Hey James, recently I finished "Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul" by Evola and had some revelations, in large part thanks to your unrelenting attack on civilization, which has been on my mind for many months, having first heard them on the appearances made on Myth of the 20th century. Keep in mind I'm a product of public “education”. Even in the title of the book, "Aristocrat of the soul" sits with me wrong, like there's some divine purpose to slapping the shit out of peasant's. This kind of thinking seems to permeate western writing as far back as the Illiad, personal inspirations like Plato, to I guess guys like Tolkien when any higher being seems to have died out. It was a great gift to be given a perspective outside the lens of civilized man. I will preface this (due to the length), that the last paragraph is where my question lies, and only the following paragraph is the only one needed to understand it. The rest are thoughts that emerged with a vision.

“Be in this world, not of it”. I came to picture our time here on earth as a candle, ignited by some divinity before coming to this void. The purpose of this candle being lit I will leave to divine mystery, but it's clear it's meant to be consumed by a higher being in the transition from this life to the next. To leave this candle unconsumed for material reasons is to turn this divine spark into a black flame, the body consuming our higher aspect. The black flame having consumed us, in death we do not return to from where we came, but remain trapped in this reality in our most base form, which is where I suspect ideas of the underworld (and later purgatory) came from because of this image manifesting itself in my mind.”

Man in nature, whatever the material purpose of existence on earth is, seems to be the one to have most likely lived it. It is here that I feel Evola, Plato, and many others, came to confuse something higher and divine, with something as debased and corrupt as civilized living, largely thanks to you. Nature in it's naked form is sublime, a form of pure being that has no subjectivity to project unto man. Here, whatever the purpose of our time in material form is, man came to realize it, since nature had no reason to impede it. Man in this sense was in a state of “action without acting”, he could simply enjoy being without outside interference. He did not even identify with something as worthless as the subjective “I”, but rather, he was a manifestation of the same divine being behind the rivers, trees, animals, etc, this form of his life would simply lead to another. In that sense he was “innocent”, not in the sentimental fashion of Rousseau, but from the straying from the intended path brought on through worship of the self. From what I understand, these people did not have laws or petty morality, which baffled the British. Instead, they adhered to strict cultural norms, so the human could focus on simply being, that being the seemingly obvious purpose of material existence. Finally, I'll add this escapes any form of primitivism implied when speaking of nature. Simply running off with a stick into the forest is too materialistic an understanding of what was lost. It was an entire way of being that was both greater and prior to us that was destroyed, the only way of ever getting it back being:

1)some divine intervention making this world new or

2) the forces of nature themselves destroying this abomination, and starting the cycle again.

“Evil” then seems to manifest when man no longer viewed this material phase of existence as a mere transition, to be experienced as it was prior to him, but as an end unto its self, and all the subjective trappings that come with this. Agriculture, even its primitive form of scattering seeds to cultivate in temporary camps, was the beginning of women bending nature to their own will. This process would grow out of hand, manifesting itself in slavish agricultural societies. Having distorted reality to their own ugly feminine will instead of the letting it be guided by the will of the divine, these people were now slaves to the projections they had made real. Work and toil appeared where there was none, no longer serving the god of divine being, but god of things. In this respect, the nomad seems to have bent reality to a masculine will. Rather than outright rejecting the divine to embrace the material, the nomad brings the divine to an all too human level, placing man as a manifestation of god through his patriarchal ways. Fortunately, man in nature can still defend it as intended by the divine.

Until the foolish nomad makes an unholy pact with the whore civilization, bringing out the worst of the masculine and feminine, giving this bitch the power to bend the divine in nature to her will. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu is taken out of a higher being in which he is merely another embodiment of nature, by the whore Shamhat, who degrades him through excessive sex to the subjective “I”, and the evil that comes with it. “But when he turned his attention to his animals, the gazelles saw Enkidu and darted off....Becoming aware of himself” .

It was your second appearance on the third rail podcast, speaking of your book “He” that opened my eyes on this matter, and see no point in repeating what you have put in much finer words. The only matter I wish to touch upon at this point is the hero himself and the underworld, to tie this back to my vision of a candle burning a black flame. Civilization is a demonic manifestation of femininity, enforced by a stoic and lifeless masculinity, who bends nature to his will in her name. Being subjected to serve purely material manifestations of an evil will, the human being loses touch with that inner divinity that manifested itself all around him in nature, and in earlier forms of patriarchal civilization, the latter doomed to decay. And so the human being no longer feels this material phase of being served its purpose as a transition to the next life, instead he feels trapped in it. The divine flame turned dark consumes his divinity as fuel for his material existence, leaving a shade of what once was behind the world. This is what the underworld is, a miserable place lost souls go, the candle of their life having never been burned, keeping them here.

This is how it's pictured in Mesopotamia, and later Ancient Greece in the Odyssey. It would seem the hero is he who finds these values within himself, and transcends this world by burning the candle of his being in a divine light to fulfill his transition to the other side, leaving nothing of himself behind. Hercules thus finds himself in the Elysian fields, not in Hades. It also points to the Homer of the Illiad being different than the Homer of the Odyssey (which I saw you mention), who places Achilles and Ajax (who commits suicide after being dishonored by Odysseus), in the same underworld as the lowest coward, missing the point of what these hero's had achieved by transcending the petty concerns of men. In other myths, Achilles winds up in the Elysian Fields, which is what Illiad Homer would have intended, or else he is to devalue the hero entirely, like the Homer of Odyssey.

That is where my vision of the candle and emergent thoughts ceased, the only thing to add being this is inspired of by Evola's idea of “Riding the tiger” of all the human projections unto civilization dissolving, to attain some higher truth within, the divine flame which will consume the candle of my life. Given that in a previous question about what stood out most in the Illiad in this phase of life to you was the conversation between Achilles and [Priam], and another reader having this same opinion, I feel obliged to ask, in your life, do you feel you will transcend this earth, having used the candle for its intended (at least if this analogy holds true) purpose of breaking through to the other side? Other than that, I have no real purpose in sharing this other than as a sign of appreciation for what I feel are pure motives in looking into these topics. As opposed to trying to bend the facts to suit a narrative, like the Homosexual elf land envisioned by FBI agents such as Dick Spencer, or the eunuchs in academia. As a retarded (at least comparing myself to better men in the past) product of public schooling, your dedication to honesty has helped guide my own studies towards a higher truth in a sea of lies.

Carlos, I’m humbled that you went so deeply into this subject on my general suggestion and have some thoughts on the Under World.

This is the Under World, obviously. As much as I regard the emergence of Christianity as an authentic revealed faith—even if I reject the idea that some aspect of God made a sacrifice of himself so that I would never have to sacrifice anything but agency—it is quite obvious that the Cristian ideal of Hell is cobbled together post-Jesus linearly from:

-the ancient ideal of the realm of man as a sink of souls trapped in a slavish cycle of materialistic ennui, as represented by the underworld of Sin in Gilgamesh, which if written by the Creeks might have been titled the Tragedy of Enkidu

-the ideal of Hades—the Descender—ruling a realm consisting of the previous and accessible to other planes of hope and damnation

-Hel, the Norse afterlife of the damned, ruled by hags, a literal plane of bitches

To think of it, all of these elements, as well as the duality pioneered by Zoroaster and blended into early Christianity through obvious syncretic mechanisms, was cobbled together to threaten the toiling soul of the peasant, serf and slave, the material non-aristocrat [aristocrat meaning “best-person”] to sell his soul to Christendom, while the sinful materialistic aristocrat gave his goods and money to the Church to buy his soul a berth in heaven. Christendom was therefore a means of encouraging the souls who had survived a period of material decline in late antiquity and who underwent much dissolution in terms of pagan theology, and much illumination in the esoteric, to buy into or surrender to the New World Order of the Roman Mega State, depending upon their station. The rich gave of their goods and the poor gave of their souls for absolution.

I see the barbarian nomad and the civilized slave as both over-reactionary figures struggling to right the imbalance caused by human domestication which we call Civilization and which brings with it many of the comforts for those at its hierarchal or epochal apexes that we associate with being human, for instance being free of the chain of violence that permeates animal life.

As to your personal question, and your wondering if I feel like I will have attained a transcendence from this earthly trap at the end of my life. I must confess that my reading has been too deep and comprehensive to leave with me the hope of faith. I am incapable of that level of trust and have seen so much hope rendered foolish that I do not place my faith in such things.

My view is Ariostotlean, essentially gnostic without the mumbojumbo—I’m searching for God, who has not revealed himself to me so far as I can tell—but I’m largely deaf, dumb and blind in the spiritual realm. I do understand that the most corrupt and unlikely outcome, is that which the fanatically religious atheists believe, that their unprovable negative—that there can be no higher conscious power than humanity—awaits as all-negating oblivion. There is too much evidence from the historical and theological record as well as modern clinical studies, that there is something greater looking over us. So, I accept the fact that the slavish Christian view of life, that we are servants of a cruel puppeteer God that is served by his left-hand Satan in our torment, and that I might very well end up cursed to eternal damnation and suffering beyond hell’s hateful doors. But to abandon the rationality that God gave me, or beg off my search for him through fear of his monstrous servant who pretends to be his opposite, is simply not in me.

Furthermore, as an avid reader of theology older than the New Testament, it is very clear that the divine does not serve man, but that Man serves the divine, which is cruel and wrathful. So, it makes the most sense in my mind that we as mortals exist only as food for the gods—for God says “we” and “us” often in the earliest texts when speaking of man as a third category of being—our suffering their delectation, our doom their fruit.

Yet what makes sense to me is not necessarily true ultimately. I’m just a stupid ape scratching my wrinkled brow in an evil world.

I entertain all possibilities for my soul, the most comforting of which is oblivion. As any Christian or Muslim does, I believe in more than one higher powers—the Almighty and Satan at least, as well as angelic and demonic forces—and the idea that all of these powers are arrayed in cruelty and wrath in heaven for my own good, I call hogwash. If they are truly powers, than they serve themselves and/or some higher end, not the serf of the soul what is I. With this in mind, I follow Aristotle’s example in a search, which I expect not to be rewarded, for “the cause uncaused” and the “unmoved mover.”

Evola to me, came across as a seeker, not content with the notions handed down to him and able to sort through the subtext of their generation. It is of interest that he is most reviled by the atheist and his metaphysic fathers rather than the Christian and that he points to a Roman view of the cosmos predictive of Catholicism and infinitely superior to that buttress of super-state social control. Personally, my life has been a dark damnation illuminated by certain bright souls and darkened by most humans I have known.

I would offer this following set of facts to those considering the materialism of our lives and our higher searches.

I offer 5 metaphysic ages of humanity

-1. Neanderthals, hunting humans, the first humans to practice religious rites we know of, lived for about 30 years, most of it in vigorous health, dying in their athletic prime as a general rule, though sometimes nursed in their infirmity.

Their religious faith was animistic.

-2. Nomads, from Central Asia, the Old Testament, from the American plains herding horses, if not killed in war or dying in child birth, seemed to live into middle age and sometimes attain great antiquity like Abraham and Wakashi, reaching a hundred or more, but mostly falling at about 40, which was therefore the age of chieftains, when one who had managed to survive where most had died was selected as a guide for his people.

Their religious faith was generally atavistic, especially in the Old World.

-3. Farmers, through most of history, never knew a season of good health outside of puberty, with most dying in childhood before age five and those who survived this all dead well before age 30, all of their years spent in suffering and ill health. Those who ruled this suffering mass of burdened beasts [often descended from herding societies who conquered the farmers] often lived to ripe old age, with the aristocrats virtually immortal by slave standards. A king generally lived to his 60s and a serf to 20. Homer’s contention that ancient heroes were all mightier than younger heroes, implies that the slavery to grain and a lessening of meat atrophied the warrior class. His slaves were nothing but diseased wretches.

Their religions, most of them, from Asia, to Europe to America, were sacrificial.

-4. Industrial humans, have generally lived to about 60 years, much of it in good physical health and all of it in poor mental health, with drug addiction and alienation the rule, not the exception.

Their religions are ideological in the main, with certain throwbacks and hold overs from deeper traditions.

-5. Information age humans, are expected to live to 80 years, most of it in poor physical health and weakness, including childhood and early adult obesity and all of it in poor mental health, with sobriety and sanity quick becoming novel conditions in this age of penultimate alienation.

What is our religion? We are taught to worship ourselves as aspects of an ascendant collective divinity.

I don’t know what to make of this trajectory other than it is suspiciously cyclic in pattern and that for all of these spiritual ages, most of humanity have occupied an underworld that either physically or mentally rivals the torments of any medieval notion of damnation. Look at Baltimore City 2019 and you will see something that approximates in gory detail the hell postulated by Bosch.

I therefore suspect, that we are Enkidu, lost, alone among a teaming mob, and betrayed, and that Gilgamesh will never find us, not on this suffering earth.

But my Creator obviously wanted me to search this grim horizon, so I do so, perhaps nothing but a stalk of grain that his slaves will scythe down to feed a devouring flame.