René Guénon - The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

The word ‘unconsciousness’ as used above is intended to mean that those who thus elaborate a ‘pseudo-tradition’ are usually totally unaware of the purpose it is really serving. Concerning the character and value of any such production, it is more difficult to admit the purity of their good faith, though even in that respect it is possible that they delude themselves to some extent, or that they may be deceived in the manner outlined at the end of the previous paragraph. Account must also be taken fairly frequently of ‘anomalies’ of a psychic nature, which again complicate matters and incidentally provide particularly favorable conditions for influences and suggestions of all sorts to produce their maximum effect; attention need only be called, without pursuing the matter further, to the anything but negligible part frequently played in such affairs by ‘clairvoyants’ and other ‘sensitives’. But in spite of everything, there almost always comes a point at which conscious trickery and charlatanism become a sort of necessity for the directors of a ‘pseudo-initiatic’ organization: for instance, if someone happens to notice borrowings made more or less clumsily from a particular tradition — and it is not very difficult to do so — how could the directors admit the fact without being obliged to confess themselves to be no better than ordinary profane people? They do not usually hesitate in a case of that kind to reverse the true relations and boldly declare that it is their own ‘tradition’ that is the common ‘source’ of all those they have robbed; and if they do not manage to convince everyone, at least there are always some innocents who will take them at their word, and in numbers sufficient to ensure that their position as ‘heads of schools’, to which they usually cling above everything else, is not in danger of being seriously compromised, all the more so because they do not pay much attention to the quality of their ‘disciples’, for, in conformity with the modern mentality, quantity seems to them much more important; and this alone is enough to show how very far they are from having even the most elementary notion of the real nature of esoterism and initiation.

It is scarcely necessary to say that all that has been described so far is no mere matter of more or less hypothetical possibilities, but is a matter of real and properly established fact; if all the facts had to be specified there would be no end to it, and to attempt the task would serve no very useful purpose: a few characteristic examples will suffice. For instance, the procedure of ‘syncretism’ recently mentioned has been followed in the setting up of a sham ‘Oriental tradition’, that of the Theosophists, comprising nothing oriental but a terminology misunderstood and misapplied; and as the world of such affairs is always ‘divided against itself’ in accordance with the Gospel saying, French occultists in a spirit of opposition and rivalry constructed in their turn a so-called ‘Western tradition’ of the same kind, in which many of the elements, notably those drawn from the Kabbalah, can hardly be said to be Western with respect to their origin, though they are Western enough with respect to the special manner of their interpretation. The first-named presented their ‘tradition’ as the very expression of ‘ancient wisdom’, the second, perhaps a little more modest in their pretensions, sought more particularly to pass off their ‘syncretism’ as a ‘synthesis’, and few people have misused this last word so badly. If the first-named showed more ambition it is perhaps because there were present at the origins of their ‘movement’ some rather enigmatic influences, the true nature of which they themselves would no doubt have been quite unable to determine; so far as the second group is concerned, they knew only too well that there was nothing behind them, that their work was only that of a few individuals with nothing but themselves to rely on, and if nevertheless it so happened that ‘something’ else effected an entry, that certainly did not happen till much later; these two cases, considered in relation to the circumstances outlined, could without difficulty be taken as applications of what was said earlier, but the task of deducing the consequences that may seem to the reader to arise logically can be left to his own efforts.

The truth is that there has never existed anything that could rightly be called either an ‘Oriental tradition’ or a ‘Western tradition’, any such denomination being obviously much too vague to be applied to a defined traditional form, since, unless one goes back to the primordial tradition, which is here not in question for very easily understandable reasons, and which is anyhow neither Eastern nor Western, there are and there always have been diverse and multiple traditional forms both in the East and in the West. Others have thought to do better and to inspire confidence more easily by appropriating to themselves the name of some tradition that really existed at some more or less distant date, and using it as a label for a structure that is no less incongruous than the others, for although they naturally make some use of what they can manage to find out about the tradition on which they have staked their claim, they are forced to reinforce their few facts, always very fragmentary and often even partly hypothetical, by recourse to other elements either borrowed from a different source or wholly imaginary. In every case, a cursory examination of these productions is enough to make apparent the specifically modern spirit that has presided over their formation, and it is invariably betrayed by the presence of one or more of the ‘directive ideas’ alluded to above; after that there is no object in further researches nor in taking the trouble to determine exactly and in detail the real source of any one element of the mixture, since the first discovery shows clearly enough, and without leaving room for the smallest doubt, that one is in the presence of nothing but a pure counterfeit.

One of the best examples that can be given of the last-named case is that of the many organizations that at the present time call themselves ‘Rosicrucian’; needless to say, they do not fail to be mutually contradictory, and even to quarrel more or less openly, while all claim to be the representatives of one and the same ‘tradition’. In fact any one of them, without a single exception, can be admitted to be perfectly right when it denounces its rivals as being illegitimate and fraudulent; never have there been as many people calling themselves ‘Rosicrucian’, or even ‘Brothers of the Rose-Cross’, as can be found now that there are no authentic ones left! There is anyhow very little danger in passing oneself off as the continuation of something that belongs entirely to the past, especially when the danger of exposure is further reduced by the fact that the organization in question has, as in this case, always been enveloped in some obscurity, so much so that its end is as obscure as its origin; is there anyone among the profane public or even among the ‘pseudo-initiates’ who can say exactly what the tradition that was known for a time as Rosicrucian really was? It should be mentioned that these remarks on the usurpation of the name of an initiatic organization do not apply to a case such as that of the imaginary ‘Great White Lodge’, of which oddly enough more and more is being heard in many quarters, and no longer only among the Theosophists: at no time and in no place has this name ever had an authentically traditional connotation; and if it is used as the conventional ‘mask’ for something that has some degree of reality, then that thing should certainly not be sought for in the initiatic domain.

The fact that some people choose to locate the ‘Masters’ to whom they profess adherence in some highly inaccessible region of central Asia or elsewhere has often aroused comment; this is a fairly easy way of ensuring that their assertions are unverifiable, but it is not the only way, because remoteness in time can serve the same purpose in this respect as remoteness in space. Others do not hesitate to claim to be attached to some tradition that has entirely disappeared and has been extinct for centuries, even for thousands of years. However, unless they are bold enough to assert that their chosen tradition has been perpetuated for that length of time in a manner so secret and so well concealed that nobody but themselves has been able to discover the smallest trace of it, they are admittedly deprived of the appreciable advantage of being able to claim a direct and continuous filiation, for in their case the claim cannot even present an appearance of plausibility such as it can still present when of a fairly recent form such as that of the Rosicrucian tradition is chosen; but this defect does not seem to have much importance in their eyes, for they are so ignorant of the true conditions of initiation that they readily imagine that a mere ‘ideal’ attachment, without any regular transmission, can take the place of an effective attachment. It is moreover clear that a tradition will lend itself the more readily to any fantastic ‘reconstitution’ the more completely it is lost and forgotten, and that it is then all the more difficult to be sure about the real significance of its remaining vestiges, which can therefore be made to mean almost anything desired, each person naturally putting into it whatever may conform to his own ideas. There is doubtless no need to look for any other explanation of the fact that the Egyptian tradition is specially ‘exploited’ in this way, and that so many ‘pseudo-initiates’ of very different schools show a preference for it that would otherwise be difficult to understand. It must be made clear, in order to avoid any mistaken application of what has been said, that these observations in no way concern references to Egypt or to other things of the same kind such as may sometimes be met with in certain initiatic organizations, where however their character is only that of symbolical ‘legends’, with no pretension to a superior value based on their initiatic origin. The question now at issue is that of alleged restorations, purporting to be valid as such, of traditions or initiations that no longer exist; but no such restoration, even on the impossible supposition that it could be exact and complete in all respects, would in any case possess any inherent interest, except as a mere archaeological curiosity.