More on Béla Hamvas

For more on the leading Hungarian Traditionalist Béla Hamvas (1897-1968), see the chapter on “Traditionalismus in Ungarn” (Traditionalism in Hungary) in Magdalena Marsovszky, Erfindung und Okkultisierung des Magyarentums, der heilige Gral und die heilige ungarische Krone: Völkische Esoterik in Ungarn als Gegenkultur und Modernisierungsabwehr (The invention and occultization of Magyarism, the Holy Grail, and the Holy Hungarian Crown: Ethnic esotericism in Hungary as counterculture and resistance to modernization), Springer 2025, €69.99 e-book.

Marsovszky has previously published a fine introduction to Traditionalism in Hungary in 2023, discussed here. This article also discussed Hamvas, though in less detail than in the new book chapter, which focuses on him. After an introduction, there are sections on his work between 1933 and 1943 (“Humanization as degeneration; desire for unification of the German-Italian spirit”), his conception of a leading elite (Führungselite), his “theories on the emergence of the ‘New Man,’” his Scientia Sacra (written 1943-44, published in 2000), and Scientia Sacra. Das Christentum (Scientia Sacra: Christianity, 1966).

Marsovszky writes of Scientia Sacra that “had it not been published in Hungarian, a language with limited circulation, it might long ago have found a central place as the ‘sacred text of Traditionalism.’” Its importance in Hungary, she suggests, was also that it was “the first manifestation of modern European Neoplatonic and Ariosophical thought in the Hungarian language.”

Marsovszky analyses Scientia Sacra under the following headings:

• Cultural pessimism 
• Hostility toward science 
• Hostility to evolution 
• Archaic-cosmic anthropology 
• Cyclical view of world history 
• Racist caste system 
• Those worthy of life versus those unworthy of life 
• The spiritual leader 
• Numerology 
• Gnostic dualism 
• Samsara, the swastika, and initiation 
• Gnostic elitist thinking 
• Intellectuals as alchemists of modernity 
• The image of women in Sophia mysticism 
• The unity of theory and practice 
• Hinduism, Buddhism, yoga, the Bhagavad-Gita 
• The Grail a s a symbol of spiritual
•  Aryan purity

If one knows other Traditionalist works, one can imagine relatively easily what many of these are. Less familiar is “archaic-cosmic anthropology.” By this Marsovszky means Hamvas’s view that (in his own words) “There has never been primordial architecture, a primordial religion...  just as there has never been a primordial people, a primordial race, or a primordial language.” Instead there was a “spirit” (Geist) on which peoples of all races and languages drew, and which might now be recovered through Hermetic science and made available to a new “Logos race” that was Hamvas' own version of Helena Blavatsky’s new “sixth race.” These are “those worthy of life.”

The much later Scientia Sacra: Christianity drew strongly on Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958), the German Traditionalist whose work still awaits a full treatment. After examining Ziegler’s debt to Guénon, Marsovszky observes that “What was new in Ziegler’s thinking was that he envisioned the religious future of the world in terms of a ‘new Catholicity’ (neuer Katholizität) that incorporated the integral tradition… he criticized… [the] ‘Christian arrogance’ with which Eastern philosophies and religions… were summarily dismissed as pagan. He therefore called on Christians to ‘raise themselves to a higher vision,’ by which he meant the integral tradition.” “What is important for Hungarian Traditionalism,” proposes Marsovszky, is “the theological justification that made it possible… to embed Catholicism within the integral tradition.”

Marsovszky also notes that Ziegler “denounced the devastating consequences of centuries of ecclesiastical masculinization of the Trinity” and proposed the replacement of the Holy Spirit with the (female) Heavenly Sophia. Hamvas does not seem to have followed Ziegler in this.

Update on Passages

The first number of a new Traditionalist journal, Passages, edited by the American Traditionalist Jafe Arnold, was released in 2023 (and reviewed here). The second number was released earlier in 2025. It is much the same size as the first number (382 pages, fifteen articles) but has grown more Russian, with six Russian contributors (including Alexander Dugin), as against two in 2023. There are about the same number of Italians (five as against six) and Hungarians (three, unchanged). Unlike 2023, there are no American, English or French contributors, perhaps because of the Ukraine war.

More on Traditionalism in Hungary

There is a good discussion of Traditionalism in Hungary in a new book on Modern Hungarian Political Thought: Ideologies and Traditions by Zoltán Balázs and Csaba Molnár (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). It comes in a chapter on “National Radicalism, Radical Conservatism, National Socialism and Traditionalism,” available here. Traditionalism is discussed along with these other trends because they are all to the right of moderate or classical conservatism. 

Traditionalism is introduced first in general terms, and then in the Hungarian context. “Much as elsewhere in Europe,” write Balázs and Molnár, “traditionalism in Hungary was never a serious political movement. However, it can boast some fascinating intellectuals.” They then discuss these: the Dialogical School of Béla Tábor (1907–1992) and Lajos Szabó (1902–1967), who attacked modernity in their Vádirat a szellem ellen (Indictment Against the Spirit, 1936), and whose group Béla Hamvas (1897–1968), discussed in earlier posts here and here, joined. 

Then we have András László (born 1984) and Tibor Imre Baranyi (born 1967), also discussed in posts already linked, and their influence on recent politics. Balázs and Molnár conclude: “In its early phase, some important politicians of… Jobbik, including its previous chairman, Gábor Vona, were heavily influenced by these traditionalist tenets. However… it has been radical conservatism… that has been the most successful in absorbing certain traditionalist arguments, mostly the modernity-criticizing ones.” It would be interesting to see this second argument more fully developed.

Between Hamvas in the first generation and László and Baranyi today, Balázs and Molnár insert Thomas Molnar (1921-2010), an American philosopher of Hungarian origin who became popular in Hungary after 1989 and who they also class as a Traditionalist. Molnar is certainly close to Guénon’s Traditionalism as an anti-modernist who regrets desacralization, values esotericism, and condemns occultism as a modern confusion, and he cites Guénon as well as Mircea Eliade and Titus Burckhardt, but his focus is mostly that of the mainstream American Right, certainty in his earlier years, before he moved in the direction of Alain de Benoist. He seems not close enough to Guénon to be classed as a Traditionalist, but I may be wrong.

A new journal and a new generation

A new Traditionalist journal was published in 2023: Passages: Studies in Traditionalism and Traditions (cover to left). It represents a new generation of Traditionalists: Americans, Russians, and Europeans.

Passages describes itself as “a textual forum for studies on and in Traditionalism” in succession to earlier Traditionalist journals such as Études traditionelles, Studies in Comparative Religion, Sophia, and Sacred Web, and is published by PRAV Publishing, on whom more below. It is more of an annual than a journal, as the first volume is 393 pages long, and the next volume is due in 2024 or perhaps early 2025.

The lead editor of Passages and the Editor-in-chief of PRAV Publishing is Jafe Arnold, an American with an MA in Religious Studies and Western Esotericism from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in Philosophy and Education at the University of Warsaw, where he submitted a dissertation on “Heidegger’s Ins and Outs of Plato’s Cave: The Mythical Liberation of Education in Heidegger’s On The Essence of Truth” in 2024. Arnold is one of the most active Traditionalists of the new generation, and has worked on and with Alexander Dugin. One article of his was previously discussed on this blog (see here). 

The opening article in Passages 1 is a translation of Dugin’s “René Guénon: Traditionalism as Language,” originally a 1998 lecture, and certainly one of Dugin’s most important pieces on this topic. Of the following seventeen articles, two are by Russians, three by Hungarians, and six by Italians, including two authors from the Julius Evola Foundation (definitely not the new generation). There are also two Americans, one Belarusian, one Englishman, and one Frenchman—this last being Jean-Pierre Laurant, the venerable doyen of French scholars of Guénon, neither new generation nor usually associated with Dugin.

PRAV Publishing (website at pravpublishing.com) describes itself as “devoted to the publication of scholarly and popular works which build bridges of ideas between Continents and Civilizations.” The ideas in question are those of Traditionalists, especially Russian ones. So far it has published sixteen books. These include three volumes on the Foundations of Eurasianism, translated and edited by Arnold together with John Stachelski, an American who recently completed a PhD on “The geopoetics of an undiscovered continent: Eurasianism as a writing practice” at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale. The first volume of the Foundations is introduced by the contemporary Russian Traditionalist and Eurasianist Leonid Savin, and contains texts by the classic first-generation Eurasianists, especially Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), Petr Savitsky (1895-1968), and Georges Florovsky (1893-1979). These are the thinkers on whom Dugin’s Eurasianism, sometimes called neo-Eurasianism, builds, combined with Guénon and Evola.

Two of the other books are by Daria Dugina (1992-2022), the daughter of Alexander Dugin who was killed by a Ukrainian car bomb that was probably intended for her father. There are no books by Dugin himself, as the English translations of these are mostly published by Arktos, an older publisher focusing on Traditionalist works, established in 2009. Five of PRAV’s other books are by Askr Svarte (Evgeny Nechkasov), a Russian Pagan Traditionalist who was once a prominent member of Dugin's Eurasian Youth Union and in 2011 founded Svarte Aske (Norwegian: Dark Ash[tree]), an Odinist community in Siberia. Then there are two books by Boris Nad, a Serbian writer whose Vreme imperija (Time of Empires, 2002) was published with an introduction by Dragoš Kalajić, the leading Serbian Traditionalist of the first generation, discussed in a recent blog post here. In addition there four more books written by two Americans, a Russian, and an Italian. 

I am told that PRAV is working on an English translation of Andrea Scarabelli’s Vita avventurosa di Julius Evola (The Adventurous life of Julius Evola), a monumental biography of Evola, a blog post on which is overdue. 

PRAV, Passages, and Arnold and his collaborators are definitely worth watching. 

This post has been edited to correct a number of small errors.

On Béla Hamvas and astrology

A chapter in a new book provides another look at the Hungarian Traditionalist Béla Hamvas (1897-1968). It is “Astral and Hermetic Symbolism in Béla Hamvas’ Tabula Smaragdina” by Péter Kecskés, pp. 169-182 in Astrology and Western Society from the First World War to Covid-19, ed. William Burns (Cham; Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). And it is available online here.

Kecskés considers Hamvas’s Tabula Smaragdina, written between 1947 and 1950, “the most concrete example in all of his writings of a systematic exposure of a divinatory system” (180). It also covers alchemical symbolism. It is not, however, particularly Traditionalist, save in the very broad sense that Traditionalists have always been interested in alchemy and astrology as ways in which traditional cosmology can be restored, as Kecskés correctly notes.

New article on Traditionalism in Hungary

A new article examines the past and present of Traditionalism in Hungary. It is Magdalena Marsovszky, “’Gegen die moderne Welt’. Julius Evola in Ungarn” [Against the Modern World: Julius Evola in Hungary], Zeitschrift für Rechtsextremismusforschung 3, no. 1 (2023), pp. 19-34, available here (try here if the download does not work).

The first half of the article introduces Julius Evola and his thought. It then traces his influence though the Hungarian writers and philosophers Béla Hamvas (1897-1968), András László (born 1941), and Tibor I. Baranyi (born 1967). This, argues Marsovszky, matters much more than Evola’s own visits to Hungary between 1936 and 1942. Although he was invited by Countess Eduardine Zichy (1877-1964), the president of the Hungarian Literary Society who was supported by the minister of culture and education, Evola’s last Hungarian lecture, on “The Mystery of the Grail and Reich Thought" in March 1942, attracted only a small audience of 25.

The Hungarian Traditionalism of Hamvas, in contrast, grew in popularity after the 1960s and especially after the fall of Communism in 1989. Hamvas drew on Evola, René Guénon, and Guénon’s main German collaborator, the philosopher Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958), author of Überlieferung (Tradition, 1936). It was then further spread by Hamvas's follower László, and László’s follower Baranyi, both of whom taught at the King Atilla Academy established by the political party Jobbik, which she says has continued operating underground since its official closure in 2016.

Marsovszky considers Scientia Sacra (Sacred Science, i.e. Tradition, 1942-43) as Hamvas’s main work, and sees it following Evola in its conviction that decline from the Golden Age could be arrested through cyclical reincarnations of ‘initiatic communities’ following an ancient traditional Boreal higher order. He also followed Evola’s understanding of race as metaphysical and spiritual rather than biological (thus rejecting Nazi racism). She considers his most important departure from Evola and Guénon to have been his inclusion of Christianity in the perennial philosophy, which she believes Hamvas took from Ziegler.

“Today,” writes Marsovszky, “Hamvas's theses are often regarded in Hungary as a democratic alternative to the biologistic descent-oriented direction of the ethnic nationalists and are also classified by anti-fascists as anti-fascist, while Hamvas's and Evola's neo-Right ideology is not reflected upon analytically.” She continues “The fact that democracy in Hungary has not been able to become stable since the fall of communism in 1989 and that society has been infiltrated by anti-modern, anti-democratic attitudes is partly due to the dissemination of Evola's theses.” Although Jobbik and the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are politically opposed, she believes, they in fact share much the same basic ideology.

As noted in an earlier blog post (here), the only book by Hamvas available in English remains his remarkable The Philosophy of Wine. Readers who want to get a feel for the dimensions of Hungarian Traditionalism can visit the Traditionalist publisher Kvintesszencia Kiadó at https://tradicio.org, and may consult Metaphysicum et politicum - A magyar tradicionális iskola bibliográfiája [Metaphysicum et politicum - Bibliography of the Hungarian Traditionalist School] by the Hungarian Traditionalist Ferenc Buji (Debrecen: A Metafizikai Hagyomány Centruma, 2008). In 334 pages, this lists and comments on Hungarian Traditionalists authors, publishers, and periodicals prior to its publication. It is available here.

New book on Traditionalist thought published (coming soon in US)

Mark Sedgwick, Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order is now available in Europe and Canada. Readers in the US will have to wait until July 6. 

Official UK price is £25, but Amazon.co.uk is selling for £22 and £12.99 on Kindle. In Canada, $53.95 and $17.99 Kindle, and in Europe €22.19 and £18.75 Kindle. 

One of the first reviews is in The Scotsman, and says (in part) "This very fine book is a forensic look at the movement and its influence, and has several points where you both realise something and ponder 'why did I never realise that?'” That is rather what I had hoped for.

The book looks at the intellectual foundations of Traditionalism, its application both to various projects, and "post-Traditionalism." Each chapter looks first at the general intellectual background to the issue it discusses, and then at Traditionalist understandings, starting in most cases with René Guénon and ending as much as possible with living Traditionalists.

Forthcoming book on Traditionalist thought

One of the criticisms that have been made of my original Against the Modern World is that I did not pay enough attention to Traditionalist thought. I agree, and therefore a new book will come out in June 2023 focusing on ideas: Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order. The book is a companion to Against the Modern World, not a replacement--it goes over different ground.

The publishers are Oxford University Press in the US (see cover without tree) at $29.95 (pre-order here) and Pelican in the UK (see cover with tree) at £22 or £9.99 on Kindle (pre-order here). Two very different covers, but the text is the same. 

 

The chapters are:

INTRODUCTORY
1. Traditionalism and the Traditionalists  
2. Historical perennialism  
 
PART I: FOUNDATIONS
3. Traditionalist perennialism   
4. Traditionalist history   
5. The Traditionalist critique of modernity   
6. Traditionalism, thought, and society    

PART II: CORE PROJECTS
7. Self-realization    
8. Religion    
9. Politics    

PART III: FURTHER PROJECTS
10. Art    
11. Gender    
12. Nature    
13. Dialogue  
  
PART IV: POST-TRADITIONALISM
14. The radical right   
 
CONCLUDING
15. Conclusion    

Bannon, Traditionalism, Dugin, and Olavo

Benjamin Teitelbaum has just published a major new book on contemporary Traditionalism, War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (New York: Harper Collins, cover to left) or, in the UK, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right (London: Allen Lane, 2020, cover below).

Teitelbaum is an American scholar who has previously published Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2017), an excellent ethnographic study of radical nationalists and the related music scene in Sweden, and although War for Eternity is written in light, journalistic style, it is based on thorough research, principally long interviews with its main subject, Steve Bannon.

The book’s US cover and title focus on Bannon, but the UK cover and title are closer to the contents, as the book also covers several other Traditionalists, notably Alexander Dugin (Russia) and Olavo de Carvalho (Brazil), and then Gábor Vona of Jobbik (Hungary) and John Morgan of Integral Tradition Publishing and Arktos (online).

Some of what is in War for Eternity will come as no surprise to those who know their Traditionalism and/or have read my Against the Modern World, but much of it is new and interesting. Most of all, Teitelbaum’s long discussions with Bannon reveal Bannon’s own, modified, version of Traditionalism, and resolve a number of mysteries.

• Firstly, what Bannon now takes from Traditionalism is, in his own words, “the rejection of modernity, the rejection of the Enlightenment, the rejection of materialism,” and the understanding that “culture, true culture, is based upon immanence and transcendence.”

• Secondly, Bannon reconciled Traditionalism with populism by identifying the American working class with tradition, and America’s globalized elites with modernity. In Guénon’s terms, in the hierarchy of values “proceeding from the body, to money, to earthly creeds, to Spirituality,” it is the elites who are slaves to money, and the working class that may perhaps access spirituality. In Evola’s terms, it is the working class who are the warriors: “The aristos don’t fight! They strictly don’t fight.” All in all, it is the working class that is “out of time, insulated from the corrupting influences of modernity; vessels for eternal ideals and carriers of a spirit that unites a society internally and separates it from others elsewhere.”

• Thirdly, Bannon agrees with the Traditionalists that the end of the temporal cycle means that destruction inevitably proceeds a new cycle. Trump is the great destroyer, though Bannon more often calls him “the disrupter.” The early moves of the Trump administration, in which Bannon’s ideas were still influential, were aimed at the destruction of the forces of modernity in the form of the “administrative state,” in this instance the federal government. Unfortunately from Bannon’s perspective (though he does not put it quite like this), Trump then also went on to destroy his own administration, and thus also the possibility of it actually achieving anything very much. That was not the original idea (though perhaps it was fortunate, at least for those who see the federal government as performing necessary functions).

• Fourthly, Trump’s enmity towards China fits with Bannon’s Traditionalist views. For Bannon, “The globalists are totally tied to the mercantilist totalitarian system of the Chinese. China is the economic engine that drives it all. Without China, it doesn’t work; that’s what’s driven the system.” Bannon tried to convince Dugin of this during a long meeting between the two in Rome, arguing that the Chinese are trying to create precisely the unipolar world that Dugin has spent much of his career arguing against. Bannon very much liked Dugin’s Forth Political Theory. It seems that Dugin was less convinced by Bannon.

Also of interest is what Teitelbaum learned of Traditionalism in Hungary, where it combined nicely with Turanism, the 19th-century nationalist view that joined Hungarians with Turks, Central Asians, Japanese, and Koreans. Just as Eurasianism proved a good basis for Dugin to construct a vision of Russia as part of a traditional alternative to Western modernity, so Turanism helped Vona construct a vision of Hunagary as part of another traditional alternative to Western modernity. Vona opened the King Attila Academy to explore and promote such views, and then closed it in 2015 when it became a political liability.

Somewhat less interesting is the section towards the end of the book on the relationship between Jason Jorjani, an American activist of Iranian origin who is influenced by Traditionalist, and Michael Bagley, a con-artist who ended up in jail.

One criticism: the book perhaps relies too much on interviews, and more attention could usefully have been paid to what Dugin and Carvalho have written.

All in all, however, required reading.

The Philosophy of Wine

A new book by the Hungarian essayist Béla Hamvas (1897-1968) is now available in English translation. The Philosophy of Wine, written in 1945, has been published by Media Kiadó in Budapest, finely printed and bound.

Hamvas was primarily a literary figure, but was also a Traditionalist, introducing Guénon and Evola to certain Hungarian circles during the interwar period. His Scientia Sacra (1943-44) is his most Traditionalist work.

The Philosophy of Wine is the only work by a Traditionalist I have yet read that has made me laugh aloud. Traditionalists tend to treat serious topics seriously, but Hamvas uses humor, and uses it well. Wine, he explains in the book's introduction, actually stands for the divine, and philosophy for metaphysics, but a book about the metaphysics of the divine would not go down well, so he has written about wine instead. And the book is indeed about wine, and the pull-out map of wine regions in Hungary is very useful. But the book is not only about wine. It is also about modernity and esotericism and the One, and it is an attack on modernity's representatives--atheists and scientists--and also on pietists and puritans. A puritan, Hamvas explains, is "a pietist turned terrorist," a phrase that must have carried special meaning as Communist puritans tightened their grip over Hungary, forcing Hamvas out of literary life into a job as a warehouseman.

The strength of The Philosophy of Wine is its humor and its elegance. It is an extended essay with short chapters. It also advances an interesting idea at a theoretical level, however: that "the golden age is not a historical period but a condition."

The Philosophy of Wine is available from Bookline for 2,550 HUF ($9) plus postage.

My thanks to JM for providing me with a copy of the translation and of related material.

Another book on Eurasianism

Alexander Dugin and Traditionalism are discussed in a new collection edited by Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo, The Politics of Eurasianism: Identity, Popular Culture and Russia's Foreign Policy (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).

The book takes "Eurasianism" in its widest sense, and Dugin's Eurasianism--what some call "Neo-Eurasianism"--is thus only one of the topics considered.

The book is divided into four parts.

• Part I, on "Eurasianism, Nationalism and Ideology," contains three chapters discussing Eurasianism in general terms. 
• Part II, "The Cultural Politics of Eurasianism," contains three chapters looking at the status of Eurasianism in post-Soviet Russian life, as "alternative history" and in movies. 
•  Part III looks at "'Project Eurasia' and Russia's Foreign Policy," and contains four chapters. Marlene Laruelle asks how Eurasianism sees China,  Gonzalo Pozo looks at the Eurasian Economic Union, Anton Shekhovtsov looks at "Aleksander Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism and the Russian-Uranian War," and Richard Sakwa looks at whether Eurasia really exists. 
• Part IV looks at Eurasianism outside Russia: In Tartarstan (Victor Shnirel’man), Hungary (Balázs Trencsényi), Turkey (Emre Erşen), Kazakhstan (Luca Anceschi) and Germany (Ian Klinke on Alexander Rahr). 

Traditionalism is discussed explicitly only by Balázs Trencsényi, who notes its importance for the post-1980s alternative intellectual milieu in Hungary that drew on the work of Béla Hamvas, and the importance of this milieu and of Traditionalism for the Jobbik leader, Gábor Vona. This, in the view of Trencsényi, is one reason why Vona and Dugin see eye to eye. Another reason, he suggests, is that there is some evidence of Russian financial support for Jobbik. Trencsényi, incidentally, wrongly identifies Guénon as "an adherent of fascism."

Dugin is discussed especially by Shekhovtsov and by Erşen. Shekhovtsov shows that Dugin has long argued for the division of the Ukraine, explicitly in Foundations of Geopolitics (Основы Геополитики, 1997), but it is not clear to what extent he has actually played an important role in the recent Russian intervention. As Shekhovtsov reminds us, members of the Eurasian Youth Union (Евразийский Союз Молодежи, ESM) were early supporters of the secession of eastern Ukraine and established several branches there, but after their role in the spectacular destruction of Ukrainian national symbols atop Mount Hoverla in 2007 (see blog post), they suffered a split, were targeted by the Ukrainian security services, and declined in Ukraine. Other secessionists remained on good terms with Dugin, however, and when secessionism re-emerged after 2014, Dugin supported secession in his public pronouncements, and also encouraged ESM members to volunteer for action. So, however, did many other groups, and thus, as Shekhovtsov says, it "seems impossible to establish how successful or efficient the ESM was in recruiting the volunteers."

Interestingly, Shekhovtsov refers to a report by the Center for Economic and Political Reform, a Russian NGO, which shows Russian state financial support for the ESM (report available here). Dugin is often said to be close to the Russian state, but this is just as often disputed. Financial support for the ESM is evidence of a good working relationship. Sakwa, however, argues that Dugin’s "influence on Russian regime politics has been minimal" and notes that after his “militant and uncontrollable support for the insurgency in the Donbass," the Russian regime “fought back to control the monster of Russian nationalism." This makes sense: the Russian government undoubtedly wishes to use nationalism and Eurasianism, not be be used by it.

Erşen also considers Dugin's influence in Turkey. He covers familiar ground, and makes an important point: that while Dugin's anti-Westernism easily finds an appreciative audience in today's Turkey, his pro-Russianism does not.

Dugin and Europe

A new book on Alexander Dugin's Eurasianism and Europe has been published, Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015), edited by Marlene Laruelle and supported by the Carnegie Council.

The book examines the three-sided relationship between the Russian government, European neo-nationalist parties and Eurasianism. As David Speedie notes in the foreword, one important thing that is going on is "Russia's rising soft power among European parties and countries that feel victims of the European Union 'technocracy.'" To this might be added the impact of globalization, to which many also feel victim. Eurasianism is not synonymous with Russian soft power, but is an aspect of it.

The book is a collection with ten chapters, two introductory and one by way of conclusion. The remaining seven chapters deal with Russia itself and with France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Hungary and Greece. One introductory chapter is by Laruelle, and the other by Anton Shekhovtsov, who also wrote the conclusion. The other chapters are by scholars specializing in the countries they cover and/or in the New Right.

The chapters on Turkey and Hungary are among the most interesting. Vügar İmanbeyli charts and explains Dugin's initially enthusiastic reception in Turkey, a reception that became less and less enthusiastic over time. Umut Korkut and Emel Akçali show how what is in some ways a Hungarian version of Eurasianism, Turanism, gained influence within Jobbik and even, to a lesser extent, Fidesz.

Unfortunately lacking is a discussion of the current, as opposed to historical, importance of Traditionalism for Eurasianists and sympathizers outside Russia. Vadim Rossman recognizes the importance of Guénon and Evola for the Center for Conservative Research at the Moscow State University, which was until 2014 an important base for Dugin and colleagues, as well as of related thinkers such as Henry Corbin and the Neoplatonists. Beyond this, it is noted that Greece's Golden Dawn initially promoted paganism before shifting to Greek Christianity. Nothing more. Even so, the book is important.

Traditionalism in Hungary

Gábor Vona in front of the Jobbik emblem

TGP has just drawn my attention to the rise of the influence of Evola in Hungary.

Gábor Vona (in Hungarian, Vona Gábor), the leader since 2006 of Jobbik (the Movement for a Better Hungary, which holds 12% of the seats in the Hungarian parliament and is the country's third political force), is a declared admirer. He wrote the introduction to a recent collection of Evola's work, Jobboldali fiatalok kézikönyve (Manual for Nationalist Youth, 2012), and in 2010 wrote:

My idea of society and people was formed and developed by such great thinkers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Mircea Eliade, Rüdiger Safranski, Konrad Lorenz or the all time favourite, Master Eckhart. But If I had to define the category to which my thinking and my perception belong to it would have to be the following: traditionalist. Here I should emphasize Béla Hamvas, Julius Evola and René Guenon. 

Béla Hamvas (1897-1968) was the Hungarian writer, journalist and librarian who introduced Traditionalism into Hungarian circles before the Second World War.

It is unclear what influence Evola has within Jobbik, and it can be assumed that few of the million Hungarians who voted for Jobbik at the last election have read him. But Vona bases his assessment of Islam on a Traditionalist analysis, and this analysis has policy consequences, with Jobbik for example taking a determinedly pro-Palestinian stance, and Vona happily visiting Turkey as well as Russia. He was in Moscow at the invitation of Alexander Dugin in 2013, and is a staunch supporter of Dugin's Eurasianism. Commentators are unsure how to describe Jobbik, with the British Guardian for example reaching for labels like "Fascist" and "extreme right." "New Right" seems a better label.

The Manual for Nationalist Youth was published by Kvintesszencia Kiadó, a publisher run by Tibor Imre Baranyi which now has 19 Traditionalist titles in Hungarian: 6 by Evola, 6 by Guénon, 2 by Schuon, and 5 by Hungarian Traditionalists (2 by András László, 2 by Tibor Imre Baranyi himself, and 1 by Róbert Horváth). András László (b. 1941) was the successor as Hungary's leading Traditionalist to Béla Hamvas; Róbert Horváth is a younger Hungarian Traditionalist.

Main bands for Scene Traditionalism

A correspondent, Eduard ten Houten, has been kind enough to supply some more information on Neo-Folk Music Scene Traditionalism.

First, there's an article well worth reading (if you know German): Nordolf, "Der Ruf nach den alten Göttern: Zum Zusammenhang zwischen Neuheidentum, europäischem Erbe und Gothic / Avantgarde Musik" (Calling on the Old Gods: Links between Neopaganism, European Heritage, and Gothic/Avantgarde Music). Nordolf traces the interest of these bands in Evola through figures such as Ernst Jünger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ezra Pound, Corneliu Codreanu, and Karl Maria Wiligut.

Then, even if you don't know German, the article ends with a long list of CDs that looks pretty comprehensive to me. Elsewhere, Qvirinvs provides a shorter list of purely Traditionalist[ic?] bands. Given the emphasis on Evola, it is not a great surprise that many of these are Italian:

• Ain Soph *#
• Apud Inferos
• Camerata Mediolanese *
• Extreme Spite Wing
• Hirpus
• Janus
• Mors Summa
• Thronus Abyss
• Viking

Bands with a * featured on the classic compilation CD, Cavalcare la tigre -
Julius Evola: Centenary.

Bands with a # are ones whose names seem to me (very impressionalistically, provisionally, and unscientifically) to be the most notable and/or interesting.

I've given only links that I know--the absence of a link does not mean there is no website.

Next in importance as a region comes Germany/Austria

• Allerseelen * (Austria)
• Orplid * (German)
• Turbund Sturmwerk (Austria)
• Von Thronstahl *# (German)

Then there's America (Alraune,* Blood Axis,*# and Waldteufel*), Scandinavia (Gemeinschaft, Green Army Fraction, and Weisse Rose), Great Britain (Death in June,# Herr, and Sol Invictus#), Hungary (Actus, and Scivias*#), Switzerland (Der Arbeiter, and Gibroaltar), and finally France (Lonsai Maikov *) and Argentina (Argentum).

Note: Sol Invictus # isn't on Qvirinvs's list--I'm not sure why.

Finally, here are some lyrics from Ain Soph's Kshatriya:

Die Treue ist stärker als Feuer
Sich erheben, auferstehen
Eine Form und eine Ordnung schaffen
Aufrecht durch die Ruinen
Den schwersten Weg auswählen
Unseren Mut in Metall gießen
Endlich wiedergeboren durch das Blut
Stark durch unsere Ehre
Kshatriya

Source: Nordolf's article.