/lit/ - Literature

>>22049252
Just read him and make your own opinion.

>>22049252
>Where to start
Revolt, Ride the Tiger, or Men Among the Ruins.
>Based or cringe?
Form your own opinions.

>>22049252
I like what he has to say, but the amount of words that he takes to say it sours the reading experience a little for me. Don't get me wrong, I love verbose manifestos and all that jazz, but holy shit Evola, get to the fucking point you bush-beater.

>>22049252
>buzzword or buzzword?
Stop speaking in memes, for God's sake.

>>22049329

Stop having Aspergers and the inability to recognise humour or sarcasm, for God's sake

Evola is the generic atheist who want to get out of the secular enlightenment but also want the secular enlightenment, especially keeping the political side of it.
Evola is the average girl who wants spirituality but also love the hecking consumerism.
It's Mysticism lite for people who can't read, Guenon is a Catholic who abandoned his faith for Sufism when he realized the Vatican was a lost cause. Both of them made shit up and basically shilled for political views: Gueon was a Theocratic Monarchist and Evola was a Fascist Neo-Feudalist.

Much like Blavatsky, who was a Theocratic Socialist, and Crowley who was a hedonistic anarchist, they knew quite a deal, spent a good amount of time with primary sources and distilled existing ideas into their own understanding.

I'm going to get a response saying that Crowley and Blavatsky were frauds, but abandoning your faith for Islam, and being a Magical Tantric renegade Fascist ostracized by your own tradition is pretty much the same as saying you're giving birth to the Anti-Christ or in contact with magicians from India. If we view all 4 of them for their works alone, ignoring the personal problems and insanity, they were all quite well spoken, did good work, and had a strong grasp on some of the material they talked about. Blavatsky was intimately familiar with Gnosticism, Vedanta, Hermeticism and Tibetan Buddhism (in fact this has been confirmed by 20th century Tibetan Buddhists, she very clearly did meet Dzogchen and Mahayana adepts). Crowley had a good grasp on Taoism, an incredible understanding of Kabbalah/Qabbala, Tarot, Numerology, Alchemy and other mystical currents. Guenon was an excellent metaphysician echoing the Geometric-Mathematical metaphysics of Volume 1 of Blavatsky's secret doctrine, a sign that he did indeed understand the perrenial wisdom, or the Secret Doctrine as she called it. It seems that Evola had a good grasp on Vedanta, though inserting his own views as well, strong grasp on Tantra, and a strong grasp of initiation and its relationship with esotericism. Actually taking anything the four of them said on faith is extremely stupid.

Read what they read, and come to your own conclusions. Modern spirituality is marred by a few things: the existence of Christian culture and theologians; Atheism and rationalism in academia; Anglos translating Eastern ideas improperly; Jews suppressing ideas; Fascists polluting Eastern and Western Esotericism with anachronistic nonsense racial science and racial teleology; Metaphysics as a talent dying off with the 19th century. It is absolutely best to go to the texts themselves while using these people as biased encyclopedias and as foils to your own understanding. I agree with Evola's Kali Yuga, Crowley's Age of Horus, Blavatsky's universal brotherhood and cosmogenesis and Guenon's ideas about the degeneration of spiritual principles. I reject most of the rest of what they say. Doing that has helped me considerably in my studies.

By the way perrenialism was create by freemasons like Guénon.

>Started in the British empire
>British loyalists (loyal to the queen)
>Primarily protestants originally (as the British empire was protestant)
>high society (wealthy, high class, high status)
>Perennial (All religions are equal, as long as they believe in "God")
>Catholic church took hard stance against them
>Catholics cannot receive the sacraments if they are freemasons
>Freemasons oppress and undermine Catholics any chance they get
>Banned wine in mexico in the early 1900s as a means of stopping mass
>Many ties to Freemasons and private security companies, contractors in general, and construction (I've seen this personally, former worshipful master of the lodge here owned a private security company)
>private security companies and contractors are among the driving forces behind "gangstalking"
>Catholicism is the highest and most true expression of Christianity (Orthodoxy being very close behind)
>Catholics are right that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity
>Freemasonry is an enemy of Catholicism
>therefore Freemasonry is an enemy of the highest expression of Christianity

People join freemasonry in hopes of making connections, climbing the ranks, making money, and becoming successful. They take oaths to do this, blood oaths, where they make a slicing motion across the neck from ear to ear and over the belly (symbolizing being murdered if they break their oaths). Freemasonry is undoubtedly evil

Why read Evola if there's so many other choices.What's so special about his philosophy?

>>22049252
Disregard all replies. Start with Bow and the Club. It will give you a feel of what Evola is really about and like, his intellect and eccleticity, while being accessible to almost everyone. Then, if you liked it and decide you want to learn more, read Metaphysics of Sex, his most underrated and precious boom that will give you a real understanding of him and his life's work and will show you he's completely different from most online understanding of him. Ride the Tiger, Doctrine of Awakening, and Hermetic Tradition. Reread his books again and again and then add more books of him according to your interests.
Most books reccomenfed of him (metaphysics of war and power for example) are his weakest works, although still solid.

I read his work in italian so I can't advise you on which translation to choose

>>22049418
Evola had a strong grasp of Buddhism as well. Doctrine of Awakening is superb, the online criticisms I saw of it are sterile and it's no surprise they never cite the text. It's not a retconning of Buddhism either, it's just a clarification and dispelling of myths, I see total harmony between the texts of most buddhist sects and DoA, from Pali Canon to Zen Koans

>>22049397
>memespeak
>humour or sarcasm
Terminally online behaviour.

>>22049421
He is extremely intelligent and well spoken, able to branch out swiftly in many topics and although he fails at time in all his books he spends a huge amount of effort to put the maximum amount of intellectual, academical end empirical rigor in what he says. For example, there's an endless list of tens of thousands precise citations in his work. All of this while refusing to consider himself a philosopher, and at the same time being extremely humble and self aware

So was he an atheist or not? I know he didn't believe in a personal Christian God but did he believe in a higher power and creator? Or was he just another larper?

>>22049252
His best books are on spirituality. His political books are shit.
>>22049418
Excellent post. I would suggest Eliade to anyone who likes such folx. And his student Culianu. A more rigorous expression of similar views. Also, if you aren't afraid to read fashy goys, check out Klages. He is like a perfect mix of Crowley and Evola IMO. Plus, as Bishop has pointed out, his work jives quite nicely with Jung's neo-archaic ontology.
>>22049420
Prisca Theologia is compatible with Christianity/Catholicism. Or has been sometimes considered so during renaissance and medieval period.
>>22049550
That is a difficult question. He seems to be some sort of henotheist neopagan but never officially joined a tradition. I would say he believes in higher power(s) for sure tho. Not a materialist. Not a sciencefag. An idealist. Magical in fact. The world as act and imagination married in will. The actualization of the perennial idea.

>>22049592

>That is a difficult question. He seems to be some sort of henotheist neopagan but never officially joined a tradition. I would say he believes in higher power(s) for sure tho. Not a materialist. Not a sciencefag. An idealist. Magical in fact. The world as act and imagination married in will. The actualization of the perennial idea

So a larper then.

>>22049455
But what does he write about? What is, broadly, the central topic of his works?

>>22049596
Plato was likely a henotheistic pagan. Is it the revival that makes it larp? He (Evola) actually is legit with sources unlike most new agers or wiccans. Was Plethon a larper?

>Personal life
>Evola was childless and never married

Chud. Simple as.

>>22049420
I'll sum you up
Clearly many traditions have irreconcilable differences and objectives so people pushing you can unify or ignore those differences are glowies.

Orthodoxy is truer though. The papacy was an innovation and John 11:56 refutes the filioque.

>>22049624
Tradition mainly. The tradition of the premodern-age, how straying from this general tradition has been bad, how different cultures have expressed this tradition and how to bring back tradition into wider use in the modern age (strengthen yourself to be able to take over once the weakening society finally collapses) Revolt against modernity ride out this bad age and be sure you or your descendants can stand among the ruins and rebuild what once case.

>>22049252
One of the most based philosophers of the 20th century. Start with Revolt or Tiger.

>>22049674
So he creates the term of tradition and then applies it generally to all major cultures that existed in the past? Why though? For instance, I don't like the Romans. They might be as traditional as they want to be but I do simply not sympathize, not even with the founding ideas of their society. I could write pages about everything that was wrong with the Romans. The point is that I don't quite follow his idea of tradition to begin with.

>>22049252
There is a chart that claims that one should start with his book on the Holy Grail. Can't find the chart though.

>>22049695

You won't like Evola then, he worshipped Rome and saw it as the pinnacle of all humanity.

>>22049252
>cringe
>who cares?
>neither, aristocratic failson

>>22049861
>>22049252

>>22050006
>he worshipped Rome
to be fair, he was Italian.

>>22049624
He continues the Idealism discussion from Hegel, Gentile etc and proposed his onthological solution: The absolute individual and magical idealism
That's the crux of his mission, "tradition" is a misnomer

>>22050006
>>22050251
Well I can accept that if he has good arguments to provide, not everything was bad about Rome but generally they were copists who took their culture from the Greeks, a multicultural shithole and they didn't have a caste system.

>>22050263
Ok now this sounds more interesting. I might read.

>>22050062
who makes this stuff. Its mindblowing

>>22050287
Spiritual aristocrats make charts like this. Who else?

Why is it that Christianity that gets shit on harder than any other religion? I can understand the complaint that there is no official esoteric component but the average human hasn't got either the intellect or patience to spend their lives studying the cryptic initiate stuff. Better to be a naive Bible thumper than a Godless degenerate. Although Evola and his occult kin didn't seem to think so.

>>22049252
It's his 125th birthday today anons! Buon compleanno Barone!
On topic, Hermetic Tradition is his best work imo and doesn't really need any prior context (although it's also very dense and definitely not light reading)

Evola says, "Trans rights!"

>>22050735
What is immediately surrounding you is often what is most prominent in the mind.

>>22050274
Sadly you need to learn italian to get the full picture. Teoria dell'individuo assoluto is his most philosophical book and serves as a huge introductor and explainer to his later work, but has never been translated in english

>>22049695
>So he creates the term of tradition and then applies it generally to all major cultures that existed in the past?
Yes, that's where his perennialists influences pop out. He gets that 'old good, new bad' but wants to codify a universality out of a generalised old when clearly that's bullshit because many traditions are vastly different. It's like people today saying stupidly "why can't all the religions just come to an agreemenr and get along?" If you read it less as an advocation for his traditionalist ideology and just his political and historical examinations for a generalised 'good' it's a good read. He also goes into magic and metaphysics.

>>22050735
>Better to be a naive Bible thumper than a Godless degenerate. Although Evola and his occult kin didn't seem to think so.
On the contrary, that's exactly what he advocates for in The Fall of Spirituality. He totally rejects all of modern occultism in favor of Christianity and the Greco-Roman worldview.

I liked his seminal work on gay niggers shaking ass. truly one of the best essays to ever essay in everty

>>22052374
This stems from the deep atheist desire for universalism, starting with their meme revolutions.
Evola is too tainted by atheism to think properly.

>>22049252
start with guenon

>Where to start with Evola?
Depends. But "Men Among the Ruins" is a pretty good book to start with.

>>22049550
It's honesty somewhat difficult to determine. I believe, like the previous anon who responded to you, that Evola more so believed in a metaphysical force rather than a omnipotent god.

>>22049642
He never married, but he had a very active sex life regardless.