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

It is particularly in this connection that the manifestations of ‘metapsychics’ and of the various forms of ‘neo-spiritualism’ may even now be taken as a sort of ‘prefiguration’ of what must happen later, though they only give a very slight idea of it. In principle, the action of the same inferior subtle forces will be involved, but those forces will be set to work with incomparably greater strength; and when one sees how many people are always ready blindly to place complete confidence in all the divagations of a mere ‘medium’, simply because they are supported by ‘phenomena’, it is not surprising that seduction will then be more general. That is why it can never be said often enough that ‘phenomena’ by themselves prove absolutely nothing where the truth of a doctrine or of any sort of teaching is concerned, and that ‘phenomena’ are the special domain of the ‘great illusion’, wherein everything that people so readily take to be signs of ‘spirituality’ can always be simulated and counterfeited by the play of the inferior forces in question. This is perhaps the only field in which the imitation may be really perfect, because the very same ‘phenomena’ (the word being taken in its proper sense of outward appearances), will in fact be produced in both cases, the difference lying only in the nature of the causes engaged in each. The great majority of men are inevitably unable to determine the nature of these causes, so that there is no doubt that the best thing to do is not to attach the slightest importance to anything ‘phenomenal’, or perhaps better still to regard it a priori as an unfavorable sign; but how can this be made comprehensible to the ‘experimental’ mentality of our contemporaries, a mentality first fashioned by the ‘scientistic’ point of view of the ‘anti-tradition’, and finally becoming one of the most potentially effective contributing factors in the success of the ‘counter-tradition’?

’Neo-spiritualism’ and the ‘pseudo-initiation’ proceeding from it are also from another point of view as it were a partial ‘prefiguration’ of the ‘counter-tradition’. Reference has already been made to the utilization of elements authentically traditional in origin, perverted from their true meaning, and then to some extent brought into the service of error; this perversion is only a move in the direction of the complete reversal that must characterize the ‘counter-tradition’ (the case of the intentional reversal of symbols dealt with earlier being a significant example); but at that time there will no longer be only a few fragmentary and scattered elements involved, because it will be necessary to produce the illusion of something comparable, indeed of something intended by its authors to be equivalent, to that which constitutes the integrality of a real tradition, including its outward applications in all domains. It may be observed in this connection that the ‘counter-initiation’, although it invented and propagated for its own purposes all the modern ideas that together represent the merely negative ‘anti-tradition’, is perfectly conscious of the falsity of those ideas, and obviously knows all too well what attitude to adopt with respect to them; but that in itself indicates that the intention in propagating them can only have been the accomplishment of a transitory and preliminary phase, for no such enterprise of conscious falsehood could be in itself the true and only aim in view; it was only intended to prepare for the ultimate coming of something different, something that should appear to constitute a more ‘positive’ accomplishment, namely, the ‘counter-tradition’ itself. This is why one can already see sketched out, in various productions of indubitably ‘counter-initiatic’ origin or inspiration, the idea of an organization that would be like the counterpart, but by the same token also the counterfeit, of a traditional conception such as that of the ‘Holy Empire’, and some such organization must become the expression of the ‘counter-tradition’ in the social order; and for similar reasons the Antichrist must appear like something that could be called, using the language of the Hindu tradition, an inverted Chakravartī . [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.

The reign of the ‘counter-tradition’ is in fact precisely what is known as the ‘reign of Antichrist’, and the Antichrist, independently of all possible preconceptions, is in any case that which will concentrate and synthesize in itself for this final task all the powers of the ‘counter-initiation’, whether it be conceived as an individual or as a collectivity. It could even, in a certain sense, be both at the same time, for there must be a collectivity that will be as it were the ‘exteriorization’ of the ‘counter-initiatic’ organization itself when it finally appears in the light of day, and there must also be a person who will be at the head of the collectivity, and as such be the most complete expression and even the very ‘incarnation’ of what it will represent, if only in the capacity of ‘support’ to all the malefic influences that he will first concentrate in himself and then project onto the world. [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. He will obviously be an ‘imposter’ (this is the meaning of the word dajjāl by which he is usually designated in Arabic) since his reign will be nothing other than the ‘Great Parody’ in its completest form, the ‘satanic’ imitation and caricature of everything that is truly traditional and spiritual; nevertheless he will be made in such a way, so to speak, that it will be entirely impossible for him not to play that part. His time will certainly no longer be the ‘reign of quantity’, which was itself only the end-point of the ‘anti-tradition’; it will on the contrary be marked, under the pretext of a false ‘spiritual restoration’, by a sort of reintroduction of quality in all things, but of quality inverted with respect to its normal and legitimate significance. [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’. After the ‘egalitarianism’ of our times there will again be a visibly established hierarchy, but an inverted hierarchy, indeed a real ‘counter-hierarchy’, the summit of which will be occupied by the being who will in reality be situated nearer than any other being to the very bottom of the ‘pit of hell’.