Sao Paulo: IV Encontro Internacional Evoliano

DE PIE SOBRE LAS RUINAS

DE PIE SOBRE LAS RUINAS

de Juan Pablo Vítali

 

De Pie Sobre las Ruinas

 

POR

 

JUAN PABLO VÍTALI

 

 

Diseño: Fernando Lutz
Maquetación y correciones: Manuel Q.
Colección: Minnesänger
Papel blanco 90gr.

Páginas: 152

Tamaño: 21 x 15 cm

Edición en rústica (cosido) con solapas de 8 cm

P.V.P.: 15 €

(Gastos de envío no incluidos)

 

ISBN: 978-84-940846-8-3 

 

www.edicionescamzo.com

http://edicionescamzo.blogspot.com.es/

Pedidos a: [e-mail]

 

Sabadell-CAM:

 

0081 3176 22 0006048819

 

 

 

 “Los poetas no están para interpretar poderes circunstanciales ni superficiales ideologías. Ellos expresan lo sagrado de los mundos auténticos e irrumpen como un rayo para alumbrar fugazmente la edad oscura. El poeta no es un dios, pero suele hablar por los dioses…..”

 

“El hombre moderno se ha colocado a sí mismo fuera de toda comprensión poética. Esa es acaso, la mejor definición de la edad oscura...”

 

“Lo poético no reside en el verso ni en la rima, sino en la tensión espiritual y épica del texto, en la sucesión simbólica que crece y se eleva hacia el objetivo, como la flecha de un arquero zen...”

 

“Los símbolos poéticos convocan a la percepción del hombre lo que está más allá de la percepción material. La poesía es la voluntad de plasmar un lenguaje simbólico no como la excepción, sino como la regla de un Orden Nuevo…..”

 

“La poesía es un mundo de dioses, que tiene por naturaleza la eternidad de los ciclos, el eterno retorno. Poeta y guerrero abren ciertas puertas a riesgo de sus vidas, para que otros pasen por ellas hacia la eternidad. Tal es su trágico destino…...”

 

 

Juan Pablo Vítali

L’écologie selon Hildegarde

Ex: http://fortune.fdesouche.com

 

Sainte Hildegarde de Bingen (1098-1179) a été proclamée en 2012 Docteur de l’Eglise par Benoît XVI, faisant d’elle la quatrième femme Docteur de l’Église après Catherine de Sienne, Thérèse d’Avila et Thérèse de Lisieux. Cette reconnaissance est la plus haute de l’Eglise catholique, affirmant par là même l’exemplarité de la vie mais aussi des écrits d’Hildegarde comme modèle pour tous les catholiques. Retour sur une pensée non sans rapport avec l’écologie.

Écologie. Vous avez dit écologie…

La mode est à l’écologie. Soigner son environnement, protéger sa planète s’impose comme une obligation morale, surtout depuis qu’on interdit aux religions de prononcer ce gros mot. Mais de quoi parle-t-on au juste ? Parler de planète, ce n’est pas la même chose que parler de monde ; parler de la nature ne dit pas ce qu’est cette nature, dans sa… nature profonde, même lorsqu’on l’écrit avec un « N » majuscule. Les anciens vivaient dans un monde ; nous, nous vivons sur une planète, perdus dans une immensité sans frontières…

Sainte Hildegarde appartient au passé, non parce qu’elle aurait aujourd’hui 916 ans ou parce qu’elle ne connaît rien à l’économie, mais parce qu’elle nous parle d’un monde qui ne ressemble plus du tout au nôtre. Tandis que nous construisons des mondes nouveaux, des cieux nouveaux, que nous sautons de progrès en découvertes, elle nous révèle ingénument les secrets d’un univers où les cieux peuplés de créatures chantent la gloire de Dieu, où la terre glorifie le Créateur dans toutes ses fibres, des plantes aux anges, en passant par les astres, le sexe, la vie, la souffrance…

C’est à peine si nous reconnaissons la nature qu’elle nous décrit dans ses visions et dans ses chants, tant le visage qu’elle en montre a changé depuis lors ! Comme si ses visions nous transportaient de l’autre côté de la toile, nous faisant découvrir avec stupeur qu’il y a un envers à ce que nous voyons, et que cet envers est en réalité l’endroit des choses. Nous qui croyions invinciblement et définitivement voir les choses à l’endroit, nous apprenons que cette perception a quelque chose d’illusoire. Elle ne dit pas que nos sens nous trompent, comme le pense M. Descartes, mais qu’ils ne nous disent pas tout, tant s’en faut, que ce qu’ils disent est plutôt vrai, mais à l’envers.

Ce défaut de perception, placé à la racine même de l’homme depuis la chute d’Adam, ne dit lui-même pas tout de l’homme : celui qui en dit tout, c’est le Verbe incarné, nouvel Adam, homme restauré dans sa dignité première, parfaitement à l’endroit, lui. En Lui, le microcosme est renouvelé, et sa vision du macrocosme peut enfin retrouver son vrai sens.

En effet, chez notre visionnaire – comme chez tous les Pères de l’Église d’ailleurs -, l’homme ressemble à l’univers parce qu’il en rassemble tous les règnes : corps, âme et esprit, d’où le terme de microcosme, c’est-à-dire petit-monde. Ainsi, le grand-monde trouve-t-il son sens dans le Verbe fait chair, et l’homme sa vraie place dans ce monde per ipsum et cum ipso et in ipso, par Lui, avec Lui et en Lui. Le Verbe est la clef de lecture du monde.

Le statut ontologique de l’homme fait que tout ce qu’il accomplit sur terre concerne aussi les cieux, qu’il aime, qu’il mange, qu’il dorme ou qu’il marche. S’il ne doit pas faire n’importe quoi, c’est que d’une certaine manière ses actes résonnent dans tout l’univers. Sa conscience est une conscience d’abord religieuse, une conscience qui le relie, via le Verbe, à l’univers créé et au Créateur, la conscience morale n’étant que le reliquat de cette conscience plus vaste.

Le monde hildegardien est un monde de nature symbolique, où ce qui est en bas ressemble à ce qui est en haut, où le supérieur fonde l’inférieur, où les êtres circulent. Et la musique d’Hildegarde ressemble à ce monde, avec ses effets de miroir, ses ascensions fulgurantes, ses résonances multiples. La grâce et la beauté y sont la parure de toutes choses, Marie le miroir où partout se reflète le verbe créateur : « C’est pourquoi tu as été couronnée de la Sagesse de Dieu qui t’a établie comme son miroir ». Chez Hildegarde, nous regardons la nature et c’est Dieu qui paraît, nous tournons nos regards vers Marie, et c’est le Verbe qui se montre…

Si notre monde moderne consentait à regarder sa planète comme un miroir, qui sait, peut-être y verrait-il Dieu ?

La Nef

Teoría del Mundo Cúbico

Teoría del Mundo Cúbico  

Diálogo sobre la Teoría del Mundo Cúbico.- EMInves ha publicado una recopilación de artículos, corregidos y aumentados, acompañados de una conclusión, titulada Teoría del Mundo Cúbico. El libro ha aparecido precisamente la misma semana en la que menos de la mitad del electorado acudía a las urnas para elegir sus representantes en Europa y quizás sea este hecho por el que convenga empezar el diálogo con su autor, Ernesto Milá:

– Nuestro pueblo no parece ha estado muy interesado por las elecciones europeas… ¿Cómo sitúan en su libro a la Unión Europea?

– Es simple: la UE podía haberlo sido todo y, sin embargo, ha optado por no ser nada. La UE podía haberse constituido como una de las “patas” de un mundo multipolar, una de las zonas con mejor nivel de vida y bienestar de las poblaciones. Y, sin embargo, ha preferido ser una pieza más de un mundo globalizado y, como tal, una víctima más de esa odiosa concepción económico–política que aspira a homogeneizar el mundo en función de los intereses de la economía financiera y especulativa.

– Así pues, no hay futuro para Europa dentro de la globalización…

– Exacto, desde hace 25 años, Europa viene siendo víctima de un doble fenómeno: de un lado la deslocalización industrial en virtud de la cual, las plantas productoras de manufacturas tienden a abandonar territorio europeo y a trasladarse a zonas del planeta con menos coberturas sociales y, especialmente, salarios más bajos; de otro lado, la inmigración masiva traslada masas ingentes del “tercer mundo” hacia Europa con la finalidad de aumentar la fuerza de trabajo a disposición, logrando así tirar a la baja de los salarios. Ambos procesos –deslocalización industrial e inmigración masiva– tienden a rentabilizar el rendimiento del capital: se produce más barato fuera de Europa y lo que no hay más remedio que se fabrique en Europa, cuesta menos gracias a la inmigración masiva. Eufemísticamente, a este proceso, se le llama “ganar competitividad” y registra en su nómina a una ínfima minoría de beneficiarios y a una gran masa de damnificados. Por eso es rechazable.

– Hablando de “modelos”, en la introducción dices que tu Teoría del Mundo Cúbico es un modelo de interpretación de la modernidad, ¿puedes ampliarnos esta idea?

– Lo esencial de toda teoría política es interpretar el mundo en función de un esquema propio que ayude a explicar la génesis de la coyuntura histórica que se vive y cuál será su evolución futura. Esto es hasta tal punto necesario que, sin esto, puede decirse que ninguna doctrina política, ninguna concepción del mundo, logrará definir los mecanismos estratégicos para modificar aquellos aspectos de la realidad que le resulten rechazables o discordantes. Para que un modelo de interpretación de la realidad sea eficiente, es preciso que integre los aspectos esenciales del fenómeno que analiza. Los modelos geométricos son particularmente interesantes por lo que tienen de “visual”. De entre ellos, el cubo es, sin duda, el que mejor se adapta a la globalización y, por tanto, es el que hemos utilizado para nuestro análisis.

– Así pues, si no se comprende bien lo que es la globalización, ¿más vale no intentar aventuras políticas?

– Exactamente. Cuando emprendes un viaje, una aventura, debes llevar contigo un mapa. El mapa es, en definitiva, el modelo de interpretación que te llevará del lugar en el que te encuentras a aquel otro al que quieres llegar. Nadie sensato se atrevería a iniciar un viaje sin disponer de un plano susceptible de indicarle en cada momento dónde se encuentra y si va por la buena o por la mala dirección. Hoy, el factor dominante de nuestra época es el mundialismo y la globalización; el primero sería de naturaleza ideológica y en el segundo destaca su vertiente económica, especialmente. ¿Qué podríamos proponer a la sociedad si ignorásemos lo que es la globalización? Incluso Cristóbal Colón tenía una idea clara de a dónde quería ir; para él, su modelo de interpretación era la esfera; sabía pues que si partía de una orilla del mar, necesariamente, en algún lugar, llegaría a otra orilla. Desconocer lo que es la globalización y sus procesos supone no asentar la acción política sobre bases falsas y, por supuesto, una imposibilidad para elegir una estrategia de rectificación.

– ¿Qué pretendes transmitir a través de estas páginas?

– En primer lugar la sensación de que la globalización es el factor esencial de nuestro tiempo. Luego, negar cualquier virtud al sistema mundial globalizado, acaso, el peor de todos los sistemas posibles y, desde luego, la última consecuencia del capitalismo que inició su ascenso en Europa a partir del siglo XVII. Tras el capitalismo industrial, tras el capitalismo multinacional, no podía existir una fase posterior que no fuera especulativa y financiera a escala planetaria. Cuando George Soros o cualquier otro de los “señores del dinero” vierten alabanzas sobre la globalización, lo hacen porque forman parte de una ínfima minoría de beneficiarios que precisan de un solo mercado mundial para enriquecerse segundo a segundo, al margen de que la inmensa mayoría del planeta, también segundo a segundo, se vaya empobreciendo simétricamente. En la globalización hay “beneficiarios” y “damnificados”, sus intereses con incompatibles. Finalmente, quería llamar la atención sobre la rapidez de los procesos históricos que han ocurrido desde la Caída del Muro de Berlín. Lejos de haber llegado el tiempo el “fin de la historia”, lo que nos encontramos es con una “aceleración de la historia” en la que e están quemando etapas a velocidad de vértigo. La globalización que emerge a partir de 1989, en apenas un cuarto de siglo, ha entrado en crisis. En 2007, la crisis de las suprime inauguró la serie de crisis en cadena que recorren el planeta desde entonces, crisis inmobiliarias, crisis financieras, crisis bancarias, crisis de deuda, crisis de paro, etc, etc. En cada una de estas crisis, da la sensación de que el sistema mundial se va resquebrajando, pero que se niega a rectificar las posiciones extremas hacia las que camina cada vez de manera más vertiginosa. Con apenas 25 años, la globalización está hoy en crisis permanente. Así pues, lo que pretendo transmitir es por qué no hay salida dentro de la globalización.

– ¿Y por qué no hay salida…?

– La explicación se encuentra precisamente en el modelo interpretativo que propongo: está formado por un cubo de seis caras, opuestas dos a dos; así por ejemplo, tenemos a los beneficiarios de la globalización en la cara superior y a los damnificados por la globalización en la cara inferior; a los actores geopolíticos tradicionales a un lado y a los actores geopolíticos emergentes de otro; al progreso científico que encuentra su oposición en la neodelincuencia que ha aparecido por todas partes. Así pues tenemos un cubo con seis caras, doce aristas en las que confluyen caras contiguas y ocho vértices a donde van a parar tres caras en cada uno. Así pues, del análisis de cada una de estas caras y de sus contradicciones entre sí, de las aristas, que nos indicarán las posibilidades de convivencia o repulsión entre aspectos contiguos y de los vértices que nos dirá si allí se generan fuerzas de atracción o repulsión que mantengan la cohesión del conjunto o tiendan a disgregarlo respectivamente, aparece como conclusión el que las fuerzas centrípetas que indican posibilidades de estallido de la globalización se manifiestan en todos los vértices del cubo, así como las fricciones en las aristas, y hacen, teóricamente imposible, el que pueda sobrevivir durante mucho tiempo la actual estructura del poder mundial globalizado.

– ¿Quiénes son los “amos del mundo”? ¿Los “señores del dinero”…?

– En primer lugar es preciso desembarazarse de teorías conspiranoicas. Si el mundo estuviera dirigido por una “logia secreta” o por unos “sabios de Sión”, al menos sabríamos hacia donde nos pretenden llevar y existiría una “inteligencia secreta”, un “plan preestablecido”. Lo más terrible es que ni siquiera existe eso. El capitalismo financiero y especulador ha dado vida a un sistema que ya es controlado por ninguna persona, ni por ningún colectivo, ni institución. Simplemente, la evolución del capitalismo en su actual fase de desarrollo está completamente fuera de control de cualquier inteligencia humana. De ahí que en nuestro modelo interpretativo, la cara superior del cubo –la que representa a los beneficiarios de la globalización– no sea plana sino que tenga la forma de un tronco de pirámide. En el nivel superior de esta estructura piramidal truncada se encuentran las grandes acumulaciones de capital, lo que solemos llamar “los señores del dinero”… pero no constituyen ni un “sanedrín secreto”, ni siquiera pueden orientar completamente los procesos de la economía mundial. Simplemente, insisto, la economía se ha convertido en un caballo desbocado, que escapa a cualquier control…

– Entonces… ¿quién dirige el mundo?

– … efectivamente, esta es la pregunta que faltaba. En mi modelo, esta pirámide truncada, está coronada por una pieza homogénea que está por encima de todo el conjunto. En los obeliscos antiguos esta pieza era dorada o, simplemente, hecha de oro, y se conocía como “pyramidion”. En la globalización ese “pyramidion” son los valores de los que se nutre el neocapitalismo: afán de lucro, búsqueda insensata del mayor beneficio especulativo, etc, en total veinte principios doctrinales que enuncio en el último capítulo de la obra y que constituyen lo que podemos considerar como “la religión de los señores del dinero”. Esos “principios” son los que verdaderamente “dirigen la globalización”. Los “señores del dinero” no son más que sus “fieles devotos”, pero no tienen ningún control sobre los dogmas de su religión.

– ¿Hay alternativa a la globalización?

– Sí, claro, ante: la llamada “economía de los grandes espacios”. Reconocer que el mundo es demasiado diverso y que un sistema mundial globalizado es completamente imposible. Reconocer que solamente espacios económicos más o menos homogéneos, con similares PIB, con similar cultura, sin abismos ni brechas antropológicas, pueden constituir “unidades económicas” y que, cada uno de estos espacios, debe estar protegido ante otros en donde existan condiciones diferentes de producción, por barreras arancelarias. Y, por supuesto, que el capital financiero debe estar en primer lugar ligado a una nación y en segundo lugar tributar como actividad parasitaria y no productiva. La migración constante del capital financiero en busca siempre de mayores beneficios es lo que genera, a causa de su movilidad, inestabilidad internacional. Hace falta poner barreras para sus migraciones y disminuir su impacto, no sólo en la economía mundial, sino también en la economía de las naciones. Los Estados deben desincentivar las migraciones del capital especulativo y favorecer la inversión productiva, industrial y científica.

– ¿Es posible vencer a la globalización?

–  La globalización tiene dos grandes enemigos: en primer lugar, los Estados–Nación que disponen todavía de un arsenal legislativo, institucional y orgánico para defender la independencia y la soberanía nacionales de cualquier asalto, incluido el de los poderes económicos oligárquicos y apátridas; se entiende, que una de las consignas sagradas del neoliberalismo sea “más mercado, menos Estado”, que garantiza que los intereses económicos de los propietarios del capital se impongan con facilidad sobre los derechos de las poblaciones que deberían estar defendidos y protegidos por el Estado, en tanto que encarnación jurídica de la sociedad. El otro, gran enemigo de la globalización es cualquier sistema de “identidades” que desdicen el universalismo que se propone desde los laboratorios ideológicos de la globalización (la UNESCO, ante todo) y son antagónicos con los procesos de homogeneización cultural y antropológica que acompañan a la globalización económica. Así pues está claro: para vencer a la globalización es preciso reivindicar la dignidad superior del Estado (y para ello hace falta crear una nueva clase política digna de gestionarlo) e incluso recuperar la idea de Estado como expresión jurídica de la sociedad, es decir, de todos (con todo lo que ello implica) y, por otra parte, es preciso reafirmar las identidades nacionales, étnicas, regionales. Allí donde haya Estado e Identidad, allí no hay lugar para la globalización.

Datos técnicos:

Tamaño: 15 x 23 cm

Páginas: 258

Pvp: 20,00 euros

Abundante ilustrado con gráficos

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The Knightly Spirit

by Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954)

Ex: http://souloftheeast.org 

Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), the White emigre philosopher who articulated Russian national renewal, shows an essential requirement for the strength of any culture – a dedicated elite committed to serving God and defending its people. Ilyin knew that only through such leadership could a nation recover and flourish, and his essay written a decade after the Russian Civil War confirms this fact with clarity and force. Translated by Mark Hackard. 

***

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10

Through all the great discord of our days, amidst catastrophe, tragedy and loss, in disputes and temptations, we must remember one thing and live by it: the maintenance and propagation of a spirit of knightly service. First and foremost within ourselves, and then within our children, our friends and the like-minded. We should protect this spirit as something sacred; we must strengthen it in those who trust us, those who confide in us, and those who seek our direction. This is what we must advocate to our leaders and pastors, insisting and even demanding it. For this spirit is as the air and oxygen of Russian national salvation, and where it would run out, there would immediately set in an atmosphere of rot and decay, overt or hidden Bolshevism.

The decades we have experienced are such that men accustomed to holding indifferent and lukewarm positions, unable or unwilling to fortify themselves and make a decision, have already had their judgment signed in advance. They are condemned humiliation and the mire, and their vital forces will be used by the tempters of this world. Everywhere that there is no will, the will of the sons of perdition shall take the field. Everywhere that the conscience is silent and greed divides the soul in two, Bolshevism already conquers, and everywhere that the crude lust for power of some irritates the insatiable ambition of others, there is prepared seduction, disintegration and the triumph of the enemy. Everywhere that the spirit of chivalry weakens or disappears, disaster awaits us. So it stands now, and so shall it be henceforth.

At whatever post a man may stand, this duty (if only the cause is not in itself shameful) has its idea giving meaning to his cause, consecrating it not as an occupation, but as service, service to God’s Unified Cause on earth. In distinction from the subject himself, having his own personal interests, sympathies and desires, God’s cause has its Transcendent paths of necessity and exaction. And so man’s personal interests and the Transcendent interest of his Cause at any moment can part and place him before the temptation of self-interest. At any moment, a man can find himself in the position of a mercenary, not knowing upon what course to decide, or the position of a traitor who prefers his interest to the Transcendent. The spirit of chivalry is comprised of steadfast loyalty to the Transcendent path.

There are men who do not see the Cause at all and do not comprehend Transcendent requirements. They know only their own business, personal success, and everything else for them is only a means to that end. All their activity proves to be servility and treachery, and from the works of these careerists, flatterers, bribe-takers and time-servers have perished and will perish all human organizations and institutions. Venality is their credo – it matters not for what they sold out the Cause, whether for money, honors or authority, and it matters not what was hidden in their soul behind the betrayal: open nihilism (as among the Bolsheviks) or a sentimental lack of character and justifying sophistry (characteristic of the pre-Bolshevik Philistines).

There are other men who know of the demands of the Cause and the Transcendent, but who treat them with formal indifference, as if they were a heavy and unpleasant duty or a repellent inevitability – without love, inspiration or creativity. Their activity is “service,” but their service is merely carrying out the next “order” or “item”; they work as hirelings, and in the best case do not curse their labor, or as slaves, weighed down by their every effort. The fate of the Cause makes no difference to them. The demands of the Transcendent, however it might be named – the Church, the Motherland, Orthodoxy, the Army, Science, Art – only belabor and burden them. They are not dedicated to God’s Cause on earth. And from the works of these unfeeling machines, these indifferent men and time servers, all human organizations begin to be emptied internally and die away, disenchanting and irritating all who come into contact with them, provoking censure and straining an atmosphere of destructive protest.

Now as never before, Russia needs men capable not of servility or time-serving, but service. Men who not only see the Cause and comprehend the demands of the Transcendent, but who are devoted to God’s Cause on earth. Men not only not indifferent and not unfeeling, but inspired and inspiring others – men who do not concede the interests of the Cause neither for money, honors, and authority, nor over any requests or favors – incorruptible in the fullest and highest meaning of this word. These are men for whom duty is not hard labor and obligation is not repellent, because in their soul, obligation is covered by personal devotion, and duty has been submerged in passionate interest for the cause. These are men who are, of course, gladdened by any personal success, but for them, their own success always remains a means to serving the victory of God’s Cause. These are men who do not fear responsibility precisely because they are wholly invested in the Cause, and not at all do they seek personal good fortune and advancement at whatever cost. These are men of character and civic courage, men of an idea of will, volunteers for the Russian National Cause. Men summoned as organizers of Russia.

The spirit of chivalry comprises first and foremost the voluntary and willed acceptance of hardship and danger in the name of God’s Cause on earth. And we must admit that if life expects this from us always, and even in the most happy time it proposes us such burdens and the responsibilities and danger tied to them at every step – then after Russia’s military collapse in the Great War and her defeat in the Revolution, all of her rebirth and restoration will depend totally on whether there shall be found in our land a cadre of men firm in such a spirit and capable of such service. An incorruptible cadre, and therefore selling out nothing to either foreigners or the internal enemies of Russia; loyal in love and conscience, and therefore capable of gathering around themselves trust and dedication in all hearts faithful to the Motherland; knightly, and therefore called to service and the organization of public salvation.

The essence of knighthood necessary to Russia is first of all not in infringement, but in self-denial. Not one of the contemporary political parties is knightly, for they all infringe upon power and its attendant benefits. What Russia needs is a cadre of men with renewed and ennobled political motivation in their souls. Only new men can create a new regime, “new” not in the sense of age, name or the all-corrupting “revolutionary standing,” but namely in the sense of direction of the will and strength of will: of Transcendent direction and unbreakable strength. He who over these years of disasters, tragedies and losses has been unable to find within his soul new sources of political reason and political activity – sources religious, patriotic and chivalrous – who as before conceives of Russia (regardless of whether from the left or right) as a field for his career and private advancement – such a man is an enemy of Russia, bringing her poison and death from his heart, whatever programs and slogans he would use as cover. Outside of the knightly spirit of national service, all is aimless, harmful and in vain; outside of it, no one will free or restore anything, but will only create new discord, new chaos and a new civil war to Russia’s ruin and the joy of her immemorial adversaries the world over.

Here is why those who stand aside from all foreign and Soviet “policy,” from all of these endless “initiatives” (abroad) and treacherous “compromises” (in the underground), from all the concoctions and squabbling of political parties, are right. However, this distancing should hardly signify the denial of sovereignty; not at all does it coincide with political meaninglessness and a lack of will. To the contrary – its entire meaning is in stockpiling political meaning and political will and in the Transcendent purification of the soul, in the concentration of the soul’s capability for comprehension and its most noble forces. This abstinence from the frivolous and the premature, from the vanity and intrigues of party politics, is imperative precisely to set a beginning for a new ideational and volitional approach to sovereignty in general and to Russian statehood in particular – the knightly way.

For this we must begin from the establishment of an indisputable maxim that holds: Russia’s ruin was brought about and conditioned by the fact that Russian men possessed insufficient chivalry, and henceforth have flowed all the errors and crimes that have despoiled Russia, all these currents of spinelessness, faint-heartedness, greed, cowardice, venality, betrayal and savagery. And these errors and these crimes will be repeated; and the currents of this cravenness and faint-heartedness will pour out – until Russia paves a course to spiritual and religious renewal; until men of knightly style and knightly character arise and close ranks. And when this takes place, it is then they will found and strengthen a new sovereign tradition, for now dispersed and lost, but conceived many centuries prior in the spirit of Russian Orthodoxy, a tradition that endured through ages of struggle for Russian national greatness. This is the tradition of religiously-rooted state voluntarism that was again reborn in the Russian lands ten years ago.

This is what is most elementary and important. If it is not there, then neither shall there be a Russia, but there shall be discord and chaos, shame and disintegration. It is now that we must take this path and begin our renewal, today, without hesitation or delay.

Nantes: Samourai

The Life & Writings of Julius Evola

MERCURY RISING: THE LIFE & WRITINGS OF JULIUS EVOLA

 

The Life & Writings of Julius Evola

by Gwendolyn Taunton

Ex: http://alternative-right.blogspot.com

If the industrious man, through taking action,
Does not succeed, he should not be blamed for that –
He still perceives the truth.
                    　　　　～The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahābhārata (2,16)

If we could select a single aspect by which to define Julius Evola, it would have been his desire to transcend the ordinary and the world of the profane. It was characterized by a thirst for the Absolute, which the Germans call mehr als leben – “more than living.” This idea of transcending worldly existence colours not only his ideas and philosophy, it is also evident throughout his life which reads like a litany of successes. During the earlier years Evola excelled at whatever he chose to apply himself to: his talents were evident in the field of literature, for which he would be best remembered, and also in the arts and occult circles.

Born in Rome on the 19th of May in 1898, Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola was the son of an aristocratic Sicilian family, and like many children born in Sicily, he had received a stringent Catholic upbringing. As he recalled in his intellectual autobiography, Il cammino del cinabro [1963, 1972, The Cinnabar's Journey], his favourite pastimes consisted of painting, one of his natural talents, and of visiting the library as often as he could in order to read works by Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Otto Weininger.[1]  During his youth he also studied engineering, receiving excellent grades but chose to discontinue his studies prior to the completion of his doctorate, because he "did not wish to be bourgeois, like his fellow students." At the age of nineteen Evola joined the army and participated in World War I as a mountain artillery officer. This experience would serve as an inspiration for his use of mountains as metaphors for solitude and ascension above the chthonic forces of the earth. Evola was also a friend of Mircea Eliade, who kept in correspondence with Evola from 1927 until his death. He was also an associate of the Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci and the Tantric scholar Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon).

 

Sir John Woodroffe

During his younger years Evola was briefly involved in art circles, and despite this being only a short lived affair, it was also a time that brought him great rewards. Though he would later denounce Dada as a decadent form of art it was within the field of modern art that Evola first made his name, taking a particular interest in Marinetti and Futurism. His oil painting, Inner Landscape, 10:30 a.m., is hanging today on a wall of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.[2]  He also composed Arte Astratta (Abstract Art) but later, after experiencing a personal crisis, turned to the study of Nietzsche, from which sprang his Teoria dell, individuo assoluto (Theory of the Absolute Individual) in 1925. By 1921 Evola had abandoned the pursuit of art as the means to place his unique mark on the world. The revolutionary attitudes of Marinetti, the Futurist movement and the so-called avant-garde which had once fascinated him, no longer appeared worthwhile to Evola with their juvenile emphasis on shocking the bourgeois. Likewise, despite being a talented poet, Evola (much like another of his inspirations – Arthur Rimbaud) abandoned poetry at the age of twenty four. Evola did not write another poem nor paint another picture for over forty years. Thus, being no longer enamored of the arts, Evola chose instead to pursue another field entirely that he would one day award him even greater acclaim.

 

To this day, the magical workings of the Ur Group and its successor Krur remain as some of the most sophisticated techniques for the practice of esoteric knowledge laid down in the modern Western era. Based on a variety of primary sources, ranging from Hermetic texts to advanced Yogic techniques, Evola occupied a prominent role in both of these groups. He wrote a number of articles for Ur and edited many of the others. These articles were collected in the book Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus, which alongside Evola’s articles, are included the works of Arturo Reghini, Giulio Parese, Ercole Quadrelli and Gustave Meyrink. The original title of this work in Italian, Introduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell’lo, literally translates as Introduction to Magic as a Science of the “I”.[3]  In this sense, the 'I' is best interpreted as the ego, or the manipulation of the will – an idea which is also the found in the work of that other famous magician, Aleister Crowley and his notion of Thelema. The original format of Ur was as a monthly publication, of which the first issue was printed in January 1927.[4]

 

Contributors to this publication included Count Giovanni di Caesaro, a Steinerian, Emilio Servadio, a distinguished psychoanalyst, and Guido de Giorgio, a well-known adherent of Rudolph Steiner and an author of works on the Hermetic tradition. It was during this period, that he was introduced to Arturo Reghini, whose ideas would leave a lasting impression on Evola. Arturo Reghini (1878-1946), who was interested in speculative Masonry and the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, introduced Evola to Guénon's writings and invited him to join the Ur group. Ur and its successor, Krur, gathered together a number of people interested in Guénon's exposition of the Hermetic tradition and in Vedanta, Taoism, Buddhism, Tantra, and magic.

Arturo Reghini was to be a major influence on Evola, and himself was a representative of the so-called Italian School (Scuola Italica), a secret order which claimed to have survived the downfall of the Roman Empire, to have re-emerged with Emperor Frederic II, and to have inspired the Florentine poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, up to Petrarch. Like Evola, Reghini had also written articles, one of which was entitled "Pagan Imperialism." This appeared in Salamandra in 1914, and in it Reghini summed up his anti-Catholic program for a return to a glorious pagan past. This piece had a profound impact on Evola, and it served as the inspiration for his similarly titled Imperialismo pagano. Imperialismo pagano, chronicling the negative effects of Christianity on the world, appeared in 1928. In the context of this work, Evola is the advocate of an anti-Roman Catholic pagan imperialism. According to Evola, Christianity had destroyed the imperial universality of the Roman Empire by insisting on the separation of the secular and the spiritual. It is from this separation that arose the inherent decadence and inward decay of the modern era. Out of Christianity’s implacable opposition to the healthy paganism of the Mediterranean world arose the secularism, democracy, materialism, scientism, socialism, and the "subtle Bolshevism" that heralded the final age of the current cosmic cycle: the age of "obscurity" the Kali-Yuga.[5]  Imperialismo pagano was to be later revised in a German edition as Heidnischer Imperialismus. The changes that occurred in the text of Evola’s Imperialismo pagano in its translation as Heidnischer Imperialismus five years later were not entirely inconsequential. Although the fundamental concepts that comprised the substance of Evola’s thought remained similar, a number of critical elements were altered that would transform a central point in Evola's thinking. The "Mediterranean tradition" of the earlier text is consistently replaced with the "Nordic-solar tradition" in this translation.[6]  In 1930 Evola founded his own periodical, La Torre (The Tower). La Torre, the heir to Krur, differed from the two earlier publications Ur and Krur in the following way, as was announced in an editorial insert:

"Our Activity in 1930 – To the Readers: Krur is transforming. Having fulfilled the tasks relative to the technical mastery of esotericism we proposed for ourselves three years ago, we have accepted the invitation to transfer our action to a vaster, more visible, more immediate field: the very plane of Western 'culture' and the problems that, in this moment of crisis, afflict both individual and mass consciousness […] for all these reasons Krur will be changed to the title La Torre (The Tower), a work of diverse expressions and one Tradition."[7]

La Torre was attacked by official fascist bodies such as L’Impero and Anti-Europa, and publication of La Torre ceased after only ten issues. Evola also contributed an article entitled Fascism as Will to Imperium and Christianity to the review Critica Fascista, edited by Evola's old friend Giuseppi Bottai. Here again he launches vociferous opposition to Christianity and attests to its negative effects, evident in the rise of a pious, hypocritical, and greedy middle class lacking in all superior solar virtues that Evola attributed to ancient Rome. The article did not pass unnoticed and was vigorously attacked in many Italian periodicals. It was also the subject of a long article in the prestigious Revue Internationale des Sociétés Secrètes (Partie Occultiste) for April 1928, under the title Un Sataniste Italien: Jules Evola.

 

Coupled with the notoriety of Evola's La Torre, was also another, more bizarre incident involving the Ur Group's reputation, and their attempts to form a "magical chain." Although these attempts to exert supernatural influence on others were soon abandoned, a rumour quickly developed that the group had wished to kill Mussolini by these means. Evola describes this event in his autobiography Il Cammino del Cinabro.

"Someone reported this argument [that the death of a head of state might be brought about by magic] and some yarn about our already dissolved 'chain of Ur' may also have been added, all of which led the Duce to think that there was a plot to use magic against him. But when he heard the true facts of the matter, Mussolini ceased all action against us. In reality Mussolini was very open to suggestion and also somewhat superstitious (the reaction of a mentality fundamentally incapable of true spirituality). For example, he had a genuine fear of fortune-tellers and any mention of them was forbidden in his presence."

It was also during this period that Evola also discovered something which was to become a profound influence on many his ideas: the lost science of Hermeticism. Though he undoubtedly came into contact with this branch of mysticism through Reghini and fellow members of Ur, it seems that Evola’s extraordinary knowledge of Hermeticism actually arose from another source. Jacopo da Coreglia writes that it was a priest, Father Francesco Olivia, who had made the most far-reaching progress in Hermetic science and – sensing a prodigious student – granted Evola access to documents that were usually strictly reserved for adepts of the narrow circle. These were concerned primarily with the teachings of the Fraternity of Myriam (Fratellanza Terapeutica Magica di Myriam), founded by Doctor Giuliano Kremmerz, pseudonym of Ciro Formisano (1861-1930). Evola mentions in The Hermetic Tradition that Myriam’s Pamphlet D laid the groundwork for his understanding of the four elements.[8]  Evola’s knowledge of Hermeticism and the alchemical arts was not limited to Western sources either, for he also knew an Indian alchemist by the name of C.S. Narayana Swami Aiyar of Chingleput.[9] During this era of history, Indian alchemy was almost completely unknown to the Western world, and it is only in modern times that it has been studied in relation to the occidental texts.

 

M is for Mussolini (not Murder)

 

In 1926 Evola published an article in Ultra (the newspaper of the Theosophical Lodge in Rome) on the cult of Mithras in which he placed major emphasis on the similarities of these mysteries with Hermeticism.[10] During this period he also wrote Saggi sull’idealismo magico (1925; Essays on Magic Idealism), and L’individuo ed il divenire del mondo (1926; The Individual and the Becoming of the World). This article was to be followed by the publication of his treatise on alchemy, La Tradizione ermetica (The Hermetic Tradition). Such was the scope and depth of this work that Karl Jung even quoted Evola to support his own contention that "the alchemical opus deals in the main not just with chemical experiments as such, but also with something resembling psychic processes expressed in pseudo-chemical language."[11] Unfortunately, the support expressed by Jung was not mutual, for Evola did not accept Jung's hypothesis that alchemy was merely a psychic process.

 

Taking issue with René Guénon's (1886-1951) view that spiritual authority ranks higher than royal power, Evola wrote L’uomo come potenza (Man as power); in the third revised edition (1949), the title was changed to Lo yoga della potenza (The yoga of power).[12] This was Evola's treatise of Hindu Tantra, for which he consulted primary sources on Kaula Tantra, which at the time were largely unknown in the Western world. Decio Calvari, president of the Italian Independent Theosophical League, introduced Evola to the study of Tantrism.[13] Evola was also granted access to authentic Tantric texts directly from the Kaula school of Tantrism via his association with Sir John Woodroofe, who was not only a respected scholar, but was also a Tantric practitioner himself, under the famous pseudonym of Arthur Avalon. A substantial proportion of The Yoga of Power is derived from Sir John Woodroofe's personal notes on Kaula Tantrism. Even today Woodroofe is regarded as a leading pioneer in the early research of Tantrism.

 

Evola's opinion that the royal or Ksatriya path in Tantrism outranks that of the Brahmanic or priestly path, is readily supported by the Tantric texts themselves, in which the Vira or active mode of practice is exalted above that of the priestly mode in Kaula Tantrism. In this regard, the heroic or solar path of Tantrism represented to Evola, a system based not on theory, but on practice – an active path appropriate to be taught in the degenerate epoch of the Hindu Kali Yuga or Dark Age, in which purely intellectual or contemplative paths to divinity have suffered a great decrease in their effectiveness.

 

In the words of Evola himself:

"During the last years of the 1930s I devoted myself to working on two of my most important books on Eastern wisdom: I completely revised L’uomo come potenza (Man As Power), which was given a new title, Lo yoga della potenza (The Yoga of Power), and wrote a systematic work concerning primitive Buddhism entitled La dottrina del risveglio (The Doctrine of Awakening)."[14]

Evola's work on the early history of Buddhism was published in 1943. The central theme of this work is not the common view of Buddhism, as a path of spiritual renunciation – instead it focuses on the Buddha's role as a Ksatriya ascetic, for it was to this caste that he belonged, as is found in early Buddhist records.

 

The historical Siddharta was a prince of the Śakya, a kṣatriya (belonging to the warrior caste), an "ascetic fighter" who opened a path by himself with his own strength. Thus Evola emphasizes the "aristocratic" character of primitive Buddhism, which he defines as having the "presence in it of a virile and warrior strength (the lion's roar is a designation of Buddha’s proclamation) that is applied to a nonmaterial and atemporal plane…since it transcends such a plane, leaving it behind." [15]

 

Siddharta's warrior youth.

 

The book considered by many to be Evola’s masterpiece, Revolt Against the Modern World was published in 1934, and was influenced by Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (1918) and René Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), both of which had been previously translated into Italian by Evola. Spengler's contribution in this regard was the plurality of civilizations, which then fell into patterns of birth, growth and decline. This was combined with Guénon's ideas on the "Dark Age" or Hindu Kali Yuga, which similarly portrays a bleak image of civilizations in decline. The work also draws upon the writings of Bachofen in regards to the construction of a mythological grounding for the history of civilizations. The original version of Julius Evola's The Mystery of the Grail formed an appendix to the first edition of Rivolta contra il mondo moderno, and as such is closely related to this work.[16]  Three years later he reworked that appendix into the present book, which first appeared as part of a series of religious and esoteric studies published by the renowned Laterza Publishers in Italy, whose list included works by Sigmund Freud, Richard Wilhelm, and C. G. Jung, among others. In this book Evola writes three main premises concerning the Grail myths: That the Grail is not a Christian Mystery, but a Hyperborean one, that it is a mystery tradition, and that it deals with a restoration of sacred regality. Evola describes his work on the Grail in the epilogue to the first edition (1937).

"To live and understand the symbol of the Grail in its purity would mean today the awakening of powers that could supply a transcendental point of reference for it, an awakening that could show itself tomorrow, after a great crisis, in the form of an “epoch that goes beyond nations.” It would also mean the release of the so-called world revolution from the false myths that poison it and that make possible its subjugation through dark, collectivistic, and irrational powers. In addition, it would mean understanding the way to a true unity that would be genuinely capable of going beyond not only the materialistic – we could say Luciferian and Titanic – forms of power and control but also the lunar forms of the remnants of religious humility and the current neospiritualistic dissipation."[17]

Another of Evola’s books, Eros and the Mysteries of Love, could almost be seen as a continuation of his experimentation with Tantrism. Indeed, the book does not deal with the erotic principle in the normal of sense of the word, but rather approaches the topic as a highly conceptualized interplay of polarities, adopted from the Traditional use of erotic elements in eastern and western mysticism and philosophy. Thus what is described here is the path to sacred sexuality, and the use of the erotic principle to transcend the normal limitations of consciousness. Evola describes his book in the following passage:

"But in this study, metaphysics will also have a second meaning, one that is not unrelated to the world's origin since 'metaphysics' literally means the science of that which goes beyond the physical. In our research, this 'beyond the physical' will not cover abstract concepts or philosophical ideas, but rather that which may evolve from an experience that is not merely physical, but transpsychological and transphysiological. We shall achieve this through the doctrine of the manifold states of being and through an anthropology that is not restricted to the simple soul-body dichotomy, but is aware of 'subtle' and even transcendental modalities of human consciousness. Although foreign to contemporary thought, knowledge of this kind formed an integral part of ancient learning and of the traditions of varied peoples."[18]

Another of Evola's major works is Meditations Among the Peaks, wherein mountaineering is equated to ascension. This idea is found frequently in a number of Traditions, where mountains are often revered as an intermediary between the forces of heaven and earth. Evola was an accomplished mountaineer and completed some difficult climbs such as the north wall of the Eastern Lyskam in 1927. He also requested in his will that after his death the urn containing his ashes be deposited in a glacial crevasse on Mount Rosa.

 

Evola's main political work was Men Among the Ruins. This was to be the ninth of Evola's books to published in English. Written at the same time as Men Among the Ruins, Evola composed Ride the Tiger which is complementary to this work, even though it was not published until 1961. These books belong together and cannot really be judged separately. Men among the Ruins shows the universal standpoint of ideal politics; Riding the Tiger deals with the practical "existential" perspective for the individual who wants to preserve his "hegomonikon" or inner sovereignty.[19]  Ride the Tiger is essentially a philosophical set of guidelines entwining various strands of his earlier thought into a single work. Underlying the more obvious sources, which Evola cites within the text, such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Heidegger, there are also connections with Hindu thoughts on the collapse of civilization and the Kali Yuga. In many ways, this work is the culmination of Evola's thought on the role of Tradition in the Age of Darkness – that the Traditional approach advocated in the East is to harness the power of the Kali Yuga, by ‘Riding the Tiger’ – which is also a popular Tantric saying. To this extent, it is not an approach of withdrawal from the modern world which Evola advocates, but instead achieving a mastery of the forces of darkness and materialism inherent in the Kali Yuga. Similarly, his attitude to politics alters here from that expressed in Men Among the Ruins, calling instead for a type of individual that is apoliteia.

"[...] this type can only feel disinterested and detached from everything that is 'politics' today. His principle will become apoliteia, as it was called in ancient times. [...] Apoliteia is the distance unassailable by this society and its 'values'; it does not accept being bound by anything spiritual or moral."[20]

In addition to Evola’s main corpus of texts mentioned previously, he also published numerous other works such as The Way of the Samurai, The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries, Il Cammino del Cinabro, Taoism: The Magic, The Mysticism and The Bow and the Club. He also translated Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, as well as the principle works of Bachofen, Guénon, Weininger and Gabriel Marcel.

 

In 1945 Evola was hit by a stray bomb and paralyzed from the waist downwards. He died on June 11, 1974 in Rome. He had asked to be led from his desk to the window from which one could see the Janiculum (the holy hill sacred to Janus, the two-faced god who gazes into this and the other world), to die in an upright position. After his death the body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in a glacier atop Mount Rosa, in accordance with his wishes.

Gwendolyn Taunton is the editor and sole founder of Primordial Traditions. This article is reprinted from Primordial Traditions (second edition).


NOTES

[1] Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power, Shakti, and the Secret Way (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992) ix
[2] ibid., x
[3] Julius Evola, Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2001) ix
[4] ibid., xvii
[5] A. James Gregor, Mussolini's Intellectuals (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005)
[6] ibid., 201
[7] Julius Evola, Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2001) xxi
[8] Julius Evola, The Hermetic Tradition: Symbols and Teaching of the Royal Art (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992) ix
[9] ibid., ix
[10] ibid., viii
[11] Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power, Shakti, and the Secret Way (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992) xii
[12] ibid., xiv
[13] ibid., xiii
[14] Julius Evola, The Doctrine of the Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992) xi
[15] ibid., xv
[16] Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1997) vii
[17] ibid., ix
[18] Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1991) 2
[19] Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2003) 89
[20] Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for Aristocrats of the Soul (Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2003) 174-175

Conversación sin complejos con el "Último Gibelino"

Tradición y Sabiduría Universal

Conversación sin complejos con el "Último Gibelino":

Julius Evola

entrevista de Enrico de Boccard

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

La Página Transversal recoge este texto, publicado en su día por la ya desaparecida, pero siempre recomendable revista de Fernando Márquez, El Zurdo, "El Corazón del Bosque", en su número doble 16/17 (Otoño 97 - Invierno 98), por su indudable interés. Cuestiones tales como: sexo, psicoanálisis, satanismo, contestación y otras, tratadas desde la particular cosmovisión de Julius Evola (1898-1974).

La presente entrevista, rescatada por nuestro colaborador Gianni Donaudi (que también nos ha facilitado unos datos de introducción), se publicó en la revista erótico/intelectual "PLAYMEN" en enero del 70. "PLAYMEN" era propiedad de la edirtora Adelina Tattilo, políticamente cercana al PSI/PSU, quien, apoyándose en el radicalizante Attilio Battistini como director de la publicación, buscó (al menos en el plano cultural) dar amplio espacio a autores de muy diferente tendencia política e ideológica.

Eran los años de la contestación y, tras el espontaneísmo inicial del 68, donde los enemigos principales eran el capitalismo, el consumismo (según la definición de Marcuse y Fromm) y el dominio americano sobre el planeta, se llegó, a través de infiltrados demoliberales (a veces situados por los mismos americanos) a reducir la lucha contestataria en términos exclusivamente "antifascistas", colocando el anticapitalismo en un segundo plano (como lúcidamente analizaban las publicaciones de signo internacionalista y bordiguista). Una estrategia que dura hasta hoy, sobre todo gracias a la obra de la izquierda chic, virtual, políticamente correcta.

A pesar de esto, Adelina Tattilo, en coherencia con su radicalismo extremo, no sólo aceptó la entrevista con Evola sino que se enorgullecía de la misma, por protagonirala alguien que sabía escribir, sin importar su procedencia.

El periodista que entrevistó a Evola fue Enrico de Boccard (1921-1981)quien, también para "PLAYMEN", había escrito una hermosa semblanza sobre Céline. Boccard era un ex-oficial de la Guardia Nacional Republicana (de Saló) y fue autor del libro, en parte autobiográfico, Donne e mitra (reeditado recientemente con el título Le donne non ci vogliono piu bene. Por cierto,Boccard no fue el único vinculado a la República Social Italiana que colaboró con "PLAYMEN". También lo hicieron Giose Rimanelli, autor de Tiro al piccione (obra adaptada al cine en el 61 por el director filosocialista Giuliano Montaldo -autor, entre otros films, de Sacco e Vanzetti y Giordano Bruno-), que en la postguerra se acercaría a los comunistas y más tarde involucionaría a la derecha; y Mario Gandini, autor de La caduta di Varsavia (obra sobre sus recuerdos de guerra en el Este y la RSI).

Por razones de espacio, hemos seleccionado los fragmentos que consideramos más interesantes y válidos según la perspectiva corazonesca, y como toque metalingüístico quasi felliniano (habida cuenta de buena parte de la temática de la entrevista), resulta procedente señalar la publicidad que la acompañaba: un vibrador ("novitá della Svezia" en dos modelos -con una y dos velocidades-), un catálogo ilustrado de productos estimulantes (escribir a la empresa sueca "Ekberg Int.") y unos potingues vigorizantes (incluido el, por entonces, mítico Gerovital de la doctora rumana Aslan, así como polen -también "della Svezia"- ideal para... los males de próstata-).

En el último piso de un viejo edificio del centro de Roma vive su intensa jornada uno de los últimos hombres verdaderamente libres en un tiempo en que la libertad se ha convertido en un lujo que se paga cada día, personal y colectivamente, siempre más caro. Este hombre, que ha sobrepasado no hace mucho los setenta años de una existencia riquísima en experiencias intelectuales, artísticas y personales, marcado contsantemente por el signo del más declarado y valeroso anticonformismo, tiene un nombre de resonancia mundial, pese a que la llamada "cultura oficial" italiana, tanto en el Ventennio fascista como después, siempre ha procurado por todos los medios de sofocarlo con una impenetrable cortina de silencio. Este hombre es el filósofo y escritor Julius Evola, autor de unos treinta libros nada superfluos, "revolucionario conservador" por temperamento y por trayectoria. Julius Evola: un aristócrata del espíritu más que de la sangre, que gusta definirse a sí mismo como "el Último Gibelino".

Pregunta - Es bien conocido que usted concede raramente entrevistas y le agradecemos, en nombre de nuestros lectores, por el privilegio gentilmente concedido. Por otra parte, usted es un escritor, un estudioso dotado de tal doctrina y preparación, y con tal bagaje de experiencias que nos encontramos un poco embarazados en el momento de plantearle preguntas, las cuales son tantas en nuestra mente como vasto es el campo de sus intereses (metafísica, crítica de la política, historia de las religiones, orentalismo, etc.). Trataremos de restringirnos a los argumentos que consideramos puedan interesar más a los lectores de la revista o que presenten un carácter de actualidad. Empecemos con una obra, recientemente reeditada (y también con dos ediciones francesas y otra alemana), sistemática y sugestiva, Metafísica del sexo (hay edición en castellano). Usted precisa, a propósito del título, haber usado el término "metafísica" en un doble sentido. ¿Puede aclararnos esto? Respuesta - El primer sentido es el corriente en filosofía, donde por metafísica se entiende una búsqueda de los principios o significados últimos. Una metafísica del sexo será, por tanto, el estudio de lo que, desde un punto de vista absoluto, significa el eros y la atracción de los sexos. En segundo lugar, por metafísica se puede entender una exploración en el campo de lo que no es físico, de lo que está más allá de lo físico. Es unpunto esencial de mi búsqueda el sacar a la luz lo que el eros y la experiencia del sexo supone de trascendencia de los aspectos físicos, carnales, biológicos y también pasionales o convencionalmente sentimentales o "ideales" del amor. Esta dimensión más profunda fue considerada en otro tiempo, en múltiples tradiciones, y constituye el presupuesto para un posible uso "sacro", místico, mágico y evocatorio del sexo; pero ello también influye en muchos actos del amor profano, revelándose a través de una variedad de signos que yo he tratado de individuar sistemáticamente. En mi libro señalo también cómo hoy, en una inversió quasidemoníaca, cierto psicoanálisis resalta una primordialidad infrapersonal del sexo, y opongo a esta primordialidad otra, de carácter "metafísico" o trascendente, pero no por esto menos real y elemental, de la que la anterior sería la degradación propia de un tipo humano inferior.

P - Usted también ha afrontado el problema del sexo sobre el terreno de la costumbre y de la ética, y siempre de manera anticonformista. ¿Qué piensa, por tanto, de lo que hoy se denomina "revolución sexual"?

R - A mí, qué cosa significa esta "revolución" no lo veo nada claro. Parece que se busca la absoluta libertad sexual, la completa superación de toda represión social sexófoba y de toda inhibición interna. Pero aquí hay un gravísimo malentendido, debido a las instancias llamadas "democráticas". Una libertad semejante no puede reivindicarse para todos: solamente pocos se la pueden permitir, no por privilegio sino porque, para no ser destructiva, hace falta una personalidad bien formada. En particular, el problema debe ser situado en modo distinto para el hombre y para la mujer, insisto, no por prejuicio sino por el distinto significado que la experiencia erótica, la auténtica e intensa, tiene para la mujer. Justamente Nietzsche había indicado que la "corrupción" (aquí, la "libertad sexual") puede ser un argumento sólo para quien no puede permitírsela, por ejemplo, para quienes no pueden hacer suyo el principio de querer sólo las cosas a las cuales también son capaces de renunciar.

La "revolución sexual" en clave democrática comporta, pues, una consecuencia gravísima, hacer del sexo una especie de género corriente, de consumo de masas, lo que significa necesariamente banalizarlo, superficializarlo, acabando en un insípido "naturalismo". En otro libro mío, "L´Arco e la Clava" ("El Arco y la Clava", existe traducción al castellano), he mostrado cómo las nuevas reivindicaciones sexuales son paralelas a una concepción siempre más primitiva de la sensualidad por parte de sus principales teóricos, a partir de Reich. Un caso particular es la falta de pudor femenina, vinculada con similares propuestas antirepresivas. A fuerza de ver mujeres desnudas o casi en espectáculos teatrales y cinematográficos, en locales porno, en top-less, etc, este desnudo acaba por convertirse en una banalidad que poco a poco dejará de producir efecto, al margen de los directamente dictados por el primitivo impulso biológico. Este impudor debería ser despreciado no desde el punto de vista de la "virtud" sino del exactamente opuesto. Por ese camino se puede llegar a un resultado de "naturalidad" e indiferencia sexual mucho mayor al soñado por cualquier sociedad puritana. (...)

P - De su exposición, parece que su juicio sobre el psicoanálisis sea negativo (...)

R - Evidentemente que no puedo profundizar exhaustivamente en esta argumentación. Pero sí señalaré que ante todo ha de relativizarse la idea de que el psicoanálisis descubre por vez primera la dimensión subterránea del Yo, el subconsciente y el inconsciente psíquico. Ya antes de Freud la psicología occidental, conectada con la fenomenología de la hipnosis y del histerismo, había prestado atención sobre este "subsuelo" del alma. Bastante más profundamente, y en muy diversa amplitud, ello estaba considerado en Oriente desde siglos, gracias al Yoga y técnicas análogas. El psicoanálisis puede ser una psicoterapia, y ofrecer resultados singulares en un plano clínico especializado. Pero no más: en su esncia es una concepción absolutamente desviada y mutilada del ser humano. Al colocar la verdadera fuerza motriz del hombre sobre el plano del inconsciente infrapersonal e instintivo, Freud concretamente bajo el signo de la libido, niega la existencia de un superior principio consciente, autónomo y soberano, porque en su lugar pone cualquier cosa del exterior, el llamado SuperYo, que sería una construcción social y el producto de la asunción de formas inhibitorias creadas por el ambiente o las estructuras sociales. Ello equivale a decir que el psicoanálisis niega en el hombre lo que lo hace verdaderamente tal, y su imagen, la cual querría aplicar al hombre de manera genérica, o es una mixtificación o vale únicamente para un tipo humano dividido, neurótico, espiritualmente inconsistente. Es bien posible que el éxito del psicoanálisis sea debido a la gran difusión que en la época moderna ha tenido este tipo. Como praxis y como tendencia, el psicoanálisis propicia esencialmente aperturas hacia abajo y significa una capitulación más o menos explícita de todo lo que es verdadera personalidad. La posible existencia de un "superconsciente", opuesto al "inconsciente", luminoso frente a lo turbio y "elemental" es ignorada por completo. (...)

P - Ha mencionado antes a Wilhelm Reich. Queremos conocer su opinión sobre su persona y su obra. ¿Reich le parece un estudioso serio o un exaltado? ¿Y qué piensa de las aplicaciones de los principios de él y de sus seguidores en el plano sociológico y político/sociológico, de sus denuncias de los sistemas "autoritarios"?

R - Reich me parece afectado por una variedad de paranoia. Su mérito es haber intuido que en el sexo existe algo trascendente, más allá de lo individual. Ello concuerda con las enseñanzas de múltiples tradiciones. pero esta intuición está muy desviada. No debe decirse que el sexo es algo trascendente, sino que en ello se manifiesta (potencialmente y en ciertas circunstancias, incluso hoy día) algo trascendente, que como tal no pertenece al plano físico. Este elemento Reich lo concibe en términos materialistas como una energía natural, como la electricidad o algo así, al punto que, como "energía orgónica", ha buscado dotarla (gastando verdaderos capitales) de sustancia física, construyendo finalmente "condensadores" de la misma. Todo esto no son sino divagaciones. A lo que hemos de añadir una "teoría de la salvación", en cuanto que Reich ve en la obstrucción de dicha energía la cuas de todos los males, individuales y sociales (hasta el mismo cáncer) y, en su completa y desenfrenada explicación, el orgasmo sexual integral como una especie de medicina universal, presupuesto para un orden social sin tensiones, armonioso, pacífico.

Es interesante detenernos un momento sobre el presupuesto de esta concepción, porque así podremos comprender las aplicaciones político/sociales de los reichianos. Freud en su madurez había admitido la existencia, junto al impulso de placer, la libido, de un opuesto, el instinto de destrucción (o "de muerte"). Reich niega esta dualidad y deduce el segundo instinto, el destructivo, del impulso único de placer. Cuando este instinto resulta impedido o "bloqueado", nacería una tensión, una angustia y sobre todo una especie de "rabia", de furia destructiva (en caso de no tomar la vía del "principio del nirvana": una evasión, una fuga de la vida). Este impulso destructivo (y agresivo) cuando se vuelve contra sí, da al hombre la orientación masoquista, y cuando se dirige a los otros, al orientación sádica.

De todo ello resulta en primer lugar que sadismo y masoquismo serían fenómenos patológicos, causados por la represión sexual. Lo que es una estupidez: existen ciertamente formas de sadismo y masoquismo vinculadas a la psicopatología sexual (según el concepto normal, no ya psicoanalítico), pero también existe un sadismo (masculino) y un masoquismo (femenino) como elementos constitucionales intrínsecos y en un cierto modo normales en toda experiencia erótica intensa. De hecho, esta experiencia tiene siempre algo de destructivo y autodestructivo (por las relaciones, múltiplemente demostradas, entre voluntad y muerte, entre la divinidad del amor y la divinidad de la muerte); y es en este aspecto que se piensa cuando, en ciertas escuelas, se cree que el clímax adecuadamente conducido puede tener, en su momento "fulgurante", algo que destruye por un momento los límites de la conciencia mortal individual. Pues bien, con la concepción de Reich, toda esta intensidad desaparece, y la consecuencia es una concepción pálida, blandamente dionisíaca, o idílica (como en Marcuse) de la sexualidad: es una de las paradojas de la llamada "revolución sexual".

No menos absurda es, en particular, la deducción de la agresividad por la inhibición del impulso primordial del sexo a cristalizar en un orgasmo completo, según la cual, cuando la obstrucción remite (en el individuo o en una sociedad "permisiva" y no "represiva" o "patriarcal") no habrá más agresividad, guerra, violencia, etc; lo que viene al mismo tiempo a decir que todo lo que hace referencia a actitudes guerreras, de conquista (en la jerga moderna, de "agresión") tendrñia la represión sexual por causa y origen. Ante esto, sólo puedo reír. La actitud agresiva es en primer lugar comprobada en los animales, evidentemente no sometidos a tabúes sexófobos y "patriarcales". En segundo lugar ya el mito ha indicado el perfecto acuerdo entre Marte y Venus, y la historia nos muestra como todos los más grandes conquistadores carecían de complejos de frustración sexual y hacían un libre y amplío uso del sexo. En la práctica, la consecuencia de la teoría de Reich es un ataque contra elementos fundamentales congénitos en todo tipo "viril" de humanidad o ser humano, que son presentados grotescamente en clave de patología sexual.

En cuanto a las conclusiones político/sociales. Proyectada sobre ese plano, la tendencia masoquista daría lugar al tipo del gregario, de aquel que gusta de servir y obedecer, que se pone al servicio de un jefe, con o sin "culto a la personalidad", y está siempre dispuesto a sacrificarse. La tendencia sádica daría lugar al tipo del dominador, de quien ejercita una autoridad, autoridad evidentemente concebida en los exclusivos términos parasexuales de una libido. De la unión de estas dos tendencias nacerían las estructuras "autoritarias" y "fascistas". Una vez más, se deforman grotescamente los datos reales de la conciencia. Del obedecer y del mandar pueden darse desviaciones. Pero, en general, se trata de disposiciones normales: existe una autoridad que tiene por contrapartida una superioridad, como existe una obediencia debida no a un servilismo masoquista sino al orgullo de seguir libremente a gentes a quienes se reconoce una superioridad. Así, mientras por un parte Reich proclama una mística mesiánica del abandono integral al orgasmo, al mismo tiempo ello actúa como preciosas coartadas para un puro anarquismo.

P - En relación con el asesinato de la actriz Sharon Tate y otros se ha hablado de "satanismo" y en los periódicos hoy se insiste en buscar conexiones entre sexo, magia y satanismo. ¿Nos puede aclarar esto?

R - En principio, existen conexiones posibles entre magia y sexo. Considerando la dimensión "trascendente" del sexo, a la que ya me he referido, se recoge en diversas tradiciones que por medio de la unión sexual conducida de determinado modo y con una orientación particular es posible destilar energías y usarlas mágicamente. La continuidad de estas tradiciones hasta un tiempo relativamente reciente es testimoniada, entre otros, en un libro, Magia sexualis de P. B. Randolph. Un ejemplo ulterior lo constituyen las prácticas mágico/sexuales y orgiásticas de Aleister Crowley, figura interesante que, por desgracia, se suele presentar con los colores más "negros" posibles. Pero en este campo se debe distinguir entre las mixtificaciones y lo que tiene un valor auténtico y una realidad. Ante todo ha de verse, por ejemplo, si se hace el amor para hacer magia o si se hace magia (o pseudomagia) para hacer el amor, o sea, si se usa la magia como un pretexto para montar orgías o para darle al acto un aire más excitante. Es cierto también que existe una tercera posibilidad, la de usar medios siríamos "secretos" con el concurso de fuerzas suprasensibles para dar un particular desarrollo paroxístico a la experiencia del coito, sin forzar por ello la naturaleza: esta vía es algo extremadamente peligroso, por razones que no viene al caso indicar ahora.

En cuanto al "satanismo" señalaré que donde predomina un clima "sexófobo" (como en el cristianismo) es fácil calificar de "diabólico" todo lo que suponga potenciar la experiencia sexual. Más genéricamente, es obvio que un "satán" existe sólo en las religiones donde ello es la contraparte "oscura" de un Dios con características "morales"; cuando como vértice del universo, en vez de Dios, se pone una "Potestad" como tal superior y más allá del bien y del mal, evidentemente un "Satán" a la cristiana no es concebible. Hay lugar sólo para la idea de una fuerza cósmica destructora, presente en el mundo y en la vida, en lo sensible y lo suprasensible, al lado de las fuerzas creadoras y conservadoras, como la "otra mitad" del Absoluto. Y existen tradicones sacras -la más característica es la tántrico/shivaica- que tienen por objeto asumir esa fuerza, diversamente concebida. Característica es la llamada "Vía de la Mano Izquierda", donde, por ejemplo, el uso de la mujer, de sustancias embriagadoras y eventualmente de la orgía, se asocia a una moral del "más allá del bien y del mal" que haría palidecer de envidia al "superhombre" Nietzsche. De dicha vía, que algunos timoratos occidentales han calificado como la "peor de las magias negras" he hablado en mi libro Lo Yoga della Potenza. Pero el punto importante es que en sus formas auténticas tales prácticas están concebidas en los mismos términos del Yoga, y no son elementos disociados, como los hippies americanos, quienes pueden permitírselas. Volvemos aquí, pero aumentadas, a poner las mismas reservas que he hecho acerca de la "revolución sexual" y sus reivindicaciones. En las tradiciones la base para darse a estas prácticas está constituida por una disciplina de autodominio profundo similar a la de los ascetas, tras una regular "iniciación".

P - Pasando a un campo distinto pero en parte relacionado, me llama la atención cómo en algunos libros históricos o pseudohistóricos sobre el III Reich hitleriano se habla de un fondo oculto, mágico/tenebroso, del nacionalsocialismo alemán. ¿Puede decime brevemente qué le parece este argumento?

R - Para quien busque los supuestos trasfondos "ocultos" del III Reich, el argumento me llevaría más allá de los límites en los cuales estoy manteniendo esta entrevista. Me limitaré a decir que, como persona que ha tenido oportunidad de conocer bastante de cerca la situación del III Reich, puedo declarar que se trata de puras fantasías, y así se lo dije a Louis Pauwels, quien en su libro El retorno de los brujos ha contribuido a defender tales rumores; él vino una vez a conocerme, hablamos y en ningún momento me presentó dato alguno mínimamente serio que apoyase su tesis. Se puede hablar no de "iniciático" sino de "demoniaco", en un sentido general, en el caso de todo movimiento que en base a una fanatización de las masas creer cualquier cosa cuyo centro será el jefe demagógico que produce esta especie de hipnosis colectiva usando tal o cual mito. Dicho fenómeno no está relacionado con lo "mágico" o con lo "oculto", aunque tenga un fondo tenebroso. Es un fenómeno recurrente en la Historia, por ejemplo, la Revolución Francesa o (en parte) el maoísmo.

P - Usted es autor de una obra considerada como fundamental por cuantos siguen atentamente su actividad, Revuelta contra el mundo moderno. Se afirma por muchos que usted, con este libro (publicado por vez primera en 1934), anticipó en varios lustros las visiones, hoy tan en boga, expresadas por Marcuse. En otras palabras, desde posiciones absolutamente distintas a la del profesor germano/americano, usted habría sido el primero en tomar postura contra "el sistema". ¿Le parece válida esta comparación con Marcuse? Y, de otra parte, ¿dado el papel que Marcuse tiene en las actuales formas de "contestación" juvenil contra el mundo moderno, qué significado y qué imagen tiene para usted este movimiento contestatario?

R - En verdad, como precedentes de Marcuse, y planteando cosas bastante más interesantes, muchos otros autores deberían ser nombrados: un Tocqueville, un John Stuart Mill, un A. Siegfried, el mismo Donoso Cortés, en parte Ortega y Gasset, sobre todo Nietzsche, y aún más el insigne escritor tradicionalista francés René Guenón, especialmente en su Crisis del mundo moderno que yo traduje al italiano en su momento. A finales del siglo pasado Nietzsche había previsto uno de los rasgos destacados de las tesis de Marcuse, con las breves, incisivas frases dedicadas al "último hombre": "próximo está el tiempo del más despreciable de los hombres, que no sabe más que despreciarse a sí mismo", "el último hombre de la raza pululante y tenaz", "nosotros hemos inventado la felicidad, dicen, satisfechos, los últimos hombres", que han abandonado "la región donde la vida es dura". Y esta es la esencia de la "civilización de masas, del consumo y del bienestar" pero también la única que el mismo Marcuse ve como perspectiva en términos positivos, cuando los desarrollos ulteriores de la técnica unidos a una cultura de transposición y sublimación de los instintos habrán sustraído a los hombres de los "condicionamientos" del actual sistema y de su "principio de prestación". La relación con mi libro no es tal porque, en primer lugar, el contenido de éste no corresponde con el título: no es mi obra de naturaleza polémica, sino una "morfología de la civilización", una interpretación general de la Historia en términos no "progresistas", de evolución, sino más bien de involución, indicando sobre estas premisas el nacimiento y el declive del mundo moderno. Sólo por caminos naturales y consecuentes se propone una "revuelta" a los lectores y, más concretamente, tras un estudio comparado de las más diversas civilizaciones, he procurado indicar lo que en diversos dominios de la existencia puede reivindicar un carácter de norma en sentido ascendente: el Estado, la ley, la acción, la concepción de la vida y de la muerte, lo sagrado, las relaciones sociales, la ética, el sexo, la guerra, etc. Esta es la primera diferencia fundamental respecto a las diversas contestaciones de hoy: no se limita a decir "no", sino que indica en nombre de qué debe decirse "no", aquello que puede verdaderamente justificar el "no". Y un "no" auténticamente radical, que no se restrinja a los aspectos últimos del mundo moderno, a la "sociedad de consumo", a la tecnocracia y demás, sino mucho más profundo, denunciando las causas, considerando los procesos que han ejercido desde hace tanto tiempo una acción destructiva sobre todos los valores, ideales y formas de organización superior de la existencia. Todo esto ni Marcuse ni los "contestatarios" en general lo han hecho: no tienen la capacidad ni el coraje. En particular, la sociología de Marcuse es absolutamente rechazable, determinada por un grosero freudismo con tonalidades reichianas. Así, no resulta extraño que sean tan escuálidos e insípidos los ideales que se proponen para la sociedad que siga a la "contestación" y a la superación del llamado "sistema".

Naturalmente, quien comprenda el orden de ideas expuesto en mi libro no puede permitirse el menor optimismo. Por ahora encuentro solamente posible una acción de defensa individual interior. Es así que en otro libro mío, Cabalgar el tigre, he procurado señalar las orientaciones existenciales que debería seguir un tipo humano diferenciado en una época de disolución como la actual. En él, he dado particular relieve al principo de la "conversión del veneno en medicina", según la medida en que, a partir de una cierta orientación interior, de experiencias y procesos mayormente destructivos se puede extraer cierta forma de liberación y autosuperación. Es una vía peligrosa pero posible. (...)

(entrevista: Enrico de Boccard)
(traducción: Fernando Márquez. Página "Linea de Sombra")

Nota de la Página Transversal:
Existen traducciones al castellano de todas las obras mencionadas en el texto.
Evola, Julius. Metafísica del sexo. Col. Sophia Perennis. José J. de Olañeta, Editor. Palma de Mallorca, 1997.
- El arco y la clava. Ediciones Heracles, Buenos Aires, 1999.
-El yoga tántrico. Un camino para la realización del cuerpo y el espíritu. Madrid, Edaf, 1991.
- Rebelión contra el mundo moderno. Ediciones Heracles, Buenos Aires, 1994.
- Cabalgar el tigre. Ediciones Heracles, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 1999.
Guenon, René. La crisis del mundo moderno. Ed. Obelisco, Barcelona, 1987
Pauwels, Louis; Bergier, Jacques. El retorno de los brujos. Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 1971.

Chaliand: le temps des héros

Cette anthologie, sans équivalent par son ampleur, offre un vaste aperçu des épopées, chants et récits les plus célèbres, contés ou écrits à travers les temps. De L’Épopée de Gilgamesh, la plus ancienne de l’histoire de l’humanité, aux Lusiades des avancées maritimes portugaises qui découvrirent des ” étoiles nouvelles “, elle retrace cinq mille ans de légendes et mythes fondateurs des civilisations : œuvres majeures comme Le Livre des rois (Perse) ou le Mahâbhârata (Inde), Le Dit des Heiké (Japon) et d’autres moins connues, issues de Russie, du Caucase, des Balkans, de Chine, du Vietnam, d’Orient ou d’Afrique. Le genre épique, que précèdent seulement les textes sacrés, se trouve à la source de la plupart des grandes littératures universelles. Création presque toujours anonyme, il relate, au sens propre, des faits dignes d’être contés. Conçu à des époques où la force physique et, d’une façon générale, les vertus martiales étaient à la fois hautement prisées et nécessaires, il est centré sur la figure du héros. Gratifié d’une naissance hors du commun, presque toujours doté d’une force surnaturelle ou bénéficiant de vertus magiques, le héros s’affirme à travers une série d’épreuves. Luttant contre le chaos, il restaure l’ordre et succombe de façon tragique. Tel est, si l’on s’en tient aux grandes lignes, le destin du héros épique. Il n’est pas étonnant que Gérard Chaliand, grand reporter, homme d’aventures et d’expériences fortes, se passionne de longue date pour la littérature épique. Son propre itinéraire n’a cessé de l’entraîner sur les grandes routes du monde, où il a croisé quelques-unes de ces figures héroïques dont ses lectures d’enfance lui avaient déjà donné un avant-goût.

Ex: http://zentropaville.tumblr.com

Kamikazes

L’opposition entre la culture occidentale prônant le libre arbitre et l’obligation de se donner la mort en mission commandée a ouvert la porte à l’irrationalité et au romantisme. Leur dernière nuit était un déchirement, mais tous ont su trouver la force de sourire avant le dernier vol. Kasuga Takeo (86 ans), dans une lettre au docteur Umeazo Shôzô, apporte un témoignage exceptionnel sur les dernières heures des kamikazes : « Dans le hall où se tenait leur soirée d’adieu la nuit précédant leur départ, les jeunes étudiants officiers buvaient du saké froid. Certains avalaient le saké en une gorgée, d’autres en engloutissaient une grande quantité. Ce fut vite le chaos. Il y en avait qui cassaient des ampoules suspendues avec leurs sabres. D’autres qui soulevaient les chaises pour casser les fenêtres et déchiraient les nappes blanches. Un mélange de chansons militaires et de jurons emplissaient l’air. Pendant que certains hurlaient de rage, d’autres pleuraient bruyamment. C’était leur dernière nuit de vie. Ils pensaient à leurs parents et à la femme qu’ils aimaient….Bien qu’ils fussent censés être prêts à sacrifier leur précieuse jeunesse pour l’empire japonais et l’empereur le lendemain matin, ils étaient tiraillés au-delà de toute expression possible…Tous ont décollé au petit matin avec le bandeau du soleil levant autour de la tête. Mais cette scène de profond désespoir a rarement été rapportée. »

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikazes, Fleurs de cerisier et Nationalismes, éditions Hermann, 2013, 580 p., 38 euros.

Ex: http://zentropaville.tumblr.com

Qu’est-ce que l’Imperium ?

Qu’est-ce que l’Imperium?

par Charles Mallet

Ex: http://lheurasie.hautetfort.com

 

Cela fait déjà quelques années que les milieux nationalistes et eurasiens, notamment au sein de la « Nouvelle Droite », se réapproprient la notion d’imperium comme moyen de la restauration/fondation et de la pérennité de l’Europe-Nation ou Europe-Puissance. Cette notion est souvent confondue avec celle d’ « Empire », pour la simple et bonne raison qu’elle en est étymologiquement la racine. Cependant, il conviendrait de clarifier ce qu’est l’imperium, afin d’en appréhender toutes les potentialités, qui dépassent la simple perspective d’un « empire » au sens commun du terme (c’est-à-dire au sens d’une structure politique supranationale).

 

Origine

 

La notion d’imperium prend corps dans l’Antiquité romaine, plus précisément à l’époque républicaine (schématiquement comprise entre 509 et 31 av. J.-C.). Etymologiquement, il vient d’« ordonner », « préparer pour ». Il s’agit d’un pouvoir souverain délégué aux consuls, préteurs et à certains gouverneurs de province, par les dieux dont la volonté était censée se manifester au travers du peuple dans le vote des assemblées (élisant les magistrats). L’imperium est donc un pouvoir souverain (c’est-à-dire ne reconnaissant pas de supérieur temporel) d’ordonner et de juger, symbolisé par les faisceaux (haches entourées de verges portées par les licteurs).

 

Le titulaire d’un imperium pouvait être désigné sous le terme d’imperator (chef militaire victorieux –souvent consul-, ayant droit à ce titre à un triomphe à Rome). Sous la République, l’imperium était néanmoins un pouvoir limité dans le temps et dans l’espace. De plus, il subissait la concurrence d’autres pouvoirs comme la puissance tribunicienne (tribunitia potestas rendant sacrosainte la personne des tribuns chargés de représenter et de défendre la Plèbe de Rome). Les guerres civiles de la fin de la République (de 88 à 31 av. J.-C.), voyant différents imperatores se disputer l’exclusivité de l’imperium (Marius, Sylla, César, Pompée, Octave-Auguste, Antoine)débouchent finalement sur l’avènement de l’Etat Impérial (à partir du règne d’Auguste de 27 av. J.-C. à 14 de notre ère) dans lequel tous les pouvoirs sont accolés à un imperium permanent entre les mains d’un seul homme : le césar auguste imperator. Imperator devient un surnom, un nom puis un prénom des empereurs, uniques détenteurs de l’imperium.

 

A ce stade, un certain nombre d’erreurs ne doivent plus être commises : L’imperium n’est pas l’ « Empire ». Si « Imperium » a bien donné « Empire », les romains n’ont pas eu de mots pour décrire précisément le système impérial en tant que système de gouvernement en soi, ou comme territoire. Rome et son Empire sont restés malgré la fin du système républicain la Res Publica. L’imperium est donc un type de pouvoir, et non un système politique ou un territoire, du moins à l’origine. De même, « imperator » ne désigne la fonction d’empereur que tardivement, l’imperator étant avant tout un chef de guerre victorieux.

 

L’empire romain : un imperium euro-méditerranéen permanent

 

A ce titre, ce concept est à l’image de la culture politique et de la pratique du pouvoir des Empereurs Romains : souple, pragmatique, concrète. Il en va de même de la nature du pouvoir impérial, difficile à appréhender et à définir, puisque construit par empirisme (sa nature monarchique n’est cependant pas contestable). En plus de quatre siècles, le pouvoir impérial a su s’adapter aux situations les plus périlleuses (telle la « crise » du IIIe siècle). Rien de commun en effet entre le principat augustéen, système dans lequel l’empereur est le princeps, le prince, primus inter pares, c’est-à-dire premier entre ses pairs de l’aristocratie sénatoriale ; la tétrarchie de Dioclétien (284-305), partage du pouvoir entre quatre empereurs hiérarchisés et l’empire chrétien de Constantin (306-337), dans lesquels l’empereur est le dominus, le maître.

Le système impérial s’accompagne d’une idéologie confortant la souveraineté suprême de l’Empereur. L’empereur est sacrosaint (il a accaparé la puissance tribunitienne). Il doit assurer la paix (la fameuse pax romana inaugurée par Auguste), assurer le retour à l’âge d’or, il bénéficie de la protection des dieux (ou de Dieu, dont il est le comes, le comte –ou compagnon- sur terre, à partir de Constantin) et d’un charisme divin (c’est là tout le sens du titre d’Augustus). Il doit posséder les vertus de justice, de clémence, de piété, de dévouement à l’Etat. Au-delà de cela, il doit corréler respect des traditions et nécessité de fédérer un empire constitué d’une myriade de cités au passé prestigieux et attachées à leur indépendance. En cela, les empereurs romains n’ont point failli, comme le souligne Lucien Jerphagnon dans sa biographie d’Augustin : « Sur 3 300 000 km2 autour de la Méditerranée […] soixante à soixante-dix millions de gens s’affairent ou se laissent vivre, tous différents, avec leurs langues régionales, leurs dieux bien à eux. S’ils avaient plus ou moins renâclé à passer sous domination romaine, ils se trouvaient dans l’ensemble plutôt bien de la Pax Romana. Bref s’était instauré un universalisme qui n’effaçait rien des identités locales. Depuis Caracalla (212), […] on était citoyen romain tout en restant Africain, Syrien… ».

 

Si la nature de la fonction impériale a évoluée, son fondement est resté inchangé : un pouvoir souverain, transcendant, à la fois civil, militaire et religieux, soutenu par un charisme divin, un pouvoir surhumain, nivelant par le haut, ayant pour horizon la pax aeterna, écartant les prétentions des forces centrifuges, donnant une orientation commune à toutes les composantes d’une même koiné (communauté culturelle et politique), tout en préservant leurs identités profondes.

 

Pérennité du concept

 

La notion d’imperium recèle donc des potentialités multiples, et représente un projet valable pour la France et l’Europe que nous appelons de nos vœux. Elle n’est pas, contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait penser, un pur objet historique limité à l’histoire romaine, et dont le champ d’action concret s’arrêterait en 476 avec la chute de l’Empire d’Occident. En effet, la notion de souveraineté héritée de l’imperium a survécu en Europe sous une infinité de forme : Byzance, survivance de l’Empire d’Orient, de culture chrétienne orthodoxe et gréco-romaine, dont l’Empire russe s’est toujours vécu comme un héritier (« tsar » est un titre dérivé de celui de « césar ») ; Le Saint-Empire, chrétien catholique, germanique, issu de l’Empire Carolingien dont la vision était de faire renaître l’Empire Romain d’Occident, témoigne de la prégnance de l’idée d’Empire, y compris chez les barbares installés sur son territoire dans les dernières années de l’empire d’Occident. Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) ne s’était-il pas fait couronné par le pape dans la ville même de Rome selon le rituel d’intronisation des empereurs (ou du souvenir qu’il en restait), n’a-t-il pas repris la symbolique impériale, en sommeil depuis la chute de l’Empire (orbe impériale, sceptre, couronne –issu du diadème impérial des empereurs tardifs, lui-même repris des rois helléniques-) ? Enfin, les royaumes « barbares », en premier lieu le royaume franc, ont eux aussi recueilli l’héritage de l’imperium romain et de la culture classique à travers l’Eglise. Les mérovingiens (ainsi que les ostrogoths, les wisigoths ou les burgondes), fascinés par le prestige impérial, ont tenté d’imiter le faste des empereurs (imitatio imperii). C’est cependant la monarchie française issue de l’éclatement de l’empire carolingien (Capétiens, Valois, Bourbons) qui sera –à notre sens- parmi les nations européennes la plus belle héritière de la tradition politique romaine. Les rois de France, notamment à partir des derniers capétiens (deuxième moitié du XIIIe siècle), nourris de la redécouverte du droit romain, vont affirmer le principe de souveraineté contre les puissances cherchant à la subjuguer ou à la faire éclater. Le pouvoir royal français comprend de nombreuses similitudes et d’emprunts à l’imperium romain : son côté surnaturel, total –ou plutôt absolu-, divin, la coexistence d’aspects civils, militaires, et religieux, certaines des regalia (l’orbe, la couronne…).

 

Ainsi, à l’éclatement politique de l’Europe au Moyen Âge et à l’époque Moderne a correspondu un éclatement du pouvoir souverain, de l’imperium. L’idée d’un pouvoir souverain fédérateur n’en n’a pas pour autant été altérée. Il en va de même de l’idée d’une Europe unie, portée par l’Eglise, porteuse première de l’héritage romain. Le regain d’intérêt que connait la notion d’imperium n’est donc pas le fruit d’une passion romantique pour l’antiquité européenne, mais la preuve qu’en rupture avec la conception moderne positiviste de l’histoire, nous regardons les formes d’organisations politiques passées comme autant d’héritages vivants et qu’il nous appartient de nous les réapproprier (les derniers empires héritiers indirects de la vision impériale issue de Rome ont respectivement disparu en 1917 –Empire Russe- et 1918 –Empire Austro-Hongrois et Empire Allemand-). Si ce court panorama historique ne peut prétendre rendre compte de la complexité du phénomène, de sa profondeur, et des nuances nombreuses que comporte l’histoire de l’idée d’imperium ou même de l’idée d’Empire, nous espérons avant tout avoir pu clarifier son origine et son sens afin d’en tirer pour la réflexion le meilleur usage possible. L’imperium est une forme du pouvoir politique souple et forte à la fois, capable de redonner du sens à l’idée de souveraineté, et d’articuler autorité politique continentale et impériale de l’Eurasisme avec les aspirations à la conservation des autonomies et des identités nationales portées par le Nationalisme ou même le Monarchisme. A l’heure où le démocratisme, les droits de l’homme, et le libéralisme entrent dans leur phase de déclin, il nous revient d’opposer une alternative cohérente et fédératrice et à opposer l’imperium au mondialisme.

 

Charles Mallet 

http://lheurasie.hautetfort.com/archive/2014/06/05/qu-est-ce-que-l-imperium-charles-mallet-5385150.html

J. Evola: Metafisica del sesso e idealismo magico

 

Tradizione e rivoluzione: intervista con Renato Del Ponte

Tradizione e rivoluzione: intervista con Renato Del Ponte

In occasione della scorsa festa nazionale di CasaPound Italia, il professor Renato del Ponte ci ha gentilmente concesso la presente intervita. Presente alla festa di CPI per presentare in anteprima un libro da lui curato su Adriano Romualdi e il periodo della contestazione negli anni '70: "Lettere ad un amico" Ed. Arya.

 

Il Professore è tornato per noi sul suo percorso universitario, metapolitico e culturale. Ha trattato del suo rapporto con Julius Evola, della sua visione del mondo, delle vie che l'uomo differenziato può ancora percorrere nella presente epoca di fine ciclo.

 

Un'intervista introduttiva per chi vuole conoscere il lavoro di chi ha dedicato le proprie energie a vivificare e trasmettere quella fiamma mai assopita nella nostra identità: la Tradizione Romana.

 

Questo è il nostro primo video in italiano.

 

Un ringraziamento alle sezioni di CasaPound Liguria e Cuneo per aver reso possibile il presente incontro.

 

I Non Allineati.

 

Inizio :

Dalla Tradizione allo studio delle religioni.

4 min 30 : 

L'incontro con Julius Evola. 

7 min 15 :

L'influenza e il ruolo di Evola.

15 min 59 :

Tradizione e politica

 

Ex: http://www.les-non-alignes.fr/

Les ressorts psychologiques des pilotes Tokkôtai

Manipulation esthétique et romantisme

Les ressorts psychologiques des pilotes Tokkôtai

Kamikazes, fleurs de cerisiers et nationalismes

Rémy Valat
Ex: http://metamag.fr

花は桜木人は武士(hana wa sakuragi hito wa bushi).

« La fleur des fleurs est le cerisier, la fleur des hommes est le guerrier. »

Les éditions Hermann ont eu la bonne idée de publier le livre d’Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikazes, Fleurs de cerisier et Nationalismes, paru précédemment en langue anglaise aux éditions des universités de Chicago (2002) sous le titre Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms : The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. La traduction de cette étude magistrale est de Livane Pinet Thélot (revue par Xavier Marie). Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney enseigne l’anthropologie à l'université du Wisconsin ; elle est une spécialiste réputée du Japon. Sa carrière académique est exceptionnelle : elle est présidente émérite de la section de culture moderne à la Bibliothèque du Congrès de Washington, membre de l’Avancées de Paris et de l'Académie américaine des arts et des sciences. 

Kamikazes, Fleurs de cerisier et Nationalismes n’est pas une histoire de bataille. L’auteure s’est intéressée aux manipulations esthétiques et symboliques de la fleur de cerisier par les pouvoirs politiques et militaires des ères Meiji, Taishô et Shôwa jusqu’en 1945. La floraison des cerisiers appartient à la culture archaïque japonaise, elle était associée à la fertilité, au renouveau printanier, à la vie. L’éphémère présence de ces fleurs blanches s’inscrivait dans le calendrier des rites agricoles, lesquels culminaient à l’automne avec la récolte du riz, et étaient le prétexte à libations d’alcool de riz (saké) et festivités. Au fil des siècles, les acteurs politiques et sociaux ont octroyé une valeur différente au cerisier : l’empereur pour se démarquer de l’omniprésente culture chinoise et de sa fleur symbole, celle du prunier ; les samouraïs et les nationalistes pour souligner la fragilité de la vie du guerrier, et, surtout pour les seconds, institutionnaliser une esthétique valorisant la mort et le sacrifice. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney nous révèle l’instrumentalisation des récits, des traditions et des symboles nippons, ayant pour toile de fond et acteurs des cerisiers et des combattants : le Manyôshû (circa 755 ap. JC), un recueil de poèmes mettant en scène les sakimori (garde-frontières en poste au nord de Kyûshû et sur les îles de Tsushima et d’Iki) ont été expurgés des passages trop humains où les hommes exprimaient leur affection pour leurs proches de manière à mettre en avant la fidélité à l’empereur.  L’épisode des pilotes tokkôtai survint à la fin de la guerre du Pacifique et atteint son paroxysme au moment où le Japon est victime des bombardements américains et Okinawa envahi. Ces missions suicides ont marqué les esprits (c’était l’un des objectifs de l’état-major impérial) et donné une image négative du combattant japonais, dépeint comme un « fanatique »... Avec une efficacité opérationnelle faible, après l’effet de surprise de Leyte (où 20,8% des navires ont été touchés), le taux des navires coulés ou endommagés serait de 11,6%....Tragique hasard de l’Histoire, la bataille d’Okinawa s’est déroulée au moment de la floraison des cerisiers, donnant une touche romantique à cette irrationnelle tragédie, durant laquelle le Japon va sacrifier la fine fleur de sa jeunesse.

Fine fleur, car ces jeunes hommes, un millier environ, étaient des étudiants provenant des meilleures universités du pays, promus hâtivement officiers-pilotes pour une mission sans retour. 3843 pilotes (estimation maximale incluant toutes les catégories socio-professionnelles et classes d’âge) sont morts en tentant de s’écraser sur un bâtiment de guerre américain. L’étude des journaux intimes de ces jeunes kamikazes, journaux parfois entamés plusieurs années auparavant constitue une source inestimable car elle permet de cerner l’évolution psychologique et philosophique des futurs pilotes. L’analyse, centrée sur 5 cas, révèle que l’intériorisation de la propagande militaire et impériale était imparfaite, individualisée. Toutefois, le panel étudié (5%de la population) est la principale faiblesse de l’argumentation d’Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (l’auteure aurait eu des difficultés à trouver des sources originales et complètes). Il ressort de son analyse que peu de pilotes, dont aucun n’était probablement volontaire, aurait réellement adhéré à l’idéologie officielle. Ironie, les étudiants-pilotes étaient pétris de  culture : la « génération Romain Rolland » (lire notre recension du livre de Michael Lucken, Les Japonais et la guerre).

L’opposition entre la culture occidentale prônant le libre arbitre et l’obligation de se donner la mort en mission commandée a ouvert la porte à l’irrationalité et au romantisme. Leur dernière nuit était un déchirement, mais tous ont su trouver la force de sourire avant le dernier vol. Kasuga Takeo (86 ans), dans une lettre au docteur Umeazo Shôzô, apporte un témoignage exceptionnel sur les dernières heures des kamikazes : « Dans le hall où se tenait leur soirée d’adieu la nuit précédant leur départ, les jeunes étudiants officiers buvaient du saké froid. Certains avalaient le saké en une gorgée, d’autres en engloutissaient une grande quantité. Ce fut vite le chaos. Il y en avait qui cassaient des ampoules suspendues avec leurs sabres. D’autres qui soulevaient les chaises pour casser les fenêtres et déchiraient les nappes blanches. Un mélange de chansons militaires et de jurons emplissaient l’air. Pendant que certains hurlaient de rage, d’autres pleuraient bruyamment. C’était leur dernière nuit de vie. Ils pensaient à leurs parents et à la femme qu’ils aimaient....Bien qu’ils fussent censés être prêts à sacrifier leur précieuse jeunesse pour l’empire japonais et l’empereur le lendemain matin, ils étaient tiraillés au-delà de toute expression possible...Tous ont décollé au petit matin avec le bandeau du soleil levant autour de la tête. Mais cette scène de profond désespoir a rarement été rapportée. » (pp. 292-293).

Quel sens donner à leur sacrifice ?

 
Outre celui de protéger leurs proches, l’idée de régénération est forte. Un Japon nouveau, épuré des corruptions de l’Occident (matérialisme, égoïsme, capitalisme, modernité) germerait de leur sublime et suprême offrande. La méconnaissance (source d’interprétations multiples) et l’archaïsme du symbole a, semble-t-il, éveillé et mobilisé des sentiments profonds et primitifs, et pourtant ô combien constitutifs de notre humanité. Ironie encore, ce sont contre des bâtiments américains que viennent périr ces jeunes hommes, ces « bâtiments noirs, venus la première fois en 1853, obligeant le Japon à faire face aux défis de l’Occident et de la mondialisation. Il ne faut pas oublier que l’ultranationalisme japonais est une réponse à ce défi... Le Japon ne s’est pas laissé coloniser comme la Chine ; les guerres de l’opium ont donné à réfléchir aux élites japonaises. Mieux, les Japonais ont su s’armer, réfléchir et chercher le meilleur moyen de retourner les armes de l’agresseur. Le Japon a été un laboratoire intellectuel intense, et le communisme, idéologie sur laquelle la Chine habillera son nationalisme, est un import du pays du Soleil Levant... Ernst Nolte explique les excès du nazisme comme une réaction au danger communiste (La guerre civile européenne) : il en est de même au Japon. La menace des navires américains est un retour à l’acte fondateur du nationalisme nippon expliquerait l’irrationalité des actes de mort volontaire...

Le livre d’Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, qui professe aux Ėtats-Unis, est remarquable, mais peut-être marqué par l’esprit du vainqueur. « Ce qui est regrettable par-dessus tout, écrit-elle (p. 308), c’est que la majorité de la population ait oublié les victimes de la guerre. Ces dernières sont tombées dans les oubliettes de l’histoire, ont été recouvertes par la clameur des discussions entre les libéraux et l’extrême-droite, au lieu d’être le rappel de la culpabilité de la guerre que chaque Japonais devrait partager ». La culpabilité (la repentance) est une arme politique ne l’oublions pas : une arme qui sert peut-être à garder le Japon sous influence américaine, car même si le Japon s’achemine vers une « normalisation » de sa politique et de ses moyens de défense, l’interdépendance des industries d’armement et de communication ainsi que l’instrumentalisation du débat sur la Seconde Guerre mondiale en Asie entravent le processus d’une totale indépendance politique de ce pays. Si les Japonais devraient partager la culpabilité des victimes de la guerre ? Qui doit partager celles des bombardements de Tôkyô, de Hiroshima et de Nagasaki ? Enfin, on ignore l’état d’esprit de ce qui ont le plus sincèrement adhéré à l’idéologie impériale au point de sacrifier leurs vies pour elle (Nogi Maresuke, Onishi Takijiro, fondateur des escadrilles tokkôtai, pour les plus illustres). Orages d’acier ou À l’Ouest rien de nouveau, deux expériences et deux visions, radicalement opposées, sur une même guerre...

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikazes, Fleurs de cerisier et Nationalismes, éditions Hermann, 2013, 580 p., 38 euros.

Artaud, Castaneda, Eliade e il viaggio iniziatico

Artaud, Castaneda, Eliade e il viaggio iniziatico

di Chiara Donnini

Fonte: ideeinoltre

All’inizio del suo saggio, Il viaggio iniziatico edito da Laterza, Emanuele Trevi sostiene che esistono narrazioni che producono "questa straordinaria esperienza - la possibilità che le parole di un altro ci tocchino in profondo, fino a quello strato dell'essere nel quale si generano le trasformazioni più profonde e benefiche", tanto che diventa assai difficile distinguere la conoscenza trasmessa dallo scrittore dalle ripercussioni interiori generate nel lettore.Questi appunti sono il risultato di un viaggio iniziatico compiuto attraverso il testo di Trevi e delle corrispondenze e degli echi che esso ha prodotto, rimandato e amplificato.

 

Il viaggio concettuale che compie l’autoreè un movimento circolare in tre momenti che dalla letteratura etnografica e antropologica sul viaggio dei primi del novecento (Dio d’acqua, nel quale l’etnologo francese Marcel Griaule rivelò le “verità” ricevute da uno sciamano dell’allora Sudan francese; Alce Nero parla di John Neihardt, che raccoglie le memorie del capo nativo americano; Gli insegnamenti di don Juanche Carlos Castaneda dedicò ai miti degli indios dell'Arizona e del Messico; Il grande viaggio in slitta nel quale l’antropologo Knud Rasmussen parlò degli Inuit), arriva alle lezioni  americane, le Haskell Lectures sui riti d’iniziazione di Mircea Eliade, passando attraverso i monologhi erratici di Antonin Artaud sulla sua esperienza d’iniziazione con l’allucinogeno peyotl (Ciguri) nel paese dei Tarahumara sulla Sierra Madre (Messico).

 

Nel primo capitolo “Il pulcino addormentato sulla scarpa”, Trevi prende in esame quattro testi iniziatici fondamentali nei quali gli autori sono stati prescelti (quindi sono stati accolti nella comunità e dotati di fiducia) per ricevere e conservare la saggezza e le tradizioni di un antico popolo. Partendo dalla domanda dello sciamano Ogotemmeli nel Dio d’acqua di Griaule “Come insegnare a un bianco?”, Trevi pone il primo tassello del suo percorso concettuale: la differenza tra sapere tradizionale e sapere moderno, tra storie, miti, parabole, simboli,archetipi, riti e ragionamenti e contenuti astratti, tra saggezza (che è il sapere congiunto

indissolubilmente all’esperienza) ed erudizione. La risposta alla domanda di Ogotemmeli la troviamo in ciò che dice don Juan in Gli insegnamenti di don Juan di Castaneda: “L’uomo si avvia verso il sapere come se andasse in guerra”, il che vuol dire che per trasmettere sapienza è necessario che un autore, nell’acquisire insegnamenti, compia a sua volta un’esperienza e che questa esperienza diventi in qualche modo parte della narrazione, cosicché da semplice testimone si trasformi egli stesso in personaggio della narrazione.“Ma solo superficialmente questo criterio di orientamento individuale può essere interpretato come un limite della credibilità del racconto. In realtà, non esiste nessun altro criterio, nessun’altra forma possibile di conoscenza, che quella che fa capo all’individuo.” Inoltre, è necessario che l’autore si ponga di fronte alla conoscenza che sta per ricevere e all’esperienza che sta per compiere con lo stupore e la meraviglia di un bambino, che fuor di metafora significa con il minor numero di sovrastrutture mentali possibile. Ciò echeggia nelle parole di Rasmussen, il quale, nell’introduzione a Il lungo viaggio in slitta, scrive: “La slitta è stato il mio primo vero giocattolo e con quello ho portato a termine il grande compito della mia vita”. Il libro diventa in questo modo “qualcosa che è accaduto, un’unica volta, all’autore” (Roberto Bazlen), qualcosa che segna uno spartiacque tra un prima e un dopo, qualcosa di assimilabile a un rito iniziatico.

 

Rito iniziatico che invece compie realmente Antonin Artaud, nel suo viaggio di ascensione reale e metaforica della Sierra Madre (Messico), viaggio che si conclude alla sommità del monte con il rito del Ciguri. Nel secondo capitolo “…dall’altra parte delle cose” Artaud compie un doppio passaggio attraverso lo specchio che separa il visibile dall’invisibile, la vita dalla morte, la materia dallo spirito. L’ascensione della Sierra per Artaud diventa di fatto una discesa agl’inferi di dantesca memoria, che passo dopo passo lo costringe ad abbandonare per strada tutto quello che concerne la sua precedente identità e a presentarsi nudo al momento finale del passaggio. “Perché quel procedere nella malattia è un viaggio, una discesa, per uscire di nuovo alla luce del giorno”. Dopo aver attraversato lo specchio, essersi sentiti rivoltati e riversati dall’altra parte e aver guardato,dunque, il mondo all’incontrario, come l’Orlando pazzo per amore, come l’Appeso diIl castello dei destini incrociati di Calvino, il rito del peyotldiventa il momento dell’illuminazione in cui, pur non riaggregandosi immediatamente la nuova identità dell’iniziato, si focalizza il centro di gravità intorno al quale essa prenderà forma. Tornato in Europa Artaud subirà anche la reclusione in un ospedale psichiatrico e l’elettroshock, esperienze che in qualche modo lo porteranno a rivedere i suoi scritti sul rito del Cigurie a evidenziare la sostanziale differenza tra la frattura identitaria generata dal rito iniziatico (esperienza di morte e rinascita all’insegna della luce e del senso) e quella generata dall’elettroshock (esperienza di morte e rinascita all’insegna dell’oscurità e del non senso).

 

Nell’ultimo capitolo del Viaggio, “Un’esistenza fallita”, Trevi prende in esame l’enorme patrimonio di erudizione costituito dalle lezioni americane, le Haskell Lectures, di Mircea Eliade sui simboli e riti d’iniziazione delle società primitive o tradizionali. Questi riti sono quasi sempre praticati su adolescenti che vengono costretti ad abbandonare il recinto (eden) delle loro certezze, delle loro abitudini, ad abbandonare tutte le “madri” e il consesso umano, per addentrarsi nella solitudine della natura e sperimentare il senso del tremendum, del sacro. “L'adolescente iniziato comincia con l'essere terrorizzato da una realtà soprannaturale, di cui sperimenta per la prima volta la potenza, l'autonomia, l'incommensurabilità; in seguito all'incontro con il terrore divino, il neofita muore: muore all'infanzia, cioè all'ignoranza e all'irresponsabilità. Subentra un nuovo modo d'essere, il modo d'essere dell'adulto: caratterizzato dalla rivelazione, quasi simultanea, del sacro, della morte e della sessualità. Al termine del processo rituale, si potrà definire l'iniziato come colui che sa.". Le lezioni di Mircea Eliade rappresentano in pieno il paradosso dell’uomo moderno che ha accumulato un’enorme quantità di conoscenze riguardo a ogni forma di religiosità, ma per il quale “la quantità del sapere appare direttamente proporzionale a un processo (forse irreversibile) di svuotamento”.

 

Il filo rosso del ragionamento che Trevi ha srotolato ora ritorna al punto di partenza e viene riannodatoisolando il concetto che permea di fatto tutta la sua narrazione: il viaggio iniziatico, con la sua morte e rinascita simboliche, sia esso moto orizzontale nello spazio e nel tempo delle civiltà tradizionali e antiche o moto verticale nella profondità dell'essere, o entrambe le cose, oggi non appartiene più alla dimensione collettiva e rituale del sacro e del divino, ma appartiene invece unicamente alla dimensione individuale e psicologica della ricerca di se stessi attuata e attuabile in special modo attraverso una “certa letteratura”. "La modernità è il tempo storico nel quale la letteratura si carica sulle spalle le esigenze più profonde del vecchio homo religiosus. Sottraendole, però, a quella dimensione collettiva, fondata su valori e credenze condivise, che è la condizione stessa dell'esperienza religiosa, alla quale, in fondo, non sfuggono nemmeno le esplorazioni più ardite dei mistici e le ribellioni degli eretici. Il terreno sul quale si muove lo scrittore moderno, al contrario, è fondato sulla più irrimediabilmente solitudine. (...) nascere un'altra volta, a costo di scuotere tutte le fondamenta dell'identità, di mandare in frantumi le abitudini, i significati, le protezioni che ci sostengono. Perché la vita è un fallimento. E se volessimo formulare una definizione sintetica della letteratura moderna, ebbene dovremmo ammettere che essa, nella strabiliante varietà delle sue forme e delle sue invenzioni, è una grandiosa, enciclopedica, inesauribile scienza del fallimento della vita umana.".

 

Il concetto di fallimento non è in questo caso da intendersi in senso nichilista. Con esso l’autorevuole evidenziare il fatto che le esperienze della vita umana contengono irrimediabilmente imperfezione, inganno, caduta, errore e di conseguenza dolore che non possono e non devono essere evitati e che vanno accettati e interiorizzati per permettere all’individuo di compiere il proprio cammino in modo consapevole, altrimenti lo condurrebbero solo alla crescente alienazione ed estraniamento da sé e dal mondo.  "Un'esistenza che, prima o poi, si rivela fallita. E, preso atto della mancanza di significato che invade lo spazio aperto da questo fallimento, tenta o immagina periodicamente di rinnovarsi, di accedere alle possibilità offerte da una seconda nascita, da una nascita mistica.".

 

Prendiamo un uomo e la fiamma viva di un fuoco. Se quest'uomo, per sbaglio o per volontà, mettesse una delle sue mani su quella fiamma, proverebbe un dolore subitaneo e intenso che lo indurrebbe a distogliere la mano per non ridurla in cenere. Quel dolore è l'unica difesa che l'uomo ha per non bruciarsi e il suo ricordo il modo per non commettere di nuovo quell'errore. Lo stesso vale per qualsiasi dolore: risveglia la coscienza e incide nella memoria la cicatrice dell'esperienza fallimentare; ma se quel dolore fosse vissuto come qualcosa di estraneo e non venisse interiorizzato in alcun modo, rimarrebbe vano e quasi certamente verrebbe ripetuto. Allora, forse, è proprio il dolore, anche il dolore totalmente esogeno che non ci procuriamo con i nostri comportamenti, che, una volta interiorizzato, può salvarci dall’autodistruzione innescando anche una rinascita più o meno significativa.

 

Naturalmente la letteratura del viaggio reale o metaforico (e non solo quella) ha sempre svolto questo ruolo di rottura e illuminazione (si pensi solamente all’Odissea di Omero o alla Divina Commedia di Dante – che però contenevano comunque la dimensione del divino -, ma anche al laico Don Chisciotte di Cervantes). Quel che avviene con l’avvento della modernità, con il progressivo accantonamento della dimensione del sacro, lo svuotamento di significato della sua ritualità e, infine, con la secolarizzazione del sapere, è che una “certa letteratura”rimane pressoché l’ultimo e l’unico strumento alla portata di tutti (almeno di tutti i lettori) per tentare il disvelamento dell’Essere e per compiere la propria medesima iniziazione alla vita, poiché “la persuasione che la vita ha uno scopo è radicata in ogni fibra dell’uomo, è proprietà della sostanza umana.” (Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo).

 

La letteratura moderna però, rispetto alla religione e alla letteratura precedente, non offre affatto una visione d’insieme ordinata, coerente e consolatoria, si limita al massimo a inchiodare un atomo nel caos del cosmo, a far brillare una scheggia di verità nel buio dell’ignoranza, ad alleviare in parte e per un istante il senso di solitudine e smarrimento dell’individuo.“Ma è bene se la coscienza riceve larghe ferite perché in tal modo diventa più sensibile a ogni morso. Bisognerebbe leggere, credo, soltanto i libri che mordono e pungono. Se il libro che leggiamo non ci sveglia con un pugno sul cranio, a che serve leggerlo? Affinché ci renda felici, come scrivi tu? Dio mio, felici saremmo anche se non avessimo libri, e i libri che ci rendono felici potremmo eventualmente scriverli noi. Ma noi abbiamo bisogno di libri che agiscano su di noi come una disgrazia che ci fa molto male, come la morte di uno che era più caro di noi stessi, come se fossimo respinti dai boschi, via da tutti gli uomini, come un suicidio, un libro deve essere la scure per il mare gelato dentro di noi. Questo credo.” (Franz Kafka, lettera a Oskar Pollak del 27.I.1904)

Tante altre notizie su www.ariannaeditrice.it

Hercule, un Jésus européen ?

Hercule, un Jésus européen?

par Thomas Ferrier

Ex: http://thomasferrier.hautetfort.com

« Hercules, the legend begins » est enfin sorti sur les écrans français après avoir connu un terrible échec commercial, il y a deux mois, aux Etats-Unis. On pouvait donc craindre le pire, malgré une bande annonce des plus alléchantes. Après avoir vu ce film, que j’ai pour ma part beaucoup apprécié, je m’interroge sur le pourquoi de cette descente en flammes et de ce qui a déplu à la critique.

Bien sûr, dans cette Grèce du XIIIème siècle avant notre ère, il y a de nombreux anachronismes comme des combats de gladiateurs ou encore la conquête de l’Egypte. Si de beaux efforts graphiques ont été faits, on se trouve dans une Grèce de légende, à mi-chemin entre la Grèce mycénienne et la Grèce classique. Et de même, la légende du héros, avec les douze travaux, est absente ou malmenée, alors que de nouveaux éléments s’ajoutent, comme une rivalité entre Héraclès et son frère Iphiclès. Tout cela a pu surprendre un public habitué à ces classiques.

Et pourtant de nombreuses idées audacieuses se sont glissées dans ce film et le rendent passionnant. Ainsi, la vie d’Hercule s’apparente par certains aspects à celle de Jésus. De nombreux films américains, à l’instar de Man of Steel, la comparaison implicite est patente. Dans « Hercules », elle est voulue mais détournée. Alcmène s’unit à Zeus sans que le dieu apparaisse, se manifestant par une tempête accompagnée d’éclairs. Cela ne vous rappelle rien ? De même, Hercule est fouetté et attaché par les deux bras dans une scène rappelant la crucifixion. Mais il en sort vainqueur, brisant ses liens, et écrasant grâce à deux énormes blocs de pierre attachés par des chaînes à ses bras tous ses ennemis. Enfin, il devient concrètement roi à la fin de son aventure, ne se revendiquant pas simplement « roi de son peuple » mais roi véritable.

Bien sûr, ce « Jésus » aux muscles imposants mais sobres, à la pigmentation claire et aux cheveux blonds, n’a pas la même morale. Fils du maître de l’univers, dont il finit par accepter la paternité, Zeus en personne, il tue ses ennemis, jusqu’à son propre père adoptif, combat avec une férocité qui en ferait l’émule d’Arès, et semble quasi insensible à la douleur. Une scène le présente même recevant sur son épée la foudre de Zeus qu’il utilise ensuite comme une sorte de fouet électrique pour terrasser les combattants qui lui font face.

Par ailleurs, la « diversité » est réduite à sa plus petite expression, limitée à des mercenaires égyptiens, crédibles dans leur rôle. Les Grecs en revanche sont tous bien européens, avec des traits parfois nordiques. Il n’est pas question comme dans « Les Immortels » ou « Alexandre » de voir des afro-américains en armure ou jouant les Roxanes. En revanche, on retrouve davantage l’esprit de Troie, l’impiété en moins. En effet, cette fois les athées ont le mauvais rôle à l’instar du roi de Tirynthe Amphitryon. Hercule lui-même, qui ne croit pas dans l’existence des dieux pendant une bonne partie du film, finit par se revendiquer explicitement de la filiation de Zeus et la prouver. En outre, Hercules rappelle par certains côtés le premier Conan, puisque le héros est trahi et fait prisonnier, puis s’illustre dans des combats dans l’arène d’une grande intensité, bondissant tel un fauve pour fracasser le crâne d’un ennemi, mais il reste toujours chevaleresque, protégeant les femmes et les enfants.

A certains moments, le film semble même s’inspirer des traits guerriers qu’un Breker donnait à ses statues. Kellan Lutz n’est sans doute pas un acteur d’une expression théâtrale saisissante mais il est parfaitement dans son rôle. Si les douze travaux se résument à étrangler le lion de Némée, à vaincre de puissants ennemis mais qui demeurent humains, et à reconquérir sa cité, son caractère semi-divin, même si le personnage refuse tout hybris, est non seulement respecté mais amplifié. En ce sens, Hercule apparaît comme un Jésus païen et nordique, mais aussi un Jésus guerrier et vengeur, donc très loin bien sûr du Jésus chrétien. Fils de Dieu, sa morale est celle des Européens, une morale héroïque.

Toutefois, bien sûr, certains aspects modernes apparaissent, comme la relation romantique entre Hercule et Hébé, déesse de la jeunesse qu’il épousera après sa mort dans le mythe grec, et le triomphe de l’amour sur le mariage politique. C’est bien sûr anachronique. Mais « la légende d’Hercule » ne se veut pas un film historique.

Enfin, la morale est sauve puisque dans le film, Héra autorise Zeus à la tromper, alors que dans le mythe classique elle met le héros à l’épreuve par jalousie, afin de faire naître un sauveur. Zeus ne peut donc être « adultère ». Cela donne du sens au nom du héros, expliqué comme « le don d’Héra », alors qu’il signifie précisément « la gloire d’Héra », expression énigmatique quand on connaît la haine de la déesse envers le héros. Pour s’exprimer, Héra pratique l’enthousiasme sur une de ses prêtresses, habitant son corps pour transmettre ses messages. C’est conforme à la tradition religieuse grecque.

Les défauts du film sont mineurs par rapport à ses qualités, graphiques comme scénaristiques, mais ce qui a dû nécessairement déranger c’est qu’il est trop païen, trop européen, trop héroïque, qu’il singe le christianisme pour mieux s’y opposer. Le fils de Dieu est marié et a un enfant (à la fin du film). Le fils de Dieu n’accepte pas d’être emmené à la mort mais triomphe de ses bourreaux. Le fils de Dieu devient « roi des Grecs ». Enfin le fils de Dieu apparaît comme tel aux yeux de tous et n’est pas rejeté par son propre peuple. Ce film ne pouvait donc que déranger une société américaine qui va voir des films où Thor lance la foudre, où Léonidas et ses « 300 » combattent jusqu’à la mort avec une ironie mordante, mais qui reste très chrétienne, très puritaine et hypocrite.

Thomas FERRIER (LBTF/PSUNE)

Iconografia e simboli del potere imperiale

Iconografia e simboli del potere imperiale

Autore: Giovanni Balducci

Ex: http://www.centrostudilaruna.it

Il filosofo tedesco Ernest Cassirer ebbe ad affermare che l’uomo è “animal symbolicum”, “animale simbolico”, nella sua opera Saggi sull’uomo scriverà infatti: «La ragione è un termine assai inadeguato per comprendere tutte le forme della vita culturale dell’uomo in tutta la loro ricchezza e varietà. Ma tutte queste forme sono forme simboliche. Per conseguenza, invece di definire l’uomo animal rationale, possiamo definirlo animal symbolicum. Così facendo indichiamo ciò che specificamente lo distingue e possiamo capire la nuova strada che si è aperta all’uomo, la strada verso la civiltà.» (1)

Come ogni altro fenomeno umano, anche la politica, nel senso più alto del termine, è da sempre stata soggetta ad un processo di simbolizzazione. Ciò è riscontrabile soprattutto attraverso lo studio della scienza araldica, o dell’iconografia, sia del potere temporale che di quello spirituale, spesso in passato strettamente connessi.

Nell‘iconografia occidentale, ad esempio, l’Imperatore è spesso stato accostato ai significati simbolici dell’aquila, in quanto ritenuto investito dall’alto, per la sua peculiarità di vedere oltre, di essere in qualche modo un chiaro-veggente, un illuminato, qualità queste attribuite tradizionalmente al rapace. Nel Bestiaire di Philippe de Thaon del 1126, infatti, si leggono questi versi sull’aquila: «L’aquila è la regina degli uccelli; essa mostra un esempio molto bello. Giustamente in latino la chiamiamo “chiaro-veggente”, perché guarda il sole quando è più luminoso e sebbene lo guardi fissamente, tuttavia non distoglie lo sguardo» (2).

Il simbolo dell’aquila fu signum delle legioni di Roma, inoltre proprio sotto forma di aquila si pensava che le anime dei Cesari liberatesi del corpo assurgessero all’immortalità solare. L’aquila era altresì ritenuta sacra al dio del cielo e padre degli dèi Giove. Scriverà Julius Evola che “fra gli stessi Aztechi si vede figurar l’aquila a indicare il luogo per la capitale del nuovo impero”, e che “il ba, concepito come la parte dell’essere umano destinata ad esistenza eterna celeste in stati di gloria, nei geroglifici egizi è figurato spesso da uno sparviero, equivalente egizio dell’aquila”. Inoltre “Nei Rg-Veda l’aquila porta ad Indra la mistica bevanda che lo costituirà a signore degli déi” (3).

Quando Costantino trasferì la sede imperiale da Roma a Costantinopoli l’aquila bicipite divenne simbolo dell’intero territorio dell’Impero Romano d’Occidente e d’Oriente, stante a rappresentare le due capitali dell’Impero. L’aquila bizantina sarà adottata, in seguito, da Mosca, in qualità di nuova Costantinopoli. Per l’Impero Russo l’aquila bicipite stava a simboleggiare i poteri temporale e spirituale riuniti nell’unica persona dello zar. In seguito le due teste dell’aquila russa passarono a simboleggiare le due parti del continente, fra Europa ed Asia, sulle quali si estendeva il territorio russo. In Occidente, invece, l’aquila bicipite, nera in campo dorato, divenne il simbolo del Sacro Romano Imperatore; il primo ad adottarla in questa forma fu Ludovico il Bavaro nel 1345 e, più tardi, l’Imperatore Sigismondo quando ascese al trono imperiale nel 1410.

Un altro dei simboli più rappresentativi dell’Impero (oltre che del Papato) è il c.d. globo crucigero (globus cruciger): una sfera con in cima apposta una croce. Esso rappresenta il dominio di Cristo (la croce) sul cosmo (la sfera), ed è, inoltre, presente sulla tiara papale, essendo il Papa considerato “padre dei principi e dei re, rettore del mondo, vicario in terra di Cristo”. Altresì la croce, quale doppia congiunzione di punti diametralmente opposti, rappresenta il simbolo dell’unità degli estremi, ad esempio il cielo e la terra. In essa si congiungono tempo e spazio e per ciò, ancor prima dell’avvento del cristianesimo, fu considerata come simbolo universale della mediazione. La croce, per ciò stesso, diviene emblema dell’Imperatore per la sua funzione di mediatore fra Dio e gli uomini, in quanto detentore di un potere temporale assunto per mandato divino. Il Globo terrestre sormontato dalla Croce, inoltre, è l’insegna del potere imperiale iniziaticamente considerato, dell’imperio esercitato sull’Anima del Mondo, ossia sul fluido vitale universale che anima i corpi siderali: secondo un’antica tradizione chi riesce a coagulare tale fluido e a dissolverne a volontà le coagulazioni, comanda all’Anima del Mondo e detiene il supremo potere magico.

Altri simboli connessi al potere e all’autorità regale ed imperiale sono lo scettro, legato da analogia con l’“asse del mondo” (per quanto concerne l’Oriente si ricordi il complementare simbolo del vajra o dorje della tradizione buddhista) ed il trono, legato al “polo” e al “centro immobile”. Similmente in Oriente alla figura del chakravartin (sovrano universale) è connesso l’ancestrale simbolo dello swastika, avente anch’esso un significato “polare”.

 

Una parte centrale nell’ampio spettro della simbologia imperiale è rivestita dal simbolo del Sole. Il Sole, astro luminoso che dà vita, luce e calore è l’epifania suprema del divino. Così si esprimerà Dante sulla simbologia solare per rappresentare il divino: «non esiste cosa visibile, in tutto il mondo, più degna del sole di fungere da simbolo di Dio, poiché esso illumina con vita visibile prima se stesso, poi tutti i corpi celesti e terreni». Il Sole rappresenta l’Imperatore, investito del principio di autorità massima ed universale, ma anche detentore della più elevata nobiltà d’animo. A tal proposito Mircea Eliade affermò che «sarebbe bene insistere sull’affinità della teologia solare con le élites, siano sovrani, eroi, iniziati o filosofi». Anche in Giappone al potere imperiale è accostato il simbolismo solare, quello della dea Amaterasu ōmikami, Dea del Sole e progenitrice della dinastia regnante. Il Sole è altresì emblema del Re del Mondo, e Cristo è designato dalla liturgia cattolica col titolo di Sol Justitiae: il Verbo è effettivamente il “Sole spirituale”, cioè il vero “Centro del Mondo”. Il simbolismo solare per indicare Cristo è molto adoperato nella Bibbia, inoltre, presso i primi cristiani Cristo è raffigurato non come un essere dalle fattezze umane, ma come un sole fiammeggiante: non a caso il monogramma IHS sormontato da una croce e posto dentro una razza fiammante è uno dei più comuni cristogrammi. Anche al giorno d’oggi il simbolismo del Sole per indicare il Cristo è molto adoperato, basti pensare agli ostensori, aventi per lo più la forma di disco solare. Curiosamente il simbolismo solare è attribuito anche ad un’altra figura soterica, quella del principe Siddhārtha Gautama, il Buddha storico, spesso rappresentato nell’iconografia tradizionale recante dietro il capo il disco solare.

Altro simbolo che accomuna il Cristo e il grande Filosofo indiano è quello del leone: il supremo insegnamento del Buddha infatti sarà indicato come il “Ruggito del leone”, ed un leone è anche il simbolo della tribù di Giuda descritta nell’Antico Testamento, dalla quale discendeva Gesù Cristo. Il leone è universalmente considerato quale simbolo di regalità, di potenza e di nobiltà, è l’animale re della Savana per i popoli dell’Africa subsahariana. Nella tradizione islamica, l’Imam Alì, nominato direttamente dal Profeta Maometto assunse gli epiteti di Ghadanfar, leone, o Asadullah, leone di Dio. Nell’astrologia il segno zodiacale del Leone è il domicilio del Sole. I leoni sono stati a lungo venerati nel Vicino e nell’Estremo Oriente e furono utilizzati dai vari governanti come simboli del potere regale, proprio come lo erano in Europa: il leone, con la sua fama di animale dotato di gran forza, di coraggio, di nobiltà, così conforme all’ideale della cavalleria medievale fu utilizzarlo come figura ornamentale sulle armi dei Franchi (Merovingi e Carolingi). Mentre in Inghilterra l’introduzione del leone quale simbolo araldico è da attribuirsi ad Enrico II, che adottò uno stemma rosso con un leone rampante d’oro. Per il suo coraggio ed eroismo Riccardo I d’Inghilterra fu insignito dell’epiteto “Cuor di Leone”. Leone fu inoltre il nome di molti imperatori e papi.

Note

(1) Ernest Cassirer, Saggi sull’uomo, Mimesis, Milano, 2011.
(2) Le Bestiaire, Éd. Emmanuel Walberg, Genève, Slatkine Reprints, 1970.
(3) Julius Evola, Rivolta contro il mondo moderno, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma, 1998.

Geopolítica, geografía sagrada, geofilosofía

Geopolítica, geografía sagrada, geofilosofía

por Claudio Mutti

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

De acuerdo con una definición integral, que intenta sintetizar aquellas proporcionadas por diversos estudiosos, la geopolítica puede ser considerada como “el estudio de las relaciones internacionales en una perspectiva espacial y geográfica, en el que se toman en cuenta la influencia de los factores geográficos sobre la política exterior de los Estados y la rivalidad de poder sobre territorios en disputa entre dos o más Estados, o entre diferentes grupos o movimientos políticos armados” (1).

Por cuán grande sea el peso atribuido a los factores geográficos, aún sigue existiendo la relación de la geopolítica con la doctrina del Estado, por lo que es natural plantearse una interrogante que hasta el momento no parece haber sido tema de reflexión de los estudiosos. La pregunta es la siguiente: ¿Sería posible aplicar también a la geopolítica la famosa afirmación de Carl Schmitt, según la cual “todos los conceptos sobresalientes de la moderna doctrina del Estado son conceptos teológicos secularizados”? (2) En otras palabras, ¿Es posible suponer que la misma geopolítica represente un eco moderno, si no una derivación secularizada de los conceptos teológicos vinculados con la “geografía sagrada”?

Si así fuese, la geopolítica se encontraría en una situación similar no sólo como la descrita sobre la “ciencia moderna del Estado”, sino también con la generalidad de la ciencia moderna. Para ser más explícito, recurramos a una cita de René Guénon: “Queriendo separar radicalmente las ciencias de todo principio superior, so pretexto de asegurar su independencia, la concepción moderna les quita toda significación profunda, e inclusive todo interés verdadero desde el punto de vista del conocimiento, y ella no puede desembocar más que en un callejón sin salida, puesto que las encierra en un dominio irremediablemente limitado” (3).

En cuanto atañe particularmente a la “geografía sagrada”, con la cual -según nuestra hipótesis- se relacionaría de algún modo la geopolítica, es de igual manera Guénon quién nos proporciona una sintética indicación al respecto: “Ahora bien, efectivamente existe una «geografía sagrada» o tradicional que los modernos ignoran tan completamente como los restantes conocimientos del mismo género; existe un simbolismo geográfico en la misma medida que existe un simbolismo histórico y es el valor simbólico de las cosas lo que les da su significado profundo dado que así queda establecida su correspondencia con las realidades de orden superior; no obstante, para que esta correspondencia quede determinada de forma efectiva, es preciso ser capaz de un modo u otro de percibir en las propias cosas el reflejo de tales realidades. Así ocurre que existen lugares particularmente aptos para servir de «soporte» a la acción de «las influencias espirituales» y este es el fundamento que siempre ha tenido el establecimiento de ciertos «centros» tradicionales principales o secundarios, cuyos más claros exponentes fueron los «oráculos» de la Antigüedad así como los lugares de peregrinación; también existen otros lugares particularmente propicios a la manifestación de «influencias» de un carácter completamente opuesto y pertenecientes a las regiones más inferiores del ámbito de lo sutil” (4).

Se ha dicho que rastros de la “geografía sagrada” son reconocibles en algunas características de las nociones geopolíticas, por lo tanto, éstas podrían ser consideradas schmittianamente como “conceptos teológicos secularizados”. Consideremos, por ejemplo, los términos mackinderianos como Heartland y pivot area, los cuales, invocan de manera explicita el simbolismo del corazón y el simbolismo axial, reproducen de alguna manera la idea de “Centro del Mundo” que los antiguos representaban por medio de una variedad de símbolos, geográficos y no geográficos. Muchas veces se ha ofrecido la ocasión para observar que, si la ciencia de las religiones ha demostrado que el homo religiosus “aspira a vivir lo más cerca posible del Centro del Mundo y sabe que su país se encuentra efectivamente en medio de la tierra” (5), esta concepción no ha desaparecido con la visión “arcaica” del mundo, al contrario, ha sobrevivido en una forma más o menos consciente en contextos históricos y culturales más recientes (6).

Por otra parte, dentro de los términos geográficos y geopolíticos existen algunos que las culturas tradicionales han utilizado para describir la realidad perteneciente a la esfera espiritual. Este es el caso del término polo, que en el léxico del esoterismo islámico indica el vértice de la jerarquía iniciática (al-qutb); es el caso de istmo, que en la forma árabe (al-barzakh) indica aquel mundo intermedio al que también se refiere la expresión geográfica de origen coránica: “la confluencia de dos mares” (majma’ al-bahrayn), “confluencia, es decir, del mundo de las Ideas puras con el mundo de los objetos sensibles” (7).

Pero también el concepto de Eurasia puede ser asignado a la categoría de “conceptos teológicos secularizados”.

De hecho, el más antiguo texto teológico de los Griegos, la Teogonía de Hesíodo, nos cuenta que: “Europa ( … ) y Asia” (8) constan entre las hijas de Océano y Tetis, “una sagrada estirpe de hijas (thygatéron hieron genos) que por la tierra se encargan de la crianza de los hombres, en compañía del soberano Apolo y de los Ríos, y han recibido de Zeus este destino” (9).

Cabe destacar que entre las hermanas Europa y Asia también figura Perseis, cuyo nombre está significativamente relacionado no sólo con el griego Perseo, sino también con Perses, su hijo y progenitor de los persas. Escuchemos ahora al teólogo de la historia: “Pero cuando Perseo, hijo de Dánae y de Zeus, llegó al reino de Cefeo, hijo de Belo, y se casó con su hija Andrómeda, tuvo en ella un hijo a quien puso el nombre de Perses, y le dejó allí, porque Cefeo no había tenido hijo varón. De este Perses, pues, tomaron el nombre” (10).

El estrecho parentesco entre Asia con Europa es finalmente proclamado también por el teólogo de la tragedia, quien en la parodia de los Persianos nos presenta a Persia y Grecia como dos “hermanas de sangre, de una misma estirpe (kasignéta génous tautou)” (11), mostrándonos “absolutamente distintas (las dos que, en Herodoto, no pueden evitar ir a la guerra) como de raíz inseparables” (12). Este es el comentario de Massimo Cacciari, para quien la imagen esquilea, representativa de la radical conexión de Europa y Asia, le ha proporcionado el motivo para crear una “geofilosofia de Europa”.

Fabio Falchi intenta ir más allá: en este volumen, él traza las líneas de una “geofilosofía de Eurasia”. Acogiendo la perspectiva corbiniana de Eurasia, cual lugar ontológico teofanico (13), el autor aspira para hacer de la posición geofilosófica el grado de pasaje para aquella “geosófica”, lo cual es completamente inteligible si, y sólo si, se coloca en relación con la perspectiva metafísica” (14).

(Traducción: Francisco de la Torre)

1 Emidio Diodato, Che cos’è la geopolitica, Carocci, Roma 2011.

2 Carl Schmitt, Teología política. Editorial Struhart & Cía. Buenos Aires, 1985, p. 95.

3 René Guénon, La Crisis del Mundo Moderno. Ediciones Obelisco. Barcelona. 1982, p. 44.

4 René Guénon, El Reino de la Cantidad y los Signos de los Tiempos. Ediciones Paidós Ibérica S.A.. Barcelona. 1997, p. 122 y 123.

5 Mircea Eliade, Lo sagrado y lo profano, Guadarrama/Punto Omega, Madrid, 1981, p. 43.

6 Claudio Mutti, La funzione eurasiatica dell’Iran, “Eurasia”, 2, 2012, p. 176; Geopolitica del nazionalcomunismo romeno, in: Marco Costa, Conducǎtor. L’edificazione del socialismo romeno, Edizioni all’insegna del Veltro, Parma 2012.

7 Henry Corbin, Templo y contemplación. Ensayos sobre el Islam iranio. Editorial Trotta, Madrid, 2003, p. 262. Sobre el barzakh, cfr. Glauco Giuliano, L’immagine del tempo in Henry Corbin, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2009, pp. 97-123.

8 Hesíodo, Teogonía, 357-359.

9 Hesíodo, Teogonía, 346-348.

10 Herodoto, VII, 61, 3.

11 Esquilo, Los persas, 185-186. Sobre esta imagen: cfr. C. Mutti, L’Iran in Europa, “Eurasia”, 1, 2008, pp. 33-34.

12 Massimo Cacciari, Geofilosofia dell’Europa, Adelphi, Milano 1994, p. 19.

13 “Eurasia es, hoy y para nosotros, la modalidad geográfica-geosófica del Mundus imaginalis” (Glauco Giuliano, L’immagine del tempo in Henry Corbin, cit., p. 40).

14 Glauco Giuliano, Tempus discretum. Henry Corbin all’Oriente dell’Occidente, Edizioni Torre d’Ercole, Travagliato (Brescia) 2012, p. 16.

Friedrich Georg Jünger: The Titans and the Coming of the Titanic Age

Friedrich Georg Jünger:

 

The Titans and the Coming of the Titanic Age

 

 

Tom Sunic

 Translated from the German and with an Introduction by Tom Sunic

Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977)

Introduction: Titans, Gods and Pagans by Tom Sunic

Below is my translation of several passages from the last two chapters from Friedrich Georg Jünger’s little known book, Die Titanen, 1943, 1944 (The Titans). Only the subtitles are mine. F.G. Jünger was the younger brother of Ernst Jünger who wrote extensively about ancient Greek gods and goddesses. His studies on the meaning of Prometheism and Titanism are unavoidable for obtaining a better understanding of the devastating effects of the modern belief in progress and the role of “high-tech” in our postmodern societies. Outside the German-speaking countries, F.G. Jünger’s literary work remains largely unknown, although he had a decisive influence on his renowned brother, the essayist Ernst Jünger. Some parts of F.G Jünger’s other book,Griechische Götter (1943) (Greek Gods), with a similar, if not same topic, and containing also some passages from Die Titanen, were recently translated into French (Les Titans et les dieux, 2013).

In the footsteps of Friedrich Nietzsche and along with hundreds of German philosophers, novelists, poets and scientists, such as M. Heidegger, O. Spengler, C. Schmitt, L. Clauss, Gottfried Benn, etc., whose work became the object of criminalization by cultural Bolsheviks and by the Frankfurt School in the aftermath of WWII, F. G. Jünger can also be tentatively put in the category of “cultural conservative revolutionaries” who characterized the political, spiritual and cultural climate in Europe between the two world wars.

Ancient European myths, legends and folk tales are often derided by some scholars, including some Christian theologians who claim to see in them gross reenactments of European barbarism, superstition and sexual promiscuity. However, if a reader or a researcher immerses himself in the symbolism of the European myths, let alone if he tries to decipher the allegorical meaning of diverse creatures in the myths, such as for instance the scenes from the Orphic rituals, the hellhole of Tartarus, or the carnage in the Nibelungen saga, or the final divine battle in Ragnarök, then those mythical scenes take on an entirely different meaning. After all, in our modern so-called enlightened and freedom-loving liberal societies, citizens are also entangled in a profusion of bizarre infra-political myths, in a myriad of weird hagiographic tales, especially those dealing with World War II vicitmhoods, as well as countless trans-political, multicultural hoaxes enforced under penalty of law. Therefore, understanding the ancient European myths means, first and foremost, reading between the lines and strengthening one’s sense of the metaphor.

There persists a dangerous misunderstanding between White nationalists professing paganism vs. White nationalists professing Christian beliefs. The word “paganism” has acquired a pejorative meaning, often associated with childish behavior of some obscure New Age individuals carrying burning torches or reading the entrails of dead animals. This is a fundamentally false conception of the original meaning of paganism. “Pagans,” or better yet polytheists, included scores of thinkers from antiquity, such as Seneca, Heraclites, Plato, etc. who were not at all like many modern self-styled and self-proclaimed “pagans” worshipping dogs or gazing at the setting sun. Being a “pagan” denotes a method of conceptualizing the world beyond the dualism of “either-or.” The pagan outlook focuses on the rejection of all dogmas and looks instead at the notion of the political or the historical from diverse and conflicting perspectives. Figuratively speaking, the plurality of gods means also the plurality of different beliefs and different truths.  One can be a good Christian but also a good “pagan.”  For that matter even the “pagan” Ernst Jünger, F.G. Jünger’s older brother, had a very Catholic burial in 1998.

When F.G Jünger’s published his books on the Titans and the gods, in 1943 and in 1944, Germany lay in ruins, thus ominously reflecting F.G. Jünger’s earlier premonitions about the imminent clash of the Titans. With gods now having departed from our disenchanted and desacralized White Europe and White America, we might just as well have another look at the slumbering Titans who had once successfully fought against Chaos, only to be later forcefully dislodged by their own divine progeny.

Are the dozing Titans our political option today? F.G. Jünger’s book is important insofar as it offers a reader a handy manual for understanding a likely reawakening of the Titans and for decoding the meaning of the new and fast approaching chaos.

*    *    *

THE TITANS: CUSTODIANS OF LAW AND ORDER

….The Titans are not the Gods even though they generate the Gods and relish divine reverence in the kingdom of Zeus. The world in which the Titans rule is a world without the Gods. Whoever desires to imagine a kosmos atheos, i.e. a godless cosmos, that is, a cosmos not as such as depicted by natural sciences, will find it there. The Titans and the Gods differ, and, given that their differences are visible in their behavior toward man and in view of the fact that man himself experiences on his own as to how they rule, man, by virtue of his own experience, is able to make a distinction between them.

Neither are the Titans unrestrained power hungry beings, nor do they scorn the law; rather, they are the rulers over a legal system whose necessity must never be put in doubt. In an awe-inspiring fashion, it is the flux of primordial elements over which they rule, holding bridle and reins in their hands, as seen inHelios. They are the guardians, custodians, supervisors and the guides of the order. They are the founders unfolding beyond chaos, as pointed out by Homer in his remarks about Atlas who shoulders the long columns holding the heavens and the Earth. Their rule rules out any confusion, any disorderly power performance. Rather, they constitute a powerful deterrent against chaos.

The Titans and the Gods match with each other. Just as Zeus stands in forKronos, so does Poseidon stand in opposition to Oceanus, or for that matterHyperion and his son Helios in opposition to Apollo, or Coeus and Phoebe in opposition to Apollo and Artemis, or Selene in opposition to Artemis.

THE TITANS AGAINST THE GODS

What distinguishes the kingdom of Kronos from the kingdom of Zeus? One thing is for certain; the kingdom of Kronos is not a kingdom of the son. The sons are hidden in Kronos, who devoured those he himself had generated, the sons being now hidden in his dominion, whereas Zeus is kept away from Kronos by Rhea, who hides and raises Zeus in the caverns. And given that Kronos comports himself in such a manner his kingdom will never be a kingdom of the father. Kronos does not want to be a father because fatherhood is equivalent with a constant menace to his rule. To him fatherhood signifies an endeavor and prearrangement aimed at his downfall.

What does Kronos want, anyway? He wants to preserve the cycle of the status quo over which he presides; he wants to keep it unchanged. He wants to toss and turn it within himself from one eon to another eon. Preservation and perseverance were already the hallmark of his father. Although his father Uranusdid not strive toward the Titanic becoming, he did, however, desire to continue his reign in the realm of spaciousness. Uranus was old, unimaginably old, as old as metal and stones. He was of iron-like strength that ran counter to the process of becoming. But Kronos is also old. Why is he so old? Can this fluctuation of the Titanic forces take on at the same time traits of the immovable and unchangeable? Yes, of course it can, if one observes it from the perspective of the return, or from the point of view of the return of the same. If one attempts it, one can uncover the mechanical side in this ceaseless flux of the movement. The movement unveils itself as a rigid and inviolable law.

THE INFINITE SADNESS OF THE TITANS

How can we describe the sufferings of the Titans? How much do they suffer anyway, and what do they suffer from? The sound of grief uttered by the chainedPrometheus induces Hermes to derisive remarks about the same behavior which is unknown to Zeus. In so far as the Titans are in the process of moving, we must therefore also conceive of them as the objects of removal. Their struggle is onerous; it is filled with anxiety of becoming. And their anxiety means suffering. Grandiose things are being accomplished by the Titans, but grandiose things are being imposed on them too. And because the Titans are closer to chaos than Gods are, chaotic elements reveal themselves amidst them more saliently. No necessity appears as yet in chaos because chaos has not yet been measured off by any legal system. The necessity springs up only when it can be gauged by virtue of some lawfulness. This is shown in the case of Uranus and Kronos. The necessary keeps increasing insofar as lawfulness increases; it gets stronger when the lawful movements occur, that is, when the movements start reoccurring over and over again.

Mnemosyne (The Titaness of Memory) (mosaic, 2nd century AD)

Among the Titanesses the sadness is most visible in the grief of Rhea whose motherhood was harmed.  Also in the mourning ofMnemosyne who ceaselessly conjures up the past. The suffering of this Titaness carries something of sublime magnificence. In her inaccessible solitude, no solace can be found. Alone, she must muse about herself — a dark image of the sorrow of life. The suffering of the Titans, after their downfall, reveals itself in all its might. The vanquished Titan represents one of the greatest images of suffering. Toppled, thrown down under into the ravines beneath the earth, sentenced to passivity, the Titan knows only how to carry, how to heave and how to struggle with the burden — similar to the burden carried by the Caryatids.

THE SELF-SUFFICIENT GODS

The Olympian Gods, however, do not suffer like the Titans. They are happy with themselves; they are self-sufficient. They do not ignore the pain and sufferings of man. They in fact conjure up these sufferings, but they also heal them. In Epicurean thought, in the Epicurean  world of happiness, we observe the Gods dwelling in-between-the-worlds, divorced from the life of the earth and separated from the life of men, to a degree that nothing can ever reach out to them and nothing can ever come from them. They enjoy themselves in an eternal halcyon bliss that cannot be conveyed by words.

The idea of the Gods being devoid of destiny is brought out here insofar as it goes well beyond all power and all powerlessness; it is as if the Gods had been placed in a deepest sleep, as if they were not there for us. Man, therefore, has no need to think of them. He must only leave them alone in their blissful slumber. But this is a philosophical thought, alien to the myth.

Under Kronos, man is part of the Titanic order. He does not stand yet in the opposition to the order — an opposition founded in the reign of Zeus. He experiences now the forces of the Titans; he lives alongside them. The fisherman and boatman venturing out on the sea are in their Titanic element. The same happens with the shepherd, the farmer, the hunter in their realm. Hyperion, Helios and Eos determine their days, Selene regulates their nights. They observe the running Iris, they see the Horae dancing and spinning around throughout the year. They observe the walk of the nymphs Pleiades and Hyadesin the skies. They recognize the rule of the great Titanic mothers, Gaia, Rhea, Mnemosyne and that of Gaia-Themis. Above all of them rules and reigns the old Kronos, who keeps a record of what happens in the skies, on the earth, and in the waters.

TITANIC NECESSITY VS. DIVINE DESTINY

The course of human life is inextricably linked to the Titanic order. Life makes one whole with it; the course of life cannot be divorced from this order. It is the flow of time, the year’s course, the day’s course. The tides and the stars are on the move. The process resembles a ceaseless flow of the river. Kronos reigns over it and makes sure it keeps returning. Everything returns and everything repeats itself — everything is the same. This is the law of the Titans; this is their necessity. In their motion a strict cyclical order manifests itself. In this order there is a regular cyclical return that no man can escape. Man’s life is a reflection of this cyclic order; it turns around in a Titanic cycle of Kronos.

Man has no destiny here, in contrast to the demigods and the heroes who all have it. The kingdom of Zeus is teeming with life and deeds of heroes, offering an inexhaustible material to the songs, to the epics and to the tragedies. In the kingdom of Kronos, however, there are no heroes; there is no Heroic Age. For man, Kronos, and the Titans have no destiny; they are themselves devoid of destiny. Does Helios, does Selene, does Eos have a destiny? Wherever the Titanic necessity rules, there cannot be a destiny. But the Gods are also deprived of destiny wherever divine necessity prevails, wherever man grasps the Gods in a fashion that is not in opposition to them. But a man whom the Gods confront has a destiny. A man whom the Titans confront perishes; he succumbs to a catastrophe.

We can say, however, that whatever happens to man under the rule of the Titans is a lot easier than under the rule of the Gods. The burden imposed on man is much lighter.

*   *   *

What happens when the Gods turn away from man and when they leave him on his own? Wherever they make themselves unrecognizable to man, wherever their care for man fades away, wherever man’s fate begins and ends without them, there always happens the same thing. The Titanic forces return and they validate their claims to power. Where no Gods are, there are the Titans. This is a relationship of a legal order which no man can escape wherever he may turn to. The Titans are immortal. They are always there. They always strive to reestablish their old dominion of their foregone might. This is the dream of the Titanic race of the lapetos, and all the Iapetides who dream about it. The earth is penetrated and filled up with the Titanic forces. The Titans sit in ambush, on the lookout, ready to break out and break up their chains and restore the empire of Kronos.

TITANIC MAN

What is Titanic about man? The Titanic trait occurs everywhere and it can be described in many ways. Titanic is a man who completely relies only upon himself and has boundless confidence in his own powers. This confidence absolves him, but at the same time it isolates him in a Promethean mode. It gives him a feeling of independence, albeit not devoid of arrogance, violence, and defiance. Titanic is a quest for unfettered freedom and independence. However, wherever this quest is to be seen there appears a regulatory factor, a mechanically operating necessity that emerges as a correction to such a quest. This is the end of all the Promethean striving, which is well known to Zeus only. The new world created by Prometheus is not.

Dr. Tom Sunic is a former political science professor, author and a Board member of the American Freedom Party. He is the author of Against Democracy and Equality; The European New Right.

The Clan vs. Modern, State-Dependent “Individualism”

The Clan vs. Modern, State-Dependent “Individualism”

By Jack Donovan 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Writing for Cato Unbound, Mark Weiner, author of The Rule of the Clan ^[2], recently made several correct observations about the problem of reconciling statelessness or “small government” with American conceptions of individual liberty. 

Many of my readers tend toward libertarianism, and I favor libertarian ideas by default. As a natural-born American, it’s in my DNA. You know what I’m talking about. ^[3]

However, I also think it’s important to look at how the State makes this swaggering self-conception of the romantic one-against-all rugged individualist possible, and how this modern anti-clannishness actually makes the individual more dependent on the modern State.

To begin, let’s look at Weiner’s essay, and go over what he got right.

What Weiner calls “rule of the clan” is similar to the male group mentality I identified in The Way of Men ^[4]  as “the way of the gang.” Weiner admits that the “rule of the clan” is a natural, universal form of human organization which exerts a “gravitational pull,” and that it is the object of modern liberal government to resist that pull. He defines the “rule of the clan” first as a society based on kinship, but notes that extra-genetic kinship is possible, and points to the existence of gangs and criminal brotherhoods which inevitably form in the smooth, derelict spaces ^[5] of failed or impotent State influence.

Weiner is also sharp for making the distinction between the modern, liberal idea of honor, which is a self-imposed standard of moral goodness, and the clannish or traditional idea of honor, where individual honor is linked to both the reputation of the group as a whole and the individual’s reputation within the group. He reduces and degrades this primal, tribal form of honor with a vulgar financial analogy, but recognizes that group honor enables group autonomy and group independence. He also recognizes the profound benefits offered by group identification. In his words, the way of the clan “fosters a powerful sense of group solidarity,” “gives persons the dignity and unshakable identity that comes from clan membership,” and “generates a powerful drive toward social justice — a political economy that prizes equality.”

Weiner’s admission of the benefits of clannishness is significant, because he sums up many far-right and reactionary criticisms of modern liberalism and globalism. The prices of liberal, globalist modernity include rootlessness, detachment, an emptiness and desperation for identity that is easily exploited by commercial interests, a lack of community, and a lack of intra-national loyalty that encourages financial greed and insulates elites from the social responsibilities of nobility and the social penalties for betraying their kin, neighbors and countrymen. As the modern, liberal State is easily influenced by large amounts of money, it also insulates the wealthiest individuals from taking physical responsibility for their crimes and betrayals.

Can there be any doubt that it is only the armed protection of the State that has made it possible for the gun-grabbing billionaire Michael Bloomberg to escape a spectacular skyscraper defenestration?

Weiner argues that the modern libertarian idea of individualism, “the modern self” — which generally includes a freedom from responsibility to clan beyond the immediate nuclear family and voluntary instead of mandatory association with groups — is a in fact a product of state development which owes its fragile sense of individual autonomy to the legal protections provided by the state and the conditions of modern life.

This makes perfect sense to me, because I’ve never understood the weird, crypto-religious libertarian obsession with the idea of “natural rights.”  I have always understood “rights” as a bargain between rulers and subjects, or in the case of the American democratic ideal, between “the people” and “their” government. In nature, men have no rights. There are no police to call and there is no mechanism to sue any entity that has wronged you or “infringed upon your natural rights.” This is why the primal form of human organization is not the pioneer nuclear family of libertarian individualist fantasy, but the patriarchal clan or tribe or gang of men who unite to provide coordinated protection against danger, and a communal mechanism for righting wrongs or resolving disputes. How “fair” or “just” these tribal systems of resolution and retribution actually are is varied, culturally relative, and subject to taste.

Weiner has concluded that, for the liberal state to thrive and continue to deliver on its promise of individual freedom and autonomy, it must do a better job of doing the things the clan has always done better. He suggests that the state “pursue policies that moderate economic inequality,” “provide space for the flourishing of voluntary civil society organizations that provide opportunities for solidarity,” and “ensure that individuals have fair opportunities to exercise their autonomy within the marketplace,” whatever that means.

At first glance, his suggestions sound OK, if you’re into that whole “saving the modern liberal state” thing.

However, after a closer look, they quickly become unworkable. He is also overindulgent of the fictions of the modern State, and he barely mentions the biggest elephants in the room.

When the State pursues policies that moderate economic inequality,  to do so, it must become more nationalistic — more clannish, even — not more economically libertarian. A chief contributor to economic inequality in America is surely the ability of corporations, wealthy individuals, even small businesses to undercut American labor and outsource it to foreigners. A little more economic protectionism and certain degree of nationalistic isolationism might go a long way in the long term, but would be damaging to “the economy” in the short term. American politicians are necessarily short-term planners, because they are held accountable in the short-term, so the likelihood of American politicians acting to serve the long term good of the nation while cutting off a foreign supply of cheap labor for corporations, wealthy individuals and small business owners in the short term is approximately zero. This is probably why, for all of their populist posturing about getting tough on immigration, and despite widespread popular support for immigration control, conservative politicians almost always fold.

When Weiner says he wants the State to “provide space for the flourishing of voluntary civil society organizations that provide opportunities for solidarity,” that sounds good, but the reality is that the State as it currently exists would end up micromanaging these organizations to the point where no one would actually want to be members of them anyway. The alternative would be the State creating space for organizations which, if left to flourish organically in harmony with human nature, would eventually challenge the authority of the State itself. Surely, no explicitly kin-oriented groups could be encouraged, especially for white people, because that would be racist. No groups that exclude women could be allowed, because that would be sexist. And the more the State intervenes to regulate and sanction the activities of individuals who associate voluntarily, the more laughable this whole idea of individual autonomy within the context of the State becomes.

What Weiner really fails to acknowledge with this suggestion, even though it is implicit in everything he has written, is that opportunities for “solidarity” and truly meaningful group bonding are a threat to the State, which exactly why there isn’t more room for them now.

People already express group solidarity in ways that are acceptable to the state and its corporate sponsors. They become sports fans. They invest money and time and emotional energy in a group identity that revolves around the dramatic but completely inconsequential activities of, usually, a gang of men.

If men put the same amount of time or energy into forming a highly visible organization with ethnic concerns, for example, half of their enthusiastic new members would probably be FBI agents, because that kind of loyalty would threaten the interests of the liberal state by creating an alternative — and clannish — network of support. The power of the liberal state depends on dependency, and as Weiner has noted, even libertarianism depends on it to protect “rights” and “liberties.”

Finally, in his ode to the State, Weiner perpetuates the fiction that the American State is some kind of benevolent expression of the will of its citizen voters, and he all but ignores the most powerful actors in American politics: corporations. Corporations amass enough money to fund, manufacture and distribute the scientific miracles we use on an everyday basis, but they also perpetuate their own amoral existences by using that money to buy and exert influence on the American political system, whether they are American or foreign-based corporations. Because corporations can exert so much more influence on politics than any voter, the modern liberal state has become a tool of corporate interests, not as Weiner idealizes, a guarantor of individual liberty.

The clan, gang or tribe poses an economic threat to corporations by creating alternative support systems, reduced consumption of goods produced extra-tribally, and the possibility of supply-chain disrupting inter-tribal violence or violence against the State. The State will always oppose clannishness because the state responds first to the interests of self-perpetuating legal entities known as corporations, and because the State is, itself, a self-perpetuating legal entity that will, like any fundamentally amoral corporation, act to perpetuate its own survival above all other concerns.

If the State is over-reaching and becoming the biggest threat to the liberties it supposedly protects, as many men with libertarian tendencies now believe, the solution is not a return to the atomized, go-it-alone individualism that ultimately relies on the liberal State. The only viable option is to increase clannishness or tribalism, which Weiner correctly identified as the natural counter to the modern liberal State.

Source: http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2014/03/the-clan-vs-modern-state-dependent-individualism/ ^[6]

 

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Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/03/the-clan-vs-modern-state-dependent-individualism/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/pioneers.jpg

[2] The Rule of the Clan: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/125004362X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=125004362X&linkCode=as2&tag=jackdono-20

[3] You know what I’m talking about.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU0WOZ0jtD4

[4] The Way of Men: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0985452307/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0985452307&linkCode=as2&tag=jackdono-20

[5] smooth, derelict spaces: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/04/deleuze-guattari-and-the-new-right-part-3-capitalism-and-schizophrenia/

[6] http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2014/03/the-clan-vs-modern-state-dependent-individualism/: http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2014/03/the-clan-vs-modern-state-dependent-individualism/

Spartan Women

Spartan Women

Ex: http://aristocratsofthesoul.wordpress.com

Sarah B. Pomeroy
Spartan Women 
Oxford University Press, 2002

Ancient Sparta is known not only for its great warriors, but also for its unusual treatment of women. Further north in democratic Athens, modest women were rarely educated and mostly kept sequestered indoors. But in the militarist state of Sparta, the government insisted that both boys and girls be given an education from childhood. Boys were trained to be future warriors, and women to be the mother of warriors — a task that required a variety of skills.

Sarah B. Pomeroy, a professor at New York’s Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University, delves into the unique education and lifestyles of women in Sparta in Spartan Women. Although its primary focus is women, the reader will learn much in the book about the men in this city-state in the south-eastern Peloponnese, as well as about the lives of both men and women in classical Athens.

Women’s Education in Sparta

Compared to other Greek women, Spartans had vastly more free time to do what they wanted. One reason for this was because Sparta was highly dependent on the labor of slaves (called helots), and Spartan citizens were not allowed to engage in most forms of manual labor. This meant that even the women were free from much domestic drudgery. The men of Sparta were full-time warriors, and consequently, Spartan women were usually more cultured than the men. For example, girls were trained in singing, dancing, and playing instruments, and singing competitions often were held between individuals and rival choruses.

Pomeroy says that there is much reason to believe that literacy was common among women in Sparta. There are numerous references to women writing letters to their sons at war (usually these consisted of urging their sons to be brave warriors). And Spartan women also were encouraged in public speaking. In Protagoras, Plato even refers to the women of Sparta and Crete, who take pride in their educations and are skilled in philosophical debate. Common themes for women’s speeches included praising the brave and reviling cowards and bachelors. Another testimony to Spartan women’s education: The Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus said there were 17 or 18 women among Pythagoras’ 235 disciples; about one-third of the women were Spartans, while less than 1 percent were Spartan men.

Women could own land in Sparta, and by Aristotle’s time, they owned two-fifths of the land in Laconia. Another privilege of Spartan women, according to Pomeroy: “of all Greek women, Spartans alone drank wine not only at festivals, but also as part of their daily fare.” Although they could not vote, they participated in political campaigns and were said to have much influence over their husbands (according to Aristotle).

Spartan Women and Sports

Edgar Degas, “Young Spartans Exercising”

Spartan Women also details women’s role in sports, another area where they were able to receive training and to excel. Their training was similar to that of boys, but less intense. Women participated in trials of strength, racing competitions, wrestling, discus throwing, and hurling the javelin. Some athletic competitions were held in honor of female deities.

The encouragement of athleticism in women appears to be based on women’s role as mothers. According to Xenophon, Lycurgus (who created Sparta’s constitution) thought that having two physically healthy parents would be more likely to produce healthy offspring.

Young men and women often exercised in the nude, and there was even a “Festival of Nude Youths.” Confirmed bachelors, according to Plutarch, were banned from attending. For the others, it was a chance to view potential marriage partners.

Marriage in Sparta

Gustave Moreau’s depiction of Helen of Troy (Helen of Spara)

Spartan women were usually married at 18—later than other Greek women—and the marriages were unusual for Greece at the time. Unlike in Athens, where a 15-year-old girl might marry a man twice her age, Spartan couples were usually close to the same age. The men lived with other men in military groups until age 30, so there was no “nuclear family” until later in life. Husbands and wives were not encouraged to spend a lot of time together, the idea being that absence created stronger passions between the pair, and that the child resulting from a passionate union would be stronger.

The marriages in Sparta were “mostly monogamous.” Although couples were married, it wasn’t uncommon for a woman to have another man’s child than her husband’s, if the man could persuade the husband to allow it. As the population declined, men began fathering children with the helots (the children would be partial citizens); but the consequence was that their legitimate wives began having fewer children. There appears to have been no penalty for adulterous women, like in other parts of Greece where they could be punishable with death.

The Importance of Motherhood

Spartan Women spends many pages describing the role of motherhood in Sparta, since being a mother (particularly the mother of a brave warrior) was the highest honor for women. The only women who were permitted gravestones were priestesses and those who died in childbirth. Women spent much of their time actually involved with their children, since slaves did many of the domestic chores and families were provided with rations of food by the state. Women did work, but it was more as managers than as servants. Before the decline of Sparta, greed was considered a vice, so women’s pursuits were more centered on the arts and their children rather than accumulating material things. In fact, Spartan women were forbidden to wear gold or use cosmetics.

Because they were so involved with their children’s upbringing, women felt very responsible for their children’s successes (and failures) in life. Many of these attitudes can be found in Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartan Women, where he recounts women disowning and even killing cowardly sons.

One of Pomeroy’s most interesting discoveries involves the practice of infanticide. It’s a well-documented fact that deformed or weak babies would be thrown into a chasm on Mount Taygetos, a form of eugenics that ensured a strong military for the state, and that only worthy candidates would be awarded the land and education that was the right of every Spartan citizen. Pomeroy presents a valid case that female babies were not put to the same scrutiny as the males (except for obvious physical deformities). Not all male babies were capable of being warriors, but even the weakest female baby could grow into a mother of warriors.

Women and Religion in Sparta

Unlike most societies in ancient Greece, the private family religious cult was virtually unknown in Sparta. There are several main reasons for this: The first is because there was such an emphasis on community, so primary loyalty was to the state not the family. The militaristic nature of Sparta meant that transcendent values and actions were more important than biological ties (as evidenced by the willingness to kill family members). And finally, since married couples lived apart until the man was 30, and since children went away from home to be educated at a young age, the “family” as we think of it today was never very solidified.

Religion was important to women in Sparta, however. The popular cults for women included those of Dionysus, Eileithyia (a fertility goddess), Artemis, Hera, Helen of Troy, Demeter, Apollo, Athena, and Aphrodite. Spartan Women goes into details about each of these cults, and also discusses the role of women priestesses at various periods in the city-state’s history.

*  *  *

Spartan Women is scholarly and well-researched, yet written in an easy-to-understand style for a general audience. My only complaint is that much of the information is repeated at many places throughout the book — however, it is evidence of thorough research and ensures that you can read any chapter and receive all of the relevant information. I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of either Sparta or Athens, women’s roles in traditional societies, and women’s roles in pagan religions.

Peut-on reconstituer les mythes du Paléolithique supérieur?

Ce que les mythes disaient, il y a 20.000 ans...

 

Peut-on reconstituer les mythes du Paléolithique supérieur?

Julien d'Huy*
Ex: http://metamag.fr

 

Certains récits complexes se retrouvent dans de vastes régions du monde. Ils auraient traversé le temps, sous une forme presque inchangée, et proviendraient, pour quelques uns, du Paléolithique supérieur.

Peut-on reconstituer les mythes du Paléolithique supérieur ? Une nouvelle méthode propose de s'appuyer sur les mythes recueillis à l'époque moderne et, en s'appuyant sur la grande stabilité de ce type de récits à travers le temps, de leur appliquer des algorithmes phylogénétiques, autrement dit, des équations utilisées les biologistes pour reconstruire les arbres de la vie.

De façon surprenante, les arbres ainsi obtenus semblent suivre la route des premières migrations de l'humanité, ce qui permet de dater certains mythes du Paléolithique supérieur. La modélisation de leur évolution tend à montrer qu'ils seraient essentiellement hérités d'une génération à l'autre et qu'ils évolueraient par « équilibre ponctué », autrement dit, qu'ils resteraient stables pendant très longtemps avant d'évoluer fortement sur une brève période de temps, à l'occasion de migrations ou de tensions territoriales, par exemple. Notons que cette formalisation est en accord avec les données ethnologiques.

Une méthode appliquée avec succès à trois grandes familles de mythes  

1/ Pygmalion, où un créateur tombe amoureux d'une image qu'il a lui-même créée, et où celle-ci finit par s'animer ; 

2/ Polyphème, où un homme se retrouve piégé dans une grotte en compagnie d'un monstre et ne parvient à s'échapper qu'en se glissant sous une peau d'animal ou un animal vivant, échappant ainsi à la surveillance du monstre ; 

3/ la Chasse cosmique, où un animal, pourchassé, s'enfuit jusqu'au ciel et se transforme en constellation. Les deux derniers récits remonteraient au Paléolithique supérieur.

Un des acquis les plus intéressants de cette méthode est la possibilité de reconstruire, d'un point de vue statistique, le proto-mythe, ou du moins, une des premières versions du mythe étudié. Il devient alors possible de reconstituer certaines croyances des hommes du Paléolithique. 

Deux exemples

Le proto-mythe de Polyphème, tel qu'il a été statistiquement reconstruit, raconte comment un homme s'introduit dans une grotte où sont enfermés des animaux. Il s'y trouve bloqué par un monstre qui l'empêche de s'enfuir en fermant la grotte par une énorme pierre. Le monstre tente ensuite de tuer l'intrus, en se postant près de l'entrée et en faisant sortir tour à tour les animaux de la caverne. L'homme parvient pourtant à s'échapper, en se cachant sous le ventre d'un animal, et à ainsi passe au nez et à la barbe du monstre.

 

Quant à la première version reconstruite de la Chasse cosmique, elle expliquerait l'apparition de la constellation de la Grande Ourse : un grand herbivore cornu – probablement un élan – est pourchassé par un chasseur. Il court jusqu'au ciel et il s'y transforme en amas d'étoiles.

*publié sur Hominides.com

Evola on Meditation

Evola on Meditation: Four Techniques for Controlling the Thoughts

Ex: http://aristocratsofthesoul.wordpress.com

Julius Evola, “Astrazione,” c. 1920

Julius Evola’s guide to Theravāda Buddhism, The Doctrine of Awakening, is divided into two sections. The first part covers the theories and doctrines of primitive Buddhism, and the second half delves into practical techniques for the disciple. (See my review of The Doctrine of Awakening.)

These practical techniques give the modern-day disciple a detailed guide from a trusted source, for Evola relies solely on the teachings of the Buddha and his disciples (unlike modern-day Buddhist guides for the layman, which tend to ignore certain ideas).

This post highlights Evola’s instructions for the “four instruments” that can help control the thought. Mental control must be the first urgent concern of a disciple, for “in its fluid, changeable, and inconsistent character, normal thought reflects, moreover, the general law of samsāric consciousness” (pg. 109).

According to Buddhist doctrine, thought is located in the “cavern of the heart,” meaning that it isn’t merely a mental or psychological process. Thus, the entire body must be engaged in its control. Rather than “forcing” oneself into a false mental control, Evola says one must:

simultaneously, proceed to an act of conversion of the will and of the spirit; interior calm must be created, and one must be pervaded by intimate, sincere earnestness. (pg. 109)

Based on this description, it can be suggested that the disciple contact a metaphysical energy to help manifest the will and spirit in order to better control the thoughts and other aspects of samsāric existence.

The result of mental control is a state called appamada, which means “conscientious” or “concern.” This is the state of consciousness in which one is master of oneself, by virtue of being centered in oneself. Rather than letting your thoughts control you or run wild, it is the “first form of entry into oneself, of an earnestness and of a fervid, austere concentration” (pg. 110). According the Max Muller, appamada forms the base of every virtue. The being who possesses appamada is said to not die, while those who let their thoughts run wild are as if already dead:

From his heights of wisdom he will look down on vain and agitated beings, as one who lives on a mountaintop looks down on those who live in the plains. (pg. 110)

All of this requires an incredible strength of will. Control of the thoughts should be the first step in developing the will and control required for the path of awakening. Here are the four techniques (“instruments”) that can be used to control the thoughts:

The First Instrument: Substitution

This technique should be used when harmful and unworthy thoughts arise–those that are manifestations of the asava, that is, thought-images of craving, aversion, or blindness. When these thoughts arise, one should replace them with a beneficial idea. This beneficial thought will dissolve the harmful one and in the process, “the intimate spirit will be fortified, will become calm, unified, and strong.”

There are several characteristics of an unworthy thought. Basically, any thought that encourages desires, cravings, errors in thinking (i.e., thoughts not in keeping with the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path), and thoughts that serve to bind the thinker to the world could all be said to be unworthy. Here is a description:

That, whereby fresh mania of desire sprouts and the old mania is reinforced; fresh mania of existence sprouts and the old mania is reinforced; fresh mania of error sprouts and the old mania is reinforced.

Part of this first technique involves creating a “chain of beneficial thoughts.” When a thought of “ill will or cruelty” arises, here is what one should think:

It leads to my own harm, it leads to others’ harm, it leads to the harm of both, it uproots wisdom, it brings vexation, it does not lead to extinction, it leads to self-limitation.

If this process of thought-replacement is performed with sufficient sincerity and intensity, then the harmful thought will dissolve.

The Second Instrument: ‘Expulsion Through Horror or Contempt’

This practice involves getting rid of harmful thoughts by associating them with things that fill you with disgust and loathing. Evola cites a simile for the technique from a Buddhist text:

‘Just as a woman or a man, young, flourishing and charming, round whose neck were tied the carcass of a snake, or the carcass of a dog, or a human carcass, would be filled with fear, horror, and loathing,’ so, the perception of the unworthy character of those images or thoughts should produce an immediate and instinctive act of expulsion, from which their dispersion or neutralizing would follow. Whenever an affective chord is touched, then by making an effort one must be able to feel contempt, shame, and disgust for the enjoyment or dislike that has arisen. (pg. 111)

Evola is adament that this repulsion should not be an act of struggling, but should arise naturally from a sense of superiority over states of mind that are unworthy. One should be filled with an “earnestly lived sense of the ‘indignity’ and irrationality of the images and inclinations that appear” (113).

The Third Instrument: Dissociation

The third technique for controlling thoughts is to not become attached to them–simply ignore them. Evola recounts a simile for this technique as well:

As a man with good sight, who does not wish to observe what comes into his field of view at a particular moment can close his eyes or look elsewhere. When attention is resolutely withheld, the images or the tendencies are again restrained. (pg. 112-113)

Evola cautions that the practitioner should be careful to not merely “chase away” a thought–doing so could have the opposite effect of causing the thought to come back even stronger. One must instead have the strength of will to not even see or acknowledge the thought.

This practice is especially useful for a normal but active state of mind (rather than when obsessed with a particular thought). This is the “monkey mind” referred to by Buddhists, in which a man is merely a passive participant of the images, emotional states, and thoughts that overtake him. Evola says these “psychoaffective aggregates of fear, desire, hope, despair, and so on, fascinate or hypnotize [the] mind, subtly tying it, they ‘manipulate’ it by their influence and feed on its energies like vampires” (pg. 113).

The Fourth Instrument: Gradual Dismemberment

The fourth technique is the practice of making the thoughts vanish, one after the next. It is a means of stopping desire by analyzing it down to its roots, so that it disappears. By examining the reasons behind every thought, behavior, and desire, a person can effectively halt any obsession.The simile is:

Just as a man walking in haste might think: ‘Why am I walking in haste? Let me go more slowly’ and, walking more slowly, might think: ‘But why am I walking at all? I wish to stand still’ and, standing still, might think: ‘For what reason am I standing up? I will sit down’ and, sitting down, might think: ‘Why must I only sit? I wish to lie down’ and might lie down; just so if harmful and unworthy thoughts, images of craving, of aversion and of blindness, again arise in an ascetic in spite of his contempt and rejection of them, he must make these thoughts successively vanish one after another.’ . . . [this way considers] them with a calm and objective eye one after another. (pg. 113)

This practice is based on what Buddhists texts call “the conditioned nature of desire.” This refers how a chain of thoughts is created, such as an obsession that feeds itself, but that can be broken if the conditions it depends and feeds upon are broken.

Direct Action (The ‘Fifth’ Instrument)

This technique is advised if none of the four instruments will work. The method is to clench the teeth and press the tongue hardly against the roof of the mouth (the palate) and, with your will, “crush, compel, beat down the mind.” The simile is:

As a strong man, seizing another weaker man by the head or by the shoulders, compels him, crushes him, throws him down. (pg. 114)

The same precaution applies for this technique as the others: It must not be performed from a place of weakness, but from a place of superiority. Evola says the practitioner must be able to call on the illumination and energy that exists outside of the samsāric current. Only then, he writes, ”is there no danger that the victory will be merely exterior and apparent, and that the enemy, instead of being destroyed, has disengaged and entrenched himself in the subconscious” (pg. 114).

*  *  *

For more on the four instruments, see Evola’s Doctrine of Awakening. For a general background on the Buddhist theories behind these instruments, see my review of The Doctrine of Awakening.

Essenzialità e proporzione nella visione del mondo indoeuropea

Essenzialità e proporzione nella visione del mondo indoeuropea

 

Di Giuseppe Arminio De Falco

 

Ex.: http://www.ereticamente.net

Dalle celebri opere dell’arte greco-romana, fondamentali per l’immaginario della cultura occidentale, riaffiora una visione del mondo che fa della chiarezza, dell’essenzialità e della proporzione razionale delle forme il proprio fulcro. La grande arte classica greca non è assolutamente concepibile, a nostro parere, come semplice atto politico-culturale volto in sostanza ad aumentare il prestigio di una determinata polis e a legittimarne il potere, o ancora peggio come finzione ornamentale e ludibrio dei sensi. Un posto centrale nella visione del mondo dei popoli indoeuropei, pertanto, lo occupano senz’altro i concetti di “Forma” e “Limite”. In greco queste idee erano espresse dai termini “Peras” (che significa per l’appunto forma, limite) e “Metron” (misura).

Il mondo greco rappresenta, da questo punto di vista, un’autentica miniera d’oro. Riguardo ciò si pensi all’ideale olimpico di Armonia e Ordine e, in particolare, al chiaro e luminoso senso apollineo delle forme, di cui l’arte classica ci ha lasciato una magnifica testimonianza attraverso il nudo ed essenziale stile dorico o attraverso la statuaria di un Fidia o di un Lisippo. Se anche, in una certa misura, specie nel periodo comunemente noto come “ellenismo”, le summenzionate ragioni contingenti sussistettero, cionondimeno il senso profondo di tale arte sta innanzitutto nel suo essere riflesso vivente e pulsante, e non banale simulacro spento, della luce divina. L’immagine (eikon) è un veicolo e un sostegno contemplativo, essa è un mezzo, giammai però un fine in sé stessa. Sempre per quanto riguarda l’area greca si può considerare a buon diritto la filosofia stessa, da Talete a Plotino, come una manifestazione inerente a questo stesso spirito di misura e moderazione. I cosiddetti presocratici, in quanto sophoi, ovvero sapienti, espressero quest’ideale attraverso detti e massime, tra cui spiccano i celebri motti “metron ariston” (misura eccellente) attribuito a Cleobulo e “meden agan” (nulla di troppo) attribuito a Solone. Platone credeva che lo stato retto secondo giustizia (dike) dovesse più di ogni altra cosa fuggire dal “mare infinito della disuguaglianza” (Politico), ossia dall’assenza di proporzione e organicità, dal caos sociale frutto dell’arrivismo e della sconsiderata brama di potere che egli brillantemente descrive nel parlare della demokratia e della sua fine. Equità e “uguaglianza” erano ovviamente intese dagli antichi nel solo senso di armonica attribuzione di oneri e onori sulla base delle caratteristiche naturali dell’individuo, caratteristiche che ne fondavano e legittimavano il ruolo sociale (Repubblica), e giammai nel senso di un livellamento verso il basso, fenomeno caratteristico unicamente delle società moderne. Una medesima idea la ritroviamo in Aristotele, nella sua Etica nicomachea, dove è affermato: “Meson te kai ariston” (la misura è la cosa migliore).Occorre ora però chiarire un punto di fondamentale importanza. In che misura quest’etica del limite ha rappresentato un ostacolo e, appunto, un limite, nel senso negativo del termine? Da parte nostra crediamo che l’uomo, proprio in quanto essere limitato e connotato fin nella sua stessa essenza dalla finitudine e dalla “morte”, in un senso affine a quello dato dal filosofo tedesco Heidegger, debba necessariamente, e oggi più che mai, fare propria la massima del frontone del tempio di Delfi: “Gnothi Seauton” (conosci te stesso), giacché paradossalmente solo conoscendo la propria finitudine e limitatezza può l’uomo approdare a concrete possibilità di auto-trascendimento e auto-superamento. Senza questo senso critico del limite e della misura nasce, infatti, quella cattiva interpretazione dell’Essere di cui parlava il summenzionato Heidegger, in altre parole una “metafisica” nel senso deteriore del termine. E proprio un grande distruttore della metafisica, nonché profondo conoscitore della grecità, Nietzsche, ha dato un contributo fondamentale a questa problematica nella sua prima opera, “La nascita della tragedia”, in cui ebbe l’intuizione tanto geniale quanto feconda dell’“apollineo” e del “dionisiaco” come principi opposti ma complementari e necessari l’uno all’altro per la realizzazione dell’arte autentica. Secondo Nietzsche, infatti, all’apollineo corrisponderebbe il senso della misura, dell’equilibrio e del limite e nell’ambito artistico l’esperienza del “sogno” (Apollo come “manteis” ovvero indovino e profeta degli oracoli) mentre al dionisiaco sarebbe proprio lo scatenamento, l’eccesso e l’assenza di limite e l’esperienza artistica sarebbe caratterizzata dall’“ebbrezza”. L’arte contemporanea, d’altra parte, è a nostro avviso totalmente sprovvista sia del “Sublime” apollineo sia del “Pathos” dionisiaco, ma è bensì ricca proprio degli elementi più degeneri di entrambe le tendenze, quali la vaga e nebulosa dimensione onirica o la sregolatezza delle forme. L’ideale dell’unità di principi cosmici opposti è interpretabile alla stregua della ricerca del “medium”, il mezzo, ossia limite e misura (il celebre motto in medio stat virtus, di origine scolastica, ma rifacentesi a una saggezza anteriore). Spostandoci ora verso altri fuochi delle civiltà indoeuropee, troviamo esempi eloquenti di tale spirito in molti dei valori tipici dell’arcaico “mos maiorum” romano, come la temperantia, la sobrietas, l’abstinentia, la frugalitas, etc. Infatti, sebbene di primo acchito possa sembrare che la mentalità romana sia orientata verso un’etica basata sull’idea dell’illimitatezza (basti pensare all’enormità del progetto imperiale), a un’analisi più attenta risulta piuttosto vero il contrario. La forte attitudine “realistica”, secca e asciutta, scevra in pari modo di eccessi di astrazione speculativa e di istintività sensoriale, è un tratto del Sentire romano in cui la logica del “Metron”è espressa con tal energia che difficilmente lo si potrebbe trovare in un altro popolo indoeuropeo con la medesima intensità. E se presso il romano Pitagorismo e Stoicismo ebbero una grande fortuna (si pensi a Seneca, Marco Aurelio, Nigidio Figulo e, in una certa misura, agli stessi Cicerone e Orazio, oltre al caso emblematico di un intransigente conservatore quale M. Porcio Catone il censore, che in vecchiaia si diede alle dottrine di Pitagora) questo non fa altro che confermare a pieno come tali dottrine non dovettero sembrare affatto peregrine all’animo romano, ma che anzi la stretta affinità di quest’ultimo con esse dovette risultare sì innegabilmente forte e chiara da dover far ammettere la loro bontà persino all'acerrimo nemico di ogni ellenizzazione e di ogni apporto culturale straniero. Se ciò non bastasse, è opportuno ricordare che il popolo romano espresse tale istanza del pensiero indoeuropeo anche nello stesso “ius romanum” che è tutt’ora alla base dell’odierna giurisprudenza, nonostante le innumerevoli storpiature avutesi nel corso del tempo, necessarie all’adattamento di quest’ultimo ai moderni stati “democratici”. Proprio su questo punto occorre un chiarimento e una puntualizzazione. Ci viene in aiuto il concetto greco di “nòmos” che ha, tra i suoi tanti significati, quello di “partizione”, “delimitazione”, “legge”, “costume”, “ordinamento”, significati tutti riconducibili nel primitivo indoeuropeo a idee come quelle di “tagliare” e “dividere”. Un’interpretazione molto interessante del concetto di “nòmos” la da Carl Schmitt nel suo “Il Nomos della terra nel diritto internazionale dello “Ius publicum europaeum”, dove l’autore lo definisce “prima misurazione, da cui derivano tutti gli altri criteri di misura; la prima occupazione di terra, con relativa divisione e ripartizione dello spazio; la suddivisione e distribuzione originaria”, accostandolo, cosa particolarmente significativa, ai termini tedeschi nehmen e Nahme, secondo lui ermeneuticamente affini ai greci “nemein” e “nòmos”. E grande importanza aveva infatti per Schmitt, che era un giurista, il concetto di diritto, che definiva significativamente “unità di ordine e luogo” (in tedesco Ordnung und Ortung), insistendo particolarmente sull’idea del landnahme, la presa di possesso spaziale e ordinativa che è alla base del nòmos basileus, il diritto sovrano, a sua volta fondamento di ogni idea di “possesso” (dal latino possessum, dalle radici *pot-, potere e *sed-, insediarsi) e dominio. Già da questo è lapalissiano quanto fosse aliena e lontana per la mentalità indoeuropea ogni concezione collettivistica e socialmente promiscua, essendo invece qui la proprietà privata concepita come bene inalienabile e fondamentale, al punto che Heidegger giunse fino a vedere una sorta d’identità tra “vivere” e “abitare”, sulla scorta di un’identità etimologica presente in tedesco tra i verbi essere e costruire (buan, che in antico tedesco vuol dire abitare, è affine all’odierno bauen, costruire, ed entrambi vengono dalla medesima radice di ich bin, io sono). Alla base del nòmos vi è dunque per Schmitt ciò che egli stesso chiama Ur-Akt, l’atto primordiale, cioè un atto di conquista, un atto cioè “violento”, ma da cui pur dipende la formazione di un nuovo diritto e di una nuova comunità. Il nòmos viene però meno quando l’interiore hegemonikon è vinto da tendenze disgregatrici e destabilizzanti, e allora prendono piede un’estetica e un pensiero improntati dagli opposti ideali d’indefinitezza e illimitatezza. Tutto questo ci riporta al mito scandinavo della lotta tra Aesir e Vanir, le stirpi divine del Cielo e della Terra, nonché a quello indù della lotta tra Deva e Asura, entrambi conclusisi con la vittoria dei primi sui secondi e cioè delle potenze “ordinative” su quelle “vegetative”. Questi miti ricordano così da vicino la conquista dell’Europa antica (l’Alteuropa) da parte degli indoeuropei che alcuni studiosi hanno voluto vederci un riflesso di questi eventi protostorici. Noi abbiamo invece ragione di credere, sulla base del fatto che il mito riproduce archetipi cosmici immutabili, che questi miti non possano essere circoscritti a tal evento (o meglio a tali eventi, data l’enorme durata che gli indoeuropeisti ormai in modo concorde attribuiscono al fenomeno dell’indoeuropeizzazione), ma ne siano bensì come il modello in senso platonico. Riscontriamo poi una netta corrispondenza tra l’idea schmittiana del “Nehmen Teilen Weiden” (Conquistare, Dividere, Pascolare) e gli antichi miti di fondazione, quali quello di Cadmo, fondatore di Tebe, che sposa Armonia, l’equilibrio del giusto limite, dopo aver ucciso il dragone giacente presso le acque (indistinzione e illimitatezza). Simile discorso vale per la leggenda della fondazione di Roma da parte di Romolo, che è a un tempo un guerriero conquistatore, un sacro legislatore che stabilisce il nòmos attraverso le divisioni e partizioni previste dallo “ius sacrum”, specie nella delimitazione dei confini dell’Urbe con la solenne aratura del sulcus primigenius, e infine pastore perché cresciuto come tale dal genitore adottivo Faustolo, e poiché intraprende l’atto di fondazione (in latino fondare è condere da cum-dare, stabilire dei confini) proprio durante il giorno dei Parilia, festività pastorale che veniva celebrata il 21 d’Aprile. Un altro mito che potremmo accostare a quest’ordine d’idee è senz’altro quello della razzia dei buoi di Gerione compiuta da Eracle come decima fatica. In questo mito l’eroe greco, figura paradigmatica di “eroe culturale”, civilizzatore e portatore di kòsmos nel khàos, intraprende questa razzia come atto di conquista, e quindi come Ur-Akt, non a caso in un luogo mitico posto ai confini del mondo conosciuto (Apeiron), erigendo in tale occasione le celebri “colonne” a metà tra Libia ed Europa, come segno forte dell’imposizione di un limite e di una misura sovrana rispetto al brutale dis-ordine della natura inferiore sciolta dai legami con quella superiore (ciò che si suole chiamare “barbarie” o “stato di natura”). Significativo è poi il fatto che Eracle raggiunga la mandria di Gerione superando le acque occidentali (qui ancora come simbolo dell’indefinitezza) sopra una “coppa dorata” (simbolicamente il Cuore quale principio divino) donatagli dal dio Helios, il dio del sole, nonché la sua vittoria simbolica contro le forze irrazionali e oscure della barbarie incarnate dagli s-misurati abitatori dell’Hesperia, per l’immaginario greco arcaico la misteriosa e selvaggia terra dove il sole moriva ogni giorno. Un mito dall’affine significato e che parimenti si riallaccia alle idee schmittiane di cui sopra è quello celtico del Tàin Bò Cuailnge, poema epico irlandese, in cui riecheggia ancora con forza l’idea di una supremazia fondata sull’idea di conquista e di partizione, quando ad esempio la regina Medb muove guerra all’Ulster per impossessarsi del leggendario toro Donn, così da poter rivaleggiare in potenza col marito, il re Ailill, che possedeva un altro toro prodigioso di nome Finnbhennach. Similmente una medesima concezione la si rinviene nell’Avesta iranica, nel cosiddetto “Fšušo Manthra” (il Mantra della prosperità), dove viene a chiare lettere affermato che sovranità e dignità spirituale sono in relazione con il possesso di “beni”, ovviamente non intesi in senso grossolanamente materialistico, nonché l’idea stessa di ordine sociale garantito da una coordinata articolazione di proprietà private e pubbliche retta dall’idea del giusto limite, attraverso vari gradi di universalità. Già da questo si evince una visione socio-religiosa del mondo agricolo e pastorale a cui è senz’altro già abituato chi conosce anche solo qualcosa del mondo italico-romano. Il contadino/mandriano è guida spirituale del villaggio iranico in quanto garante del nòmos o, per dirla alla maniera dei persiani, dell’Aša. A ulteriore conferma di ciò rileviamo infine come la principale divinità mazdaica dopo Ahura Mazda stesso, e cioè Mithra, dio notoriamente associato alla funzione della sovranità, sia definito nell’Avesta come “signore di tutte le regioni dello spazio” e “Mithra dagli ampi pascoli”. Sulla scorta del Dùmezil, sicuramente uno degli indoeuropeisti più autorevoli, potremmo affermare che questa idea di nòmos e di ordine sapiente del mondo sia riferibile essenzialmente sul piano divino alle divinità della cosiddetta “prima funzione” ovvero le divinità strettamente associate alla sovranità e al comando, mentre su quello umano alle classi aristocratiche, quali i Brahmanah e gli Kshatriya del mondo indù, e gli Athravan e i Rathaeštar di quello iranico. Secondo lo studioso francese, infatti, il dio-cielo degli indoeuropei, assieme a due divinità sussidiarie, sarebbe il garante del nòmos e del kòsmos (nel ruolo di kòsmokràtor, dominatore del cosmo) e perciò stesso tutore dell’ordine e dei patti sociali (il germanico *Tiwaz, il greco Zeus, il romano Dius Fidius, ipostasi di Giove, affiancato da Juventas e da Terminus, e l’indoiranico Mithra, a sua volta affiancato da Aryaman e da Bhaga). Da ciò si evince come per l’indoeuropeo “Dio” è sempre stato sinonimo di forma, limite, creazione, definizione, in una parola: Ordine, di contro a tutto ciò che è caotico, turbinoso, oscuro, informe e indefinito. La fondamentale contrapposizione tra i binomi Ordine/Caos, Maschile/Femminile, Luce/Ombra, Destra/Sinistra, etc. la si può distintamente ritrovare anche nel mito cosmologico indù del Samudramanthan, in cui il dio Vishnu pone l’Ordine divino nell’Oceano primordiale ponendo in esso il monte Meru, simbolo dell’Asse che non vacilla, e così facendo rende possibile la manifestazione e lo sviluppo di ciò che prima era solo allo stato larvale e potenziale, e cioè, usando un linguaggio aristotelico, consente il passaggio del cosmo dalla Potenza all’Atto. Ritroviamo questa visione del mondo anche nelle Upanishad, dove è affermato: “Ordunque l’Atman è un argine, una barriera perché questi mondi non si disgreghino. Né il giorno né la notte raggiungono questo argine, né la vecchiaia né la morte né il dolore e nemmeno la virtù o il vizio; tutti gli errori recedono da quello: perché, invero, questo Brahmaloka (regno celeste) non è affetto da alcuna imperfezione. “Nelle dottrine indù vi è poi il centrale concetto di Dharma quale legge e limite sul piano sia individuale e microcosmico sia sovrindividuale e macrocosmico. Fondamento di tutto il Reale è il Dharma, che nel Buddhismo giunge a essere sinonimo di essenza delle cose, pilastro invisibile che regge tutto l’universo. Nell’Edda, tra l’altro, la concezione della misura e del limite può essere trovata anche nella cosiddetta “poesia gnomica”, dove, nelle “regole di comportamento”, così ci parla lo spirito etico degli antichi germani: “Non stare attaccato alla coppa, bevi moderatamente idromele, parla solo il necessario oppure taci! Certamente nessun uomo ti rimprovererà perché vai a letto presto. L’uomo ingordo, quello senza autocontrollo, si abbuffa; spesso allo stupido lo stomaco suscita risate, quando egli viene dai saggi.” Sembra quasi di trovarsi dinanzi a dottrine epicuree o stoiche, giacchè in fondo entrambe convergono, sebbene da prospettive parecchio diverse, nel medesimo ideale di mediocritas, per dirla con Orazio. Da ciò si può facilmente comprendere l’istintiva repulsione e antipatia che l’uomo indoeuropeo ha sempre provato dinanzi a forme orgiastiche, mistiche e sentimentaliste di approccio al divino (basti pensare al senatus consultum de bacchanalibus del 186 a.c., oltre che alle violente reazioni anticristiane avutesi nel pur tardo e corrotto impero). “Contro queste forme di mistica”dice a proposito il Günther “sta l’aspirazione indoeuropea alla forma (der indogermanische Wille zur Gestaltung), uno sguardo posato sull’Ordine formato del mondo, congiunto al sentimento ariano del dovere che impone di lottare contro il disordine in tutte le sue forme, contro Utgard. E perciò la mistica della segregazione dell’anima in se stessa (mistica da mùein), del distacco dal mondo, dell’inerzia, dell’abulia, come pure la mistica sentimentale e quella dell’oziosa contemplazione, la cosiddetta mistica quietistica, non è mistica indoeuropea.” Per concludere potremmo affermare a ragione che l’attitudine e l’intimo sentire dell’uomo di stirpe indoeuropea, nella sua espansione da Reykjavik a Benares, ha sempre favorito l’emergere di concezioni politiche, economiche, filosofiche, religiose e artistiche strutturate sulla base dei concetti di “Forma” e “Limite”, concetti che, come abbiamo visto, erano strettamente legati a quelli di “sacro” e “divino”. Tutto ciò che è nobile, ordinato, pulito, netto, forte e sano è un prodotto coerente e necessario di tale visione del mondo, che, contrariamente a ciò che si può superficialmente pensare, non si muove per nulla in un orizzonte ristagnante e immobilista, ma al contrario, proprio per la sua vocazione alla “definizione”, è essenzialmente volto alla trascendenza, concepita come un graduale s-velarsi dell’uomo dalla sua scorza materiale in vista del risveglio al suo vero Sé spirituale ed eterno.

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