Julius Evola on Paganism

[LoTrobador]

In his Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza, Julius Evola wrote on the Ancient and Modern Paganism (as it was until the fifth decade of the 20th century). An extract has been translated into English: The Misunderstandings of the New "Paganism" and Further Misunderstandings Concerning the "Pagan" World-View.

In your opinion, are his criticisms relevant to the modern Pagan movements, after almost seven decades since it has been published? What are your thoughts regarding the points he is raising in this work?

 

[LoTrobador]

Nobody?

Three quotations, particularly critical of Paganism:

One should consider, then, that "paganism" is a fundamentally tendentious and artificial concept that scarcely corresponds to the historical reality of what the pre-Christian world always was in its normal manifestations, apart from a few decadent elements and aspects that derived from the degenerate remains of older cultures.

Once we are clear about this, we come today to a paradoxical realization: that this imaginary paganism that never existed, but was invented by Christian apologists, is now serving as the starting-point for certain so-called pagan circles, and is thus threatening for the first time in history to become a reality--no more and no less than that.

What are the main traits of today's pagan outlook, as its own apologists believe and declare them to be? The primary one is the imprisonment in Nature. All transcendence is totally unknown to the pagan view of life: it remains stuck in a mixture of Spirit and Nature, in an ambiguous unity of Body and Soul. There is nothing to its religion but a superstitious deification of natural phenomena, or of tribal energies promoted to the status of minor gods. Out of this there arises first of all a blood- and soil-bound particularism. Next comes a rejection of the values of personality and freedom, and a condition of innocence that is merely that of the natural man, as yet unawakened to any truly supra-natural calling. Beyond this innocence there is only lack of inhibition, "sin," and the pleasure of sinning. In other domains there is nothing but superstition, or a purely profane culture of materialism and fatalism.

Many of these neo-pagans seem to have fallen into a trap deliberately set for them, often ending up by advocating and defending ideas that more or less correspond to that invented, nature-bound, particularistic pagandom, lacking light and transcendence, which was the polemical creation of a Christian misunderstanding of the pre-Christian world, and which is based, at most, on a few scattered elements of that world in its decline and devolution. And as if this were not enough, people often resort to an anti-Catholic polemic which, whatever its political justification, often drags out and adapts the old clichÈs of a purely modern, rationalist and enlightenment type that have been well-used by Liberalism, Democracy, and Freemasonry.

There is a general and unmistakable tendency in neo-paganism to create a new, superstitious mysticism, based on the glorification of immanence, of Life and Nature, which is in the sharpest contrast to that Olympian and heroic ideal of the great Aryan cultures of pre-Christian antiquity. It would indicate much more a turning towards the materialistic, maternal, and telluric side, if it did not exhaust itself in foggy and dilettantish philosophizing. To give an example, we might ask what exactly is meant by this "Nature," on which these groups are so keen? It is little use to point out that it is certainly not the Nature that was experienced and recognized by ancient, traditional man, but a rational construct of the French Encyclopedist period. It was the Encyclopedists who, with definitely subversive and revolutionary motives, made up the myth of Nature as "good," wise, and wholesome, in opposition to the rottenness of every human "Culture." Thus we can see that the optimistic nature-myth of Rousseau and the Encyclopedists marches in the same ranks as "natural right," universalism, liberalism, humanitarianism, and the denial of any positive and structured form of sovereignty.

What do you think about this critique?

 

[Gentoo]

I don't see how see how this should effect me and/or my beliefs..

 

[LoTrobador]

I'm simply interested in what would Pagan RF Users say about this extract and crtique expressed therein from your respective points of view.

What do you think of the view of the Ancient Paganism as expressed by Evola in this extract? Do you find the critique of the new, superstitious mysticism, based on the glorification of immanence, of Life and Nature relevant to modern Pagan movements with their emphasis on the Nature? Do you think that Modern Paganism does have an idea of Nature different from the Ancient idea?

 

[Antibush5]

How deliciously Christian this seems.But yet, I am inclined to agree with her on a lot of points.We are probably nothing like what the ancients, science and reason has advanced, we do not fear thunder anymore (well some do, but my point is still valid) it is explained. Appeasing the thunder spirit won't make it go away.We shall and always will, view the world with somewhat Christian eyes, it has become too powerful of a cultural influance on us in the west to ignore.How sad that such ancient lore is lost to us forever, some of it, down to their own ineptitude mind you, a good example is the druids.