“When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered technologically and can be exploited economically…when a boxer counts as a great man of a people; when the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph; then, yes then, there still looms like a spector over all this uproar the question: what for?-where to?-and what then? The spiritual decline of the earth has progressed so far that peoples are in danger of losing their last spiritual strength, the strength that makes it possible even to see the decline.”
—Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics.

“His apartment was a long sequence of rooms. At the end was his library, in the center of which hung the Stieler portrait of Goethe, and beyond it his study. Nothing ‘genius-like’ or chaotic in this home. Next to his desk hung the death masks of Napoleon and Frederick the Great. And in the first room stood the grand piano on which he played old Italian music, Verdi, and Wagner. This fondness for Wagner, which had often brought him to Bayreuth, was probably more for the last musical genius than for the artist. Here, too, there was something of wistfulness and longing.”

—Fritz Behn describing the apartment of his friend Oswald Spengler.

"Faustian man has become the slave of his creation. [...] The Western industry has diverted the ancient traditions of the other Cultures. The streams of economic life move towards the seats of King Coal and the great regions of raw material. Nature becomes exhausted, the globe sacrificed to Faustian thinking in energies. The working earth is the Faustian aspect of her, the aspect contemplated by the Faust of Part II, the supreme transfiguration of enterprising work and contemplating, he dies."

— Oswald Spengler, 1922
Image: Prometheus Bound, Thomas Cole (1847)

Roman soldier’s tombstone: “I emulated myself.”

The term 'asceticism' is also susceptible to being misunderstood by those who view Buddhism from the outside.

Evola reminds his readers that the original meaning of the term asceticism is "practical exercise," or 'discipline' — one could even say 'learning.' It certainly does not mean, as some are inclined to think, a willingness to mortify the body that derives from the idea of penance, and even leads to the practice of self-flagellation, since it is believed that one must suffer in order to expiate one's sins.

Asceticism is rather a school of the will, a pure heroism (that is, it is disinterested) that Evola compares to the efforts of a mountain climber.

To the layman, mountain climbing may be a pointless effort, but to the climber it is a challenge in which the test of courage, perseverance, and heroism is its only purpose. In this we recognize an attitude that Brahmanism knew under certain forms of yoga and Tantrism.

"Not long before the Russian occupation of the city, a bombing raid caused an injury to my spinal cord. The injury, which appeared lethal at first, caused the partial paralysis of my lower limbs.

I thus found myself confined to hospital. Such an accident, no doubt, was not unrelated to a rule I had long chosen to follow: not to avoid, but, on the contrary, to seek dangers as a tacit way of putting fate to the test. For this very reason, in the past, I had pursued mountain climbing at dangerous altitudes. I remained faithful to this very principle during the war, when a world was crumbling and the future was shrouded in uncertainty. The accident I fell victim to, however, lent itself to no obvious explanation. Not much changed in my life following the accident, as my handicap was merely physical: aside from the practical disadvantages, and the limitations it entailed from the point of view of my profane existence, the handicap hardly bothered me, for my spiritual and intellectual work remained unaffected by the accident. In my heart, I have always thoroughly subscribed to the traditional doctrine I often quoted in my writing, which teaches that we have wished all relevant events in our life before our birth. I could not, therefore, avoid applying such a doctrine to the aforementioned event. To remember why I had wished such an accident upon myself, and to understand its most profound significance, is what truly mattered in my eyes — more than ‘recovery’ itself."

— Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar

Study of Dante holding the hand of Love (for the painting ‘Dante’s Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice’) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
1855-1856.

“Help, if it comes, frequently turns up from an unexpected quarter: from the weak. This happened to me when I met and married Teresa. My defeatism reached a climax: I went the whole distance, finally turning my back on the struggle for power. It all seemed meaningless and futile, a wasted effort, time lost. I wanted to wipe it from my memory.

I came to recognize that one single human being, comprehended in his depth, who gives generously from the treasures of his heart, bestows on us more riches than Caesar or Alexander could ever conquer. Here is our kingdom, the best of monarchies, the best republic. Here is our garden, our happiness.”

—Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees.

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
— Lord Byron

“If the industrious man, through taking action,
Does not succeed, he should not be blamed for that,
He still perceives the truth.”
—The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahabharata (2,16).

https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/secret-wisdom/mercury-rising-the-life-writings-of-julius-evola

“Once I asked the muse, and she
Replied:
In the end you’ll find it.
Those born to die can’t grasp it.
About the highest mysteries, I’m speechless.
One’s true native land, like the laurel,
Is forbidden fruit, the last thing
We all taste.”
—Hölderlin, Once I asked the muse.

“When all institutions become disreputable, and when prayers are heard even in churches not for the persecuted but for the persecutors, moral responsibility passes into the hands of individuals, or, better said, the unbroken individuals.”— Ernst Jünger.