A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace. ~ Confucius Men employ their reason to defend conclusions arrived at by reason, but conclusions arrived at by the passions are defended by the passions. ~ Benedict de Spinoza Realizing that the drug culture was no … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Letter from Evola to Carl Schmitt (I)
Among the 19,000 pieces of correspondence found in Carl Schmitt’s personal library, there were eight letters from Julius Evola over a period of several years. There were none found in the opposite direction. From the letters, it is obvious that Evola was very interested in Schmitt’s book on Donoso Cortes, … Continue reading
Guenon and Islam
Regarding Rene Guenon’s ultimate decision to follow a Sufi path, he wrote: 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 … Continue reading
Entheogens
The use of mind-altering drugs has been associated with various mystical, magical, and shamanic rites. This is very appealing to the modern mind which is impressed by technological and materialistic explanations. Entheogens, or drug use for allegedly spiritual purposes, began to be widespread in the 1960s following the discovery of … Continue reading
The Deception of the New Age
Because of time constraints, Alexander Shepard was unable to post this piece himself, but has given us permission to reproduce his notes on the New Age as counter tradition. Rene Guenon writes of it: As for the counter tradition, we can still only see the preliminary signs of it, in … Continue reading
Letters from Guenon to Guido de Giorgio (I)
This is the first of Rene Guenon‘s letters to Guido de Giorgio . It shows how things were done prior to Internet blogs and e-mail. The letters were written in French; Guenon was not fluent enough in Italian to write in that language. The criticism of Evola is pretty severe, … Continue reading
The Correspondence Project
Beginning tonight, on on successive Mondays, we plan to make available selected correspondence between the various men of tradition. Our initial efforts will include letters from Rene Guenon to Guido de Giorgio (the letters in the opposite direction are missing) as well as the exchanges between Mircea Eliade and Julius … Continue reading
Tradition & the General Law
Before beginning this post, several definitions of terms peculiar to Boris Mouravieff’s work: “A Influences” : sensate pressures and resulting spiritual tendencies, along with the cosmic hierarchies which keep them in “tutelage” (see St. Paul in Galatians 4) “General Law“: the karma which keeps the men in bondage to the … Continue reading
Changing of the Guard
The third dimension of history understood as the impact of imaginal world on human history. Wars, migrations, expansions, conversions, and so on, need to be seen in the light of this higher dimension, above and beyond the material, biological, economic, and ideological causes. We have seen that Julius Evola attributes … Continue reading
The Tangible Immediacy of the Present
This is final section of an article by Guido de Giorgio, titled The Instant and Eternity, first published in Diorama Filosofico in 1939. How many of Dante’s admirers are there who are not content in glorifying his verses or expression—something absolutely exterior and superficial—but who in applying the doctrine, the … Continue reading