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

Naturally, in order that the imitation by inverted reflection may be as complete as possible, centers are likely to be established to which the organizations appertaining to the ‘counter-initiation’ will be attached. These centers will of course be purely ‘psychic’, like the influences they use and transmit, and in no sense spiritual, like the centers of initiation and of the true tradition, but they will be able, for the reasons given, to assume up to a point the outward appearance of spiritual centers, thus producing the illusion characteristic of ‘inverted spirituality’. But there need be no cause for surprise if these centers themselves, and not merely some of the organizations that are more or less directly subordinated to them, are found to be engaged in struggles one with another, for the domain in which they are placed is the nearest domain of all to ‘chaotic’ dissolution, and therefore all oppositions are given free rein in it, and are not harmonized and reconciled by the direct action of a superior principle, necessarily lacking in such case. The result often is an impression of confusion and incoherence in everything connected with the manifestations of these centers and their offshoots, and that impression is certainly not illusory; it is even a characteristic ‘mark’ of such things; they can only agree as it were negatively, in the common struggle against the true spiritual centers, insofar as the latter are situated on a level at which such a struggle can take place, that is to say only insofar as they are concerned with a domain that does not extend beyond the limits of our individual state. [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. It is here that what can properly be called the ‘stupidity of the devil’ becomes apparent: the representatives of the ‘counter-initiation’ who act in this way are deluded into thinking that they are opposing the spirit itself, though nothing can really be opposed to it; but at the same time, in spite of themselves and unknown to themselves, they are really subordinated to it and can never cease to be so, just as everything that exists is submitted, albeit unconsciously and involuntarily, to the divine Will, from which nothing can escape. Thus they too are in fact being made use of, though against their will, and though they may themselves hold an exactly contrary belief, for the realization of ‘the divine plan in the human domain’; [164] Al-Tadāb r al-ilāhiyyah fi’l-mamlakat al-insāniyyah, title of a treatise of Muḥyi ’d-Dīn ibn al-‘Arabī. like all other beings they take the part in that plan that suits their nature, but instead of being effectively conscious of that part, as are the true initiates, they are only conscious of its negative and inverse aspect. Thus they themselves are dupes, and in a way that is much worse for them than is the mere ignorance of the profane, since, instead of keeping them as it were at the same point, it has the effect of driving them ever further away from the principial center, until finally they fall into ‘outer darkness’. But if the affair is looked at, not in relation to these beings themselves, but in relation to the world as a whole, it must be allowed that they are necessary in the place they occupy as elements in that whole, like all other beings, and as ‘providential’ instruments (to use theological language) in the passage of the world through its cycle of manifestation, for all partial disorders, even when they appear in a certain sense to be the supreme disorder, must nonetheless necessarily contribute in some way to the total order.

These few considerations should make it easier to understand why the constitution of a ‘counter-tradition’ is possible, but also why it can never be otherwise than eminently unstable and almost ephemeral, but this does not prevent its actually being in itself, as was said earlier, the most redoubtable of all possibilities. It will also be understood that this is the goal at which the ‘counter-initiation’ really aims and has always aimed throughout the whole course of its activity, and that the merely negative ‘anti-tradition’ only represented a necessary preparation. It now only remains to investigate rather more closely what can be foreseen, with the help of various concordant indications, of the modalities in which the ‘counter-tradition’ is likely to be realized in the future.

From everything that has been said so far it is easy to deduce that the setting up of the ‘counter-tradition’ and its apparent momentary triumph will in effect be the reign of what has been called ‘inverted spirituality’; this last is of course only a parody of spirituality, imitating it so to speak in an inverse sense, so as to appear to be its very opposite; it appears to be its opposite, but is not really so, for whatever may be its pretensions no symmetry or equivalence between the one and the other is possible. This point must be insisted on, for many people allow themselves to be deceived by appearances, and imagine that there exist in the world two contrary principles contesting against one another for supremacy; this is an erroneous conception, identical to that commonly attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the Manicheans, and consisting, to use theological language, in putting Satan on the same level as God. There are certainly nowadays many people who are ‘Manicheans’ in this sense without knowing it, and this too is the effect of a ‘suggestion’ as pernicious as any. The conception concerned amounts to the affirmation of a fundamentally irreducible principial duality, or in other words, to a denial of the supreme Unity that is beyond all oppositions and all antagonisms; that such a denial should be made by adherents of the ‘counter-initiation’ need cause no surprise, and it may even be sincere on their part, since the metaphysical domain is completely closed to them: it is therefore all the more evidently necessary for them to propagate the conception and to impose it on others, for in no other way can they succeed in getting themselves taken for what they are not and what they can never really be, namely, representatives of something that could be put on a level with spirituality and might eventually prevail over it.

This ‘inverted spirituality’ is thus in very truth only a false spirituality, but it is false to the most extreme degree conceivable; false spirituality can be spoken of in every case in which, for example, the psychic is mistaken for the spiritual, without necessarily going as far as total subversion, and that is why the expression ‘inverted spirituality’ is certainly best suited for designating total subversion, provided that the way in which it must be understood is precisely specified. It is in fact identifiable with the ‘spiritual renewal’ the near approach of which is persistently announced by people who are often quite unaware of its real nature; or again, it is the ‘new age’, into which the present humanity is being driven by all available means, [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. and the general state of ‘expectation’ created by the diffusion of the predictions alluded to above may well contribute effectively toward hastening its arrival. The attraction of ‘phenomena’, already taken account of as one of the determining factors in the confusion of the psychic and the spiritual, may also play a very important part, for most men will be caught and deceived by it in the time of the ‘counter-tradition’, since it is said that the ‘false prophets’ who will arise at that time shall ‘show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.’ [166] Matt. 24:24.