A few years ago, an Italian acquaintance of ours who has been
familiar with Evola's work for almost four decades opened a site
dedicated to magic from an evolian perspective. It was meant to be,
if you want, an introduction to the writings of 'Ur and Krur', whose
spirit, whether Dr Hakl - Dr Hakl is the author of the most
informative article we have just published in English about 'The
Relationship between A. Crowley and J. Evola' - likes it or not, has
nothing to do with "the philosophies of German Romanticism, of
solipsism, and of French personalism", nor with "the conceptions of
Otto Weininger (...). He decided to close his site a few months
later. It seems to us that three of his short articles about the
conception of magic exposed by J. Evola can be of interest to our
readers.
As the numerous effects of the various operations of what can be
called, to cut a long story short, 'black magic', a 'black magic'
which the gynaeco-democratic environment in which we live favours
greatly, by means of various 'media', in its lowest and most
menstruous aspects, can be more and more felt, a synthetic
and 'circular' exposition such as the following one appears essential.
The Magical Path
The term 'magic' can have various meanings, some negative, justified
by the fact that man has the possibility to use the faculties which
may appear along a spiritual path for egoistic purposes, or even to
make attempts to influence the other, to terrorise him, in order to
obtain advantages for himself. These actions are possible because the
context of magic is that of the psyche, an intermediary element
between the spiritual one and the corporeal one, and therefore likely
to be used for evil scopes. As a well-known master of the past
century put it, the spiritual destiny of the so-called 'black
wizards' is only a concern of theirs.
What Do We Mean By Magic?
The acknowledgement of the existence of a subtle world, parallel, so
to speak, to the physical world, and the possibility to act on it by
concrete actions which have real results. It is therefore a matter of
becoming aware of this subtle world in the same way as one becomes
aware of the physical world, of recognising that this subtle world
has a higher degree of reality than what is commonly considered real,
and of understanding, that is, that the physical senses and the mind
itself can deceive and give illusorily the idea of reality to
subjective mental impressions, to fantasies lacking any objective
counterpart. Finally, it is a matter of learning a way of knowledge
which goes beyond reason and for which no error is possible any
longer.
Reality of Magic
People are led naturally to relegate the world of magic to the field
of the fantastic and of the illusory. It is only logical and normal
that they do so, except for those who have had the opportunity to go
beyond the great wall that separates the sensitive world from the
subtle world, or who, for reasons they could not even explain to
themselves, sense that the world is not limited to what falls under
the control of the common waking consciousness, which can be extended
to what is generally called the subconscious. This process of
transformation of the being is not something vague or mystical, but a
real possibility, even if not open to everyone. By accepting the
reality of magic, our vision of the world, the way we see things, is
changed. Far from any materialist conception, the relationship with
the invisible forces which rule this subtle world is re-established,
appearances fall, and we see things that others do not, in the true
causes of events ; we harmonise with the rhythms of nature, the
perception of space and of time undergoes a liberating transformation.
It is a slow awakening of faculties which have been dulled for a long
time, a return to the archaic spiritual vision of the classical
world, in which every road, every source, every forest, every field
was the invisible but real centre of a 'spirit', a return to the cult
of the ancestors, a relighting in our interiority the sacred fire of
the ancients. It is the manifestation of invisible forces in every
event, in every action in the physical world. Forces that man can
control and dominate through rite. This is the conception ancient
Greeks and Romans had of the sacred. A total vision of the world,
which is not limited to its outer aspect but is able to notice
through the intellect the invisible forces which rule it. To possess
a magical vision of life is the base necessary to cover the spiritual
way of direct approach, of the "knock and it will be open", the
magical, ritual path, of the aware man who experiments, explores,
until he finds the divine which is in him. It is a spirituality of
light, without servile attitudes towards gods, which are luminous
gods, of the day and of the sky, whose presence in the human being is
constituted by the pure, clear intellectual principle. It is a matter
of giving to oneself a heroic ideal towards which one must strive
innerly. It is a tension towards the light which does not weaken even
with death, seen as a passage, a door, the end of an existence and
simultaneously the birth to another.