Testament

Evola and Guenon urged rebellion against modernity, wanting intellectual reform of Western Civilization. The hypothesis that humanity once possessed a sure knowledge and tradition and method of self- actualization....but the last few centuries have severed Man from his spiritual inheritance, leading to the current crisis and decline- this hypothesis seems true. Nobody has any living heroes anymore, almost half of the populace is medicated and in therapy, unable to live their own lives unless some doctor or celebrity or confidante tells them what to do. 25% of Americans have no friends. The scientific age has removed the mystery from life, replacing it with 'problems' and 'solutions.' We no longer can distinguish between our wants and needs, we confuse having with being...Evola saw the need for a new order, a revival of the traditional wisdom, organized by the few at the twilight of Kali Yuga ...Ghibelline in form, a sacred warrior caste patterned after the Templars or Samurai...initiates imbued with the black fire of gnosis, self-deified through ceremony and ritual absolute, and not merely spiritual. (Contrast with Pareto and circulation vs. degeneration) Total social equality is illogical.

Yeats sought to dwell in both worlds, he developed formulae for contact (A Vision,1925) .."In early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, that architects and artificers....spoke to the multitude and the few alike. The painter, the mosiac worker, the worker in gold and silver,the illuminator of sacred books, were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design, absorbed in their subject matter, and that (of) the vision of a whole people." New Citadel Byzantium and the Great Work....

The small yet intense civilization of the Assassins...