Devotion Is Essential
In this newsletter we discuss things from a perspective of Perennialist Traditionalism. Perennialism is the idea that all worthwhile religions and philosophies come from a common source of Divine Truth and are each valid ways of approaching Truth appropriate to peoples of different times and places. Perennialism is opposed to Sectarianism, which is the idea that only one particular religion is correct and the others are all wrong. Traditionalism is the idea that ancient cultural norms and ideas are of supreme value even if not necessarily understood because they help us to flourish materially and spiritually, and this is opposed to Modernism which is the idea that we need to radically destroy all former modes of cultural expression in order to liberate man.
The influence of Julius Evola on those who view the world through the lens of Perennialist Traditionalism is immense. For the most part, this influence is positive. Evola has many lucid insights into how the path of the warrior is utterly inseparable from the Dharmic path, and how this path can be realized through contemporary athletic activities such as mountaineering through adopting an attitude of heroic detachment towards them even in lieu of the lack of initiatic warrior organizations of yore. He also has a thorough doctrine of Race, and he takes great care to describe its physical and spiritual aspects, which I have drawn on in my own writings on race. In these things Evola is not coming up with his own ideas but rather describing what had always been the case in every Traditional society, however most people are too blinded by Modernity to see these things, so it took someone with a truly aristocratic spirit and analytical mind like Julius Evola to reveal what is in plain sight. Reading his books helps us to understand eternal truths to a great extent and thus they serve as an initiation of sorts into Traditionalism.
His critique of Modernity is perhaps the very best of any thinker I have ever encountered. Evola’s assessment of Modernity builds on the foundation of Nietzsche’s critiques and takes it much deeper, as well as offering a better and more coherent solution to the problems of Modernity than does Nietzsche who remained stuck in the dark squalor of Atheism despite his brilliant psychological and philosophical insights. Imbibing Evolianism in our thoughts, words, and deeds helps us to overcome the effete intellectualism that so often predominates among Perennialists and the impotent sterility that predominates among Traditionalists. I have described Evola to people before as the best parts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Rene Guenon combined, with a flair that is all his own.
I have made it clear that I have great respect for Julius Evola, and I intend to write on many of his insights in the future. However, I cannot do so in good conscience without clarifying at the very beginning where Evola goes seriously wrong. For all of his good contributions to Traditionalism and the light he provides for those of us trying to escape from the darkness of modernity, there are certain pernicious errors woven into Evola’s writings amongst the truths he espouses, and these errors have rendered the Traditionalists weak in their attempts to realize The Truth in the deepest recesses of their own existential being as well as to actualize that Truth as a weapon in the fight against the dark forces of Modernity. The most fatal of these errors propagated by Julius Evola and The Evolians is the idea that devotion to God represents a lower and degenerate form of spiritual practice that those seeking advanced spiritual progress must abandon in favour of either contemplation or action in accordance with one’s disposition.
Contrary to being a weak expression of spirituality, devotionalism is the most essential of all true expressions of spirituality. It is in fact the most perennial, the most human, and it remains the most accessible to all sentient beings in every planet even if they live in times of total degradation like us. What it is exactly that a community chooses to be devoted to, how they construe and live out their devotion to God, is in fact what largely defines entire ethnic communities and empires and trans-national historical movements. Devotion and Traditionalism have always gone hand-in-hand, and this is true not just in this yuga but in all yugas in every planet in every universe for every type of sentient being: all have a relationship with The Supreme Being and are defined by the qualities of that relationship, their nearness to Him determine their position in the cosmic hierarchy.
Failing to humbly embrace the need for devotionalism in the modern world has robbed Traditionalists of the opportunity to attempt to reform Christianity and wrest it from the hands of modernists, and it has also halted any serious attempt at a Pagan revival as many Traditionalists pine for. By not standing up for God in the modern world and dismissing our need to worship Him we are not being more enlightened, but actually quite smug and arrogant, and thus unwittingly pawns of the dark powers that rule Modernity. Far from being “Un-Aryan” devotionalism has actually been, alongside the path of the warrior, the most common expression of spirituality for the Aryan peoples throughout all of history, whether the divinity was honoured as a singularity as in Christian monotheism or as a plurality as in paganism. European-descendant People who approach spirituality from an un-devotional means are thus actually out of step with the common trends of European spirituality. Devotion is a quintessential aspect of all Perennial Traditions and the neglect of this by Evola and other Traditionalists is a serious problem. By embracing devotionalism we will not only be better at all the forms of activism we are doing already, we will have God on our side.
II.
Devotionalism or The Path of Devotion is the most common expression of spirituality in our world. Any kind of spiritual practice that centers around worshipping and praising The Supreme God is a kind of devotionalism. Christianity and Bhakti-Yoga are both expressions of devotionalism. There are two other spiritual paths that lead one to being able to realize the Divine. The Path of Contemplation is any kind of spiritual practice that centers around meditation, and so Buddhism, Jnana-Yoga and I believe also Neo-Platonism are expressions of this path. The Path of Action is realized in most of the sacred warrior traditions of this world and Evola frequently cites the Islamic idea of Jihad as an expression of this ancient Path of Action.
Evola characterizes devotionalism as effeminate and plebeian, a symptom of people no longer being able to realize the Divine within themselves so they seek it in externals. The Paths of Contemplation or of Action are more suitable for trying to realize the divinity within oneself, he says, but this fails to take into account that we become like that which we are devoted towards, and this is especially true for something spiritual. Thus, by being devoted to The Supreme God we become more like Him and thus realize the divine potential of our own selves. The miracles attributed to Catholic and Orthodox saints, Islamic Sufis, and Yogis who made worshipping God a central part of their spirituality like Yogananda are all the result of these people having realized their true spiritual nature and shed their ego through the path of devotion.
An attitude that is characteristic of Evolianism is a lament over the fact that the ancient rites necessary for the unfoldment of the spiritual powers of Man have been hopelessly forgotten or distorted. It is true that in the antediluvian world and in ages even more remote than that people still knew the esoteric rituals that allow one direct access to the spiritual world and to become a being of great power. Important facts about the epic spiritual drama that forms the backdrop of everything that happens in this world will always be unknown to us because such knowledge has been lost. However, The Path of Dharma was actually never about seeking power, though that is indeed a necessary side-effect of walking it with sincerity, and someone who walks the path of Dharma for that reason will ultimately not get very far even if they do attain power. One of the reasons why the path of Dharma that exists in many religions exists is to prepare us for greater service towards and intimacy with God.
While people who make occult practices for the sake of gaining power a central part of their life often think they are an elite, the truth is they are actually practicing a much more lower and primitive form of spirituality. The magic powers they gain at great costs to themselves, even if it’s only from the sheer amount of time they must sacrifice to be able to gain them, are ultimately as vain and as transient as any other thing our delusional egos crave such as social status or wealth. It is true that certain people endowed with spiritual gifts due to their blood lineage can have power and influence over the elements and over mankind through visualization, the recitation of words, rituals, etc but these do not last. After their earthly lifetime is finished, they will not still have these powers just like how no one can bring their social status or their wealth with them when they die. The only thing we brought into this world when we first incarnated was our spirit which we can’t ever lose because it is who we are in our innermost essence, and it is also all that we will bring with us when we leave. So it is that the state of our spirit is what really counts in this life, and status, wealth, and power are only a means to an end for developing our spirits in service towards God and only of value if they do.
C.S. Lewis talks about the principle of first and second things. If we value first things first, then we get the secondary things too. But if we value the secondary things as though they were the primary things, then we wind up with neither the secondary nor the primary things. Thus, those who seek The Creator will get all the desirable things of the creation, but those who value the creation and power over it more than the Creator wind up with neither.
It is true that Devotionalism is the most appropriate spiritual path for women in any era, but this does not mean that this path is inherently effeminate as men have their own way of expressing devotion to God such as a son to their Father or as a knight to their king. While these masculine expressions of devotion are “submissive” in the sense that they stem from an acknowledgment of our inferiority in comparison to Him and our dependence on Him, the truth is we are inferior to and dependent upon Him, existentially, and the part of us that struggles to recognizes this is our ego. I fear that many Evolians are in fact blinded by egotism and because of this they cannot see the value of devotion.
In this Kali Yuga, the path of contemplation is difficult for most to walk because their IQ’s have been wrecked by miscegenation and poor attention spans brought by modern living. The path of action is hard too due to most not having the ability to approach courageous actions in a detached manner if they even have the opportunity. The industrialization of warfare has made the sacred path of the warrior hard to actualize in these modern times. It is possible for people to walk those paths even unto completion in this world, but such spirits are rare. Even those destined to not have their spiritual path reach fruition through devotion can still benefit from learning about it. God, after all, is one of the the supreme subjects of contemplation for the contemplative and the supreme subject of service for the warrior. The three spiritual paths intersect with each other and which one a person ends up practicing is really more a matter of emphasis.
Devotionalism is by far the most universal spiritual expression in this Kali-Yuga because it was always the most essential. When you chip away at the grand Traditions that existed in the other yugas, when you remove all the rites and all the initiatic hierarchies and all of the other beautiful things that we have mournfully lost, all that we are left with is Devotion. We can’t ever lose devotion, even in this era ruled by deceptive demons, because it is so essential to who we are as eternal spirits that we actually can’t lose the ability to have devotion. Being able to praise God, our source and our master, is as essential a quality to our eternal spirits as is free will or consciousness. While we may forget that we have these essential qualities we literally cannot lose them. Just as heat is an inherent quality of the sun, or wetness to water, so too is devotion utterly inseparable from the quality of being a sentient consciousness such as we are. It’s the one thing the demons can never take from us. They may annihilate our traditions, subvert our religious institutions, distort our scriptures, and all other kinds of truly malevolent deeds, but ultimately our connection to God is as natural and intuitive to our spirits as breathing is to our bodies. Nothing other than ourselves can really stop us from praising Him, and praising Him attracts Him, and He always defends His Servants from the demons whom He can destroy effortlessly if He so wishes. Therefore, the most evil thing for the demons to aim to do is to try to encourage laxity in devotion, or not to be devoted at all, or to promote bad ideas about Him, or to encourage us to seek the fulfillment of our devotional nature in anything other than God. That last point is really important for understanding the role of devotion in spiritual warfare. Because the demons know that we are inherently devotional beings, that we are literally made to praise God, they try to find ways for us to express our devotional nature towards anything other than it’s proper end, God. Because we’re made to worship God humans wind up creating false idols in the illusion of His absence and we see this dynamic play out with political ideologies, money, sex, power, egotism, drugs, etc. In the ancient world these lower, passional aspects of the human being were called upon by praising demonic spirits directly who claimed to be gods. But in the modern world idolatry plays itself out in a more subtle manner, and sometimes it is even not subtle. The demons want idolatry to be as explicit as possible and the natural conclusion of all subversive modernist movements is for demons to be praised in God’s place explicitly, and for them to possess people to rule over humans directly. What drives the demons to do this is only their mad hatred of God and His Justice. But by praising God sincerely, which we can do at literally any time, the entire demonic plan is thwarted.
To be born in the 21st century in The West means to be born in a society ruled by ancient demons older than the earth itself, who through establishing secret societies that promote anti-traditional subversive movements like liberalism, capitalism, communism, feminism, LGBTism, secularism, etc. have taken over the world and they are preparing to rule over it more directly each day. The ancient rites that could empower you to fight them directly have been lost. The religious institutions of your ancestors are in ruins and subverted by them directly. The earth itself is being spoiled and turned into a hellscape. I don’t need to tell you that this is all a catastrophe. But nothing can stop you from getting on your knees and asking for God’s help, and He will give it to you. What does it matter to Him if you don’t know the rites, or if the institutions He established through people devoted to Him millennia ago are totally in shambles? The LORD of Space and Time won’t have His Will, which is always the good of His Servants, to be trumped by mere historical circumstances. The Omnipotent God can’t be thwarted by your lack of access to secret initiatic knowledge. How can He who is Omniscient fail to hear your prayers if you speak them with sincerity? Do not worry if you do not know the rites or if your prayers are following the right format or if you belong to the correct religion, because to speak directly to God with a sincere heart is the most Traditional thing of all. This is the great secret, a truth of more value than anything taught in the ancient mystery schools.
Devotion to God is what we were made to do, and it was our first activity when our spirits first realized their sentience long before they took on the bodies they had now. When you praise The Creator, you are actualizing in time your true eternal nature and fulfilling the purpose of all Tradition. Even if you were an ignorant wretch on the verge of death or madness wandering a nuclear wasteland ruled by Satanists, He could still give you all that you need to make your life ultimately worthwhile if you turn to Him, and He doesn’t need a reason to do that for you because He is good.
Yes, you are even now being directly targeted by ancient demons who hate you on a level you can’t even imagine, and they are far more powerful than you such that direct confrontation is simply out of the question. But to God all these demons are less than little gnats or fleas, and He only allows them to reign for a time to test His servants and to subvert their evil plans to bring about good for His servants and the glorification of His Name. Even the lowest and most ignorant devotee of God will rejoice in the impotent screeching of the doomed lords of hell when they are decisively defeated and the golden age returns. Then that golden age will pass, too, and a new cycle will begin, with new demons who will also be defeated. So it will go on and on. These cycles exist for us to rise above them, and we rise above the cycles through spiritual enlightenment. When we reach that state of transformational enlightenment we will not wander this cyclical world anymore but will be situated in our eternal home.
The essential thing to know is not that it’s the kali yuga, or the specific details of the spiritual conflict. The essential thing to know is whether you are on God’s side. If you are not then the demons will drag you down to hell with them. But if you are then you will ultimately prevail because you will be united to The One who is ontologically incapable of anything other than Victory: God.
Yes, it is true that the Traditional paths of initiatic knowledge and their accompanying rites are fatally lost or distorted. But do not let this discourage you from your spiritual quest for even the shadow of an instant. God gives all benefits to His devotees. If you are devoted to God, you will not lack for any spiritual growth if this is what you desire sincerely. Through devotion one can attain all the transformative spiritual wisdom of all the old paths of initiation and their accompanying powers, and through devotion one can attain the very summit of all spiritual enlightenment sought after by all the wise men of yore. How could it not be so? The Omnibenevolent God gives everything to the one who loves Him sincerely. What does it matter if every single religion on earth were subverted into preaching Modernism? God is omnipresent: He is always accessible to the one who seeks Him with humility no matter what is going on in this world.
Because God knew the low states humanity would plunge into during this dark age, He ensured that we could still have an understanding of Him through the promotion of devotionalistic religions like Christianity or Vaishnavism. The latter tends to have a greater grasp of metaphysical questions, but Jesus is as much an avatar of the Perfect Lord as Krishna is and thus all Christians are a kind of Bhakti-Yogi even if they do not understand this about themselves. While they have flaws, mostly stemming from conceptual limitations, the Abrahamic religions and Christianity especially is a suitable religion for this dark age of materialism and ignorance because of its emphasis on the love of God.
Evola thinks that devotionalism began as a cult to a primordial mother-figure, but this is gravely incorrect. In fact, devotion to the Supreme Creator Father God is the primordial religion. Devotion to a supreme mother figure in lieu of a supreme father is a serious sign of degeneration, because it is indicative of a lack of patriarchy. Patriarchy is Dharma. The entire universe is, in fact, a patriarchy because it is ruled by God The Father, and part of the natural order that is intertwined in all things is that God wants humans who are fathers to reflect His power and authority by being powers and authorities. Devotionalistic religions that dominate the Kali Yuga are just particular and usually flawed instantiations of the primordial panentheistic monotheism that existed in the golden age which nonetheless can still bring their practitioners to enlightenment. Christianity and indeed all forms of Abrahamism will one day disappear as have all other expressions of religion, nonetheless the perennial reality of our eternal spirits being able to connect to God Our Father will remain.
Not only is devotion to God the most appropriate spiritual expression in the Kali Yuga, but it is even more beneficial now than it is in any other age. The Vedas all proclaim that in the dark age calling upon the name of God brings about the same benefits as the forgotten holy rites of sacrifice or meditation does in other ages. To be devoted to God in this dark age requires great faith and God rewards it richly. Contrary to the common conception that being born in the dark age is unfortunate, spiritual growth can happen more rapidly here than at any other time through disciplined devotional obedience to God and seeking for His Presence. Thus if we choose to be devotees to God in this age of materialistic madness then we ascend very rapidly and our having been born in the dark age will have been the best thing that ever happened to us. Any human ruler rewards and elevates a good servant, so how much more will God do this for us if we serve Him under such difficult circumstances? The truth is, the one who serves God becomes quasi-divine himself. It is not servile but noble indeed to seek to serve God with a pure heart because faithful loving devotion to one higher than us overcomes our lower impulses, and none is higher than God. To serve God with humility is the most supremely glorious enterprise for any sentient being.
Devotion is not strictly a plebeian activity. All of the castes can find their fulfillment in devotion. Indeed, what really determines one’s caste-nature is how one approaches devotion. The Brahmins study the nature of God and teach it to others, and realize God in their innermost being as an end-in-itself. The Kshatriyas fight to uphold God’s Justice and fight His enemies in their martial activities. The Merchants grow the Kingdom of God on Earth through their economic activities, and the Shudras serve God through obedience to their masters. The man with a higher nature serves God for who He is in Himself, the man with a lower nature serves God for what He can give. Both get what they want, but only the one with a pure motivation in praising God can reach spiritual enlightenment through devotion. The one who serves God for materialistic reasons will be rewarded with a brief stay in a paradise world before reincarnating back into this world, but the one who seeks unity with God forevermore will never again reincarnate or return into this cyclical universe.
For the man who walks the Traditional Path of Devotion, loving God is an end-in-itself. He is their goal, and He is also the path to the goal as He draws His devotee to Himself, and He also sustains His devotee on the journey.
There are dozens of devotional religions in this world that worship the Supreme God. They are not all equal in God’s eyes, nor do they all have equally correct ideas about Him. When people believe things about Him that are not true or only half-true, it is certainly an impediment to them being able to serve God fully and to realize Him but nonetheless out of His gracious magnanimity He accepts their worship, and thus there is no anxiety over whether or not one belongs to a religion that is going to make one go to Hell just because it wasn’t the right one, that is all just a sectarian delusion that is beneath God. We will discuss the different types of devotional religions and what they get right or wrong in future installments of our newsletter.
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