Kali Yuga: The Age of Darkness The 4 Ages of Man
The cycle of the seasons
cycles within cycles The Cycles of Time
Just like you go through a cycle in one day - sleep, waking, peak energy, wind down, sleep…. or throughout your life Humanity goes through phases and cycles that are in timing with the universal clockwork
The Ancients had a worldview and a view of time that was much more sophisticated than ours - they thought in terms of millenia and scales of time that we find almost unimaginable
Indian Yugas Greek ages Mayans Other??
How do we know we are in Kali Yuga? - LOOK AROUND!
Yogananda’s guru says we are not actually - and maybe he is right? Maybe this is the Kali part of the next best yuga. Perhaps we are on the ascent up, but still close to the bottom.
It seems to me that we are living in a Dark Age, yet this dark night holds the seeds and promise of a New Dawn. And that things can change quickly.
Understanding that we live in an age of spiritual darkness, of materialsim, of insanity and degeneracy - it can help to understand that, to understand that the world you were born into is a fallen one, an insane one That it is not you who is crazy
All things go through a 4 step process (or different number)
Winter - Spring - Summer - Autumn 4 yugas and ages Cardinal - fixed - mutable birth - growth - maturity - flowering - fruits - decay - death - rebirth
And it is not a circle, it is a spiral - going up or down, or both at the same time…
Within each yuga is 4 stages So you could be in the Darkest part of the dark age, or the lightest part of the dark age.
Does the Yuga cycle happen within one’s own soul and consciousness? Born originally into the mud of deep materiality, then slowly spiraling up and out…
(get excerpt from vedas about Kali Yuga) (hermes prophesy from Aesclepius)
Understanding that you were born into Kali Yuga, you have to do your best to do it on your own, and with a small community of soul-family. You have to make do as best you can in a fallen world. Accept that you are a product of this world Evola - ride the tiger Self-initiate
One can thrive and flourish here
We are here to be carriers of the light in this age of darkness and yet promise….
From Julius Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World, the appendix "On the Dark Age", where he quotes and interprets passages from the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (Vishnu Purana) describing the characteristics of the Kali Yuga (the current "Dark Age" or age of degeneration in Hindu cosmology). Evola includes his own bracketed contemporary applications and commentary to draw parallels with modern society.
Appendix: On the Dark Age
In reference to what I previously said concerning what ancient traditions called the Dark Age (Kali Yuga), I will now describe some of the features of this age found in an ancient Hindu text, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa. I will put in brackets what I consider to be the contemporary applications.
The passages that follow are taken from the English translation of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, by H. Wilson (London, 1868), 4.24; 6.1.
Outcastes and barbarians will be masters of the banks of the Indus, the Chandrabhaga and Kashmir. These will all be contemporary [of this age] violent rulers [of this age] reigning over the earth—kings [rulers] of violent temper ... They will seize upon the property of their subjects; they will have but limited power and will for the most part rapidly rise and fall; their lives will be short, their desires insatiable, and they will display but little piety. The people of various countries intermingling with them will follow their example ... The prevailing caste will be the Shudra ... Vaisyas will abandon agriculture and commerce [gain a livelihood by servitude to the exercise of mechanical arts [proletarianization and industrialization]] ... Kshatriyas instead of protecting will plunder their subjects: and under the pretext of levying customs and private merchants [crisis of capitalism and communism] of their property [inner socialization, nationalization]. Wealth [inner property]; and piety [following one’s dharma] will decrease day by day until the whole world will be wholly depraved. Then property alone will confer rank [the quantity of dollars—economic classes]; wealth [material] will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation.
Earth will be venerated but for its mineral treasures [unscrupulous exploitation of the cult of the earth] ... Brahminical clothes will constitute a Brahmin ... weakness will be the cause of dependence [cowardice, death of fides and honor in the modern political forms] ... simple ablution [devoid of anything of the power of the true salvation procured by the true rite] will be purification procured by [can there really be sacraments?] more in the alleged: "men corrupted by unbelievers sacraments?" ... will say: ... Of what authority are the Vedas? what are gods or Brāhmans? ..."
Observation of caste, order and institutes [traditional] will not prevail in the Kali age. Marriages in this age will not be conformable to the ritual, nor will the rules that connect the spiritual preceptor and his disciple be in force. ... A regenerated man will be initiated in any way whatever [democracy applied to the spiritual plane] and such acts of penance as [humanistic] and conformist religion ... all orders of life will be common alike to all persons. ...
He who gives away much money will be the master of men and family descent will no longer be a title of supremacy [the end of traditional nobility, advent of bourgeoisie, plutocracy] ... Men will fix their desires upon riches, even though dishonestly acquired. Men of all degrees will conceive themselves to be equal with Brahmans ... [the prevarication and presumption of the intellectuals and modern culture]. The people will be almost always in dread of dearth and apprehensive of scarcity; and will hence ever be watching the appearances of the sky [the meaning of the religious and superstitious residues typical of modern masses]. The women will pay no attention to the commands of their husbands or parents ... They will be selfish, abject and slatternly; they will be scolds and liars; they will be indecent and immoral in their conduct ... Men having deviated into heresy, dissolute men ... and the duration of life will therefore decrease. Iniquity will flourish, and the duration of life will therefore decrease.
Nevertheless, in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa there are also references to elements of the primordial or "Manu's" race that have been preserved in this Dark Age in order to be the seed of new generations; what appears again is the well-known idea of a new and final epiphany "from above":
When the practices taught by the Vedas and the institutes of law shall nearly have ceased, and the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being who exists of his own spiritual nature in the character of Brahma, and who is the beginning and the end, and who comprehends all things, shall descend upon earth. He will then re-establish righteousness upon the earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of the Kali age shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds [of new] human beings, and shall give birth to a race, or a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age, or age of purity (primordial age).
In the same text and chapter it is said that the stock from which this divine principle will be born lives in the village of Shambhala; Shambhala—as I previously suggested—refers to the metaphysics of the "center" and the "pole," to the Hyperborean mystery and the forces of the primordial tradition; and the forces of the primordial tradition.
I suspect a good place to put the nadir of Kali yuga is the year 0 - Christ born into the heart of the darkness and representing the beginning of the ascent back to the light.
