From Krur to La Torre

Julius Evola's farewell Essay to the Krur Journal, and introduction to La Torre (The Tower), a biweekly publication focused on cultural and politics from the perspective of Tradition.

To the friends who have followed us thus far, the moment has come to say a few words not of farewell – because our activity does not cease, and elsewhere even materially they can follow it – but rather of conclusion.

The tasks that three years ago we had set for ourselves with Ur, as far as falls within our possibilities, are, more or less, exhausted.

We proposed to initiate the few, who are still susceptible to disgust for all that is simply human, and to sensitivity for a higher reality, toward the difficult paths, the horizons and culminations of that strange and powerful Science, which the Ancients knew under the name of Magic. We proposed to free this Science from all that is “occultistic,” superstitious, deceitful, and sectarian: to give it in terms of an exact and positive technique for the attainment of relations of knowledge and of power with respect to that transcendent reality, to which religion knows how to turn only through the mists of faith and fearful devotion. We proposed finally to corroborate our teachings with the relation of experiences effectively attained, and likewise with traditional texts and various references, yet always converging in the single direction.

All this, in the whole of our issues over three years, which are bound one to another forming as three volumes of a single work, we have done, in the measure of what was personally possible for us. To continue, would be to condemn ourselves, in many respects, to a piétiner sur place: because certain “further” things cannot be said; or fall outside of what we could honestly take up again under the assurance of our own knowledge. To do simple “cultural” work is not, moreover, among our intentions: above all in this setting. But those who can understand, in what we have given in these three years have also more than what they need: more, in any case, than what in such a direction they could seek elsewhere. As for the others, we fear that if for still much time we continued to strike the same keys, they would hardly know how to come to something more.

And now:

We know of those who have already dared. We know of those who have already come to half-open the doors. We know of those who have taken up our teaching in a profound commitment of life. Many, moreover, more externally, have in various ways shown us their interest, their esteem, their affection. All this suffices to compensate us for all our work.

It is scarcely worth saying, that the real relationships that bind us with those who have begun, can only subsist, unaltered. The “chain of Ur” remains. To the friends of “Ur” we exhort constancy and faith in the work. The times, today, are as sad as ever; as ever, they are adverse to every possibility of transcendent development. Still, one must hold firm: not with a violent effort or a revolt against the external circumstances of the epoch, but with the most subtle and most powerful energy of an interior persuasion and of a calm firmness enthroned silently where the echoes, the invasions, and the upheavals of the sensible life could not reach. The bite of the Dragon does not scar over: that which even if only once and even if only in a flash one has come to grasp, is no longer lost: even when no consciousness would any longer seem to correspond to it and when the great frost would seem to have pervaded the whole soul. “As the clouds pass and repass over the sky, so the experiences transmute in the soul of the One. And as all dark clouds cannot overshadow its emerald calm, so the sorrows and passions of the world cannot disturb the serenity of an illuminated soul.” These words of Shankara¹ remain also as our teaching.

To the others, to those who still seek, we say not to give space to the doubt of being alone, in a vain and chimerical work. Let them have the courage to wait, to endure, and the sense that unknown friends are fighting on their same line. As with strange clarity certain sounds from the valley reach to the heights of the mountains, so let it be known that they are not ignored by those on the other shore: and they are awaited. Whatever mouths today have repeated the phrase, it remains nonetheless true that “when the disciple is ready, the master too is ready.” In their second manifesto, the Rosicrucians wrote: “If someone is seized by the desire to see us only out of curiosity, he will never communicate with us. But if his will truly and effectively leads him to inscribe himself in the register of our brotherhood, we, who judge by thoughts, will show him the truth of our promises; so much so, that we do not name the place of our residence, for the thoughts, joined to the real will of the reader, are capable of making us known to him, and him to us.” These words require no further comment.

It is rather to be added that, to make conscious that if our teaching essentially concerns an inner and invisible work that is accomplished in the intimacy of a few spirits, it also, and at the same time, constitutes itself as a symbol and a sign, as something that – we may indeed say it – can acquire, with regard to the world and to the epoch in which we have come to live, the value of a prophetic anticipation.

It is a commonplace, today, to speak of the crisis of modern civilization: this, however, does not prevent the fact from being real. A deep force carries the Western world beyond itself, with a rapidity that cannot fail to strike all observers. Every attempt to curb this force by means of “returns” and of extrinsic remedies, is vain. A will to power and to action bursts forth irresistibly from every form of the Western world, definitively undermining the bimillennial attempt to imprint upon Europe the spirit of a religious tradition, constituting a compact block with respect to which every mystical nostalgia and every lingering in feminine-Orientalizing spiritualisms visibly acquires the value of an escape and of an impotent hysteria.

On the other hand, if the Western world has come to conquer every people and to sweep away with itself whatever could be linked to other traditions and other visions, does this not perhaps mean that a stronger power and a stronger destiny act behind it?

Where such a force goes, which very soon nothing will hold back anymore; what its final outcome is, this we do not know. Not free with respect to itself, devoid of light, it can plunge catastrophically to touch the bottom of that dark and iron age, which ancient traditions foretold. Or else, if it surpasses itself, if it frees itself from the Ahrimanic forms of matter and of the closed, violent, evil individuality, it can find a higher equilibrium, a path of health and transfiguration, opening into a new epoch of realism and transcendent action.

But such an epoch, assumption in the metaphysical world of the virile and dominating Western spirit, how could it be thought otherwise than as a magical epoch? When this be the destiny of the future West, it will therefore be the magical tradition, the pagan tradition of the “heroes” and the “warriors” to become, from occult, manifest, to act visibly and regally in a cycle of culture.

Now – we have not missed occasion to declare it – the teaching that has found expression in these our issues, refers precisely to such a tradition just as we are bound to the occult and ever-watchful forces of it. Therefore not for what in our doctrine there is of our own (for this could never be but a contingent and illusory aspect), but for what in it belongs to the transcendent and primordial Wisdom of the “Masters of Power,” the vision and the meanings that we have defended beyond what they may say to the single individual, have also – we repeat it – the value of a symbol and of a prophetic anticipation, today perhaps uncomprehended, tomorrow recognized.

It may be that a world sets, that the heavens definitively close over the destinies of the peoples of the West. But it may also be that the transfiguration occurs. Then to have kept alive today, among the great, phantomlike masses in motion of the dark age, the sign of that Wisdom and the contact with those Forces, will have a universal meaning. The subtle and invisible chain of a few scattered and unknown men, will be that very one which will open into the central and regal stream of a great current of visions and of powers, of a great tradition of free men and of liberators.

(Krur, no. 12, December 1929, pp. 384–388)

Our activity in 1930
To the readers

To the friends and readers who thus far have followed and supported us, ideally and materially, we make today a new appeal.

Krur is transforming. Having exhausted the tasks which, relative to that which is the technical domain of esotericism, we had proposed to ourselves three years ago, we have accepted the invitation to transfer our action into a broader, more visible, more immediate field: on the very plane of Western “culture,” of the problems which in this moment of crisis trouble individual consciences and those of peoples.

Krur in 1930 will thus be issued in another form: no longer as a monthly issue, but as a biweekly publication of combat, of critique, of affirmation and of negation. The heroic-magical point of view, which we have defended until now, will not be abandoned: in reality, it alone will constitute the point of reference and of justification for a critical and revisionary work, which will engage the most immediate problems, in relation to what is published of significance in Italy and abroad.

And in our intention to constitute an inaccessible bulwark against the general lowering of every value of life; in our claim to know and to indicate broader horizons, beyond the usual ones of small human constructions; in our purpose to stand firm on the battlements, ready for defense as for offense, isolated and closed to every evasion – for all this the title Krur will be changed into the title LA TORRE – JOURNAL OF VARIOUS EXPRESSIONS OF THE ONE TRADITION.

The present is thus the last issue of Krur. On January 30 will appear the first of La Torre, and the others will follow every fifteen days.

Now, we count that all who have followed us thus far will remain faithful to us in this further development of our movement. Our expenses, given the biweekly schedule and the greater circulation (5000 copies), come to be more than doubled, not to speak of all our greater labor. It is thus necessary that all friends renew their subscription, and that what they have given previously, at least the same they continue to give. Moreover, we would like to appeal to the “generous,” known and unknown – to those who, willing, are able, so that they offer an additional support to our new effort, considering how ours is a work to which we give everything and from which we ask nothing. Although La Torre is biweekly, the subscription rates remain unchanged: Ordinary subscription L. 25 [~$24]; Supporting subscription L. 50 [~$33]; Registered or Foreign subscription L. 35 [~$48]; Contribution of the “Friends of Ur” L. 100 [~$95].

Those who have truly been interested in our teachings, it is not possible that they do not also feel that need, of which La Torre will be symbol, because it is not possible that they – as we – do not feel how the rhythm of the external world today increasingly chokes every spiritual possibility, every vision of transcendent things.

That insurrection, that protest and that challenge against the “modern world,” which La Torre will constitute, cannot then fail to be also theirs. And it is necessary for all to remain united, because this unity of the few, of the solitary and of aristocrats, will be our strength.

As we state within the issue, we do not abandon, moreover, those who have devoted themselves to the practice of our teachings. Also as doctrine, we can indicate to them two important works, one by J. Evola and of philosophical character already published: PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE ABSOLUTE INDIVIDUAL². The other is of forthcoming publication and constitutes a complete study on The Hermetic Tradition⁴⁸ in its doctrine, in its symbolism and in its royal art.

These two works will continue the esoteric-philosophical side of the work of Krur, while on the battlements of La Torre each of us will take position on the lines of combat, and will begin the battle.

(Krur, no. 12, December 1929, inserted supplement)

Julius Evola

1 Indian theologian and philosopher who lived between the 6th and 8th centuries A.D. (we do not have the exact dates of his birth and death), he is known above all as the founder of Advaita-Vedānta, advocate of a non-dualistic theology and author of commentaries, considered authentic classics, on the Vedānta.

2 An English translation of this work was completed by Cologero Salvo, and is available through Gornahoor Press, included under the collection of essays titled “Introduction to Magical Idealism”.