A Caricature of Evola
Evola As He Is
If asked who said "the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.", one of the most famous statements of the whole history, most people would answer : "Hitler", or perhaps "Goebbels". Countless books and web-sites have assured them that it can be found in 'Mein Kampf', or in one of Goebbels' speeches. The truth is that neither Hitler nor Goebbels said this. What Goebbels said is this : "One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous", often 'misquoted', precisely, as "the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."

One of the favourite tactics of the agents of the forces of subversion is to distort their adversaries' words, and, if need be, to make them say what they have never said, and to pretend they have done what they have never done, in order to discredit them in the eyes of the masses, on which the virtual rule of those forces of subversion is based. As an old Muslim saying goes, "only lies spread", and the best way to spread them is to give them media coverage in the broadest sense. Radio, books, and newspapers were the main media in the 1930's. This is what can be read in one of those books :

"Hitler wakes at night with convulsive shrieks... He shakes with fear... He shouts confused, totally unintelligible phrases... Then he suddenly broke out - (...) 'The new man is among us. I have seen the vision of the new man - fearless and formidable. I shrank from him!" ('Hitler speaks'). Had Rauschning heard of the rumours which the King of Italy spread about Hitler's so-called habits and private life during his stay at the Quirinal in May 1938, the lie would have been even bigger. As far as Hitler is concerned, it seems that allied propaganda used the cinema to ridicule him and the press to demonise him, so as to induce the mesmerised masses of the 'Free World' to see in him a sort of 'killing joke'.

As much Hitler, 60 years after the fall of the Third Reich, still gets a large media coverage, up to being the money-maker of various European Jew-owned 'cultural' channels, as much Evola's work is still surrounded by a conspiracy of silence, made even more obvious by the ever-growing ambient cacophony. The few intellectual products and by- products of the modern world who have taken an interest in him have tried to demonise his figure, but, interestingly enough, they have contented themselves with dismissing him as a "racist" in the name of the gyneaco-democratic 'human rights' they are possessed by, without ever venturing to discuss the racial doctrine he put forward, since sophisms are all they have to oppose it, and they can feel that, by referring to it, they may risk to draw attention to it and to make it known to people who are not necessarily affected by the limitations and the prejudices which are peculiar to their own mentality.

The woman of letters with whom Nasr visited Evola at his place in Rome in the 1960's, and whose level of awareness of Evola's views on 'women of letters' is not known exactly, described him - later - as a "sinister" man. He got the same compliment, and others, from another woman of letters, namely Antebi, who claimed to have met and interviewed him a few years later, that is in the late 1960's. There are strong grounds for thinking that most of the caricatures of Julius Evola which have been concocted and put into circulation for a few years originate in the notorious airport novel of this woman of letters : to the best of our knowledge, she's the first to have called him the 'éminence grise' of Mussolini. Yet, in April 1928, following the publication of 'Imperialismo pagano', A. Tarannes published in 'Revue Internationale des Sociétés Secrètes' an article called 'Un sataniste italien: Julius Evola', followed, in February 1929, by 'Le "fasciste" Evola et la mission transcendante de l'Eglise'.

In October 2002, the mayor of Graz invited the 14th Dalai Lama officially to preside over a Kalachakra initiation in this Austrian city. Various Austrian officials, among whom the federal education and culture minister and state secretary for economic affairs, attended that ceremony, which was widely talked about in Austrian media. During this time, doubts, suspicions were cast on the activities of the Dalai Lama and, more generally, on Tibetan Buddhism, especially by the press organs of the Catholic church. The most resounding of all were the criticism made by a German couple, Victor and Victoria Trimondi, in books, in interviews, in speeches and in articles on the Internet. Their criticisms were concentrated on the three following issues : the relations between the Dalai Lama and former National Socialists ; the substitution of Christianity for Tibetan Buddhism in Western countries ; and - to keep the best till last - the "sexual exploitation and harassment of women in the rituals of Tibetan Buddhism". 'The Shadow of the Dalai Lama', the main work of that couple, of which, in other occasions, we have quoted a few excerpts without endorsing in any way their views on Tantrism, is structured around those three themes. Before getting to the caricature made by that couple of Julius Evola, let's have a look at their career. In 1967, Herbert Rattgen, aka Victor Trimondi, set up the Trikont publishing house in Munich. This publishing house cultivated a 'social activist' program and was very closely linked to the 1968 protest movement. Trikont published the first German- language books on feminism, the gay rights, 'alternative lifestyles', green politics, regionalism, and the new American Native movement. Trikont publishing went so far as to publish a book by Regis Debray and a book by Cohn-Bendit, one the numerous living caricatures of the 1968 movement who, thirty years later, have become the meat of Brussels Kosher restaurants. Then, Herbert Rattgen had his "spiritual phase", during which he "self-published a critique of the radical left", "reached the conclusion that political and sociopolitical activities alone are not enough to solve the pressing problems of human society once and for all", "saw a new and promising possibility in a radical transformation of consciousness", "consequently (...) turned to the topic of applied spirituality", and "developed the contents of a new publishing program that was supposed to promote a discourse between religion and science, tradition and modernity, myth and history, mysticism and sensuality, as well as between the various cultures and religions", without, needless to say, "abandoning the existing humanist objectives of the preceding publishing phase", an so on, until, in 1989, he married his current wife, Mariana who "was born into a family of artists", and the Berlin wall fell. He "started a new life". He did. "He invested great hopes for social transformation in the encounters with and between various religious traditions. He thus saw the so-called New Age movement as a large-scale experiment from which, via a social coincidentia oppositorum (of tradition and modernity), a new culture might emerge which would be able to meet the challenges of globalization". It should be stressed that, since 1986, Victoria Trimondi "has been engaged in the (...) study of theology, mythology, history, the history of religion, depth psychology and related areas", and that this study is "intensive".

It shows :

"Five years ago (1998), when we began the research for our cultural historical book we had a thoroughly positive attitude toward Tibetan Buddhism. Like very many people, we believed that the Dalai Lama expressed with courage and conviction a majority of the social, political and individual values which were also close to our hearts: peaceableness, compassion for all suffering creatures, the overcoming of class and racial barriers, ecological awareness, individual freedom, the transcending of the concept of enemy, a sense of community, social engagement, inter-religious dialog, a meeting of cultures and much more.

But we were especially attracted to Tantrism, the actual heart of Tibetan Buddhism. Here it appeared as a religion, which at last took the equality of the sexes seriously, and rather than banishing erotic love from the sacred realm placed it at its very center.

But it was not just the history of ideas which united us with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. As a publisher I have published books of his, and have organized several symposia and major events for him. In 1982 I brought him from Paris to the Frankfurt Book Fair in a small propeller-driven aircraft. The plane was caught in a storm and began to toss wildly. All the passengers grew pale, including the Dalai Lama. Such moments in life generate bonds, and a relaxed friendship developed. With the intention of discovering in Tibetan Buddhism a spiritual teaching able to offer answers and solutions to the problems of the world, we studied the foundations of Buddhism, the Tantric texts, the history of Tantrism, and the biographies of earlier Tantrics, but above all we got down to the problem of the history of Tibet, the Dalai Lamas and the politics of the Tibetans in exile.

The results were more than sobering, and led to a total revision of our previous attitude. Instead of a peaceful and tolerant culture we discovered a warlike and aggressive one; instead of a positive attitude towards women and sexual equality we came to know a system which took the oppression and exploitation of women to new refined heights. The repression of dissidents, despotism, intolerance, a boundless obsession with power, the use of demonization and fear as political instruments, contempt for everything human - we were forced to recognize everything we had never expected in the texts, rituals and history of this religion."

And they did it by writing 'The Shadow of the Dalai Lama', whose twelfth chapter, 'Fascist Occultism and it's Close Relationship to Buddhist Tantrism, offers an absurd presentation of Julius Evola's figure and work. He's pictured as "a fascist Tantric", as the "Tantric advisor of Benito Mussolini", and as having been, "for a time", his "chief ideologist (mainly in the forties). In numerous books and articles he has investigated and further developed the relationship between tantric rituals and power politics. He has followed "tantric trails" in European cultural history and come across them everywhere: among the Cathars, the troubadours, the Knights Templar, in the work of Alighieri Dante, the mysticism surrounding the holy grail, European knighthood, alchemy. Using criteria drawn from Vajrayana, he propounds a cultural history of sexuality in his most famous book, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex. Evola was not just a theoretician, he also practiced sexual magic rites himself. There are unmistakable statements from him about the "tantric female sacrifice" and the transformation of sexuality into political power. Like almost no other, the Italian has openly named the events that unfold in the mysteries of the yogis and then confessed to them: "The young woman," he writes, "who is first 'demonized' and then raped, ... is essentially... the basic motif for the higher forms of tantric and Vajrayanic sexual magic" (Evola, 1983, p. 389). In dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini he saw the precursors of future Maha Siddhas who would one day conquer the world with their magic powers: "The magician, the ruler, the lord", he proclaims in regard to Tantrism, "that is the type of the culture of the future!" (Evola, 1926, p. 304). He recommends Tantrism as "the way for a Western elite" (Evola, East and West, p. 29).

In the Shambhala myth he sees a confirmation of the European tradition of the savior king, especially the myth of the grail: "At a particular time decreed by one of the cyclical laws, a new manifestation of the solar principle from above will occur in the form of a sacred ruler who gains victory over the 'dark age': Kalki Avatara. Symbolically Kalki will be born in Shambhala - one of the terms in the Indian/Tibetan tradition for the holiest hyperborean [Nordic] center" (Evola 1955, p. 56)."

Evola – unfortunately - was never the "advisor of Benito Mussolini", nothing in his work shows us that he "practiced sexual magic rites himself", 'Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex' is not a 'cultural history of sexuality', it is not based on criteria "drawn from Vajrayana", this 300-page book contain fifteen pages or so on Tantrism, Hitler and Mussolini were far from being considered by him as "the precursors of future Maha Siddhas", he didn't "recommend Tantrism as the way for a Western elite", but thought that, in certain conditions, "Tantrism may be a way for a Western élite which does not want to be the victim of the experiences with which a whole civilisation is about to be overcome' ('The Meaning of Tantrism for Modern Western civilisation', in 'East and West'). In any case, the élite to which Evola refers here is a spiritual one, and not a political one, as claimed by the authors of 'The Shadow of the Dalai Lama', whose incapability to give exact references to the work of this Italian author ('Evola, 1926, p. 304'? ; (Evola, 1983, p. 389) may explain why they have found in it "unmistakable statements" about "the transformation of sexuality into political power". None of the texts written by Evola on Tantrism make any reference to politics as a direct application of the principles of this doctrine.

In this respect, and only in this respect, the journalist who reviewed 'The Shadow of the Dalai Lama', who may have read 'L'Uomo come Potenza', but not 'Revolt against the Modern World', didn't dare to follow on its footsteps :

'Thus Baron Giulio Evola (1898-1974) did derive from the Vishnuite Bhagavad Gita a sacralization of Sadism in terms of the divine will of destruction of everything mortal, the Endlessness of the Divine meaning the perennial destruction of everything temporal: Thus the sacralized sadism of the Kshatrya warrior celebrates the Blood Sacrifice of Life -transcending the mere perversions of "profane" sadism. Accordingly, Murder becomes a holy sacrifice (246). Evola's publications of 1953 and 1961 made him the chief "philosophical authority", the Guru of today's Black Order of spiritual fascism (257), of the New Elite proclaiming anew more than merely Hitler's New Order: It is more explicit about the destruction of modern society. Evola was calling for precisely this ever since his main work, "The Revolt against Modernity" (sic) of 1935 (sic). Nevertheless, in spite of this admiration for the 55, the Kshatrya Warrior Order, he is but rarely mentioned in its literature of the 55 although he did influence its self-image (particularly the "Ancestral Heritage" of the "Grail Mystery" of the Templars). Better known is his influence on Fascism's "afterthought", the Italian race legislation since 1937.

Evola's "L'Uome come Potenza" (sic) ("The Male as Might") is a glorification of power generated through sexual energy, following models of Indian Tantric cults, associated particularly with the Female Energy (Shakti) of Shiva Rudra and Kali, Indian deities of destruction and regeneration. Among Evola's "applications" of them was killing - sacrificing - the Female (the female principle comprising both Compassion and Bolshevism...) - as its energy is to strenghten the Male, the Aryan Masculinity (p.234) which accumulates its own power by sacrificing the "Other".

These notions Evola derived from the Vajrayâna School of Tantric Buddhism. And with concepts from Tantric texts concludes his most influential work: The concept of Shambhala, symbolized by the Swastika pointing to, a center of Hyperborean traditions "of Aryan origins." Images of this mythic realm derive from the Tantric Kalachakra tradition. Its main texts have been made accessible in the post-war period, also by Jean Marquès Rivière, a French Sankritist, specialized in police persecution of secret societies, Masons and Jews in the semi-Fascist France of 1941-1944." (http://www.trimondi.de/H-B-K/bookreview.en.htm)