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The definitions of heroism and the qualities of the warrior that Evola describes herein are surely timeless and universal.
Evola’s ideal was that of the kshatriya described by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, which has been explained by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada as follows: One who gives protection from harm is called kshatriya. … The kshatriyas are specially trained for challenging and killing because religious violence is sometimes a necessary factor. …
A kshatriya, therefore, is not an ordinary man, but rather a man of the highest aristocratic attitude and behavior. He does not kill out of a desire to fulfil some selfish desire or to bring about some temporary political gain. Rather, a kshatriya fights because he knows that it is the reason for his existence, his dharma.
Men Among the Ruins, in which he outlines his understanding of the concept of apoliteia, or the ‘apolitical stance’ which he felt was a necessary condition for those of a traditional inclination to adopt in the age of Kali-Yuga – the last, and most degenerate age within the cycle of ages as understood by in the Vedic tradition, and in which we are currently living.
The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities.
The expression mors triumphalis[15] in our own Classical tradition corresponds to this concept. As for the properly Nordic tradition, well-known to all is the part which concerns Valhalla, the seat of celestial immortality, reserved for the ‘free’ divine stock and the heroes fallen on the battlefield (‘Valhalla’ means literally ‘from the palace of the chosen’). The Lord of this symbolic seat, Odin or Wotan,
appears in the Ynglingasaga as the one who, by his symbolic self-sacrifice on the ‘world tree’, showed the heroes how to reach the divine sojourn, where they live eternally as on a bright peak, which remains in perpetual sunlight, above every cloud.
The spirits of the fallen heroes would add their forces to the phalanx of those who assist the ‘celestial heroes’ in fighting in the ragnarökk, that is to say, the fate of the ‘darkening of the divine’, which, according to these teachings, and also according to the Hellenes (Hesiod),[16] has threatened the world since time immemorial.
Many may be astonished to hear that the well-known Valkyries, which choose the souls of the warriors destined for Valhalla, are only the transcendental personification of parts of the warriors themselves, parts which find their exact equivalent in the Fravashi, of which the Iranian-Persian traditions speak – the Fravashi, also represented as women of light and stormy virgins of battle, which personify more or less the supernatural forces by means of which the human natures of the warriors ‘faithful to the God of Light’ can transfigure themselves and bring about terrible, overwhelming and bloody victories.
Appearing in the forms of craving, partiality, passion, instinctuality, weakness and inward cowardice, the enemy within the natural man must be vanquished, its resistance broken, chained and subjected to the spiritual man, this being the condition of reaching inner liberation, the ‘triumphant peace’ which allows one to participate in what is beyond both life and death.
AI Summary
Metaphysics of War by Julius Evola presents key insights from the Advaita Vedanta tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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