THE WORLD ACCORDING WITH THE ISLAMIC STATE If the modem world has disapproved of the "injustice" of the caste system, it has stigmatized much more vibrantly those ancient civilizations thast practiced slavery; recent times boast of having championed the principle of "human dignity." This too is mere rhetoric. Let us set aside the fact that Europeans reintroduced and main- tained slavery up to the nineteenth century in their overseas colonies in such heinous forms as to be rarely found in the ancient world; what should be emphasized is that if there ever was a civilization of slaves on a grand scale, the one in which we are living is it. No traditional civilization ever saw such great masses of people con- demned to perform shallow, impersonal, automatic jobs; in the contemporary slave system the counterparts of figures such as lords or enlightened rulers are nowhere to be found. This slavery is imposed subtly through the tyranny of the economic factor and through the absurd structures of a more or less collectivized society. And since the modern view of life in its materialism has taken away from the single individual any possibility of bestowing on his destiny a transfiguring element and seeing in it a sign and a symbol, contemporary "slavery" should therefore be reckoned as one of the gloomiest and most desperate kinds of all times. It is not a surprise that in the masses of modern slaves the obscure forces of world subversion have found an easy, obtuse instrument to pursue their goals; while in the places where it has already triumphed, the vast Stalinist "work camps" testify to how the physical and moral subjection of man to the goals of collectivization and of the uprooting of every value of the personality is employed in a methodical and even satanic way. In addition to the previous considerations concerning work as art in the world of Tradition, I will briefly mention the organic, functional, and consistent quality of the objects produced, by virtue of which the Beautiful did not appear as something sepa- rated or distinct from a certain privileged category of artistic objects and the mere utilitarian and mercantile character of the objects was totally lacking. Every object had its own beauty and a qualitative value, as well as its own function as a useful object. With regard to art in the traditional world Thus, according to the symbolism of the Roman tradition, the seat of the lures is underground; they are in the custody of a female principle, Mania, who is the Mater La rum. According to esoteric teachings, at the death of the body an ordinary person usually loses his or her personality, which was an illusory thing even while that person was alive. The person is then reduced to a shadow that is itself destined to be dissolved after a more or Less lengthy period culminating in what was called "the second death." 1 The essential vital principles of the deceased return to the totem, which is a primordial, perennial, and inexhaustible matter; life will again proceed from this matter and assume other individual forms, all of which are subject to the same destiny. This is the reason why totems, manes, lares, or pennies I have decreed that you must eternally rise asking of the North and of the South on the seat of Horus, like the sun." These sayings from the ancient Egyptian royal tradition bear a striking similarity to the sayings of the Persian tradition, in which the king is believed to be "of the same stock as the gods": "He has the same throne of Mithras and he rises with the Sun"; he is called particeps siderum and "Lord of peace, salvation of mankind, eternal man, winner who rises in company of the sun." In ancient Persia the consecrating formula was: "Thou art power, the force of victory, and immortal . . .Made of gold, thou rise, at dawn, together with Indra and with the sun. 1 " In the Indo-Aryan tradition, in reference to Rohita, who is the "con- quering force" and who personifies an aspect of the radiance of the divine fire (Agni), we find: "By coming forward, he [Agni] has created kingship in this world. He has conferred on you [Rohita] majesty and victory over your enemies." 6 In some ancient Roman representations, the god Sol (sun) presents the emperor with a sphere, which is the symbol of universal dominion. Also, the expressions sol conservator and sol dominus rornani imperii, which are employed to describe Rome's stability and ruling power, refer to the brightness of the sun. The Last Roman profession of faith was "solar," since the last representative of the ancient Roman tradition, the emperor Julian, consecrated his dynasty, his birth, and royal condition to the brightness of the sun, 7 which he considered to be a spiritual force radiating from the "higher worlds." Spiritual Virility So far I have discussed the roles that the Sacred, the gods, the priestly class, and the rites played in traditional societies. In the world of Tradition, these things hardly correspond to categories typical of the domain of "religion" in the current sense of the word, based as it is on the notion of deities conceived as self-sufficient beings and the notion of God as a personal being who providentially rules the uni- verse. Moreover, the cult is essentially characterized by an affective disposition and by a sentimental and devotional relationship of the "believer" to this Supreme Being or deities. In this type of relationship the moral law plays a fundamental role. One would look in vain for "religion" in the original forms of the world of Tradi- tion. There are civilizations that never named their gods or attempted to portray them— at least this is what is said about the ancient Pelasgians. The Romans themselves, for almost two centuries, did not portray their deities; at most, they represented them with a symbolical object. What characterizes the primordial times is not "animism" (the idea that an "anima" is the foundation of the general representation of the divine and of the various forces at work in the universe) but rather the idea or perception of pure powers, 1 adequately represented by the Roman view of the numen. The numen, un- like the notion of deus (as it later came to be understood), is not a being or a person, but a sheer power that is capable of producing effects, of acting, and of manifesting itself. The sense of the real presence of such powers, or numina, as something simul- taneously transcendent and yet immanent, marvelous yet fearful, constituted the sub- stance of the original experience of the "sacred." 2 A well-known saying of Servius emphasizes that in the origins, "religion" consisted in nothing else but experience* Even though more conditioned points of view were not excluded from exotericism (those traditional forms reserved for the common people), "inner doctrines" were 1. G. F. Moore, Origin and Growth of Religion (London, 1921). 2. R, Otto (The holy) has employed the term "numinous" A reflection of the solar symbol was preserved up to the time of Ghibelline emper- ors — one may still speak of a deltas solisin reference to Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. This solar "glory" or "victory" in reference to kingship was not reduced to i mere symbol, but rather denoted a metaphysical reality. Eventually it came to b< identified with a nonhuman operating force, which the king did not possess in and b; himself. One of the most characteristic symbolic expressions of this idea comes fron the Zoroastiian tradition, wherein the hvareno {tht "glory" that the king possesses) is a supernatural fire characterizing heavenly (and especially solar) entities that al- lows the king to partake of immortality and that gives him witness through victory. This victory must be understood in such a way that the two meanings, the first mys- tical, the second military (material), are not mutually exclusive but rather comple- mentary/ Among non-Persian people, this hvureno was later confused with "fate"Since the chthonic or "Earth" religions go hand in hand with mother cults and their feminine leadership, Evola saw every matriarchal culture as further evidence of "deterioration." It was neither misogyny nor "patriarchism" that led him to this, but simply an intense striving for liberation from earthly bondage. In his eyes this libera- tion is all that matters; everything else is meaningless alongside it. To achieve this goal, no sacrifice is too great for him. Even one's own death becomes a "triumphal death," insofar as one is aware of it as a sacrifice undergone for this liberation. Who perishes in battle in this spirit is "godly," because for him the outer struggle is merely a symbol for the inner struggle against enslavement to earth. It is only from such a viewpoint that today we can grasp Evola's acceptance of the Hindu practice of SATI all cultures is regarded as male because it makes the womb of the eaith fertile through the sun and rain, is therefore in those cults nearly insignificant beside her. And if one worships the earth, striving upward for heavenly transcendence is of no avail. Evola 's path, however, is neither a search for consolation nor an abandonment of the self to the mother goddess with its consequent loss of the self. For Evola the earthly is not the path that leads to active liberation, to "awakening." On the contrary, it strength- ens the u sleep" in which one gropes to return to the mother's womb. Evola values only the continuum of consciousness, the enduring presence, and the awakening of the thousand eyes as the essentials for achieving liberation.Evola was also looking for "an arena open to more opportunities," namely, politics. He wanted to create a spiritual foundation in the prevailingclimate of the New Order, Fascism, and to strengthen what in his eyes were the positive possibilities in bringing back the idea of the ancient Roman Empire while avoiding its negative traits (totalitarianism, the emphasis on the masses). He set about doing this by first creating the periodical La Tone, which after ten issues had to be put on the shelf. By order of Mussolini no print shop was allowed to print it any longer. Evola's criticism therein had been belligerent. After being reminded that Mussolini thought otherwise about something he wrote, "Tantopeggio per Mussolini" (Too bad for Mussolini). At this time, therefore, in spite of his sympathies for Fas- cism, he was obliged to move about Rome with bodyguards. Here we find ourselves in the middle of the key question as to why Evola suffers from a negative image — not only in the English-speaking world — despite many of his opponents' appreciation for his esoteric works. For starters, there is his undoubted sympathy for Fascism, National Socialism and racism, but let us also make some distinctions. First, there is the spirit of the times to take into consideration, under whose spell authors more famous than Evola, such as Ezra Pound and Knut Hamsun, also fell. In his defense, on no account must we forget Evola's numerous critical newspaper articles written during the entire Fascist epoch, inclusive of wartime, an accomplishment that under a totalitarian regime demanded personal courage by anyone's standards In all of these aspects one finds repeated confirmation of the view according to which traditional institutions were ordered "from above' 1 and were not based on nature but on sacred legacies and on spiritual actions that bind, free, and "shape" nature. In the divine dimension what counts is the blood (deoi ovvaijioi) and the family (Oeoi eyyEveiq). The state, the community, the family, bourgeois feelings, duties in the modem (profane, human, and social) sense of the word — all these are human "fabrications," things entirely made up and existing outside the realm of tra- ditional reality, in the world of shadows. The light of Tradition did not know any ol these things.

The World of Tradition 

hero who possesses a woman or a goddess. 

The goddess appears in other traditions 
either as a guardian of the fruits of immortality 

(see the female figures in relation to 
the symbolical tree in the myths of Heracles, Jason, Gilgamesh, and so on), or as a 
personification of the occult force of the world, of life and of nonhuman knowledge, 
or as the embodiment of the principle of sovereignty (the knight or the unknown hero 
of the legend, who becomes king after taking as

 his bride a mysterious princess)." 

Some of the ancient traditions about a female 

source of royal power may also 
be interpreted in this fashion; their meaning, in 

that case, is exactly opposite to 
gynaecocracy, which will be discussed later.

 As far as the tree is concerned, 

interestingly enough, even in some medieval legends it is related to the imperial ideal; the 
last emperor, before dying, will hang the scepter,

 the crown, and the shield in the 
"Dry Tree," which is usually located in the 

symbolical region of "Prester John," just 
Like the dying Roland hung his unbreakable 

sword in the tree. This is yet another 
convergence of symbolical contents, for Frazer 

has shown the relationship existing 
between the branch that the fugitive slave must 

break off Nemi's sacred oak in order 
to fight with Nemi's king and the branch Aeneas 

carried to descend, while alive, into 
the invisible dimension. One of the gifts that 

Emperor Frederick II received from the 
mysterious Prester John was a ring that renders 

invisible and victorious the one who 
wears it. Invisibility, in this context, refers to the 

access to the invisible realm and to 
the achievement of immortality; in Greek

 traditions the hero's invisibility is often 
synonymous with his becoming immortal. 

This was the case of Siegfried in the Niebelungen (6), who through the same 
symbolic virtue of becoming invisible, subjugates and marries the divine woman 
Brynhild. Brynhild, just like Siegfried in the 

Siegdrifuina I (4-6), is the one who

 bestows on the heroes who "awaken" her the 

formulas of wisdom and of victory contained in

 the runes. 

What has been said also applied to the rite in general, that is, to the rite dedi- 
cated to the "hero" or to the founding father to whom the traditional patrician family 
lines often attributed their nonmaterial origins as well as the principle of their rank 
and of their rights; it also applied to the rite dedicated to the cult of the founders of an 
institution, of a legislation, or of a city who were believed to be nonhuman beings. In 
these instances too it was believed that in the origins an action analogous to a sacri- 
fice took place that produced a supernatural quality that remained as a potential 
spiritual legacy within the stock as the "soul" of those institutions, laws, or founda- 
tions. In these cases, rites and various ceremonies helped to actualize and to nourish 
that original influence, which by virtue of its own nature, appeared to be a principle 
of well-being, good fortune, and "happiness." 

Having clarified the meaning of a relevant body of traditional rites allows me to 
establish an important point. There are two elements within the traditions of those 
civilizations or of those castes characterized by a Urania n chrism. The first element 
is a materialistic and a naturalistic one; it consists of the transmission of something 
related to blood and race, namely, a vital force that originates in the subterranean 
world together with the elementary, collective, and ancestral influences. The second 
element is "from above," and it is conditioned by the transmission and by the unin- 
terrupted performance of rites that contain the secret of a certain transformation and 
domination realized within the abovementioned vital substratum. The latter element 
is the higher legacy that confirms and develops the quality the "divine forefather' 1 
has either established ex novo or attracted from another world. This quality origi- 
nates the royal stock, the state, the city or the temple, and the caste, the gefiS or the 
patrician family according to the supernatural dimension that acts as a "form" shap- 
ing chaos. Both of these elements were found in the higher types of traditional civi- 
lizations. This is why the rites could appear to be "manifestations of the heavenly 
law," 13 according to a Chinese saying. 

The unfolding of the ritual action par excellence 

in its most complete form (e.g., the Vedic sacrifice) 

reveals three distinct phases. ~

First of all, there was a ritual and 
spiritual purification on the part of the person 

performing the sacrifice that put him in 
real contact with invisible forces and facilitated 

the possibility of his dominating 

THE ISLAMIC STATE .....IS NOW LIKE IS

LEAKING IN THE WIKILEAKS OF FAITH