Julius Evola

Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola was born in Rome to Sicilian parents on 19 May 1898. His family were members of the Sicilian aristocracy and devout Roman Catholics; he is sometimes described as a baron. Evola considered details about his early life irrelevant, and is noted for hiding some details of his personal life. He adopted the name Julius in homage to Ancient Rome in his mid twenties. Evola rebelled against his Catholic upbringing. He studied engineering at the Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci in Rome, but did not complete his course, later claiming this was because he did not want to be associated with "bourgeois academic recognition" and titles such as "doctor and engineer". In his teenage years he immersed himself in painting—which he considered one of his natural talents—and literature, including Oscar Wilde and Gabriele d'Annunzio. He was introduced to philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Otto Weininger. Other early philosophical influences included the Italian man of letters Carlo Michelstaedter and the German post-Hegelian thinker Max Stirner. He was attracted to the avant-garde, and briefly associated with the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist movement during his time at university. He broke with Marinetti in 1916 as Evola disagreed with his extreme nationalism and advocacy of industry. In the First World War, Evola served as an artillery officer in the Italian Army on the Asiago plateau. Despite reservations that Italy was fighting on the wrong side (against Germany, which Evola admired for its discipline and hierarchy), Evola volunteered in 1917 and briefly saw frontline service the following year. Evola returned to civilian life after the war and became a painter in the Italian Dadaist movement; he described his paintings as "inner landscapes". He wrote his poetry in French and recited it in cabarets accompanied by classical music. Through his painting and poetry, and his work on the short-lived journal Revue Bleue, he became a prominent representative of Dadaism in Italy. (In his autobiography he described his Dadaism as an attack on rationalist cultural values.) In 1922, after concluding that avant-garde art was becoming commercialised and stiffened by academic conventions, he gave up painting and renounced poetry. Evola was a keen mountaineer, describing it as a source of revelatory spiritual experience. Evola reportedly went through a "spiritual crisis" through the intolerance of civilian life and his need to "transcend the emptiness" of normal human activity. He experimented with hallucinogenics and magic, which, he wrote, almost brought him to madness. In 1922, at 23 years old, he considered suicide, he wrote in The Cinnabar Path. He said he avoided suicide thanks to a revelation he had while reading an early Buddhist text that dealt with shedding all forms of identity other than absolute transcendence. Evola would later publish the text The Doctrine of Awakening, which he regarded as a repayment of his debt to Buddhism. By this time his interests led him into spiritual, transcendental, and "supra-rational" studies. He began reading various esoteric texts and gradually delved deeper into the occult, alchemy, magic, and Oriental studies, particularly Tibetan Tantric yoga. The historian Richard H. Drake wrote that Evola's alienation from contemporary values resembled that of other Lost Generation intellectuals who came of age in the First World War, but took an uncompromising, eccentric and reactionary form. == Philosophy ==

Evola's writings blended ideas from German idealism, Eastern doctrines, traditionalist conservatism, and especially the interwar Conservative Revolution, "with which Evola had a deep personal involvement". He viewed himself as part of an aristocratic caste that had been dominant in an ancient Golden Age, as opposed to the contemporary Dark Age (the Kali Yuga). In his writing, Evola addressed others in that caste whom he called ''l'uomo differenziato''—"the man who has become different"—who through heredity and initiation were able to transcend the ages. Evola considered human history to be, in general, decadent; he viewed modernity as the temporary success of the forces of disorder over tradition. Tradition, in Evola's definition, was an eternal supernatural knowledge, with absolute values of authority, hierarchy, order, discipline and obedience. Matthew Rose wrote that "Evola claimed to show how basic human activities—from eating and sex, commerce and games, to war and social intercourse—were elevated by Tradition into something ritualistic, becoming activities whose very repetitiveness offered a glimpse of an unchanging eternal realm". Ensuring Tradition's triumph of order over chaos, in Evola's view, required an obedience to aristocracy. Rose wrote that Evola "aspired to be the most right-wing thinker possible in the modern world". Evola's philosophical work started in the 1920s with The Theory of the Absolute Individual and ''Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual. Teoria dell'individuo assoluto (Theory of The Absolute Individual) and Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto (Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual) originally constituted a single work which only for editorial reasons ended up being divided into two separate volumes, published a few years apart from each other, one in 1927 and the other in 1930, published in Turin at the publisher called Bocca. This work was different and even attack on the dominant Hegelian thought in Italy, prevailed by the works of Benedetto Croce. He helped Evola to find a publisher for his Theory and Phenomenology of Absolute Individual,'' a work which started in 1924 but was only published in its final form in 1927 and 1930, though it is not certain to which extent Croce helped Evola. Evola wrote prodigiously on mysticism, Tantra, Hermeticism, the myth of the Holy Grail and Western esotericism. German Egyptologist and scholar of esotericism Florian Ebeling noted that Evola's The Hermetic Tradition is viewed as an "extremely important work" on Hermeticism for esotericists. Evola gave particular focus to Cesare della Riviera's text Il Mondo Magico degli Heroi, which he later republished in modern Italian. He held that Riviera's text was consonant with the goals of "high magic"the reshaping of the earthly human into a transcendental 'god man'. According to Evola, the alleged "timeless" Traditional science was able to come to lucid expression through this text, in spite of the "coverings" added to it to prevent accusations from the church. Though Evola rejected Carl Jung's interpretation of alchemy, Jung described Evola's The Hermetic Tradition as a "magisterial account of Hermetic philosophy". In Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, the philosopher Glenn Alexander Magee favoured Evola's interpretation over that of Jung's. In 1988 a journal devoted to Hermetic thought published a section of Evola's book and described it as "Luciferian." Evola later confessed that he was not a Buddhist, and that his text on Buddhism was meant to balance out his earlier work on the Hindu tantras. Evola often relied on European sources about Asian creeds while evoking them for racist ends, Peter Staudenmaier wrote. Rose described Evola as an "unreliable scholar of Eastern religions." Evola advocated that "differentiated individuals" following the left-hand path use dark violent sexual powers against the modern world. For Evola, these "virile heroes" are both generous and cruel, possess the ability to rule, and commit "Dionysian" acts that might be seen as conventionally immoral. For Evola, the left-hand path embraces violence as a means of transgression. Women would find their true identity in total subjugation to men. Evola regarded matriarchy and goddess religions as a symptom of decadence, and preferred a hypermasculine warrior ethos. He was influenced by Hans Blüher, a proponent of the Männerbund ('alliance of men') concept as a model for his "warrior-band" or "warrior-society". Goodrick-Clarke noted the fundamental influence of Otto Weininger's book Sex and Character on Evola's dualism of male-female spirituality. According to Goodrick-Clarke, "Evola's celebration of virile spirituality was rooted in Weininger's work, which was widely translated by the end of the First World War." Evola denounced homosexuality as "useless" for his purposes. He did not neglect sadomasochism, so long as sadism and masochism "are magnifications of an element potentially present in the deepest essence of eros." Then, it would be possible to "extend, in a transcendental and perhaps ecstatic way, the possibilities of sex." Evola held that women "played" with men, threatened their masculinity, and lured them into a "constrictive" grasp with their sexuality. He wrote that "It should not be expected of women that they return to what they really are ... when men themselves retain only the semblance of true virility", Evola also said that the "ritual violation of virgins", and "whipping women" were a means of "consciousness raising", so long as these practices were done to the intensity required to produce the proper "liminal psychic climate". Evola translated Weininger's Sex and Character into Italian. Dissatisfied with simply translating Weininger's work, he wrote the text Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (1958), where his views on sexuality were dealt with at length. Arthur Versluis described this text as Evola's "most interesting" work aside from Revolt Against the Modern World (1934). This book remains popular among many 'New Age' adherents. Race Evola's views on race had roots in his aristocratic elitism. According to the European studies professor Paul Furlong, Evola developed what he called "the law of the regression of castes" in Revolt Against the Modern World and other writings on racism from the 1930s and the Second World War. In Evola's view "power and civilization have progressed from one to another of the four castes—sacred leaders, warrior nobility, bourgeoisie (economy, 'merchants') and slaves". Furlong explains: "for Evola, the core of racial superiority lay in the spiritual qualities of the higher castes, which expressed themselves in physical as well as in cultural features, but were not determined by them. The law of the regression of castes places racism at the core of Evola's philosophy, since he sees an increasing predominance of lower races as directly expressed through modern mass democracies." Evola used "a man of race" to mean "a man of breeding". and "esoteric-traditionalist racism". The book was endorsed by Benito Mussolini. Prior to the end of the Second World War, Evola frequently used the term "Aryan" to refer to the nobility, who in his view were imbued with traditional spirituality. Feinstein writes that this interpretation made the term "Aryan" more plausible in an Italian context and thereby furthered antisemitism in Fascist Italy. Evola's interpretation was adopted by Mussolini, who declared in 1938 that "Italy's civilization is Aryan". Wolff notes that Evola seems to have stopped writing about race in 1945, but adds that the intellectual themes of Evola's writings were otherwise unchanged. Evola continued to write about elitism and his contempt for the weak. His "doctrine of the Aryan-Roman super-race was simply restated as a doctrine of the 'leaders of men' ... no longer with reference to the SS, but to the mediaeval Teutonic knights or the Knights Templar, already mentioned in [his book] Rivolta." Evola wrote of "inferior, non-European races". He believed that military aggressions such as Fascist Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia were justified by Italy's dominance, outweighing concerns he had about the possibility of race-mixing. Richard H. Drake wrote, "Evola was never prepared to discount the value of blood altogether". Evola wrote: "a certain balanced consciousness and dignity of race can be considered healthy" in a time when "the exaltation of the negro and all the rest, anticolonialist psychosis and integrationist fanaticism [are] all parallel phenomena in the decline of Europe and the West." Furlong wrote that a 1957 article by Evola about America "leaves no doubt as to his deep prejudice against black people". "Spiritual racism" Evola's racism included racism of the body, soul, and spirit, giving primacy to the latter factor, writing that "races only declined when their spirit failed." Like Evola, Clauss believed that physical race and spiritual race could diverge as a consequence of miscegenation. Peter Staudenmaier notes that many other racists of the time found Evola's "spiritual racism" perplexing. Like René Guénon, Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga of Hinduism—the Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites. He argued that both Italian fascism and Nazism represented hope that the "celestial" Aryan race would be reconstituted. He drew on mythological accounts of super-races and their decline, particularly the Hyperboreans, and maintained that traces of Hyperborean influence could be felt in Aryan men. He felt that Aryan men had devolved from these higher mythological races. Gregor noted that several contemporary criticisms of Evola's theory were published: "In one of Fascism's most important theoretical journals, Evola's critic pointed out that many Nordic-Aryans, not to speak of Mediterranean Aryans, fail to demonstrate any Hyperborean properties. Instead, they make obvious their materialism, their sensuality, their indifference to loyalty and sacrifice, together with their consuming greed. How do they differ from 'inferior' races, and why should anyone wish, in any way, to favor them?" Concerning the relationship between "spiritual racism" and biological racism, Evola put forth the following viewpoint, which Furlong described as pseudo-scientific: "The factor of 'blood' or 'race' has its importance, because it is not psychologically—in the brain or the opinions of the individual—but in the very deepest forces of life that traditions live and act as typical formative energies. Blood registers the effects of this action, and indeed offers through heredity, a matter that is already refined and pre-formed ..." Antisemitism Writings by Evola in the late 1930s contributed arguments for Fascist Italy's repression of its Jews. Evola encouraged and applauded Mussolini's antisemitic racial laws in 1938, and called for a "supreme Aryan elite" to oppose the Jews. In some writings, Evola called Jews a virus. He said Fascism and Nazism's final victory over Jews would end "the spiritual decadence of the West" and thereby "re-establish genuine contact between man and a transcendent, supersensible reality". Evola wrote the foreword and an essay in the second Italian edition of the infamous antisemitic fabrication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in 1938 by the Catholic fascist Giovanni Preziosi. In it, Evola argued that the Protocols—whether or not a forgery—"contain the plan for an occult war, whose objective is the utter destruction, in the non-Jewish peoples, of all tradition, class, aristocracy, and hierarchy, and of all moral, religious, and spiritual values." He was an admirer of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the antisemitic leader of the fascist Romanian Iron Guard. After Codreanu was assassinated in 1938 on orders from King Carol II, Evola railed against "the Judaic horde" that he accused of planning "Talmudic, Israelite tyranny." Evola's antisemitism did not emphasise the Nazi conception of Jews as "representatives of a biological race", but rather as "the carriers of a world view, a way of being and thinking—simply put, a spirit—that corresponded to the 'worst' and 'most decadent' features of modernity: democracy, egalitarianism and materialism", Wolff writes. According to Wolff, "Evola's 'totalitarian' or 'spiritual' racism was no milder than Nazi biological racism", and Evola was trying to promote an "Italian version of racism and antisemitism, one that could be integrated into the Fascist project to create a New Man". Evola dismissed the biological racism of chief Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg and others as reductionist and materialistic. He also argued that one could be "Aryan" but have a "Jewish" soul, and could be "Jewish" but have an "Aryan" soul. In Evola's view, Otto Weininger and Carlo Michelstaedter were Jews of "sufficiently heroic, ascetic, and sacral" character to fit the latter category. In 1970, Evola described Adolf Hitler's antisemitism as a paranoid idée fixe that damaged the reputation of the Third Reich. But Evola never clearly acknowledged the Holocaust committed by the regimes he associated with, perpetrated in the name of racism—Furlong called this a "fatal lapse that by itself ought to be enough to destroy his authority". == Written works ==

Evola wrote more than 36 books and 1,100 articles. In some of his 1930s writings, and in works about magic, Evola used pseudonyms, including Ea (after a Babylonian god), Carlo d'Altavilla, and Arthos (from Arthurian legend). Christianity In 1928, Evola wrote an attack on Christianity titled Pagan Imperialism, which proposed transforming fascism into a system consistent with ancient Roman values and Western esotericism. Evola proposed that fascism should be a vehicle for reinstating the caste system and aristocracy of antiquity. Although he invoked the term "fascism" in this text, his diatribe against the Catholic Church was criticised by both Benito Mussolini's fascist regime and the Vatican itself. A. James Gregor argued that the text was an attack on fascism as it stood at the time of writing, but noted that Mussolini made use of it to threaten the Vatican with the possibility of an "anti-clerical fascism". Richard Drake wrote that Evola "rarely missed an opportunity to attack the Catholic Church". On account of Evola's anti-Christian proposals, in April 1928 the Vatican-backed right wing Catholic journal Revue Internationale des Sociétés Secrètes published an article entitled "Un Sataniste Italien: Julius Evola", accusing him of satanism. In his The Mystery of the Grail (1937), Evola discarded Christian interpretations of the Holy Grail and wrote that it "symbolizes the principle of an immortalizing and transcendent force connected to the primordial state ... The mystery of the Grail is a mystery of a warrior initiation." He held that the Ghibellines, who had fought the Guelph for control of Northern and Central Italy in the thirteenth century, had within them the residual influences of pre-Christian Celtic and Nordic traditions that represented his conception of the Grail myth. He also held that the Guelph victory against the Ghibellines represented a regression of the castes, since the merchant caste took over from the warrior caste. In the epilogue to the book, Evola argued that the fictitious The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, regardless of whether it was authentic or not, was a cogent representation of modernity. The historian Richard Barber said, "Evola mixes rhetoric, prejudice, scholarship, and politics into a strange version of the present and future, but in the process he brings together for the first time interest in the esoteric and in conspiracy theory which characterize much of the later Grail literature." Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola "regarded the advent of Christianity as an era of unprecedented decline", because Christianity's egalitarianism and accessibility undermined the Roman ideals of "duty, honor and command" that Evola believed in. Buddhism In his The Doctrine of Awakening (1943), Evola argued that the Pāli Canon could be held to represent true Buddhism. His interpretation of Buddhism is intended to be anti-democratic. He believed that Buddhism revealed the essence of an "Aryan" tradition that had become corrupted and lost in the West. He believed it could be interpreted to reveal the superiority of a warrior caste. Harry Oldmeadow described Evola's work on Buddhism as exhibiting a Nietzschean influence, but Evola criticised Nietzsche's purported anti-ascetic prejudice. Evola claimed that the book "received the official approbation of the Pāli [Text] Society", and was published by a reputable Orientalist publisher. Evola used the page to publish international right-wing thinkers. Evola's writings on the page argued for imperialism; leading up to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, Evola praised "the sacred valor of war". During the same period he contributed to the antisemite Giovanni Preziosi's magazine La vita italiana. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has written that Evola's 1945 essay "American 'Civilization'" described the United States as "the final stage of European decline into the 'interior formlessness' of vacuous individualism, conformity and vulgarity under the universal aegis of money-making." According to Goodrick-Clarke, Evola argued that the U.S. "mechanistic and rational philosophy of progress combined with a mundane horizon of prosperity to transform the world into an enormous suburban shopping mall." Evola translated some works of Oswald Spengler and Ortega y Gasset to Italian. == Politics ==

In Evola's view, a state ruled by a spiritual elite must reign with unquestionable supremacy over its populace. He cited two models of such an elite as the Schutzstaffel and the Romanian Iron Guard, known for their violence. Evola's philosophy, over his long career, adapted the spiritual orientation of Traditionalist writers such as René Guénon and the political concerns of the European authoritarian right, Furlong wrote. Sheehan described Evola as "perhaps the most original and creative — and, intellectually, the most nonconformist, of the Italian Fascist philosophers". Evola had access to Benito Mussolini in the last years of the Fascist regime, and advised him on racial policies, but "without much effect", Ferraresi wrote; Evola "was kept (or stayed) on the sidelines of officialty, as some sort of eccentric". Evola was in charge of the cultural page of the influential fascist newspaper Il Regime Fascista for the regime's last decade.'' With its help, he fled to Berlin in Nazi Germany when the Italian Fascist regime fell in 1943. In May 1951 Evola was arrested in Italy and charged with promoting the revival of the Fascist Party, and of glorifying fascism. Evola declared that he was not a Fascist but was instead "" (). He was acquitted of all charges. Fascist Italy Evola experienced Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922 and was intrigued by fascism. He would praise fascism for "its attempt to refashion the Italian people into a severe, military mold", in Ferraresi's words, but would criticise any concessions to "democratic" pressures. Atkins wrote that "Evola was critical of the Fascist regime because it was not fascist enough." Evola applauded Mussolini's anti-bourgeois orientation and his goal of making Italian citizens into hardened warriors, but criticised Fascist populism, party politics, and elements of leftism that he saw in the fascist regime. He stated that to become "truly human", one would have to "overcome brotherly contamination" and "purge oneself" of the feeling that one is united with others "because of blood, affections, country or human destiny". Evola argued that the regime should dictate to the Catholic Church, not negotiate with it, and warned in Critica fascista in 1927 that allowing the church independent power would make fascism a "laughable revolution". In 1928, he wrote that fascists had made "the most absurd of all errors" through entente with Christianity and the church. He also opposed the futurism that Italian society was aligned with, along with the "plebeian" nature of the movement. He opined that Mussolini should have disbanded his party after 1922 and become a loyal advisor to King Victor Emmanuel III instead. Accordingly, Evola launched the journal La Torre (The Tower) in 1930, to advocate for a more elitist social order. He wrote in La Torre, "We would like a fascism more radical, more intrepid, a truly absolute fascism, made of pure force, inaccessible to any compromise." Other scholars have rejected the argument that the racial ideology of Italian fascism could be attributed solely to Nazi influence. A more recent interpretation is that Mussolini was frustrated by the slow pace of fascist transformation and, by 1938, had adopted increasingly radical measures including a racial ideology. Aaron Gillette has written that "Racism would become the key driving force behind the creation of the new fascist man, the uomo fascista." With the passage of the Italian racial laws in 1938 and Italy's campaign against Jews, Evola demanded measures to counter "the Jewish menace", through "discrimination and selection". Evola admired Heinrich Himmler, whom he knew personally. Evola took issue with Nazi populism and biological materialism. SS authorities initially rejected Evola's ideas as supranational and aristocratic, though he was better received by members of the conservative revolutionary movement. Despite this opposition, Evola was able to establish political connections with pan-Europeanist elements inside the Reich Security Main Office. He subsequently ascended to the inner circles of Nazism as the influence of pan-European advocates overtook that of Völkisch proponents, due to military contingencies. Evola wrote the article Reich and Imperium as Elements in the New European Order for the Nazi-backed journal European Review. He spent World War II working for the Sicherheitsdienst. The Sicherheitsdienst bureau Amt VII, a Reich Security Main Office research library, supplied Evola with arcane occult and Masonic texts. According to Sheehan, Adolf Hitler also met Evola and other fascist intellectuals. After the meeting with Mussolini, at Hitler's Wolf's Lair, Evola involved himself in Mussolini's Italian Social Republic (the Republic of Salò, a Nazi puppet regime). About the alliance during World War II between Allies and the Soviet Union, Evola wrote: "The democratic powers repeated the error of those who think they can use the forces of subversion for their own ends without cost. They do not know that, by a fatal logic, when exponents of two different grades of subversion meet or cross paths, the one representing the more developed grade will take over in the end." Postwar and later years Evola, partially paralysed after the Soviet bombing raid in Vienna in 1945, returned to postwar Italy in 1948, after being treated for his injuries in Austria. Ferraresi wrote that Evola was "the guru" for generations of radical right Italian militants, through his writings and youth groups. "The political model Evola selected after 1945 was neither Mussolini nor Hitler," Wolff writes; instead, in post-World War II conversations with neo-fascists, Evola would reference the Nazi SS, the Spanish Falange, Codreanu's Legionary Movement, Knut Hamsun, Vidkun Quisling, Léon Degrelle, Drieu La Rochelle, Robert Brasillach, Maurice Bardèche, Charles Maurras, Plato (particularly The Republic), Dante (particularly De Monarchia), Joseph de Maistre, Donoso Cortés, Otto von Bismarck, Klemens von Metternich, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels. He wrote for publications of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) but never joined the party. Adkins wrote that the MSI "claimed him as their philosopher-king, but he barely tolerated their attention". Wolff described him as a "freelance political commentator". Evola continued his work in the domain of esotericism, writing a number of books and articles on sex magic and various other esoteric studies, including The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way (1949), Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (1958), and Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest (1974). He also wrote his two explicitly political books Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (1953), Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul (1961), and his autobiography, The Path of Cinnabar (1963). He also expanded upon critiques of American civilisation and materialism, as well as increasing American influence in Europe, collected in the posthumous anthology Civiltà Americana. Evola was arrested along with thirty-six others in April 1951 by the Political Office of the Rome Police Headquarters and charged on suspicion that he was an ideologist of the militant neofascist organisation Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria (FAR), after attempted bombings in 1949–50 were linked to Evola's circle. Evola's charges were glorifying fascism and promoting the revival of the Fascist Party. His lawyer was Francesco Carnelutti. He was carried into the courtroom on a stretcher. Defending himself at trial, Evola said that his work belonged to a long tradition of anti-democratic writers who could be linked to fascism—at least fascism interpreted according to certain Evolian criteria—but who could not be identified with the Fascist regime under Mussolini. Evola then denied being a fascist and instead referred to himself as "" (). Concerning this statement, the historian Elisabetta Cassina Wolff wrote that it is unclear whether this meant he was placing himself "above or beyond Fascism". The judges, who themselves had served during the fascist era, ruled that Evola could not be held responsible for the crimes. Evola was acquitted of all charges on 20 November 1951. Of the 36 other defendants, 13 received prison sentences. While trying to distance himself from Nazism, Evola wrote in 1955 that the Nuremberg trials were a farce. Evola also made an effort to differentiate his caste based aristocratic state from totalitarianism, preferring the concept of the "organic" state, which he put forth in his text Men Among the Ruins, as well as in his autodifesa. Evola sought to develop a strategy for the implementation of a "conservative revolution" in post-World War II Europe. He rejected nationalism, advocating instead for a European Imperium, which could take various forms according to local conditions, but should be "organic, hierarchical, anti-democratic, and anti-individual". Evola endorsed Francis Parker Yockey's neo-fascist manifesto Imperium, but said Yockey had a "superficial" understanding of what was immediately possible. Evola believed that his conception of neo-fascist Europe could best be implemented by an elite of "superior" men who operated outside normal politics. He dreamt that such a "New Order" of aristocracy might seize power from above during a democratic crisis. Evola's occult ontology exerted influence over post-war neo-fascism. After 1945, Evola was considered the most important Italian theoretician of the conservative revolutionary movement and the "chief ideologue" of Italy's post-war radical right. Ferraresi wrote that "Evola's thought was the 'essential mortar' that held together generations of militants". According to Jacob Christiansen Senholt, Evola's most significant post-war political texts are Orientamenti and Men Among the Ruins. In the opening phrase in the first edition of Men Among the Ruins, Evola said: "Our adversaries would undoubtedly want us, in a Christian spirit, under the banner of progress or reform, having been struck on one cheek to turn the other. Our principle is different: "Do to others what they would like to do to you: but do it to them first." In Men Among the Ruins, Evola defines the Fourth Estate as being the last stage in the cyclical development of the social elite, the first beginning with a spiritual elite of divine right. Expanding the concept in an essay in 1950, the Fourth State according to Evola would be characterised by "the collectivist civilization... the communist society of the faceless-massman". Orientamenti was a text against "national fascism"—instead, it advocated for a European Community modelled on the principles of the Waffen-SS, which had mustered international forces. The Italian neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo adopted Orientamenti as a guide for action in postwar Italy. Evola praised Ordine Nouvo as the only Italian group that had "doctrinally had held firm without descending to compromise". The European Liberation Front of Francis Parker Yockey called Evola "Italy's greatest living authoritarian philosopher" in the April 1951 issue of its publication Frontfighter. Giuliano Salierni, who was an activist in the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement during the early 1950s, later recalled Evola's calls to violence, along with Evola's reminiscences about Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels. ==Personal life==

Evola was childless and never married, but as a young man he had a relationship with the writer Sibilla Aleramo. He spent his postwar years in his apartment in Rome. His ashes, per his will, were deposited in a hole cut in a glacier on Monte Rosa in the Pennine Alps. == Influence on the far-right ==

At one time Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, the Nazi Grail-seeker Otto Rahn, and the Romanian fascist sympathiser and religious historian Mircea Eliade admired Evola. After World War II, Evola's writings continued to influence many European far-right political, racist and neo-fascist movements. He is widely translated in French, Spanish, partly in German, and mostly in Hungarian (the largest number of his translated works). Franco Ferraresi described Evola in 1987 as "possibly the most important intellectual figure for the Radical Right in contemporary Europe" but "virtually unknown outside the Right". He is described by Stanley Payne (in 1996) and Stephen Atkins (2004) as the leading neo-fascist intellectual in Europe until his death in 1974. Giorgio Almirante referred to him as "our Marcuse—only better." But outside Italy, France and Germany, Evola was not well known until around 1990 when he received wider English-language publication, according to Furlong. Richard Drake wrote that Evola advocated terrorism. Peter Merkl noted that Evola's advocacy of force was part of his appeal to the radical right. Wolff wrote: "The debate around his 'moral and political' responsibility for terrorist actions perpetrated by right-wing extremist groups in Italy between 1969 and 1980 began as soon as Evola died in 1974 and have not yet come to an end." According to one leader of the neofascist organization Ordine Nuovo, "Our work since 1953 has been to transpose Evola's teachings into direct political action." The neofascist terrorists Franco Freda and Mario Tuti reprinted Evola's most militant texts. Radicals of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR) helped spread Evola's philosophy in far-right circles abroad after fleeing Italy in the wake of the terrorist bombing of the Bologna railway station in 1980; some influenced Britain's National Front. Roberto Fiore and his colleagues in the early 1980s helped the National Fronts "Political Soldiers" forge a militant elitist philosophy based on Evola's "most militant tract", The Aryan Doctrine of Battle and Victory. The Aryan Doctrine called for a "Great Holy War" that would be fought for spiritual renewal and fought in parallel to the physical "Little Holy War" against perceived enemies. The far-right English orator Jonathan Bowden gave lectures on Evola's philosophy. The French far-right figure Alain de Benoist has cited Evola as an influence. Goodrick-Clarke noted Evola's pessimistic invocation of the Kali Yuga as an influence on esoteric Nazism and Aryan cults. Evola's Heidnischer Imperialismus (1933) was translated by the Russian radical-right Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin in 1981. Dugin has said that in his youth he was "deeply inspired" by Guénon's and Evola's Traditionalism. The Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of the Hungarian nationalist party Jobbik admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works. Steve Bannon has called him an influence. A former worker of Praxis, a company backed by Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, was reported to have said that recruitment of new members and prospective residents for enclaves of the proposed "Network Empire" should be guided by Evola's "four castes." == Works ==

;Books • ''L'individuo e il divenire del mondo (1926; The Individual and the Becoming of the World''). • ''L'uomo come potenza (1925; Man as Potency''). • ''Teoria dell'individuo assoluto (1927; The Theory of the Absolute Individual''). • Imperialismo pagano (1928; second edition 1978)English translation: • ''Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto (1930; The Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual''). • La tradizione ermetica (1931; third edition 1971)English translation: • Maschera e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo: Analisi critica delle principali correnti moderne verso il sovrasensibile (1932)English translation: And: • Heidnischer Imperialismus (1933)English translations: And: • Rivolta contro il mondo moderno (1934; second edition 1951; third edition 1970)English translation: • ''Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero'' (1937)English translation: • Il mito del sangue. Genesi del Razzismo (1937; second edition 1942)English translation: • Sintesi di dottrina della razza (1941)English translation: • Indirizzi per una educazione razziale (1941)English translations: • La dottrina del risveglio (1943)English translation: • Lo Yoga della potenza (1949; second edition 1968)English translation: • Gli uomini e le rovine (1953; second edition 1972)English translation: • Metafisica del sesso (1958; second edition 1969)English translations: 1983–1991: • ''L'operaio nel pensiero di Ernst Jünger (1960; The Worker in the Thought of Ernst Jünger''). Excerpts in English • Cavalcare la tigre (1961)English translation: • Il cammino del cinabro (1963; second edition 1972)English translation: • Il Fascismo. Saggio di una analisi critica dal punto di vista della Destra (1964; second edition 1970)English translation: And: ;Collections • ''Saggi sull'idealismo magico (1925; Essays on Magical Idealism''). • Introduzione alla magia (1927–1929; 1971)English translation: And: And: • ''L'arco e la clava'' (1968)English translation: • Ricognizioni. Uomini e problemi (1974)English translation: • Meditazioni delle vette (1974)English translation: • Metafisica della Guerra (1996)English translation: • Jobboldali fiatalok kézikönyve (2012, collection of Hungarian translations of periodicals by Evola, published by Kvintesszencia Kiadó)English translation: • • • ;Articles and pamphlets • ''L'Homme et son devenir selon le Vedânta. (1925;'' Review of Guenon's work published in 1925 in ''L'Idealismo Realistico''). • Il superamento dello spiritismo (1928) Il Lavoro d'Italia,11 April. • Tre aspetti del problema ebraico (1936)Originally published by Edizioni Mediterranee in 1936, this was also published in Italian by Edizioni di Ar, in 1978. English translation: • ''La tragedia della 'Guardia di Ferro - (1938) English translation: The Tragedy of the Iron Guard. Originally published in La vita italiana 309,'' Dec 1938. • On the Secret of Decay (1938)Originally written in German and published by the Deutsches Volkstum magazine n. 14. • Le Napolas (1941) - English translation: "The Naples" published in the italian fascist periodical "Il Regime Fascista". • ''Una vittima d'Israele (1939). Published in January 1939 in La vita Italiana.'' • Orientamenti, undici punti (1950)English translation: • ''L'emancipazione dell'islam è una strada verso il comunismo (1957) - English translation: The emancipation of Islam is a path towards communism. Published on Meridiano d'Italia newspaper. It appears this article was reprinted in the journal Roma'' in 1958. • Il vampirismo ed i vampiri (1973)English: Vampirism and Vampires. Written for journal Roma in September 1973. ;Works edited and/or translated by Evola • Tao Tê Ching: Il libro della via e della virtù (1923; The Book of the Way and Virtue). Second edition: Il libro del principio e della sua azione (1959; The Book of the Primary Principle and of Its Action). • ''La guerra occulta: armi e fasi dell'attacco ebraico-massonico alla tradizione europea'' by Emmanuel Malynski and Léon de Poncins (1939)English translation: == See also ==