Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 8

Chapter 8: The Two Paths in the Afterlife

In this chapter, Julius Evola examines the traditional beliefs surrounding the afterlife and the destiny of the soul. He explains that in the world of Tradition, the idea that every soul is immortal is rare. Instead, there is a distinction between true immortality, associated with participation in the divine nature of a god, and mere survival. Various forms of possible survival are analyzed, considering the different elements present in a human being, beyond the simple dichotomy of soul and body.

Evola outlines three main entities within a person: the ordinary personality, the "demon" or "double," and the shadow. The "demon" or "double" is the deep force behind consciousness and organic processes, often linked to the primordial ancestor or totem. Upon death, an ordinary person's personality dissolves, reducing to a shadow destined for the "second death." The essential principles return to the totem, continuing the cycle of life.

For those who achieve a higher order, particularly the heroes or demigods, death does not lead to dissolution. Instead, they attain an immortal body, transcending the physical and achieving a self-subsistent, incorruptible life. This concept is articulated in ancient Egyptian traditions, where the creation of an "immortal body" through rites ensured a place among the solar gods.

Evola explores the dual paths in the afterlife: the "path of the gods" or the "solar path," leading to immortality, and the "path of the ancestors," leading to dissolution and reincarnation. He emphasizes that traditional societies aimed to elevate individuals from the latter path to the former, achieving a heroic and liberating immortality.

This chapter highlights the deeper spiritual principles and the role of rites in shaping the destiny of the soul, contrasting with the more limited modern understanding of the afterlife.

Footnotes

1. The Egyptian tradition referred to those who are damned in the afterlife judgment as "twice dead.” They become the victims of the inferal monster Amam ("The Devourer") or Am-mit ("The Corpse Eater"). The Egyptian Book of the Dead contains formulations designed to help a person "to elude the second death in the next world.” “Judgment” is just an allegory. It is rather an impersonal and objective process, as the symbol of the scale weighing the "heans" of the deceased seems to suggest, since nothing could event a scale from being weighed down by the greater weight. As far as the "sentencing” is concerned, it also presupposes the inability to realize some possibilities of immortality granted in the postmortem; these possibilities are alluded to by some traditional teachings, from Egypt to Tibet, and described in their respective “Books of the Dead." Also, see the Aztec traditions concerning the “trials” undergone by the deceased and the magical formulas employed by them.

2. Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.4.

3. Rg Veda, 10.14.8.

4. D. Merezhkovsky (Dante [Bologna, 1939]), wrote: "In Paleolithic times soul and body were believed to be inseparable; united in this world they remained joined together in the next world too. As strange as it may inseparable; united in this world they remained joined together in the next world too. As strange as it may seem, cave men knew a 'resurrection of the flesh' which a Socrates and a Plato, with their ‘immortality of the soul,' seem to have forgottern.”

5. Such a justification of the authority of the leaders is still preserved among some primitive populations.

6. Among Assyrian-Babylonian people we find conceptions of a larval state, similar to the Hellenic Hades, awaiting the majority of people after death. Also, see the Jewish notion of the dark and cold sheol in which the deceased, including prestigious figures such as Abraham and David, led an unconscious and impersonal existence. The notion of torments, terrors and punishments in the afterlife (like the Christian notion of "hell") is very recent and extraneous to the pure and original forms of Tradition; in these forms we find only the difference between the aristocratic, heroic, solar, and Olympian survival for some, and the dissolution, loss of personal consciousness, larval life, or return into the cycle of generation for the others. In various traditions (e.g., in Egypt and in ancient Mexico) the fate of the postmortem of those who underwent the latter destiny was not even considered.

7. In Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad (6.30) the “path of the ancestors" is also called “the path of the Mother,” more on which later. See also Bhagavadgītā, 8.24–26.

8. All the main characteristics of the Greek religion are related to the opposition between chthonic and Olympian deities. The opposition was not merely between Hades, Persephone, Demeter, Dionysus and Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo. It was not just a matter of the difference between two orders of gods, but also of the opposition between radically different cults; the consequences of this opposition affected even the smallest details of the daily cult. In the second part of this work I will show an analogous opposition, including its development, in other civilizations.

9. In some traditions there is the belief in two demons: a divine and friendly demon (the “good demon” or αγαθός δαίμων) and an earthly demon, subjected to the body and to passions. The former may represent transformed influences, or the “triumphal" heredity that the individual can confirm and renew or betray whenever he gives in to his inferior nature, expressed by the other demon.

10. Conceming the relationship between the fire tended by noble families and a divine survival, see The Laws of Manu, 2.232.

11. This form is the same superindividual form of the divine ancestor or of the god into whom the limited consciousness of the individual becomes transformed; this is why in Greece the name of the deceased sometimes was substituted with the name of the founding father of his stock. We may also refer to the Zen koan: “Show me the face you had before you were born."

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1. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Foreword (https://rumble.com/v4zm5tq-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-forward.html)
2. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 1, The Beginning (https://rumble.com/v4zmraf-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
3. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 2, Regality (https://rumble.com/v4zq2nw-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
4. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 3, Polar Symbolism (https://rumble.com/v4zr566-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
5. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 4, The Law, The State, The Empire (https://rumble.com/v4zshwr-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
6. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 5, The Mystery of the Rite (https://rumble.com/v4zv075-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
7. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 6, On the Primordial Nature of the Patriciate (https://rumble.com/v4zydz5-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
8. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 7, Spiritual Virility (https://rumble.com/v500py2-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
9. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 8, The Two Paths in the Afterlife (https://rumble.com/v50556i-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
10. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 9, Life and Death of Civilizations (https://rumble.com/v50aqwt-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
11. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 10, Initiation and Consecration (https://rumble.com/v50kzgb-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
12. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 11, On the Hierarchical Relationship Between Royalty and Priesthood (https://rumble.com/v50rmrr-monetized-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-on.html)
13. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 12, Universality and Centralism (https://rumble.com/v50sybe-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
14. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 13, The Soul of Chivalry (https://rumble.com/v51anjl-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
15. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 14, The Doctrine of the Castes (https://rumble.com/v51o38z-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
16. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 15, Professional Associations and the Arts; Slavery (https://rumble.com/v525v94-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
17. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 16, Bipartition of the Traditional Spirit; Asceticism (https://rumble.com/v525zx1-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
18. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 17, The Greater and the Lesser Holy War (https://rumble.com/v526gxc-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
19. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 18, Games and Victory (https://rumble.com/v5272gy-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
20. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 19, Space, Time, the Earth (https://rumble.com/v52ee4o-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
21. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 20, Man and Woman (https://rumble.com/v52etn8-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
22. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 21, The Decline of Superior Races (https://rumble.com/v52f2wz-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-one-chapter-.html)
23. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Genesis and Face of the Modern World, Introduction (https://rumble.com/v52j35f-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-introduc.html)
24. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 22, The Doctrine of the Four Ages (https://rumble.com/v52jgnv-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-chapter-.html)
25. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 23, The Golden Age (https://rumble.com/v52k2of-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-chapter-.html)
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30. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 28, The Cycles of Decadence and the Heroic Cycle (https://rumble.com/v52ssg7-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-chapter-.html)
31. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 29, Part 1, THE AMERICAN CYCLE AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN CYCLE (https://rumble.com/v52wwp5-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-chapter-.html)
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33. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 30: The Heroic-Uranian Western Cycle, Part 1 (https://rumble.com/v52zblu-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-chapter-.html)
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38. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 34, Unrealism and Individualism (https://rumble.com/v535jkt-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-chapter-.html)
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