The Relationship Between Crowley and Evola ('Conclusion')
We will not follow in the author's footsteps. As much he investigates
with much rigour the possible relationship between Evola and Crowley
on the historical plane, as much, when he endeavours to compare their
respective standpoint, there is far too much fantasy in his views for
us to bother to report them, not to mention that, now that those who
were exalted at the thought of a possible personal link between Evola
and Crowley are quietened down, it would be a shame and a mistake to
set again their imagination on fire by inflicting on them hazy
considerations such as these : "Evola's magic was essentially based on
the philosophies of German Romanticism, of solipsism, and of French
personalism, as well as on the conceptions of Otto Weininger (...)".
To most scholars, as a matter of fact, sources are and cannot but be
of the historical order, and are found and cannot be found outside the
philosophical or artistic currents which have developed in the
generations immediately preceding that of the author they deal with.
The conception of magic exposed by Evola was essentially based on
something far different.
What is true, on the other hand, is that "to Evola, traditional
teaching was reserved to an élite, whereas Crowley, notwithstanding
his elitist and misanthropic vague impulses, had a more democratic way
of thinking and wanted to fill with joy the whole world with his
doctrine (waiting for an acknowledgment, of course)". However, it was
not only to Evola that traditional teaching was reserved to an élite :
the traditional world was per se elitist.
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