Lords of the Visible World:
A Modern Reconstruction of an Ancient Heresy

4,840 words

Luis Varady
A Life Beyond Change: The Gnostic System of Carpocrates
Amazon Kindle, 2015

As with many ancient teachers of whom we only know about through their accusers, we must read between the lines in examining his system.

— Luis Varady 

Conjecture about things not meant to be known, “to explain what ancient authors deliberately concealed,” is risky at best.

— Richard Conner, Secret Gospel of Mark

Despite a superficial gloss of rebellion and “History” Channel romanticism, the Gnostics themselves are a tough sell. Expositions tend to be either dry as dust academic pinhead-dancing, or else New Age hokum hoping to ride on the coattails of the aforementioned glamor — “Now it can be revealed — by me!”

Partly it’s due to the Gnostics, being the losers in the great theological wars of the early AD’s, having had their writings torched, in typical Christian fashion, and consequently being known to us only through quotations in the “refutations” of their enemies.[1]

Over the last hundred or so years, more and more “gnostic” texts[2] have become available — even leading to a “Gnostic Bible”[3] — but even with issuing the texts themselves the same shoals of academic embalming and New Age exploitation rear themselves again.

The discovery and study of the new Gnostic materials was largely an affair of German scholarship, and consequently they had a high profile in NS Germany: Alfred Rosenberg relied heavily on the doctrines of the Gnostics, and especially the example of their alternative canon of scriptures, both in The Myth of the 20th Century as well as his attempts to concoct a “Pagan Christ” suitable for his “German Church.”[4]

They also rode with others in “Lucifer’s Retinue,” the “good spirits” of Europe’s past that Himmler sought to disinter with the help of Otto Rahn, his personal Indiana Jones.[5]

An essential problem is that these Gnostic chaps, at least the ones literally bedeviling the Christians, are that they are, though un-orthodox, never the less still working in the same Semitic medium. That is to say, these are an alternate set of gospels, epistles and apocalypses, and just as turgid and borderline-sane as the “official ones.”[6]

This is partly connected with the notion of the Gnostics teaching a “secret doctrine” of some sort. Partly, of course, due to their eventual suppression by the orthodox as soon as they attained secular power, it’s also, I think, another especially Semitic trait.

Hebrew has a script so primitive that it lacks both vowels and numerals; the rabbis have made a virtue of this, and have arrogated to themselves the power to “interpret” the “real” meaning of any given word — and hence passage — by supplying a different set of vowels, based on some “oral tradition” supposedly handed down from Moses;[7] or, taking advantage of the use of consonants for numerals, “summing up” the letters of words as if they were equations, then substituting “equivalent” words (gematria).[8]

Carpocrates of Alexandria himself made use of a supposed Secret Gospel of Mark, which is attested to by Clement, also of Alexandria, though the surviving texts of the latter don’t contain actual quotes. Morton Smith, a professor of ancient history at Columbia, claimed to have rediscovered the portion Clement quotes in 1958, spending the next 15 years studying and translating it. Despite — or because of — being endorsed by both academic poohbah Jacob Neusner and up and coming guru Bubba Free John (aka Adi Da among other sobriquets), the jury is still out on whether Smith was one of the great Biblical archeologists, a Borgesian trickster, or a disgruntled homosexual trying to forge a scriptural backing for his lifestyle.[9]

So, between lost texts, invidious commentary by enemies, secret doctrines, and Semitic double-talking, the Gnostics are a tough sell.

Comes now this Varady chap, unknown to me and with no apparent internet presence (other than his half dozen or so short little kindles), and offers us a clear, interesting interpretation of the teachings of Carpocrates of Alexandria (founder of an early Gnostic sect from the first half of the 2nd century).

A search of my (admittedly unrepresentative) kindle discloses about 7 titles with references to our guy, and they illustrate the Rashomon Effect in action.

Not surprisingly, the most references are in The Essence of the Gnostics, one of those illustrated little gift books for History Channel fans; for example:

Carpocrates believed in magic and taught that fornication was in order.

Carpocrates claimed that we are all imprisoned in a cycle of reincarnations by wicked angels, but we will eventually be saved. In order to leave this world, the soul has to pass through every possible condition of earthly life, or it cannot free itself from the material powers. This view is very similar to that of Buddhism.

Carpocrates is a favorite of Lawrence Durrell, referencing him in both the Alexandria Quartet and the (thematically Gnostic) Avignon Quintet.

[Alexandria] has always thrown up one religious libertine — Carpocrates, Anthony — who was prepared to founder in the senses as deeply and truly as any desert father of the mind.

. . . working over those huge parchment tomes, lost in the non-world of Carpocrates — the negative of the printed world we had thought we knew well, but which now seemed a delusion, and all the more dangerous because it was so enticing.[10]

The Illuminati, no strangers to rumor themselves, state bluntly:

Carpocrates believe that the route to heaven was to commit every conceivable sin.[11]

And speaking of the Illuminati, the Gnostics in general are always a bugbear, from quasi-reputable scholars like Voegelin (“Immanentize the eschaton!”) to conspiracy hounds like Nesta Webster:

Another Gnostic sect, the Carpocratians, followers of Carpocrates of Alexandria and his son Epiphanus—who died from his debaucheries and was venerated as a god — likewise regarded all written laws, Christian or Mosaic, with contempt and recognized only the γνῶσις or knowledge given to the great men of every nation—Plato and Pythagoras, Moses and Christ—which “frees one from all that the vulgar call religion” and “makes man equal to God.”[12]

So in the Carpocratians of the second century we find already the tendency towards that deification of humanity which forms the supreme doctrine of the secret societies and of the visionary Socialists of our day. The war now begins between the two contending principles: the Christian conception of man reaching up to God and the secret society conception of man as God, needing no revelation from on high and no guidance but the law of his own nature. And since that nature is in itself divine, all that springs from it is praiseworthy, and those acts usually regarded as sins are not to be condemned. By this line of reasoning the Carpocratians arrived at much the same conclusions as modern Communists with regard to the ideal social system.[13]

Well, you see the PR problem.

By contrast, Varady presents, according to the Amazon page,

A detailed but concise description of the long lost Gnostic system of the Christian Gnostic Carpocrates, giving his teachings on God, reincarnation, magic, salvation, the nature of Christ and how one may realize the ultimate truth.

Early on, Varady gives us a handy summary of the system, such as we can recover it, of Carpocrates:

The one source of all being, the unbegotten Father, emanates lesser beings distinct from himself. Over time, as these lesser beings become ore and more distant from the unbegotten Father’s original purity, they take on malevolent forms and a group of them – Abolus and his angels – take it upon themselves to create the cosmos and bind other emanated beings therein, in hopes that they endlessly reincarnate.[14] The task of salvation, therefore, is to undo this deed and return to the world of the unbegotten Father. And after all experiences have been transcended, one can return to the primordial state. The role of Jesus was to teach this same path.[15]

Varady is not the first to notice there are some problems with this. Why does the perfect produce the imperfect? Why does Good produce Evil? Why do the devils persecute us, and why does the Father permit it? And so forth.

Since we are here to understand, rather than anathematize, Varady tries to find a coherent picture by presenting what might be called a psychological interpretation of Carpocrates – but that would be misleading, suggesting some kind of Jungian reductionist angle.[16] “Experiential” might be better, especially if we keep Evola in mind.[17]

Reflecting on our experience, we see that it is also quite irrational. That is, in experience, there is nothing prior to it, which can offer a reason or rationale or raison d’etre. Since we can experience nothing prior to experience, experience is, indeed, unbegotten. Like the Unbegotten Father, it is the prior potential of all subsequent experience; and since it is us at our own deepest level, we and the Father are one.[18]

And, in the same way, we can see that though our experience starts out pure and blissful as consciousness itself, as it expands in space and time it become increasingly ensnared in the fears and delusions that emanate from the mind itself; this is delusion.

This leads to a psychological, or experiential, understanding of karma and reincarnation; each thought leads to and conditions another thought, spiraling — or rather, circling, an important distinction as we’ll see — endlessly.

Yet there always remains a way out; there is always the Seer himself, the deepest and most necessary level of our consciousness, which observes but is not these experiences. How then, can we rise (or sink) to the level of the Seer, and become free of the pain and evil of entrapment in experiences?

Here’s where Carpocrates’ bad reputation arises. But before getting there, where is Jesus in all this?

Jesus was sent by the unbegotten Father to be born into a conducive environment by natural means yet with full knowledge of what occurred in the upper regions prior to time. [19]

But for Carpocrates, Jesus was not some God-Man sent to redeem us by faith; he also taught the real story (the secret gnosis) to his disciples:

He taught the real science of salvation, and how to overthrow the authorities of the cosmos.[20]

Rather than believing in Jesus,

The life of Jesus could be looked upon as a symbolic form of what must occur in the life of each individual.

What must occur is remembrance (anamnesis), remembering who we really are.

Knowing this and using such knowledge (gnosis) as a means of liberation, one completes the same cycle that Jesus completed, and becomes free.

An interesting wrinkle here is that in addition to suggesting that Jesus had a secret or at least more profound teaching, the Carpocratians also believed there was deeper aspect of the “miracles.” Rather than just material trickery like changing water into wine, or even healing the sick,[21] there was also “psychological and spiritual miracle working . . . Jesus had the power to take the passions of human beings and eradicate them.”

This aligns Jesus far more with the Eastern guru, or the Hermetic Magus, and uncovers a new level to the Gnostic distaste for the Jewish scriptures:

If one reads the Old and New Testaments, salvation is always portrayed as something exterior — a place one goes after death — and revelation, also, is the unveiling of spiritual truth to a person by an external agent. Yet it is not the spiritual truth of oneself, but rather of events which will come to pass, or the nature of heaven and hell. We never see an angel or God showing a person what the true nature of the soul is, or eradicating their deluded inclinations directly. Everything is outside and pertains to time and space.[22]

In all this, we can see how Carpocrates’ system aligns itself not with Judeo-Christian “faith” but with the heroic striving of the Northern or Hermetic Traditions, as well as the Tantric schools of the Hindu and Chinese Traditions.

We can also see how to overcome the biggest puzzle of the Carpocratians. As we’ve seen, according to the orthodox heresy-hunters, the Carpocratians believed that one had to undergo all possible experiences, in order to transcend them all and thus achieve liberation from the prison of the material world. In particular, they were accused of engaging in every kind of horrifying and revolting practices.

As Varady notes, this is absurd; a moment’s thought reveals that no mortal creature could acquire every possible experience, good or bad.

Things become clear, however, when we recall that the Gnostics, unlike their orthodox brethren, are part of the Western tradition of Hermetic Magic.

By using incantations, images, dream control and other methods, the Carpocratians sought to overpower the forces of the created universe and demonstrate their freedom from the cosmic prison.

Magic is the opposite of prayer. . . . Magic is active and serves to confound the forces of nature, compelling tem to align with the magician’s wishes.

We could imagine that the Carpocratians were practicing a form of dream magic where they called up in their minds certain specific dream scenarios for the purposes of transcending them.

Indeed, Varady suggests that here lies the origin of the seemingly tiresome phantasmagoria of the Gnostic cosmologies:

Spiritual traditions rooted in dreaming would likely look very similar to old Gnosticism, incorporating rich mythologies and dramas, mystical pantheons and fragmentary cosmologies.

The use of images is especially interesting, as it ties back to the notion of a Gnosticism as an active, Western tradition versus the passive, Semitic nature of orthodox Christianity. Evola in fact explains the differences between the “dry” and “wet” paths by considering the use of images. The pupil first constructs an image of his ideal Self, concentrating all his thoughts and will on it. In the wet path, the duality remains, the Self is worshipped from afar; while in the dry path, one attempts to gradually achieve unity, to become the Self.

You must generate—first by imagining and then by realizing it—a superior principle confronting everything you usually are (e.g., an instinctive life, thoughts, feelings) [This is the bondage of experiences]. This principle must be able to control, contemplate, and measure what you are, in a clear knowledge, moment by moment. There will be two of you: yourself standing before “the other.”

All in all, the work consists of a “reversal”: you have to turn the “other” into “me” and the “me” into the “other.”

Then, in contrast to the mystical, or Christian, path, where the Other remains Other, and the Self remains in the feminine position of need and desire . . .

In the magical, dry, or solar way, you will create a duality in your being not in an unconscious and passive manner (as the mystic does), but consciously and willingly; you will shift directly on the higher part and identify yourself with that superior and subsistent principle, whereas the mystic tends to identify with his lower part, in a relationship of need and of abandonment.

Slowly but gradually, you will strengthen this “other” (which is yourself) and create for it a supremacy, until it knows how to dominate all the powers of the natural part and master them totally. Then, the entire being, ready and compliant, reaffirms itself, digests and lets itself be digested, leaving nothing behind.[23]

And thus, as we have seen, in the orthodox sects Jesus is the unique Self, worshipped by the unworthy believer, so as to obtain the boon of salvation — like a waiter hoping for a tip — while for Carpocrates and the other Gnostics Jesus is the one who brings a technique which each of us can use for ourselves, so as to become one with him and thus with the Unbegotten Father.

Thus, through magic, the Gnostic magus becomes “able to control, contemplate, and measure what you are, in a clear knowledge, moment by moment”; in short, mastery, and thus transcendence, of all experiences in space and time. And this is equivalent to Liberation:

By demonstrating magical power, the gnostic also demonstrates that they are no longer in bondage to the cosmic authorities, and if Gnostics should possess within themselves the power to control events on the material plane, they may also possess the power to transcend matter entirely. In fact, [the two powers] both derive from the same mystic source.

According to the Christian heresiologists, the gnostic adepts claimed to be “lords over even the wicked angels that made the cosmos,” the Royal Priesthood that Evola — contra the contemplative Guénon — considered to be the truly primordial condition of Man.

I find this aspect of Carpocrates’ teaching — or Varady’s version of it — especially interesting, as it seems to offer an historical parallel to some notions I’ve been finding — or applying to — various movies: endless repetition of experiences — the circle of Samsara — until an escape can be found upward — the circle becomes a spiral[24] — and the related notion, that as this Liberation is beyond the polarity of good and evil, so is the means: any method, such as magic or murder, is fair game, including one I’ve called “passing the buck,” in which ones karma is unloaded on a willing or unwilling sucker.[25]

Varady is not free of the New Age hokum impulse, of course. He’s eager to inform us right away that

As with other Gnostics, the Carpocratian system was also egalitarian, seeing men and women as spiritual and ethical equals — a belief which clearly disturbed the more patriarchal Christens of the time.

The supposedly “feminist” and “egalitarian” tone of the Gnostics has long been a selling point among PC academics, going back at least to Elaine Pagels.[26] As academics as well as Traditionalists have pointed out, the idea that women can, if they try real hard, “achieve the male mind” as one Gnostic says, is hardly going to satisfy today’s feminists (“Phallocentric rationality!”), and the practices of small, elite religious groups are hardly a model for society as a whole to implement.

On the other hand, Traditionalists, unlike New Agers, will reject the idea of reincarnation, although as we’ve said, Carpocrates (or Varady’s Carpocrates) seems more in tune with Guénon’s preferred notion of exhausting all possible states of being on one particular level and then moving to another, entirely different one (rather than repeatedly reappearing as a human or even animal).[27] The way out for the soul is a spiral, not a circle, as we’ve frequently said.[28]

Especially hurtful to Traditionalist ears will be the combination of reincarnation with the idea of “evolution” of the soul, in the modern sense of the word. For Guénon, the combination of reincarnation and progressivist evolution is always the hallmark of a modern pseudo-tradition.

But Guénon being dead, perhaps everything is now permitted. In any event, Varady presents us with a clear and interesting model which could prove quite useful for those interested in the sort of self-guided pursuit of Liberation through exploration of consciousness that remains for us, now that Tradition has withdrawn in the Kali Yuga.[29]

Though Gnosticism may have been erased as a discernable set of institutions, its undercurrents and values never did disappear from either Europe or the Middle East, and I think that an open-minded reading of their beliefs shows that their systems still have relevance to the modern world.

Those “undercurrents and values” have an archeo-futuristic character. Like paganism, Tradition, or fascism, Gnosticism can never die.[30]

Notes

[1] Cioran says somewhere — perhaps The New Gods? — that after reading one of the orthodox denunciations, its level of cultural and spiritual foulness would make any reader immediately go over to the Gnostic side.

[2] The word itself is, typically, subject to enormous academic huffing and wheezing, leading some scholars to call for it to be forcibly retired from the field. As will become clear, I’m talking about “Christian Gnostics” or “Gnostic Christians,” not Persian dualists, Manicheans, Ranters, Levellers, etc.

[3] The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition by Willis Barnstone (Boulder, Col.: Shambala, 2009).

[4] See “Gnostic Origins of Alfred Rosenberg’s Thought” by James B. Whisker, The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 3), pages 335-55, online here; as well as his The Social, Political and Religious Thought of Alfred Rosenberg (Bethesda, Md.: University Press of America, 1982).

[5] See Rahn’s Luzifers Hofgesind, eine Reise zu den guten Geistern Europas (1937), Lucifer’s Court: A Heretic’s Journey in Search of the Light Bringers, translated by Christopher Jones (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2008) and Nigel Graddon, Otto Rahn and the Quest for the Grail: The Amazing Life of the Real “Indiana Jones” (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2008). “Rahn also equates heretics such as himself (a baptized Catholic) and the Cathars, for example, with the Luciferian tradition, the “Light Bearers.” The SS saw themselves in this role and their insignia represented two lightning bolts of Thor. In terms of the Occult, the Luciferian tradition represents the middle path between Satanism and Yahweh–in other words, Lucifer is seen as a sort of Pagan-Christ.” — Review by J. E. Farrow at gnostics.com, here.

[6] It’s always wryly amusing when some standard Christian, scholar or journalist, pooh-poohs some rediscovered text, like the Gospel of Judas, as “fittingly excluded from the canon because of its crazy ideas.” Unlike, I suppose, the New Testament? Richard Conner gives an excellent summary of the chaotic welter of texts generated by the turbulent Christians in “Faking Jesus,” online here.

[7] For example, and to illustrate how easily the goyim are fooled, the tribal god’s name, YHVH, was never to be pronounced (except by the High Priest, in the Holy of holies, on Yom Kippur), so the phrase “my Lord” (Adonai) was always used in reading; to make this clear, the vowels of the latter were added to the former wherever it appeared in printed texts, thus leading later Christians to think the name was (the impossible form) “Jehovah”!

[8] This sort of double-talk is the root of Christ’s rejection of the Pharisees: “For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men — the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do” (Mark 7:8, KJV).

[9] In terms of our previous distinction of dusty academics and New Age hokum, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (1973) falls into the first group; The Secret Gospel (1973) the second. For the subsequent brouhaha, see Robert Conner, The Secret Gospel of Mark: Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and Four Decades of Academic Burlesque (2014). Conner comments that “Although the question of authenticity remains unresolved, the controversy has opened a window on the intellectually corrupt nature of apologetic New Testament studies, a subject of greater importance than the authenticity of early Christian texts” since “The case against Smith has advanced over the past four decades on the basis of homophobia, conspiracy theory, amateur forensic demonstrations and repeated misstatements of fact.”

[10] From Monsieur; Durrell also blurbs the City Lights edition of Jacques Lacarriere’s quasi-scholarly The Gnostics.

[11] Michael Foust, Nietzsche: The God of Groundhog Day (The Divine Series Book 3) (Kindle, 2014).

[12] Thus, Guénon and the other Traditionalists are often slighted as “Gnostics” with Tradition being the gnosis common to all religions and which makes man a god. Guénon himself seems to have used Gnostic memes only in such very early essays as “The Demiurge” (reprinted in Miscellanea [Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2003]) and for most of his career seems to have shared the usual orthodox aversion to “gnostics.” Unlike his epigones (e.g., Huston Smith), Guénon did not consider the exoteric/esoteric to be operant in every Tradition, but mainly in the Semitic ones, for the reasons we’ve alluded to above.

[13] Nesta H. Webster Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, innumerable editions, online here.

[14] “What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you: “the word.” Alien Word “the.” “The” word of Alien Enemy imprisons “thee” in Time. In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out.” – William S. Burroughs, Nova Express: The Restored Text (New York: Grove, 2014), p. 4.

[15] In Alan Watts’ terms, the Gnostics teach the religion of Jesus, not, like the orthodox, the religion about Jesus, the unique Son of God (and thus, as Watts’ points out, a freak).

[16] “Jung interprets Gnosticism the way he interprets alchemy: as a hoary counterpart to his analytical psychology. As interpreted by Jung, Gnostic myths describe a seemingly outward, if also inward, process which is in fact an entirely inward, psychological one.” Richard Segal, “Jung and Gnosticism,” in Religion Volume 17, Issue 4, October 1987, pages 301–336; abstract online here.

[17] See the discussion of the role of experience in science and mysticism, as opposed to Semitic “faith,” in “The Nature of Initiatic Knowledge,” reprinted in Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2001)

[18] “Who is Number One?” “You are… Number Six.” “I am not a number, I am a free man!” {Hysterical laughter in response). “Six of one, half dozen of the other.” “I I I I! I I I I!” – various quotes from The Prisoner. See Collin Cleary’s meditations on the TV show in his Summoning The Gods (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012).

[19] As Number Six, the Prisoner, is repeatedly sent into the Village, each time with more and more knowledge of how it works and how it can be defeated.

[20] Including, of course, the Jews, who on the mundane level entrap mankind with their endlessly elaborated and arbitrary laws and rituals. Varady is clear on this but gingerly notes “this was not anti-semitically motivated, as some might imagine.”

[21] Shaw, following Ibsen, pointed out that the miracles, far from “guaranteeing” the message, were actually the biggest stumbling block; no real teacher would resort to such mountebankery.

[22] Alain de Benoist says somewhere in On Being a Pagan? that he has never found any spiritual inspiration in “those ‘timeless’ stories” of the Old Testament sheepherders.

[23] Julius Evola, Introduction to Magic (Rochester, Vermont.: Inner Traditions, 2001), pp. 88-91. Actually, this essay, “The Three Ways,” is attributed to an author with a very appropriately Gnostic pseudonym: “Abraxas.” The process of lovingly “cultivating” the Other as part of the process of initiation is referenced in The Silence of the Lambs, where Buffalo Bill cultivates a rare species of moth: “Somebody grew this guy, fed him honey and nightshade, kept him warm. Somebody loved him.” I consider this process of imaginal magic in the context of two Hollywood films in my essay “Of Costner, Corpses, and Conception: Mother’s Day Meditations on The Untouchables and The Big Chill,” here and reprinted in my collection The Homo and the Negro (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012).

[24] See, for example, “Phil and Will: Awakening Through Repetition in Groundhog Day, Point of Terror, and Manhunter, Part 2,” here (Phil is an example of Gnostic self-liberation as he gradually improves himself; “The Tooth Fairy” endlessly repeats his crimes until Will Graham crashes through his window with the saving gnosis).

[25] See my “Breaking Badge: Touch of Evil through the Lens of Breaking Bad,” here. Griffin, the murderous ex-con and hobo played by Coleman Francis himself in his masterwork, Red Zone Cuba (aka Night Train to Mundo Fine) is an example of a Carpocratian figure who, through the sheer repetition of his crime and brutality, achieves Liberation. “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence.”

[26] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels New York, Random House, 1979.

[27] “He seeks to dismantle all aspects of spiritism, including the theory of reincarnation, whose foundations are false because, he said, involving ‘a limitation of the universal possibility’.” — Wikipedia, quoting The Spiritist Fallacy (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2003). For Evola, see the essays on posthumous survival in Introduction to Magic, op. cit.

[28] For example, “Our Wagner, Only Better: Harry Partch, Wild Boy of American Music,” here and reprinted in The Eldritch Evola . . . & Others (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014), quoting Alain Daniélou: “The fifths form a spiral whose sounds, coiled around themselves, can never meet. For us, this limitless spiral can be the joint in the center of the world, the narrow gate that will allow us to escape from the appearance of a closed universe, to travel in other worlds and explore their secrets. Music and the Power of Sound: The Influence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1995), p. 8.

29. Cf. of course Evola’s Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2003).

30. “Fascism is a human political system that is deeply rooted in primeval, pervasive biological impulses and patterns that lead to the emergence of distinct communities. Understood in this way, Eco’s characterization of ur-fascism as “eternal fascism” is transparent: while fascism always manifests in certain places and times, it can always come back again in unexpected guises and different forms; it can never truly, entirely be eradicated.” “Ur-fascism” by Organon tou Ontos, here. See also: Terrence McCoy, “How thousands of Icelanders suddenly started worshiping the Norse gods again,” Washington Post, February 3, 2014, here. The Grail Legend, according to Evola, is a pagan survival, no part of Christianity; like Carpocrates’ followers, any method is made use of by the knights, and the hermit Titurel observes with wonder: “The Grail never was won by violence [until Parzifal came along].”