Julius Evola- The Sufi of Rome

by Frank Gelli

  STORMS OVER CHINA

  A fellow with a certain intellectual reputation in far right circles had visited the Baron. He had quoted some sayings of Mao. ‘I have not read him’, Evola had admitted. “Well, se lo legga! Read him!” the boorish man had blurted out. Evola had let it pass – he was, as a gentleman, above the tit for tat mode. However, when he told me of the episode, it provided him with the opportunity for what I felt was a prophetic observation about China’s future: ‘I do not believe the so-called cultural revolution – a real misnomer, I see not Kultur in that - will have a lasting influence. The roots of the Chinese people, their real cultural roots cannot be so easily cut off. The Chinese are born traders, buyers and sellers. Natural capitalists, if you like – insofar as capitalism is based on private property. Marxism cannot erase that. What is more, the wisdom of sages like Confucius and Lao Tsu will outlast Mao’s banal utterances...But the true challenge to Chinese communism will emanate from two spiritual centres. Tibet is one. The Dalai Lama is a brave man. A spiritual giant. From his exile, he stands up to the Chinese Moloch...But the force that will break up regime eventually will be Islam. In East Turkestan the Muslims groan under the alien communist rule. The people there are not Chinese at all. They are Uighurs. A few millions, but an indomitable lot. Because they are Muslims. Compared with the might of the Red Chinese - over a billion ant-like beings - the Uighurs may seem nothing but they are the spanner in the works. The joker in the pack. The tiny, insignificant speck that will grow and grow and in the end will cause the Red tyranny to split and disintegrate.

  ‘The Uighurs are the forgotten Muslims of China. An ancient people. You know, they appear in the Travels of our Marco Polo. Some writer whose name I forget wonders why the many names in Polo’s book are not Chinese names at all. He concludes that the writer was lying – he never visited those places after all – a fantasist. But the truth is that Marco Polo travelled into China with the Uighurs, hence the names he picked up obviously would have been Uighur names, not Chinese! A friend who has been there tells me that the Uighurs do not look Chinese at all. They have round eyes, like the Europeans, not narrow ones, like the Chinese. A different race. And, you know, unlike the Chinese who are very fond of pork, the Uighurs do not eat it at all. Because they are Muslims. Blood is thicker than water...’

  What Evola said made sense. Many years later, on a trip from Ankara, I visited Chinese Turkestan. Words heard in markets in Urumqi, the capital, sounded like Turkish to my ears. Whenever I tried out my Turkish, faces beamed. People gathered festively about me, as if I was a long-lost relative come back. (A shopkeeper with a wispy beard went as far as to offer me his daughter in marriage – if I understood him correctly!) When I asked about their lives, however, voices were lowered. People looked about, as if fearing to be overheard. “We are not free”, some confided.

  ‘China is desperate to stifle the Uighurs’ religion and way of life. Remember how there are many minorities in the huge country. The regime is afraid Uighur unrest might serve a stimulus for others to rebel. Survival is what is at stake. Survival for the red dictatorship or survival for the Uighur nation? Religion and racial identity is at the heart of the Uighur cause. The Communists have even changed the country’s name. Bu they can’t destroy the people’s hearts. Colonialism is now abhorred as one of the greatest crimes but colonial rule by another, oppressive country is what the Uighurs are suffering, what else? Still, I have no doubt the Uighurs will not give in...They are Muslims... Islam will prove Mao’s nemesis, believe you me...’

  DORIAN GRAY

  Maria and I had been to see a theatrical production of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Not a very good one. I could not make up my mind whether Wilde’s story was deep or shallow, designed only to entertain. When I told Evola, he raised his black eyebrows a little and commented: ‘Well, don’t forget Shakespeare and Goethe also aimed at entertaining, to some extent. Don’t be too snooty about that. Dante’s Comedy also has plenty of fun. Wilde’s idea of art for art’s sake is not very profound...a form of literary dandyism...a young man’s disease...You can’t disconnect art from the whole physical context that way... But the matter of Dorian’s depravity is of interest. Englishmen of the Victorian era kept up a strict, hypocritical pretence about their shenanigans. Homosexuality, for some reason, was a thing they drew the line at. At the risk of contradicting myself – worse, sounding like the ghastly M. – I must say that the French and the Italians have handled this hang-up a bit better. Still, the real problem today is that Dorian’s misdeeds, as Wilde describes or hints at them, would not shock even your maiden aunt. A producer worth his salt would have to come up with updated versions. I am thinking of...Well, making Dorian join the SS, perhaps. Becoming a Gestapo agent? He’d look the ideal embodiment of darkness to liberal theatregoers. The smart black uniform, the red arm-bands with the aggressively hooked swastikas, the silver death’s head on his cap, the Gott mit Uns on the belt buckle...Don’t you imagine he would give the audience a real frisson? Then the famous picture the book sets up as a diabolical representation of Dorian’s soul would live up to its wearer. Not all SS were handsome men, of course, but Wilde’s Dorian would have been. Handsome and cruel. Like Lucifer! A real inversion of values, eh? Nietzsche would agree. The SS, if they were anything, were an attempt to reconstitute a medieval Order of fighter monks. Protestant prejudice smeared the medieval Templars, just as bourgeois, democratic prejudice has demonised the SS beyond any historical truth. Modernity cannot bear anyone whose values are radically different. It just shows the insecurity of our establishment...’

  He was being facetious, I knew. Maybe he was hinting at the possibility that Julius Evola, as outsiders fancied him to be, was an ideal Dorian Gray. Although now a bit of a ruin, pictures of the young Baron showed a handsome, dark guy...

  JESUS AND THE QUR’AN

  ‘The Qur’an appears to controvert the notion that Jesus died on Golgotha. Or indeed that he was crucified there. It says that “only a likeness was shown to them.” Christian writers have objected, on the grounds that it would make God a liar or a deceiver. But Muslims could reply that St Paul in one of his letters warns that one day God will send “a strong delusion” upon the wicked, so that “they should believe a lie”. So, God can deliberately set out to deceive - Christians have it on St Paul’s authority! On the other hand, note who is being deceived in St Paul’s case – it is in the Letter to the Thessalonians, I think. Not the good and the righteous but “those who are perishing”. The bad guys, in other words. The followers of a sort of Antichrist figure. God will delude them in order to further his own purposes, St Paul is saying. The idea behind this is that wrongdoers have no right to expect God to be fair with them. As criminals, they asked for it. Similarly, when the Qur’an says that people were deceived at the crucifixion, it refers to Christ’s enemies, not the Apostles, Jesus’ followers, for whom the Qur’an has high regard. That is the orthodox Islamic position. Sure, the Apostles do not seem to have said that Jesus did not truly suffer on the cross...oh, well...’

  ‘I do not, however, hold with the notorious Jesuit teaching that there are people to whom you do not owe the truth. It is the kind of casuistry that gave them a bad name. A man of honour is always true to his word. His pledge is sacred. But, note, you only pledge your word when you know it is the right thing to do. The riff-raff is not entitled to have my word. I would never give it to people who do not deserve it. But, once given, a man’s word is unbreakable. No Jesuit sophistry could even alter that.’

  ‘Protestantism has made a big meal of truth-telling. That was the gist of Kingsley’s attack on Newman. I have to say that, on this one, I feel more Protestant than anything else. Equivocation, subterfuge, trickeries are not things worthy of a man.’

  From the expression on my face, he must have gathered I was a bit puzzled. He was beginning to sound almost moralistic, something not quite like him. ‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked me. Well, two things. First, I thought his �
��way of the left hand” did away with certain conventions. Even moral conventions. Now he seemed to back them up. Second, concerning the Golgotha’s deception taught in the Qur’an, why didn’t the followers of Jesus testify to that?’

  The answer Evola gave to my first question - “the way of the left hand” – I cannot set out here. It would not be safe. I can only hint that it is part of the malamatiya way. The way of shame and reprobation. A way that can bring great disgrace to a person. Hence, teaching that is not possible in public. Actually, it is forbidden. On the second question, he gave a terse answer: ‘Yes, I see your point. But you forget that Islam does not accept that Christians possess the true Incil, the true Gospel, containing the authentic teaching of Jesus. Hence Muslims maintains that the Gospel record is garbled. I know, in a way this just reiterates the problem. There is a lie, a deception but...whose lie? Whose deception? Muslims would say it is the Christians who have been mendacious about Jesus – I mean, the early writers have. Christians maintain the opposite – it is Muslims who have got it wrong. The truth is known only to the wise and the mystics...’

  QUEEN OF HEAVEN

  After the war the Master had been prosecuted on terrorist charges. I was eager to learn of his prison experience but he did not like to talk about it. He joked about the name of the main Rome jail: ‘Regina Coeli, Queen of Heaven! A title of the Madonna, Christ’s mother. Only Italians would come up with an absurd name like that for a prison. But I found some of the prisoners nicer than many of the respectable people outside...It is quite an old-fashioned jail...Still, I was glad it was not shaped like a panopticon...’ I blinked. I had never heard that word before. He explained: ‘A name made up from two words. Pan, all, and Opticon, to observe. It refers to a building shaped in such a way that it permits a watchman to scan what is going on all around him. He can do that without the people watched being able to tell. Imagine a circle with a tower at the centre. Something like that. An idea cooked up by Jeremy Bentham, the so-called father of utilitarianism. His panopticon was a prison...An all-seeing eye may observe the prisoners all the time. They know it but cannot tell if the watchman is always there or not. A stratagem to keep them fearful, cowed. Yes, I would not have liked Regina Coeli to have been a panopticon...’

  ‘The all-seeing eye as a symbol for the divine goes back to the ancient Egyptians. Christians adopted from them. It is also a Masonic emblem...from there it made its way into the dollar bill...you can see it at the back of the one dollar note...Freemasonry played an important role in the origins of the United States, no secret there. In Bentham, however, the idea is thoroughly secularised. His philosophy is the antithesis of transcendence. He taught that mankind was subservient to two masters alone, pleasure and pain. Values like piety, honour, duty and glory were meaningless to him. Bodily sensations, being at bottom pleasure and pain, ruled men and beasts alike. You see, Bentham aimed at controlling people, like wardens control prisoners in a jail. Hence the panopticon constituted his model, his master key, his essential paradigm.’

  ‘Epicurus of course had anticipated Bentham of nearly 2000 years but the Greek’s influence was limited to a few intellectuals...drop-out philosophers...Bentham brought hedonism into legislation, ethics and social engineering. Karl Marx did indeed describe him as “the father of us all”. It explains a lot...’

  ‘Modern experimental behaviourism owes much to Bentham. Rats in a maze, reacting to electric shocks or to a bit of cheese. You understand? Pleasure and pain as bates, as means to shaping, controlling the conduct of human beings...And all in the name of democracy, free trade, liberalism and so on. Of course, Bentham conceived his philosophy of domination under the aegis of reform and progress. He belonged to the misnamed ‘age of reason’. Dogmatic rationalism would be a better word. Tradition, religion, authority were his targets and he knew how to drag them down, to knock them off their pedestals...Unlike the French philosophes, staunch enemies of revealed religion, he paid lip service to Christianity but his anthropology was materialistic, mercantile...Allegedly, he believed in a deity but in practice his god was rather like one of Epicurus’ gods. Useless deities, dwelling intermundia, between planets, and caring not a jot for human affairs. For a consistent materialist, God can only be like an absentee landlord...It goes back to another disastrous Englishman, Hobbes. For him reality consisted only of matter in motion and its modifications. Bentham, like Hobbes, abominated spirituality...His calculus of felicity, how to balance power and pain in a pseudo-scientific manner, is pretty droll...even his disciple, the far more consistent – and dangerous – J.S. Mill had to give that up. But the panopticon idea thrives on. I am told there are many prisons around the world built on that design. And, as I said, Bentham’s hedonism is a true hallmark of modern society. He plotted well, you have to recognise it. But I am reminded of that sentence in the Qur’an. It refers to the schemes, the plots of the wicked against the Prophet but it goes on to state: “Allah is the best of plotters.”

  ROME AND MECCA

  A newspaper had written about a possible terrorist attack on the great church of St Peter’s in Rome. Evola thought it unlikely. ‘Even if it happened, what would be the result? No real reaction to speak of from Catholics. Present-day Catholicism is utterly watered-down and enfeebled. I don’t think anyone can imagine angry Catholics wanting to avenge the outrage, can you? Council Vatican II has knocked the stuffing out of the Catholic life. The Roman Church has dismantled the few remaining vestiges of tradition in her bosom, such as the Tridentine Latin Mass. A perverse act of self-sabotage. She will rue the day. Have you studied that admirable book, Conspiracy against the Church? Friends of mine in France wrote parts of it. The word “conspiracy” is a kind of metaphor. But in practice it boils down to that. It traces the origins of the malaise to the action of Anti-Pope Anacletus II. Voltaire called him the Jewish Pope – and he was that, I mean, Judaism was the religion of his ancestors. His roots were from a family of bankers, the Pierleoni....He cajoled a number of fellow cardinals into electing him Pontiff. By lavish gifts and bribes, it is alleged, he got the populace of Rome on his side. But almost all the Church and the kings were against him. Still, he regarded himself as the true Pope...Conspiracy against the Church traces the genesis and the ramifications through history of a vast plot against Catholicism, culminating in our time.’

  ‘The book is quite a sophisticated work. The plot it charts is not a matter of a cabal of individual, malevolent conspirators. Nothing like that all too quoted canard, The Protocols of the Elders of Sion. A sort of implausible armchair conspiracy. In reality, it is more a question of disembodied forces. Subversive ideas have their own momentum. Other forces are economic, mercantile, ideological, political and so on. The publishers had had a copy delivered to each Father of the Vatican Council. Alas, it fell on stony ears. Apart from Monsignor Carli, the bishop of Segni. He spoke out during the Council. But then he is alone, with no influence. Or perhaps it caused more harm, who knows? Well, at least I can boast the honour that the current Pope, Paul VI, once attacked me in print! Before his election, when he was still Monsignor Montini. I hope they’ll mention it in my obituary.’

  ‘For once, I am going turn the other cheek. I mean, I could help in spreading the rumours about Pope Montini...About his being sexually deviant...His boy friend is rumoured to be the actor, Paolo Carlini. Roger Peyrefitte, the homosexual novelist and master gossip, has suggested as much – that is why he is persona non grata in Rome. The Vatican has the Italian police dogging Peyrefitte’s every footstep...But, as it happens, I am not vengeful. Not that I believe avenging yourself on your enemies is wrong. No, it is just the way I am. My nature. Besides, most of my enemies are not worth bothering about. Non ti curar di lor ma guarda e passa, says Dante. To the effect that it is beneath a man to pay attention to worms.’

  ‘It would be entirely another matter, of course, if some terrorists or some state decided to attack Mecca. Aiming at striking the Kaaba. Islam’s most famous shrine. A crusader, a certain Rey
nald, once wanted to do that. He did not succeed and came to grief at the hands of Saladin...The Kaaba is the sacred building at the heart of the Great Mosque at Mecca. The Islamic holy of holies. Abraham and his son, Ismail, are said to have built it. It is in its direction that Muslims throughout the world turn in prayer, five times a day. Muslims would not take that lying down, believe you me. The conflagration it would generate would set half the world on fire...’

  ‘Not that it would be the first time that the Kaaba was desecrated. A heretical sect, the Qarmatis, once entered the great mosque and profaned it, killing many worshippers. They then seized the Black Stone and took it away to Bahrain. Remember that the Black Stone was originally kept in Paradise, Muslims believe. It took 20 years before the sacred thing was restored to Mecca.’

  ‘Of course, the building in Mecca today is not the one in existence in the days of the Prophet. It has been pulled down and rebuilt several times since. I know a Lebanese who went on the pilgrimage to Mecca. He told me that once inside the Kaaba he looked in vain for the famous painting of Jesus and the Virgin Mary that Muhammad, when he cleansed the building, ordered to be spared, while destroying all the other idols kept inside and outside the Kaaba. He asked the guards and they almost lynched him! They took him for an infidel. The simpleton had never realised that the Kaaba of today is not, materially speaking, the same building that existed 1300 years ago!’