Olavo de Carvalho and Julius Evola, parallels of two prominent right-wing occultists of the Traditionalist School
Evola, the Guru of Mussolini and the Italian Fascism, Was the Most Prominent Disciple of René Guénon, an Islamic Occultist who Also Influenced Steve Bannon and Olavo de Carvalho
Italian occult philosopher Julius Evola is a model of Guénon adherents promoting a “Judeo-Christian West,” with Bannon becoming the American Evola and Carvalho the Brazilian Evola
By Julio Severo
There is an old Bible passage that says, “there
is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV)
Today, with new Evolas emerging as gurus of
modern presidents, the Traditionalist School is reviving its old relevance,
even though its name is not known by the general public. Only its members and
occult leaders know its importance. Some of the current members of the Traditionalist
School are American Steve Bannon, Brazilian Olavo de Carvalho and Russian Alexander
Dugin.
There is a belief among Christians that every Marxist stance is satanic and that every anti-Marxist stance is Christian. I had more or less that notion, until I understood, through an adherent of the Islamic sorcerer René Guénon, that there are anti-Marxist stances that are satanic.
Olavo de Carvalho, who is a self-exiled
Brazilian immigrant to the United States since 2005, is an example. Although
his adherents swear that the foundations of his anti-Marxism are Catholic, the
truth is that his anti-Marxist notions were acquired when he was immersed in
the occult.
In his article “Capitalism and Socialism
according to Astrology” in the Brazilian magazine Planeta, in its September
1977 issue, Olavo de Carvalho, who was already an astrologer at the time,
stated:
“The evolution of the conflict between
capitalism and socialism closely follows the movements of three planets: the
geometric relationships (in astrological language, ‘aspects’) between Saturn
and Uranus mark important events in capitalist countries, and the crucial
points in the history of communism counterpoint the aspects between Saturn and
Neptune.”
It may be a crazy theory to use astrology
to explain capitalism and socialism, but when it comes to the occult magazine Planeta,
madness was normality itself. There is nothing more natural than an occultist writing
in an occult magazine.
According to the American Jewish writer
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum in his book “War for Eternity,” published by
HarperCollins (2020):
“During the mid-1970s, [Olavo de Carvalho]
delved into alchemy and [astrology], and started hanging out in occultist
circles in São Paulo. Soon he began writing for the French-based occultist magazine
Planète. It hardly counted as standard journalism: he interviewed
extraterrestrials, dead people, and so on. At the same time, he started
teaching, offering astrology lessons in bookstores.”
I contacted the editor of Planeta magazine,
and they assured me that Carvalho was an esoteric columnist there in the 1970s
and 1980s. For many years, he wrote as an occultist for an esoteric magazine.
Carvalho wrote many articles in Planeta magazine.
In one of his articles, entitled “René Guénon: The Master of Tradition Against
the Kingdom of Misrepresentation,” published in the August 1981 issue of
Planeta, Carvalho said:
“It is strange that, in ‘spiritualist’ environments
and debates in Brazil, you almost never hear the name of René Guénon. However,
a first contact with this author is enough to verify that no approach to
esoteric or simply religious matters, in the twentieth century, can have any
claim to seriousness without making a comparison with his work.”
Carvalho questions why spiritualists in
Brazil do not know Guénon, since Guénon’s teachings are essentially occult. Carvalho
also said:
“Life, in a way, embodies the ‘transcendent
unity of religions’ (title of a book by F. Schuon), because if there is
anything that characterizes the Guenonian effort as a whole, it is the defense
of a Tradition, of a single Truth that, at the level of metaphysical doctrine,
establishes the unity of all particular spiritual manifestations, of all times
and cultures. In that sense, he was able, for example, to become a Muslim while
declaring the superiority of the Hindu tradition (closer, according to him, to
the primordial Tradition), and to defend Eastern doctrines while proposing that,
for the West, there was only one legitimate path: the return to the Catholic
Church.”
So, according to Carvalho, Guénon could at
the same time be a Muslim, defend the Hindu tradition and still defend the
return of the West to Catholicism! And Carvalho defends the return of the West
to Catholicism with Guenonian passion and unrestricted advocacy of the
Inquisition. Occultists only advocate religious channels that facilitate the
expansion of the occult itself.
But it was not only Guénon who was
comfortable with various religions, perfectly embodying perennialism.
On his own website
(www.olavodecarvalho.org), in a post from the year 2000 that he later deleted,
but which I recorded in my files, Carvalho said that for a time he dedicated
himself to Islamic studies — he learned Arabic and regularly recited excerpts
from the Koran — and won an award in Saudi Arabia in 1985 for a 200-page book
on Muhammad. He said that he practices Christianity, but that he would be comfortable
at professing Islam. The reason, in his opinion, is that Christianity, Islam
and Judaism have the same objective at heart.
In other words, Carvalho said the same
thing that Guénon himself had already essentially said. Perhaps Carvalho is
today a kind of incarnation of Guénon, not that the spiritualist doctrine of incarnation
is valid, but he has absorbed so much Guénon and his malice and deceit that the
public who follows Carvalho does not know if what he says are in fact his
original ideas or one of his many imitations of Guénon’s ideas.
Continuing in his article “René Guénon: The
Master of Tradition Against the Kingdom of Misrepresentation,” Carvalho said:
“Guénon’s effort to spread the primordial
Tradition in the West had in view the same objective contemporarily advocated,
in the East, by the great Islamic master Ahmed El-Alawi, descendant of the Prophet
Muhammad: to establish a united front of all orthodox spiritual traditions
against two common enemies: materialism and the occult.”
What Carvalho meant was that Guénon
intended to unite spiritual traditions (Islam, Hinduism and Catholicism) to
combat the occult. This religious union is the very essence of perennialism.
But how could Guénon, an occultist, lead a perennialist or traditionalist war
on the occult? In the same way that Carvalho today poses as a philosopher who
is leading some kind of war on the occult, although he himself is an occultist
at the level of Guénon.
However, just as Guénon denied being an
occultist and even claimed to fight the occult, today Carvalho denies his
Guenonian roots and also claims to fight the occult. Only Guénon himself could
play such a stealthy role so perfectly.
An occultist fighting the occult makes as
much sense as a Nazi fighting Nazism or a Communist fighting Communism. Chaos,
contradiction and lies are the very soul of the occult, where the deceived deceive.
In his article, Carvalho adds that “Guénon
managed, simultaneously, to make adherents and to raise awareness within each
of the existing traditions” (in Catholicism, Islam and Hinduism).
However, Guénon was never able to “raise
awareness” among American evangelicals. This “awakening of consciences” is just
a euphemism for minds opening up to occult ideas masked as philosophical,
political and anti-Marxist ideas.
It is fascinating that while Guénon and Carvalho
see an easy opening to the occult in Catholicism, Islam and Hinduism, all of
them see evangelicalism as an enemy, because evangelicalism is the Christian
force most resisting the occult, although in Brazil Carvalho has achieved an
incredible feat: He was able to deceive some evangelicals by presenting his
occultism as a harmless anti-Marxist philosophical activism.
I'm probably the biggest culprit in this. In
2003 Mídia Sem Máscara, Carvalho’s website, invited me to be the first
evangelical columnist, because I was already a well-known evangelical writer in
Brazil, having a book, “The Homosexual Movement,” published in 1998 by the
Brazilian branch of Bethany House Publishers. I also gave interviews to major
evangelical magazines in Brazil. Although Carvalho’s site was sponsored by
large companies, I never received a penny in salary, even though I worked there
for more than a decade, writing about homeschooling, abortion, the gay agenda
and Marxism. In my mind, Mídia Sem Máscara was essentially an anti-Marxist
website. I never understood that the anti-Marxist base of Mídia Sem Máscara was
the Traditionalist School itself. In fact, I didn’t even know what Guénon and
Traditionalist School were. So I contributed to draw evangelicals to Mídia Sem Máscara
and to Carvalho himself, including through my role as a spiritual adviser to
the Evangelical Parliamentary Caucus, traditionally the most conservative and
pro-life force in the Brazilian Congress.
Confusion in Carvalho’s life is evident,
thanks to his occult involvement. His son is an astrologer. His other two
children are Muslims. Media Sem Máscara is closed because Carvalho fought with
most of the columnists, including Heitor de Paola and Graça Salgueiro, who were
the site’s main writers. He fought with the webmaster. He also fought with me
in October 2013 because he wanted to force me, even cursing and slandering me,
to accept his passionate defense of the Inquisition. As an evangelical who
defends Israel and the Jews, I can never defend the Inquisition and the
Holocaust.
I am an example of how evangelicals are
able to detect and confront occult forces masked as anti-Marxist political
activism. They may be attracted and deceived by the anti-Marxist political
appeal, but sooner or later they will detect the occult character behind the
appeal. I was able to detect Carvalho’s camouflaged occult because I am an
intercessor and author
of the book “Prophetic Prayers,” published in the United States in 2016.
Evangelicals are not part of the strategy
of the adherents of Guénon to dominate the presidency of several nations, but there
is an effort by adherents of Guénon to co-opt evangelicals.
Phenomenally, in his article in the occult
magazine Planeta, Carvalho presented Guénon as a tradition-loving occultist who
fought against the occult — a contradiction and confusion that Carvalho himself
mirrors very well. This may be contradictory to the understanding of the vast
majority of people, but confusion is the very essence of the occult. Carvalho
has remained true to Guénon’s standard — of attacking the occult while his
“philosophy” exhales the occult directly and indirectly.
In the article “René Guénon: The Master of
Tradition Against the Kingdom of Misrepresentation,” Carvalho recommended many
books by Guénon, which he demonstrated to know very well when summarizing them
for helping people understand Guénon’s thought, making it clear, however, that
in 1981 there were few works by Guénon in Portuguese. Carvalho probably read
them in French, the language of Guénon.
In the article, Carvalho took the
opportunity to offer for sale the book “The Eastern Metaphysics,” written by
Guénon, commented by Michel Veber and published by the Jupiter School in 1981.
In the article, Carvalho calls Veber “my professor Michel Veber, who studied
under the Guénon’s personal guidance.”
This is one of the very rare confessions
in which Carvalho declared that he studied Guénon from a direct disciple of
Guénon.
At the end of the article, according to
the information that Carvalho provided to the publisher, Planeta magazine said:
“Olavo de Carvalho translated into Portuguese Guénon’s only work published in
Brazil to date (The Eastern Metaphysics, São Paulo, Jupiter Publishing House,
1981). Carvalho, journalist and astrologer, is also director of the Jupiter
School, where the first course on Guénon’s work in Brazil was also held in
April, whose expositor was Michel Veber, plastic artist and martial arts
teacher, who studied under the personal guidance of Guénon.”
Carvalho’s
Jupiter School also published “Basic Elements of Astrology” (1980) by Emma
Coster de Mascheville.
If Guénon was an occultist who
hypocritically claimed to fight occultism, how is Carvalho different? He claims
to fight fascism, even though he is a member of the Traditionalist School, an
occult cult where Guénon is revered. The Traditionalist School produced one of
the greatest fascist philosophers the world has ever seen, Julius Evola.
According to Teitelbaum, “Traditionalism
counts as one of the clearest examples of religious esotericism.” Actually,
traditionalists are not conservative in any Christian sense. If its
conservative image is Christian, it is fake Christianity, because its essence
and soul is occultism.
Teitelbaum declared that Steve Bannon, who
was once President Donald Trump’s guru until he was expelled for treason and
opportunism, is a weak member of the Traditionalist School. Teitelbaum
considers Olavo de Carvalho to be one of the strongest members of this school.
The most prominent member of the
Traditionalist School was the Italian philosopher Julius Evola, who was a guru
of the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Although Carvalho is famous
in the Traditionalist School, Evola was much more.
Let us see some similarities and even
parallels between Evola and Carvalho. Let us also remember that traditionalists
are also known as perennialists.
Carvalho is not a pioneer in anti-Marxism
along the lines of the Traditionalist School. Evola was anti-Marxist decades
before Carvalho thought about it. Of course, even without this school, there
was already an anti-Marxist culture in Brazil, mainly present in the
Pentecostal and charismatic evangelical churches. For this reason, in
the Cold War years while the KGB funded leftist Catholic movements, the CIA funded
and encouraged conservative evangelical movements.
However, Olavo de Carvalho’s anti-Marxism
has nothing to do with Christianity, especially evangelicalism, and it has
everything to do with the Traditionalist School.
You cannot understand Carvalho’s
anti-Marxist roots without understanding Evola, who was the greatest adherent
of Guénon and of the Traditionalist School.
In 2014, years before he became famous as
the White House chief strategist (post from where he was expelled some months
later), Steve Bannon gave a lecture at a conference held inside the Vatican. He
spoke about the need to defend the values of the “Judeo-Christian West”—a term
he used 11 times—against crony capitalism and libertarian capitalism,
secularization, and Islam. He also mentioned the late Julius Evola, an
anti-Marxist Italian philosopher popular with fascists and Nazis in the 1930s.
The Italian philosopher was a virulent
anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer who influenced far-right movements in Italy
from the 1940s until his death in 1974.
Evola was the author of right-wing
handbooks, including “A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth.” He was also the author
of several occult books, including “Introduction to Magic: Rituals and
Practical Techniques for the Magus.”
Evola
was in a sense the Antonio Gramsci of the right. Incidentally, both were
Italian.
Born in Rome to an aristocratic family,
Evola became fascinated with esotericism and the study of non-European
religions in his 20s. He developed a strong rejection of modernity and yearned
for a return to an ancient form of spirituality: paganism. He became an
adherent of Traditionalism and the most prominent disciple of René Guénon.
When the fascists came to power in Italy
in 1922, Evola jumped on board and became a regular contributor to the regime’s
mouthpiece magazine, Difesa della Razza (Defense of the Race). He devised his
own brand of anti-Semitism, which he called razzismo dello spirito, racism of
the spirit.
Further distinguishing Evola from other
racist writers was the fact that he openly attacked the Christian religion,
which he described as a “Semitic superstition” and as “one of the main sources
of the decadence of the West” in his seminal 1928 essay “Imperialismo Pagano.”
The similarity between Evola and Carvalho
in this point is that even though Carvalho is not openly anti-Semitic, he is an
open advocate of the Inquisition, which tortured and murdered thousands and
thousands of Jews. Besides, Carvalho sees evangelicalism, especially the
American evangelicalism, as “one of the main sources of the decadence of the
West.” For Carvalho, the medieval Catholicism, which ruled Europe with the
Inquisition, is the purest form of Christianity.
Evola’s fascination with esotericism wasn’t
only abstract; he believed in the power of magic and tried to use it to restore
Roman pagan religion. “He joined an esoteric group called the Ur Group and
performed rituals with the specific aim of drawing [the dictator Benito]
Mussolini away from Christianity and toward paganism,” said Simone Caltabellota,
an editor and writer who researched the group’s archives for his historical
novel Amore degli Anni Venti, set in Evola’s inner circle.
Evola’s radical ideas about Christianity
eventually put him at odds with Mussolini’s regime, which signed the Lateran Treaty
with the Vatican in 1929, establishing a special relationship between the
Catholic Church and the fascist Italian state. “Evola wasn’t an organic
intellectual for the fascist government, but rather a merely tolerated one.
Mussolini didn’t like Evola, because he knew of the magic rituals. For his
part, Evola thought that Mussolini’s fascism wasn’t extreme enough,”
Caltabellota noted.
Only after the end of World War II did
Evola become the intellectual of choice for the far right — “their Aristotle,” historian
Francesco Germinario said. “Both in Italy and in Europe, it’s hard to find a [right-wing]
militant who hasn’t dealt with Evola’s writings.”
In 1921, the philosopher wrote an
introduction to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion — an anti-Semitic text
first published in 1903, and largely used by fascists and Nazis — in which he
conceded that the document may have been a forgery, but insisted that it
nevertheless contained a deeper truth.
I do not know what it is worse: The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the Catholic Inquisition, who tortured and
killed Jews. In this sense, how different is Carvalho from Evola? One Traditionalist
defended the Protocols and another defends the Inquisition.
The fact that an anti-Semite as Evola is
held in high regard by radical “conservatives,” including Bannon and the
Brazilian foreign minister, claiming to defend the “Judeo-Christian West” is a shock
to conservative evangelicals like me. Such high regard has parallel only in
Brazil, where Carvalho’s feelings toward the Jews under the Inquisition are
everything, except supportive. Carvalho, who has a history as the most
prominent Brazilian astrologer, is the most prominent Brazilian advocate of the
Inquisition, and he denies its many crimes against the Jews. How different is
this from Evola?
That Evola was the most prominent disciple
of Guénon and the most prominent member of the Traditionalist School puts the
disciples of Guénon and the members of the Traditionalist School in bad
company. In fact, in fascist company.
Bannon, Carvalho and Evola have a common
connection: All of them are members of the Traditionalist School, where its
adherents see Guénon as their supreme master. All of them are adherents of or
were strongly influenced by Guénon and his direct disciples. But Carvalho is
vastly more Traditionalist and Guenonian than Bannon is.
So it is no wonder that Bannon praised
Evola. It is no wonder also that the Brazilian
Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo, who is an adherent of Carvalho, also praised
Evola, Bannon and Carvalho. This is a political-esoteric cult in all sense.
Bannon’s involvement with Guénon is
explained in “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of
the Presidency” (Penguin Publishing Group, 2017), by Joshua Green. According to
Green, Bannon has a “deep interest in Christian mysticism and esoteric
Hinduism” and a special “fascination with Guénon.”
Green said that “The antimodernist tenor
of Guénon’s philosophy drew several notable followers” and “The most notorious of
these was Julius Evola,” who “had struck an alliance with Benito Mussolini, and
his ideas became the basis of Fascist racial theory; later… Evola’s ideas
gained currency in Nazi Germany.”
According to Green,
“The common themes of the collapse of
Western civilization and the loss of the transcendent in books such as Guénon’s
The Crisis of the Modern World (1927) and Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern
World (1934) are what drew Bannon’s interest to Traditionalism (although he was
also very much taken with its spiritual aspects, citing Guénon’s 1925 book, Man
and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, as ‘a life-changing discovery’).
Bannon… brought to Guénon’s Traditionalism a strong dose of Catholic social
thought.”
For decades, Carvalho has been promoting Guénon
in Brazil. His latest best-seller, “O Mínimo Que Você Precisa Saber Para Não
Ser Um Idiota” (The Least You Should Know to Be Not an Idiot), published in
2013, quotes positively Guénon two times. For a short review, you can read my
article “The
Least You Should Know to Be Not a ‘Protestant Donkey.’”
So it is no wonder that adherents of
Carvalho eventually get interested in Evola in their pursuit of traditionalist
or anti-Marxist interests.
Adherents of Carvalho who followed his
recommendation to read Guénon eventually praised Evola and other fascists.
The bibliography of “Trump and the West,” written
by Enersto Araújo (Brazilian foreign minister), has Guénon and Julius Evola as
the main references for his defense of “traditionalism” and the West. He
mentions ostensibly “The Crisis of the Modern World” (New York: Sophia
Perennis, 2001.), by René Guénon, and “Metaphysics of War” (London: Arktos,
2001), by Julius Evola.
Other hard-core adherent of Carvalho, Roberto
Alvim, Brazil’s top culture official, was fired on January 17, 2020 after using,
in his nationalist speech, phrases used by Hitler’s right-hand man, Joseph
Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s minister of propaganda.
Probably, he quoted a Nazi official because,
in their shared traditionalist and nationalist interests, both drank from the
same traditionalist source.
The connection between all of them is René
Guénon.
The books Evola wrote, ranging from
traditionalism to alchemy, mirror the influence he received from Guénon:
* “A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth”
(2017), a collection of essays of Evola defending the right-wing ideology.
* Essays on Magical Idealism, 1925.
* Introduzione alla magia (1927–1929;
1971). English translation: Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical
Techniques for the Magus. Inner Traditions/Bear. 2001. And: Introduction to
Magic, Volume II: The Path of Initiatic Wisdom. Inner Traditions/Bear. 2019.
* Rivolta contro il mondo moderno (1934;
second edition 1951; third edition 1970); English translation: Revolt Against
the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga. Inner
Traditions/Bear. 1995.
* Tre aspetti del problema ebraico (1936;
Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem).
* Il Mistero
del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero (1937). English
translation: The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for
the Spirit. Inner Traditions/Bear. 1996.
* Indirizzi per una educazione razziale
(1941; The Elements of Racial Education).
* La dottrina del risveglio (1943). English
translations: The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According
to the Earliest Buddhist Texts. Inner Traditions/Bear. 1996.
* Lo Yoga della potenza (1949). English
translation: The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way. Inner
Traditions/Bear. 1993.
* Ricognizioni. Uomini e problemi (1974).
English translation: Recognitions: Studies on Men and Problems from the
Perspective of the Right. Arktos. 2017.
Similarly, the books Carvalho wrote,
ranging from traditionalism to alchemy, mirror the influence he received from
Guénon:
* A Imagem do
Homem na Astrologia [Male Image in Astrology]. São Paulo:
Jupiter. (1980)
* O Crime da
Madre Agnes ou A Confusão entre Espiritualidade e Psiquismo [Mother Agnes’s
Crime or The Confusion between Spiritualism and Psychism]. São
Paulo: Speculum. (1983)
* Questões de Simbolismo Astrológico
[Issues of Astrologic Symbolism]. São Paulo: Speculum. (1983)
* Astros e Símbolos [Stars and Symbols].
São Paulo: Nova Stella. (1985)
* Astrologia
e Religião [Astrology and Religion]. São Paulo: Nova Stella. (1986)
* Fronteiras da Tradição. São Paulo: Nova
Stella. (1986)
The fact that Carvalho and Evola liked to
be presented as “philosophers” and the fact that the book production of both
included occultism, astrology and advocacy of the right-wing ideology make both
almost twin brothers. At least, their problem involves twin demonic spirits.
The man Guénon most influenced, Evola,
became not only a fascist, but also the guru of the Italian fascism. Why think
that the other men he influenced — including Bannon, Carvalho and Alexander
Dugin — would not become in a way or another fascists and gurus of fascism in
their respective nations?
Not surprisingly, all of these members of
the Traditionalist School are ambitious about influencing presidents. Evola, influencing
Mussolini. Carvalho, influencing Brazil’s Bolsonaro. Bannon, influencing Trump
— who expelled him before a more destructive influence emerged. And Dugin,
influencing Putin — according to Carvalho. But, according
to my experience, including with my trip to the Kremlin, Dugin never had on
Putin the massive influence Carvalho has on Bolsonaro.
Bannon is the American Evola. Carvalho is the
Brazilian Evola. And Dugin is Russian Evola. And Evola was just an Italian
Bannon, Carvalho and Dugin.
Carvalho eternally denies his
traditionalistic connections and eternally exhales them. If in the past his
first trip to the U.S. was to visit and stay with Martin Lings, a direct
disciple of Guénon and the author of the introduction of “The Essential Rene
Guenon: Metaphysical Principles, Traditional Doctrines, and the Crisis of
Modernity,” by René Guénon, today he is connected to other members of the
Traditionalist School, including Catholic Wolfgang Smith and Muslim Seyyed
Hossein Nasr, both adherents of Guénon. The three appeared in a documentary by
geocentrist Rick Delano. Geocentrism and Flat Earth appeal to Guenonians
(adherents of Guénon).
If today Carvalho attacks some Guenonians
(Lings), yet, he praises others. He just loves Bannon and Smith because, as he
said himself, “Steve Bannon and Wolfgang Smith think I’m a genius.” He loves to
be flattered.
The Atlantic
showed Carvalho’s inconsistencies in two interviews with him. In the first
interview, in 2018, he criticized Bannon; in the second, in 2019, he praised
him.
His trip to Lings in the 1980s was riddled
with scandals. The students in his astrology course, from whom he had borrowed
thousands of dollars to make the trip, sued him for swindle.
What is clear is that Carvalho studied
under two occult masters, Michel Veber and Martin Lings, who were direct
disciples of Guénon. He also read all or most books by Guénon.
Teitelbaum said that Carvalho’s name in the
Islamic tariqa (an occult cult) was “Sidi Muhammad.”
Adherents of Carvalho keep
today showing affinity for astrology. In his book “Introduction to Magic,” Evola
praises astrology.
The resurgence of admiration for Evola is
a Brazilian phenomenon occurring only within Carvalho’s movement. Only people
affected by his ideas end up praising Evola. Even affected evangelicals
succumb. On May 2019, evangelical writer Thiago Cortes quoted a statement from Evola: “Be radical,
have principles, be absolute, be what the bourgeoisie calls extremist.” It is a
right-wing statement made by a right-winger with Nazi ties.
Cortes has a history as a columnist of
major Brazilian evangelical websites such as GospelPrime and GospelMais. On
early 2016, I scolded him for cursing foul-mouthed Carvalho. But later, the
curses turned into a passion for Carvalho. Today, everything about Cortes’s
rightism, including Evola, is Carvalho’s influence. Cortes’s passion for
Carvalho has guaranteed him a high political job and direct connections with
Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is the son of the Brazilian president. One of the things
Eduardo does most is propagandizing Carvalho.
Most Christians influenced by Carvalho are
Catholic. When Protestants are influenced, their behavior becomes erratic and
irrational. One of the most prominent Brazilian Protestant ministers influenced
by Carvalho is Daniel Lopez, a minister in the headquarters of Snowball Church
in São Paulo, Brazil. After
becoming an adherent of Carvalho, Lopez began to sell pro-Inquisition and
Eastern religion books.
Toward the end of his life, Evola toned
down his attacks on Christianity. While maintaining that Christianity was
“incompatible” with his worldview, he claimed that, in an increasingly
materialistic world, a “sincere conversion to Catholicism could be an
advancement” for those incapable of embracing a more authentic spirituality,
that is, occultism.
But he found a new target for his
invective: America.
Evola saw the advent of [what he described
as] Americanism — capitalism and evangelical values — as the worst thing that
could happen to Europe, Germinario said, adding that Evola was particularly
suspicious of Anglo-Saxon cultures because “he blamed Protestantism for having
undermined the principle of authority.”
As far as Protestantism is concerned,
Evola and Carvalho are twin occult brothers. In his Portuguese writings,
Carvalho frequently accuses that Protestantism has undermined Western
civilization, which he alleges was built exclusively by the Catholic Church and
Traditionalism (occultism). In fact, he thinks that Protestantism was the first
communist revolution in the human History.
Adherents of Guénon see “conservative American
evangelicalism as an aberration from historical” Catholicism. Even though
Bannon has never voiced openly such disdain for the conservative American
evangelicalism, Carvalho has voiced a number of scornful comments against
evangelicals, including his comment saying: “Evangelical churches have done
more harm to Brazil than the entire left.”
No
surprisingly, Carvalho has produced videos where he
himself says that his worst enemy is an evangelical: Me.
For two times, Carvalho has asked the Brazilian government to investigate me
because he thinks that it is a crime to expose his occultism and advocacy of
the Inquisition.
The parallels between Carvalho and Evola
are impressive, because as a member of the Traditionalist School Evola came to
be the guru of Mussolini, and as a member of the Traditionalist School Carvalho
came to be the guru of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
According to Teitelbaum, Bolsonaro’s
fascination with the members of the Traditionalist School is so profound that
in his first trip to the United States Bolsonaro made a point to be with Bannon
and Carvalho. Teitelbaum said,
“I saw images splashed across U.S. media
showing Steve sitting once more at a lavish dinner in Washington, D.C.—across
town this time, at the residence of the Brazilian ambassador on Massachusetts
Avenue. To Steve’s left sat President Bolsonaro. To Bolsonaro’s left sat Olavo
de Carvalho. And to Olavo’s left sat Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo.”
By reading Teitelbaum, I mused how the bizarre
religious esotericism of the Traditionalist School could lead Carvalho from guru
of a cult of Brazilian esoteric fanatics to guru of the Brazilian president.
With information from The Atlantic, Benjamin
R. Teitelbaum (War for Eternity), revista Planeta, Olavo de Carvalho website
and Facebook and Joshua Green (Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and
the Storming of the Presidency).
Portuguese
version of this article: Olavo de Carvalho e Julius Evola, paralelos de dois
proeminentes ocultistas direitistas da Escola Tradicionalista
Recommended Reading:
Astrologer Olavo de Carvalho calls for
Brazilian Federal Police to investigate Julio Severo on the allegation that
accusations against him involving the Inquisition and occultism are collusions
paid by the Russian government that threaten the Brazilian national security
“Idiotic astrologer”: Response from Brazilian
televangelist Silas Malafaia to Olavo de Carvalho, who said that “Every evil
that happens in Brazil comes from evangelical churches”
Supported by Evangelicals Angry with the
Left and Its Anti-Family Attacks, Jair Bolsonaro Is Elected Brazilian President
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