According to this, Codreanu characterized the national movements of the time as follows: "He said that there are three principles in every organism: Form, Vital Energy, and Spirit. A movement for national rebirth could not develop if it placed its emphasis on one principle or another. If one follows Codreanu, in Fascism the Form-principle is the leading political idea that the State has priority. The heritage of Rome is here the organizing energy. In German National Socialism, on the other hand, special weight is given to the principle of Vital Energy. This is where the concern about race comes from. The myth of race, with its recognition of blood and the national racial community, stands at the center of National Socialism. For the Iron Guard, in contrast to these, the Spiritual element is of central significance, with religious and ascetic values, which for Codreanu are closely related." (Evola, Il mio incontro con Codreanu).
There is no doubt which of the three principles Evola ascribed the greatest weight to. For a long time he had been criticizing the reduction of Fascism to State-worship and a new bureaucracy. In his opinion, Fascism had to choose between the Roman Empire and Italy: between the Roman Empire, which is also an important heritage for Romania, and Italy, the revolutionary, freemasonic state that arose out of the unholy spirit of the French Revolution, corresponding to the current Romania of party squabbles.
In National Socialism, Evola certainly welcomed the racial ideas in one respect, but openly criticized its formulation in the terms of biological materialism. For Evola, the racial soul was of greater significance than the material basis of heredity. This view was clearly connected with his refusal of the so-called "theory of evolution," that materialistic invention of Darwin's, which, together with Marx and Freud, Evola considered as the lowest drivel of the materialistic period.
Evola was in quest of a national movement that would help the spiritual principle to break through. He and a few friends had tried to influence Fascism accordingly. He thought that he had discovered in National Socialism, with the SS, the attempt to found a new ascetic Order. In fact, the intention of Reichsfόhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler's was to lay a net of castles of the SS Order all over the new Greater-German Reich, which would take over its rule after the death or retirement of the Fόhrer, thus thwarting the development of a new bureaucratic hegemony. But what was the spiritual principle of this ambition? Beside the adoration of the Fόhrer (the Form principle) and the belief in the superiority of the Nordic race (the principle of Vital Energy) there was not much room left for the Spirit: merely an exoteric rune-cult, supposed to evoke the spirit of the Germanic antiquity. Here Evola saw a chance of introducing his doctrine of Tradition, but this met with mistrust and incomprehension. As the records of the NS authorities show (see Julius Evola nei documenti segretei del Terzo Reich, Edizioni Europa, 1986), it was this concept of soul-race that upset them. They could issue certificates of Aryanism, but in no way could they meet Evola's hopes for the Aryan warrior in the spiritual sense.
The Iron Guard, on the other hand, seemed to correspond to the ideal that Evola was seeking. He particularly approved of the name they had chosen: "Legion of the Archangel Michael." Evola mentions the importance that fasting and prayer had for Codreanu. "By prayer he understands inner composure and the gathering of energies." This had nothing to do with his former interpretation of Christian prayer, in the spirit of Nietzsche, as nothing but crawling and debilitation. Evola would later write about ascesis in the context of Buddhism (La dottrina del Risveglio, 1943: Eng. tr., The Doctrine of Awakening, Rochester, VT, 1997). There he argues the idea that Buddha taught nothing other than the original Indo-Germanic values, lost to us today because Buddhism had fallen under Asiatic influence.
