Eros and the Mysteries of Love by Julius Evola

As Klages put it: ‘Reproduction is a possible outcome of sexual activity but is not in any way included in the actual experience of sexual excitement.’ The sexual instinct is not the instinct for reproduction, as shown by primitive peoples who don’t associate birth with coitus. ‘ In Indo-Aryan morals, a lie was only allowed for the purpose of saving a human life, or in love…’Įvola’s sex book is ‘a search for the first principles and fundamental meaning of what is signified by the sexes and their interaction.’ Does he penetrate this seemingly bottomless mystery? Well, he does throw some light into the abyss.Įvola believes that only metaphysics can illuminate sex, not psychology or biology (‘eros cannot be explained by biology’) and the metaphysics of sex, he maintains, is bound up with the polarity of the two sexes. Nevertheless, he should not be considered primarily as a political thinker, but rather as an exponent of the wider Traditionalist School that encompasses the work of such individuals as René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon.

Since his death, also in Rome, his writings have influenced right-wing, reactionary and conservative political thought not only in his native Italy, but throughout continental Europe and, increasingly, the English-speaking world. The author of many books on esoteric, political and religious topics (including The Hermetic Tradition, The Doctrine of Awakening and Eros and the Mysteries of Love), his best-known work remains Revolt Against the Modern World, a trenchant critique of modern civilisation that has been described as ‘the gateway to his thought’. For Evola, ‘the center of all things was not man, but rather the Transcendent.’ This metaphysical conviction can be seen to have determined both Evola’s stance on socio-political issues, and his antipathetic attitude towards ‘all professional, sentimental and family routines’. Yet behind it all lay a singular emphasis on, and pursuit of, a ‘direct relationship to the Absolute’. Despite this, his life was characterised by ‘an anti-bourgeois approach’ hostile to both ‘the dominant tradition of the West – Christianity and Catholicism – and to contemporary civilization – the ‘modern world’ of democracy and materialism’.īy turns ‘engineering student, artillery officer, Dadaist poet and painter, journalist, alpinist, scholar, linguist, Orientalist, and political commentator’, he has been described as a 'rare example of universality in an age of specialization'. Born in Rome to a family of the Sicilian landed gentry, Evola was raised a strict Catholic. Julius Evola ( – 11 June 1974), born Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esoteric scholar.

Eros and the Mysteries of Love by Julius Evola