Le Tre Vie — Magia Mistica Yoga/en

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«Le Tre Vie» is a brief theoretical treatise published in March 1927 in the third issue of the journal UR signed by Abraxa — one of the Group's pseudonyms, traditionally attributed to a third collaborator distinct from Evola and Reghini (likely Giulio Parise). The article presents in a concise and didactic form the traditional typology of the three methods of initiatic realization: the Humid Way or mystical, the Dry Way or magical, and the Tantric Way or the "violent path". It constitutes one of the programmatic cornerstone texts of the journal, because it establishes the doctrinal framework within which to place all the other operative articles of the following years.

In the thought of the Paret-ISI-CNV School, Abraxa's article represents one of the clearest typological syntheses ever produced in Italian on the methods of the initiatic tradition, and provides the coordinates to recognize to which way each practice belongs — exercise, ritual, experience — that the initiate encounters on their path. The distinction among the three ways is not exclusive (an initiate may traverse them successively or use them alternately), but it is operatively decisive: each requires a different quality of spirit and preparation, and the methods appropriate to one way can be destructive if applied to the wrong temperament.

I. The common principle: creating the being-two

For Abraxa, the common secret of the three ways lies in a single preliminary operation: "create in yourself a being-two". The author formulates it with great technical precision:

«You must detach — first imagining it and then realizing it — a superior principle, which opposes itself as a whole to everything you habitually refer to yourself — instinctual life, thought, feeling — that controls, contemplates, and measures it in clear knowledge moment by moment. You will be two: you before the 'other' — and you will know the meaning of 'inner dialogues', the inner commanding and obeying, the inner asking and obtaining counsel.»

The work, ultimately, consists of a 'reversal': making the 'other' the 'me', and the 'me' the 'other'. Depending on whether the active principle (the operator's active consciousness) knows how to place itself in one or the other of the two principles, the difference among the three ways is determined. This preliminary operation — creating internal duality as a premise for all subsequent work — is the same that recurs in all the operative traditions of the wiki cluster: the sdoppiamento of the hypnotic-magnetic tradition, the 'witness of the yogic tradition, the Augenblick of the German mystics, the awakening of the Caduceus of the Hermetists, the Neoplatonic hypostasis.

II. The Humid Way — the mystical method

The Humid Way — also called mystical — is that in which the active principle remains in the lower part (soul, feeling, desire, need) and reaches toward the 'other' (Christ, the Master, the Divinity, the Absolute) in a relationship of love, abandonment, renunciation, adoration. It is the classic way of Christian mysticism, Indian bhakti-yoga, loving Sufism, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis. Abraxa describes it with these words:

«The I [of the mystic] does not transform itself there; it remains instead in the feminine part made of desire, of need, of thirst, and as soul it reaches toward Him in a surge of renunciation, of love, of adoration, of complete dedication. Sui juris non esse, to die completely to one's own will, to give oneself to God with inner humility and poverty, consecrating every act to Him with pure faith, wanting nothing for oneself.»

The article identifies three structural limits of this way, which render it incomplete from the perspective of the integral esoteric tradition:

The persistence of dualism: in the union proper to love, the beloved and the lover communicate but remain distinct persons, lacking identity; "thus even at the heights of Christian mystical theology you will see a dualism persist, which rarely gives way to the true transformation according to substance into the 'other'"
The passive and dependent character: the relationship of desire and love "is negative and dependent, has a character of need; and to reverse it into the purely affirmative, central, self-sufficient essence of solar natures requires a leap in quality and a daring, for which the nature of the preceding mortification creates, in the mystic, a serious prejudice"
The state of revelation instead of integration: "transcendent states appear in a situation of revelation: you do not remain integrated in them, but passive and uprooted under their striking power of miracle". Abraxa cites Ruysbroek: "A vast sea, made of burning white flames, where creation resolved into fire burns; the fire is immobile, burning upon itself" — and The Light on the Path § 12: "You will enter the Light, but you will never touch the Flame"

The Humid Way therefore has its great value — it is the way of Christian saints, of Indian bhaktas — but it does not fully realize, according to Abraxa, what the integral initiatic tradition calls identity: the beloved remains 'other', the Flame remains untouched. It is the way of Albedo without Rubedo, of contemplative union without total transmutation.

III. The Tantric Way — the path of self-excess

The Tantric Way (or Dionysian, or the violent path) instead operates through exasperation to the point of self-excess of the energies of the lower nature. It is the "tragic, sacrificial way, the violent and orgiastic Dionysian ecstasy". Abraxa explicitly refers to other works by Evola that document it in depth:

«In Evola, in his writing on Dionysus published by 'Ignis', as also in what he expounds on the Tantras in his 'L'Uomo come potenza', you will find the best indications on the subject.»

This way works through overwhelming the lower plane by means of such an intensification that it breaks and releases the higher energy. It is the way that has always required — in authentic Tantric schools, in the Dionysian mysteries of antiquity, in the orgiastic rites of certain Syrian and Phoenician traditions — a most iron initiatic direction to avoid degenerating into simple dissolution. Abraxa names it but — programmatically — does not insist on it, indicating that it is not the main way of the journal nor of the work suggested to readers. For the Paret-ISI-CNV School, it is the way discussed in Lo Yoga della Potenza di Evola, Cavalcare la Tigre di Evola and, under other languages, certain currents of eighteenth-century initiatic magnetism.

IV. The Dry Way — the magical-solar method

The Dry Way — also called solar or magical — is the method proper to the UR Group and the one Abraxa expounds most detailedly, with concrete operative instructions. The fundamental principle is to consciously and volitively bring oneself into the superior part of one's being, identifying with the superior and subsistent principle, and to fortify it progressively until it becomes master of the entire being:

«You will create not unconsciously and passively as the mystic does, but consciously and volitively, a duality in your being; you will then place yourself directly in the superior part, you will identify yourself with that superior and subsistent principle. Slowly, but ever more, you will fortify this 'other', which is yourself, you will create supremacy for it, until it can hold under itself and entirely dispose of all the powers of the natural part.»

The Dry Way requires a specific discipline that Abraxa describes in its elements:

Discipline of strength and sobriety — without any 'moral', religious, or utilitarian intention, and without any preconceived belief or philosophy. Purification here is not penance but structural construction of the superior nucleus
Reference to primitive Buddhism as a starting disciplinary model: the aim is to create "an equilibrium, a firmness, the quality of a life master of itself, free with respect to itself, cleansed of that 'mania' (taṇhā) which is instinctuality"
Only after the constitution of the nucleus, the eventual use of "corrosive waters": the alchemical expression for violent methods (toxic substances, use of wine and woman, suspension of breath) — which presuppose the fixed nucleus and which without it "by dissolution would lead you not above but below the human condition". Fundamental technical warning: Tantric methods applied without the preliminary magical preparation are destructive, as many historical cases have demonstrated
Transformations provoked by direct method, but always with the principle that "the whole being, ready, pliable, reaffirms itself, digests and lets itself be digested and rises whole, leaving nothing behind". The image used by Abraxa is that of the swimmer: "in the same way as a swimmer who catches the course of a wave, takes it up and lets himself be carried by it; but where he arrives, he himself arrives and rejoins himself, remaining affirmative, hard, central"

The fulfillment of the Dry Way is described by Abraxa in extraordinarily precise terms, which the School recognizes as a faithful description of an actually realized state:

«The solar and golden nature in you can then break the equilibrium and be the strongest: then the other — your ego, your senses, your mind — will be under you. And then you can also suspend them: render them inert, neutralized, fixed: it is the Silence, the 'extinction of mania', the dissipation of the fog. Then in your cleansed, clarified, celestial, superterrestrial eye, the cyclic, titanic, integral vision will flash: you will see your transcendental essence, the destiny of beings and all things, and the kingdom of 'Those who are'. You will conceive the mode of the act in the free state, of immaterial motion acting outside any space or body with a timeless creative rapidity. The center in you will amalgamate with the universal non-becoming nature, and from it will draw a divine virtue that turns into miraculous powers. You can then turn to the knowledge of the Names and to the nuptials with the 'houses' and the 'planets'. You will be initiated.»

V. The typology in the School cluster

Abraxa's schema of the three ways has enormous diagnostic utility in the work of the Paret-ISI-CNV School, because it allows recognizing to which modality each transmitted practice belongs and directing the student toward the method most conformable to their inner quality. Schematically:

Humid Way (mystical): it is found in the practices of abandonment, contemplative prayer, dedication, love-bhakti. In the wiki cluster, the pages Donato, Beauregard and magnetic cure of wounds show its applications in the therapeutic field
Dry Way (magical-solar): it is the main way of the UR Group and the School. To it belong the practices of detachment-witness by Reghini, the ritual of immortalization from the Magical Papyrus of Paris, the exercise of attitude before death by Leo, the constitution of magnetic chain (UR 1927 n. 5)
Tantric Way (self-excess): treated mainly in Evola's books (Lo Yoga della Potenza di Evola, Cavalcare la Tigre di Evola) and in the specific currents of Tantrism studied by the Group in KRUR 1929

The article "Le Tre Vie" therefore has a map function: it allows the initiate to know where they are, what they are doing, toward what they are going, and which methods are suitable for them. For this reason, in the School's thought, it is considered one of the essential propaedeutic texts that every serious student of the hermetic work should have clear before delving into specific practices.

VI. Bibliography

Abraxa, Le Tre Vie, in UR — Rivista di indirizzi per una Scienza dell'Io, year I, issue 3 (March 1927), pp. 45-49 — primary source
Julius Evola, Dioniso, in Ignis (1925) — source indicated by Abraxa for the Tantric way
Julius Evola, L'Uomo come potenza. I Tantra nella loro metafisica e nei loro metodi di autorealizzazione magica, Atanòr, Rome 1926 (later Lo Yoga della potenza, 1949) — source indicated by Abraxa
Julius Evola (edited by the UR Group), Introduzione alla Magia, vols. 1-3, Bocca/Scheiwiller/Edizioni Mediterranee, 1955-1971 — the anthology collection
Jan Marcel Maria Ruysbroek, Opera omnia, ed. Surius (quoted textually by Abraxa)
La Luce sul Sentiero (Mabel Collins, 1885), § 12 (quoted by Abraxa for the Light/Flame difference)