Saturday, December 30, 2017

Spiritual Races

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"A short time ago we referred to a ‘quite special race of spirit’. We must explain this point and, together with it, the specific place of the Ariya. The touchstone, as we have said, is the vision of universal impermanence, of dukkha, and anatto. Now, it is not said that the realization that something is impermanent is so eo ipso a motive detaching from and renunciation of it. This depends, rather, on what we have elsewhere called the ‘race of the spirit’, which is at least as important as that of the body. Here are some examples. A ‘Telluric’ spirit may consider quite natural a dark self-identification with becoming and with its elementary forces, to such an extent that it does not even become aware of its tragic aspect— as sometimes occurs among the Negroes, savage peoples, and even among certain Slavs. A ‘Dionysian’ spirit may consider universal impermanence of little account, opposing it to carpe diem, the joy of the moment, the rapture of a corruptible being who enjoys from instant to instant corruptible things, a joy so much more acute in that— as the well-known Renaissance has it— ‘di woman non v e certezza. A ‘Lunar’ spirit, religiously inclined, may in its turn see in the contingency of life an atonement or a test, in face of which it should behave with humility and resignation, having faith in the impenetrable divine will and maintaining the feeling of being a ‘creature’ created by it out of nothing. By others still this death of ours is considered as a completely natural and final phenomenon, the thought of which should not for a moment disturb a life turned towards earthly aspirations. Finally, a ‘Faustian’, ‘Titanic’, or Nietzschean spirit may profess ‘tragic heroism’, may desire becoming, and may even desire the ‘eternal return’…”

--- Julius Evola ("The Doctrine Of Awakening", ch#7: "Determination Of the Vocations")

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