By
Massimo Scaligero
I knew Evola at a time when almost everyone prudently distanced himself
from him: he revealed himself, by means of the journal La Torre, to be
the boldest protester of the culture of the Regime. Even though those
around him created a type of vacuum, for that reason he carried on the
attack unperturbed. That attracted my attention, even if I did not yet
understand what he was really driving at. In those days, around the
spring of 1930, I went to him despite being advised against it by
well-meaning friends: I did not want others to decide for me. At that
time telephones in the home were rare, so the appearance at someone’s
home would not have been considered an indiscretion: in case of the
absence of the person you wanted to visit, we used to leave a calling
card with the concierge.
I was curious to know the person who showed so much courage and about
whom Adriano Tilgher had spoken to me with admiration, albeit with
reservations about the content of his doctrines. I remember he called
him “the most powerful dialectician of Europe”. But that was not what
impressed me. I had yet to understand that Tilgher was referring mainly
to the dialectical battles at the Associazione per il Progresso Morale e
Religioso (Association for Moral and Religious Progress), then directed
by professor Giuseppe Puglisi, and headquartered in Piazza Nicosia
(later, it was transferred to Piazza Campicelli under the direction the
poet Raniero Nicolai) where, at the end of the conference, a debate took
place in which the usual participants included Professor John Imperato,
Professor Ernesto Quadrelli, Professor Giuseppe Palanga, sometimes
Tilgher, and, finally, Evola, who regularly beat them all with
compelling arguments and humorous barbs.
I knocked on the door of the next to top floor of Corso Vittorio 197 and
a youthful, tall, rangy character, undoubtedly older than I, opened the
door: his expression was between Buddhist and Olympic, his bearing quite
calm. Having at once intuited the meaning of my visit, or rather, lack
of one, Evola promptly met me with genuine affection and this affection
was the strength of the connection, beyond dialectics and doctrine, that
linked me to him for years.
As I wrote in my book From Yoga to the Rosicrucians, I didn’t know that
Evola had followed an esoteric path for a time and directed a group of
aspirants to initiation, although his name was familiar to me from the
journal Ignis.
I was already following my own very personal path since adolescence,
which was between Yoga and the most unrestrained thought of the
West—Nietzsche, Stirner, Bauer—but I did not like to talk about it with
anyone.
I recall that at first Evola was surprised by the meaning of my visit,
neither political, nor esoteric: as I said, at that time he was subject
to continuous attacks and intimidations. I remember that the theme of
mountains and the inner impressions of the climb, the silence and
solitude of the peaks, united us right away. In a chapter devoted to
Evola, in the book I mentioned, I outline the meaning of my relationship
with him: the encounter with a world that gave me the perception of
thought as a primordial force.
I loved Goethe and Nietzsche for that reason: not the Nietzsche of the
exaltation phase, but rather that of The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.
At that time, I dramatically felt the state of death of the thinking of
the whole culture, every expression of culture, whatever its subject, or
its political complexion: I had the impression of moving in a vast
cemetery: I came out of it every time thanks to energetic meditation,
but it was important for me to encounter, through Evola, a kind of
thinking that I secretly cultivated in myself: a thinking still capable
of life and freedom. After several years, moreover, I had to believe
that it was not so much the content of Evola’s writings which delighted
my inner self, but also feeling that content as a very personal
construction: a work of art: a work of brilliant, organic art, even when
I felt the affects—to be clear—of Tantrism of the “left Hand”.
The harmony with Evola was essentially this: the contact with a world of
forces. But this was possible because I myself carried in me this world
of forces: the recognition of their origin, however, gradually brought
about the orientation that was to carry me out of the path. But what is
not in dispute: reality is one, truths are many.
The dialogue with Evola reinforced in me the need for a distinction of
values and traditions: that was decisive for me with regard to issues
such as karma and reincarnation, the essentially Christian character of
Western alchemy, the mysteriously Christian character of the Grail, the
fundamentality of the Logos as Christ-Principle. I understood Evola’s
paganism, but I considered it only as a positive impulse of the quest
for what really was the Logos beyond all worldly expressions and beyond
what He had become in theological and ethical-political formalism.
Actually Evola is a strong medicine, a shock treatment, the application
of force without mediation: as such, he acts in those who already have
the power of mediation and just has the task of making it operative. But
if he truly realized that, he already has the principle of the Force.
Thanks to Evola, I encountered a decisive moment of my inner experience:
the feeling of liberation, which gives the image rather than knowledge
of liberation: the heroic, mythic image, not cognitive. I then had to
discover that the cognitive way was necessary for me: Evola’s way had
the cognitive appearance, but in essence it relied on the feeling of
strength, not on its reality, penetrable and comprehensible by the power
of the idea. To renounce this power of the idea, means to accept
super-nature mystically, or by faith.
In other words, we do not enter into the magical by the feeling of magic
or by the dialectic of magic, but only by virtue of its initial power in
the soul, which is ideational or imaginative power. Evola, indeed,
cannot hide a certain contempt for thinking, or for a “way of thinking”,
believing thinking as the expression of a specific sentient nature and
not of super-nature.
The ideal of the absolute individual was for him an expression of the
will sufficient in oneself: thinking indeed has nothing to do with it,
and he is right, but you cannot move away from it: nor can you willfully
experiment with thinking, which ceases to be dialectical, but
volitional. He pointed out that in yoga, essentially the strength of the
will was awakened and recovered in its magical movement, and it becomes
the flow of Kundalini.
The whole power of Evolian “persuasion” is this immediacy of the
possessed will. He refuses, as premise, thinking, the cognitive act, the
mediation of the idea: Evola always speaks about an absolute act, a
movement from which they come about, as it should be in itself magical.
It is in effect the raw material of the Work, which it is necessary to
already have: Evola attributes it to a particular inner constitution, to
belonging to a particular race of the Spirit. For me it was always clear
that it is about the meeting of the free I with its own karma: This is
the condition of the element with which a psychophysiological I covers
itself.
Nevertheless, that persuasion, so decisively expressed by Evola, was a
confirmation of my personal experience of the centrality and the
invincibility of the I: which, brought to the depths, can encounter the
Logos, His origin: Evola was not able to recognize that. I knew that the
formulation of the centrality and asceticism of the I was correct: I
appreciated Evola, because at that time I was convinced that he had
never come to talk about it so explicitly and methodologically.
Stirner’s and Nietzsche’s attempts were ultimately Hegelian-romantic:
bold offshoots of the Hegelian left, but prisoners of dialectics.
The way which I personally followed at that time was my own synthesis,
which, I believed, could not correspond to a doctrine. The term “Science
of the I” resonated pleasantly familiar with me: in fact it corresponded
to the ideal of asceticism to which I tended and to the correlative
method. This was the true help that I got from Evola: to perceive the
doctrinally justifiable asceticism of the I, independently of Tradition.
The reality of this proved to be traditional, even as it did not
correspond to any conceivable form in Tradition. In a similar way,
however, it was possible to come to see the source of this asceticism.
For a while I had the feeling of having found in Evola the master that I
was looking for, and he had indeed more than a claim.
I think I was affected more than Evola, by the disappointment of the
fact that, at a certain time, even as I was following the “way of the
I”, I was no longer able to follow his path. I could recognize in him
only a characteristically strong indicator, an individuality from
autonomy so sufficient in himself, since it does not require metanoia,
or conversion, of his own dialectic to arouse in others the feeling of
his strength through dialectic: naturally, without possibility of the
resolution of individual limits: in the end a resolute titan, whose
strength however had its foundation in himself, but he could not become
the weakness of the less autonomous disciple who is unable to find the
foundation in himself, that is, his inner path.
Along the way, I could understand my relationship with Evola even
better. Generally it happened—and it is happening—that one reads his
works and then decides to follow him. In substance it had happened to me
in a something different way: I had gone to him without reading a single
line of his: for a long time our conversations had as its theme the
mountains, nonconformity, the courage to oppose the pseudo-culture. I
kept company with a group of aggressive Transtiberine friends, that I
mobilized when he was in danger of being attacked again on the occasion
of the different causes that he had in court for lawsuits and the
aftermath of lawsuits. I remember that, at our second meeting, he lent
me Meyrink’s Golem, probably to give me the opportunity for an esoteric
connection with him; but, just flipping through the pages, I was not too
convinced of their content. In truth I did not read the book at all and
after a fortnight gave it back to Evola, avoiding telling him that I was
not interested. I noticed, however, in Evola a minimal expression of
disappointment. Later, however, I carefully read Evola and Meyrink.
The true meaning of what had driven me inwardly toward him, became clear
to me with the passing of time: it was the meeting with expert disciples
of Steiner, collaborators of Ur (although I was already connected with
Giulio Parise and Arturo Reghini through the journal Ignis), among whom
the significant and decisive one for me had to be Colazza, and the inner
encounter with the one whom I came to recognize as the Master of the new
age, Rudolf Steiner; in fact, the original edition of Ur contained
impartial appreciations of Steiner. Actually, it was not so much the
knowledge of Evola’s works that united me to him for several years, but
rather his lively, exceptionally individual, personality. Of course, I
then would examine these works line by line, before making the decision
for another path.
The meetings I had with Evola were filled with a Hermetic climate, from
which the feeling of magical forces regularly arose, something like what
I actually had from the habit from personal meditation. Or else there
were Bacchic-gastronomic meetings, based on spirited philosophy and
bucatini all’Amatriciana, but with the unusual addition of peperoncino.
I was struck by the fact that Evola, who was a compelling alcohol
supporter, cared to drink very sweet wines such as vino passito, or
Gaglioppo. He explained it to me, saying, I don’t know how jokingly,
that, having learned from Colazza that alcohol deadened the I, while
sugar was the physical food of the I, he, not to take risks, tried to
reconcile them. Moreover, he connected me to him by an inclination that
has always guided my action, to support the one against whom everyone,
the koinonia ton kakon [communion of evil], manages to feel themselves
sympathetic: so-called “public opinion”, or Phariseeism, whose hypocrisy
I have always felt. At that time Evola had only adversaries, even if,
truth be told, he did everything to provoke them.
The idea that the truth was from the party against whom everyone lined
up in solidarity, in a certain sense corresponded for me to a specific
supersensible law. On the other hand, Evola today is translated into the
major languages of the world, and he has a following even in Asia.
However Evola never assumed the role of the “master”: guidance
counselor, instigator, yes, but not the master. Sometimes when I had
problems with respect to the method, and I turned to him, he demurred,
recommending Colazza or Bonabitacola to me, that is, Steiner’s disciple
or Kremmerz’ disciple. Evola found Bonabitacola interesting especially
because he received all insults like a Zen master; while Colazza was the
character for whom he professed the utmost deference, because he
recognized him as an outstanding investigator of the “occult”.
Colazza also had respect for Evola as a strong personality: he
reproached him only for his yoga and the fact that he wrote books. “One
of us”, he said to me one day, “must not write books. Books occultly
bind the author, they bind him to his present thought, preventing him
from opening himself up to the new, to the unknown, to what he still is
not capable of thinking. Besides, whoever plays the role of teacher,
loses the opportunity to be a disciple.”
Something substantially true can be recognized with this thought of
Colazza. Nevertheless, you cannot help but consider in Evola’s case the
mission of sacrifice by the word: namely the compromise of one’s own
way, on the dialectical level, for the way of others. The snare that he
throws would not be necessary if the initiatory path were not in
relation to a free choice, to self-determination, that is a
determination that is not fated to occur, otherwise it would not be
free. This can sufficiently explain his dominant and bold reconciliation
of Buddha with Nietzsche; for us it is valid, even if only introductory
to the true sadhana. When esoterism is realized, it ceases to be mental
position.
The enigma of Evola’a inner personality and his relationship with
Tradition remains. In truth, the traditional form cannot conceal the
powerful thrust of his anti-traditional system of thought. If you
observe, Evola makes use of the traditional element for building his own
absolutely personal spiritual cosmos. He uses the value of Tradition as
the aristocratic touchstone, that is, as the opposite to the modern
world. He seems to propose a return to Tradition, but in fact, he wants
something that is not Tradition, indeed positively against it. And this
is what we can recognize as important in Evola.
Guenon is in Tradition, Evola leaves it all the time, while appealing to
it: it is a juxtaposition, a dialectical theme, a habitus cogitandi
[habit of thinking]. From Novalisian “magical idealism” to Tantrism,
from the Nietzschean formulation of Mahayana to the “pagan”
interpretation of Alchemy and the Grail, to the sympathy for
Michelstaedter and Meyrink, Nietzsche, Kremmerz and Crowley, the
imperious authority of thinking is clear, that makes everything subject
to an intimate personal vision, to an individual, determined “will to
power”, ultimately, to an impulse of freedom that subordinates
everything to self-affirmation.
Evola succeeds in making his own world real through the power of
thought. This is the aspect that could give real help to those who want
to follow his path, not as a follower dazzled by his light, but as a
conqueror of the Light. It does not matter whether the thinking is
correct or not, it becomes correct when it is powerful. It is undeniably
true: error, immorality, is weak thinking, or merely dialectical, or
reflexive. The power of thought is the truth: the truth that coincides
with reality. But only a free man can realize it and make it his own.
Those who believe in that thought as a content that comforts him,
excites him or hypnotizes him, is not free, he is not in the current of
reality. He believes he is in Tradition, but he is against it in the
worst form, that of dogmatism and mystical subjection. So we said, at
the beginning of this essay, that Evola is a strong medicine, a shock
treatment: a discipline that it is necessary to possess. If you do not
possess yourself, you actually betray yourself, because you act with
respect to it as one who is subjugated.
The living element of Evola’s work is the idea of liberation, which
requires, however, pure recognition, the decision of self-knowledge, by
the person who encounters it. This is the demand and the virtue of his
system, but also the real thrust of his personality, which can be seen
as a synthesis of what he is individually with that which the real
Guides of humanity implant in him, despite himself. Certain inspirations
in the ascetic become operatively individual, even as they draw on the
Super-individual. Julius Evola points out a direction that, to become
creative in the esoteric sense, requires its separation from its
phenomenology, that is, from maya, from the ethos resulting from it in a
social, political sense: especially from this. Certain mixtures betray
the spiritual proposition: the worst disasters always come from the
collusion of the Sacred with the profane. A similar separation, just
like the assumption of the discrimination of subtile a spisso [the
subtle from the dense], is about Evola’s own karmic direction. You can
metaphysically become aware of his cosmic-spiritual future. It will be
determined by how much independence he has achieved from the written
works. The possibility will be decisive that he not be identified with
his own doctrinaire expression, i.e., with the mythical and mystical
world of his followers.
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