“To live is modern man’s only value. Even the modern hero does not die except in the name of life."
Don Colacho
Removing the mask of social conditioning
Humans are predisposed to fear, judgment, guilt and shame by design - all emotions encoded within our genetic material and reinforced culturally, over and over, by a form of perverse social conditioning called archontic programming. From it stems a certain psychology of the masses familiar with brainwashing, herd mentality, self-censorship - as in political correctness - and so on.
Shame about our sexuality and desires has been instilled into us to keep us from knowing who we are.
It is not just education and culture that should be blamed, but religion and faux spirituality as well - how often do we hear that what is base must be transcended for what is higher, or that individual attributes must be renounced to gain a deeper connection to the whole?
Renouncing our nature as physical, human, animal beings does not, in fact, bring us any closer to true self-knowledge; but only toward an illusory notion of spirit/Oneness/unity, energetically programmed as a realization by our creators. Perceived closeness to this white energy/divine light is not necessarily a sign of greater realization, but may in fact be submission to a program that attempts to leech our individuality and strength.
The "sexual liberation" of the modern era is not true liberation, but rather is a freeing of possible forms of gender-based expressions of sexuality without an understanding of their depth - horizontal expansion to mask the fact that its vertical aspect is as concealed as ever: that which connects the individual to true self-knowledge and power.
True power and integrity come when we unflinchingly see and accept everything we are, before filtering ourselves with the various lenses of who we should be. This means, as Nietzsche said, replacing any sense of shame or guilt with pride - not arrogance, but rather a genuine understanding and exaltation of our existence, both as individuals and as parts of the whole.
Beyond Good and Evil
The restoration of the sacred is a task to which no moral judgment can be attached. So long as the individual acts to instantiate the transcendent in material existence, he is acting in accordance with a higher form of what is right, a form that surpasses traditional distinctions of good and evil.
Violence
“Any purpose which is intelligently, objectively consistent with the war-aims of the undying Forces of Light in their age-old struggle against the forces of Darkness, i.e., of disintegration—that Struggle illustrated in all the mythologies of the world—any such purpose, I say, justifies any amount of selfless violence. Moreover, as the “Era of Gloom” in which we are living proceeds, darker and darker and fiercer and fiercer year after year, it becomes more and more impossible to avoid using violence in the service of truth. No man—no demigod—can bring about, today, even a relative amount of real order and justice in any area of the globe, without the help of force, especially if he has but a few years at his disposal.
And, unfortunately, the further this world advances into the present age of technical wonders and human abasement, the more the great men of inspiration are submitted to the factor of time, as soon as they attempt to apply their lofty intuitive knowledge of eternal truth to the solution of practical problems. They just have to act, not only thoroughly, but also quickly, if they do not want to see the forces of disintegration nip their priceless work in the bud. And whether they like it or not, thoroughly and quickly means, almost unavoidably, with unhesitating violence.
From all this it is quite clear that, to condemn violence indiscriminately is to condemn the very struggle of the Forces of Life and Light against the Forces of disintegration—struggle, all the more heroic and all the more desperate, also, as the world rushes on towards its doom. It is to condemn that struggle which, at every one of its age-long, varying phases, and even through temporary disaster, has been securing for the world, beyond its deserved doom, the glorious new Beginning, which the few alone deserve.
The “unpleasant truth” is that pacifism, non-violence, and so forth are, most of the time, just rackets in the service of the forces of disintegration; dishonest tricks to bluff the fools, to emasculate the strong, and to set millions of cowards and hypocrites (the bulk of the world) against the few people whose inspired policy, pursued ruthlessly to its logical end, could perhaps, even now, arrest the decay of man. And if they are not that, then, they are nonsense.
As we have said in the beginning, non-violence can only exist in a world in which the temporal socio-political order is, on the human scale, the replica of the eternal Order of the Cosmos. Any effective preaching—and any partial practice—of pacifism in politics; i.e., within Time, outside such a temporal order, only leads, ultimately, to greater violence; to a greater exploitation of living Nature and a greater oppression of man at the hands of those who work for the Death-forces. But, for millenniums already, that perfect earthly order has ceased to exist. It has to be created anew before peace can re-flourish. And it cannot, now, be created anew, without utmost violence, exerted, this time, in a selfless spirit, by men of vision. The best course for those who sincerely desire a just and lasting peace would, therefore, naturally be to do all they can to give over the world to those men of vision, as soon as possible; at least, not to try to prevent them from conquering it.”
Savitri Devi, The Ligthning and the Sun (1958)
Quotes:
"Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. Asman emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges."
Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913)
"First of all it is necessary to overcome the frivolous pride of some nationalists, according to whom the ultimate criterion consists of having the same fatherland and a common history; hence the Italian habit of indiscriminately exalting everything that is "ours." The truth is that just as with any great historical nation, and likewise with Italy, despite a certain uniformity of the common type, there are different components. It is important not to create illusions but to objectively recognize that which, although being "ours," hardly corresponds to a higher calling. As we can see, this is the counterpart of what I discussed in chapter 8 about the political-cultural domain, in regard to a "choice of traditions.
The creation of a new State and of a new civilization will always be ephemeral unless their substratum is a new man. [...]."
Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins (1953)
"Just as fire can affirm the will of fuel to live and blaze, so the "I" which wishes to be sovereign unto itself has the power to absorb its own non-being as the matter from which, alone, the splendor of an absolute life and of absolute actions might spring forth.' In philosophical terms, such an approach left two paths open: the 'path of the other' and 'the path of the Absolute Individual'. [...] In Buddhism, the 'path of the other' (which I also termed 'the path of the object’) corresponds to samsāra, the inferior world of becoming, which arises from thirst and greed; in the ancient Mysteries, this path corresponds to the 'cycle of generation' or necessity. The opposite path is described as the path of the Awakened or Liberated in Buddhism, and as the path of the consecrated in the ancient Mysteries."
Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar (1972)
"What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end."
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra (1883)
"This present "civilization," starting from Western hotbeds, has extended the contagion to every land that was still healthy and has brought to all strata of society and all races the following "gifts": restlessness, dissatisfaction, resentment, the need to go further and faster, and the inability to possess one's life in simplicity, independence, and balance. Modem civilization has pushed man onward; it has generated in him the need for an increasingly greater number of things; it has made him more and more insufficient to himself and powerless. Thus, every new invention and technological discovery, rather than a conquest, really represents a defeat and a new whiplash in an ever faster race blindly taking place within a system of conditionings that are increasingly serious and irreversible and that for the most part go unnoticed. This is how the various paths converge: technological civilization, the dominant role of the economy, and the civilization of production and consumption all complement the exaltation of becoming and progress; in other words, they contribute to the manifestation of the "demonic" element in the modem world."
Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World (1934)
"Today's soldier is reduced to be a warmonger, the antithesis of the warrior and hero we call those individuals that aim and succeed at embodying their True Will:
The quality and spirit of the men to whom the arms, the means of offense and destruction, are given, have represented, still represent and will always represent the basic element of 'war potential'. No mobilization will ever be 'total' if men whose spirit and vocation are up to the tests which they must face cannot be created.
How are things, in this respect, in the world of the 'democracies'? They now want, for the third time this century, to lead humanity to war in the name of 'the war against war'. This requires men to fight at the same time that war as such is criticized. It demands heroes while proclaiming pacifism as the highest ideal. It demands warriors while it has made 'warrior' a synonym for attacker and criminal, since it has reduced the moral basis of 'the just war' to that of a large-scale police operation, and it has reduced the meaning of the spirit of combat to that of having to defend oneself as a last resort."
Julius Evola, Metaphysics of War (2007)
"The warrior ceases to act as a person. When he attains this level, a great non-human force transfigures his action, making it absolute and 'pure' precisely at its extreme. Here is a very evocative image belonging to the same tradition: "Life - like a bow; the mind - like the arrow; the target to pierce - the supreme spirit; to join mind to spirit as the shot arrow hits its target."
This is one of the highest forms of metaphysical justification of war, one of the most comprehensive images of war as 'sacred war'."
Julius Evola, Metaphysics of War (2007)
"The constitution of 1795, like its predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man. In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no knowledge of him."
Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France (1797)
"This latter characteristic of the true left-hand path is the chief cause of its misunderstanding, not only for those on the outside, but for some who would follow this path as well. It takes an enormous amount of spiritual courage to persevere in the face of rejection by not only the world around them but by elements within their own subjective universes as well. Many break under the strain and fall away from the aim and sink back into the morass of cultural norms."
"To be considered a true lord of the left-hand path then, someone must have rejected the forms of conventional 'good' and embraced those of conventional 'evil,' and have practiced antinomianism, as part of the effort to gain a permanent, independent, enlightened and empowered level of being. This self-deification does not seem sufficient without the 'Satanic' component which acts as a guide through the quagmire of popular sentiment and conventional beliefs."
Stephen Flowers, Lords of the Left-Hand Path (2012)
"Seneca and the Roman Stoics conceived earthly existence in the form of a struggle and a test. According to Seneca the real man stands above the gods themselves, because, whereas the gods, owing to their very nature, do not know adversity and disaster, man is instead subject to them, but has the power of triumphing over them. Unhappy is he who has never encountered disaster and suffering, Seneca wrote, for he has had no occasion to put his own powers to the test and to know them. To man something more than exemption from ills has been granted: the power of triumphing over them within himself. And those beings who have been most subject to trials should be regarded as the worthiest, if we bear in mind that in war the commanders entrust the most exposed positions to the strongest and best qualified men, whereas the less brave, the weaker and the less trustworthy are employed in the less difficult, but also less glorious positions of the rear."
Julius Evola, “The Right to One's Own Life" (1955)