Outline of Sintesi della rasa

Chapter outline of Sintesi di dottrina della razza
Summary of Racial Doctrine

Introduction

    Race as Revolutionary Idea
        Racial doctrine as anti-universalism.
        Racial doctrine as anti-individualism. Race and personality.
        Racial doctrine as anti-rationalism. Theory of environment.
        Race and history. Racial doctrine as anti-evolutionism.
        Race and culture. Surpassing the neutral conception of culture.
        Depth psychology and the science of subversion.
        On the idea of pure race.
    The Three Levels of Racial Doctrine
        Different meanings of race.
        The three levels of racial doctrine.
        Races of nature and higher races.
        On higher races and anti-ascetic prejudice.
        On the racial doctrine of the first level
        The Hyperborean race and its branches
        The group of “aryan” races
        On the limits of the laws of heredity.
        The problem of mixing.
        The three modes of the appearance of race. The Nordic and Mediterranean race.
        The internal race and heredity. The prophylaxis of tainted heredity.
        Sex and race
        The masculine and feminine races
    The Race of the Soul and Spirit
        The race of the second level. The race of the soul.
        The race of the soul and culture. The Hebrew problem.
        Origin of the race of the soul.
        Can new races arise?
        The race of the soul and “myth”. The limits of “myth”.
        The mystery of birth. Historical heredity and heredity from above.
        Race and classical and romantic ethics.
        The “demonic” element in the anti-race
        The doctrine of the race of the third level. Value of the symbol. The eternal race.
        Race of the spirit. The solar race. The race of Demeter.
        The Amazon race, the race of Aphrodite, the “heroic” race.
        The race of the spirit in the archaic Mediterranean and Judaism.
    The Aryan Race and the Spiritual Problem
        What does “Aryan” mean?
        The heroic and solar element of the ancient Aryan race.
        Ex Occidente lux. The religious problem.
        The misunderstanding of the new racist paganism
        Christianity, race, spirit of the origins.
        Race and death.
        Law and race. The anti-collectivist concept of the national-racial community.
    Race and the Problem of the New Elite
        The “Italian race”. Meaning of its aryanity.
        Interracial types in the Mediterranean people.
        The rectification of the Mediterranean relations between the sexes.
        The new Italy. Race and war.
        Conditions for the reawakening of race.
        The race of the fascist man. On the new western front.

Share this:
The Masculine and Feminine Races
Posted on 2015-04-29 by Aeneas

The translation from Sintesi of The Masculine and Feminine Races is now available.

In this chapter, Julius Evola demonstrates that the male and female are equivalent to different races. This is not simply the obvious corporeal differences, but extends also the the soul and the spirit. The female spirit is undifferentiated whereas the male spirit is differentiated.

He appeals to J J Bachofen‘s writings on ancient gynocentric civilizations which had “promiscuity, communism, mother right, general equality as their characteristics”. This is how he concludes:

    Strictly speaking, opposite to every man worthy of this name, the true woman that our ancestors considered significantly as “woman of race”, had to present herself as something dangerous, as a foreign principle that attracts, insinuates herself, and demands an inner action: almost the same type of reaction of which we said speaking of cross-breedings, where foreign blood puts the type to the test and gives rise to two possibilities: either to an awakening, a reaffirmation, and a vivification, or else to dissolution and debasement. In the first case, the man maintains himself at the peak of his purpose and, according to traditional teachings, his qualities permeate and persist intact in his progeny, as the “dominant” character. In the second case, in a form more or less disguised, he will undergo at least an internal degeneration of the type. Uncontrollable forces will take the upper hand in the processes of heredity, the protection of the race will become something problematic, until the limit-case is realized, that is, the return, in new forms, to the spirit and promiscuity of the gynocratic civilizations formed by the anti-Nordic races and from the degeneration of the Nordic race. 

From this perspective, the Western nations are moving toward a more gynocratic form. This is not imposed, but rather accepted and even chosen, by a race in decline, that is, those who have followed the second possibility. There is still the first possibility.

Classical and Romantic Ethics
Posted on 2015-07-16 by Cologero

    Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations. ~ Jeremiah 1:5 

In the chapter Classical and Romantic Ethics from Sintesi di dottrina della razza, Julius Evola recapitulates the traditional doctrine of preexistence. This was one of the acceptable opinions for the origin of the soul along with traducianism and creationism. The latter developed in opposition of the former, but has nothing to say against preexistence, properly understood (i.e., not in a crude, “materialistic” sense). Every possibility of manifestation “exists” in the mind of God. If you want to restrict the word “exist” to manifested being, then that possibility does not “exist” as an actuality. Moreover, if by “preexistence” is meant a prior existence as another human being, then that use of the word is false. In a planned post on the metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, we will defend the use of the neoplatonic and other traditional sources cited by Evola.

Evola himself refers to the Catholic teaching on the creation of the soul from nothing, with the same semantic confusion about “preexistence” mentioned above. This chapter cannot be understood in the conventional scientific, empirical, or material sense, but requires a full understanding of the metaphysical principles underlying it. Thus “race” in his view is not at all a biological quality that can be determined genetically, but a spiritual attitude. Otherwise the decline of the modern world would be incomprehensible. It results from a spiritual decline, regardless of biological facts.

These are questions that are ignored by theologians today. The idea that archangels are assigned to different peoples and nations is no longer taken seriously, never mind that they participate in their creation. The quote from Plotinus on inequality used to be known and was held to be due to God’s Providence, predestination, and predilection. Of course, our intent is not to open a debate on these topics, but rather to observe their effects. All things, including men, have their origin in the mind of God as possibilities. If a man has a destiny, he must actively actualize it and not wait passively for it to happen. In Rene Guenon‘s words, that refers to the actualization of the possibilities open to him. That is, he must become who he is.

From the Amazons to the Heroes
Posted on 2015-07-01 by Cologero

In the following, please refer to:

    The Amazonian race
    The Aphroditic race
    The Heroic Race

In Revolt Against the Modern World, Julius Evola expanded on the ages of these three races. The Amazonian period was a reaction against the male revolt. It represents the lunar principle that tried to restore the Demetrian race as it was being defeated by the Solar principle. We see the same mythological motifs return in our own day with the appearance of strong female warriors in virtually all action movies of recent years. All traces of vestigial patriarchy are being attacked to facilitate the return of the dominance of the Demetrian civilization.

Parallel with this movement, there is also the Aphroditic principle. The chthonic nature tries to reduce the masculine principle to the phallic. Men thus become enslaved to sensualism. Manifestations of this would include the addiction to pornography as well as the “hookup” culture. In the phallic, or genital, stage, sexuality is centered on the genitals and finds its fulfilment in intercourse. Yet, there is a further degeneration as predicted by Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization: with the decline and overthrowing of patriarchy, people would become polymophous perverse, that is, they would find sexual gratification beyond the socially normative behaviors permitted by the patriarchy.

Thus, both through force and seduction, the hold of patriarchy is weakened.

The Heroic age represents the attempt to recover the primordial solar state by force. The Heroes retain the inner impulse toward transcendence and overcome the Amazonian and Aphroditic forces. He sublimates the phallic, erotic drive raising it to the “spiritual plane of virility”.
Esoteric Astrology

Evola makes a brief allusion to the esoteric science of astrology. In its degenerate form today, astrology has become merely materialistic and quantitative. Instead traditional astrology was spiritual and qualitative, as he explains:

    The planets naturally are not the physical planets, but are designations used to define spiritual, super-individual forces, of which the physical planets are at most symbolic, sensible manifestations. 

In other words, esoteric astrology represents our “essence”, who we are, what we are born with, something that in some way we ourselves have chosen or accepted. Pop astrology, on the other hand, is something that “happens” to us, from the outside, beyond our control, through merely material forces.

If you sense some truth in this, even if beyond the possibility of clear articulation, then you have the possibility to understand these ideas. We have been using the term “preconception” to describe this inner essence of who you are.
Manifestations of the Races of the Spirit

In the Sintesi, Evola brings up the idea of the relationship between the third level of race and the second and first. Obviously, the first place to start is with the civilizations that have been dominated by the various spiritual races. Here, Evola refers back to the collection of J J Bachofen’s writings that he translated under the title of La Razza Solare. I haven’t been able to track down any copies of that work. However, I recently discovered that it has been republished, sort of, as Le Madri e la Virilità Olimpica: Storia segreta dell’antico mondo mediterraneo; the other work apparently was never actually published.

That is why, in the German edition, Evola adds a paragraph making his ideas explicit since, obviously, German readers would have had no access to La Razza Solare. Here is the German paragraph as is followed by an English translation.

    Was die Entsprechung anbetrifft, die sich normalerweise zwischen Rassen des Geistes, der Seele und des Körpers verwirklichen soll, können also vorläufig diese Anspielungen genügen: die sonnenhaften und heroischen Rassen sind artverbunden dem Stil der Rasse des Leistungsmenschen und – als physische Rasse – dem nordisch-arischen, arisch-römischen und arisch-abendländischen Menschen. Die lunare Rasse fände den gemäßesten Ausdruck in den seelischen und somatischen Merkmalen der ostischen Rassen und den Überbleibseln jener uralten mittelmeerischen Rasse, die allgemein „pelasgisch“ genannt werden kann. Die aphroditische und dionysische Rasse könnte gut zu einigen Zweigen der westischen Rasse, insbesondere – wie gesagt – in ihren keltischen Formen passen. Die dionysische aber auch zur wüstenländischen und ostisch-baltischen Rasse und, ihren gespalteneren Aspekten nach, zur vorderasiatischen. Ein titanisches Element könnte sich wohl in der Seele und im Körper des Menschen fälischer Rasse ausdrücken, schließlich würde das tellurische Element physische Rassenkomponenten erfordern, die aus nichtarischen oder vorarischen Stämmen hervorgehen, wie es beispielsweise bei den afrikanisch-mittelmeerischen und teilweise bei den im semitischen Typ vorhandenen Rassen der Fall ist. Es liegt also ein neues und weit gespanntes Forschungsfeld vor uns, für welches es hauptsächlich gilt, das ihm zustehende Interesse in den neuen Generationen zu wecken. Dann wird das schon Errungene entsprechend entwickelt werden bis zu einem wirklich umfassenden Rassenbewußtsein. 

H/T to marcelkol for the following English translation:

    In regard to the correlation that should manifest itself between the races of the body, the soul and the spirit the following remarks should suffice for now: the solar and heroic races are intimately connected with the nature of the man of achievement and – as physical race – with the Nordic-Aryan, Roman-Aryan and Occidental-Aryan human. The lunar race expresses itself in its most complete form in the soul and the body of the Eastern European races and the remnants of the old Mediterranean race which could generally be described as ‘Pelasgian’. The Dionysian and Aphroditic races could correspond to some branches of the Western race, especially – as already mentioned – in its Celtic forms. The Dionysian race could also correspond to the desert race and the East Baltic race, and – due to its conflicted aspects – to the Near Eastern race. A Titanic element could express itself in the body and the soul of the Phalian race, since the Telluric race would require a physical racial component stemming from non-Aryan or pre-Aryan lines, as is the case with the African-Mediterranean and some of the races of the Semitic type for example. We’re looking at a new and very broad field of research and priority should be given to awakening the interest of the young generations so our present knowledge can be developed further towards a comprehensive racial consciousness. 

Matter and Form: The Dionysian Race
Posted on 2015-06-19 by Cologero

    The new victories of the maternal principle over the revelation of purely spiritual paternity show how hard it has been for men, at all times and amid the most varied religious constellations, to overcome the inertia of material nature and to achieve the highest calling, the sublimation of earthly existence to the purity of the divine father principle. ~ J J Bachofen, Mother Right 

Having traced the stages of history from the Telluric to the Demetrian to the Apollonian or solar periods, the latter peaking in the Roman Imperium, J J Bachofen then identifies the Dionysian period. Julius Evola calls this the Dionysian Race.

The Dionysian race represents the paternity of the Apollonian falling back into materiality. The Apollonian ideal was unable to withstand the assaults of baser doctrines. The Dionysian stage prepared the way for a new victory of the feminine principle and the mother cult. The victory of Dionysus over Apollo was assured in the meeting of the Greek and Oriental worlds under Alexander. Bachofen points out the spiritual principle of the Delphic Apollo was powerless to overcome the lower material views of the sexual relation. He writes:

    We see paternity falling back from Apollonian purity to Dionysian materiality, so preparing the way for a new victory of the feminine principle, for a new flowering of the mother cults. Although the intimate union which the two luminous powers concluded in Delphi seemed calculated to purify Dionysus’ phallic exuberance through Apollo’s immutable repose and clarity, and to lift it above itself, the consequence was the exact opposite: the greater sensuous appeal of the fecundating god outweighed his companion’s more spiritual beauty, and increasingly usurped the power that should have been Apollo’s. Instead of the Apollonian age, it was a Dionysian age that dawned. 

This shows that the spiritual aspect alone is insufficient. Rome, instead, was able to maintain the Apollonian through its structure. Bachofen explains:

    Mankind owes the enduring victory of paternity to the Roman political idea, which gave it a strict juridical form and consequently enabled it to develop in all spheres of existence; it made this principle the foundation of all life and safeguarded it against the decadence of religion, the corruption of manners, and a popular return to matriarchal views. Roman law maintained it traditional principle against all the assaults and threats of the Orient, against the spreading mother cult of Isis and Cybele, and even against the Dionysian mystery. 

Evola’s final point seems to be directed against a Hans Gunther or his followers. Gunther, more than 80 years ago, was concerned about the “degradation” of the Nordic peoples, which resulted from factors like the decline in marriage and birth rates, particularly among the higher “more Nordic” classes. Obviously, that decline has continued in the ensuing decades. Evola attributed that decline to “processes of involution” on the spiritual plane among the Nordic people.

Impulse and Instinct: The Earth Race
Posted on 2015-06-14 by Cologero

Swamp Thing
Prior to the lunar or Demetrian cultural stage and the patriarchal, or solar, cultural stage, J J Bachofen identified, through the study of ancient myths, and even earlier stage which he called “hetaerism”. Julius Evola gives the name “Telluric Race” in the Sintesi to the guiding spirit of that age.

In such periods, marriage is unknown and women held in common. Bachofen explains:

    Woman is not endowed with all her charms in order to grow old in the arms of one man: the law of matter rejects all restrictions, abhors all fetters, and regards exclusivity as an offense against its divinity. 

Unlike the Demetrians, who developed agriculture, the Tellurians were associated with the natural flora and fauna of the marshy lowlands, as well as swamp cults. This life is represented by witches, who were involved with herb collecting and concoctions using lower life forms like toads and lizards. The battle between the Telluric and Solar impulses is demonstrated, for example, in the Nordic legend of the Virgin Spring, with Ingeri as the exemplar of the former and Karin of the latter.

The struggle between the Titans and the Olympic gods can also be understood in this context. The mlecchas were a degraded Telluric warrior caste, which the avatar Parashurama came to destroy.

Fire and Ice: The Solar Race
Posted on 2015-05-31 by Cologero

Fire and Ice
This is the first of several posts about the various races of the spirit by Julius Evola: The Solar Race. Evola owes his typology of spirits of the race to J J Bachofen‘s study of Mother Right, although with a creative misreading of the text, Evola extracts a deeper meaning from it.

Bachofen delineated a historical process of cultures from haeterism to matriarchy, culminating in patriarchy, which he admitted was

    the highest calling, the sublimation of earthly existence to the purity of the divine father principle.

Bachofen traces the patriarchal system in the ancient world to Athens and to the Roman Imperium. In them, there was Solarity.

As we have seen, however, Evola rejects any notion of “progress” in history. Rather he sees a degeneration. Certain ancient peoples were feminine in nature, and hence endured various matriarchal systems as described by Bachofen. On the other hand, the Hyperborean, or Nordic, peoples, were originally masculine, or equivalently Solar. Subsequent racial degeneration has led to the situation of the present era.

Although Evola gives us a very brief outline, he entire oeuvre is dedicated to the description of the Solar race. Fire and Ice are the paradoxically conjoined symbols of the Solar qualities. The Solar beings are described by Evola as being in this world, but not of it: they feel themselves as strangers in a strange land. Only ignorance or a waking “sleep” keep them bound to specific modes of being in the world. Gnosis, or awakening, what Guenon calls the Supreme Identity, liberates them from attachment to the world. Evola claims that such doctrines of awakening can only apply to the Solar race; attempts to extend such ideas as universal can lead only to misunderstandings.

This series, we hope, should make clear that the problem of the modern world is not a problem of thinking but rather of being. The error of the intellectual type is the belief that thinking the correct thoughts will somehow rectify things. Hence, there is incessant chatter and debate, which, apart from a few random conversions, always ends up in aporia.

The fundamental thing that matters is a change in the level of being.

The Eternal Race
Posted on 2015-05-24 by Cologero

In The Eternal Race, Julius Evola explains the doctrine of the “race of the spirit“. Unlike the race of the soul, which is contingent and changeable, the race of the spirit is transhistorical. The way to access it is through the originary symbols and myths of a people. Evola describes the method, dangers, and value of this type of research.

Although the context is much different, this is not essentially much different from methods described by Valentin Tomberg; this undoubtedly arises from their deep and comprehensive knowledge of Hermetism. Remarkably, it is not unlike the “phenomenology” of John Paul II in the Theology of the Body. The latter treats the first chapters of Genesis as the myth of the origins of the entire human race.

For Evola, however, the goal is to determine the spiritual roots of specific peoples. He expects a “super race” to arise, which is really Guenon’s “elite” who, by recovering the original spiritual impulse of a people, will inaugurate a new civilization.

What follows is some background information for understanding the text.
Evolutionism

Evola rejects “evolutionism” because it assumes that man evolved from a lower state to a higher state. This is a false metaphysical claim, although most people today assume it as a biological fact. What is too often called the “theory of evolution” is a misnomer; “neo-Darwinism” is a more accurate term (although there are alternatives), since it is based on the addition of Mendel’s work on genes as the mechanism to explain heredity in Darwinism. However, strictly as science, there is no direction or aim to it. Humans can arise from apes just as readily as an ape from a human (and the latter is more observable.) There is only a problem when science oversteps its bounds.
Klages and Jung

Carl Jung is easily misunderstood. In his autobiography, he explains that qua scientist, he can only make psychological claims. This is what Evola objects to. However, Jung also said that the archetypes have more than a psychological significance.

Ludwig Klages is a different story. Lucian Tudor describes Klages’ philosophy of biocentrism in this way:

    Biocentrism posited an essential distinction between Seele (Soul?) and Geist (Spirit), which conflict each other in human life. The Geist is the nous, the pneuma, or the logos … what we would call in ordinary speech the intellect, the reason, the spirit, the mind…. The Seele corresponds to the Greek psyche. It is the living principle, the vital spark … and one with the body, soma. Biocentrism is a romanticist and anti-rationalist philosophy which poses the Soul as positive and the Spirit as negative. According to Biocentric theory, human beings had originally – in primordial, ancient times – lived ecstatically in accordance to the principle of Leben (Life, which is held as the ultimate value, to be distinguished from mere existence) and in a harmonious relation to the cosmos and the sensual world of images.

    In Biocentric theory, at some point in history the force of the Spirit intruded into life and caused humans to use abstract, conceptual (as opposed to symbolic) thought and rational intellect, thus beginning the severing of body and Soul … Biocentric philosophy also attacked Judeo-Christianity as a Logocentric religion opposed to Life and upheld ancient Paganism (which has a Dionysian character centered around vitalistic, feminine values) as the Biocentric religion of Life. 

Obviously, Biocentrism is absurd from a Traditional point of view, so, for Evola, it is not only false but dangerous. However, it is implicit in much of neo-pagan reconstructions, which seeks to live in immediacy with no sense of the truly transcendent.
Positive Sources

Evola mentions Fustel de Coulanges and Bachofen as being of fundamental importance. Evola’s work will be understood better by those who have read those authors.

Origin of the Race of the Soul
Posted on 2015-05-17 by Cologero

In formulating a theory of the origin of the race of the soul, Julius Evola points out that “soul” (or psyche) does not mean “subjective activities” in the mind as contemporary psychology understands it. Rather, it is a distinct entity, which he relates to the traditional teachings of the “subtle body”. In other words, it is not reducible to material, physical, or biological factors. Hence, scientific methods cannot be applied to understand the race of the soul.

At its origins, the soul and the body may have been in harmony, but that is seldom the case today. Hence, there are really two levels of heredity: the biological and the psychical. Moreover, psychical heredity is non-deterministic since the factor of elective affinity comes into play.

The full text is at Origins of the races of the soul.
Addendum

A commenter on gornahoor.wordpress.com mentioned that this chapter seemed “arbitrary and even dangerous.” However, I believe this chapter is significant, at least in some aspects, if not in toto. For example, I believe it offers an explanation for the transmission of what is called “original sin”. In times past, the method of transmission was debated, e.g., whether it came through semen, etc. However, such biological and material explanations make no sense to anyone today. Were that true, there would be an “original sin” gene. Then, presumably, gene therapy could someday reverse the effects of original sin.

On the other hand, Joseph Ratzinger’s description of original sin as more like a psychological matrix that we are unavoidedly born into makes more sense to people today. It can be understood and even observed. Nevertheless, it is still weak since a means of transmission is never specified. The notion that there is a psychical heredity, therefore, answers the question of transmission. Moreover, psychical deformations even spill over onto the body, with ill effects. This is just a starting point for understanding that doctrine.
Postscript

: The German translation has some interesting additions. In it, Evola refers to the “Nordic-Roman” race rather than the “Nordic” race.

He also quotes Alfred Rosenberg, with whom Evola otherwise had significant disagreements:

    The body is the externality of the soul and the soul is the race seen from the inside. 

Race of the Soul
Posted on 2015-05-10 by Cologero

    there are many cases of people who are exactly of the same race of the body, of the same tribe, sometimes even, brothers or fathers and sons, of the same blood in the most real sense, but who nevertheless fail to understand each other. A barrier separates their souls, their way of feeling and seeing is different, and the common race of the body and common blood can do nothing about that. A possibility of comprehension exists, and therefore of true solidarity, of deep unity, only where a common “race of the soul” exists. 

Since man is an ensouled body, his outward physical characteristics, or race of the body, are insufficient to determine him. That is, the body is neither a chunk of matter, nor an animal, so DNA will fail to define him. Keep in mind that by “race”, Evola does not mean it how it is understood in the USA, with its emotionally charged history of slavery, apartheid, and civil rights. Rather, it is much more specific, so he can speak of a Nordic race, an Italic race, and so on. This is more obvious in languages like Italian or German, since the word for “race” in those languages is also used to refer to “breeds” of animals.

Applying phenomenology to the experience of race, we see, as did Evola, that sharp and deep divisions separate even those of the same physical race. These are not merely accidental qualities, but are constitutive of the person. These divisions often make mutual intelligibility impossible, without the effort to transcend such differences on a higher plane. There are two all too obvious consequences to this. First of all, any attempt to appeal to some racial solidarity of the first level will necessarily fail. Secondly, these divisions at the soul level will not be resolved by discussions or “debates”. Fabre d’Olivet confirms this:

    Nature does not make men equal; souls differ still more than bodies. 

From the esoteric perspective, what is of interest is why people hold certain views, not the views themselves. For example, a convinced materialist or atheist holds his view with a passionate intensity, since he is unable to conceive of, or experience interiorly, any other possibility that makes sense to him. Bracketing out for the moment the possibility of a spiritual or intellectual conversion, people remain locked into certain fixed patterns of soul life.

Evola also provides a different understanding of “purity”. Physical purity is impossible, or at least, undesirable. There is a small, but not negligible, mutation rate in any population. Since most mutations are deleterious, an endogamous population will decline over the centuries. Purity, then, can only mean the adequation of corporeal and psychic qualities. Thus for example, on the one hand he can praise certain Nordic qualities, while also mentioning the degeneration of the Nordic race. Note that these qualities are all on the plane of the soul and spirit, not the body.

The takeaway is that successful movements depend on a core group of “like-minded” people, if that is your goal; great leaders instinctively understand this. As Evola explains,

    A possibility of comprehension, and therefore of true solidarity, of deep unity, exists only where a common “race of the soul” exists. 

For example, desirable qualities may include “calm and dominating superiority, solarity, sense of distance, active detachment”. Those that have such qualities actively can then identify those who may have them virtually. However, an indiscriminate mixing, a “big tent”, won’t come to much beyond putting some people in positions of power for its own sake. The telltale sign of degeneration is the failure to differentiate, which is also the hallmark of the Kali Yuga. Differentiation at the level of the soul is more important than the body. Evola concludes:

    it may happen that a person gives us the clear impression by his way of acting that he “is of another race” and, then, there is no longer anything to do with him; relationships of a various nature can exist with him, but always with an inner reservation and inner distance. He “is no longer ours”. 

A leader needs to make that determination. Of course, the most fundamental differentiation is that between a man and a woman, who relate to each other not just physically, but more importantly at the soul and spirit level. Nowadays, even that differentiation is losing force. Many, today, even fail to differentiate between humans and animals.

Aeneas has posted a new chapter from Sintesi; it will remain online for four days

The Race of Rome: Foundations

29
Saturday
Oct 2016

Posted by Gornahoor in Massimo Scaligero	

≈ 1 Comment

The racial origins of Rome are surrounded by the mystery that accompanies the birth of every great civilization: fable and history intermix with each other. Beyond the veil of myth, the foundation of the City of Rome presents in its drama the signs of a new history of the West, through a chain of events that are to be considered symbols of a new way of seeing and organizing life and that therefore, in the old and decadent Mediterranean world, herald the Roman conquest of the West. It should be said that the rite of the
la-lupa-e-i-gemelli-di-roma

The Wolf and the Twins of Rome

foundation is the prelude, in its naked drama, to the eternal virtues of the Empire: the founder is in fact the Lar par excellence, the progenitor of a race of divine origin, and first and foremost achieves a spiritual pact with the gods and with men; then he will proceed to the rite of the foundation.

In order to understand the meaning of a power that initiates the formation of the race, it is necessary to keep in mind that everything in Rome comes from a sacred, supernal sense of life: the foundation of the city is a constructive act that moves from an order of purely spiritual necessity: it is the result of a religious ideal harmony constituted among a group of men, warriors and priests, who seek to establish a new unity, a creative force, and intend primarily to locate the sanctuary of common worship in the city. The foundation, then, is not motivated by economic, topographic, or, in any case, contingent reasons, but by reasons of common aspiration to a higher ideal of a supermaterial, “divine” level. The rite then discloses a universalistic value assigning celebrations of nature, mystical and esoteric meanings, queries to the celestial forces for the choice of location and evocations to demonic powers, the genius of the people, to the chthonic and uranic gods, for the fortune of the city that is going to arise.

While wanting to mention this mystery of the founding of Rome in this paper, it is not possible to linger at this point to give even a brief idea of the essential value attached by the ancients, and especially by the Romans, to the action of the rite. Suffice it to say that, in the same way that a modern with mechanical operations and procedures becomes master of distance, it gives form to matter and organizes its own outer life, so the ancient Roman Empire, through the ritual technique made perfect thanks to the regal-priesthood union that entailed the action of a self-conscious, “solar” will, and the body of a dynamic, mediating, “lunar” force, established an ascending contact with the magnetic forces of the universe and acted psychically through them. There existed a science of such action: unlike the mechanical sciences placing all men on the same levels (since mechanical means can be operated both by the learned and the ignorant), it required a spiritual dignity that was not for everyone; it demanded the presence of psychical qualities, in a dynamic and exceptional sense, and hence connected to a higher morality that was not at all different from that of the mystic, the priest. However, this does not mean for the Roman that the event must be limited to the contemplative and mystical world (as in the ancient rituals of the Mediterranean peoples, Orphism and Pythagorism) but from a spiritually “superhuman” plane, it was necessary to speak in order to give meaning to the “human”, to the real, to everyday life, to organic political unity. It was therefore a highly religious sense of that existence which the rite conformed to: the race was continuously moulded in it, made strong in every aspect: and they were privileged beings, that is, more inwardly complex, far-sighted, “Initiated”, and were entrusted with the task of giving shape and direction to events, through the meticulous technique of the rite. They were priests, flamens, pontiffs. Their wisdom was the Tradition, the very remote legacy of the “solar” race, heroic and spiritual at the same time.

With the founding of Rome, the priesthood resumed to be part of an eternal harmony of the world, becoming a complement of warrior action, that is, no longer limited to the aestheticism of the ancient Western mysteriological communities (Zagreus, Dionysus, Orpheus), nor serving as an instrument for abusive orgies and to matriarchal ”aphroditism” of previous Mediterranean regimes, but compelling the Spirit in a new discipline, that is, to result in precision of acts, assertions, conquests, constraining the Spirit in a new discipline, that is, to result in a precision of acts, affirmations, conquests, obliging the apeiron, the indefinite, to assume form, to be actualized in pèras, in well-defined reality, the archetype of the classical creation and the original inspiration of the imperium, of the new architectonic soul.

We repeat, this is not poetry, nor even myth. Despite the magical resonance of myth in the story of Aeneas, as Virgil relates it, and in that of Romulus, son of a Vestal Virgin and the god Mars, although later than the events of the origins, it represent only a human veil of deep mystery of the foundation. Someone told us that with this legend they wanted make of Romulus an emanation of the “feminine” principle – those who believe that it’s worth the trouble, and attributes value to the similarities, takes into account that, despite the union of Mars with the Vestal Virgin, she is to be considered as the terrestrial symbol of virginity, i.e., of the raw power not actualized in maternity – enlivened by the Numidian force personified in the masculine God.

The essence of the secret can be glimpsed only if, taking advantage of a non-scholastic and non- rationalistic vision of history, we consider that Romulus, while adopting the archaic rite of the foundation, grafted onto it acts which have new meanings. It is not enough to recognize that this rite, although of Etruscan origin, was also common to Lazio and Sabina. In the rite of the mundus the principle of the eternity of the Urbe is realized, since the Spirit again results in action, in hierarchical reality. For those interested in it, we refer to symbols, like the prophetic visions of Romulus on the Palatine, and emphasize that Remus, who is to symbolize the anti-hierarchical element of the decadent period, breached the intangibility of the trench and Romulus punished him.

According to the archaic Etruscan rite, the auguries had to get up after midnight, in silence, and wait for the dawn. Romulus and Remus also rise post mediam noctem: they go up on two hills (tabernacula capiunt, templa capiunt): from this moment the destiny of Rome and of its race is going to be marked. Historians and poets almost totally agree in telling us that Romulus went up on the Palatine and Remus on the Aventine: two different places, two opposed symbols, two traditions that clash, and hence still two races.
i-due-re-romolo-e-remo

Romulus and Remus

It is necessary to decide on the name of the new city: will it be called Rome or Remora? Will the king be Romulus or Remus? All are intent, in anticipation of the verdict of which must come from the same force of destiny. The white disk of the moon sets: it diffuses the light of dawn and here is the most perfect of the auguries: the eagle of Jupiter shows up on the left – it is the symbol of “Olympian” royalty characteristic of the “Solar Race”, which is revealed to the fathers of the future rulers of the West–and while the disc of the sun appears, there is a black flock of birds flying rapidly. The one who had seen the first twelve vultures would reign. First is Romulus, at the brightening of the day; the people rejoice: Romulus is consecrated king and priest, is the first Lar, the father of the new race.

And so it is that an authentic progenitor demonstrates the priestly technique of the foundation. He, informed of the ancient Etruscan ritual and learned through the secret liturgical books–as we read in Cato, Servius, Festus and Gellius–initiated a very spiritual sacred science which integrated in him the warrior and the founder of civilization, he drew the omens, offered the sacrifice, lighted the ritual fire, dug the circular pit, the mundus, and threw on it the handful of earth to which the soul of ancestors was symbolically and actually tied, he began the powerful and mysterious life of the terra patrum, the land of the fathers, the fatherland, that is, of the earth to which the destiny of the race will be linked.

To seal the bond of the needed deity with the spatial center of the new city, that is, in order to link the power of the Spirit to the place, so the place contains his “demonic” forces of the fatherland, the sacred place, the actual eternity, a large stone, the lapis Manalis, closes the mouth of the pit.

The “underworld” is so constituted, that it must accept the souls, not the bodies, of the dead, and hence three times a year they will issue in the world of life. Delivered to the underworld, there are erected a conically shaped column and a pyramid: both are sacred to the manes of the progenitory and are consecrated to his heroisms. It is therefore an immortal strength that goes to the ground, which will therefore also be immortal. After taking in the divine cycle, the founder, living spiritually in the underworld, will be revered by the city as a son of the gods, a god among gods, auctor, hero and kin of the new people.
romolo-traccia-il-solco-dellurbe

Romulus digging the trench

With the underworld and the supernal word consecrated, we proceed to the ritual constitution of the topography of the city, always with regard to an ancient ceremonial secret that Romulus knows well. We know only the exterior modality of the ceremonial, but it also has a language for those who can understand it. In a white cloak and his head covered, according to the priestly custom, he yoked an ox and a white robust cow to the plow, he descended down the hill, followed by silent companions, and invoking with mysterious formulas of propitiation the favor of divine forces, began to trace the ritual trench, making sure that inside, on the side of the city, is the cow, the image of fertility, and outside, on the countryside, is the ox, a symbol of strength.

In driving the trench, he lifts the plow where he wants the gates, so that it does not touch the ground. Then he raises the walls of the city limits, following the line of the trench, and outside, hugging the walls, dig the trench of the circumvallation: here and there the two pomeri: one inside and the other outside: two land areas that they can neither plow nor inhabit, purposely vacated and free, for the purpose of lookout and defense. The sacred walls will be raised here and no one will be able to then modify the size and restore them without the permission of the Pontiffs. At the borders the names dedicated to the god Terminus will be placed.

Having traced the borders of the city, he gave houses to the fathers subject to chance, declared the laws, and, followed by all the comrades, climbed back up the summit. Then, he shouted out the divine name of the city, which is repeated three times in a loud voice by the fathers, immolated the white bull with the cow on the altar of the Supreme Jupiter. They then prepared meals and celebrations lasting for nine days. The objects used in the rite of the foundation of the Urbe were put back into the mundus as sacred.

This complex ritual so that Rome, according to Ennius, was founded with an “august omen,” contains the basic reasons that will give the sense of eternity to the race, the city and its empire: it is the ceremonial aspect of a secret technique aspiring to subjugate the events to a single direction, that of the nascent Urbe . It is the initial victory of the race of Rome over fate, for a new cycle of the West. This will be then the meaning of the Dies Natalis Urbis Romae. The founding of Rome is thus a constructive act that moves from an order of inner necessity: while it is the consequence of a religious agreement among those who will live there, since it will represent the sanctuary of common worship, it must be ritually established as cause of causes , as a starting point, as a radical design of a future organism. It is a seed in the womb of the earth and, as a seed, it must contain the force of procreation.

It is essentially an “initiatic” art that intervenes to give direction to destiny, with the rite of the mundus: this small circular pit, dug by Romulus, accepts a handful of earth that he has brought with him from Alba (Plutarch, Dione, Cassius, Ovid, Festus) and welcomes the sod that each of his companions has carried from the land in which it was burning before the sacred fire, which was linked to the souls of their manes. It is therefore land steeped in forces, the soul of races, the land where the dynamics of the genius loci, the spirit of the race is attached. It is not poetry. It is the creation of a powerful condenser of forces gathered according to a process whose modality is not known by many, and indeed must–always in compliance with an esoteric technique–be unknown, just as the secret name of the city, the nomen sacrum, the seminal word, spermaticos logos, the secret word that corresponds to the virtues of the deity of the city. The same force of the rite ensures that the founders are liberated from the “impiety” of leaving the land of their forefathers and promotes a new link between soul and matter, between the spirit of the race and the land chosen for the foundation.

The mundus is, therefore, a sacred place, the central point in which destiny is tied to the earth through ritual strength: the spatial aspect of becoming is thus dominated and bound by virtue of an incident that contains in itself the surpassing of time: if the land is linked to the power of the Spirit, if the Spirit of the deified ancestor is immortal, the land is saturated in a metaphysical virtue, it becomes the mystical center of eternity. Mundus means, in ancient esoteric language, the region of the Manes, moundos (Plutarch, Festus, Servius); and because the worship of the Manes is uninterrupted due to burning the sacred flame in front of the domestic lararium, it also clarifies the meaning of the fire. The sacred fire of the city will be lighted on the prophetic pit, which will be the fire of Vesta, always lit in the temple: it will not be an element of deified nature, as historical criticism has always believed, but will represent the earthly symbol of a divine force that , on the celestial plane, will always symbolically correspond to the sun and in the sense of human physiology, the heart, the seat of superhuman intelligence according to ancient spirituality (Cicero, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Emperor Julian). Thus as an eternal flame of divinity burns in the heart of the hero and the ascetic, the fire of Vesta will burn inside of the temple.

But who in Rome first lit this fire? Romulus. He then is the founder, but also the primigenial Lar of the city, the spiritual father of the Roman race: and being divine in human life, his death will only be a total reuniting with the divine plane. The myth dramatizes this story.

What is necessary to emphasize is that the divine element constitutes the essential part of the birth of Rome, it is only the religious aspect of the mastery of events, of inevitability, obtained through the possession of transcendent energy that was familiar to the ancient Initiate, as the control and mastery of physical energies is to the contemporary engineer and mechanic.