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Julius Evola

Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul Hardcover – September 15, 2003

by Julius Evola (Author), Joscelyn Godwin (Translator), Constance Fontana (Translator)

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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.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Inner Traditions
Publication date

September 15, 2003
Dimensions

6.2 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
ISBN-10

0892811250
ISBN-13

978-0892811250
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Evola is one of the most interesting minds of the [world] war generation.” ― Mircea Eliade, author of The Sacred and the Profane

"One of the most difficult and ambiguous figures in modern esotericism." ― Richard Smoley, in Parabola

"Evola looks beyond man-made systems to the eternal principles in creation and human society. The truth, as he sees it, is so totally at odds with the present way of thinking that is shocks the modern mind." ― John Mitchell, author of The New View Over Atlantis

"It is one of Evola's greatest merits that he combines a prodigious wealth of erudite detail with the gift of isolating from their local conditioning ideas or disciplines that are of value to us." ― Marguerite Yourcenar, author of Memoirs of Hadrian

"Evola rises above the usual dichotomies of left and right, liberal and conservative, challenging us to reconnect our lives and our institutions to the timeless spiritual standard that guided our ancestors." ― Glenn A. Magee, author of Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition

"Ride the Tiger offers a practical view of how to be truly awakened in a dark age." ― Robert Burns, New Dawn, Sept-Oct 2005

". . . this is an important work for an intellectual history of the twentieth century. . ." ― The Journal of Esoterica, July 2006

“A dazzling and interesting, but very dangerous author . . .” ― Hermann Hesse, author of Siddhartha

"Simply put, Evola shows, unintentionally but with passion, why European Tradition may not be able to match East Asia in riding the tiger in today's world. It lacks a spirituality for today's mundane world, tempered by the harsh realism of Daoism and the practical disciplines of Confucianism." ― Reg Little, New Dawn, No. 121, Jul/Aug 2010

From the Back Cover

WESTERN SPIRITUALITY / HERMETICISM

“It is one of Evola's greatest merits that he combines a prodigious wealth of erudite detail with the gift of isolating from their local conditioning ideas or disciplines that are of value to us.”
--Marguerite Yourcenar, author of Memoirs of Hadrian

“Evola rises above the usual dichotomies of left and right, liberal and conservative, challenging us to reconnect our lives and our institutions to the timeless spiritual standard that guided our ancestors.”
--Glenn A. Magee, author of Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition

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”--an individual who may transform destructive processes into inner liberation--and, in so doing, offers hope for those who wish to reembrace Tradition.

JULIUS EVOLA (1898-1974) was one of the leading authorities on the world’s esoteric traditions and wrote extensively on ancient traditions and hermeticism. Among his other works published by Inner Traditions are Men Among the Ruins, Introduction to Magic, The Mystery of the Grail, The Hermetic Tradition, and Eros and the Mysteries of Love.

About the Author

Julius Evola (1898-1974) was one of the leading authorities on the world’s esoteric traditions and wrote extensively on ancient traditions and hermeticism. Among his other works published by Inner Traditions are Men Among the Ruins, Introduction to Magic, The Mystery of the Grail, The Hermetic Tradition, and Eros and the Mysteries of Love.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

from Chapter 1: The Modern World and Traditional Man

This book sets out to study some of the ways in which the present age appears essentially as an age of dissolution. At the same time, it addresses the question of what kind of conduct and what form of existence are appropriate under the circumstances for a particular human type.

This restriction must be kept in mind. What I am about to say does not concern the ordinary man of our day. On the contrary, I have in mind the man who finds himself involved in today’s world, even at its most problematic and paroxysmal points; yet he does not belong inwardly to such a world, nor will he give in to it. He feels himself, in essence, as belonging to a different race from that of the overwhelming majority of our contemporaries. The natural place for such a man, the land in which he would not be a stranger, is the world of Tradition. . . .

Everything that has come to predominate in the modern world is the exact antithesis of any traditional type of civilization. Moreover, the circumstances make it increasingly unlikely that anyone, starting from the values of Tradition (even assuming that one could still identify and adopt them), could take actions or reactions of a certain efficacy that would provoke any real change in the current state of affairs. After the last worldwide upheavals, there seems to be no starting point either for nations or for the vast majority of individuals--nothing in the institutions and general state of society, nor in the predominant ideas, interests, and energies of this epoch.

Nevertheless, a few men exist who are, so to speak, still on their feet among the ruins and the dissolution, and who belong, more or less consciously, to that other world. A little group seems willing to fight on, even in lost positions. . . But this does not resolve the practical, personal problem--apart from the case of the man who is blessed with the opportunity for material isolation--of those who cannot or will not burn their bridges with current life, and who must therefore decide how to conduct their existence, even on the level of the most elementary reactions and human relations.

This is precisely the type of man that the present book has in mind. To him applies the saying of a great precursor: “The desert encroaches. Woe to him whose desert is within!” He can in truth find no further support from without. There no longer exist the organizations and institutions that, in a traditional civilization and society, would have allowed him to realize himself wholly, to order his own existence in a clear and unambiguous way, and to defend and apply creatively in his own environment the principal values that he recognizes within himself. . .

There is an important point to clarify at the outset regarding the attitude to be taken toward “survivals.” Even now, especially in Western Europe, there are habits, institutions, and customs from the world of yesterday (that is, from the bourgeois world) that have a certain persistence. . . . This is not what I call the world of Tradition. Socially, politically, and culturally, what is crashing down is the system that took shape after the revolution of the Third Estate and the first industrial revolution, even though there were often mixed up in it some remnants of a more ancient order, drained of their original vitality.

What kind of relationship can the human type whom I intend to treat here have with such a world?

The answer to this question can only be negative. The human type I have in mind has nothing to do with the bourgeois world. He must consider everything bourgeois as being recent and antitraditional, born from processes that in themselves are negative and subversive.

. . .It is good to sever every link with all that which is destined sooner or later to collapse. The problem will then be to maintain one’s essential direction without leaning on any given or transmitted form, including forms that are authentically traditional but belong to past history. . . . As we shall soon see, the support that Tradition can continue to give does not refer to positive structures, regular and recognized by some civilization already formed by it, but rather to that doctrine that contains its principles only in their superior, preformal state, anterior to the particular historical formulations: a state that in the past had no pertinence to the masses, but had the character of an esoteric doctrine.

from Chapter 2: The End of a Cycle

. . .The phrase chosen as title of this book, “Ride the Tiger,” may serve as a transition between what has been said hitherto, and this other order of ideas. The phrase is a Far Eastern saying, expressing the idea that if one succeeds in riding a tiger, not only does one avoid having it leap on one, but if one can keep one’s seat and not fall off, one may eventually get the better of it. . .

This symbolism is applicable at various levels. First, it can refer to a line of conduct in the interior, personal life; then to the appropriate attitude in the face of critical, historical, and collective situations. . . . In the classical world, it was presented in terms of humanity’s progressive descent from the Golden Age to what Hesiod called the Iron Age. In the corresponding Hindu teaching, the final age is called the Kali Yuga (Dark Age). Its essential quality is emphatically said to be a climate of dissolution, in which all the forces--individual and collective, material, psychic, and spiritual--that were previously held in check by a higher law and by influences of a superior order pass into a state of freedom and chaos.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Inner Traditions; 1st edition (September 15, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0892811250
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0892811250
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #103,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #145 in Philosophy Metaphysics
- #154 in Modern Philosophy (Books)
- #194 in Political Philosophy (Books)

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Julius Evola

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Julius Evola (1898-1974) has been one of the most misunderstood and controversial authors of the Twentieth century. Born in Rome, Evola began his pursuit of truth as a Dadaist painter and an Idealist philosopher, but quickly lost his taste for modernism and moved on to metaphysics, religion, and the occult. Encountering the work of René Guénon, who became a lifelong friend, Evola embraced his concept of the Tradition and his critique of the modern world, and spent the remainder of his long career elaborating his own, more individualised variation of the principles first explicated by Guénon, offering a unique view of how one can put into practice the doctrines of a genuine spiritual path. Believing that Tradition was an idea which should encompass the social as well as the spiritual world, Evola saw some hope for a remedy to the ills of modernity in Fascism, although he never joined the Party, and his writings on the subject were more critical than complimentary of the movement.

Nevertheless, his involvement branded him as a Fascist in the eyes of his opponents, and this label continues to follow his name to this day. After 1945, Evola remained aloof from politics, and attempted to define the most effective stance for an inhabitant of the modern age to adopt and still retain something of traditional wisdom. He remained almost entirely unknown in the English-speaking world until the 1990s, when Inner Traditions began publishing its translations of Evola’s works. Since then, Evola’s ideas have given rise to a new breed of spiritual seekers and anti-modernists in the English-speaking world. Arktos has published his books, Metaphysics of War, which is a collection of his essays from the 1930s and ‘40s; The Path of Cinnabar, which is his intellectual autobiography; Fascism Viewed from the Right, which is his post-war analysis of the positive and negative aspects of Italian Fascism; and Notes on the Third Reich, which performs a similar analysis upon German National Socialism.

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Evola's premise goes something like this: The modern age is the end of ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 8, 2017

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I will state from the outset that I do not subscribe to Evola's extreme right wing (or "traditionalists) politics, but that's ok. This book (and this author) is not first and foremost about politics, but is rather about how to conduct ones life along metaphysical dimensions in a society that has gone mad.

Ride The Tiger explores all sorts of themes that have interested me for well over a decade: The Death of God, Existentialism, Altered States of Consciousness, and all sorts of other things philosophical and esoteric.

Evola's premise goes something like this: The modern age is the end of a cycle, one that begins with a golden age, and then a silver age, and then a bronze age, and then finally an iron age (or "Kali Yuga"). The golden age is characterized by man living in perfect unity with the divine or transcendent. Each further age moves further and further away from the divine/transcendent until it reaches the Iron age, which is characterized by an almost total disparity between how we live and how a mature, spiritually realized individual or people's ought to live.

Evola's advice for trying to live a spiritually fulfilling life in such an age is to "Ride The Tiger", which means that one jumps upon the monster that is this age and lives among it but not with any attachment to it. Even though Evola is a radical Traditionalist, he does not call upon his disciples to try and change the current state of affairs through political action, but rather he calls upon his disciples to live a noble, traditional, spiritually fulfilled life and let the forces of external chaos plays themselves out. This is something that many of his followers should probably pay heed to. Because to go on some political crusade in the name of traditional values is antithetical to Evola's own teachings. We are not to concern ourselves with politics, or if we do, we are only to concern ourselves with it as a vehicle for self transformation, not for the purpose of changing political outcomes.

My favorite part of this book is when the author confronts Nietzsche, existentialism, and nihilism, and attempts to show what is valuable in all of these movements and what is damaging and needs to be discarded.

This is a great book for seekers of something beyond the mundane, regardless of your politics.

118 people found this helpful

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c m

who is this book for?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 29, 2007

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I wouldn't exactly call this book a manual. There is no how-to. It's more like a summary of a non-political philosophy of life. If you don't already know something about European philosophy and essentially agree with Evola's worldview, you probably won't get anything out of this book. And even if you can follow parts of it, you may not be able to follow all of it. For example, I agree with Evola's conclusions on music, but I don't understand the rationale for his criticism of jazz--that it relies in the silences (or up-beat, I don't remember exactly). I suspect this has some metaphysical meaning related to his esotericism.

Evola and the translator are talented enough that the book is interesting to read even when it is useless. I agree with Evola on enough points that I intend to keep reading more of his works, looking for some way to adapt his worldview without embracing the occult, in which I have no interest. As Buddhism is becoming "psychologized" through neuroscience, I suspect much of Evola's work can be of interest to post-modern Americans who would have been interested in Albert Jay Nock or Henry Adams in another time. In some ways this is unfortunate because Evola could be a gateway to foolish, dead-end political philosophies like anarchism or neo-fascism.

Who is this book good for? As you can guess from the other reviews, it will appeal to people who see themselves as above the middling crowd, although these are not the right people for the book. The book is meant for people who have a strong intuition that something is wrong with the world that can't be fixed by giving people more money, passing more laws, or voting out our current political regime.

38 people found this helpful

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New Age of Barbarism

Riding the Tiger - Aristocratic Tradition Against Modernity.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 3, 2004

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_Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul_ by Italian counter-revolutionary theorist Baron Julius Evola is a manual for a certain spiritual type of man - the man of Tradition - faced with the nihilistic reality of the modern world. Tradition is characterized by a recognition of transcendence and hierarchy as opposed to the mass levelling which has taken place in modernity - at root in nihilism. Evola, a gloomy figure on the marginalized radical right in postwar Italy, writes of the modern world as witnessing a new dark age, the Kali Yuga of Indian tradition (as noted by the father of Traditionalism, Rene Guenon). In the philosophy of Traditionalism, the world is said to have fallen from a past Golden Age (as witnessed to by the ancient Greeks, Hesiod, and the Hindus) and approaching the end of a cycle has entered the Kali Yuga, an era characterized by dissolution. Kali is a dark goddess of sexuality and orgiastic rites in Hindu mythology - said to be asleep in previous eras but in the Kali Yuga said to be wide awake. The modern age is characterized by the "death of God" (the end of the transcendent), the beginning of European nihilism as explained by Nietzsche. In such a world, the spiritual type Evola writes for is totally alienated. Topics covered in this book include Nietzsche's philosophy and the world in which "God is dead", the "lost youth" and the postwar generation of Beatniks, the dead end of existentialist philosophies, Heideggerianism and Husserlian phenomenologies, the new physics and scientism, moral decline, an excursus on drugs, the failure of modern art, sexuality and marriage, the "new religiosity, and death. Evola finds little to recommend for his ideal type except for a sort of neo-Gnostic complete withdrawal from the modern world characterized by what he terms "apolitea". In terms of Tradition, little remains left to recognize and hierarchy has been completely abolished. This form of apolitea may be described as "riding the tiger", a Far Eastern saying meaning that if one succeeds in riding a tiger not only does one avoid having to leap on one, but one may eventually get the better of it. This is Evola's only recommendation for coming to terms with modernity and making one's way across the Kali Yuga that completes the traditional cycle. As in his previous book _Revolt Against the Modern World_, Evola offers many profound insights into both the nature of modernity and the means for achieving counter-revolution giving the prevailing winds of the time.

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Joanna Lochowska

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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 14, 2022

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you will learn a lot

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Amazon Customer

A critique of modernity from a man out of time.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 29, 2021

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Ride the Tiger is an overarching damnation of modern thinking and life from a man who dedicated his life to raging against it. Evola expects a lot from the reader and openly admits that the work is only for a certain type of man, If you aren't into illiberal and Spiritual thinking you likely aren't one of these people.

I would also recommend reading other Evola books before this: Revolt for spirituality/theory and his less political works for that as well with Men among the ruins for a greater political insight. He says often that he won't go deeper into a subject as he has somewhere else or expects you to know beforehand.

If you don't care or have read his other books this is a perfect book for understanding his "traditional" mindset and how to put it into practice.

One person found this helpful

Alpha Tracking Services

Not a modern self help book, you need some left hand path 'knowledge' to read this..

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 27, 2021

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Very Julius Evola, ie VERY complex.. However, well worth the struggle and the continual cross-referencing if you like your geniuses a little on the mad side, ie you hate the age of subjectivity, personal truth and feel good b/s we all currently live in, and perhaps can relate a little to the pressing need of transcendence to triumph over immanence, in yourself... The section on Nietzsche should be read by all modern 'fanboys' of the man particularly, it's that bloody good.

Be warned.. for all his genius old Julius would not pass any 'modern' test for a 'nice man', which is probably his greatest recommendation as an author. His invention of the aristocratic man of 'Tradition', perhaps an attempt to update the East Asian view of the gentlemen, is something quite unique.. Yep, its not a book for the modern-day 'individualists', simple-minded woke types or bunny huggers, you need some self-reflection for this..

2 people found this helpful

Manteau D'orient

Avoid Kindle Version of this seminal work

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 30, 2017

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This was given one star as a warning to anyone thinking about buying the kindle version. This is probably the worst example of an ebook possible with absolutely no care taken in correcting OCR mistakes.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the kindle version is illegal.

HOWEVER do not miss this book (in print). This is a phenomenal work for those looking to better understand the Way of Being as it pertains to the UR-Group lineage.

9 people found this helpful

Wyrd One

A profound expansion of Nietzsche's Will to Power. Evolva ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 19, 2017

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A profound expansion of Nietzsche's Will to Power. Evolva here provides guidance as to how the Traditional man, the heroic aristocratic soul, should encounter the modern world as a means to Becoming. Evolva's language is at time a little dense and overly constructed, but such is also likely the result of the translation. A seminal work for those on the LHP.

5 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Awful e-book production - do not buy electronic edition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 22, 2016

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Wonderful book ruined by the abysmal copy editing and appallingly lax scanning; caveat emptor, as Greek characters, blank pages and other horrors abound. I shall be writing to the publishers to complain.

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Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul Hardcover – September 15, 2003

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