Mysticism and Dissent

" Whoever worships God by hear-say, as others tells them, knows not what God is from light within himselfe; or that thinks God is in the heavens above the skyes; and so prays to that God which he imagines to be there and every where: but from any testimony within, he knows not how, nor where; this man worships his owne imagination, which is the Devil".
-- Gerrard Winstanley

Typically the Mystic is picked as a secluded and introverted person. Hence the idea of mystics getting involved in the very earthly world of politics and preaching dissent and revolutionary changes may seem somewhat contradictory. On the contrary however there exists a strand of Mysticism that is politically involved. This is by no means contradictionary: Since the basic core of Mysticism is that the single individual, or group of people, can connect with the Other World without having to go through the state or ordinary religious institutions, such institutions must be regarded by the Mystic as unessential institutions. So there is an inherent distrust of official institutions in the legacy of Mysticism. Even more so the Mystic can easily come to regard official institutions as outer challenges blocking the way between the individual and the Other World.

Presumably the involvement of Mysticism in revolutionary politics reaches far back in history. From letters of officials of the Roman Empire we know that the Roman authorities were certainly monitoring Mystic religions. Mithraism, Isis-cultism, at some point Christianity and countless lesser religions with a Mystic emphasis were kept under careful watch by the authorities.

So evidently these religions must have been important political actors at the time. Indeed at some point a strand of Mystics, represented by Marcus Aurelius Caesar, managed to rule Rome itself.

It is also known from Tacitus that a Germanic high-priestess called Veleda was one of the driving forces behind a revolt against the Romans.

The middle ages also abound with Christian offshoots that were deemed heretic by the Catholic Church. These were probably of a more or less Mystic and revolutionary character since the church found them to be such a threat.

The amount to which we know the legacy of these religious groups - their political teachings and the way they played politics - up until after the middle-ages is limited though.

Only from the 16th century and forth can we find less sketchily described Mystic revolutionaries. The two leaders known to us by name are Mûntzer and Winstanley.

These two were obviously of a mystical persuasion insofar as they believed in the ability of man to link up with - or at least catch a glimpse of - the Other World without going through any institutions. More so they even believed common people to be closer and dearer to god than the rich who were blinded from the godly by their wealth.

Müntzer read the bible quite literally and applied the words of the bible in relations to social issues to contemporary society at his time. Thus he believed that god was on the side of the peasantry against the nobility and that the biblical apocalypse was in fact a description of society in the 15th century and that the epic struggle between good and evil, described in the book of revelations, was in fact a description of a war between peasantry and nobility. Hence Müntzer was determined on fulfilling the prophecy himself by leading a revolutionary army of peasants. He was thoroughly convinced that god would at some point intervene and save the peasants as described in the bible.

Gerrard Winstanley and his digger-movement were also inspired by religion and in many a ways had the same ideas as Müntzer: They interpreted themselves also as living in the last days and saw their revolutionary struggle in this light. They focused more on the use of land though and spoke of the god-given right to use land.

The involvement of Mysticism with radical politics is not limited to the distant past in any way.

Mystic groups like the Illuminati also played a role during the French revolution and carried the legacy of revolutionary Mysticism.

In the 20th century it is known that Mussolini banned Aleister Crowley from Italy presumably because Il Duce feared his influence. This is testimony to Crowley's involvement in and influence over the political scene. Samuel Lidell McGregor Mathers was cast from his seat as leader of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn because of his alleged lust for power: this seems from records to have included political power.

René Guenon is one of the most noticeable persons to mix Mysticism with politics. Indeed he was a thinker with many facets: his influence can be felt in politics, literature and art. René Guenon was a critic of a Western civilization that he thought was putting much too large an emphasis on materialism. Instead he wanted to restore what he called a Traditional system in which immaterial values and strands of science would have a larger priority. In relation to this Guenon often talked in favour of what he called a hierarchic system. Sadly this has led many to see him as an authoritarian and even a Fascist. What René Guenon meant by "hierarchy" however was that the spiritual should be recognized as more important than materialism. This line of thinking may well be a dangerous thought but it does not propose a major, authoritarian state. Here is a short quote from Guenon himself: "History clearly shows that the failure to recognize a hierarchical order (based on the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal) has the same consequences in all places at all times: social instability". Notice the words in parenthesis…

A student of René Guenon's, and probably the most politically inclined Mystic in our century, was Julius Evola. In his earliest youth he originally associated himself with the Futurists: a group of people who worshipped the industrial progress of society and vowed to bring down all the remains of the traditional agricultural society still withstanding the tide of industrialization.

Unlike what a modern audience - accustomed to the Left- and Right-continuum - might think the Futurists also looked heavily down upon women. Today people regard disrespect for women as the remains of an old-fashioned worldview but to the Futurists women were the representatives of the continuity of tradition: after all how many famous revolutionary female leaders have there been in history? Almost none, the Futurists would argue, as evidence for their despising of women.

Evola however had a different view: In his Teoria Dell'individuo absoluto (theory of the absolute individual) he wrote that "it is impossible to ask if woman is inferior or superior to man anymore than it is possible to ask if water is superior to fire". He thus declared his disagreement with the Futurists on the issue of gender.

Yet he did not endorse the general claims of the Feminist movement either which he, in the same work, goes on to claim is lacking respect for the differences between men and women.

This Evola's position on the gender issues did not sit well with the head of the futurists, Marinetti; and although it is not proven it may be that they had a fall-out over this: a fall-out that pushed Evola away towards traditional values.

It is certain that Evola, shortly after releasing the above-mentioned work, cut his association with the Futurists and became interested in the works of René Guenon. That was around the year 1930. After that Evola moved quickly. In 1931 he released La Tradizione ermetica (the Hermetic Tradition) and in 1934 followed what has often been seen as his greatest work: Rivolto contro il mundo moderno (Revolt against the modern world). In these books he expanded on the ideas of René Guenon; in the first one the more occultist or spiritual sides of it and in the latter both politics and spiritual issues.

Quite frankly I only know Evola from recounts, essays and some extracts. I think I can deduce however the basic political worldview of Julius Evola: He believed that in the distant past people had been living according to a perfect system (the so-called Traditional system). This system acquired its perfection from the perfect distribution of power between the different classes[*]: The warriors, the priests, the merchants and the workers. But, as Evola has pointed out, this system has crumbled over the years.

I am an ardent believer in this idea of society devolving from a perfect (or at least better) original system. When it comes to the practical view upon the nature of this system I must say that there are clear differences between my own view and that of Evola. Evola imagined the Traditionalist system as being a hierarchic system of a sort; although not a dictatorship of modern type. Rather Evola envisioned an organic hierarchy based on the different abilities of the classes.

In stark contrast to this Engels believed that the ancients lived in a system of primeval communism. Tacitus occupies a whole third view by referring to the stout love of freedom and unwillingness to be governed espoused by the nature-people surrounding Rome.

So how do these diverging views upon the political system of ancient peoples fit together? They seem incompatible at first…

It is very possible that they all hold a certain truth to them. That is if we imagine there to have been a group of family heads espousing the liberal values referenced by Tacitus.

We must imagine these family heads as fathers playing a kind of chieftain's role based not on dictatorship but on the natural respect and trust they enjoyed by the other members of the extended family. This goes well with Evolas viewpoint of organic hierarchy but at the same time does not exclude that there might have reigned a form of Communism within the clan or extended family itself.

In a basic formulation we can thus fit together the diverging images of the political system of antiquity together into a complex system: a perfect political system based on the perfect balance of various values and concerns that again were forged by the equal distribution of political power between the different classes. It was a class-society insofar as people fulfilled different roles and had different jobs. Yet it also meant that all classes had a say in the governing of the community and its leaders earned their position through the trust and respect vested in them by their fellows and not on dictatorship.

In line with Evola I agree that this system has been eroded over time but unlike Evola I do not think the fallacy lies so much in the fact that it is the wrong classes who have come to exercise power but rather in that it is a too narrow array of classes: over time society has come to be run by a smaller and smaller array of social-classes. First the priests were ousted so that only the other social classes held influence, then the warriors lost their power too, and we now live in a society controlled solely by the workers and merchants (mostly the merchants though). All the while these two groups are the only two wielding any real power and they are constantly at war with each other. Eventually one will defeat the other, and then things will get really bad as only one group (and thus only very few and narrow concerns) will come to govern society.

The current society proclaims its democratic outlook and tolerance towards all sorts of views but in reality the politicians represented in the parliaments and governments differ from each other only very superficially. People whose views are truly divergent from the secularist, materialist ideology that in effect saturates both Marxist Socialism and Liberalism are kept away from the media and in general met with very little respect. All this by the so-called democrats who apparently have forgotten that true democracy also requires respect for the minority.

I believe this to be utterly bad and I - whether that is in line with Evola or not - believe we need to create a society where all classes have an equal influence over which path society should take. Notice by classes I'm not merely talking about social groups of different economic means but also about people of different personalities: like spiritually interested people as well as materialistic people or emotional people as well as cold-blooded people, people with a close affinity for nature as well as people who adore technology etc. We need to have all sorts of concerns play an important part in the rule of society, unlike in current society where economic and concrete material concerns are allowed to supercede spiritual values entirely and also social values to a degree.

This is in fact at the heart of all revolutionary Mysticism, for Mysticism has always been about exploring that which is unknown and prowling the edges of the world that man can grasp with his consciousness. Such a society - where all classes work together to shape the best thinkable society - is exactly about going beyond petty greed and special interests. In exactly the same way Mysticism has always strived to go beyond the material world.

Mysticism thus seems destined to pave the way for such a society where every class wields power over society's fate.

We need new Mystic dissidents to provide an intellectual defense for the Mystic and the spiritually-inclined, to challenge people's minds, to show to the world that the impossible, all that which was only believed to be mere fairytales, can become true or at least cannot be as easily brushed off as one might think.

In that manner Mysticism may open peoples minds to the possibility of the alternative: The possibility of building a new society.

Thus Mysticism may yet pave the way for the society where emotional, economic, spiritual, and societal values can be joined together in a greater whole. This is a dangerous road though, filled with flickering lights and hidden traps, and the ones who wish to undertake it should be careful in their interpretations as to not fall into a coldhearted line of thinking, unpleasing to the moral of gods and men alike, as to those of the Fascists.

*And notice that the perfect distribution of power between the classes according to Evola was NOT equal distribution. Evola did not put much faith in the workers and he also supported the importance of the regal over the priestly. As opposed to other Traditionalists and to me…