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Editor’s Note:
Some questions for discussion: Does the concept of “spiritual race” simply amount to types of character? If so, then why speak of spiritual races at all? Why not reserve “race” for the biological realm and speak of character types, which are shaped by culture, habituation, and ideas as well as genes?
We all recognize that people can be racially white but act like Jews or blacks because of culture and upbringing. And we also recognize white character traits in some non-whites. The ideal, of course, should be the preservation of the white race along with a distinctively white culture and character.
Given a choice between the two, however, the most important thing is to preserve the race. Even if all of white civilization were entirely wiped out, as long as our race is preserved, white people can produce appropriate civilizations again. But if our race disappears, it hardly matters to me that the Japanese will still be listening to Debussy.
We have to consider the “solar” race as being superior to and having preceded all other races. The solar, or Olympic-solar race, which corresponds to the Hyperborean tradition and line, has the characteristic of a “natural supernaturality.” The fundamental aspects of this “race of the spirit” are power, domineering calm, and promptness to precise and absolute action, and also of a sense of centrality and steadfastness; the virtue referred to by the ancients as numinous, the kind of superiority which imposes itself directly and irresistibly, simultaneously provoking awe and veneration. Through these characteristics, the solar race is naturally predestined to command.
Ice and fire are fused in this race, as in the symbols of its Nordic origin: ice as transcendence and inaccessibility; fire as the radiant quality of solar beings who give life and bring light, always in a context of sovereign remoteness.
The symbolic designations of “divine” or “celestial” race are to be understood as being applied to men who do not believe themselves to be gods, but who feel that they belong to a terrestrial race only by chance, or by “ignorance” or “sleep.” The two terms of vidya and avidya, from the ancient Indo-Aryan teachings, meaning respectively knowledge (of the Supreme Identity) and ignorance, are to be comprehended exactly in this sense.
The other races of the spirit, to whom our contemporaries belong, presuppose a separation of the two elements of spirituality and virility which are found in the solar race.
We shall start with the “lunar,” or Demetrian, race. While the solar individual is the one who has in himself his own light and principle, the lunar individual receives from others his own light and principle.
Thus in the lunar race the sense of spiritual centrality has been lost, either through degeneration or passive crossing with other races which have degraded its original solar quality.
By extension, the lunar man is priestly as opposed to the regal man; he is the man who, in the face of the spirit, acts like a normal woman in front of a man, e.g., with a sense of submissiveness and dedication.
Another lunar type is the intellectual, the man of “passive reflection.” In the political field, wherever there is a scission between secular and sacerdotal power, inevitably the lunar spirit emerges: lunar is the dominator who receives authority from someone else, from a sacerdotal caste which is not regal, the supreme consecration of his own power.
The third race of the spirit, which can be singled out on the basis of ancient symbolic traditions, is the “telluric,” or titanic, race. It is a way of being which witnesses the adherence to life in all its instinctivity and irrationality.
The telluric race (from Lat. tellus; earth) has an explosive impulsiveness, sudden changeability, and absolute self-identification. This race is as “intensive” as it is gloomy, without however the depth and detachment which are necessary to also be tragic. Sexuality has a considerable part in this race; the sentiment of personality in the telluric man is little developed, it is the collective element that predominates; it is in this sense that blood ties are manifested, and always in a material, atavistic and fatalistic form; this can be recognized in some of the typical aspects of the sentiment of race peculiar to the Jewish people.
The term “telluric” has been used by Keyserling to indicate an indisputable aspect of the so-called contemporary “world revolution.”
The “Dionysian” man has common traits with the titanic one. He is the one who aspires to re-conquer the lost level, capable of partly surmounting the human condition through a radical explosion of all forces connected to the senses; but this explosion does not go further than mere ecstacies, where the sensitive is mixed with the supersensitive, where liberation is obtained only at the cost of betraying the affirmative principle of the personality.
It would not be arbitrary to establish a correlation between Dionysian man and the “romantic” man.
From the racial point of view, we should not be surprised when we discover that the Dionysian man, under the romantic cloak, is rather largely represented in the Nordic races, be they Germanic or Anglo-Saxon.
Thus we have reconfirmation of the necessity of distinguishing the primeval Nordic-Aryan race from the recent Nordic races. Rather significant about the latter is the part played by the feminine element at the beginning of historic times (today still, German is the only language amongst those of Indo-European stock in which the word for “sun” [die Sonne] is of feminine gender, while “moon” [der Mond] is masculine).
A “Demetrian” or lunar race which, in the face of usurpations by titanic or telluric races, does not possess any longer the superior authority peculiar to the solar race, with which to reaffirm itself, will make its own the violent and materialistic forms of its enemy, thus creating a new type, the “Amazonian” man. The Amazonian appears like the woman (an embodiment of lunar spirituality) who, against the abuses of a man (titanic spirituality) will affirm herself by adopting a masculine way of being, thus diverting from her primary nature. The Amazonian man would then be he who in essence remains lunar, but who affirms himself by displaying strength, a material, non-spiritual strength.
Another race of the spirit is the “Aphroditian” one. In it, tellurism assumes the forms of an extreme refinement of material life, often promoting an opulent development, all of which is luxury and sumptuousness in exterior life, thus also promoting the world of arts and the sentiment of aesthetics. But inside, there remains a passivity and inconsistency of a lunar type, compensated by a particular emphasis given to all which refers to the woman, who in turn is led to exercise a certain domination and to ensure herself, silently, a certain preeminence.
The Aphroditian on one side and the telluric on the other, represent the extreme limits of those forms comprised within the Nordic-Aryan cycle, beyond which one enters the domain of the races of nature.
Lastly, one can consider the “race of heroes.” The term hero is here understood not in the common sense, but rather with reference to the mythical traditions described by Hesiod, following which in the cycles of a humanity which was already deviated and materialized, Zeus, e.g., the Olympic principle, would have generated a race capable of re-conquering through action the primordial state, the “Golden” or “solar” state of the first generation of the Hyperborean cycle. Outside the myth is a question of a type in which the “Olympic,” solar quality is no longer a nature, but a duty, to be carried out by means of an internal transformation, an overcoming, often achieved through a “second birth” or initiation, the latter alone being capable of rendering of the present times that which had become latent, and of making it possible to regain what was lost.
Excerpt from part three of Synthesis of a Doctrine of Race (1941). Translator unknown.
10 Comments
I entirely agree with your editor’s note, Greg. However, I believe that simple “types of character” is not sufficient to explain what he meant by “race of the spirit”. As I read the recently published English translations of his comments on Fascism and National Socialism, I got the impression that he is far more dualist than that; it looks like he views “body” and “spirit” as two entirely different entities (in the Cartesian manner of the mind/body problem), rather than two aspects of the same entity (in the Aristotelian manner). One of his central criticisms against National Socialism is that it didn’t view the soul as separate from the body (which is necessary if the soul is to survive the death of the body), and he makes it clear that the body is, at best, of secondary importance.
This is of course ridiculous in light of what we know about genes and how they affect the mentality of individuals as well as races. A “race soul” is the product of the genes, environment, and history of a people, and cannot be separated from any of the components (which also entails that it must change, if it wants to survive, as the environment changes).
Actually, I think you are confusing the meaning of his terminology (I might be wrong, because you aren’t entirely clear, however). Oftentimes, the term “soul” for us is a reference to a metaphysical (in the religious or mystical sense) spiritual being. However, when Evola refers to “Soul” it means “psyche” or “mind,” akin to the German word “Seele”; it is not something metaphysical, but merely a reference to psychology. When he uses the term “Spirit,” it usually means the metaphysical “soul.” Thus, as I explained in my commentary on the article “Racialism as Anti-Universalism” (the comment there is also where I have expressed my opinion on Evola’s theory), what Evola calls “race of the soul” refers to “character types” while what he calls “race of the spirit” refers to a kind of religious/spiritual world-view. The latter is still linked to character or personality, but just in a different manner.
I thought the same at first, Ulf. However, the more I read of Evola and the Italian spiritual racists’ view on race, I came to the conclusion that his view was actually opposed to Cartesian thought (where the mind/soul is separate from the body. This line of thought has often been used by anti-racist spiritualists to justify their egalitarian fetish.) Alberto Luchini, head of the racial bureau of Italy, who worked alongside Evola who considered Luchini a “worthy collaborator,” wrote that the spirit, through the soul, creates the body, and as a result, race has a spiritual as well as biological meaning. This seems to be the position of Evola as well, from what I gathered.
I personally converted to Evola’s view of race because I eventually realized that if race is just a mere biological phenomenon, an act of chance created by genes, then eventually it will die. There will be no more of the White race one day, regardless of whether due to outbreeding by blacks and Hispanics or the heat death of the universe. I suppose if one believes in a totally materialistic view of life, where death is the end, than that might not bother other nationalists. It also seems to explain the spiritual difference between a Nordic, Vietnamese, and Sub-Saharan African.
As long as we keep our spirit and material pure until the very end, the White race can arise once again in this world or the next.
This question of spiritual race first depends on whether or not you believe in the spiritual.
With that said, I see spirit and matter as being connected, with matter the expression of spirit. If White humans are wiped from the earth, it will be because the White spirit was overcome by the spirit of anti-Whiteness. The visual world of matter follows the incorporeal world.
Walk into a room filled with anti-Whites (for example a Tim Wise talk on a college campus) and you will feel discomfort before a word is even said. The spirit of anti-Whiteness is strong in that room.
So now the question is, how do you utilize the White spirit? At this point one starts getting into the subject of magic. First, you acknowledge that it exists. You represent it with something in the material world (a white candle perhaps). You meditate and contemplate on it. You visualize an outcome you want it to bring to you.
Let’s say you want an end to the anti-White system (the program of White genocide). You ask the White Spirit to empower your activism in bringing about this outcome. You visualize a world without White genocide. You write the words “White spirit assist me in ending the program of White genocide” on a piece of paper. Read the paper out-loud 3 times. Burn the paper and as the smoke rises from it see this as your request moving into action. If you’re inside, make sure a window is open nearby. Dump the ashes outside. Blow out the candle.
I daresay I like your ideas! But I would rather refer in magick to Norse mythology. Those images resonate with me on a very deep level. They have welled up in our racial soul. Therefore, imagining Donar (Thor) smashing the SPLC with his mighty hammer seems emotionally and magickally more effective. And quite pleasurable too.
Furthermore, I would suggest that rather than thinking about the destruction of our enemies, for now the goal of pro-white magick should be to waken up our people. Not that I do not heartily desire the destruction of an ADL or SPLC, but our enemies are spread out far and wide. An ADL or SPLC can be replaced. We can deal with them all however, “when the Saxon begins to hate”.
We who traffic in the Mantra (the message against White genocide) are concentrating on ending the program of White genocide. This is what we are focusing our Will upon. It is our Will to end the program of White genocide.
D. Whitman: “This question of spiritual race first depends on whether or not you believe in the spiritual.”
That’s right, although with simply “the race of the soul” (or better put, “psyche”) no belief in the spiritual is required, because it merely involves psychology. The “race of the spirit” is what involves metaphysical or supernatural issues. I believe in the existence of a spiritual realm beyond the material world, but this does not mean I have to see eye-to-eye with Evola. I would say that Evola’s viewpoint is mistaken because he does not give enough importance to the link between the physical and the spiritual aspects of race; in his view the bond between them are not as strong as I believe it is. Of course, I also disagree with Evola’s religious-spiritual classifications (the “lunar”, “telluric”, “solar”, etc.; which I actually don’t think are suitable in racial matters at all) because I have a much different religious background, but that is another more complicated matter.
Both aspects: “spiritual” and material are necessary to the ideal race. The material aspect is not enough, we can see all around us people of the White race (with not even a drop of other bloods) who are worse than jews or blacks. I always use the metaphor of the marble statue: the marble (the race) is only a rock (the base material), and to be something more, something beautiful and valuable need the sculptor (the education, the enviroment, etc).
However, i do not agree 100% with Evola, because he sometimes underrate the importance of the Marble (the race) in all the equation, talking about the supreme importance of metaphysical aspects above the race. This position, IMHO can be traced in the Catholic uprising of Evola.
Some programs are built into the Computer and some you put into it. Races come with programs already built in but these can be subverted or twisted. The natural communalism of the German peoples becomes the suicidal liberalism of the upper Midwest.
Obviously not all Whites have the genes of the Superman. And those that do become our worst enemies if they are taught that the Holy Work is to wipe us from the earth. The worst is a corruption of the best.
Or other sophisticated programs can replace the natural one, say the Muslim. Thus we have had a history of White converts like the Janissaries using their natural Nordic fighting ability against their own people. Christianity can be used the same way since it is not Ours in any fundamental sense.
Exactly. You can also substitute “racial spirit” for the word “civilization” above and it holds true.
Anyone who risks compromising our race’s physical survival in the service of the “spiritual race” is a white traitor (in the physical and spiritual sense). Our Blood and our Soul are connected. As long as our Blood remains relatively intact, we will rise to our spiritual purpose, goals, and mission. But destroy that and you have severed the link to our racial soul, to the White Gods, to our ability to transcend.