Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 27

Chapter 27: The Civilization of the Mother

In this chapter, Evola delves into the concept of the "Civilization of the Mother," where the feminine principle is revered as the supreme reality. He explores how various ancient cultures, such as those of Isis, Cybele, and Demeter, viewed the goddess as the central figure of life and generation. This civilization is characterized by the subordination of the masculine principle and the emphasis on the cyclical and generative aspects of life, symbolized by the Mother Earth. Evola discusses the rituals, symbols, and cultural practices that reflect this worldview, highlighting the inversion of values where the feminine principle dominates and the masculine is seen as ephemeral.

Footnotes:

1. A reading of Bachofen's Das Mutterrecht (1897) will show the extent to which I have employed the findings of this scholar and the extent to which I have integrated them in a wider and more up-to-date order of ideas.

2. Plutarch, De bide et Osiride,4l; 33. Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca historica, 1.27) related that in Egypt the queen enjoyed greater powers and was given higher honors than the king, to reflect the fact that Isis survived Osiris and that she was credited with the resurrection of the god and with the bestowal of many gifts to mankind (since she embodied the immortal principle and knowledge). I would add that this view reflects the decadence of the primordial Egyptian civilization.

3. Bachofen, Mutterecht, chap. 1. Herodotus says that originally the Licians (the primordial inhabitants of Crete) adopted their mothers’ rather than their fathers’ names.

4 .Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus, 1.9-15.

5. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, 4.66. Although the modern interpretations that see in this ritual the slaying of the “spirit of vegetation" are typical of the whims of the ethnologists, nevertheless we find a predominant chthonic character in these Sacchean rituals that is found among several other peoples. Philo of Biblos recalled that Kronos sacrificed his son after putting the regal robe on him; in this context, Kronos is not the king of the Golden Age, but he represents time, which in later ages gains power over all forms of life and from which the new Olympian stock manages to escape only thanks to a stone. The sacrifice recalls

6. I am referring to cases in which this attitude was not typical only of the inferior strata of a civilization and the exoteric aspect of a tradition, and in which it did not even occur in a given ascetical path as a transitory phase, but formed all relationships with the divine.

7. “For Selene is the last of the heavenly spheres that Athena fills with wisdom; and by her aid Selene beholds the intelligible that is higher than the heavens, and adorns with its forms the realm of matter that lies below her, and thus she does away with its savagery and confusion and disorder." Emperor Julian, Hymn to King Helios, 150a.

8. Bachofen’s views, which in many regards are true from a traditional point of view, should be rejected or at least integrated whenever they take as a reference point and assume as an original and even older element that which is connected with the Earth and with the Mother, these views posit something like a spontaneous evolution from the inferior to the superior in those cases in which there are forms of “mixture” between the inferior (the South) and the superior (the Hyperborean element).

9. A characteristic example is the legend of Jurupary, which reflects the sense of the recent Peruvian civilization. Jurupary was a hero who appeared in societies ruled by “women" to reveal a secret solar law, reserved to men alone, to be taught in every nation, against the ancient law of the mothers. Jurupary, like Quetzalcoatl, eventually withdrew to the sacred land situated east of America.

10. The Saturnalia, by evoking the Golden Age in which Saturn reigned, celebrated the promiscuity and universal brotherhood that were believed to characterize this age. In reality, this belief represents a deviation from traditional truth, and the Saturn who was evoked was not the king of the Golden Age, but rather a chthonic demon; this can be established by the fact that he was represented in the company of Ops, a form of the earth goddess.

11. A. Rosenberg in The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Munich, 1930), was right to claim, against Bachofen, that it is necessary to differentiate and not to put civilizations in a linear succession; that the “civilization of the Mother,” which Bachofen thought to be the oldest stage from which Uranian and patriarchical societies "evolved” as superior and more recent forms, in reality was a heterogeneous, independent world, inhabited by other races that eventually clashed orcame in contact with Nordic traditions. Rosenberg was also right to criticize Wirth’s association, concerning the Northern-Atlantic cycle, of the solar cult with the cult of the Mother, which consistently presents chthonic and lunar, rather than solar, characteristics. Such confusions are driven by both the temporal distance between us and those events, and by their assumption of mythical forms; in many traditions the memories of the Arctic cycle are fused together with the memories of the Atlantic cycle.

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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)
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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)
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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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27. Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part Two, Chapter 25, The Northern-Atlantic Cycle (https://rumble.com/v52lmre-audiobook-revolt-against-the-modern-world-by-julius-evola-part-two-chapter-.html)
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