Writing of it as ‘The Yoga of Power’, Evola saw in Tantra a
means for the de-emasculation of modern man – a path of
heroic, free, individualist and elitist counter-revolution
aimed at an emaciated Christian morality and an
emasculated democratic and modernist culture. In his own
words: “We may consider typical of Tantric speculation a
metaphysics and theology of Shakti, namely of the principle
of Power, or of ‘the active Brahman’.”
Noticeable is that all the figures we have mentioned so
far identify Tantrism primarily with Shaktism rather than
Shaivism, even whilst acknowledging, albeit to a greater or
lesser extent, and with greater or lesser depth of
knowledge, the Kashmir identificiation of divinity with
Shiva-Shakti. This is something of great import in attaining
a new and unified understanding of both the spiritual and
political meanings of ‘left’ and ‘right’ traditions in tantra –
with their double connotation of ‘left-hand’ and ‘right-
hand’ on the one hand, and ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ on
the other. For it was the left-hand tantric tradition that was
associated with Shaktism, not simply as worship of the
divine feminine but also with practices and rituals that
incorporated physical intercourse, and in which
paradoxically, the female tantric partner or Yogini could
either play the decisive initiatory role herself – as guru – or
else be reduced to a mere dispensable spiritual object and
appendage for the male Yogin or Tantrika (such