: the spontaneious will and creative will. The former is unconscious, so it both deterministic and random like Schopenhauer’s depiction of the Will. This is the condition of the natural man, who is asleep to life. The awakened higher man uses his will consciously and with purpose.

Valentin Tomberg, in Covenant of the Heart breaks it down this way:

• Matter is concentrated Energy
• Energy is concentrated Will
• Thinking (the idea) and Feeling (intensity) underly Will

This is consistent with Swedenborg’s teaching that thought is transformative, though it is the intensity of the thought that determines the speed of transformation.

What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.

~ Joseph de Maistre

My principles are only those that prior to the French revolution, every well born person considered healthy and normal.

~ Julius Evola

At at time when the right is in a state of confusion, we witness many attempts at its definition. The term “conservative”, with all is vaious qualifications don’t satisfy. But “right” is vague, meaning little more than “not left”, despite attempts to define a “new right”, or an “alternative right”, as though there is a mainstream right.

No, the correct term is “counter-revolution”, that is, the restoration of order that every succeeding revolution has sought to undermine. As Evola points out, at one time every well born man was “on the right”, so the distinction was hardly necessary until the aftermath of the French revolution.

I have prepared a little quiz for readers to determine if they are on the side of the revolution or on the counter-revolution. For each position in the table below, circle either the option on the left, or the one on the right. Score 5 points for every circle on the right column. Score 0 points if you circle any option on the left. Your score indicates how healthy an normal is your point of view. If you circled any on the left, the count will indicate whether you are in the revolutionary vanguard or merely a useful idiot.

Guenon tells us in “Symbols of Sacred Science” that the Horse represents the Sun or Agni, and hence is a solar symbol. He also makes reference to this passage from Revelation 19:14-15: “And the armies that are in heaven followed him [Christ] on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goes a sharp two-edged sword, that with it, he may strike the nations.” Similarly, according the the Puranas, Kalki, the final avatar, will also come riding on a white horse at the end of the Kali Yuga, wielding a sword, to punish the nations.

On a more prosaic note, in pre-industrial times, the horse signified mobility (it was the quickest way to get around), abundance (it was costly to maintain a horse and develop skills in horsemanship), and power (the horse was effective in battle). Ramon Lull called the horse the “most noble of beasts”.

Ramon Lull is an interesting figure in the history of Chivalry. He was a knight born to wealth, who lived a rather dissolute life. Later in life, he had a “conversion” and he devoted his life to philosophy and God. His biographer claimed that Lull was a Hermeticist, a judgment that is certainly compatible with his written works. In “Perspectives on Initiation”, Guenon tells us:

Within a single organization, a kind of double hierarchy can exist, especially when the apparent leaders are themselves unaware of any link to a spiritual center. In such cases there may exist beside the visible hierarchy made up by those apparent leaders, an invisible hierarchy of which the members may not fulfil any ‘official’ function but who, by their presence alone, nonetheless assure an effective liaison with this center. In the more exterior organizations these representatives of the spiritual centers obviously need not reveal themselves as such …

Interestingly enough, these “invisible” spiritual leaders often worked as jugglers and horse traders. One can certainly speculate that Lull came into contact with one of these so-called horse traders, from whom he learned Hermetic science.

Finally, this is what Lull wrote about the Knight’s horse in his “Book of Knighthood and Chivalry”, and instruction manual for young knights written in his later years:

The Knight’s Horse: Noblesse of Courage

To a knight is given a horse, and also a courser to signify noblesse of courage. And because he is well horsed and high is why he may be seen to be free from fear. And that is the significance, that he ought to be made ready to do all that which behooves the order of chivalry more than another man would. To a horse is given a bridle. And the reigns of the bridle are given to the hands of a knight because the knight may at his own will hold the course the horse and refrain him. And this signifies that the knight ought to refrain his tongue, and hold that he speaks neither foul nor false. And it signifies that he ought to refrain his hands, that he gives not so much that he is suffrous and needy. And that he begs or asks not; nor ought he be so hardy that in his hardiness he has reason and temperance.

Some notes from reading the highly recommended history of medieval knighthood Chivalry by Maurice Keen. Since Medieval Europe was the last great Traditional Aryan civilisation, it is well worth the study. As it is recent in time to us, we can trace its origins and development directly from the sources, without the need to rely on ancient myths. In particular, the system of chivalry developed out of earlier Roman and Germanic traditions. The intellectual foundations of chivalry can be traced directly to their understanding, and often creative re-interpretations, of Roman, Greek, and Trojan warriors, such as Hector, Alexander, Scipio, Julius Caesar, and Vegetius.

On the self-development of the Kshatriya caste. Classical ethics, classical jurisprudence and classical philosophy, though by no means irreconcilable with Christian thought and exercising a powerful influence upon it, belonged to a pre-Christian tradition. Chivalry was thus reminded, forcefully, of the separation of the origins of its institutions from those of the priesthood, and of the original independence of its function – within the broad framework of divine providence – from the priestly one.

A knight was expected to be courteous, loyal, nobly spoken, well clad, generous, sincere, humble, truthful, and valiant. He protected the weak, defended the faith, had a taste for adventure, and composed poems for his lady love.We can see the beginning of sports leagues in the Medieval tournaments, as they pitted one township or region against another and flew their own colours. The knights would contend for fame and fortune, although defeat could bring death, serious injury, or financial ruin. The aristocracy would “scout” for the best knights to recruit for their own militias. If a knight lost a joust in a contest, he could expect to lose his horse to his opponent. He might also be captured by the victor and held for ransom. And we think football players are tough guys.The women admired their knights and inspired them to greater deeds. Some even pledged to marry the victors. Yes, it is true, in those days that was considered a reward, especially since it often meant “marrying up” in class. There were three things that “mattered” to the knight of the Middle Ages: the matter of Britain, the matter of France, and the matter of Rome. These matters were the subject matter for the epic poems of the era. The “matter of Britain” relates to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The “matter of France” is about Emperor Charlemagne and his paladins. The “matter of Rome” concerns the ancient Roman empire encompassing, also, ancient Troy and Greece. Compare that to what “matters” to today’s “man”. Boucicaut was a knight inspired by love of his lady. He exercised regularly to keep fit. He could do a somersault in full armour, vault armed onto his horse, and climb up the reverse side of ladder in armour, using only his hands. Boucicaut learned from Vegetius, Scipio, and Demosthenes. He permitted no loose women around the camp, deplored drunkenness, and was a stern discipliarian. He learned eloquence to rouse his men to action and to explain himself to subject people.

Caste refers to the division of society into functional and hierarchical classes reflecting the different characteristics of human individuals. “Caste” is often exclusively associated with the societal divisions of Hindu India, although the word originally referred to the feudal system in Portugal. Furthermore, George Dumezil documented the caste structure of Traditional Indo-European societies from India to Ireland.

In keeping with Guenon’s and Evola’s usage, we will usually refer to the Hindu names of the castes. The Brahmin caste refers to those who are oriented to transcendent reality; their function is to maintain spiritual authority and ensure the conservation and transmission of traditional doctrine. The Kshatriyas consist of the ruling and warrior class. The Vaishyas comprise the productive elements of society. Finally, there is the mass, or Shudra caste, and beyond them the outcastes, which may be slaves, foreigners, or others inhabiting the land, yet outside the societal bounds. This system was last seen in the West during the Middle Ages where the clergy corresponded to the Brahmins, the nobility to the Kshatriyas, the third-estate to the Vaishyas, and the serfs to the Shudras.

Evola ties the notion of castes to aryanity, or the capacity to be twice born.

In a specific sense, “Aryan” was essentially a designation of caste: it referred collectively to the whole of the three higher castes (spiritual leaders, warrior aristocracy, and “heads of families” or landowners with authority over a certain group related by blood) in their opposition to the fourth caste of the Shudra – today, perhaps, we would say the proletarian masses.

Julius Evola, “Sintesi di dottrina della razza”

Although the Brahmins are the highest caste, they do not rule by power, but rather by moral authority. They enunciate the transcendent principles that rule the society. The Kshatriyas have the political power. Their role is to apply the principles to specific circumstances. They derive their authority from the Brahmins; in return, they provide a safe and stable milieu for the Brahmins to do their own work.

Due to their inherent differences, the different castes experience spirituality in different ways; the system or religion needs to be broad enough to accommodate the different perspectives. The Brahmins are oriented toward super-human states and apply themselves, in their personal practice, to the realization of final Deliverance.

The path of the Kshatriyas is more devotional or bhakti, that is, it is more emotional than the intellectual path of the Brahmin. The Kshatriya is interested in developing the highest potentials of the human state. The Vaishya is interested in moral stability, the preservation of property, and the maintenance of family and clan loyalties. The Shudras believe anything; however, whenever the caste system is weakened, they turn to atheism, since hierarchical structure is a reflection of divine order.

In a Traditional, hierarchically organized society, the religious form is regulated by the true spiritual authority, or Brahmins. Since the Medieval period, there have been a succession of revolts against this authority by each lower caste, until we have reached our current state which is ruled by functional atheism and materialism.

The would-be initiate must bring with him a certain measure of courage and fealessness. He must positively go out of his way to find opportunities for developing these virtues. His training should provide for their systematic cultivation. In this respect, life itself is a good school — possibly the best school. The student must learn to look danger calmly in the face and try to overcome difficulties unswervingly.For instance, when in some peril, he must swiftly come to the conviction that fear is of no possible use: I must not feel afraid; I must only think of what is to be done. And he must improve to the extent of feeling, upon occasions which formerly inspired him with fear, that to be frightened, to be disheartened, are things that are out of the question as far as his own inmost self is concerned. By self-discipline in this direction, quite definite qualities are developed which are necessary for initiation into the higher mysteries.

~ Rudolph Steiner, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”

In “Sintesi di dottrina della razza” (Synthesis of Racial Doctrine), Evola included several pages of photographs illustrating various aspects of Aryan men. He included not one, but two, photos of Rudolph Steiner with this caption. Among the race of the nordic-dinaric body type, we see the solar element differentiating itself, predominantly in the “ascetic” sense … The physical traits give the sense of a condition of illumination and a power of spiritual penetration.

I had a different topic in mind, but I decided to address this thoughtful comment first:

I think the issue some take with Christianity lies in the third of your
criteria. The Christian religion seems to have been the fountainhead of a large number of subversive movements – though even as I write this I can anticipate your response will be that Christianity was Judaized. Well, fair enough, but wasn’t it also paganized in an earlier period? It seems to me that what is of most value in historical Christianity is what is least essentially Christian about it.

We need to look at this from the point of view of Tradition and not in a partisan way. The third criterion is this: “Does the exterior form provide a safe haven within which the elite can accomplish their tasks?” Even though the post made no reference to Christianity, the comment nevertheless brought it up.

As a word “Christianity” encompasses a long period of history and and too many movements, and yes, most of them subversive. See we are not nominalists, we need to specify something with a determinate content. As a side note, it should be pointed out that the subversive movements are nomilinist, either explicitly or implicitly. For the background to this, I recommend Ideas Have Consequences

So as far as I am concerned, we should only be concerned about the “Religion of the Middle Ages” (ROTMA). Some, such as Maurras and Comte regarded it as a form of paganism and Evola considered that some “rectifications” were made to make it near pagan. Guenon referred to it as Catholicism, but regarded it — both esoterically and esoterically — as an extension of Classical Rome, not of Jerusalem. These are the assumptions of the latter two expounders of Tradition:

1. The Middle Ages represented a civilization of the Traditional type
2. The end began with the Renaissance and Reformation
3. There is no longer a Traditional religion in the West

So the third point is moot; there exists in the West no Traditional religion readily available, whether Christian or pagan. If this point were the only issue in dispute, it could be intelligently discussed. Unfortunately, discussion is replaced with partisanship, with the most absurd and irrelevant arguments made against Christianity. These come straight from the enemies of the West, so you have to wonder if they are really false flag operations. At some point we can address some of them.

It is not advisable to throw away the accomplishments of the west, described by Donoso Cortesso quickly. Because of the ROTMA, Europe had spiritual unity. A knight could travel from Portugal to Poland and encounter the same religion and the same code of chivalry. The attempts nowadays to create a unity based on “whiteness” or “genetic similarity” are ludicrous and doomed to failure.

If we reject ROTMA out of hand, then we will miss out on what was able to establish a continental unity and Traditional society. Guenon regarded Hermeticism as the esoteric core of ROTMA; this is the perspecitve of the Brahmin. We can also point to the chivalric orders to get the perspective of the kshatriya. Everything said deserves much deeper treatment, and that will be forthcoming.

So did Guenon “convert”? In the article “Conversions”, included in the collection “Initiation and Spiritual Realization”, he explains that the word can be taken in two totally different senses. The first is an “intellectual metaphrphosis”, an “interior transformation”, metanoia, or “change of nous” that indicates the “conscious passage of the ordinary and individual mind, normally turned toward sensible things, to its superior transposition.” This is an interior transformation and has nothing to do with what is commonly called a religious conversion, nor is it the exterior passage from one religious form to another.

As for the latter type of conversion, Guenon offers this explanation, apparently in light of his own seeming exterior conversion: “those who, for reasons of an esoteric an initiatic order, adopt a traditional form different form that to which they would seem to be linked by their origin [do this] either because their native tradition provides them with not possibility of an esoteric order, or because their chose tradition give them a foundation that is more appropriate to their nature, and consequently more favorable to their spiritual work.”

“Contrary to what takes place in ‘conversion’, nothing here implies the attribution of the superiority of one traditional form over another. It is merely a question of what one might call reasons of spiritual expediency, which is altogether different from simple individual ‘preference’.”

So we see that for the elite, it is the intellectual conversion that is important. The outer form is secondary. Therefore, the various attempts to recover lost forms for their own sake or to critique living forms based solely on their exteriority are misguided. The criteria are these:

1. Is the form rich and varied enough to incorporate true metaphysical teachings?
2. Is the exterior form able to capture the allegiance of the general population, given their various capacities to understand?
3. Does the exterior form provide a safe haven within which the elite can accomplish their tasks?

Tradition, in the Guenonian sense, has nothing to do with the past in itself. Just because it happened yesterday does not make it therefore traditional. And it is not a reaction against modernity, nor a nostalgia for the past. Its expression today may appear that way, but that is because a Traditional path either no longer exists in the West, or is accessible only to a few.

The method of Tradition has nothing at all to do with the study of comparative religion. One can be a so-called “Traditionalist” within the confines of one’s own religion alone, without any detailed knowledge of any other religion whatsoever. As a matter of fact, that is the way it has been for most of history, recorded and unrecorded. So it is not a process of somehow “distilling” the core teachings of several religions to end up with something remarkable. I don’t see what that even entails or how it could be accomplished, since it implies one can somehow have the inside (”esoteric”) without an outside (”exoteric”). Even worse, is syncretisim, that is, combining all the religions into some incompatible stew.

So that brings us to the next item: the relationship between the esoteric and exoteric sides of a religious tradition. In “The Esoterism of Dante”, Guenon responds to the question of whether Dante was Christian or pagan. Guenon explains: “we do not think that such a point of view is necessary, for true esoterism is something completely different from outward religions, and if it has some relationship with it, this can only be insofar as it finds a symbolic mode of expression in religious forms. Moreover, it matters little whether these forms be of this or that religion, since what is involved is the essential doctrinal unity concealed beneath their apparent diversity.”

So this brings us to the crux of the matter, which few people seem to find palatable: “in the past, initiates participated in all forms of worship, following the customs established in whatever country they happened to be.” So let us make clear the necessary corollaries that follow from this.

Esoterism is neither pagan nor Christian. So whoever – and I have met many – believes that by rejecting Christianity and reverting to some pagan practice, whether Greek, Roman, or Germanic, he therefore is coming closer to Tradition, then he is quite mistaken. Guenon again: “The ancient mysteries were not paganism, but were superimposed upon it. In the same way there were in the Middle Ages some organizations of an initiatic, and not religious, character, but which took Catholicism as their base.”

Since Catholicism has been, at least until recently, the Traditional form of worship in Europe, then we would expect Traditionalists to find their home there. The idea that we can “pick and choose” our religion comes from a modernist mindset and is alien to the Traditionalist. Unfortunately, Catholicism has lost much of its Traditional character, leaving Traditionalists without solid ground in the West; reenacting the lost forms of ancient paganisms is an even worse option.

Nietzsche has done as much as anyone in undermining the Traditional spiritual roots of Western man in his division of religion into life-denying as exemplified in Christianity and life-affirming as exemplified in Paganism. The destruction of Christianity has not led to a life-affirming paganism, but rather to a paganism that limits itself to the satisfaction of biological needs. As was shown in a previous post, there was much less difference between the Christian and the Pagan elites (whatever the masses may have believed). The dichotomy proposed by Nietzsche is useless; the spirituality of the elite has always been life-transcending.

It is likely that Nietzsche borrowed this concept from his “educator” Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer took the opposite position from Nietzsche; within the context of his philosophical pessimism, Schopenhauer praised the life-denying religions at the expense of the life-affirming. Among the former, he included the religion of the Upanishads, Buddhism, and Christian mysticism, particularly in its Neoplatonic form. Clearly, this not only ties Christianity to the Eastern religions, but also to the most advanced manifestations of Classical Greek and Roman paganism. I believe that in this matter, Schopenhauer is a better psychologist than Nietzsche.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer criticizes Judaism as a life-affirming religion. This is hard to deny, since Judaism does not have all those other-worldly elements that Nietzsche attributes to Christianity. It is also more interested in material benefits than is Christianity. So all the anti-Semites who lean on Nietzsche for their anti-Christian attitudes are inadvertently promoting Judaism, and are totally missing the continuity between the Classical Pagan civilization and the Christian Middle Ages.