Don't speak it

Established in symbolic mountain

drawn with no recourse

to observation of twisted stone

plunge

across the told abyss

the shadow abyss

abyss of the abyss

and confront

true abyss

abyss beyond expression

abyss beyond the deepest abyss

contained in the most abject human

born abject

and made more so by the earth

and cursed beyond cursing

that the worst curse man can imagine

would seem a blessing

and cursed before the gods and by the gods

and reach in

and pull from it true despair

a despair as true as the abyss

and bring it to the mountain

and mould from it an idol

and hand to it a crown

and let it be your lord

and understand

the possibilities beyond the human

that stretch and break free from the human

and take this as your new truth

A counter reading of Julius Evola's 'against the Neo-Pagans'

Julius Evola's 'Against the Neo-Pagans' is a 1941 polemic against "nature worship". Evola was a ceremonial magician, self described pagan, and fascist intellectual operating in Italy from the 1920's until the 1970's. His primary concern was with the idea that there existed a spiritual basis for the institution of aristocracy, and his attempts to justify this outside of the a christian framework. To this end he was influenced to a large extent by Hinduism, as "Aryan"and sacralising a caste system, as well as the Roman imperial cult.

'Against the Neo-Pagans' has a tone of urgency combined with a vagueness about it's target. It's ostensive purpose is, in it's own words, to demonstrate that "There is a general and unmistakable tendency in neo-paganism to create a new, superstitious mysticism, based on the glorification of immanence, of Life and Nature, which is in the sharpest contrast to that Olympian and heroic ideal of the great Aryan cultures of pre-Christian antiquity." and this Neo-Pagan glorification of immanence, of life and nature acts as a mask for the promotion of "“natural right,” universalism, liberalism, humanitarianism, and the denial of any positive and structured form of sovereignty."

There is something important in this text. Not in its content, and definitely not in it's analysis of what it attempts to attack, but in the fact that the text exists at all, that Evola felt the need to write an attack on nature worship and that it lacks the conviction to delve into nature worship as a spiritual practice, a text held back by unconscious forces from confronting it's shadow.

'Against the Neo-Pagans' reads to the student of the Greek and Roman agrarian cults, and the paganism of the Celts as it is understood, those who see the potency in the Wicker Man and the cults of Lovecraft*, and all polytheisms taken on their own terms, the historically maligned and disregarded strains in the western occult tradition, solely as an attack against impulses Evola labels degenerate, unworthy of consideration on the merits of what they offer. Spiritually he refuses to examine them on their own terms, they are just an error, a poor reading, ending in a mistaken understanding, which is, conveniently, that the ancient paganisms, if "correctly" interpreted, uphold Evola's ideal of "spiritual aristocracy"

What then are the positive assertions of "Neo-Paganism", that loom unnamed on the periphery of 'Against the Neo-Pagans'? The dangerous core that must be dismissed, that Evola cannot bring himself to examine? Revolt, and Celebration. What is nature worship that it stands so opposed to Evola's "spiritual aristocracy", his metaphysics of hierarchy? On one hand, it is joy, good humour, the ability to laugh and let go. To celebrate nature welcomes the absurd, the spontaneous and the unmediated. Nature welcomes all expressions of joy, and this is true religion, man fulfilling his duty towards the sacred.

To celebrate the "spiritual aristocracy", the celebrant must bow internally, cannot be seen to be mocking, must put on a show of being "appropriately" happy, and this is true of both king and subject. So the hierarchy shackles the human spirit, happiness must be feigned, absurdities must be curtailed, the form of celebration must be tailored to the imposed social structure, authenticity sacrificed, the first alienation.

And what is the other side of nature worship? Fatalism, true fatalism, a fatalism that reaches beyond the ruler and is beholden only to the gods. No ruler, no matter how virtuous, has any control over the movement of the gods, the vagaries of chance over a bountiful harvest, or crop failure. This impotence militates against the investiture of divine authority in the figure of the ruler, and those who serve under him, relegating him, at best, to a member of pantheon. From this position he makes a poor showing, a god who bleeds, fails and dies. Even more threatening in this fatalism derived from nature to the metaphysics of aristocracy is the weakening of the aura of protection and security promised by the lord to those who demonstrate their loyalty and acceptance of their rank and caste. The most powerful king cannot prevent you being snatched up and torn to shreds by the wind if it wants you, nor struck down by a sickness. To acknowledge nature above social order is to acknowledge ordering powers, terrible, absurd and capricious, as well as awesome and bestowing, over which the aristocracy holds no power, and can provide no security. Death may come upon you no matter how deep you bow, how much you prostrate and debase yourself for your master. To acknowledge this and internalise it, to accept the fatalism of realising yourself in nature destroys the magical promise that underwrites Evola's implicit demand in 'Against the Neo-Pagans' that nature worship be suppressed and the worship of "spiritual aristocracy" exulted. The fatalism of nature worship ends the promise that through accepting your station the perfectly ordered society will emerge, one that  guarantees justice and security.

This brings us, at last, to revolt, the unspoken in Evola's text, Witchcraft. The occult revolt against social order, the fear of the witch is the fear of the marginalised and oppressed who, consciously or unconsciously, refuse to accept the strictures imposed upon them. Kurt Seligman in "The Mirror of Magic" places pointedly at the start of the first chapter a Chaldean incantation against demons. it reads.

So the maligned sorcery, the occult powers that must be suppressed, are those which challenge, first and foremost, the social order. This fear, the moral panic against the overturning of the structure of society does not however, rob these magics of their potency, their spiritual potential. instead it affirms them. This is not Evola's dismissal of these spiritual paths as degenerate mistakes, lacking potency as they sit in error, but instead the affirmation of their great and terrible consequence, and their conscious banishing to the realm of prohibited.

Witchcraft as an otherisation of those supernatural forces which threaten the security of those in power. Seen in a line running from the mass persecutions of witchcraft in ancient Rome, against first the devotees of Bacchic cult, and later those who used divination to determine the assent and fall of emperors, presaging the witch burning's of Western Europe, when the collapse of church authority manifested in the hunt for scapegoats in an attempt to impose moral order upon the moral chaos that gripped society. This is seen in the first self-conscious witchcraft text, Charles Leland's 'Aradia or The Gospel of the Witches', which, on the cusp of the 20th century, married devotion to the Pagan gods with the a peasant defiance of the social order and equally, a defiance of male power. In 'Against the Neo-pagans' Evola unconsciously casts nature worship in this oposistional role, and act that invites counter-reading and interrogation, to tease out those things in the heart of folk religion that give it it's power and lead to it being both consciously opposed and unconsciously marginalised within the western religious milieu.

*Which, though they are characterised as dark and madness inducing all share two important traits. Their gods are real, and the cult does not exist for the material gain, or sexual advantage of it's leader, the cult serves the god and all are equal in their devotion.

Is the arc of history pointing toward a dissolution of authority?

Is the arc of history pointing toward a dissolution of authority?

In the middle ages you had the catholic church, the entire framework of the world was backed by the authority of the church, in the ultimate personage of the pope. the only potential vector  to challenge that came from the local aristocracy, backed by the king, who was at least nominally backed by the clergy. Within this system people were largely corralled and kept from wondering too far from the view put forth by the church.

Into this world come four forces. The printing press, which opens the potential of individual learning or independent study and the mass distribution of the views of literate individuals in a manner that can reach far wider an individual traveler can ever hope to do with his voice.  The revival of interest in classical thought, both literary and philosophical, which validates and invests with authority ideas from outside of the church. Machiavelli's 'the Prince' which decouples the idea of secular authority from virtue by suggesting that power is maintained not by any superior spiritual position or innate nobility but rather by manipulation and favour. And the reformation, which divests spiritual authority from the structural authority of the church and instead places it the hands of those who can correctly interpret scripture.

This then becomes a tale of the decline of the monarchy, first the autocractic and reactionary Charles II being overthrown and beheaded by the military when he attempts to institute the idea of divine rule, overturning centuries of constitutional monarchy (and we could talk here about the desacralisation of monarchy and the end of the taboo about lopping off their heads brought about by the execution of Mary queen of scots by Elizabeth I). The American revolution while presenting no direct threat to the monarchies of Europe, provided an example of a state organised on the liberal ideals of the enlightenment to the Revolutionaries of France. Not only did the deposing of the monarchy through revolutionary insurrection (rather than civil war) open a new crisis of legitimacy for monarchs throughout Europe (the facts on the ground support the general with the army at his back, and it is without question that he replaces the king, but through insurrection the question of -what- replaces the king is not easily answered with deferment to the authority of a single man at the head of the conquering army, but through a political process, carried out by those seen as the 'face' of the insurrection, aimed at fulfilling the demands of the insurrectionary populace, without triggering full blown counter revolution among those opposed). The shattering moment that ended the idea of monarch as authority was,(after a century of expansion and conquest for Europe, and the formation of vast overseas empires) the events of the first world war, which was not only attributable in it's outset to the logic of imperial authority, but destroyed the myth of European cultural superiority on which the authority of the imperial exercise was based. This was capped by the deposing of European monarchs in socialist revolutions (Russia and Germany) as well as the creation of nation states from territories formally part of large multi-ethnic empires (the rise of nationalist movements having been fermenting throughout Europe throughout the 19th century).

Though the monarchy and church had began as the locus of authority in the middle ages, from the late 18th century a new idea with claim to the mantel of authority had been forming. The nation state arose from romantic notions of myth and feeling binding together ethnic groups into blocks who would through some irrational means would organise themselves into the best form of government for each group, these were augmented by the ideas of the German idealists to construct a concept of duty and service to the state, and the authority of the state over the lives of it's citizens. A further mythic layer was added with the idea of evolution, which served as a further layer of justification for both aggressive international policy as well as for the suppression of internal dissent. This had its ultimate expression in the fascist government of Nazi Germany, who seized power not through the authority of a king, nor through military force, but through a coup using the mechanisms of state, and who then used the authority of state to suppress all opposition. This claim through action of the authority of the state to have total control over the lives of it's citizenry was refuted by it's total defeat, first on the field of battle, and again economically in Franco's Spain, by the forces of liberalism.

Which  leaves us where we are today, religious authority dissolute, the power of monarchs empty, the state as new locus of authority discredited. The -power- today resides in the hands of the rich. But power is not the same as authority. The rich claim no authority, instead their justification for their de facto power rests on arguments about freedom, and, when their outsized power is an obvious imposition of the ability of other to exercise their freedom and agency, on the idea that their authority to impose their will on society is due to their merit. A meritocracy both arbitrary and post hoc, resting on the idea that a persons ability to accumulate money correlates to their authority to wield power, and this claim of meritocratic authority stands in direct contradiction to the ideals of freedom they martial to justify their unconstrained accumulation of wealth.