The Individual and the Becoming of the World

[Gornahoor]

Edred.net is now offering an English translation of Julius Evola’s “The Individual and the Becoming of the World”.

The item can be found at:

http://siriusruna.info

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http://edred.net/community

The item is a downloadable PDF and costs $2.00 US. Edred.net subscribers can get the item for free as part of their subscription.

“The Individual and the Becoming of the World”, originally published as “L’Individuo e il divenire del mondo” in 1925, was based on two lectures presented to the Independent Theosophical League of Rome, and subsequently updated by the author in 1973. Evola considered this work to be a synthesis of his system which is fully developed in these works: Essays on Magical Idealism, The Theory of the Absolute Individual, and The Yoga of Power. Now, the first work is an introduction, the second is a rigorous and exhaustive exposition, and the third is its development as praxis. Evola thus connects his critical and theoretical philosophy with doctrines and techniques belonging to traditional wisdom, particularly in this case, Tantra.

It is important to note that, as Evola wrote in his autobiography, it was not philosophy that led him to seek out Traditional wisdom, but rather the opposite. It was his spiritual practice that led him to elaborate a suitable philosophical system. So, he asserts, metanoia – or “change in polarity” – does not come from thought, but rather from the deed, which then becomes a philosophic principle and not its conclusion.

The first lecture describes the growth of consciousness through three stages: from naive realism, to the quest for certainty in science and religion, finally to self-realisation through magical idealism. The world, then, is my Will. The second lecture makes a clear distinction between knowledge which leads to the surpassing of philosophy through the path of the absolute Individual – that is the knowledge of the mystery schools, in particular, the Dionysian initiation – and the knowledge of religions, as exemplified in Christianity. The former is the way of the warrior, the latter of mystical asceticism.