All that has been said so far relates to the vestiges left by an entirely extinct tradition; but there is another case to be considered alongside this one: that of an ancient traditional civilization that lives on so to speak for itself alone, in the sense that its degeneration has proceeded to such a point that the ‘spirit’ has at last withdrawn entirely from it. Certain kinds of knowledge, having nothing of the spiritual in them and belonging only to the order of contingent applications, may still continue to be transmitted, particularly the more inferior among them, but they will naturally thereafter be liable to every kind of deviation, for they themselves represent nothing more than ‘residues’ of another kind, the pure doctrine on which they ought normally to depend having disappeared. In this sort of case of ‘survival’ the psychic influences set to work in earlier times by the representatives of the tradition will again be liable to be ‘captured’, even without the knowledge of their apparent guardians, who will thenceforth be illegitimate and entirely without real authority; those who really make use of the influences through them will thus have the advantage of having at their disposal not only so-called ‘inanimate’ objects as unconscious instruments of the action they want to exercise, but also living men who serve no less well as ‘supports’ to the influences, and whose real existence confers on them a much greater vitality. Exactly this sort of thing was in view in quoting an example like that of ‘shamanism’, but of course with the reservation that it must not be held to apply indiscriminately to all the things that are commonly grouped under that rather conventional heading, for they may not all have arrived at an equal degree of decadence.
A tradition deviated to that extent is really dead as such, just as dead as a tradition that no longer even appears to be in existence; if there were any life left in it, however little, no such subversion could in any event take place, for it consists in nothing but a reversal of what remains of the tradition so as to make it work in a direction by definition anti-traditional. It is however as well to add that before things reach that point, and as soon as traditional organizations are so diminished and enfeebled as no longer to be capable of adequate resistance, the more or less direct agents of the ‘adversary’[124] can begin to work their way in with a view to hastening the time when ‘subversion’ will become possible; they are not always sure to succeed, for whatever still has some life can always recover itself; but if death takes place, the enemy will then be found to be as it were in possession and ready to take advantage of his position and to use the ‘corpse’ for his own purposes. The representatives of everything in the Western world that still retains an authentically traditional character, in the exoteric as well as in the initiatic domain, might be thought to have the strongest possible interest in paying attention to this last observation while there is still time, for all around them the menacing signs indicating ‘infiltrations’ of this kind are unfortunately by no means indiscernible by anyone who knows how to find them.
Another consideration having its own importance is this: if the ‘adversary’ (as to whose nature some more exact indications will follow) has something to gain by taking possession of places that were the seat of former spiritual centers, it is not solely because of the psychic influences accumulated in them and more or less free to be made use of, but it is also for the very reason that the places are where they are, for of course they were not chosen arbitrarily for the part they had to play at one time or another, and in connection with one traditional form or another. ‘Sacred geography’, the knowledge of which determines the choice in question, is susceptible, like every other traditional science of a contingent order, of being diverted from its legitimate purpose and of being applied ‘inversely’. If a place is ‘privileged’ to serve for the emission and direction of psychic influences when they are operating as vehicles of a spiritual action, it will be no less so when these same psychic influences are used in quite another way and for ends opposed to all spirituality. It may be observed in passing that the danger of the misdirection of certain kinds of knowledge, of which this last is a very clear example, accounts for much of the secrecy that is quite natural in a normal civilization; but the moderns show themselves to be entirely incapable of understanding this, for they commonly mistake what is really a measure designed as far as possible to prevent the misuse of knowledge for a desire to monopolize that knowledge. And in truth secrecy only ceases to be effective when the organizations that are the repositories of the knowledge in question allow unqualified individuals to penetrate into their ranks, for these individuals may even be agents of the ‘adversary’, and if they are so one of their first objects will be to discover the secrets. All this has of course no direct relation to the true initiatic secret, which resides, as explained earlier, exclusively in the ‘ineffable’ and ‘incommunicable’, and is therefore obviously protected from all indiscreet research; nevertheless, although none but contingent matters are in question here, it must be recognized that the precautions that may be taken within the contingent order with a view to avoiding all deviation, and thus all harmful action that might arise from it, are far from having in practice only a relatively negligible interest.
In any case, whether it be a question of the places themselves, of the influences remaining attached to them, or again of knowledge of the kind just mentioned, the old adage corruptio optimi pessima may be recalled, and may be applied perhaps more accurately here than in any other case; and moreover ‘corruption’ is just the right word, even in its most literal sense, for the ‘residues’ here concerned are, as stated at the beginning, comparable to the products of the decomposition of a once living being; and as all corruption is more or less contagious, these products of the dissolution of things past will themselves exercise, wherever they may be ‘projected’, a particularly dissolving and disaggregating action, especially if they are made use of by a will clearly conscious of its objectives. All this may be likened to a sort of ‘necromancy’, making use of psychic remains quite other than those of human individuals, and it is by no means the least redoubtable sort, for it has by its nature a field of action far more extensive than that of common witchcraft, indeed no comparison between the two being possible in that respect: matters have reached such a point nowadays that our contemporaries must indeed be blind not to have even the least suspicion of where they stand!
28
The Successive Stages in Anti-Traditional Action
The material presented to the reader hitherto and the examples given should make it easier to understand, if only in a general way, the precise character of the stages in the anti-traditional action that has really ‘made’ the modern world as such; but it is of first importance not to forget that, since all effective action necessarily presupposes agents, anti-traditional action is like all other kinds of action, so that it cannot be a sort of spontaneous or ‘fortuitous’ production, and, since it is exercised particularly in the human domain, it must of necessity involve the intervention of human agents. The fact that it has conformed to the specific character of the cyclic period in which it has been working explains why it was possible and why it was successful, but is not enough to explain the manner of its realization, nor to indicate the various measures put into operation to arrive at its result. In any case, a little reflection on what follows should suffice to bring conviction, for the spiritual influences themselves act in every traditional organization through human beings as intermediaries and as authorized representatives of the tradition, although the tradition is really ‘supra-human’ in its essence; there is all the more reason why the same condition should apply when only psychic influences come into the picture, especially such as are of the lowest order, and are the very antithesis of a power transcendent with respect to our world, apart from the fact that the character of ‘counterfeit’, everywhere manifested in this domain, and to be referred to again later, makes human intermediaries even more rigorously necessary. On the other hand, initiation, in whatever form it may appear, is that which really incarnates the ‘spirit’ of a tradition, and is also that which allows of the effective realization of ‘supra-human’ states; obviously therefore initiation is the thing that must be opposed (at least insofar as any such opposition is really conceivable) by anti-traditional action, which tries by every means to drag men toward the ‘infra-human’. The term ‘counter-initiation’ is therefore the best for describing that to which the human agents through whom the anti-traditional action is accomplished belong, both as a whole and in their various degrees (for, like initiation itself, it must necessarily comprise degrees); and this term is not merely a conventional expression used for convenience to designate something that really has no name, for in its form and in its meaning it corresponds as exactly as possible to very precise realities.
124
The literal meaning of the Hebrew word