Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul

Written by Julius Evola

Narrated by Andy Rick

Julius Evola’s final major work, which examines the prototype of the human being who can give absolute meaning to his or her life in a world of dissolution

• Presents a powerful criticism of the idols, structures, theories, and illusions of our modern age

• Reveals how to transform destructive processes into inner liberation

The organizations and institutions that, in a traditional civilization and society, would have allowed an individual to realize himself completely, to defend the principal values he recognizes as his own, and to structure his life in a clear and unambiguous way, no longer exist in the contemporary world. Everything that has come to predominate in the modern world is the direct antithesis of the world of Tradition, in which a society is ruled by principles that transcend the merely human and transitory.

Ride the Tiger presents an implacable criticism of the idols, structures, theories, and illusions of our dissolute age examined in the light of the inner teachings of indestructible Tradition. Evola identifies the type of human capable of “riding the tiger,” who may transform destructive processes into inner liberation. He offers hope for those who wish to reembrace Traditionalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inner Traditions Audio
• Translator: Joscelyn Godwin and Constance Fontana
• Release date: Oct 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644113493

Julius Evola

A controversial philosopher and critic of modern Western civilization, Julius Evola (1898-1974) wrote widely on Eastern religions, alchemy, sexuality, politics, and mythology. Inner Traditions has published his Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, The Yoga of Power, The Hermetic Tradition, Revolt Against the Modern World, The Mystery of the Grail and Ride The Tiger.

Reviews for Ride the Tiger

[russellwhitely · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As a spiritual explorer and thinker, no one is better than Evola

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Who is Julius Evola? What does he want? Why does he matter? Do Fascists shit in the woods?

Ride the Tiger starts with some standard criticisms of the Liberal-Democratic-Capitalist-Constitutional world, as well as the Materialist-Marxist-Soviet-COMINTERN world, again noting their focus on material conditions while ignoring 'spiritual' or mental processes. He briefly discusses a few contemporary philosophers in this early stage of analysis. Most of his time is spent wrestling with Nietzsche, his implications from "God is dead", a Zarathusthra, the Apollonian-Dionysian dualism of society, and so forth. He makes a few brief criticisms of Heidegger, Marx and Stirner, and notes the 'new nihilism' of existentialism, and takes a good whack at Sartre.

So what does Evola propose instead? He starts with Nietzsche's view of what must come after nihilism, after God has died, and proposes his new society from there. He advocates something called 'radical traditionalism', with emphasis on the old institutions of Europe which existed before 1789, or perhaps before 476.

Evola is anti-cosmopolitan, anti-financial, anti-Marxist, anti-rational, anti-scientific, anti-pacifist, anti-materialist, anti-feminist, anti-egalitarian, anti-Christian, anti-individual, anti-modern, anti-democratic, anti-bourgeois.

This leaves us with tribal nationalism, agrarianism, neo-paganism, traditional family organization, an aristocratic caste system (with people like him on top, naturally - he was born into Italian nobility) as well as a bit of Eastern Mysticism thrown in, especially the 'Kali Yuga', the 432,000 year long age of darkness and sin in Hindu theology.

He is not solely an ordinary 'traditionalist', with reference to familial customs or little traditions. Instead he wants to throw out all of the changes over the past few hundred years and start again 'anew' with older traditions, a grand mystical warrior existence, 'riding the tiger'. Before the French Revolution, before Marxism, before 'human rights' or 'democracy'.

This is where Evola shows his true inner self - not in his criticism, but what he does advocate. He snarls at modern society, but perhaps because it has passed him by. He is frightened of the 'degeneracy' of the world, and such is made very clear.

He advances a few tentative points against 'scientific rationalism', but these are laughably muddled. For example, because he does not understand atomic theory, it is therefore 'useless knowledge' and to be discarded.

On culture, he is insipid. His rants are that of a grumpy racist grandfather complaining that 'new music' rap jazz is intellectually bankrupt because it is from 'primitive' peoples. I quote:

One can deduce that modern man, especially North American man, has regressed to primitivism in choosing, assimilating, and developing a music οf such primitive qualities as Negro music, which was even originally associated with dark forms οf ecstasy.

Women? Their best place is raising a family. Men are suited for war and should thus kill. The modern world is wholly bosh and should be tossed.

So - the big question: is Evola a fascist? Perhaps, although not necessarily - he was a 'Radical Traditionalist', and gives himself a substantial intellectual covering to prevent himself from being mistaken for a fascist immediately. Though not all traditionalists are fascists, all fascists are traditionalists.

Evola, here, comes across as a man who wants so desperately, so futilely, for the world to be simple, black-and-white, good-and-evil, with himself naturally on the side of good. He wants a return to simplicity, with some people naturally in power (such as himself), and all of the annoying complaints of others (women, people not in his ethnicity, people who aren't 'superior') to be sidelined. Everything else can go. Agriculture, technology, politics, art, all of it which cannot be controlled or changed for the better (and very little can) is to be eliminated. The simple fact is that our modern world is pluralistic, save for a few isolated locals in the Amazon, the Sentinel Islands, and the militias of North Midwest, and this cannot be changed very easily.

One of the core tenets of fascism - at least, fascism in its 20th century unholy incarnations, is the cult of tradition. Hitler had his imagined Aryan race, the restoration of German glory, as well as his 'cult of pastoral life' - his view was for Germany to be a nation of soldier-peasants after the war, gleefully exterminating the brutish Poles and Russians. Mussolini made plain his ambitions for the New Roman Empire, as well as his rejection of democracy. Francisco Franco imagined himself to be a new Crusader of Spain's glory days in the 16th century.

Of course, the poisonous ideas of fascism still endure. Most recently, Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the Utoya massacre imagined himself to be a Crusader, a defender of traditional Europe and its Values, as he bombed civilians.

As such, he is to be pitied as much to be held in contempt for his intellectual garbage, and providing a pleasing lie for the radical traditionalists who complain about 'foreign invasion' on one day, and shoot children in the head and beat homosexuals and immigrants the next.

1 star.