The premise from which the Buddhist Doctrine of Awakening starts is the destruction of the demon of dialectics; the renunciation of the various constructions of thought and speculation which are simply an expression of opinion, and of the profusion of theories, which are projections of a fundamental restlessness in which a mind that has not yet found itself its own principle seeks for support.
~ Julius Evola, The Doctrine of Awakening
This premise is the exact opposite of what people believe. They believe in the search for the right opinion, the correct view, the salvific belief. The purpose of this search is to do the impossible: to build a castle in the air. The man engaged in this quest is unaware of this elementary thesis:
We accept the proofs of Hume, Kant, Herbert Spencer, Fuller, and others of this thesis: The Ratiocinative Faculty or Reason of Man contains in its essential nature an element of self-contradiction.
~ Aleister Crowley, Equinox Vol 1 No 2
To this we would add, from Goedel: if a system of thought contains no self-contradiction, then it is incomplete.
While for Beings in the human state, there is necessarily a perspective (see Hermit Crabs and Nietzsche), it is equally necessary to understand that it is only a perspective, something arbitrary and ephemeral, and unrelated to real knowledge, True Will, Awakening, the Solar spirit. All our opinions on politics and popular culture, our likes and dislikes, our style or dress, are all equally arbitrary and stand as obstacles to Awakening.
Opinion, O disciples, is a disease; opinion is a tumour; opinion is a sore. He who has overcome all opinions, O disciples, is called a saint, one who knows. (Majjhima-nikaya 2:38)
Crowley once proposed an interesting exercise, which we adapt. For one year, be a political liberal. Subscribe to their journals, read their web sites, attend their rallies. The following year, read conservative journals, watch their networks, participate in their demonstrations. Try to understand the worldviews of each, how that affects their opinions on issues, and blinds them to deeper truths. The same could be done with attitudes toward pop cultures or personal styles. Such exercises will loosen the hold that opinions have over us; they will give us more options for action; they will begin the process of awakening our consciousness from the turgidity of ordinary life.
Man has two aspects: his essence and his personality. His essence is who he truly is, what he is born with, beyond the superficialities of opinion. Personality is what accrues to him during his life, his opinions and imaginings, or “social constructs”. You will find that what is essential and what is a social construct are polar opposites from what is commonly believed.
“Do I contradict myself? I embrace multitudes.” (Walt Whitman) Go ahead, embrace multitudes. Only thought can contradict itself, “I” cannot.
Julius Evola advocated something he called the “race of the spirit”, which is not caused by or the result of any biological process or genetic makeup. These races of the spirit do not correspond to what we would recognize as races. Actually, since Spirit is free, the race of the spirit is not a given, but must be willed. The spiritual race most important to Evola is the Solar race. Now, perhaps, not every man is capable of reaching that state, so at best it can exist only virtually, as a possibility, and not necessarily in actuality.
Alchemically, Solarity is represented by Gold. The path to solarity is given in the piece titled “The Hermetic Caduceus and the Miriror” by Abraxas from “Introduction to Magic” . It starts off with this claim:
Every teaching of ours is illusory until it is translated into a practice and an action.
This distinguishes Hermetic philosophy from academic philosophy. It is not sufficient to know. One must also will and dare. This is what makes the ideas actual.
Abraxas tells us that it is necessary to firmly and actively establish a new quality, by becoming the master of a part of your life. The path to becoming one among the Solar race involves:
Become innerly detached from yourself and from what surrounds you; maintain a sober, effortless, neutral, and well-balanced lifestyle, without excesses. Sleep only as needed and eat little.
Let your body be whole, calm, harmonized. Temper your soul with the power that is in you; cleanse it from impulsiveness, passions, restlessness, and then stabilize it and amalgamate it with your body.
Other beings do not exist. Do not let their actions, thoughts, or judgments affect you, no matter what they are.
Make sure that nothing will secretly creep into you: watch over everything that comes from the outside and that emerges from the unexplored depths of your consciousness. Observe all things in silence with your mind and remain unperturbed, stopping every judgment with a firm hand.
If passions bother you, do not react or become perturbed. Bring them deliberately to satisfaction, and then get rid of them.
Grow in this direction until you are able to realize the frivolity, uselessness, and the threat of every thought, so that your mind, too, may slowly calm down and silently crouch at your feet.
In this way you can slowly build up a strength inside you, similar to a lord whose glance instills silence, respect, or confusion in the servants around him. THIS IS OUR GOLD.
The characteristic mark of minds of the first rank is the immediacy of all their judgments. Everything they produce is the result of thinking for themselves and already in the way it is spoken everywhere announces itself as such. He who truly thinks for himself is like a monarch, in that he recognizes no one over him. His judgments, like the decisions of a monarch, arise directly from his own absolute power. He no more accepts authorities than a monarch does orders, and he acknowledges the validity of nothing he has not himself confirmed.
The type of man described above does not discard contemplation altogether and favor thoughtless or blind action, rather, he is one who’s thoughts have organized value and are elevated to the level of being. His non-acceptance of authorities does not imply that he does not recognize the possibility of someone wiser or stronger than he, but that he does not accept their judgment without first confirming their value for himself.
To be is to have the ability to both recognize oneself clearly and also to act immediately on this knowledge. This is an interdependent relationship, and one’s being can be only be discovered through insight into both of these realms.
That God is, we believe, but what God is, we experience and try to know. Of course, without belief in the reality of the object, the facts of inner religious experience are only fantasy and hallucination. But the facts of external experience are also fantasies and hallucinations if we do not believe in the reality of their objects. In both cases, experience gives only psychic facts, facts of consciousness; the objective meaning of these facts is determined by a creative act of faith.
Solovyov, like Nietzsche, saw a history of Christianity that included an eventual period of Nihilism. He disagreed with Nietzsche though, in that he believed the period after Nihilism would transition towards a revitalized Christianity that affirmed both the reality of God in a more total sense.
Abrstract thining is clearly a transitional state of mind that appears when the mind is strong enough to liberate itself from the exclusive domination of sense perception and can adopt a negative attitude toward it, but is not yet capable of grasping an idea in the fullness and integrity of its actual objective being, of uniting with it inwardly and essentially, and so can only touch its surface, glide over its external forms… abstract thinking, deprived of its proper content, must serve either as an abbreviation of sense perception or as an anticipation of intellectual intution.
Solovyov recognizes that many Christians during his time had developed an abstract attitude towards God. To put it in a Platonic sense, they affirmed God in an ideal sense, of ruler of the higher world of forms and Heaven, and as the purest and most high idea, but he sees them as losing sight of the other side of God’s principle. While they see God in the way mentioned and recognize him to have personal being, they have lost sight of God’s absolutness in the fullest possible sense, as the world substance that unites all life into absolute unity. While some accuse such a view as Pantheism, Solovyov points out that this is not the case because Pantheists deny the other side of God as a person with his own will, while his view affirms both.
Part of the Western tendency to romanticize Eastern traditions is that we see them only in terms of their ideal. Many Westerners think of Tibet or China or India as an idyllic land of sages, because they have studied some Asian philosophy and spirituality, and assume that the land and people which produced it actually lives up to the ideals it expresses.
In contrast, they see Christianity not in terms of its ideal form, but in terms of how it actually functions in the world, because we have much more actual exposure to it. So when these Westerners think of Buddhism, Hinduism, or Taoism, they think of enlightened beings, but when they think of Christianity, they think of boring church services, kooky televangelists, and pedophile priest scandals.
One wonders if Christian converts in Asia idealize Christianity in the same way that Westerners idealize Asian traditions.
The reality of one tradition can never compare to the ideal of another. All living traditions contain examples of human folly and imperfection, as well as examples of human greatness and transcendence. To focus on only one or the other is to have an incomplete view.
Instead, our approach to studying traditions should be neither the romanticism of the new age believer, nor the skepticism of the academic debunker, but should contain both the openness of the former, and the discernment of the latter.
To some extent, the belief that there must be somewhere where human beings do and are better than here is an expression of the intuition that the divine is real, and that we ourselves can be better. In the world of Tradition, this intuition and longing found expression in the idea of a better world in the ancient past, in the coming future, or in another realm. This conveyed the idea that in order to get to or restore that place, work is necessary. But in the modern world, many people cannot think outside of earthly geography, and so this longing is instead projected onto foreign lands, and people’s idea of working towards spiritual growth is saving for a plane ticket to India. The recent film The Darjeeling Limited portrayed several Americans who hold this delusional belief.
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743 – 1795) was the alias of the hermeticist Giuseppe Balsamo, a Sicilian by birth. He led a remarkable life by earthly standards, the details of which &mdash whether factual or fanciful — can be found on Wikipedia. Like other Hermeticists of the time, he was eventually put in prison for heresy, where he died.
However, we are more interested in his inner state, not the outward conditions of his life. Julius Evola quotes this passage written by Cagliotro:
I belong neither to any century nor to any particular place; my spiritual being lives its eternal existence outside time and space. When I immerse myself in thought I go back through the Ages. When I extend my spirit to a world existing far from anything you perceive, I can change myself into whatever I wish. Participating consciously in absolute being, I regulate my action according to my surroundings. My country is wherever I happen to set foot at the moment … I am that which is … free and master of life. There are beings who no longer possess guardian angels: I am one of those.
In his role as trickster, Cagliostro was able to travel and obey an intention. Guenon remarked that initiates often traveled under the guise of jugglers or horse traders, something we documented in The Symbolism of the Horse.
If Cagliostro’s claims about himself are true, we can note the following:
He is aware of himself as transcendent spirit
“Going back through the ages” may refer to knowledge of previous yugas.
By “regulating his actions according to his surroundings, he is engaging in what Gurdjieff called “conscious acting”.
“Master of life” refers to the correct ordering of spirit over soul over body, something mentioned by Evola on many occasions.
By having no “guardian angel”, he would mean that he has reached higher states of consciousness, which, according to Guenon, are equivalent to angels.
There is unfortunately not a lot of music of this genre. Reminiscent of Gregorian Chant but with Heathen themes, Lord Wind is a musical project of the influential Rob Darken Fudali, who is especially renowned for his contributions to many Metal bands.
Here is Lord Wind’s contribution to a “Tribute to Evola” CD. Please disregard the nonsense at the beginning:
When people approach spiritual ideas, they typically have preconceived notions of what an enlightened being or master should be like. Perhaps they expect someone to dress a certain way, speak in a sentimental manner, hold liberal political views, or demonstrate great powers over the material world. These notions will either attract them to the legion of charismatic gurus who know how to play the con game, or cause them to reject those nondescript types, who really do have a higher level of understanding. Evola addresses this topic in the final chapter of The Hermetic Tradition.
There are two things to keep in mind.
As Evola points out, the magus or initiate is not at all interested in manifesting unusual phenomena in order to astonish, amaze or terrify. From his perspective, there is simply no point to it.
If an ordinary person already knows how an initiate should act and comport himself, then what sets the two apart? The magus has an understanding of the world that the uninitiated do not, and that needs be reflected in many ways.
Ordinary people bristle when they hear this, because they are egalitarians at heart, either explicitly or implicitly. Overt egalitarians on the left consider the initiate to be nothing more than an idealized version of themselves; hence, rather than being challenged by the initiate, they instead find confirmation in their own beliefs. Thus their egalitarianism is protected.
Those on the so-called right reject out-of-hand any claims to occult knowledge. They may claim to rely on the authority of reason, and trust in science, materialism, genetics or so on. The alternative is to accept a worldview based on faith in place of a genuine gnosis or knowledge. Evola addresses the latter two options in “Those who know and those who believe” from Pagan Imperialism.
In opposition to preconceived notions, the initiate will appear quite ordinary. The difference lies in their interiority, which the uninitiated are incapable of recognizing. Evola offers this portrayal of the initiate.
The initiate is an occult being and his path is neither visible nor penetrable. He is elusive, not to be pigeonholed. He arrives from the direction contrary to that towards which all gazes are fixed and takes the most natural seeming vehicle for his supernatural action. He may be an intimate friend, companion, or lover; he may be sure of possessing all your heart and confidence. But he will always be something different, other than what he lets be known. We will perceive this “other” only when we have penetrated his domain. And then perhaps we will have the feeling of having been walking on the edge of an abyss.
Some men return to their past, so that new forces may arise for the reconquest ~ J. Evola
Par l'espace, l'univers me comprend et m'engloutit comme un point ; par la penseé, je le comprends.
~ Pascal
A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace. ~ Confucius
Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi: in interiore hominis habitat veritas. ~ St. Augustine
A man of talent is like a marksman who hits a target others cannot hit, but the man of genius is like a marksman who hits a target others cannot see. ~ Schopenhauer
To live is to change, to be perfect is to have changed often. ~ John Henry Cardinal Newman
I believe in being free, acquiring knowledge, and telling the truth. ~ H. L. Mencken
