Julius Evola

Barone Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola (May 19, 1898 – June 11, 1974) also known as Julius Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esotericist. Evola regarded his stances and spiritual values as aristocratic, masculine, traditionalist, heroic and defiantly reactionary.

Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites, spiritual oblivion and organised deviancy. To counter this and call in a primordial rebirth, Evola presented his world of Tradition. The core trilogy of Evola's works are generally regarded as Revolt Against the Modern World, Men Among the Ruins and Ride the Tiger. According to one scholar, "Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century." Much of Evola's theories and writings are centred on Evola's own rarefied, idiosyncratic spiritualism and mysticism; the inner life. He authored books covering themes such as Hermeticism, the metaphysics of war and of sex, Tantra, Buddhism, Taoism, mountaineering, the Holy Grail, the essence and history of civilisations, decadence and various philosophic and religious Traditions dealing with both the Classics and the Orient.

Though never a member of the National Fascist Party (and rejected for not being a member), or the Italian Social Republic, and constantly criticizing fascism and declaring he was an anti-fascist Evola regarded his position as that of a sympathetic right-wing intellectual, saw potential in the movement and wished to reform its errors, to a position in line with his own views. One of his successes was in regards to the racial laws; his advocation of a spiritual consideration of race won out in the debate in Italy, rather than a solely materialist reductionism concept popular in Germany. Since World War II many Radical Traditionalist, New Right, Conservative Revolutionary, Fascist and Third Positionist groups have taken inspiration from him, as well as several apolitical occultists, such as Thomas Karlsson and Massimo Scaligero.