The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

Примечания

1

These words translate in a rather unsatisfactory way the Greek terms εἶδος and ὕλη employed in the same sense by Aristotle. These terms will be referred to again later.

2

It is possible to speak of Brahma saguna or ‘qualified’, but there can be no possible question of Brahma ‘quantified’.

3

It may be observed that the name of a being, insofar as it is an expression of its essence, is properly speaking a number understood in this qualitative sense; and this establishes a close link between the conception of the Pythagorean numbers — and consequently that of the Platonic ideas —and the use of the Sanskrit word nāma to denote the essential side of a being.

4

It must be pointed out, in connection with essence and substance, that the scholastics often translate as substantia the Greek word οὐσία, which on the contrary means properly and literally ‘essence’, and this contributes not a little to the growth of linguistic confusion; hence such expressions as ‘substantial form’ for instance, this expression being very ill adapted to convey the idea of that which really constitutes the essential side of a being and not its substantial side.

5

The primary meaning of the word ὕλη is related to the vegetative principle; here there is an allusion to the ‘root’ (in Sanskrit mūla, a term applied to Prakriti) which is the starting-point of manifestation; in this can be seen some connection which does in fact plunge its roots into that which constitutes the obscure support of our world, substance indeed being in a way the tenebrous pole of existence, as will appear more clearly later on.

6

The pure idea of number is essentially that of whole number, and it is evident that the sequence of the whole numbers constitutes a discontinuous series; all the extensions that have been applied to this idea, and that have given rise to the notions of fractional numbers and incommensurable numbers, are real alterations, and only in fact represent the efforts that have been made to reduce as far as possible the intervals in the numerical discontinuity, so as to lessen the imperfection inherent in the application of number to continuous magnitudes.

7

This also agrees well with the original meaning of the word ὕλη which was given above: the plant is so to speak the ‘mother’ of the fruit that comes forth from it and is nourished from its substance, but the fruit is only developed and ripened under the vivifying influence of the sun, the sun being thus in a sense its ‘father’; and as a result the fruit itself is symbolically assimilated to the sun by ‘co-essentiality’, if it be permissible to use this expression, as may also be understood by reference to explanations given elsewhere of the symbolism of the Ādityas and other similar traditional notions.

8

These two terms, ‘intelligible’ and ‘sensible’, used in this way as correlatives, properly belong to the language of Plato; it is well known that the ‘intelligible world’ is for Plato the domain of ‘ideas’ or of ‘archetypes’, which, as we have seen, are actually essences in the proper sense of the word; and, in relation to this intelligible world, the sensible world, which is the domain of corporeal elements and proceeds from their combinations, is situated on the substantial side of manifestation.

9

‘Notes on the Kaṭa Upaniṣad,’ New Indian Antiquary (Bombay) 470 (1938): pt. 2.

10

The Sanskrit word rita is related by its root to the Latin ordo, and it is scarcely necessary to point out that it is related even more closely to the word ‘rite’: a rite is, etymologically, that which is accomplished in conformity with ‘order’, and which consequently imitates or reproduces at its own level the very process of manifestation; and that is why, in a strictly traditional civilization, every act of whatever kind takes on an essentially ritual character.

11

Cf. A. K. Coomaraswamy, ibid.

12

Cf. Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, chap. 17.

13

Cf. The Symbolism of the Cross, chap. 4.

14

Omnia in mensura, numero et pondere disposuisti (Wisd. of Sol. 11:20).

15

In Arabic, the word hindesah, of which the primary meaning is ‘measure’, serves to denote both geometry and architecture, the latter being really an application of the former.

16

Coomaraswamy has called attention to a curious symbolical drawing by William Blake representing the ‘Ancient of Days’, appearing in the solar orb, whence he points toward the outside a compass held in his hand, all of which might illustrate the following words from the Rg-Veda (VIII.25.18): ‘With his ray he hath measured [or determined] the bounds of Heaven and of Earth’ (and among the symbols of certain Masonic grades is found a compass, the head of which is formed of a sun with rays). Here it is a case of the figuration of that aspect of the Principle that Western initiations call the ‘Great Architect of the Universe’, who becomes too in certain cases the ‘Great Geometrician of the Universe’, and who is identical with Vishvakarma of the Hindu tradition, the ‘Spirit of Universal Construction’; his terrestrial representatives, that is to say those who in some way ‘incarnate’ this Spirit in the case of each distinct traditional form, are what has earlier been called, for this very reason, the ‘Great Architects of the Orient and of the Occident’.

17

It is true that Descartes, at the beginning of his physics, only claims to construct a hypothetical world on the basis of certain assumptions, which can be reduced to extension and movement; but, since he is at pains to demonstrate later that the phenomena that would be produced in such a world are precisely those of which we are aware in our own, it is clear that, in spite of his purely verbal precaution, he intends to conclude that our world is in fact constituted like the world he began by imagining.

18

This argument is equally applicable against atomism, which by definition admits no positive existence other than that of atoms and their combinations, and is thus necessarily led to posit a void between the atoms for them to move about in.

19

Such are, for instance, descriptive geometry, and the geometry to which certain mathematicians have given the name of analysis situs.

20

This is just what Leibnitz expressed by the formula: Aequalia sunt ejusdem quantitatis; similia sunt ejusdem qualitatis.

21

For a full treatment of this theme, reference may be made to the considerations set out, and fully developed, in The Symbolism of the Cross.

22

Attention may be directed in particular to all questions of ritual related to ‘orientation’; this cannot be dwelt on here, and it need only be mentioned that not only are the conditions for the construction of buildings traditionally determined in this way, whether they be temples or houses, but also those for the foundation of cities. The orientation of churches is the last vestige of this that has persisted in the West up to the beginning of modern times, the last vestige, at least, from an ‘exterior’ point of view, for within the symbolism of initiatic forms considerations of this order, though not generally understood today, have always kept their place, even when the present degenerate condition of affairs has led to a belief that the maintenance of the effective realization of the implied conditions can be dispensed with, and that a purely ‘speculative’ representation of them is enough.

23

It will suffice at this point to call attention, on the one hand, to the extent of the use of the symbolism of the zodiac, especially from a strictly initiatic point of view, and on the other hand, to the direct applications in the field of ritual to which the unfolding of the annual cycle gives rise in most traditional forms.

24

While on the subject of the qualitative determinations of space and time and their correspondences, it would be a pity not to mention a testimony which is certainly not suspect, as being that of an ‘official’ orientalist, Marcel Granet, who has devoted to such traditional notions a whole section of his book entitled La Pensée chinoise [Paris: A. Michel, 1988]. It goes without saying that he cannot see in these notions anything but singularities, which he is at pains to explain exclusively in terms of ‘psychology’ and ‘sociology’, but there is no need to pay any attention here to such interpretations, for they are the inevitable outcome of the prejudices of modernity in general and of the universities in particular, only the noting of the fact being relevant here; from this point of view, a striking picture can be found in the book in question of the antithesis presented by a traditional civilization, on the one hand (and this would be no less true for any such civilization other than the Chinese) and the ‘quantitative’ civilization of the modern West on the other.

25

The decrease is known to be proportionate to the numbers 4, 3, 2, 1, their total, 10, comprising the entire cycle; human life itself is moreover well known to be considered as growing shorter from one age to another, which amounts to saying that life passes by with ever-increasing rapidity from the beginning to the end of a cycle.

26

It should be pointed out that there is a difficulty in this connection, at least in appearance: in the hierarchy of kinds, if one considers the relation of one particular kind to a second less general kind, which is as it were a species in relation to the first, the first plays the part of ‘matter’ and the second the part of ‘form’; thus at first sight the relation appears to apply in a reverse direction, though actually it is not comparable to the relation of species to individuals; moreover, it is envisaged from a purely logical point of view, as if it were the relation of a subject and an attribute, the subject corresponding to the designation of the kind and the attribute to that of the ‘specific difference’.

27

A. M. Hocart, Les Castes (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1938), p27. [Caste: A Comparative Study (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968).]

28

It may be noted that all that still persists in the way of authentically initiatic organizations in the West, whatever may be their present state of decadence, has no other origin than this. Initiations belonging to other categories disappeared completely a long time ago.

29

It should be noted that the French word métier is etymologically derived from the Latin ministerium, and properly means ‘function’. [The word métier is here translated as ‘craft’. Its exact meaning is somewhere between ‘craft’ and ‘vocation’ as commonly understood today, and it does not appear to have a precise equivalent in modern English. Tr.]

30

On this subject see particularly the Meno of Plato.

31

It may be remarked that the machine is in a sense the opposite of the tool, and is in no way a ‘perfected tool’ as many imagine, for the tool is in a sense a ‘prolongation’ of the man himself, whereas the machine reduces the man to being no more than its servant; and, if it was true to say that ‘the tool engenders the craft’, it is no less true that the machine kills it; the instinctive reactions of the artisans against the first machines thus explain themselves.

32

Such people could say with Muḥyi ’d-Dīn ibn al-‘Arabī: ‘My heart has become capable of all forms: it is a pasture for gazelles and a monastery for Christian monks, and a temple for idols, and the Kaabah of the pilgrim, and the table of the Thorah and the book of the Quran. I am the religion of Love, whatever road his camels may take; my religion and my faith are the true religion.’

33

On this subject, see A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Ākiṃchañña: Self-Naughting’, New Indian Antiquary (Bombay) 3 (1940).

34

It will easily be understood from this why, in craft initiations such as Compagnonnage just as much as in religious orders, it is forbidden to designate an individual by his profane name; there is still a name, and therefore an individuality, but it is an individuality already ‘transformed’, at least virtually, by the very fact of initiation. [Regarding the Compagnonnage, see Perspectives on Initiation, chap. 5, n6; also Studies in Freemasonry and the Compagnonnage. Ed.]

35

There could only be a quantitative difference, because one worker may work taster than another (and all the ‘ability’ that is demanded of him consists only in such speed), but from the qualitative point of view the product would always be the same, since it is determined neither by the worker’s mental conception of the work nor by a manual dexterity directed to giving it its outward shape, but only by the performance of the machine, the man having nothing to do but to ensure its proper working.

36

This is the meaning of Eckhart’s expression ‘fused, but not confused’, which A. K. Coomaraswamy, in the article mentioned earlier, very pointedly compares with the meaning of the Sanskrit expression bhedabheda, ‘distinction without difference’, that is, without separation.

37

Where, for example, has anyone ever seen a ‘heavy material point’, or a ‘perfectly elastic solid’, an ‘unstretchable and weightless thread’, or any other of the no less imaginary ‘entities’ with which this science is replete, though it is regarded as being above all else ‘rational’.

38

This adage, like another according to which nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu (and this is the first formulation of what was later to be called ‘sensualism’) is among those that can be assigned to no particular author, and it is likely that they belong only to the period of decadence of scholasticism, that is, to a time that is in fact, despite current ‘chronology’, not so much the end of the Middle Ages as the beginning of modern times — provided that it is right, as has been suggested elsewhere, to date that beginning as far back as the fourteenth century.

39

In this connection the scholastic adage of the decadent period could be contrasted with the conceptions of Saint Thomas Aquinas himself concerning the angelic state, ubi omne individuum est species infima. This means that the differences between the angels are not analogous to the ‘individual differences’ of our world (the word individuum thus being not entirely correct here, as supra-individual states are in question), but to ‘specific differences’; the true reason for this is that each angel represents as it were the expression of a divine attribute, as is shown clearly by the constitution of the names in the Hebrew angelology.

40

That is why Leibnitz said that ‘every system is true in what it affirms and false in what it denies,’ and this means that it contains an amount of truth proportional to the amount of positive reality included in it, and an amount of error corresponding to the reality excluded; it is important to add that it is precisely the negative and limitative side of a ‘system’ that constitutes it as such.

41

The Gospel parable of the mustard seed may be recalled here, as also the similar texts from the Upanishads quoted elsewhere (see Man and His Becoming according to the Vedānta, chap. 3), and it may also be added in this connection that the Messiah himself is called ‘Seed’ in a number of biblical passages.

42

In particular to East and West and to The Crisis of the Modern World.

43

As for Descartes’ own conception of science, it should be noted that he claims that it is possible to reach the stage of having ‘clear and distinct’ ideas about everything, that is, ideas like those of mathematics, thus obtaining the sort of ‘evidence’ that can actually be obtained in mathematics alone.

44

In the classical definition of the human being as a ‘reasonable animal’, ‘rationality’ represents the ‘specific difference’ by which man is distinguished from all other species in the animal kingdom; it is not applicable outside that kingdom, or in other words, is properly speaking only what the scholastics called a differentia animalis; ‘rationality’ cannot therefore be spoken of in relation to beings belonging to other states of existence, in particular to supra-individual states, those of the angels, for example; and this is quite in agreement with the fact that reason is a faculty of an exclusively individual order, and one that can in no way overstep the boundaries of the human domain.

45

It can be said in this connection that of all the meanings that were comprised in the Latin word ratio one alone has been retained, that of ‘calculation’, in the use to which reason is now put in the realm of ‘science’.

46

It could also legitimately be said to be a ‘fruit’ rather than a ‘seed’; the fact that the fruit itself contains new seeds indicates that the consequence can in its turn play the part of cause at another level, in conformity with the cyclical character of manifestation; but for that to happen it must again pass in one way or another from the ‘apparent’ to the ‘hidden’.

47

See Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power, where the case of Philip the Fair is specially referred to, and where it was suggested that there may be a fairly close connection between the destruction of the Order of Templars and the alteration of the coinage, something easily understood if it is recognized as at least very plausible that this Order then had the function, among others, of exercising spiritual control in this field; the matter need not be pursued further here, but it may be recalled that the beginning of the modern deviation properly so called has been assigned precisely to this moment.

48

Numerous studies by A. K. Coomaraswamy may be consulted on this subject, which he has developed profusely and ‘illustrated’ in all its aspects with all necessary explanations.

49

The Americans have gone so far in this direction that they commonly say that a man is ‘worth’ so much, intending to convey in that way the figure to which his fortune has risen; they say too, not that a man has succeeded in his affairs, but that he ‘is a success’, and this is as much as to identify the individual completely with his material gains.

50

This association, by the way, is not an entirely new thing, for it actually goes back to the ‘moral arithmetic’ of Bentham, which dates from the end of the eighteenth century.

51

This sort of thing is particularly apparent in spiritualism, and in the crudest possible forms; a number of examples were given in The Spiritist Fallacy.

52

It is as a result of this same incapacity and of the confusion to which it gives rise that Kant, in the philosophic field, did not hesitate to declare to be ‘inconceivable’ everything that is merely ‘unimaginable’; moreover, speaking more generally, it is the very same limitations that really gave birth to all the varieties of ‘agnosticism’.

53

Pliny’s Natural History in particular seems to be an almost inexhaustible source of examples of things of this kind; it is moreover a source on which all those who came after him have drawn most abundantly.

54

See The Symbolism of the Cross, chaps. 6 and 20.

55

This same form reappears at the beginning of the embryonic existence of every individual comprised in that cyclical development, the individual embryo (pinda) being the microcosmic analogy of what the ‘Egg of the World’ (Brahmānda) is in the macrocosmic order.

56

The movement of the celestial bodies can be given as an example. It is not exactly circular, but elliptical; the ellipse constitutes as it were a first ‘specification’ of the circle, by the splitting of the center into two poles or ‘foci’ in the direction of one of the diameters, which thereafter plays a special ‘axial’ part, while at the same time all the other diameters are differentiated one from another in respect of their lengths. It may be added incidentally in this connection that, since the planets describe ellipses of which the sun occupies one of the foci, the question arises as to what the other focus corresponds to; as there is nothing corporeal actually there, there must be something belonging only to the subtle order; but that question cannot be further examined here, as it would be quite outside our subject.

57

See Fabre d’Olivet, The Hebraic Tongue Restored and The True Meaning of the Hebrew Words Re-established and Proved by their Radical Analysis, (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1981).

58

The point is not that earth as an element is assimilated simply and solely to the solid state, as some people wrongly think, but that it is rather the very principle of solidity.

59

This is why the spherical form is attributed in the Islamic tradition to the ‘Spirit’ (ar-Rūḥ) or to the primordial Light.

60

In the Hebrew Kabbalah the cubic form corresponds to Iesod, one of the Sephiroth, and Iesod is in fact the ‘foundation’ (and if it be objected in this connection that Iesod is nevertheless not the last Sephirah, the answer must be that the only one that follows it is Malkuth, which is actually the final ‘synthesization’ in which all things are brought back to a state corresponding, at another level, to the principial unity of Kether); in the subtle constitution of the human individuality, according to the Hindu tradition, the same form is related to the ‘basic’ chakra or mūlādhāra; and this is also connected with the mysteries of the Ka‘bah in the Islamic tradition; also, in architectural symbolism, the cube is properly the form of the ‘first stone’ of a building, otherwise of the ‘foundation-stone’, laid at the lowest level, to serve as support for the whole structure of the building, thus assuring its stability.

61

In plane geometry a similar relation is obviously found when the sides of the square are considered as being parallel to two rectangular diameters of the circle, and the symbolism of this relation is directly connected with what the Hermetic tradition calls the ‘quadrature of the circle’, about which a few words will be said later on.

62

In certain symbolical representations the compass and the square respectively are placed in the hands of Fu Hsi and his sister Niu-koua, just as, in the alchemical figures of Basil Valentine, they are placed in the hands of the two halves, masculine and feminine, of the Rebis or Hermetic Androgyne; this shows that Fu Hsi and Niu-koua are in a sense analogically assimilated, as regards their respective functions, to the essential or masculine principle and to the substantial or feminine principle of manifestation.

63

Thus, for example, the ritual garments of the ancient sovereigns in China had to be round in shape at the top and square at the bottom; the sovereign then represented the type of man himself (Jen) in his cosmic function, as the third term of the ‘Great Triad’, exercising that function as intermediary between Heaven and Earth, and uniting in himself the powers of both.

64

See The King of the World, also The Symbolism of the Cross, chap. 9.

65

If this is compared with the correspondences previously pointed out, it might appear that there had been an inversion in the use of the two words ‘Heavenly’ and ‘Terrestrial’ and there is in fact a discrepancy, except in the following particular connection: at the beginning of the cycle, this world was not such as it is now, and the ‘Terrestrial Paradise’ constituted the direct projection, at that time visibly manifested, of the specifically celestial and principial form (it was besides situated in a sense at the confines of heaven and earth, since it is said that it touched the ‘sphere of the Moon’, that is, the ‘first heaven’); at the end of the cycle, the ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’ descends from heaven to earth, and it is only at the end of that descent that it appears in the form of a square, because then the cyclic movement has come to a stop.

66

It is worth noting that this circle is divided up by the cross formed by the four rivers which rise at its center, thus giving exactly the figure alluded to when the relation of the circle and the square was being dealt with.

67

See The Esoterism of Dante.

68

This moment is also represented as that of the ‘reversal of the poles’ or as the day when ‘the stars will rise in the West and set in the East’, for a rotational movement appears to take place in two opposite directions according as it is looked at from one side or the other, though it is really always the same continuous movement, but seen from another point of view, corresponding to the course of a new cycle.

69

See The King of the World. The twelve signs of the zodiac, instead of being arranged in a circle, become the twelve gates of the ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’, three being placed on each side of the square, and the ‘twelve suns’ appear in the center of the ‘city’ as the twelve fruits of the ‘Tree of Life’.

70

That is, a square of the same surface area, if a quantitative point of view is adopted; but this is merely a wholly exteriorized expression of what is really in question.

71

The corresponding numerical formula is that of the Pythagorean Tetraktys: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10; if the numbers are taken in the reverse order: 4 + 3 + 2 + 1, this gives the proportions of the four Yugas, the sum of which is the denary, that is to say the complete and finished cycle.

72

Much could be said about the prohibitions formulated in certain traditions against the taking of censuses otherwise than in exceptional cases, if it were to be stated that such operations, like all those of the ‘civil state’ as it is called, have among other inconveniences that of contributing to the cutting down of the length of human life (and this is anyhow in conformity with the progress of the cycle, especially in its later periods), but the statement would simply not be believed; nevertheless, in some countries the most ignorant peasants know very well, as a fact of ordinary experience, that if animals are counted too often far more of them die than if they are not counted; but in the eyes of moderns who call themselves ‘enlightened’ such things cannot be anything but ‘superstitions’.

73

Two particularly significant examples may be cited here: the ‘Zionist’ projects as they affect the Jews, and the attempts recently made to fix the Bohemians in certain countries of Eastern Europe.

74

It must be recalled in this connection that the ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’ itself is symbolically a town, which shows that in this case also there is reason to take account of a double meaning in ‘solidification’.

75

It may be added that, as Cain is said to be the elder, agriculture therefore appears to have some kind of anteriority, indeed Adam himself is represented as having had the function of ‘cultivating the garden’ in the period before the fall. This is also related more particularly to the vegetable symbolism in the representation of the beginning of the cycle (hence there was a symbolical and even an initiatic ‘agriculture’, the very same as that which Saturn was said by the Latins to have taught to the men of the ‘Golden Age’); but however that may be, all we have to consider here is the state of affairs symbolized by the opposition (which is at the same time a complementarism) between Cain and Abel, arising when the distinction between agricultural and pastoral peoples was already an established fact.

76

The names Iran and Turan have frequently been treated as if they were the names of races, but they really represented the sedentary and the nomadic peoples respectively; Iran or Airyana comes from the word arya (whence arya by extension), meaning ‘laborer’ (derived from the root ar, found again in the Latin arare, arator and also arvum, ‘field’); and the use of the word arya as a title of honor (for the superior castes) is consequently characteristic of the tradition of agricultural peoples.

77

On the very special importance of the sacrifice and of the rites connected with it in the different traditional forms, see Frithjof Schuon, ‘On Sacrifice’, in The Eye of the Heart (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1997), and A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Ātmayajña: Self-Sacrifice’, in The Door in the Sky: Coomaraswamy on Myth and Meaning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), chap. 4.

78

The fixation of the Hebrew people was essentially dependent on the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem; as soon as the Temple was destroyed nomadism reappeared in the special form of the ‘dispersion’.

79

Fabre d’Olivet’s works may be consulted on this cosmological interpretation.

80

The use of the mineral elements includes more especially building and metallurgy; the latter will be further considered later; Biblical symbolism attributes its origin to Tubalcain, that is, to a direct descendant of Cain, and Cain’s very name reappears as a constituent in the formation of his descendant’s name, indicating that there is a very close connection between the two.

81

The distinction between these two fundamental categories of symbols is, in the Hindu tradition, that between the yantra, a figured symbol, and the mantra, a sonorous symbol; it naturally carries with it a corresponding distinction in the rites in which these symbolical elements are respectively used, though there is not always such a clear separation as can be conceived theoretically; in fact, every combination of the two in different proportions is possible.

82

It is scarcely necessary to observe that, in all the considerations now under examination, the correlative and in a way symmetrical character of the spatial and the temporal conditions, seen under their qualitative aspect, becomes clearly apparent.

83

This is why nomadism, in its ‘malefic’ and deviated aspect, easily comes to exercise a ‘dissolving’ action on everything with which it comes into contact; sedentarism on its side, and under the same aspect, must inevitably lead only toward the grossest forms of an aimless materialism.

84

As Abel shed the blood of animals, his blood was shed by Cain; this is as it were an expression of a ‘law of compensation’ by virtue of which the partial disequilibria, in which the whole of manifestation consists fundamentally, are integrated in the total equilibrium.

85

It is important to note that the Hebrew Bible nevertheless admits the validity of the bloodless sacrifice considered in itself: as in the case of the sacrifice of Melchizedek, consisting in the essentially vegetable offering of bread and wine; but this is really connected with the rite of the Vedic Soma and the direct perpetuation of the Hebraic and ‘Abrahamic’ tradition and even much further back, to a period before the laws of the sedentary and nomadic peoples were distinguished; this again recalls the association of a vegetable symbolism with the ‘Terrestrial Paradise’, that is, with the ‘primordial state’ of our humanity. The acceptance of the sacrifice of Abel and the rejection of that of Cain are sometimes pictured in rather a curious symbolical way: the smoke of the former rises vertically toward the sky, whereas the smoke of the latter spreads horizontally over the surface of the earth; thus they trace respectively the altitude and the base of a triangle representing the domain of human manifestation.

86

These two tendencies are again manifested in movement itself, in the form of centripetal and centrifugal movement respectively.

87

Equilibrium, harmony, and justice are really but three forms or aspects of one and the same thing; they could even in a certain sense be brought respectively into correspondence with the three domains shortly to be referred to, on condition of course that justice be taken in its most immediate meaning, of which in the modern world mere ‘honesty’ in commercial transactions represents an expression, diminished and degraded by the reduction of all things to the profane point of view and the narrow banality of ‘ordinary life’.

88

The intervention of the spiritual authority in the matter of money in traditional civilizations is directly connected with what has just been said: indeed money itself is in a certain sense the very embodiment of exchange, hence a much more exact idea can be formed of the real purpose of the symbols that it bore and that therefore circulated with it, for they gave to exchange a significance quite other than is contained in its mere ‘materiality’, though this last is all that it retains under the profane conditions that govern the relations of peoples, no less than those of individuals, in the modern world.

89

It is true that among many peoples the buildings of most ancient date were of wood, but such buildings were obviously not so durable, and consequently not so fixed, as stone buildings; the use of minerals in building thus always implies a greater degree of ‘solidity’ in every sense of the word.

90

Deut. 27:5-6.

91

Hence the continuing employment of stone knives for the rite of circumcision as well.

92

1 Kings 6:7. Nevertheless the Temple of Jerusalem held a large quantity of metallic objects, but their employment is connected with the other aspect of the symbolism of metals, which is twofold, as we shall see presently: it seems moreover that the prohibition ended by being to some extent ‘localized’, mainly against the use of iron, and iron is the very metal of all others that plays the predominant part in modern times.

93

In the Zoroastrian tradition it seems that the planets were envisaged almost exclusively as ‘malefic’; this may be the result of a point of view peculiar to that tradition, but in any case all that is known about what still remains of Zoroastrianism consists only of fragments so mutilated that it is not possible to form any exact judgment on such questions.

94

As concerns the relationship to the ‘subterranean fire’, the obvious resemblance of the name of Vulcan to that of the Biblical name Tubalcain is particularly significant: moreover they are both said to have been smiths; and while on the subject of smiths it may be added that the association of their craft with the ‘infernal regions’ sufficiently explains what was said above about its ‘sinister’ aspect. The Kabires, on the other hand, while they too were smiths, had a dual aspect both celestial and terrestrial, bringing them into relationship both with the metals and the corresponding planets.

95

It should be stated that alchemy properly so called did not go beyond the ‘intermediary world’ and held to a point of view that may be called ‘cosmological’, but its symbolism was nonetheless capable of being transposed so as to give it a truly spiritual and initiatic value.

96

The case of money, as it stands today, can also serve as a typical example: deprived of everything that was able, in traditional civilizations, to make it as it were a vehicle of ‘spiritual influences’, not only is it now reduced to being in itself no more than a mere ‘material’ and quantitative emblem, but also it can no longer play a part that is otherwise than truly nefarious and ‘satanic’, and it is all too easy to see that such indeed is the part it plays in our time.

97

This prohibition is in force, at least in principle, notably in the Islamic rites of pilgrimage, though in fact it is no longer strictly observed today; furthermore, anyone who has accomplished these rites in their entirety, including that part of them that constitutes their most ‘interior’ aspect, must thenceforth abstain from all work involving the use of fire, and this includes more particularly the work of blacksmiths and metallurgists.

98

In Western initiations this takes the form, in the ritual preparation of the recipient, of what is designated as the ‘stripping of metals’. It could be said that in a case of this kind the metals, apart from their real power to affect adversely the transmission of ‘spiritual influences’, are taken as representing more or less what the Hebrew Kabbalah calls the ‘rinds’ or the ‘shells’ (qlippoth), meaning all that is most inferior in the subtle domain, thus constituting, if the expression be allowable, the infra-corporeal ‘pit’ of our world.

99

Thus, those who in the first half of the nineteenth century wrote ‘histories of religion’ invented something to which they applied the word ‘symbolical’, which was a system of interpretation having only a very remote connection with true symbolism; as for merely literary misuses of the word ‘symbolism’, they are evidently not worth the trouble of mentioning.

100

The case of Shri Ramakrishna can be cited as a known example.

101

Nevertheless, since Yama is designated in Hindu tradition as the ‘first death’, and is assimilated to ‘Death’ itself (Mṛtyu), or, if the language of the Islamic tradition is preferred, to the ‘Angel of Death’, it will be seen that in this as in so many other cases the ‘first’ and the ‘last’ meet and become more or less identified through the correspondence between the two extremities of the cycle.

102

Wagner wrote in Parsifal: ‘Here, time is changed into space,’ the place referred to being Montsalvat, which represents the ‘center of the world’ (this point will be returned to shortly); there is however little likelihood that he really understood the profound meaning of the words, for he scarcely seems to deserve the reputation of being an ‘esoterist’ attributed to him by some people; everything really esoteric found in his works properly belongs to the ‘legends’ used by him, the meaning of which he all too often merely diminished.

103

In other words, if the three coordinates of space are x, y, and z, the fourth coordinate is not t, which designates time, but the expression t√-1.

104

It is of interest to note that, although the ‘end of the world’ is commonly spoken of as the ‘end of time’, it is never spoken of as the ‘end of space’; this observation might seem insignificant to those who only see things superficially, nonetheless it is actually very significant.

105

On the successive powers of the indefinite, see The Symbolism of the Cross, chap. 12.

106

Another significance of the ‘inversion of the poles’ can be deduced from this, since the course of the manifested world toward its substantial pole ends at last in a ‘reversal’, which brings it back, by an instantaneous transmutation, to its essential pole; and it may be added that, in view of this instantaneity, and contrary to certain erroneous conceptions of the cyclical movement, there can be no ‘reascent’ of an exterior order following the ‘descent’, the course of manifestation as such being always descending from the beginning to the end.

107

This is the Regnum Dei intra vos est of the Gospel.

108

On the ‘seat of immortality’ and what corresponds to it in the human being, see The King of the World.

109

On the symbolism of the ‘third eye’, see Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta and The King of the World.

110

Solvet saeclum in favilla are the exact words of the Catholic liturgy, which incidentally calls upon both the testimony of David and that of the Sibyl in this matter, and this in itself is one of the ways in which the unanimous agreement of the different traditions is confirmed.

111

This is what the Hebrew Kabbalah, as was pointed out earlier, calls the ‘world of rinds’ (ōlam qlippoth); into this the ‘ancient kings of Edom’ fall, inasmuch as they represent the unusable residues of past Manvantaras.

112

It should be evident that the two sides here referred to as ‘benefic’ and ‘malefic’ correspond exactly to the ‘right’ and ‘left’ sides on which the ‘elect’ and the damned respectively are drawn up in the ‘Last Judgment’, which is nothing other than the final ‘discrimination’ of the results of cyclical manifestation.

113

The word ‘traditionalism’ denotes only a tendency that may be more or less vague and often wrongly applied, because it does not imply any effective knowledge of traditional truths; this matter will again be referred to later.

114

It is of interest to note that the expression ‘hardened materialist’ is freely used in current speech, doubtless without any suspicion that it is no mere figure of speech, but actually corresponds to something very real.

115

In the symbolism of the Hindu tradition the ‘Great Wall’ is the circular mountain Lokāloka, which divides the ‘cosmos’ (loka) from the ‘outer darkness’ (aloka); and this symbolism is of course susceptible of analogical application either to more extensive or to less extensive domains within the totality of cosmic manifestation, hence the special application now being made with respect to the corporeal world alone.

116

In the Hindu tradition they are the demons Koka and Vikoka, whose names are obviously similar.

117

The symbolism of the ‘subterranean world’ is twofold, and, as in other cases, it also has a superior meaning, a point more particularly explained in some of the considerations set out in The King of the World; but naturally only the inferior meaning is here in question, a meaning which could be said to be literally ‘infernal’.

118

These five colors are white, black, blue, red, and yellow, corresponding in the Far-Eastern tradition to the five elements, as well as to the four cardinal points and the center.

119

It is also stated that ‘Niu-Koua cut off the four feet of the tortoise to put the four extremities of the world in their place,’ so as to stabilize the earth; reference to what was said earlier about the analogical correspondences between Fu Hsi and Niu-koua will make it clear that the function of ensuring the stability and ‘solidity’ of the world belongs, according to this symbolism, to the substantial side of manifestation, and this agrees exactly with all the explanations given in this book on that subject. [Guénon provides no references in his French text for these citations regarding Niu-koua, but see Symbols of Sacred Science, chap. 20. Ed.]

120

But only of some of them, for there were other traditional sciences which have not left in the modern world even the smallest trace, however deformed and deviated. It goes without saying, too, that all the enumerations and classifications of the philosophers apply only to the profane sciences, and that the traditional sciences could in no way be made to fit into their narrow and ‘systematic’ categories; at this time, more appropriately than ever before, could the Arabic saying be applied to the current period, to the effect that ‘there are many sciences, but few scientists’ (al-‘ulūm kathīr walakin al-‘ulamā’ qalīl).

121

In what follows, a certain amount of information about ‘shamanism’ is drawn from an exposition called ‘Shamanism of the Natives of Siberia’ by I. M. Casanowicz (taken from the Smithsonian Report for 1924) to which the author’s attention was kindly called by A. K. Coomaraswamy.

122

There is evidence worthy of belief to the effect that there exists in a distant part of the Sudan a whole population of at least twenty thousand people who are ‘lycanthropic’; there are also, in other African countries, secret organizations, such as that to which the name of ‘Society of the Leopard’ was given, in which certain forms of lycanthropy play a predominant part.

123

Such appears to have been the case with ancient Egypt in particular.

124

The literal meaning of the Hebrew word Shayṭān is ‘adversary’, and the ‘powers’ now under consideration are truly ‘satanic’ in character.

125

It is opportune to add that this ‘organization of leisure’ is an integral part of the efforts referred to earlier, such as are intended to oblige men to live ‘in common’ as far as possible.

126

As it is one of the linguistic errors that are of common occurrence and are not without serious inconveniences, it may be useful to state clearly here that ‘duality’ and ‘dualism’ are two quite different things: dualism (of which the Cartesian conception of ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’ is among the best known examples) properly consists in regarding a duality as irreducible and in taking account of nothing beyond it, thereby denying the common principle from which the two terms of the duality really proceed by ‘polarization’.

127

See The Symbolism of the Cross, chap. 7.

128

Attention has been drawn elsewhere to a mistake of this kind in connection with the representation of the swastika with its arms turned so as to indicate opposite directions of rotation (The Symbolism of the Cross, chap. 10).

129

For the same reason the Far-Eastern Dragon itself, really a symbol of the Word, has often been taken by Western ignorance to be a ‘diabolical’ symbol.

130

Instances can even be found in which the inverted triangles occurring among the alchemical symbols of the elements have been interpreted in that sense.

131

The Spiritist Fallacy and Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion.

132

It is a question here, not so much of the more or less important part to be assigned to fraud, conscious or unconscious, but also of delusions as to the nature of the forces that intervene in the actual production of the phenomena called ‘metapsychic’.

133

The Two Sources of Morality and Religion.

134

So far as morality is concerned, it is not of special interest here, but the explanation of it proposed by Bergson is of course parallel to his explanation of religion.

135

It is worthy of note that Bergson seems to avoid the use of the word ‘truth’, and that he almost always uses instead the word ‘reality’, a word that in his view signifies that which undergoes continual change.

136

It is most regrettable that Bergson was on bad terms with his sister, Mrs S. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (alias ‘Soror Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum’) who might have been able to give him a little instruction in such matters. [S. S. L MacGregor Mathers, author of The Kabbalah Unveiled, was a leading figure in various occult organizations in the early twentieth century, primarily in England, and is known especially for his role in the founding of The Order of the Golden Dawn, whence the ‘initiatic’ name given for his wife derives. Mrs Mathers was herself very active in all these matters. For a time the Order of the Golden Dawn attracted a number of figures who became well-known in later years, including William Butler Yeats (on whom both of the Mathers exerted a strong influence for a time) and Arthur Edward Waite. Ed.]

137

The case of Freud himself, founder of ‘psychoanalysis’, is quite typical in this respect, for he never ceased to declare himself a materialist. One further remark: why is it that the principal representatives of the new tendencies, like Einstein in physics, Bergson in philosophy, Freud in psychology, and many others of less importance, are almost all of Jewish origin, unless it be because there is something involved that is closely bound up with the ‘malefic’ and dissolving aspect of nomadism when it is deviated, and because that aspect must inevitably predominate in Jews detached from their tradition?

138

It may be noted in this connection that Freud put at the head of his The Interpretation of Dreams the following very significant epigram: Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo (Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 312).

139

Incidentally it was the ‘psychist’ Myers who invented the expression ‘subliminal consciousness’, which was later replaced in the psychological vocabulary for the sake of brevity by the word ‘subconscious’.

140

See The Spiritist Fallacy, pt. 2, chap. 10.

141

Another example of such means is furnished by the comparable employment of ‘radiaesthesia’, for in this case also psychic elements of the same quality very often come into play, though it must be admitted that they do not appear under the ‘hideous’ aspect that is so conspicuous in psychoanalysis.

142

The reader may be referred here to what has been said earlier about the symbolism of the ‘Great Wall’ and of the mountain Lokāloka.

143

Freud devoted a book specially to the psychoanalytical interpretation of religion, in which his own conceptions are combined with the ‘totemism’ of the ‘sociological school’.

144

On an attempt to apply psychoanalytical theories to the Taoist doctrine, which is of the same order as Yoga, see the study by André Préau, La Fleur d’or et le Taoïsme sans Tao [Paris: Bibliothèque Chacornac, 1931], which contains an excellent refutation of the attempted application.

145

See The King of the World and Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power.

146

According to the Islamic doctrine it is through the nafs (soul) that Shayṭān can obtain a hold on man, whereas the rūḥ (spirit), of which the essence is pure light, is beyond the reach of his endeavors.

147

A number of examples of activities of this kind have been given in Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion.

148

The announcement of the destruction of Paris by fire, for example, has been promulgated several times in this way, the exact dates being specified, although nothing has ever happened, except for the impression of terror invariably aroused in many people, and never growing any less with the repeated failure of the predictions.

149

The relatively valid part of the predictions in question seems to be related chiefly to the function of the Mahdi and that of the tenth Avatāra; these matters, which directly concern the preparation for the final ‘rectification’, are outside the subject of this book; all that need be mentioned now is that their very deformation lends itself to an ‘inverted’ exploitation leading toward subversion.

150

It must be clearly understood that this in no way means that they are the subjects of ‘hallucinations’: the difference between the meaning of the two terms is the difference between seeing things that have been consciously and voluntarily imagined by others, and imagining them oneself ‘subconsciously’.

151

For example, a little thought about all that has been done to throw the question of the survival of Louis XVII into inextricable confusion will give an idea of what is meant here.

152

The predictions of Nostradamus provide the most typical and the most important example; the more or less extraordinary interpretations assigned to them, particularly in the last few years, are almost numberless.

153

‘Fashion’ itself, an essentially modern invention, is in its real significance something not entirely devoid of importance: it represents unceasing and aimless change, in contrast to the stability and order that reign in traditional civilizations.

154

Much could be said in this connection about the use of the Tarot in particular. It contains vestiges of an undeniably traditional science, whatever may have been its real origin, but it also has some very tenebrous aspects; no allusion is intended here to the many occultist fantasies to which the Tarot has given rise, for they are mostly negligible; the concern is with something much more effective, making its handling really dangerous for anyone not sufficiently protected against the action of the ‘underground forces’.

155

Anyone who may be desirous of learning some details of this aspect of the question might usefully consult, in spite of the reservations that would have to be made on certain points, a book called Autour de la Tiare by Roger Duquet, the posthumous work of a man who had been fairly closely involved in some of the ‘underground’ work referred to above, and who wanted at the end of his life to give his ‘testimony’, as he himself says, and to contribute to some extent to the unmasking of these mysterious undercurrents; the ‘personal’ reasons he may have had for doing this have no importance, and in any case clearly do not detract in any way from the interest of his ‘revelations’. [Full reference: Roger Duquet, Autour de la Tiare: Essai sur les prophéties concernant la succession des papes du XIIIe siècle à la fin des temps: Joachim de Fiore, Anselma de Marsico, St. Malachie, le ‘Moine de Padoue’, etc. (Paris: Nouvelle éditions latine, 1997). Ed.]

156

The Great Pyramid is in truth not so very much bigger than the two others, especially than its nearest neighbor, so that the difference is not very striking; but without any very evident reason all the modern ‘seekers’ have been as it were ‘hypnotized’ almost exclusively by this one; to it are always related all their most fanciful hypotheses, many of which could better be described as ‘fantastic’, including, to give only two of the queerest examples, one that attempts to find in its interior arrangements a map of the sources of the Nile, and another that makes out that the ‘Book of the Dead’ is no more than an explanatory description of those same arrangements.

157

Before leaving the subject of the Great Pyramid, attention should be drawn to another modern fantasy connected with it: some people attach much importance to the fact that it was never finished; the summit is in fact missing, but all that can be said for certain about it is that the most ancient authors whose evidence is available, but who are nevertheless relatively recent, all describe it as truncated, as it is today; but it is a long step from this to the claim, as expressed word for word by an occultist, that ‘the hidden symbolism of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is directly related to events that took place in the course of the building of the Great Pyramid’; indeed, this is another assertion that seems singularly lacking in plausibility on all counts! It is a strange fact that the official seal of the United States bears the truncated pyramid, and over it is a triangle with rays, separated and isolated from it by a surrounding circle of clouds, but apparently intended to replace the summit. There are other decidedly strange details in this seal as well, and the ‘pseudo-initiatic’ organizations rampant in America try to make good use of them by interpreting them in conformity with their own ‘doctrines’; they certainly seem to indicate an intervention by suspicious influences: thus, the number of the courses of the Pyramid is thirteen (this number reappearing somewhat insistently in other features, notably that of the letters of which the motto E pluribus unum is composed) and is alleged to correspond to the number of the tribes of Israel (the two half-tribes of the sons of Joseph being counted separately), and no doubt this has some connection with the real origin of the ‘prophecies of the Great Pyramid’, which, as we have seen, tend to treat the Pyramid as a sort of ‘Judeo-Christian’ monument, for reasons that are somewhat obscure.

158

To this truth is really related the formula ‘when everything seems lost, then it is that everything will be saved’, repeated in a sort of mechanical way by a considerable number of ‘seers’, each of whom has of course applied it to something he can understand, usually to events of comparatively minor importance, even to such as are quite secondary and merely ‘local’, by virtue of the ‘minimizing’ tendency already mentioned in connection with the stories about the ‘Grand Monarch’, leading to his being seen as no more than a future king of France; needless to say, real prophecies are concerned with affairs of quite different dimensions.

159

The sixth chapter of Genesis might perhaps provide, in a symbolical form, some indications relating to the distant origins of the ‘counter-initiation’.

160

The symbolism of the ‘fall of the angels’ can be applied analogically to the matter in hand, which corresponds exactly thereto in the human order; and that is why the word ‘satanic’ can be used in its most precise sense in this connection.

161

The last degree of the ‘counter-initiatic’ hierarchy is occupied by what are called the ‘saints of Satan’ (awliyā’ al-shayṭān) who are in a sense the inverse of the true saints (awliyā’ al-Raḥmān), thus manifesting the most complete expression possible of ‘inverted spirituality’ (cf. The Symbolism of the Cross).

162

A finality so conclusive of course represents only an exceptional case, which is that of the awliyā’ al-shayṭān; the fate of those who have gone less far in the same direction is only that of being abandoned on a road that leads nowhere, to which they may be confined for the indefinity of an ‘aeon’ or cycle.

163

From the initiatic point of view this domain is that of what are known as the ‘lesser mysteries’; on the other hand, everything connected with the ‘greater mysteries’ is essentially of a ‘supra-human’ order, and is thereby out of range of any such opposition, since it belongs to the domain which is by its very nature absolutely closed and inaccessible to the ‘counter-initiation’ and to its representatives at all levels.

164

Al-Tadāb r al-ilāhiyyah fi’l-mamlakat al-insāniyyah, title of a treatise of Muḥyi ’d-Dīn ibn al-‘Arabī.

165

The extent to which the expression ‘new age’ has in these days been spread about and repeated in all quarters is almost unbelievable, with a significance that can often appear to be different in different cases, but it always tends positively to the establishment of the same persuasion in the mentality of the public.

166

Matt. 24:24.

167

On the subject of the Chakravartī or ‘universal monarch’ see The Esoterism of Dante, and The King of the World. The Chakravartī is literally ‘he who makes the wheel turn’, and this implies that he is situated at the center of all things, whereas the Antichrist is on the contrary the being who will be situated furthest from that center; he will nevertheless claim to ‘make the wheel turn’, but in a direction opposite to that of the normal cyclic movement (incidentally, this is ‘prefigured’ unconsciously in the modern idea of ‘progress’), whereas in fact no change in the rotation is possible before the ‘reversal of the poles’, that is before the ‘rectification’ that can only be brought about by the intervention of the tenth Avatāra; moreover the Antichrist will parody in his own way the very function of the final Avatāra, who is represented as the ‘second coming of Christ’ in the Christian tradition.

168

He can therefore be regarded as the chief of the awliyā al-shayṭān, and as he will be the last to fulfill that function, and at the same time his function will then have its most manifest importance in the world, it can be said that he will be as it were their ‘seal’ (khātim), according to the terminology of Islamic esoterism; it is not difficult to see from this to what point the parody of the tradition will be carried in all its aspects.

169

Money itself, or whatever may take its place, will once more possess a qualitative character of this sort, for it is said that ‘no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name’ (Rev. 13:17), and this implies the actual use in connection with money of the inverted symbols of the ‘counter-tradition’.

170

Thus he will be the antithesis of the Christ saying ‘I am the Truth’, or of a wali like al-Ḥallāj saying in the same way ‘ana’l-Ḥaqq.

171

‘The analogy existing between the true doctrine and the false has perhaps not received sufficient attention: St. Hippolytus, in his little work on the Antichrist gives a memorable example of it which will not be surprising to people who have studied symbolism: the Messiah and the Antichrist both have as their emblem the lion.’ (P. Vulliaud, La Kabbale Juive, vol. II, p373) The profound reason from the kabbalistic point of view lies in the consideration of the two faces, luminous and obscure, of Metatron; it is also why the Apocalyptic number 666, the ‘number of the Beast’, is also a solar number (cf. The King of the World).

172

Here there is an untranslatable double meaning: Masīkh can be taken as a deformation of Masīha, by the mere addition of a dot to the final letter; but at the same time the first word means ‘deformed’, which correctly expresses the character of the Antichrist.