INTRODUCTION TO JULIUS EVOLA

INTRODUCTION TO JULIUS EVOLA 

Thompkins & Cariou - "Evola As He Is" 

http://thompkins cariou.tripod.com/id2.html 

We are proud to present the first translation ever of Tre Aspetti del Problema Ebraico', Evola's 

very first work on the problem of race, into English (1). As a matter of fact, it is the first 

translation of a racial work by Evola into English. 

Outside Italy, and not solely by the Anglo-Saxon public, Evola is considered above all as a 

metaphysician, a philosopher, a traditional thinker, an esotericist, for famous works such as 

'Rivolta Contro il Mondo Moderno', 'Cavalcare la Tigre', 'Gli Uomini e le Rovine', 'La Dottrina 

del Risveglio' and 'Introduzione alia Magia', all translated into most of the major Indo-European 

languages. In Italy, on the other hand, and to quote Evola himself in what may be called, for lack 

of a better word, his autobiography, II Cammino del Cinabro' (Scheiwiller, Milan, 1963) (The 

Road of Cinnabar') (2), things appear in a different light: "Many people in Italy came to know 

me only as the author of a book on race and the label of racist, not easy to shake off, was given to 

me, as if I hadn't turned my attention to anything else (...). In reality, I endeavoured to apply to 

the problems of race principles of a higher and spiritual nature ; this field, to me, was completely 

subordinate (...). Even in this field, I was consistent in my behaviour, and, in the context of the 

whole of my work, there is nothing that I wrote then that I would now deny". What those 

'principles of a higher and spiritual nature' were, we shall see later on. 

Evola's racial writing stretches over five years, from 1936 to 1941, and yet it should not be 

assumed that his interest in the problem in question suddenly began in 1936 to vanish just as 

suddenly in 1941. Traces of an Evolian racial doctrine can be found in his numerous 

collaborations with the paper Vita Nuova (from 1927) and with Giovani Preziosi's paper La Vita 

Italiana (from 1931), and, as early as 1928, II Lavoro d'ltalia published an article by him in 

which, while refuting the Darwinian evolutionist theory, he denied beforehand all the solutions 

that Rosenberg was to propose to the problem of race for his own country two years later in 'The 

Myth of the XXth Century'. Evola's interest in the problem of race can even be detected in some 

of the articles he wrote for the 'Ur e Krur' group, through his focusing on the concepts of elite, of 

hierarchy, of aristocratic nature and of Imperium. In 'Revolt Against the Modern World' (1934), 

to which the reader of Tndirizzi per una Educazione Razziale' (Elements for a Racial Education') 

and of 'Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza' ('Synthesis of Racial Doctrine') will be constantly 

referred, the spiritual categories put forward by Evola ('Olympian' or 'solar' race, 'Demetrian' or 

'lunar' race, and so on), based on Bachofen's morphology of cultures (Patriarchal 

society/Matriarchal society ; Solar spirituality/Lunar spirituality ; aristocratic ethic/collectivist 

ideal) are imbued with racial considerations that are closely linked to a metaphysic of history, 

and, in 'The Doctrine of Awakening' (1943), the Aryan nature of the earliest and purest Buddhist 

teaching is the subject of a whole chapter, and the 'spiritual, aristocratic and racial meaning' of 

the word Arya' itself is repeatedly stressed. 

Evola wrote four books on the problem of race, whose titles are all explicit; 'Tre Aspetti del 

Problema Ebraico' (Mediterranee, Roma, 1936 ; Ar, Padova, 1978, 1994) is the first of them ; 

it was published at the end of 1936, but it should be pointed out that its three chapters had 

previously appeared, over a period of a few weeks, several months earlier, in an Italian paper 

called Corporatismo Fascisto ; there followed in 1937 'II Mito del Sangue' (The Myth of Blood'), 

a work commissioned by the publisher Hoepli ('revised and expanded', again by Hoepli, in 1942, 

with thirty pages or so more ; Ar Padova, 1978 ; SeaR, Borzano, 1995). Subsequently, Evola was 

asked to write the preface of the second Italian edition of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', 

published by Giovani Preziosi in 1938, a year that saw the promulgation of racial laws by 

Mussolini, justified and made necessary by the ceaseless attitude of hostility, which can be 

evidenced by many documents, of various Jewish international organisations against Europe and 

the European peoples, and dictated, to quote Evola, by "the will to brace the sense of race and of 

racial dignity in the relationships with the indigenes in the new empire", as well as by "problems 

of inner, selective, cultural and ethnic nature" ('Mussolini e il Razzismo', in II Meridiano d'ltalia, 

December 1951). 

Following these first Italian racist laws, two Offices of Race were created, one in the Ministry of 

the Interior, the other in the Ministry of Popular Culture, "which, to explain and define essential 

aspects of the problems of race, (proposed) to develop a programme of research and propaganda, 

whose aim is to reveal to all Italian citizens the features of the Italian race and exalt its millennial 

virtue", and, to this end, committed a small number of Italian academics to the task of 

determining the policy of Fascism on racial questions. The 'Manifesto del Razzismo Italiano' 

('The Manifesto of Italian Racism') that emerged from this group the same year was published in 

the very first issue of La Difesa della Razza, edited by Telesio Interlandi, who, according to a 

scholar who studied Mussolini's views on the Jewish problem, was commissioned by the Duce, 

in early 1937, to launch a racial and, later on, also an anti- Jewish campaign through this paper. 

Evola started to collaborate from January 1939, with articles such as 'Metodologia Razzista - 1 

Tre Gradi del Problema della Razza' ('Racial Methodology - The Three Degrees of the Problem 

of Race') and 'Razzismo di Secondo Grado - La Razza dell'Anima' ('Racism of the Second 

Degree - The Race of the Soul'), whose content prefigured that of some chapters of Evola's first 

organic work on the problem of race: 'Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza', which was published in 

1941, again by Hoepli (Ar, Padova, 1978, 1994) ; finally, the same year, a collective lampoon, 

'Gli Ebrei Hanno Voluto la Guerra' ('The Jews Wanted War'), to which Evola contributed a text 

called La Civilta Occidentale e l'lntelligenza Ebraica' (The Western Civilisation and Jewish 

Intelligence') appeared, as did Tndirizzi per una Educazione Razziale' (Conte, Napoli, 1941 ; Ar, 

Padova, 1994). Before going any further, we would like to emphasise that the term 'racism' in 

Evola's work must be understood as 'racial theory', as a theory of the hierarchy of races, not as an 

attitude of violent hostility against any given racial group. 

After Mussolini read 'Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza', he not only explicitly authorised Evola to 

call the German edition 'Grundrisse der Faschistischen Rassenlehre' (E. Runge, Berlin, 1943) 

('Synthesis of Fascist Racial Doctrine'), and, therefore, to present Evola's formulations as official 

Fascist positions, but also he invited him to collaborate with the Italian authorities to rectify 

some ambiguous positions assumed and spread by other Italian racial theorists, while supporting, 

to a certain extent, the initiatives taken by Evola himself abroad, initiatives that consisted in 

creating in Germany and, in general, in the Austro-German world, an aristocratic traditional 

front, which, in collaboration with the best elements of Fascist Italy, would have endeavoured to 

halt and neutralise the corrosive action of the forces of subversion, all of which, from their 

democratic and liberal to their Marxist components, were known to be organised and ruled by a 

secret and unitary Jewish and Masonic conspiracy. For this purpose, Evola reckoned it was 

necessary to awake consciences by unmasking the tactics used by the forces of worldwide 

subversion to achieve their goals and by drawing people's attention to the necessity of restoring 

as fundamental points of reference the root ideas and the myths related to the culture and the 

values of the ancient Roman Aryan and Nordic Aryan worlds: themes that he was to set out, 

analyse and explain during a set of lectures he gave in Germany and in Hungary in 1938, at the 

invitation of very exclusive German aristocratic circles to which he belonged and of 

representatives of the Conservative-Revolutionary movement with which he had spiritual 

affinities. He had already lectured in Germany, though, back in 1934, at a university in Berlin, at 

the second Nordisches Thing in Bremen and at the Herrenklub of Heinrich von Gleichen, an 

aristocrat with whom he was to establish a 'cordial and fruitful ' friendship, and it is most likely 

at that time that Himmler first heard of him. 

It seemed, for a while, that this tour had borne fruit, since, from 1939 to 1941, much was said 

about a collaboration between Fascist Italy and the Third Reich in the field of political and racial 

policy, under the care of the director of the Ufficio per lo Studio del Problema Razziale nel 

Ministero della Cultura Populare and the head of the Ahnenerbe, Walter Gross, whom Evola met 

at that time, along with Rosenberg. Further developments in this area were thwarted, mainly, 

according to Evola himself, because of pressures exerted by Catholic Italian circles on Mussolini 

and representatives of the 'zoological' Italian racism. Specifically, this German-Italian 

collaboration should have given birth to a bilingual periodical (both in German and in Italian) 

publication meant to overcome the biological materialist reductionism linked with the Darwinian 

evolutionist theory : Sangue e Spirito (Blood and Spirit). 

Let us permit Evola himself to sum up, still in 'Mussolini e il Razzismo', the situation in Italy at 

that time in this field, and, in doing so let us allow him to draw attention to one of his main 

reasons for focusing as he did on the one main point: "(...) The whole thing presented few 

satisfactory features. As a matter of fact, for such purposes, in Italy, there was a lack of previous 

serious preparation and specific studies, and racial theory was completely unknown to Italian 

'intellectuals'. This is how the group that had drafted the 'Manifesto', and even the group of the 

contributors to La Difesa della Razza, came to seem so incoherent and unprepared. It was a 

mixture of some anthropologists of the old positivist school and opportunistic journalists and 

scholars who had turned into racists overnight. That is why the general impression was that of a 

dilettantism in which mere controversy and the slogan too often held the place of a serious and 

homogeneous doctrine: doctrine that would not have got bogged down either in biological 

specialisation or in gross anti-Semitism, but would have appeared in the form of a general vision 

of life, and acted as a politically and ethically formative idea. To a large extent, it was the not 

very favourable judgments heard abroad on the racial revolution within Fascism that induced me 

to devote myself to such material". 

Modern forms of the theory of race, be they based on history, philology, biology, philosophy, 

anthropology or religion, were, as Evola pointed out repeatedly, filled with confusions, 

misinterpretations and ambiguities, so that, before he was able to reformulate them from a 

traditional point of view, he had to specify the true meaning of race, from first principles: "There 

are three ways to understand the theory and the very concept of the race: with reference to a 

reality, to a certain order of scientific knowledge and, finally, to a 'myth'. According to the first 

way, the awareness of the value of the race already shows in a set of norms that are discernible in 

the ancient civilisations, particularly wherever the system of caste and the law of endogamy were 

in use, norms that in part were continued until relatively recent times in the specifically 

aristocratic traditions. This was an un-theorised but practical racism. This is why the word 'race' 

can be very seldom found in the ancient world: people did not feel the need to speak about race 

in the modern sense, because people had it. People were mainly interested, if ever they expressed 

interest at all, in the mystical forces that appeared behind those of the blood and the gens: for 

instance, in the Roman Patrician and, in general, Aryan cults related to the Lares, the Penates, 

and the archetypal heroes. But the necessity of preserving the blood, of maintaining and 

transmitting in its integrity a precious and irreplaceable inheritance linked to the blood, was 

distinctly perceived. That is why, in several cases, the contamination of a given blood appeared 

to the ancient, traditional, man, less as an offense of a social nature than as a true sacrilege (...). 

The word 'anthropology' originally meant science of man in general, considered both from 

physical and spiritual points of view. It was with such a meaning that the term was used in the 

ancient world, for example, by Aristotle, and it retained this meaning also in some Western 

philosophical schools, until Kant. But in the development of Western culture a shifting of point 

of view gradually took place. People became more and more accustomed to considering man not 

as a unique being within the created world, to be essentially understood on the basis of his 

supernatural origin and essence, but as one natural species among many others. Anthropology 

thus ended up assuming a new meaning: it was not a science of man as such any longer, but of 

man as a natural being, to which classificatory methods similar to those of zoology and botany 

could be applied: it was a natural science of man. 

"In this way, attention was to be more and more turned towards the corporeal and physical 

differences between human beings and the idea of there being several races of mankind gradually 

emerged, so that the idea of race became familiar and more and more definite in modern 

anthropology through various elements supplied by biology and genetics. Race, therefore, 

became a scientific concept, not to say scientistic: it came to be based on a knowledge of 

'positive' nature obtained with the classificatory and experimental method. 

"In the third place, we have race as a 'myth' - it is essentially in these terms that the idea of race 

took shape in Europe in the last quarter of the XlXth century, before it came to be part of 

renovating political movements, at first of National Socialism and then of Fascism. By 'myth', we 

do not mean a simple fiction, an arbitrary part of the imagination, but an idea that draws its force 

of persuasion mainly from elements that are not rational, an idea that is valuable above all for the 

evocative force that it condenses and, therefore, for its capacity to be expressed, finally, in 

action" ('II Mito del Sangue'). 

In 'II Mito del Sangue', Evola attempts "to show the genesis of racial theory, or more precisely, 

of the various themes in it, after having stated very precisely its meaning ; (...) the sources that 

have fueled the 'myth', the influences that have gradually contributed to its formation and 

assertion in contemporary history", while "sticking to the principle of the greatest objectivity". In 

the first place, the antecedents of racial theory in the ancient traditions, such as the polygenist 

theory and the Biblical monogenist theory, are mentioned ; in the second place, the doctrine of de 

Gobineau, as well as the three main components of modern racial theory (first, philosophical ; 

second, anthropological ; and third, philological) that were to be synthesised by this 'ancestor of 

racial theory', are examined ; in the third place, besides the theory of heredity, racial typology 

and the arctic myth, Chamberlain's theses are considered, in connection with the politicisation of 

racial theory and the part it had in post-war pan-German ideologies. Finally, the racial 

conception of history and the racial conception of law are presented, as well as the Jewish 

question, Rosenberg's 'new myth of blood' and Hitler's racism. 

And, as Evola himself mentions in the introduction to 'Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza' three years 

later, "the general opinion is that this account is one of the most comprehensive ever written so 

far on the matter in Italy". 'Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza' will be "the second part, both critical 

and constructive, of 'The Myth of Blood'". In the introduction to it, Evola specifies the two main 

reasons that led him to conceive it. They are complementary: in the first place, the official 

incorporation of the concept of race into Fascism - and, in this connection, it must be be borne in 

mind that Evola considers racial theory as an 'instrument', a 'power' of Fascism, to be looked 

upon, not as a contingent element in the Fascist ideology and spirit, but as inherent to it ; in the 

second place, there is the fragmentation of the concept of race in a vast number of theories, all 

more or less biologically and materialistically orientated, their controversial and propagandist 

use, which, by inviting the critique of the adversaries of racial thought, weakens fascism. Hence 

the imperative of a 'comprehensive and coherent', 'really totalistic formulation of the doctrine of 

race', if Fascism is to be fulfilled. By 'totalistic', Evola meant that "'morality' had to rely on an 

active will, that is to say that, once the 'revolutionary' duty of integrating the Fascist doctrine has 

been entrusted to the 'idea of race', racial theory should rise above the level of a 'particular 

discipline' (of scientific nature) to the more general level of a 'mentality', thus penetrating 'all the 

cultural manifestations of a time" (Gian Franco Lami). More than this, 'totalitarianism' can 

represent a positive political system to Evola, depending on which type of state it refers to: "As a 

matter of fact, the total state is not only a creature of necessity of modern times. Any traditional 

state was total, dogmatic, authoritarian. But there are two different ways to organise in a totalistic 

fashion, in the name of spirit and in the name of matter, in the name of what is superior to man 

and in the name of what, as mere collectivity, is inferior to him and subrational. Such is the 

difference between the great Supra-States of solar and traditional antiquity and the Bolshevik 

ideal" ('Sulle Premesse di un Antibolscevismo Positivo' - About the Premises of a 'Positive 

Anti-Bolshevism', in La Vita italiana, January 1937). Specifically, Evola shows, in the first 

chapter of 'Sintesi', that the doctrine of race is a 'revolutionary' instrument, in that, by 

reinvigorating national feeling and racial pride, it opposes universalism ; by substituting the 

organic value of personality for the Promethean ambitions of the individual, it fights 

individualism ; by going, through these values, beyond the paralysing antithesis of 'nature' and 

'culture', it makes rationalism irrational ; by considering history, not as an evolutionary process 

of material nature, but as a spiritual involution, it invalidates evolutionism ; it undermines 

materialism and the 'zoological' racism it gave birth to, by showing that there is no pure race in 

the modern world and that 'the mysticism of blood' is a product of a purely biological conception 

of race. 

In the same way, the doctrine of race conceived by Evola is to be considered as 'totalistic' 

('totalitario'): " The central thesis that I defended was, in short, the following one ", Evola 

explains in 'Mussolini e il Razzismo': "for man, the problem of race cannot be posed in the same 

terms, nor can it have the same meaning, as it can for a cat or for a thoroughbred horse. The real 

man, in addition to the biological and somatic part, is soul and spirit. Therefore, a comprehensive 

racial theory must consider all these three terms: body, soul and spirit. There will thus be a 

racism of the first degree, which addresses the strictly biological, anthropological and eugenic 

problems ; then, a racism of the second degree, which addresses the 'race of the soul', that is to 

say the form of the character and the affective reactions ; finally, as a crowning-piece, the 

consideration of the 'race of the spirit', which addresses the highest elements of the personality 

which, in regard to the general vision of the world and the beyond, destiny, life, action, in short, 

the 'highest values', differentiate and make men unequal. The classical ideal, racially interpreted, 

is the harmony and the unity of these three racial aspects in a higher type". To characterise these 

three racial aspects will be the subject of the second and third chapters of 'Sintesi', which in 

addition deal with questions such as those of natural races and superior races, of the race of the 

spirit as formative force, of the Hyperborean race and its ramifications, of the group of the Aryan 

races, of the superior race in the Nordic man and in the Mediterranean race, of the inner race and 

heredity, of the sexes and race, which last leads Evola to put forth the audacious concept of the 

'race of man' and the 'race of woman', and, as a preamble to the exposition of the principles of a 

racial theory of the spirit, enlightening observations on the problem of birth are made in the light 

of the Buddhist doctrines of karma and dharma. To define and distinguish the race of men and 

the race of women is in fact the first of the prerequisites that Evola, when he proceeds from the 

theory to its practical applications, adopts as the principle of effective racial reform ; "to 

acknowledge the reality of something super-biological, super-corporal, super-rational" is the 

second prerequisite. If Evola fully subscribes to the prophylactic and defensive measures meant 

for protecting the race of the body from alterations caused by racial mixing, he goes further and 

speaks of an 'intraracial discrimination'. The idea is that a race comprises several bloods, that one 

of them is higher than the others and that a time comes when this race must commit itself to this 

blood, choose the spiritual orientation that corresponds to its vocation, while, within this race, 

each individual must also make this choice, for, just as, among races, there are individuals whose 

higher nature predisposes them to occupy a central and leading part in history, there are, in a 

people, on the one hand, the elite, spiritual leaders, models of racial perfection, and, on the other 

hand, the people, in which race fulfills itself to a greater or lesser extent according to the 

individuals. 

Three main elements are to contribute to this decisive vital choice and to support this harmonious 

organic process of racial rectification: the myth and the symbol, conceived of in a traditional 

fashion as the reflection of a supernatural reality, are 'to galvanize and give shape to the 

emotional forces of a community' ; an 'austere' mysticism ; finally, a 'liturgy of power'. It must be 

borne in mind, however, that these conditions can only be met if an elite worthy of this name is 

in office ; to Evola, and this is a fundamental point, only a traditional state is able to provide the 

people with the means and the disciplines likely to spiritualise it, to lead it to a spiritual 

realisation according to the nature and the possibilities of each of its members. This elite Evola 

sees as an institutionalised one, as an Order. 

Tndirizzi per una Educazione Razziale', which was published, right in the middle of a 'racial 

campaign', in a collection of pedagogic and didactic studies, develops and specifies even further 

the points of reference given in 'Sintesi' to achieve such a goal. As the title of the book shows, it 

is primarily meant for educators: "our duty in this small volume is of a very special nature: it is 

not a matter of abstract expositions as bases of a general 'instruction' or 'information', nor of 

exploring the doctrine in greater depth and detail, but of being more specific about the ideas - 

and even the 'key ideas' - needed by an educator to achieve, in the field of racism as in other 

fields, his true goal. Simple notions, but clear and saturated with suggestive forces, likely to act 

on the soul of the youngsters rather than on their intellect alone, so as to promote a certain 

formation of their will and a certain orientation of their highest vocations. The educator must 

always be fully aware, on this point, of the essentially political and ethical value that the theory 

of race must have in Fascism as well as in the Fascist school. He must fully realise the race in 

question is something very different from the one biology and anthropology could speak of until 

recently (...). True racial philosophy, more than a special discipline, is a mentality". Opposed to 

the narrow and distorted naturalist and biological points of view on race, Evola criticises and 

goes beyond them, referring in this connection to Clauss' 'psychanthropy': race, to him, is a 

specific mentality, a hereditary style, a differentiated way of being. A race must be judged, not 

from its physical exteriority, its somatic features, but from its psychic interiority. The body, that 

is to say the racial features, is the means and ground of expression of a psycho -spiritual reality. 

Because Clauss thought that the psycho-spiritual dimension of man does not belong to the same 

level as that of his corporeal, somatic and biological features, he was accused of reintroducing 

the Christian dualism between body and soul, as opposed to the traditional tripartite conception 

of man as spirit (in the supra-rational sense), body and soul, which was precisely the conception 

revived by Evola within the framework of the racial theory he put forward. As Renato del Ponte 

rightly notes, "if however Clauss, keeping his examination on the psychological level, could 

avoid establishing a hierarchy of the various races, Evola, who begins to consider the spiritual 

values of each race and tries to delineate a typology of the races of the spirit, must necessarily 

place each spiritual type along the degrees of a hierarchical scale. Just as Clauss was right to 

assert that 'the objective value of a race could only be known by a man who would be beyond 

every race', Evola is right to assert the superiority of the 'solar race' over the 'titanic', of the 

'heroic race' over the 'telluric': there is no contradiction between the positions of these two 

authors, since each of them applies his research to a different level. The level to which Evola's is 

applied, or, to express it better, what is new in it in relation to that of other scholars in this field, 

allows the human being to know the objective hierarchical differences between the various 'races 

of the spirit', for the simple reason that it is in the spiritual element of man that the universal 

principle lies, able to place him 'beyond every race' and to make him foresee the real hierarchy of 

the spiritual types. Such an objective judgment, obviously, psychanthropy could not give, 

because the soul, the psyche lacks an element that transcends the individual subjectivity". 

In this connection, 'Indirizzi per una Educazione Razziale' contains as an appendix an essay on 

The Problem of the Supremacy of the White Race', in which some have claimed to see an 

anticipation of differentialist views on the grounds that, since, to Evola, the conformity or not to 

one's own tradition is the only valid criterion of superiority or inferiority for a given race or 

people, it follows that 'any race can only be superior or inferior in relation to itself. Those who 

will have fully understood and integrated the premises of the doctrine of race built by Evola from 

a traditional standpoint will immediately realise that this relativistic view leads to an absurdity. 

Since the 'heroic race' as such is superior to the 'telluric race' as such, it follows, for instance, 

that, if, at a given point in a given historical cycle, a given relatively fallen 'heroic race' can be 

objectively considered as inferior to a 'telluric race' still consonant with its own traditional form, 

the fact is that nevertheless a given 'heroic race' still consonant with its own archetype will still 

be objectively superior to a given 'telluric race' that shows the same degree of purity towards its 

own archetype. In short, 'ethnic' differentialism just forgets about hierarchy, which, whether one 

likes it or not, exists, and, in this, it is the victim of modern egalitarian prejudices. 

However, the fact that the Jews occupy so many key positions in both public and private sectors 

in most Western countries, to the point of being in real effective control of their economies and, 

through them, their social, cultural and political policies, not to mention their mass media, cannot 

but lead any serious lucid person, of whichever party, to wonder whether this could nevertheless 

be a sign of the inferiority of the white race, a fundamental question to which Evola brings a 

clear, straightforward, uncompromising answer in 'Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem', a work 

that condenses most of the considerations set out by him in fifty articles or so published, from 

1936 to 1941, in several Italian papers on the Jewish problem, most of which an Italian publisher 

was astute enough to compile, in 1994 in 'II 'Genio d'Israele" ('Israel's 'Genius"). In this, the most 

accomplished text he ever wrote as regards Judaism, Evola considers the effects that ensue from 

this reality in the spiritual world, in the cultural world and in the economic and social worlds. In 

addition to this there is, in the articles, an examination of the destructive action of the Jewish 

people throughout history, the part it has played in the attack upon the Aryan traditional world, 

and, therefore, in the construction of the modern world. In fact, Evola knew how to outline a 

comprehensive framework for the Jewish problem, which he analysed from all possible points of 

view. He avoids lingering over anthropological and biological analyses and focuses on the 

spiritual dimension, from which any historical manifestation proceeds. 

Evola notes and emphasises the fact that the Jewish Law and tradition is based on a unity, a unity 

that remains despite the composite and heterogeneous nature of the human materia prima. "It is 

the Jewish Law that extracted from a chaos of ethnic waste the Jewish type and gave shape to it, 

essentially as a spiritual type" ('Sulla Genesi dell'Ebraismo come Forza Distruttrice', La Vita 

Italiana, 1941 - 'On the Genesis of Judaism as a Destructive Force'). This formative force, this 

common spiritual legacy guarantees the unity of Israel, despite its dispersion in time and space, 

as well as the persistence of Jewishness as a set of stable hereditary tendencies, as an 

indestructible specific instinct, whether the Jew remains faithful to the Law or grows away from 

it. 

The Jewish Law is centered on the 'Promise' that Israel would be God's chosen people and would 

dominate all other peoples and possess their goods. Such a belief, which can already be found in 

the Old Testament, became even more pronounced in the Talmud, the Jewish oral tradition as 

interpretation of the Torah, whose violent expressions against the non-Jews are famous. The 

encounter with a world that denies the fundamental themes of the Jewish Law only reinforces the 

resentment of the Jew against peoples he sees as unjust and unfair. The Jewish Law thus only 

intensifies and legitimates the aversion to any non-Jewish people. "The Jew will sense in any 

society, in any regime, in any political organisation, an injustice, and, with respect to it, will 

always assert himself as a subversive, revolutionary or, at least, reforming element (...). Hence 

the high percentage of Jews, on the one hand, in movements with democratic, Masonic, 

humanitarian and liberal ideologies, and, on the other hand, in movements of Marxist, 

Communist and anarchist revolutionary subversion" (ibidem). And, on this antitraditional front, 

the secularised Jew, grown away from his Law and left to himself, meets with the religious Jew. 

As a matter of fact, the typical features of the Jewish people, far from diminishing in a Jew that 

has separated from his Law, become even more marked and his activity thus becomes even more 

corrosive for Aryan values, for, without law, he has no more norms. Those who pretend to 

criticise anti-Semitism by asserting that most Jews have no connection with their Law in the 

modern society are thus on the wrong track. The proof is that it is precisely the Jews with a 

non-religious background who are the most efficient representatives and propagators of 

internationalism, Communism, rationalism, and of any other ideology that constitutes an attack 

against form, difference, hierarchy and traditional spirit. 

In addition to this there is the dualism between body and soul, a distinctive feature of the Jew, 

whether secularized or not - a dualism that, as the preface writer of 'II 'Genio d'Israele" remarks, 

was passed on to a large extent to Christianity, to become even more pronounced in Calvinism 

and Protestantism, all 'lunar' beliefs, and that can be referred, in the last analysis, to a specific 

aspect of the feminine psyche. The incapacity to overcome this sterile and destructive dualism 

produces imbalances and contradictions of every kind, and, at the end of the day, it is the body, 

the flesh that prevails, leading to an abstract spirituality and a gross sensualism. Hence the taste 

for the assertion of the omnipotence of the law of flesh, of earth, of sex, of matter and gold. "To 

understand this inner situation means also to uncover the origins and causes of the nature that, 

almost without exception, is common to any sort of modern Jewish 'creation', be it in science or 

in economics, in literature or in music, in science of the religions or in psychoanalysis, in 

criminology or in anthropology, in law or in theatre, and so forth" (ibidem). 

While the Jew faithful to the Law resents and cannot but resent the peoples, the non- Jewish 

peoples, who do not recognise Israel as the 'chosen people', and, for this reason, tends to do 

everything he can, consciously or not, to subvert their values and the social and political 

organisation based on them, the secularised Jew, again more or less consciously, driven as he is 

by race-old specific instincts, sees in the Messianic myth and the expectation of the Regnum an 

effective domination over every people. Israel offered all its faith to Yahveh and, as a reward, 

expects Yahveh to supply it with all the wealth of the earth, and this is how mercantilist 

principles get applied to the religious field. The second 'column' of Judaism is Jewish capitalism 

and the Jewish financial International, that found in the solidification, the materialisation of the 

modern world, to which it contributed by giving more and more power to economic factors and 

faceless and stateless capital, the ideal ground to develop its own instinct and to achieve its own 

goals. 

Such were the premises assumed by Evola to analyse the undeniable Jewish problem in the 

larger context of racial thought in the 30's in Fascist Italy, taking advantage of a political 

situation that lent itself to such analysis. The spiritual climate, however, was not as favourable in 

later years to the development of racial philosophy and, within it, of anti-Semitism as set out by 

Evola, not to mention the fact that the war declared on 24 March 1933 by 'Judea' on Germany, 

the ally of Italy, did not precisely help to create a climate in which racial philosophy and 

anti-Semitism could have been examined in an objective and serene way, and that the course of 

war and, even more, its outcome were to frustrate any solution of the Jewish problem. Evola, 

throughout this process, remained always faithful to the Aryan traditional principles he fully 

endorsed, without ever lapsing into that gross racism and anti-Semitism he was the first to 

condemn: "On the plane of historical forces, I did not fail to show, not only the one-sidedness, 

but also the danger of a fanatical and visionary racism, even in the introduction I wrote for the 

new edition by Preziosi of the famous and most controversial 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'. I 

thus indicated how dangerous it was to think that Judaism alone is the enemy to fight: I was even 

led to see in this tendency the effect of one of the tactics of this war that I called the 'occult war' ; 

to ensure that all attention gets focused on a part of the whole is the best way to divert it from 

other parts and to keep on acting without being disturbed". 

The racial doctrine set out by Evola was not well received by the Italian racist camp at that time ; 

the criticisms presented against it are all based on the crassest form of biological and scientific 

racism, on the view, to sum them up, that "our racism must be that of flesh and muscles" (G. 

Almirante) ; they are mostly very similar to one another and result, at best, from a lack of 

understanding or, at worst, from a selective reading and bad faith. 

Post-WW2 critique is more worthy of attention, even though it still proceeds to a greater or 

lesser extent from a selective or superficial reading, and, because of the post-war demonisation 

of Fascism and National-Socialism and the 'Verjudung' that has proceeded from the full 

internalisation of this traumatising representation by the vast majority of our contemporaries, it is 

burdened with a compulsive scholarly need to exorcise a deep sense of guilt by trying more or 

less to apologise with a most convincing sense of self-righteousness for J. Evola's so-called 

"compromises" with Fascism and National-Socialism. Let us not dwell on this pronounced 

tendency, but not without stressing that Evola not only never apologised - why apologise when 

one has not made any mistake ? - but once stated that, if anyone has to apologise, it is the others, 

whose lessons in morality a differentiated man does not need. Let us not dwell either on the 

critical comments against the so-called 'enthusiasm' that he supposedly showed in using the word 

'Aryan', which is not more grounded than those against his supposedly mistaken use of the term 

'anti-Semitism'. Except in the cases where mention is made of the historical Aryans, it is made 

clear that the word 'Aryan' is used in a typological sense ; besides, it is often used ironically to 

designate contemporary German racists. With regard to the term 'anti-Semitism', the following 

excerpt from 'Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem' shows that he was fully aware that it should 

not be used as a synonym for 'anti- Judaism' : "the term 'Semitic', as everyone knows, implies a 

far broader concept than the mere term 'Jewish'. We will deliberately be using it here because 

we believe that the 'Jewish' element cannot be, purely and simply, separated from the general 

type of civilisation that formerly spread through the area of the Eastern Mediterranean from Asia 

Minor to the borders of Arabia - noteworthy though the differences between Semitic peoples 

may be". Thus, whilst a clear distinction based on etymology is duly made between 

anti-Semitism in general and anti-Judaism in particular, what all Semitic peoples, including the 

Jews, have in common in cultural and racial terms is conversely emphasised. 

Let us thus turn now to what stands as the work of reference in the field of Evolian studies on 

everything that concerns directly or indirectly the Italian author's political views and action, 

namely, the preface and introduction to the American edition of 'Gli uomini e le rovine' by H.T. 

Hansen ( http://www.juliusevola.com/site/MenAmongtheRuins.pdf) . Much of what is stated in it 

about the decisive influences on Evola's thought, his artistic experiences, his philosophical 

period, his first steps towards politics, is, from a scholarly perspective, accurate, yet it is difficult 

to understand how "Montaigne, Herder and his Volkergeist. . ., Fichte" can be seen as being 

among J. Evola's "forefathers", when strong reservations are expressed in the first chapter of V I1 

Mito del sangue' against Fichte's and Herder's position and constructions on race, and the 

philosophy of the half -Jewish French humanist is clearly light years away from the Italian 

author's Weltanschauung. Much of what is mentioned in it about his relations to Fascism and to 

Fascists in the years 1935-1945 is substantiated. The account given of the Italian author's 

connection with National- Socialism is not inaccurate, both on the politico-historical plane and 

on the intellectual plane, except it contains some nebulous formulations and it is dramatically 

incomplete. What a statement such as "Evola tried to construct a racial theory that combines the 

history of the spirit with racial history" may mean is not clear at all, and yet it is the conclusion 

reached at the end of the chapter on "Evola and Racism" ; now, what he tried to do in this respect 

was, as laconically put by the preface writer of 'Sintesi di dottrina della razza' (1994, 2d ed.), "to 

give a traditional content to a modern concept", that is to say, to apply the concept of race to the 

traditional organic view of man as body, soul, and spirit. Much has been written in the 

Anglo-Saxon world about the relations between J. Evola and National-Socialist leadership, much 

of which is entirely based on what is reported about these in the preface and introduction to 'Men 

among the Ruins', which in turn relies on documents which were published in Italian translation 

from the mid-1980's ('Julius Evola nei documenti segreti del Terzo Reich', 1986, 'Julius Evola 

nei documenti segreti del Ahnenerbe', Fondazione Julius Evola, 1997, and 'Julius Evola nei 

rapporti delle S.S.', Fondazione Julius Evola, 2000), the only available reports written by 

German authorities during WW2 about the Italian author ; they were mainly taken from the 

Bundesarchiv in Koblenz and the Berlin Document Centre. 

The first document is a letter, dated January 2 1938, from SS-Hauptsturmfiihrer Langsdorff to 

Reichsfuhrer Himmler about "the personality and the ideas of Evola" and, more particularly, 

about 'Heidnischer Imperialismus' ; the last, a short letter, dated September 1940, from J. Evola 

to Dr Bohm from the Ahnenerbe. However, the consideration of these documents in 'Julius 

Evola's political endeavors' stops at "The final report on Evola's June 1938 lectures, kept in the 

handwritten files of the personal staff of the Reichsfuhrer- SS (file AR/126)", whose notorious 

conclusion is highlighted : "there exist no grounds for National-Socialism to place itself at the 

disposal of Baron Evola. His political plans for a Romano-Germanic Imperium are of a Utopian 

character and moreover very apt to cause ideological confusions. Since Evola is also only 

tolerated and barely supported by Fascism, it is tactically not necessary to accommodate his 

tendencies from our side. It is therefore recommended to : 

1. Not support Evola's current efforts for the establishment of a secret supra-national order and 

the founding of a magazine directed toward this goal. 

2. Curb his public activities in Germany after this lecture series, without taking any special 

measures. 

3. Prevent his further penetration into leading offices of the party and the state. 

4. Observe his propaganda activity in neighboring countries." 

In fact, here, the very last document to be taken into account is a short letter, dated August 8, 

1938, from the author of the report to H. Himmler : "The Reichsfuhrer-SS has acknowledged the 

report regarding the lectures of Baron Evola and is in full agreement [or rather, in agreement] 

with the thoughts and recommendations [or rather, the terms] stated in the last paragraph 

thereof." On that basis, the inference can legitimately be drawn that "the SS as a whole was not 

favorably inclined toward him, even though he was apparently unaware of it" ; it will soon 

become clear why "he was apparently unaware of it". Speaking of awareness, has anyone 

wondered why, in 1944, following the invasion of Italy by the Anglo-Saxon cannon fodder of the 

anti-European forces, J. Evola moved to Austria, where, in Vienna, he was commissioned by the 

SS to translate Freemasonic documents seized by the Gestapo from various lodges which had 

just been raided by the SS, if indeed "the SS as a whole was not favorably inclined toward him" 

? "In Vienna it was possible for" M. Serrano "to read an internal communication among several 

SS centers in which they recommended Julius Evola not be given facilities to expound 'his 

esotericism'" (The Ultimate Avatar). It's a shame that the Chilean author did not have the 

opportunity to have access to the various other documents which were published in 'Julius Evola 

nei rapporti delle SS', and which are not brought to the reader's attention in 'Julius Evola's 

Political Endeavours'. 

In a short letter, dated September 6, 1938, to the personal staff of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, the 

v Societa Italo-Tedesca' confirmed they had received the day before a payment of "300 

Reichsmark for the stay of J. Evola in Germany" the previous June. 

In March 1939, G. Landra, who later became the first director of the Office of Racial Studies and 

who, at that time, was a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Rome, wrote to the 

Reichsfuhrer-SS, informing him that J. Evola had drawn their attention to the "biological and 

racist basis of the SS led by you, as well as to the aspects that make it a caste order". 

Six weeks later or so, the SS. Obersturmbannfuhrer Grau, in a letter to SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer 

Dr. R. Brandt, H. Himmler's personal chief of staff, reminded him that "Baron Evola, who once 

published a brilliant article on the SS in the Italian review 'La Vita Italiana', . . . after he read the 

speech delivered by the Reichsfiihrer-SS. . . in Magdeburg, wrote another article, which is 

essentially based on this speech and which he would like to publish under the signature of the 

Reichsfuhrer, either in 'La Vita Italiana', or in the review 'Regime Fascista'. The Baron is acting 

under the explicit orders of Professor Landra, that is, of the Minister (of Popular Culture) 

Farinacci." 

Two days later, Dr. Brandt informed Grau that J. Evola' s request had been favourably considered 

by the Reischsfiihrer, who, however, did not wish the article to be published under his name, and 

asked that a few minor changes be made to some passages "that could hurt Italians' feelings". It 

was published on June 15 of that year, in 'Regime Fascista', and sent to H. Himmler, who, on 

July 26, had Standartenfiihrer Ullmann, informed G. Landra of the following : 

"The Reichsfuhrer-SS is willing to keep supporting in the future the work of writer of Baron J. 

Evola. Baron J. Evola is therefore asked to make proposals on the topics he intends to tackle in 

the field of activities of the SS." 

Incidentally, there is every reason to believe that, surprisingly enough, J. Evola was far more 

familiar with F£. Himmler's and German ideologists' ideas and policies than these were actually 

familiar with his work, let alone their knowledge of his precise relations with the Fascist regime. 

Indeed, in a review of 'Grundrisse der Faschistischen Rassenlehre' ('Synthesis of Fascist Racial 

Doctrine'), the German edition of 'Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza' ('Synthesis of Racial 

Doctrine'), sent on September 9, 1942 to the head of the NSDAP Racial Policy Department, Dr 

Gross, Dr Huettig stated that J. Evola "was not authorised" to publish it under this title 

('Synthesis of Fascist Racial Doctrine' instead of 'Synthesis of Racial Doctrine), when 

permission to do so had been given to the Italian author by B. Mussolini. This lack of first-hand 

information is also evidenced by another document quoted by Hansen, a document "from 

Himmler's personal staff which shows that "Himmler personally received and collected 

information about Evola" and "reports that Himmler again ordered a thorough examination of 

Evola' s Heidnischer Imperialismus, in which the German translation should even be compared to 

the original Italian text in order to eliminate errors in translation (sic)." So the chief of the 

Sicherheitshauptamt (main security office) who was supposedly in charge of collecting 

information about the Italian author was not aware of what was known by any contemporary 

Italian-speaking German reader interested in J. Evola's work, that is, that 'Heidnischer 

Imperialismus' was not the German translation of 'Imperialismo pagano', but a different book. 

Some have sought to "fill in the gaps" by means of embroidery, in the 

tradition of sensational journalism, describing Evola, for example, 

as the "eminence grise of Mussolini", while others beat around the 

bush in a conventional manner, attempting to exorcise their own 

senses of guilt by trying more or less to apologise, from a merely 

moral point of view, for Evola's so-called "compromises" with Fascism 

and National Socialism. We may add that this shows some temerity, 

because Evola not only never apologised - why apologise when one has 

not made any mistake? - but once stated that, if anyone needed 

excuses, it was the others, the representatives of counter-initiation 

and their gynaeco-democratic lackeys, whose lessons a differentiated 

man does not need. 

'Evola's attitude towards the Jews', the fifth part of 'Julius Evola's Political Endeavours', is 

also, to a greater or lesser extent, the fruit of a selective reading of the Italian author's 

anti-Semitic writings and of a biased tendency to think of racism merely as hatred or intolerance 

of another race. It is true that "There are so many comments against the Jews in Evola's work, 

ranging from simple criticisms to truly painful ones, that there can be no doubt about his basic 

attitude..." ; rather than being "against Jews", however, these comments are, first and foremost, 

about Jews. The first sentence of the following quote demonstrates a consummate sense of 

salami slicing which distorts greatly the Italian author's thought : "His writings never spoke out 

against orthodox religious Judaism. On the contrary ; as an example, he writes in his Tre aspetti 

del problema Ebraico (Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem), Rome, 1936, p. 23 : 'There are 

elements and symbols in the Old Testament that possess metaphysical and therefore universal 

value.' Or in (a footnote of) Revolt Against the Modern World (p. 281) : 'In contrast to orthodox 

Judaism, early Christianity can at most claim a mystical character on the same line as the 

prophets. . . And whenever a true esotericism was subsequently created in the West, it was 

essentially found outside of Christianity with the help of non-Christian currents, like the Hebraic 

Kabbalah. . . '" Indeed, the following clause, a restrictive one, was left out of the first quote : 

"even though they were taken from somewhere else . . ." . The point made by J. Evola is that 

"even though they were taken from somewhere else, elements and symbols of metaphysical and, 

therefore, universal value can be found in the Old Testament ('Three Aspects of the Jewish 

Problem', Thompkins&Cariou, 2003, p. 14). As regards the second quote, for the sake of 

completeness, a passage of 'La scienza ebraica, la teoria della relativita e la 'catarsi demoniaca" 

(Vita Italiana, May 1940) in which. the Kabbalah is considered as an application to the divine 

world of the Semitic peoples', and, more specifically, of the Jews' "tendency towards abstract 

mathematical speculation", should have been brought to the reader's attention, making him 

aware that J. Evola's views on early Hebraism varied significantly over time with respect to the 

issue of Messianism : in a curious article called 'Trasformazioni del 'Regnum" (La Vita Italiana, 

1937), it is argued that "It is not the former Jewish Messianic idea, but its corruption and its 

materialisation, which is the real point of reference for the subversive forces which aim at 

destroying for good our civilisation and at exercising a satanic dominion on all forces on earth", 

whereas the close connexion between the early Jewish Messianic idea and the thirst for material 

possessions right from the start, and not just from Mosaic times, is fully recognised by the Italian 

author both in 'II Mito del sangue' ("... the 'Kingdom' supposedly promised to the Jewish people 

was not understood by any means in a mystical and supra-terrestrial sense, but as that which is to 

possess all the riches of the world") and in 'II Giudaismo nell'antichita' ("It has been noted that 

the very way the Jews conceived of the relation between man and the divinity, a relation that was 

based on a mercantile mechanism of service and rewards, shows, de do ut est, a mercantilism 

that must have already constituted the essence of Judaism in ancient times ; however, this spirit 

could not but provoke the scorn of Aryan peoples, who were used to a different type of morality 

and conduct. As is known, in the ancient Law, the Torah, the Messianic idea was already 

intimately connected with earthly riches and goods, which would give rise to capitalistic 

speculation, and, finally, to economics as an instrument of power in Israel's plans"). 

Between 1932 and September 1941, Julius Evola published forty articles or so on the Jewish 

problem in various Italian papers, of which thirty-one, all signed v Arthos', appeared in La Vita 

Italiana, and were compiled in 1992, by the Italian publisher II Cinabro, into an anthology, the 

aforementioned 'II 'Genio' d'Israele'. It is divided into four sections, namely 'L'Azione 

distruttrice' ('The Destructive Action'), 'Guerra occulta e 'Protocolli" ('Occult War and the 

'Protocols"), 'L'Intervento nella Storia' ('The Intervention in History'), 'L'Antisemitismo' 

('Anti-Semitism'). The title is borrowed from a set of three articles published by J. Evola in La 

Vita Italiana in 1936 on the subject of the destructive action of Judaism : 'II 'Genio' d'Israele' 

("Israel's 'Genius"), at the outset of which the organic nature of the study of Judaism which he 

was about to carry out in a long series of articles, "whose systematic coherence will certainly not 

escape the attentive readers of La Vita Italiana", is made clear. Three-quarters of these articles, 

which, for most of them, stand as essays on their own, examine the Jewish problem on the 

cultural and scientific level in the broadest sense, while the remaining quarter looks into it, either 

from a spiritual and religious perspective, or from an economic, social and political perspective. 

Therefore, it is simply not the case that "Evola's attacks are more often directed against the Jews 

as symbol of the rule of economic-materialistic individualism and the hegemony of money. In 

other words : in the Jews he is fighting materialism", and that these would be limited to ". . . the 

same accusations that Martin Luther brought up, and which Karl Marx presented in his tract Zur 

Judenfrage (Concerning the Jewish Question), published 1844 in the Deutsche franzosische 

Jahrbucher in Paris." Marx's anti-Semitic arguments are of the economic order, while Luther's 

are of the religious and economic order. The Jewish question was looked into "in a totalising 

way" by J. Evola. 

Even if J. Evola had only envisaged the Jewish problem from an economic perspective, it would 

still not be inaccurate to state that "The fact that in doing so he again brings up all the 

well-known prejudices and generalizations shows that he too was dependent on the preeminent 

Zeitgeist". For "These accusations" had already been made by a huge number of people 

throughout the ages, including the citizens of the German town of Hirschau, who, in the 

Renaissance, "opposed allowing Jews to live there because Jews were seen as aggressive 

competitors who ultimately dominate the people they live among : 'If only a few Jewish families 

settle here, all small shops, tanneries, hardware stores, and so on, which, as things stand, provide 

their proprietors with nothing but the scantiest of livelihoods, will in no time at all be superseded 

and completely crushed by these [Jews] such that at least twelve local families will be reduced to 

beggary, and our poor relief fund, already in utter extremity, will be fully exhausted within one 

year. The Jews come into possession in the shortest possible time of all cash money by getting 

involved in every business; they rapidly become the only possessors of money, and their 

Christian neighbors become their debtors." (in http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/UnderstandJI- 1 .htm ) 

From 'Antisemitism Through the Ages' (Almog, S., Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988) and 'History and Hate : 

The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism' (Berger, D., Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997) to 'Antisemitism : 

A Reference Handbook' (Chanes, J. A., Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004) and 

'Antisemitism : A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution' (Levy, R.S., Santa 

Barbara, CA : ABC-CLIO, 2005), countless books, essays, and articles examine the relations 

between Jews and non-Jews and analyse the origins and the development of intellectual and 

cultural anti-Semitic ideas and beliefs in Europe from Roman times to the present ; whether or 

not it was the Enlightenment that made possible the growth of non religious anti-Semitism, the 

fact remains that anti-Semitic attitudes were prevalent among French and Russian intellectual 

circles as early as in the XVIIIth century, while, drawing its inspiration from German 

romanticism, and, particularly, from the Jew Johann Gottfried Herder's concept of Volk, 

anti-Semitic literature, in which the Jew became the incarnation of selfish and atomistic 

individualism and of resistance to the national, ethnic, and ethical state, flourished in the first 

half of the XLXth century in Germany. As summed up by B. Lazare ('Antisemitism : Its History 

and Causes', 1894), "If this hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the Jews at one 

time or in one country only, it would be easy to account for the local causes of this sentiment. 

But this race has been the object of hatred with all the nations amidst whom it ever settled". 

In an essay on the Aryan nature published in 1940 in 'II Corriere Padano', J. Evola stressed that 

"One is born 'Aryan', one does not become so : NASCITUR, NON FIT. (...) To be Aryan is a 

quality of race and of caste. It is transmitted from father to son. Nothing can replace it : just as 

the privilege which, until recently, aristocratic blood had among us." No reference is made to 

these lines in 'J. Evola's Political Endavours', in which, on the other hand, a truncated quote 

from the Italian author" is used to support the empty claim that "Since Evola set supreme 

importance on the spiritual attitude, a Jew could of course also espouse Aryan thought" : "There, 

he writes verbatim : For example, can an 'Aryan' have a Jewish soul or inner race and vice versa 

? Yes, it is possible. . ." This truncated quote is taken from a footnote to the antepenultimate 

paragraph of '"Scienza, razza e scientismo' [Science, Race, and Scientism], in Vita Italiana, 

XXX, no. 357, December 1942, pp. 556-563", a right of reply which was offered by G. Preziosi, 

La Vita Italiana' s editor, to him, after his racial doctrine had been the subject of inflammatory 

attacks, a major proponent of scientistic and biological racism. 

This is the antepenultimate paragraph : "A few more words should be said about the problem of 

selection. The problem of selection in its higher aspects is obviously closely linked to the inner 

race, or the expression of inner race. Once biology and similar disciplines have defined a given 

area, the boundaries of which cannot be crossed (4), it does not mean that, within these 

boundaries, everything is in order and that race manifests the same purity and nobility, even 

where pathological processes and hereditary taints can be ruled out. Hence the problem of inner 

or interracial selections, a problem which, as far as active and political racism is concerned, is at 

least as important as the protection from crossbreeding, or rather is the necessary counterpart of 

this racism, since what is true here is also true of diseases : it is only when steps are taken to 

strengthen the body and to erase predispositions that the risk of infection is greatly reduced." 

This is the footnote : "Exceptions do not alter the rule, and, in this field, they can be explained 

scientifically, with reference to the Mendelian laws of inheritance. Can an 'Aryan' have, for 

example, a Jewish soul or inner race, or vice versa ? Yes, it is possible, and this does not 

contradict anything, or destroy the principle that the biological element must be used as the first 

criterion of discrimination. Here, a difficulty would arise only if it could be demonstrated that, in 

the ancestors of the type in question, down to the most remote generations, no racial mixing 

occurred : such a demonstration is nearly impossible. But since this cannot be demonstrated, the 

Aryan soul of a Jew or the Jewish soul of an Aryan could still be considered as a case of 

reappearance of exogenous ancestral characteristics which had remained latent, 

'recessive' . . .THIS WILL NOT RESULT IN THE ARYANISATION OF THE FORMER 

[emphasis added] or in the degradation of the latter into a Jew, but in a case by case 

discrimination, limited strictly to the individual and, therefore, not transmittable to offspring. It is 

therefore useless to raise again and again this objection to try to invalidate the theory that 

distinguishes the race of the body from the race of the soul." Apart from the fact that there is no 

comparison between feeling and being, the spurious assumption that "Evola had surely noticed 

that especially in Germany some Jews felt more 'Aryan' than many Germans, and this was not 

only in intellectual circles" is wishful thinking. 

While J. Evola was the first to acknowledge and to criticise constructively the racist arguments 

of biological and zoological order that flourished in National-Socialist Germany, it is ridiculous 

to reduce the whole of National-Socialist racism to these, so as to suggest that there was a binary 

opposition between the nature and content of National-Socialist racism and J. Evola's, which, as 

to it, would be 'spiritual'. This is precisely the egregious error that is made by one of the 

'knowledgeable experts' whose self-righteous insight is used to support the views expressed on 

this matter in 'J. Evola's Political Endeavors', in which it is however acknowledged that "Of 

course, Evola does not intend to totally cut off the idea of "race" from its biological 

background". Indeed, when R. De Felice argues that "...the 'spiritual' theory of races... 

renounced the German and German-derived confusions and tried ... to confine racism to the 

plane of a cultural problem worthy of the name" (History of the Italian Jews under Fascism), not 

only he disregards the positive fact that the racial question was looked into by J. Evola on all 

planes, and not just on the cultural one, but also his considerations are based on "a confusion that 

Landra wants to create in the minds of his readers, giving them to understand that only a scientist 

and biological racism is followed in Germany. Is this not precisely what is aimed at by those who 

devote themselves to a dull intellectual work of sabotage against the Axis and set people against 

the 'barbarity' and the 'materialism' of German racism ? Cases such as Manacorda's, R. 

Carbonelli's, Bendiscioli's and the like are more than meaningful in that regard. But the reality is 

completely different, as we have said many times and we must say again. Landra acts as if he 

was unaware that, in Germany, as a complement and counterpart of Walther Gross and his 

doctors and biologists, there is Rosenberg, and besides the Rassenpolitisches Amt (the Office of 

Racial Policy), there is the Beauftragter besondere des Fahrers fur die gesamte Weltanschauung, 

which is at least as powerful. All that we mean by 'inner race' and 'spiritual race' has the closest 

relation with what is defined in Germany by the term 'world view' and, as authoritatively put by 

the Fiihrer in Nuremberg, has the character of priority and of infallibility, since only the way of 

thinking and of behaving, as well as the world view, can be seen - according to Hitler - as a 

confirmatory proof of racial qualities. In this paper, we have commented repeatedly on the role 

of the 'struggle for a world- view' in Germany, on the determination with which it has been 

conducted, and on the fact that, in National-Socialism, it accounts for the truly active and 

creative counterpart of the purely biological and prophylactic racism, so that there is no need to 

repeat ourselves." ('Scienza, razza e scientismo') J. Evola consistently stressed that "Precise 

considerations of 'racism of first degree' should. . . not be neglected in the creation of a new 

ruling class" ( http://thompkins cariou.tripod.com/id7.html) in parallel with considerations of 

racism of second and third degree. One of the very first authors to use truncated quotes from the 

writings of J. Evola on the SS to support the thesis that the SS was incapable of contemplating 

anything beyond "materialist racism" and that J. Evola reached the conclusion that the SS was 

incapable of contemplating anything beyond "materialist racism" is the Jew A. de Benoist 

('Julius Evola, Reactionnaire radical et metaphysician engage' 

( http://www.scribd.com/doc/56441759/Julius-Evola-Alain-de-Benoist) , who dares say that H. 

"Himmler's world-view was at the extreme opposite of J. Evola's', despite the fact that no major 

criticism of the Reichsfuhrer's views and action in the racial field can be found in any of the four 

articles published by the Italian author on him. J. Evola pointed out that the criteria for 

membership in the SS were biologico-racist as well as of an ethico-spiritual nature 

('L'Animatore delle SS e il Problema delle Nuove Elette', Regime Fascista, December 17 1940), 

of an ethico-spiritual nature which had been defined precisely by H. Himmler himself in an 

article published in the same paper the year before ('Principi per una Nuova Elite 

Politica-Razzista'), which was translated in all likelihood by J. Evola and which, in any case, 

was commented on by him in 'Le SS, guardia e "ordine" della rivoluzione crociuncinata'. 

Because of the fact that the following statement by A. de Benoist is preceded and followed by 

quotes from J. Evola's work, and that the inverted commas used around several groups of words 

in it make these look like actual quotes, any reader unfamiliar with the latter' s writings on race, 

and more particularly, on German racism, is led to assume that it is faithful to their spirit : "The 

SS were not conceived of in any way as a "men's band", as "an elite defined by an exclusively 

manly solidarity" and oriented toward "the absolute individual" ; each of its members has instead 

to found a family as part of an hereditary line." In fact, J. Evola wrote exactly the opposite in 'Le 

SS, guardia e "ordine" della rivoluzione crociuncinata' (1938) : " A SS man is not free to marry 

whomever he wants. By means of a law promulgated by Himmler in 1931, a special bureau must 

ensure that the woman he has chosen offers sufficient guarantees that she can have children 

conforming to the type and the race. On this basis, the SS viewed itself as a "Sippenorden", that 

is, a "kinship order", and it is on this anti-individualist and racial basis that it wanted to develop. 

The capacity to comply with this law is already a first proof of a higher order, as it shows that 

one is willing to subordinate feeling and passion as a purely personal fact to the supra-individual 

needs." H. Himmler's conception of the SS as a 'Mannerbund' is reasserted in 'Fascismo e Terzo 

Reich' (6th edition, 2001), in which, however, a completely different and unexpected approach 

to the issue of marriage in the SS is taken : "With this clause [that which stipulated that no SS 

man could marry whomever he wanted], racist biologism was reasserted, not unrelated with a 

certain trivilisation of the feminine ideal, as the 'motherly' aspect of woman was given special 

emphasis." (ibid, p. 221) If, from the standpoint J. Evola looks at things, marriage consent should 

certainly be based on higher criteria than the race of the body and hereditary health, it is hard to 

understand what is wrong in highlighting the "'motherly' aspect of woman" in a matrimonial 

context. Apart from this criticism, it is extremely interesting that the few pages dedicated to the 

SS in 'Fascismo e Terzo Reich' are essentially descriptive, and that, in the end, the positive role 

played by the SS in the Aufordnung, that is, in the 'nordicisation' of the German people both on 

the mental and on the spiritual plane, is fully acknowledged (p. 204). 

Due recognition of the sound foundations and of the positive formative action of the SS in terms 

of formation of character and sensitivity, of ethics, along Nordic lines, does not mean that in the 

pre-WW2 period J. Evola was not critical of its spiritual aspect, which, despite "the 

unquestionable existence of a considerable interest and of an appropriate sensitivity", did not 

appear to him as being grounded in "principles worthy of the name" (ibid.), even though it 

testified to attempts of the German leadership at integrating the National-Socialist world- view 

into a higher traditional and symbolic content, attempts which, "however, should not prompt 

hasty conclusions : as a matter of fact, it is not easy, in this matter, to make up one's mind, and 

the harmful effects of a wrong way of thinking and of a false culture which have been 

characteristic of the Western man for centuries cannot be destroyed overnight." 

In concluding a review of a speech delivered by A. Hitler in Nuremberg in 1933, J. Evola had 

shown the same caution, stating that, even though he had examined the German chancellor's 

writings as well as the main National-Socialist ideologists', he was not able "to see whether, in 

the end, the inner spirit of this revolutionary current works toward a racist particularism or to a 

universal idea. To overcome the internationalist collapse, to restore the qualitative values of race 

and of difference, not, however, so as to end in the pluralism of closed units and of ideas put in 

the service of material interests and empirical politics, but so as to allow the formation of a 

superior, ecumenical, reality, likely to manly unite nations in spirit without merging them in their 

bodies, seems to us the fundamental problem of the European future." (Osservazioni critiche sul 

"razzismo" Nazionalsocialista, La Vita italiana, November 1933) In his last writing about this 

usse, it is clear that J. Evola considered that, in the end, the National-Socialist leadership was not 

up to the task in this regard : "in National-Socialist racism, [the] biological aspect played an 

important role, and, because of a 'scientistic' bias, they were greatly mistaken in thinking that all 

that was needed to bring back to life qualities that had become dormant and to resurrect almost 

automatically the man who would be the creator of a superior civilisation was to use prophylaxis 

and to erect barriers to cross-breeding and hybridism." On the theoretical plane, however, it did 

not escape J. Evola's notice that racism was far more differentiated and 'in ordnung' than on the 

practical plane : "... in the National-Socialist propaganda and legislation, the concept of race had 

an undetermined content and was affected by collectivistic elements, while on the other hand, 

even though less officially, a different orientation, a selective orientation, existed in the Third 

Reich. . . Whilst generic racism was a mere expedient to strengthen nation self-consciousness. . . 

as not only the main anthropological divisions, but also 'races' as special articulations within 

each of these and of the white or 'Aryan' race itself, are considered in the modern doctrine of 

race, it was necessary to acknowledgment that Germany was not the expression of one pure and 

homogeneous racial stock, but of a mix of various 'races'... A racism of second degree thus 

developed. The collectivism of the Volk and of the Aryano-German Volksgemeinschaft to be 

defined, defended, and handled totalistically on the basis of the Gleichschaltung was overcome 

by the idea that not all the racial components of the German people had the same value and that 

the most qualified element, the superior element, was the 'Nordic' or 'Nordid' one." ('Fascismo 

e Terzo Reich', p. 204) This point is categorically acknowledged by A. Hitler : "The 

fundamental racial elements are not only different in different districts, but there are also various 

elements in the single districts. Beside the Nordic type we find the East-European type, beside 

the Eastern there is the Dinaric, the Western type intermingling with both, and hybrids among 

them all. That is a grave drawback for us." (Mein Kampf, p. 328 - 

http://www.greatwar.nl/books/meinkampf/meinkampfpdf ) Since this programmatic work was 

meant for the general public, it would be overstating the case to say, as did J. Evola, that "Any 

German was implicitly led to believe that he was eminently that 'Aryan' who was credited with 

the creation and the origin of any superior civilisation", and that, as a result, the concept of race 

undergone a 'democratisation' in the Third Reich. "In fact, he does well to add, what serious 

[German] racists meant by 'Aryan' was a rather broad category in which the 'German' (and even 

the 'Germanic') represented only a special kind." In actual fact, Any German had to live with the 

thought that "Unfortunately the German national being is not based on a uniform racial type. The 

process of welding the original elements together has not gone so far as to warrant us in saying 

that a new race has emerged. On the contrary, the poison which has invaded the national body, 

especially since the Thirty Years' War, has destroyed the uniform constitution not only of our 

blood but also of our national soul. The open frontiers of our native country, the association with 

non-German foreign elements in the territories that lie all along those frontiers, and especially 

the strong influx of foreign blood into the interior of the REICH itself, has prevented any 

complete assimilation of those various elements, because the influx has continued steadily. Out 

of this melting-pot no new race arose. The heterogeneous elements continue to exist side by 

side" (Mein Kampf, p. 328), including, needless to say, the Jews. 

A few paragraphs are devoted to J. Evola's warning against the scapegoating of the Jew, and, 

this time, in strict accordance with the Italian author's views. The longer the quotes, the more 

consistent with J. Evola's thought : "A serious formulation of the Jewish problem cannot 

overlook that which concerns the Aryan peoples themselves : the Jew must be prevented from 

becoming a kind of scapegoat for everything that in reality the non Jews also have to answer 

for." Since it is beyond the scope of this descriptive review of J. Evola's writings on race to 

discuss the validity of this warning, let us move on to the next contentious point. It relates to J. 

Evola's treatment of 'The Protocols of the Elder of Zion' in 'L'autenticita dei "Protocolli" 

provata dalla tradizione ebraica" (Edizioni di Ar, Padova 1971, p. 183-204), in which, according 

to Hansen, "he included a mass of quotations allegedly from the Talmud and other Jewish 

religious writings. However, these quotes were taken not from the original writings but from 

second or third hand sources, such as Rohling's Talmudjuden and Theodor Fritsch's Handbuch 

der Judenfrage, whose dubious scholarship and zealous bias should have been obvious to Evola". 

By scholarly standards, it should have been specified that these quotes were also taken from a far 

more reliable source, namely, Father LB. Prainitis' - Master of Theology and Professor of the 

Hebrew Language at the Imperial Ecclesiastical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church in Old 

St. Petersburg - 'Talmud Unmasked' ( http://www.talmudunmasked.com/ ), to which the Italian 

author devoted a whole essay : 'I Cristiani e il Talmud' (Biblioteca della 'Difesa della razza', 

Roma-Milano, 1939-XVII, p. 247), and which is not mentioned once among J. Evola's sources 

on the Talmud by C. Mattogno. "Carlo Mattogno - Hansen goes on - who is probably more 

partial toward Evola, in a series of articles for Orion 

( http://andreacarancini.blogspot.com/2010/05/evola-e-la-veridicita-dei-protocolli.html - Note of 

the Editor) examined the aforementioned quotes allegedly stemming from old Hebrew sources, 

and proved that they were either falsified (though long before Evola), taken out of context, or in 

some cases freely invented." In fact, C. Mattogno, who cannot read Aramaic more than Hansen 

or us can, and who, as a result, cannot check the primary sources, does not reveal anything that J. 

Evola did not already know, relying as he is on his own second or third hand sources. Let us go 

further : as is well-known, Aramaic, as any Semitic language, uses no vowels. "Imagine, A. 

Fomenko points out, how precise the kind of writing that consisted of nothing but consonants 

would be today, when the combination BLD, for instance, could mean blood, bled, build, boiled, 

bald, etc. (...) The vocalization aleatory quotient in ancient Hebraic and other old languages is 

exceptionally high. Many consonant combination may be vocalized in dozens of ways. Gesenius 

wrote that "it was easily understood how imperfect and unclear such writing method had been" (quoted in [765]). 

T. R Curtis also noted that "even for the priests he meaning of the scriptures remained extremely doubtful and 

could only be understood with the aid of the tradition and its authority" (quoted in [765], p. 155). Robertson Smith 

adds that "the scholars had no other guide but the actual text, that was often ambiguous, and oral tradition. 

They had no grammatical rules to follow ; the Hebraic that they wrote in often allowed for verbal 

constructions that were impossible in the ancient language." In any case, the Talmud needs to be 

kept in proportion, put into perspective, demystified, so as to reduce the morbid fascination it 

often holds for Gentiles. Even if all the Talmudic quotes produced by anti-Semites were false, be 

it because they were fabricated or as a result of mistranslation, Deuteronomy 7:16, 2:25, 9:3, 

9:11, 11:23, 12:2-3, to name a few, are explicit enough not to leave any doubt about the 

'feelings' of the Jews for him and what they have in store for him. The inspiration of the Talmud 

is not different from that of the Torah. It extended the Law to apply specifically to Christianity. 

In the last paragraphs of 'J. Evola's attitude toward the Jews', scholarly self-righteousness, 

boosted by intellectual dishonesty, reach new heights of Jesuitism. When the preface writer 

asserts that "Even if some things announced in the Protocols, although already easy to recognize 

at the time of their publication, such as Liberalism and Rationalism and the dissolution of family 

ties, have come to pass, there are scores of contradictions and absurdities in them that destroy 

their 'authenticity'", he shies away from the main point made by the Italian author, which is that 

"the problem of their 'authenticity' is secondary to the far more serious and essential problem of 

their 'veracity', as already emphasised by Giovani Preziosi when he published them for the first 

time seventeen years ago. The serious and positive conclusion of the whole controversy which 

has developed since is that, even if we assume that the Protocols are not 'authentic' in the narrow 

sense, it comes to the same thing as if they were, for two capital and decisive reasons : 

1) because the facts show that they describe the real state of affairs truthfully ; 

2) because their correspondence with the governing ideas of both traditional and modern Judaism 

is indisputable." ( http://thompkins cariou.tripod.com/id68.html ) 

"(...) the theoretical convergence between the essence of the Protocols and that of Judaism is 

indisputable, and we can infer that, even if the Protocols are invented, the author has written 

what Jews faithful to their tradition and to the deep will of Israel would have thought and 

written." (ibid.) 

True, "In his preface, Evola himself described certain parts of the Protocols, especially toward 

the end, as 'fantasy'", but these parts do not invalidate in the slightest the "theoretical 

convergence between the essence of the Protocols and that of Judaism". What, to J. Evola, "is 

fantasy" is merely Nilus' attempt to compare ", in an apocalyptic tone, the principal ideal of the 

Protocols to the coming of the anti-Christ (the obsession of the Slavic soul)" ; in doing so, "he 

simply raves." 

"A list of these contradictions [the contradictions contained, according to Hansen, in the 

Protocols] is presented in Pierre Charles' 'Les Protocoles des sages de Sion' (Paris-Tournai, 

1938)". From the "condensed Italian version of this book (that) also appeared in Orion" at 

http://andreacarancini.blogspot.com/2010/05/lo-storico-opuscolo-di-pierre-charles.html/ , and, 

more particularly, from his comments on Protocol n° 2 1 , 11 ("We shall replace the money 

markets by grandiose government credit institutions, the object of which will be to fix the price 

of industrial values in accordance with government views. These institutions will be in a position 

to fling upon the market five hundred millions of industrial paper in one day, or to buy up for the 

same amount. In this way all industrial undertakings will come into dependence upon us. You 

may imagine for yourselves what immense power we shall thereby secure for ourselves. . .") - 

"With what resources the state, which will not be able to take out loans and will only be able to 

levy moderate taxes, will carry out this wonderful task, he wonders, the Elders do not tell us. Yet 

this is the main thing.") serious doubts can be cast on the expertise of this Belgian Jesuit in 

economic matters, and, more generally, in the tactics of the forces of anti-European subversion. 

E. C. Kopff once wrote : "With the publication of Men Among the Ruins : Post-War Reflections 

of a Radical Traditionalist, English speakers can read Evola's political views for themselves. 

They will find that the text, in Guido Stucco's workman-like translation, edited by Michael 

Moynihan, is guarded by a double firewall." 

( http ://w w w . toqonline .com/blog/j ulius-evola-on-tradition/ ) . Drawing on this metaphor, it would 

be more accurate to say that J. Evola suffered a hacking attempt. 

Now, it could be objected that Evola says in Tl Cammino del Cinabro' that "after the second 

world war, (he) was to state the absurdity of stressing the 'Jewish' or 'Aryan' problem, from a 

higher point of view, precisely for the simple reason that the negative attitude attributed to Jews 

is now shown by the majority of Aryans', without the latter having the former's excuse of a 

hereditary predisposition". It is to the remaining minority that a text such as 'Three Aspects of the 

Jewish Problem' is addressed. Obviously, "it would be completely absurd to take up again today 

similar problems on the practical plane" (ibidem). 'On the practical plane', but not on the 

theoretical. 

"To react against one's own racial awareness, to feel in oneself a revolt against one's own ideas, 

means to prove oneself not to be in harmony with one's race ; to think that there is something 

ridiculous and 'scientifically' untenable about the Aryan and Nordic-Aryan myth means to create 

an alibi for a non- Aryan and non-Nordic vocation, that cannot but be related to the substratum of 

a corresponding race of the body, or, at least, race of the soul, in the person in question". 

BK 

(1) A Hungarian translation of 'Tre Aspetti del Problemaebraico' (Azsidokerdesrol) was 

published in three parts in 2001, in issues 34, 35, and 36 of a magazine called 

'Pannon 'http://www.geocities.com/pannon_front/34/08evola.htm). 

(2) 'Cammino" means 'walk, 'path' or 'way' in English, 'walk' in a sense of 'journey, the act of 

traveling from one place to another', 'path' in a sense of 'line or route along which someone 

travels', 'way' in a sense of 'itinerary, direction, journey', all of which, used figuratively, are able 

to assume a spiritual meaning. 'II Cammino del Cinabro' could thus be translated either as 'The 

Path of Cinnabar' or as 'The Way of Cinnabar' or as 'The Road of Cinnabar'. It is the latter that 

we have chosen, for the following reason, which we see as decisive. In the entire work of Evola, 

when it comes to designating a spiritual behaviour, a series of spiritual acts turned towards an 

end and considered as a way that one wants to follow, that is to say, a path in the spiritual sense 

of the term, Evola always uses the Italian term 'via', rightly translated as 'way' or 'path'. The 

translators do this, for example, in 'The Doctrine of Awakening' or in 'The Yoga of Power' ' ; i.e. 

'the path of the right hand' ('La via della mano destra'), 'The path of the left hand' ('La via della 

mano sinistra'), 'the Buddhist path' ('la via buddista') and so on. The term 'cammino' is never used 

by him in such a context. Besides, the fact is that, while 'the path of the right hand' and 'the path 

of the left hand' are traditional terms for given spiritual paths, there is no such term as 'cammino 

del cinabro': the term 'cinnabar ('cinabro') simply designates the conclusion of the alchemical 

work, the marriage of sulphur and mercury, the elixir of immortality. This, with respect to what 

Evola said in 'II Cammino del Cinabro' about having had 'to open a way on his own', leads us to a 

much more important question, closely related to the one of the translation of the title of this 

book into English: was this a new road that Evola endeavoured to tread ('cammino' also implies 

the idea of a constant sustained effort)? Let us clarify this point: it is generally assumed that 

Evola followed the path of the left hand or the 'humid path', on the basis of 'Cavalcare la Tigre' 

and its largely autobiographical content. This is true only to a certain extent. In 'II Cammino del 

Cinabro', Evola mentions that, in his youth, he reached a point where there seemed no other 

course open to him than suicide, before an early Buddhist text (Majjhimanikayo, I, 1) put him 'on 

the right track', and it was most likely tantric practices that led him for a while to consider 

suicide. By 'on the right track', we only mean: 'right' in his case, true as it it is that, according to 

Aryan Buddhism, nothing is negative or positive as such, but what can be positive for certain 

people can turn out to be negative for others and vice-versa. The reading of this Buddhist text 

acted on him as a revelation, and, from then on, he was to follow the 'dry path' practices, that, so 

to speak, came to balance his previous tantric experiences. In fact, Evola practiced both ways, 

and, if 'Cavalcare la tigre' may 'reflect my own way' ("The maxims and the orientations indicated 

in it are those that I endeavoured to follow in my life"), this does not mean that these are 

exclusively related to the path of the left hand, as any attentive reader of this book will have 

noticed. What he did follow, as he pointed out himself, was rather, if we may put it this way, a 

synthesis of both paths. 

While we are at it, we would like to draw people's attention to the fact that there are two different 

editions of 'II Cammino del Cinabro'. The first edition dates from 1963 (Scheiwiller). The second 

edition, enlarged, from 1972, still by Scheiwiller. The French edition of it, 'Le Chemin du 

Cinabre' (Arche Milano, 1982), appears to be based on the second edition.