An Intro to Eros and the Mysteries of Love - Part 1

Chapter One: Eros and Sexual Love

Julius Evola’s Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex certainly has an alluring title and the book itself does not disappoint. This is perhaps among my personal favourites and sheds light on a topic that is perennially interesting and important: what is the true nature of erotic sexual love? 

This book is an in-depth and comprehensive study of the metaphysics of sex and the transcendent possibilities that erotic love can open up. Evola grounds this study in Traditional teachings, applying the same studiousness and spiritual insight that we find in his other writings, integrating the dynamics of sex and love into a broader Traditional framework. As is typical, he draws from many of the world’s traditions, seeking the common thread of metaphysical truth that ties them all together. 

The book features six chapters and I would like to expound on each of them individually over a series of essays.

CHAPTER ONE: EROS AND SEXUAL LOVE

In order to set up the rest of the book, it is first necessary to address the many faulty modern explanations that surround erotic love. Evola is always seeking to raise our eyes upward, away from the profane, to seek truth in what is highest. Students of Evola will certainly be familiar with the idea that everything in materiality has its origins and roots in something metaphysical. And so the metaphysical is where we must find answers that can resonate as true across cultures and epochs.

Evola begins by refuting materialist explanations of sex. The one with which most people default to, of course, is the idea that the sex drive is evolutionary and biological, that it is something related to the drive for procreation. This is an idea that is often taken at face value due to the materialist mindset which prevails in our era, but which Evola artfully dismantles through one refutation after another. 

At one point, he notes that sexual love and procreation seem to be in an inverted ratio to one another. The stronger one is, the weaker the other. Essentially we are dealing here with the difference between the horizontal path of procreation within materiality and linear time and the vertical path of spiritual liberation outside of matter and time, and in which erotic tension can fuel transcendence. He expands on this theme throughout the book. 

A somewhat provocative quote on this topic stands out:

“It is unthinkable to associate the most exalted models of human love in history and art, such as Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca, with a happy ending and a baby, or rather a whole brood as a crowning feature!”

Later in the book, he makes reference to ritual orgies in which the rate of pregnancies that should be expected to occur were statistically much lower than they ought to be. This opens up the interesting idea as to what the logical endpoint of sexually passionate relationships is, and the answer to that is “death”, both in the initiatic sense (a theme that is developed further in later chapters) as well as in terms of the “fatal passion” that occurs on a lower plane.

While this idea is hardly the central focus of the chapter, I emphasise it because of its importance to the rest of the book. The bulk of his arguments are directed against such ideas as the instinct for reproduction, the Freudian “pleasure principle”, Schopenhauer’s “genius of the species”, the biological “need to evacuate”, and so forth. I won’t elucidate his arguments against them here because they are only of relevance in terms of shifting the paradigm of the modern reader and reorienting it in such a way that he will be able to make sense of the rest of the book, and as such, they don’t have much bearing on the transcendent aspect of sex which is the main focus of Evola’s study.

A significant portion of this chapter is devoted to the “magnetic theory” of love, which Evola says comes closest to reality. He writes:

“As we have seen, eros cannot be explained by biological finalism, by the genetic impulse, or by the detached idea of pleasure as the end purpose. Apart from these theories, eros must be considered as a state governed by the polarity of the sexes in the same way that the presence of positive and negative poles governs the phenomenon of magnetism and everything connected to a magnetic field.”

This polarity of the sexes is an essential element of Traditional teachings. It is also what allows us to feel that we have a certain “chemistry” with someone. Two opposing poles contain a tension between them, and in the case of man and woman, it is an erotic tension. Evola goes on to discuss the degrees of sexual development and he discusses Weininger’s theory that we are men and women to varying degrees and that complementarity in this regard will result in the greatest sexual attraction with someone of the opposite sex. For example, a man who is 3/4 yang and 1/4 yin will be most attracted to a woman who is 3/4 yin and 1/4 yang, because the sum of the two of them together reestablishes a whole. This will be important to keep in mind for Chapter 2.

He states that sex (being male or female) is a destiny, a basic fact of human nature, that there is no existence except as a man or as a woman. We are male or female in our soul and spirit before we are so in the body. Everything in creation is permeated with a primordial male or female quality— it is the union of these two things that allows for any existence at all. The predominance of one of these two natures in our souls determines our physical sex. Evola does acknowledge “intermediate degrees” of sex, but says that it does not disqualify the basic fact of the conditional nature of sex, and goes on to condemn the modern degenerations that give rise to those who are detached from their own formative forces. Feminists get a special mention.

Evola anticipates the reader’s unspoken question at this point: is man or woman superior? Truly, this is a question of little relevance in a Traditional worldview and Evola explains why such a question is nonsensical:

“A question of this kind is lacking in sense because it assumes that the two can be measured against each other. If we set aside everything artificial, external, and acquired, we find that there is a difference of Platonic ideas between man and woman that makes impossible any common measurement. Even faculties or gifts that appear to be common to both and to be ‘neutral’ have a different functional character and imprint, depending on whether they are present in a man or a woman. We cannot ask ourselves whether ‘woman’ is superior or inferior to ‘man’ anymore than we can ask ourselves whether water is superior or inferior to fire. Thus the standard of measurement for either of the sexes can be provided not by the opposite sex but only by the ‘idea’ of the same sex. In other words, the only thing we can do is establish the superiority or inferiority of a given woman on the basis of her being more or less close to the female type, to the pure and absolute woman, and the same thing applies to man, as well.”

The standard against which men or women should be measured, in other words, is not against each other but against the “pure” masculine and feminine, which he refers to as Absolute Woman and Absolute Man. These are not subjective caricatures of the “perfect woman” or “perfect man” in the profane sense, but something primordial. Absolute Man would be something akin to pure Being, while Absolute Woman would be akin to pure Matter, whether in her Aphrodite aspect or Demeter aspect, a topic to be explained in depth in Chapter 4. 

Evola ends the chapter by saying that in order to understand all the factors involved in sexual choice, we must understand what traditional teachings understood to be the structure of a human person. This is worth spending some time on, because it is integral to understanding the rest of the book, and it’s also easy to accidentally gloss over it at the end of the chapter and miss giving it the attention it requires. 

Evola draws the distinction between the “mask” and “face” of a person, or between their “persona” and their “essence”, to use synonymous terminology. The first and outermost level or layer, this “mask” or “persona”, is the level of the external individual, the social individual who must interact with other people, institutions, and so forth. This is essentially just a social construct, "an entity whose form is fairly arbitrary, ‘free,’ and unsteady because of its artificial nature.” But the inner “face” or “essence” of a person is the more profound part and the more relevant to the content of this book. This Evola divides into two parts, creating three layers in all. 

Evola likens the second or intermediate layer to the philosophical principium individuationis, or the way in which a thing (or in this case, a person) is distinct from all others. “It is here that those forces act by which a being is what it is, both physically and psychically, and is distinguished from every other being of the same species.” These forces include not only racial and hereditary factors, but also various influences that extend back beyond one’s own life, such as karmic imprints. It is one’s inborn nature and character and this is a much more stable and fixed layer than the first one. However, not everyone has individuated to the same degree (or at all, in some cases).

The third and deepest, innermost layer “concerns elementary forces superior and prior to individuation but acting as the ultimate seat of the individual. In this realm, where the first root of sex is found, the original force of eros is aroused. In itself, this level is prior to form and determination.” Here we are dealing with something very primordial and, one could even say, impersonal. This is something that existed prior to any individual existence, something that is foundational to the cosmos itself. And ultimately, what is being referred to here is the primordial act of creation. This innermost layer is where Absolute Man and Absolute Woman reside, each forever seeking their complement. These two forces, masculine and feminine, are always dancing within every person, always drawn magnetically towards each other. At this level, the process of sex is governed by this desire for the reintegration of the masculine and feminine into a unified whole.

There are practical implications to this. The deepest layer of elementary forces, being impersonal, does not care who the sexual partner is, so long as the complementarity of the two sexes adds up to the whole. But the intermediate layer exerts an influence over what type of partner we are attracted to specifically (physical characteristics, personality traits, etc). It is on this layer that we feel we can only love one specific individual and that this love is irreplaceable. However, if all of the elementary forces from the deepest layer become “fixed” at this intermediate layer, the “fatal passion” occurs and the outcome of this is never a happy one if that love is not elevated beyond a profane sphere. This is something that will be looked at more closely in Chapter 3.

The intermediate layer is also one of illusion. A man may believe he loves a woman because of this or that quality she possesses, when in actuality that which he truly loves and which binds him to her is her “naked being”, or her embodiment of Absolute Woman and all of the abyssal, fascinating, seductive qualities of that primordial feminine.

But for the majority of people, the force of eros never even permeates the intermediate layer because they lack a strong inner “face” and are primarily only “mask,” or in other words, they don’t really have much of an intermediate layer. (In popular slang, we might call them NPCs.) For them, rather than a single irreplaceable and unique soulmate, they tend to simply have a “type,” which more than one person can easily fulfil (for example, a man who always goes for redheads, or who is always drawn to athletic women, or any other trait you can think of). Eros isn’t fixed in these cases and can be moved from one object of desire to another. Because such people are not very individuated and exist mainly on the outer, external layer of existence that is very mutable, the object of their desire is also less specifically defined. Predominant among them are those who value sex as sensual pleasure alone and who value a romantic partner for how much pleasure he or she can bring or what other perks they can offer. The focus is on meeting their own needs rather than a union. For them, one partner is much the same as any other and the primary deciding factors in their choice of lover tend to be purely influenced by social or environmental pressures, such as class, fashion, tradition, and vanity. It can be the case that sometimes such a person will experience a true love where they have found their “soulmate” and that will cause eros to recover its fundamental character (the desire for reintegration), which can have rather catastrophic effects in the person’s life. At this point a “voltage” is activated on the deepest level and he will no longer be able to change the object of his eros.

Evola writes:

“In everything we have said so far we should never confuse the role of that which conditions with the role of that which determines. For a machine to function properly, it must consist of given parts that interact correctly; this is the condition. But when motor energy is lacking, even the most perfect machine will stay still. The same is true of all the conditional qualities in a man which, on the two more superficial levels of his being, can theoretically correspond to the optimum as regards sexual attraction; but the primary force of eros must be roused with ‘voltage’ in order to establish that magnetic or magic state which is the true foundation of all sexual love.”

Each level successively works to undermine the things which the previous level valued. Where the outer “mask” of the individual may wish for a partner  who is very wealthy or very beautiful or with high social status, the intermediate level (to the degree that it exists or has been developed within an individual) may cause the person to be attracted to someone who is more genetically compatible or who is more intellectually or spiritually aligned, even if they are of modest means or not conventionally attractive or of low social status. Many a love story has centred on this dynamic, in which one is willing to throw away their own status or risk social disapproval to be with their lover. Likewise, the deepest level will also upend even the desires of the intermediate level in pursuit of the person who holds the most erotic magnetism for them, even if it is a person that the outer or intermediate levels have reason to hate, which is why sometimes a very strong sexual tension can arise between two people who can’t stand each other. Conversely, a potential lover may “look good on paper” and “check all the boxes”, and yet there may still not be any chemistry. Without the magnetic attraction at the deepest level, no activation of erotic “voltage” can occur and sexual attraction will remain on a relatively profane plane.

While much of this chapter is spent on necessary paradigm-shifting so that the reader has a frame of reference for everything that is to follow, the relevant takeaway is that eros is something that flows directly from the ratio of absolute manhood to absolute womanhood, that the complementarity and balance between a man and a woman on the deepest level is at the root of intense erotic attraction. Evola says:

“No matter how much we try to explain eros, we always come back to eros itself and inevitably meet the fundamental question: Why are man and woman attracted by each other? Having succeeded in recognising this elementary and uncompromising fact, we must seek its meaning. This is precisely the same as asking what is the meaning of sex itself, and we now find ourselves led to the centre of the metaphysics of sex proper.”

And that is where Chapter 2 will pick up!

This article is part of a series intended to introduce the reader to Julius Evola’s book, “Eros and the Mysteries of Love”, which is now available in audiobook format, narrated by me. Please consider purchasing the book and using these articles to help guide your study.