Customer Reviews

The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way

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Julius Evola is an elitist. Having experienced both the First and Second World Wars, Evola firmly believed that we are in the Hindu Age of Darkness or the Kali Yuga, and that enlightenment would only come to those who sought it out and achieved it through power of their will. Writing from the perspective of an experienced occultist, Evola warns the reader of potential problems of undertaking Eastern systems, Hatha Yoga in particular, without a fuller knowledge of their purpose and potential. Evola writes serious books about serious subjects, yet manages to present the material in a manner that is both meaningful and practical. Evola is not for everybody, and those more attuned to New Age fluff had better leave him alone. However, occultists who want to understand a man who was a major force in Italian esotericism, and who to this day is having more of an impact after this death than when he was alive as a result of translations and symposiums, will find a wealth of knowledge and esoteric insight.

When most people, in the West, think of Tantra, they think of sex magic. And usually that's all they think of. However the Western perception of Tantra as just sex magic is quite incorrect, as Mr. Evola shows us in this book on what Tantra really is. In this book you actually learn what the spiritual practices are behind Tantra.

For instance, you will learn about the various spirits that are worked with in Tantra as well the ideal goal of Tantra, which is not to succumb to passion, but to master it. Sex magic is just a part of that and is used to liberate the individual from the passion for sex, so that it becomes just another act to do. The elemental workings described in this book are particularly fascinating and useful for anyone who likes doing elemental workings. Evola does a good job of explaining how this system of magic works. He takes an in-depth look at the Tattvas, as well as the role of colors in the making of tattvas, and explains how the tattvas are used.

However, this book isn't necessarily for everyone. Evola's writing is complex. You will certainly find yourself rereading passages, as I did, just to be sure you understood what he was explaining. Nonetheless, such a book is wonderful for how it challenges you. The ideas you can take away from this book to your own practice are well worth the work you may have to, when reading this book. At the least you'll learn that Tantra is about more than just sex magic.

This book articulates a solid understanding of tantric yogas
and incorporates several forms of tantra into a comprehensive
study.
Evola talks at great length about the notion of the shiva/shakti
duality as well as various sadhanas (practices) such as kundalini, ... magic, and chakra work. Keeping in mind that ... magic is a key and valid point in this context Evola treats such ideas with informed maturity and a solid knowledge of how it is correctly performed.
This book is at times difficult to read but only because of the complexity of the issues discussed (the chapters concerning the Tattvas and human condition are the most profound and thus complex).
All in all a great tantra source.

Evola turns to the East in his revolt against the modern world. This time he looks at the power of yoga. A friend from the Volksberg commune turned me on to this book. It ties well in with the Volkberg idea of mixing Odinism with the occult of the East. A lot of Eastern Pagan ideas tie into Asatru very seamlessly. This is a great book for both the student as well as the master of the occult. Wyatt Kaldenberg

Evola is a thinker that I have a somewhat troubled relationship with.

Sometimes, he's brilliant (Revolt Against the Modern World, Metaphysics of Sex). Yet some of his books are rather wretched, many acknowledge then table difficult arguments, a few have absolutely bizarre tinfoil hat conspiracy theories (e.g. Lemuria, Atlantis, Hollow Earth cribbed from the Sci-fi of Bulwer-Lytton) and all his works are uniformly pretentious, but he has his moments (as much or more so than most post WWII continentals) and he is, if nothing else, a unique philosophical voice. How many other philosophers talked about the ontology of gender in the first half of the 20th century? Short list, that is.

Books like this one are part of the trouble I have with Evola. It's completely reliant on secondary sources, it's essentially a running commentary on Woodroffe's "Shakti and Shakta" (so much so that it really borders on plagiarism) and Evola seems more concerned with showing how "Adept" he is and throwing around as much Tantric terminology as he possibly rather than being concerned with explaining anything or exploring his philosophy. I honestly am a bit skeptical of the level of familiarity Evola had with Tantra since so much of this is lifted from Woodroffe and since Tantric documents were tough to come by when this was initially written in 1926 (versus say texts of Buddhism or the Vedanta). I can't seem to find anything Tantric besides Woodroffe cited in the bibliography, either.

It's the old occult/hermetic "Whose secret knowledge is bigger?", rather than the philosophy of religion/Orientalist, anthropological study, or philosophy book it should be. Anthropology books and Orientalist scholarship have footnotes. If you read Muller's "Dhammapada", half the page is footnotes on every page. A footnote every 30 pages is not scholarship.

This book's footnotes are anemic. While part of that may be the translator's fault, judging by his keen and readable translations of "Revolt Against the Modern World" and "Metaphysics of Sex" and "Ride the Tiger", I'd wager it's mostly Evola's fault.

While I'm rather grateful that someone would bother to translate this or any of Evola's work and Mr.Stucco should be commended for all he's done to make Evola's work accessible to a larger audience, a footnote on which work of Vedantic Monism (it sounds like something out of Guenon's MAHBATTV) is referred to in chapters like "Shakti: the World as Power" would be helpful, as would cites of obvious quotes from Spinoza on the godhead (where a reference would be helpful since Spinoza is seldom read anymore, even by people with philosophical backgrounds) or the fact "other" (23) is an obvious Hegel POS reference (another philopher virtually no layperson is familiar with).

I'm fine with Evola's usual philosophical references in his other books, but I'm not sure if he's implicitly referring to something else or not half the time in this one. The notes seem more slipshod than usual. Since many of these books aren't available in English, footnotes should be more thorough, not less.

Long story short, if you don't know anything about shaktic tantra, you won't learn anything from this book - it really is mostly a commentary on Woodroofe that Evola intersperses with comments about "the vira's path", which he proposes as an alternative to Nietzsche's Superman and Stirner's "hero's path". If you do know about shaktic tantra, you'll probably think Evola's interpretation of it is odd, but maybe interesting, if inconsistent with the actual texts. Evola's strength is not as a religious thinker or scholar - he's a philosophical one that uses eastern religions as the basis of his system, a la Schopenhauer, Hegel or Nietzsche.

Oh, E's system itself? As described in this book, it roughly borders on hinduistic antinomianism and forms a bizarre counterpart to Satanism's Rational Egoism - it's not focused on radicalized passions, but the detachment from them in the radical situation. This seem kind of counterintuitive - what then is the point of radical actions if no benefit is gained from them in detachment? Supposedly, it's less individualistic than those systems, though it's never really clear how.

Allegedly, detachment and passion "co-exist". Evola proceeds to table that whopper of a hole in his theory after mentioning "the difference from an individualistic Superman, not to mention Marquis De Sade, is rather obvious." (61). The thing is, it isn't, well not the second part at least. What's the point of doing something apart from self-interest, will, or whim? How can detachment and passion simultaneously co-exist in the subject? Personally, I think this again points to the fact Evola was completely reliant on secondary sources, namely Woodroffe - who was relatively uninterested in Power-as-an-end-in-itself (Evola's interest) or the "vira's path" and wrote nothing about it. His research was more descriptive.

The other major problem in the book is the fact Tantra was egalitarian in its recruitment of initiants, which is at odds with portions of Evola's philosophy. People from all castes could join. Evola glosses this as much as possible, since he finds equality reprehensible and at odds with Tradition.

In fact, the Tantra of Evola really seems to stand in direct contradiction to the world of "Tradition" and has far more in common with Modernity and its subjectivism, promiscuity, lack of the real absolute (with the abstract of money replacing Shakti, an absolute relegated in practice to the world itself without a center/monarch as anchor of the other-world), "equality", lack of center, structure, and relativism. Evola's Tantra, which mixes equal parts demagoguery, power-worship, occult, ritual, and dual moralities (itself a byproduct of egalitarianism, something Evola himself will write extensively about later) for the population and provisional moralities for the initiated is essentially just Hinduistic Naziism, even though he doesn't seem to realize it. It would be hard to see it as such in 1926, I suppose.

You really don't need to read through the entire book and its obscure references to chakras, etc to get that. In the "magickal" sense, the vira's path is a really "left-hand" system. The aghori path and esoteric hitlerism are the only things I've seen more out there and self-contradictory. If you follow either of those last two, best of luck in your imminent incarceration.

Essentially, do whatever you want, but remain detached, follow a ritual or engage with the Five M's, and it's fine (it's a provisional and partial amorality, not a total one like Nietzsche's). To be utterly frank, in the Western psychology idiom, E gives you tips on replicating anti-social personality disorder. Personally, I find that utterly horrifying. Your mileage may vary, though I wouldn't recommend it. Evola himself completely abandoned any philosophy vaguely resembling this after WWII. Look towards "Ride the Tiger" for his mature philosophy.

The funny thing is I think despite E's willingness to shock, his interpretation is probably less criminal than what Shakti actually was historically (despite the West's willingness to turn all Asian religions into pacifist hippie caricatures) - unsurprisingly, it's allegedly been the belief system of the Thuggee for quite some time. Also, Angulimala is generally said to have been a Shaktic Tantric devotee, which gives you an idea of how Tantra was viewed when it was first gaining popularity.

Extremely Limited Recommendation.

Largely incomprehensible to the educated layperson. Only for people interested in Tantra or in Western philosophers who use Eastern Religion. If you're interested in this, buy Woodroffe's book first (it's available for free online, too). If you are still interested after reading that (it's a slog, though it's thoroughly researched and decently scholarly) read some of Evola's other work. Start with the main trilogy - "Revolt Against the Modern World", "Men Amongst Ruins" or "Ride the Tiger", then buy this. "Ride the Tiger" or "Men Amongst Ruins" are the easiest to read, RATMW is his best book and the most systematic.

If you're interested in yoga (as an exercise routine), look elsewhere, if you're interested in the philosophy underlying yoga exercise, read something on Kundalini Yoga ("Serpent Power" by Woodroofe, etc).

This book is heavy going- although as an elitist, Evola would doubtless take that as a compliment. I wouldn't mind if it contained more practical advice on how to actually DO Kundalini yoga, however the book is very theoretical rather than practical. Evola was actually a paraplegic for the last 29 years of his life- would this not have precluded him from actually doing kundalini yoga? I'd rather read a book by someone who actually does tantric yoga on a regular basis.

This book is just not worth the effort. I have no doubt that Evola was a tantric adept, but he was not a particularly good writer. He assumes a working knowledge of all sorts of tantric terminology, and the glossary is incomplete. He is maddeningly vague; I found myself re-reading sentences 5 and 6 times, just to figure out what his pronouns were referring to. He digresses from his digressions and whole trains of thought simply END without warning or resolution.

This book reads like some contemporary continental philosophy, but I get the impression that Evola was not merely an obscurantist. He was actually TRYING to communicate something with this book, he just wasn't successful.

Some of this could be forgiven as the result of poor translation, but some of it is also clearly the author's fault. He seems totally unconcerned with providing any textual support for his many bare assertions.

This book is of interest solely because of the author's scandalous life story, but you won't find any of that here. This is just a very, very boring manual for tantra.

This is a very good book, not just the typical nonsensical new age book about "tantric sex" or the ways to improve your sexual relations. It is a book written by a philosopher. A man who studied deeply and seriously the occult, and western and eastern spiritual disciplines.
You may not agree with everything he says... but you have to respect him.
In some parts it gets difficult. It may not be a book for everybody.
Even if I do not understand everything, this is one of the book I long to read again

Julius Evola are indeed a controversial author. But this book must be readed
with free mind, because it reveals too much of the metaphisics and of the
inner tradition of Hindu and Buddhist Tantras. This book also are now the
only source that compares the Hindu and ocidental spiritual traditions and
show interesting points of coincidence. A high recomended lecture to the
one who studies philosophy and religion.