This is the concluding part of the chapter on the Workers from La Tradizione Romana [The Roman Tradition] by Guido De Giorgio.
Even those who say and believe they adhere to a tradition have accepted science as the expression of an achievement that, according to them, would not collide with the truths of the divine order; more impure and blind than the others, they implicitly repudiate every spirituality and show they do not know the fundamentals of sacred science: this is exclusive of every knowledge that does not replace the elements of creation in the circularity of dependence by a unique center of which they are only appearances. Men, accustomed to the separative visions of things, in considering elements and forces, distanced themselves from integrative contemplation for which everything loses precisely that material and determined consistency that is the foundation of scientific investigation. Science rises when traditional knowledge no longer succeeds in maintaining supremacy through the disintegration of its own unity: philosophy, also secular, has substituted for sacred wisdom.
It is a fateful cycle that is fulfilled and whose origins must be traced back to the very nature and the frame of mind of the people of the West incapable of maintaining intact the traditional solidarity in order for them to be brought to the exteriority of the active life. With the progressive dimming of sacred motifs secular motifs arose and the attainments that man was no longer able to accomplish in the domain of the supersensible were limited to those that were easy and exterior for a childish craving for visible concreteness. While the creative process starts from the internal to the external, the scientific process comes from the external, which does not exist as such, to a purely nonexistent and ideal internal subordinated to that which does not exist except as depending on appearance: hence the scientific hypothesis claims to be the standard of method.
The current condition of humanity and antitraditional blooming are due in great part to science, to the scientific spirit, but also to philosophy that, with science, has substituted for sacred science. Philosophy, subordinated to Revelation, is a preparatory and necessary stage to higher truths that must be integrated, experienced, in order to be known: without revelation, it is sterile and false and is transformed into veritable diverting nonsense. Philosophy is based exclusively on reason, which presupposes a revelatory light in order to be guided to truly decisive ends be it only in the theoretical sense: isolated from this, it cannot find any absolute point of reference, because the absolute is beyond reason and beyond man in the sense that these cannot approach it unless ceasing to be it, which does not prevent them from passing through his terrestrial existence, as everyone will easily be able to convince himself considering that Ascetics and the Saints, those, i.e., those who from this life have reached a permanent state of beatific vision that is fulfilled in eternity, certainly not able to be realized within the limits of time and space. Philosophy is a preparation to sacred science and can constitute its theoretic side only if it is subordinated to it, because otherwise it is nothing: it would not even be of interest to show how and why, from the Renaissance on, modern thought unwound following a direction that is ever more antitraditional in order to be liberated from sacred science that necessarily must precede it because it is focused and productive.
To what extent can Pascal’s famous phrase[1] suffice to denounce the incongruity and inadequacy of the god of the philosophers and poets. Divine reality is revealed and no philosophy, if it remains such, can realize it: this possibility is to be excluded in an absolute way: all the acrobatics of human reason will never succeed in grasping that which, being simple, original, and absolute, offers itself from itself through direct realization and cannot actualize itself through a discursive process that is only direct and mediated. Moreover, after what has been said, in the domain of divine unity there is only divine unity itself and what is human is not excluded from it as simply nonexistent, or, better said, as existing only as long as ignorance lasts: this dispelled, and sacred science tends precisely to that, true and proper realization is initiated that, as unitary and passing beyond what is produced and generated, can rigorously be called metaphysical and metarational. We could also call it “intuition” although no psychological quality is given to this term: the psyche in fact is below the spirit, the intellect, the heart—these three terms denoting, under three aspects, the same type of integrative activity of the divine. The spirit expresses the direct integration whose absolute type is the divine breath, the intellect expresses the cognitive permeation, the heart expresses radiant receptivity: by means of the first, one is elevated, with the second, absorbed, in the third, one is welcomed and realizes himself. Representing here a vertical axis, the spirit is the peak, the intellect the base, the heart the center that gathers the two extreme points and extends them, prolonging them horizontally, hence the Cross as radiant symbol of universality and unifying centrality.
No one will dare assert that philosophy can be elevated to this sphere which is of an integrally revelatory order because it is superhuman in the absolute sense of the word. These truths constitute exactly the traditional body, the sacred science, whose transmission happened in a divine way: this knowledge is the true knowledge for the absoluteness and legitimacy of the efforts accomplished in the same axis of truth.
If the Priests are the depositories of it, all men, even the Workers, must extend themselves by giving to their activity a sacred intention and not considering it as the pure satisfaction of their needs and desires. These cannot be, in the seat the truth, distinct in the lower and higher, material or spiritual, in the absolutely erroneous meaning that the moderns give to the last term when they apply it to that which is called the cultural environment. Culture is a profane thing and does not come close to true spirituality: we admit that it perfects the sensibility and develops the intelligence, but it rests completely outside of that which is sacred and real precisely because it is sacred. It is something empty and superficial and is reduced to a vision of life where all the prejudices of the modern era flow into each other, from so-called historicity to linguistics, all exterior sciences that leave intact the domain of the true reality which evades any separative analysis and false constructive synthesis. As behind the Forms there are Rhythms, so behind the visible there is the invisible and as modern sciences stop only at what is expressed but not at that which expresses. Actually, cultural prejudice contributed to the current decline with a dense network of loci communes [commonplaces] which is applied indiscriminately to the present and the past, all being considered sub specie alteritatis in its own function and not as the reflection of a quid that eludes exterior analysis. This is not the place to insist on modern deviations which have behind them a centuries-old preparation which led to the current madness. Nevertheless many symptoms of nausea, fatigue, and glut bring hope that a radical change can still be produced in a progressive way and without too violent perturbations. This rectification can and must happen from the inside to the outside, i.e., it is necessary that the orientation of thought changes and determines the progressive return to normality: let us say “return” meaning especially a restoration of the traditional spirit because the exterior forms can never be reproduced; the cycles do not renew themselves and do not return backwards, repeating developments already accomplished. Nor is it possible to predict how this traditional return will happen if first it is not really initiated with stable foundations and with roots that sink into the very core of the integrally restored traditional unity.
The sad anomalies of current life, the discomfort of individuals and peoples, all the previous misunderstandings serious in themselves but fueled by freedom granted with impunity to those who are not worthy of it, the impoverishment, the progressive cover-up of existence, the vanity of facts, the lack of a secure direction capable of satisfying not only the small needs of small men, but above all the needs of integral man in his true revelatory function of the divine essence—all that brings hope that an awakening can and must be accomplished provided that the pauci optimi, conscious of this necessity, does not let itself be submerged by the ignorance of the anonymous and profane crowd.
But if we start from the divine truth as the basis of orientation and we restore the axis of convergence integrally, an endeavor to which the Priests and the Warriors must contribute to, consciously united as being truly the sustainers of tradition, it unites them because the former contemplate and by contemplating realize, the latter because they liberate activity from its contingent utilitarian character developing it in protective adherence to what is sanctified in the Temple through the maintenance of the sacred deposit, then truly the last caste, which is the most numerous and constitutes the great mass, will also reclaim the Sacred Path where every feeling, symbol of a higher purpose, is established in a single direction like a river from a thousand ripples contained within the same banks, and will be reconstituted, with the fascification of all the energies turned to a single end, the new trunk on the old roots which are still alive and ready to regerminate because revived from the eternal breath of God.
[1] God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars.
Michael, the three castes that Guido De Giorgio wrote about should be “twice born” as they still are in India AFAIK. Not so long ago in Europe, the priests obviously had their orders, the nobility would probably belong to some order of chivalry, and the workers had their guilds.
This is a bit off topic but related since de Giorgio is talking the three orders. To what extent is membership in one of the orders by birth? Evola talks about the priestly caste being twice born, but that would mean that some of the upper caste (or the priests or nobility) are not really of that order if they are not initiates. I think of the nobility of today and it does not seem that they are particularly noble except for birth.
If being twice born is the criteria, then who makes the call?
I apologize if this has already been answered elsewhere.
This is fabulous; particularly the passage on the cross being the symbol of heart, intellect, & spirit united. I think there are many “workers” who know something is wrong, & are working, with the hope that the Priests & Warriors will begin to act in time.