Ernst Jünger, "At the Wall of Time": the "breaking level" and access to the "original fund"

On the occasion of Ernst Jünger's birth anniversary (March 29, 1895) we are republishing our article focused on his work At the wall of time previously published in Barbadillo, Eumeswil and Il Centro Tirreno, here slightly revised and expanded.

di Marco Maculotti

originally published on eumeswil.cc, barbadillo.it & Ilcentrotirreno.it
on 21 November 2021
cover: painting by J. Evola

With this contribution we would like to analyze some of the most meaningful concepts of the work of Ernst Junger An der Zeitmauer ("At the wall of time"), originally published in 1959, perhaps the most cryptic and at the same time the most prophetic work of the German thinker. We have already previously analyzed other perspectives of the text in question, from that one astrological1 to that meta-historical2, up to highlighting the prophecies advanced by the Author3, more than sixty years ago, onHe was of the Titans in which we find ourselves living. Here we will instead analyze some more metaphysical questions, availing ourselves, as in the articles already published, of the comparison, where necessary and illuminating, with some contemporary authors of Jünger himself and in some ways similar to him - in particular Mircea Eliade, Julius Evola and René Guénon - and even others with whom the comparison is even more surprising, by virtue of their very different cultural and existential background. We will begin our discussion from the concept of "level break", closely connected to that of "exit from history" which we have already mentioned in previous studies, and then continue by examining two of the most enigmatic and at the same time significant phrases of Jünger's work, that is to say those of "original background" and "spirit of the earth".


The "breaking level"

Speaking of the experience of "Exit from abstract time", thus Jünger [§185] describes the "Breaking level", which alone would allow man to access the transcendent dimension: "When the spirit manages to take steps towards heights or depths, freeing itself from the sphere of phenomena, this world of forms dissolves: the light becomes too strong, it has to retreat. All that is personal is equivalent to separation, to loan. There is a happiness greater than that implied in the personality, and it is self-denial. Here father and mother are one». Commenting on some passages of this Jungerian work, L. Caddeo he wrote4 these observations regarding this kind of experience, underlining how it inevitably derives from the encounter with what he defines "Original phenomenon":

When the intellect encounters the original phenomenon, it can only stop. Its impulse to knowledge is satisfied because it is illuminated by 'something' that is eternal which cannot be conceptually evaluated but which, in a sense that is difficult to grasp, is the transcendental of every measure, its possibility. The apparently infinite pathos of knowledge thus finds satisfaction, the Faustian world comes to fruition.

These concepts, typical of Jünger's mythopoetic vision, echo the 'obsessions' of the Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade regarding what he called "Out of history" and the consequent access to dimension timeless (o to lend-thunderstorm)5, but also the ruminations of other scholars of the 'short century', usually labeled as "Traditionalists", including René Guénon and Julius Evola. The latter, starting from the thirties, insisted on the need for a revolution above all intern that could give the individual lost in the maze of modernity the conditions for the creation of a new level of consciousness6 . This transcendence of phenomenal reality (il veil of Maya of the Indo-Buddhist tradition) to access a level other and ontologically superior, according to Evola, it consists in overcoming the Gurdjieffian “ordinary level of wakefulness”, to finally reach a “level rupture” which allows access to the transcendent dimension. It would be first7 from "be central or become central to oneself, ascertain or discover the supreme identity with oneself [...] perceive in oneself the dimension of transcendence and anchor in it, make it the hinge that remains immobile even when the door slams " to finally reach the«Conscious activation in oneself of the other principle and of its strength in experiences, moreover, not only undergone but also sought».

This would ultimately amount — as he paraphrased Pio Filippani Ronconi8 analyzing Evoli's work - to «activate a type of freedom that men already potentially possessOr - as he stated Nietzsche, quoted by Evola - of «to impress upon becoming the character of being». This, comments Evola9 , who are "after all, it leads to an opening beyond the unilaterally conceived immanence, it leads to the feeling that "all things have been baptized in the source of eternity and beyond good and evil"". The transcendent dimension - the Other World - is not another reality, but "another dimension of reality, one where the real, without being denied, acquires an absolute meaning, in the inconceivable nakedness of pure being»10.

In these terms, Evola talks about the necessary "break in level", a central theme in his Riding the tiger, which must be sought at all costs, especially in the darkest times11: "Having taken the path of absolute affirmation and having made all those forms of 'asceticism' and activation of a higher intensity of life one's own [...] the only solution of salvation is given by a conscious change of polarity, by the possibility that, for a given point, in given situations or events, due to a kind of ontological rupture of level, the extreme intensity of life is transformed, almost overturned, into a different quality- this transformation being able to express itself, according to the author, as the step from one Dionysian state of consciousness one Apollonian. This "level break" can sometimes have12 «the character of a violence done to oneself [...] ascertaining whether one knows how to remain standing even in the void, in the formless».

Through this attitude, which Evola calls "Positive anomie", would thus be transformed, according to the ancient Tantric and Pythagorean precept, the poison in the drug, that is, a potentially negative situation would be reversed into a truly positive, or at least neutral one. "If the experiment is successful - goes on13 —, the last limit falls; transcendence and existence, freedom and necessity, possibility and reality come together. Absolute centrality and invulnerability are realized, without restrictions, in any situation».

READ MORE  Mircea Eliade: "Pauwels, Bergier and the Planet of wizards"
E. Junger

The "original fund" and the "spirit of the earth"

We believe it is necessary, at this point, to focus on the concept, which is fundamental At the wall of time by Ernst Jünger, by "Spirit of the earth". Jünger weaves his 'dialectical tapestry' with the following words:

We must imagine this vision of the spirit of the earth as an animated current that crosses the world and pervades it, without yet being separated from it. Even today it is an unconscious force, and nevertheless an indispensable force in every diagnosis and prediction.

[§79]

The author therefore seems to use the locution of "spirit of the earth" - and in other passages of his work the closely connected one of "Original fund" — extremely similar to the Eastern concept of Akasha14, a sort of 'ether' or 'quintessence' known from the Hindu tradition: eternal and invisible substance that pervades everything, essence of all creations of the empirical world, as well as basic element of the astral world; not to be confused, however, with the more spiritual and elevated element, that is the Brahman which coincides with the Logos of the Greeks. Similarities with theAkasha they can rather be detected with what the latter called Zoe (ζωή), the principle and essence of life which belongs in common, without distinction, to the universality of all living beings, or with the esoteric conception of the cult of Great God Pan15, understood as transcendent power e life-giving of all levels of the cosmos, from stars to stones, passing through daimones, men, animals and plants — and at the same time disruptive of the same, to bring them back again, once the respective earthly cycle is over, to the "original source" from which everything is born and to which everything returns.

Perhaps even more significantly, the Jüngerian concept of "original background" finds another counterpart in the Neoplatonic conception, later taken up by the Hermetic Renaissance vein and more recently by CG Jung and J. Hillman, of anima mundi: life would not operate by assembling individual parts up to the most evolved organisms, but would also start from a unitary and intelligent principle, from which plants, animals, men and every other empirically existing reality would take shape. And if this unitary principle is the Logos, the 'frame' on which the divine intelligence takes shape and becomes experiential is its so-called 'feminine' part, the eternal substance which is the substrate of every existing thing and which receives and reflects the inexpressible light of the former. So this anima mundi, in the Jungerian sense of “original fund”, is Fertile abyss and timeless Womb of all Creation and experiential event, necessary through e conditio sine qua non to finally reach, even if only for a fleeting moment, the truly Transcendent.

In Jünger's opinion, in the age of nihilism and "Death of God" the aforementioned access to the "original fund" would thus allow the differentiated individual an effective encounter with the divine: the author speaks of this experience defining it «exit from abstract time"[§13] and therefore, we could paraphrase, entry into sacred time. It is, at the same time, the "descent into the Underworld" of pagan mythologies and the descent of Christ into Hell to redeem the souls of the damned, as well as the triple otherworldly journey of the Divine Comedy, which underlines, if needed, that to get to Heaven it is compulsory to first cross Hell and Purgatory16. The "magical powers” [§117]: only in this way can we get to know the celestial powers, but only and only by dealing in the first place with the titanic-asuric ones which Jünger calls, precisely, “magical” or “mythical” powers.

In this lies the great risk of descensus to Infera, yet here is also the battle to be won now, to the wall of time. Descend into the "original bottom" and immerse yourself completely in preter-temporal uranium-telluric dualism: this is the only way to enter the new era. Only in this way will the individual be able to experience the Sacred and the Truth again. It might seem like a concept too esoteric (in the derogatory sense of the term), yet Jünger maintains that his vision may not be entirely in contrast with the scientific knowledge of our age, emphasizing that

Behind every scientific theory and, in particular, material, there is today the belief that being resides in the original ground and not in the spirit, and that from that ground the magic wand is raised..

[§118]
Painting by J. Evola

In what relationship does man find himself with this "original fund"? It can be assumed - says the Central European philosopher [§118] - that "the original fund aspires to spiritualization and that to this end it uses (among other things) man as a means. It would then be a new phase of spiritualization of the earth, like many others that have already taken place, and the responsible task of man should be to keep it in motion in order to avoid that, as if by magic, it crystallizes". Or, alternatively, it could be hypothesized that man, thanks to an ever higher awareness, "penetrating layer by layer - the most superficial of which is called Story - you arrive to a certain extent to draw on the original background, spiritualizing and making active parts of it. Where the contact takes place, there will be extraordinary responses". Already a few years earlier, in Treaty of the Rebel, Junger predicted17:

Only apparently is all this dispersed in distant times and in remote places. In reality, each man harbors it within himself, it is transmitted to each in encrypted form to allow him to understand himself in his deepest, supra-individual form..18 

From what has been said, on closer inspection, we would hypothesize that, in the final analysis, both hypotheses can be considered valid, being two sides of the same coin; in this, recognizing once again the relationship of communion and reciprocity, which we have already noted, between the cosmos and man, a concept which is, moreover, very common in the Tradition and among the traditionalists of the twentieth century. According to Eliade, just that process of "cosmization" or "solidarity with the cosmos" and the condition sine qua not to go beyond the domain of Yuga and escape from abstract time. Guénon, for his part, confirmed that the axiom of reciprocity between man and the cosmos is established in all traditional cultures, going so far as to affirm19:

Considering the history of man as isolated in some way from everything else is an exclusively modern idea, in stark opposition to the teaching of all traditions which, on the contrary, are unanimous in affirming the existence of a correlation necessary and constant between the cosmic order and the human one.

A few more words on the use of the term "spirit of the earth" At the wall of time. Jünger [§67] refers to it with the term "magic", specifying the reference to "an earthly force that cannot be further explained, whose counterpart within the physical world is electricity". In this sense, "the spirit of the earth becomes magical only when it returns", in which "we see it coagulate, crystallize and harden as in the first cities, the cities of the silver age». It therefore seems that by "spirit of the earth" he means that transcendent energy that can be activated, calling it back to life from the "original background" and then using it within the space-time continuum. In this sense, the spirit of the earth can return in men and institutions, and only by adhering to it «cults, works of art, cities can assume magic character»[§67]. With these premises, the Jüngerian concept of "spirit of the earth" is also reflected in the aither of the Presocratics (Empedocles), seen as a life-giving force, a "something continuous that moved from the surface of the earth to the stars and beyond»20, which moves like a pendulum swinging between the upper and lower regions, bringing its gifts to all levels of the cosmos.

READ MORE  The Pole, the incorporation, the Androgyne

The "spirit of the earth", says Jünger, it is not sacred, at least as we are used to understanding this term in monotheistic religions, but it is quite similar to what the ancient Romans called Genius and the Greeks Daimon21: "It does not dwell in privileged and closed spaces. Rather, it is legitimate to imagine that it is condensed and evident in certain places, or even in certain men, just as electrical energy can make some parts of a material luminous.»[§67]. Moreover, this definition appears to be easily comparable to archaic conceptions that are found almost everywhere, from prana of Hindus al mana of the Polynesians; from huaca of the Andes toorenda of the Iroquois of the Sub-Arctic. But, above all, the almost perfect correspondence with the original meaning of the Latin concept of numen, a term that initially did not include a reference to a specific deity, but also designated one supernatural force of ff uses in the natural and cosmic elements, made sacred by the divine power that was manifested through them, at all levels of The world. In this light, the spirit of the earth would present itself as transcendental and primordial power, vital and vivifying force endowed with symbolic, archetypal efficacy, and, ultimately, therefore, "sacred" in its archaic meaning and traditionally recognized throughout the world.

It did not go unnoticed how the term "spirit of the earth" was used, about thirty years before the publication of An der Zeitmauer, from the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca22, in relation to Duende, which is the equivalent of Genius Latin and del Daimon Hellenic: according to the writer, it is "the spirit of the earth […] mysterious power that everyone feels and no philosopher explains". "Throughout Andalusia - goes on - people constantly talk about the duende and he discovers it as soon as he appears with e ffi ective instinct ». The meaning of the term is never explained by the author, although it is well known that, in the Andalusian dialect, the meaning of "elf", Although it can also be translated as"brocade" or "I'm ff a prized". In the conceptual duplicity of the term, therefore, it is highlighted on the one hand a dimension, so to speak, of elevation and excellence with respect to the norm, on the other a more obscure e panic, which nevertheless stands as the founding and causal element of the first, more luminous: 

Anything that has black sounds has duende [...] These black sounds are the mystery, the roots that sink into the silt that we all know, that we all ignore, but where does what is substantial in art come from?.

In any case, in García Lorca's perspective in the same way as in Jünger's, the conceptual dichotomy harmonizes coherently between its two opposites: only the one who has the duende (in the panic sense of the term) can aspire to excellence, to rise above his fellow men, this not depending on his individuality, but rather on having awakened in himself a sort of primordial force which, "possessing" the individual, leads him beyond the limits established for the rest of the human consortium. Some aphorisms of the Spanish poet seem almost written by Jünger himself, especially when he predicts: "the duende is a power and not an action, it is a struggle and not a thinking", And" it is not a question of faculty, but of authentic living style; or blood; that is, of very ancient culture, of creation in act».

Painting by N. Roerich

Bibliography:

- Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The secret doctrine [1888]

- Luca Caddeo, Stereoscopic approaches, adapted from Annals of the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy of the University of Cagliari, (vol LXV), 2011

- Stefano Cascavilla, The god of crossroads. No place is without genius, Exòrma, Rome 2021

READ MORE  On the shoulders of the Jötnar: interview with Ylenia Oliverio ("Il Bosco di Chiatri", "Vanatrú Italia")

- Julius Evola, Riding the tiger, Mediterranee, Rome 2012 [1961]

- Id., Introduction to R. Guénon, The crisis of the modern world, [1937]

- Pio Filippani Ronconi, J. Evola a destiny, in G. de Turris (edited by), Evola testimonials, Mediterranee, Rome 1985

- Federico Garcia Lorca, Game and duende theory, Adelphi, Milan 2007 [1933]

- René Guénon, Traditional forms and cosmic cycles, Mediterranee, Rome, 2012

- Ernst Jünger, At the wall of time, Adelphi, Milan 2012 [1959]

- Id., Treaty of the Rebel, Adelphi, Milan 1990 [1951]

- Peter Kingsley, Mysteries and magic in ancient philosophy. Empedocles and the Pythagorean tradition, Il Saggiatore, Milan 2007 [1995]

- Marco Maculotti, “At the wall of time”: the question of history and the crisis of the modern world, on «AxisMundi.blog», March 2020

- Id., “At the wall of time”: Ernst Jünger's prophecies about the Age of the Titans, on «AxisMundi.blog», March 2020

- Id., Arthur Machen, Advent Prophet of the Great God Pan, in Aa.Vv., Arthur Machen. The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Bietti, Milan 2021.

- Id., The god of crossroads: no place is without genius, on «AxisMundi.blog», July 2021

- Id., The "revival" of Astrology in the 900s according to Eliade, Jünger and Santillana, on «AxisMundi.blog», December 2018

- Id., Parallelisms between Dante's infrworlds and the Indo-Buddhist and shamanic tradition of Asia, on “Arthos” n. 30 / year 2021 [forthcoming]


Note:

[1] See M. Maculotti, The "revival" of Astrology in the 900s according to Eliade, Jünger and Santillana, on «AxisMundi.blog», December 2018.

[2] See M. Maculotti, “At the wall of time”: the question of history and the crisis of the modern world, on «AxisMundi.blog», March 2020.

[3] See M. Maculotti, “At the wall of time”: Ernst Jünger's prophecies about the Age of the Titans, on «AxisMundi.blog», March 2020.

[4] L. Caddeo, Stereoscopic approaches, adapted from Annals of the Facultyà of Letters and Philosophy of'Universityà of Cagliari, (vol LXV), 2011 and available online on the “Centro Studi la Runa” website (March 2012).

[5] For further information, please refer to the aforementioned article "At the wall of time": the question of history and the crisis of the modern world [see note 2].

[6] In the introduction to the first Italian edition (1937) de The crisis of the modern world by R. Guénon, Evola wrote: "Beyond all that is conditioned by time and space, which is subject to change, which is imbued with sensitivity and particularity or linked to rational categories, there is a higher world, not as a hypothesis or abstraction of the human mind, but as a the most real of realities. Man can 'realize it', that is, have an experience of it as direct and certain as that mediated to him by the physical senses, when he manages to rise to a superrational state, or, as Guénon always says, of 'pure intellectuality', that is to a transcendent use of the intellect, dissolved from every properly human, psychologistic, affective and equally individualistic or confusedly 'mystical' element».

[7] J. Evola, Riding the tiger, Mediterranee, Rome 2012, pp. 62-63.

[8] Fr. Filippani Ronconi, J. Evola a destiny, in G. de Turris (edited by), Evola testimonials, Mediterranee, Rome 1985, p. 122.

[9] Evola, op. cit., p. 50.

[10] Ivi, p. 62. The conception of the Other World finds its origins known in Phaedo by Plato [109a-113c], who refers to it as "real earth", stating that the world we live in is only a pale reproduction of another earth of cosmic dimensions, purer and more beautiful than ours, in which purified souls go to live after death. The Pythagoreans, for their part, spoke of "another ethereal world, celestial or Olympic", often referred to as invisible, in turn inhabited; among these, Filolao called it antiquityōn ("Antiterra" or "controterra") - that is to say: a land opposite to ours [P. Kingsley, Mysteries and magic in ancient philosophy. Empedocles and the Pythagorean tradition, Il Saggiatore, Milan 2007, pp.101-2]. In its literal meaning, "the term also evokes the image of an upside-down earth, a kind of shadow-earth, a land reflected or looked at in the mirror that represents the Other World: the world of the dead»[Ivi, p.187]. Keep in mind this apparently paradoxical dichotomy of the Other World, at the same time "ethereal world", "celestial" and "Olympic" and "world of the dead", when we will later analyze the Jüngerian conception of "original background" as a at the same time as powers magical-uranic than of those mythical-titanic.

[11] Evola, op. cit., p. 58.

[12] Ivi, P. 67.

[13] Ibidem.

[14] According to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, initiator of the theosophical current of the late nineteenth century, theAkasha, by virtue of its ability to contain and connect every event of the space-time continuum, would represent a sort of "universal library", which would potentially bring together all the knowledge of the world and cosmic history (the so-called "Chronicles of Akasha") [Cf. The secret doctrine].

[15] See M. Maculotti, Arthur Machen, Advent Prophet of the Great God Pan, in Aa.Vv., Arthur Machen. The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Bietti, Milan 2021.

[16] See M. Maculotti, Parallelisms between Dante's infrworlds and the Indo-Buddhist and shamanic tradition of Asia, on “Arthos” n. 30 / year 2021 [forthcoming].

[17] E. Junger, Treaty of the Rebel, §20; transl. Adelphi.

[18] In the same paragraph, it is also said: "Always and everywhere there is the awareness that the changing landscape hides the original nuclei of strength and that the sources of abundance, of cosmic power, gush under the appearance of the ephemeral. This knowledge does not only represent the symbolic-sacramental foundation of the Churches, not only is it perpetuated in esoteric doctrines and sects, but constitutes the nucleus of the philosophical systems which fundamentally propose, however distant their conceptual universes may be, to investigate the same mystery».

[19] R. Guénon, Traditional forms and cosmic cycles, Mediterranee, Rome, 2012, p. 13.

[20] P. Kingsley, op. cit., p. 30.

[21] See, in this regard, S. Cascavilla, The god of crossroads. No place is without genius, Exòrma, Rome 2021, and the homonymous article by the writer published on «AxisMundi.blog», July 2021.

[22] F. Garcia Lorca, Game and duende theory, Adelphi, Milan 2007.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *