Eros and the Mysteries of Love by Julius Evola

Evola has been called the 'chief ideologue' of Italy's radical right after World War II. Concerning this statement, historian Elisabetta Cassina Wolff wrote that 'It is unclear whether this meant that Evola was placing himself above or beyond Fascism'. On trial in 1951, Evola denied being a fascist and instead referred to himself as ' superfascista' ( lit. In 1945 in Vienna, a Soviet shell fragment paralysed him from the waist down. He fled to Nazi Germany in 1943 when the Italian Fascist regime fell, but returned to Rome under the puppet Salò government to organize a radical-right group. Autobiographical remarks by Evola allude to his having worked for the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party. Įvola advocated for Fascist Italy's racial laws, and eventually became Italy's leading 'racial philosopher'. Various writings by Evola are noted for their misogyny, racism, antisemitism, and attacks on Christianity and the Catholic Church.

According to scholar Franco Ferraresi, Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most consistently ' antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century'. Tradition for Evola was not Christian-he did not believe in God-but rather an eternal supernatural knowledge with values of authority, hierarchy, order, discipline and obedience. To counter this and call in a primordial rebirth, Evola presented a 'world of Tradition'. Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites. His writings blend various ideas of German idealism, Eastern doctrines, traditionalism and the interwar Conservative Revolution, with themes such as Hermeticism, the metaphysics of war and sex, Tantra, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, mountaineering, the Holy Grail, civilisations, and decadence. In the 1920s he delved into the occult he wrote on Western esotericism and of Eastern mysticism, developing his doctrine of ' magical idealism'. He said he considered suicide until he had a revelation while reading a Buddhist text. He became a Dada artist but gave up painting in his twenties. He served as an artillery officer in the First World War. An eccentric thinker in Fascist Italy, he also had ties to Nazi Germany in the post-war era, he was known as an ideological mentor of the Italian neo-fascist and militant right. Evola regarded his values as aristocratic, monarchist, masculine, traditionalist, heroic, and defiantly reactionary. Giulio Cesare Andrea ' Julius' Evola ( Italian: – 11 June 1974) was an Italian philosopher, poet, painter, esotericist, and radical-right ideologue.

Eros and the Mysteries of Love by Julius Evola