In this video, I thought to talk a bit about the books of Julius Evola.
Now, I have posted a longer podcast episode, one hour, where I discuss the teachings of Julius Evola.
So, if you're interested in hearing my take on those teachings, first link in the description box below.
Then, as I am fond of reminding y'all that you must read all of my book reviews, I suppose some of you have read all of my book reviews.
If so, I salute you.
That warms my heart to know.
So, if you haven't, and if you're interested in Evola, then I suggest that you head over to the second link in the description box below to thegoldenone.se, where I have a section called book reviews, and there I have reviewed quite a few of Evola's works.
Now, on to the question at hand, where to begin with Julius Evola.
And I can actually respond in the following way: where not to begin.
You should not begin where I began a few years back with this book, Ride the Tiger.
Now, of course, it has an epic title and a nice cover, and you've probably heard of it because the teaching itself is very profound and valuable.
So, I don't regret reading it, even though I didn't understand much about it during my first read-through, but I did understand the teaching, the central teaching, which is to ride the tiger.
So, to give a concrete example that I have mentioned before, of course, I talk about this book in or the teaching in Dauntless as well.
So, an example could be that you ride on the tiger, which is modernity.
If you fall off the tiger, it will eat you and corrupt you.
So, to take an example, you find it extremely nice to, instead of going to MMA or instead of going to the gym on an afternoon after school or work, instead of doing that, you go into you sit down on your sofa with some sweets and you watch Netflix.
That is to fall off the tiger or to watch porn or something like that.
So, stay on top of your routines, we could say, stay on top of your habits, stay on top of the tiger, lest it mauls you and you will find yourself being depressed and without a purpose, which you know happens to many individuals in the modern world.
And they ask why am I depressed?
And they live, you know, not particularly active lives.
They are spending a lot of time on the sofa watching Netflix and eating bad food.
So, anyway, this is a longer topic, but I just thought to mention that it contains that valuable teaching, so I don't regret reading it.
But when I read it, when I was 26, now I am almost 33,000 years old, I re-read this a few months back, and I still didn't really find it all too interesting.
Of course, I did understand it in a different way than I did first upon reading it, but this is not Evola at his best.
This is not Evola that is really, really interesting.
Here, he discusses the philosophy of others, which isn't really all too interesting.
So, I wouldn't recommend reading the book at all, unless you are a true Evola connoisseur, an enthusiast of Evola's works.
So, that being said, you can, of course, read it if you are interested in that sort of stuff.
I wouldn't recommend starting with it at all.
And if you don't find it particularly interesting, and you say to yourself, oh, what's the hype about?
This isn't particularly interesting.
Yeah, it's because the book isn't his finest work, so to speak.
Would actually say that I haven't read all of his books, but I've read enough of them to say that this is his least interesting book.
So, with that being said, I would like to say that you can approach Evola in two different ways.
So, you can approach him as the magical Evola, which in my humble opinion is the more interesting Evola.
Secondly, the Political Evola, which, you know, he has some interesting takes in regards to those matters as well.
But most of us, I'd say, I do believe that you're also, you know, aware of the political situation we find ourselves in.
So, it's not really something that is so interesting for us at this stage.
It would have been different if you read it during the, say, 80s or something like that.
But for most of us, it's not really new.
But the magical teachings are more exciting in that way.
So, you can approach Evola in two different ways.
And for me personally, the books I have found to be more to be more high thumus.
Yeah, it would be the more esoteric, the more spiritual of his books.
Now, on to the question at hand.
I have rambled on for long enough without actually responding to where to start.
I would say that you should start with the following fine masterwork.
So, that is his Mungnum Opus.
That is his masterwork.
And if you read it, you will also gain a good introduction to other topics he talks about at length in different books.
So, if you read this, you will encounter many of the teachings in other books.
Now, also to keep in mind here, a while back I made a video titled Bombard Your Mind.
If you haven't watched that video, I recommend that you do so.
Basically, what I say there is that if you want to understand something, if you want to understand the teachings of Evola, which at a first read, they are quite hard to understand, hard for me too, but the more you read, the easier it becomes to understand.
So, this I actually read quite recently after I had already read quite a few of his books.
So, it was quite smooth for me to read because I had encountered many of the teachings before and I had contemplated, I had digested said teachings.
So, if you start, if you haven't read any of his books and you start with this and you find it to be, you know, very hard, complicated, completely fine, completely fine, not something to stress about at all.
Just keep reading his books and it will dawn.
Many teachings will become clear the more you read, because he writes from different perspectives in the books.
This also leads me into the second book I recommend if I were to give a top three, and that's Men Among the Ruins.
So, it's quite similar in its style to Revolt Against the Modern World.
You could also use this as a first book to get acquainted with his teachings.
So, both of these books, they contain both a bit of social commentary and some more esoteric commentary.
Now, if you don't want to invest so much time, because I would say that Revolt Against the Modern World, it will take quite a bit of time to read, to digest and to reread, which you probably should do.
I have re-read some of his books just to properly digest all of the teachings, because they can be quite dense.
The Hermetic Tradition, I wrote it in my book review, that I re-read it directly upon finishing it, because many of the teachings were so, yeah, they needed to be properly digested.
Now, anyway, if you want something lighter, not lighter in the sense that the teachings are light, they are quite profound, but Metaphysics of War, you see, that's quite thin.
I haven't written a book review on it, but I do reference to it in Dauntless.
So it might be familiar if you have read Dauntless, which I suppose all of you, most of you, have done.
Now, speaking of the magical Evola, you have the three volumes of Introduction to Magic.
It's primarily Evola's work, but some other essays by his companions in the Ur group.
So yeah, some insights from his companions there as well.
That can be a good starting point.
The first one you can read by itself.
It's more practical in its nature.
The second and third ones are a bit more theory.
And now to respond to the question, which is my favorite Evola book?
It's a tough question, but I would say that it's probably The Mystery of the Grail.
Because it's a bit more esoteric and also he analyzes the spiritual aspect of the medieval conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope.
I have written about this many times in my book reviews and Evola writes about it all the time, including in Revolt Against the Modern World and Men Among the Ruins.
This is more specifically about that teaching and of course the Greyle legend.
I suppose we're all great fans of it.
If you're a fan of my work, I can only suppose that you're also interested in the Greyle legend.
I sure am, so it was nice reading it.
And again, in my humble opinion, the best Evola is the magical, esoteric Evola because ultimately, as I said, the political stuff, the social stuff, there are so many others who can write well about it.
And I suppose many of us were quite, we've had our fill of political theory and everything like that.
So it's more interesting to develop this magical path.
And, you know, Evola, he writes from a right-wing perspective.
So when he writes about yoga and Buddhism, as I wrote in my review of the Yoga of Power, he does it from a high thumbous perspective.
So you can access these teachings in a high thumbous perspective and not a hippie nonsense perspective, which, you know, Buddhism, I would say that most people think it's, you know, hippie nonsense, but Evola he can present it to us in a different way, which is very appealing, I would say.
But anyway, those are just my own thoughts.
I am more interested in the magical stuff.
Then you have some good historical and social commentary as well.
You have metaphysics of power.
I wrote a shorter review of it.
So it's a collection of essays in which one of the essays he discusses the very interesting concept of race of body, race of soul, race of the spirit, which I elaborate on at length in the latest podcast episode, by the way.
So if you're interested in that, then listen to the podcast.
And you can of course also read this fine book.
In the book, he also elaborates on his critique of Francis Philip the Fair, who centralized power.
And of course, Evola wasn't a fan of that at all because he was on the side of the aristocrats.
Very long topic, I elaborate on it in the podcast as well.
And I do elaborate on it in many of the book reviews.
Now, of course, I do have some critique of Evola's teachings.
If you want to read about said critique, you can read my book review of Men Among the Ruins.
I made that review a bit longer to give an overall take on the teachings of Evola.
And to give a more fun, light-hearted example, he denotes boxing as American barbarism, basically.
And for me personally, of course, I encourage you all to box and to train MMA and stuff like that.
But had he lived today, he would probably hopefully agree with my assessment because, yeah, the world looks a bit different, even though he predicted it to a large extent with the decline of the West.
But anyway, I could ramble on more about the books, but I've written so much on my page, thegoldenone.se.
So read through my reviews there.
Listen to the podcast if you like.
But to respond to the question at hand, where to begin, I would say his greatest work, Revolt Against the Modern World.
Then you can decide which skill tree you would like to level.
So you can level the magical skill tree, again, which I find a bit more interesting.
And then you have this volume's introduction to magic, which I found quite interesting indeed.
So anyway, thank you for watching and have a high thumb day ahead.
