So i read Evola’s "mithraic mysteries" and his essay on Emperor julian the Apostate, as well as the chapters in revolt against the modern world that deal with Julian and have some thoughts :
Julius Evola saw Julian the Apostate as a paradigmatic figure—not just historically, but spiritually and symbolically. In Evola's worldview, Julian was a solar warrior-king, a philosopher-emperor, and the embodiment of the heroic revolt against the modern world. He was one of the few in history who attempted to restore a sacred order grounded in Tradition after its degradation by egalitarianism and materialism, which for Evola began with Christianity.
Julian as a Restorer of Tradition
Evola placed Julian within his broader theory of "Tradition" (with a capital T), meaning the primordial metaphysical order that links man to the divine through hierarchy, ritual, and initiatic kingship. For Evola:
Julian represented a counter-current—the heroic effort to reassert the spiritual and hierarchical worldview of antiquity.
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He saw Julian’s reign as an interruption of decay, a last flare of sacred kingship before the long twilight of modernity.
In Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola writes:
“Julian’s revolt was not merely religious, but metaphysical—it was a stand for the sacred solar authority of the ancient world against the spiritual leveling brought by Christianity.”
Julian is portrayed as the last representative of the Olympian spirit, which values hierarchy, virtue, heroic struggle, and initiation.
Evola admired Julian’s opposition to Christianity—not out of atheism, but because he believed Christianity:
Introduced a feminized, egalitarian, sentimental morality that undermined the warrior-ascetic ethos of Rome and Aryan antiquity.
Substituted divine kingship and initiatic knowledge with dogma and faith for the masses.
Disconnected man from the heroic ideal and made him weak, passive, inwardly broken.
Julian’s attempt to revive pagan cults, Neoplatonic philosophy, the worship of Mithras and Mithraic rites was seen as an effort to revitalize the inner fire of civilization.
Evola revered this as a spiritual insurrection—Julian was not just rejecting Christianity, but reclaiming the sacred masculine axis.
Julian embodied the solar archetype central to Evola’s conception of rulership:
He was a philosopher and initiate,warrior and Sovereign not a politician.
He aligned with the Sun God Helios/Sol/Mithras, the cosmic sovereign in Neoplatonic and Mithraic traditions.
In writing his Hymn to King Helios, Julian affirms the cosmic identity between the ruler and the divine sun, which Evola saw as the model of sacral sovereignty.
This matched Evola’s ideal of imperium—rule derived from spiritual authority, expressed through virile discipline, transcendence, and luminous clarity.
“The emperor should be the pontifex of the cosmos,” Evola echoes Julian’s vision—binding heaven and earth through action, ritual, and will.
Evola was not blind to Julian’s defeat—he saw it as inevitable given the tide of history—but not as a failure of vision:
Julian died in battle (possibly assassinated by Christians), and his restoration project collapsed soon after.
But to Evola, his heroism lay in the attempt—the warrior who stands against the age, like Arjuna on the battlefield, regardless of outcome.
Julian is framed as a symbol of the Right-Hand Path: active, solar, royal, and tragic—but inwardly, his spirit triumphant.
In Evola’s cyclical view of history (influenced by Hindu Yugas and Guénon), Julian appears at the tail end of the age of heroes, just before the Kali Yuga deepens. Thus:
Julian = the last beacon of the Solar-Aryan tradition before descent into the dark, materialist age.
Christianity = spiritual subversion, an inverted hierarchy.
Julian’s reign = a final rebellion of light, a doomed but noble attempt to reestablish the sacred axis.
