THE ISSUE OF THE ELITE In René Guénon’s WORK Excerpts (nn 1-2-6-7-8-10)
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The devil says in the Antichrist’s ear the words which unleash the explosion of the world. From Luca Signorelli’s: “Fatti dell’Anticristo”, Orvieto, Cappella di S. Brizio
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A note from the Author This edition has, as Introduction, a short essay in English, entitled “Return to Basic”. This Introduction contains in itself a Summary of The Issue of the elite (in Italian: “La Questione dell’élite”). In Return to Basic I also wrote some observations about the state of the problem in present times and the enormous errors committed by the ones who cultivated in themselves wrong attitudes. To start changing these attitudes would be the first step towards the right direction, even if it’s highly improbable that this step will be done. I also must say that the Summary in English is a good Introduction for the Italian speakers too, even if Italian language is required to read the whole “La Questione dell’élite”. In fact I chose not to translate into English the entire Italian version. Then it follows the English adaptation of the Italian version. These are Excerpts which may be able to give the essential messages of the writing itself, even if they cannot substitute the Italian original version, because some paragaphs of the parts I chose to translate (nn 1-2-6-7-8-10) have been changed. Actually, these paragaphs have been sometimes only simplified but in other cases really changed. This has been made in order to make some message clearer. Finally: in the last part of the booklet I have added some posts I wrote in October 2005 in a small Internet community I founded. Mr. Fundador (2005 A.D.)1 [Pictures in this essay are different forms of the same Jerosolimitana Crux, the “Jerusalem Cross”. There are also images taken from Buddhism and Christianism 2. The Horse A series of problems didn’t allow me to make this brief writing concretely available immediately, but I had to wait much time. So it is vavailable years after the date here. 2 The images are – in oder of appearance -: an image of Bishamon Ten, one of the Four Guardians of the Orients, named here in Japanese language (he owns a trident in his hand and this reminds us Poseidon-Neptune and even Shiva, in other words “dangerous” deities); two images of Kshitigarbha-Jizô (respectively in Sanskrit and Japanese language); finally, last but not least, St. Jude’s image. Kshitigarbha is considered the one who has a role of Saviour between the nirvâna of Sakyamuni Buddha and the Advent of the (real) Maitreya (not the pseudo-Maitreya of B. Crème). The role of Bishamon is to remind and partly “exorcise” Neptune-Shiva. St. Jude is the protector of impossible things and “lost causes”. Guénonism is a lost cause. As I say for joke – but not much really… -: “Guénonists” are “hidden discordianists”. You know the ironic movement of “Discordianism” that “worships” goddess Discordia-Eris. This movement was born from the book (of the late Fifties of the last passed century of the last Millennium): “Principia Discordia”. In this book it is ironically said: “Hardly a discordianist agrees with another discordianist”. We could say instead: “Hardly a ‘Guénonist’ agrees with another ‘Guénonist’”… In more serious terms, this means: There is no more “Guénonism” as such. And this is the truth. Nothing less, nothing more. The incapability of constructing even a seed of a “School” signed the end of “Guénonism”. The “diaspora” came then, as a consequence of the incapability of finding a common goal, a centre to which make reference to. The aim of the Internet community – whose name is quoted in the last part of this booklet (“Posts from Internet community”) – is to express this centre, which is – and can only be – the other milestone of Guénons’ Work: the inevitable decadence of Occidental civilization and the End of this present Human and Cosmic Cycles. Orient as an individual choice and Orient as the “cure of the deseases of Western civilization” do not coincide but they are both 4 1
is a stylization of the “White Horse” of Uffington, England, as seen from the space by a Satellite. Source: Wikipedia. The background, from the colour green, has been changed into Red. (I must thank Maria Gagliardi for the help to change its background) Then, to introduce the Posts from the Internet community, there are a “Celtic Shield” and the Chinese character Tao, Dô, “The Way”. ]
present in Guénon’s Work, in which we have two pictures: the Orient as a “cure in general” – not merey an individual choice, individual choice that showed all its insufficiencies in last decade of the XX Century – and the “End of the Cycle” and fatal decadence of Western civilization, decadence that dragged and drags along like a water drake in a dirty lake the whole world and all the civilizations till remaining on Earth surface. But the situation dragged on too much time along. Time is arrived at the point in which it is necessary, finally and in the end, to cut the Gordian’s Knot. A last question: Was it a mere chance that Guénon chose to unite the theme of initiation and Tradition with that of the decadence (which he called “deviation” and then “dissolution”) of Western – and potentially of the whole world – civilization? NOT AT ALL. NOT AT ALL. Having forgotten this main theme is one of the main causes of the final dispersion (or “diaspora”). The theme of the decadence was not only put in evidence because it was an argument strongly debated in the Thirties of the last century of the last Millennium. It is still the defence against deviation of para-pseudo-“traditionalism”. Kali-Yuga’s theme is fundamental. On the contrary the “traditionalists” must think that the actual religions – which, by the way, they understand in a poor, very poor way … - are the “cure” of the desease, a thing that Guénon never, never and really never believed possible. The other main cause of the dispersion-deviation of passed and finished “Guénonism” is in fact that it has been lost the sense of the fundamental qualitative distinction between esotericism and exotericism-s. THE TWO ERRORS BIND EACH ONE WITH THE OTHER ONE EXACTLY AND PRECISELY IN THE LACK OF THE THEME OF DECADENCE. If the “‘traditionalists’-wrong exotericists” accept that theme it is only and merely as “moral” decadence, while Guénon always, really always, underlined that decadence was above all intellectual and only as a consequence “moral”. In fact we saw moral decadence happening many times in history in the phases of decadence of a civilization. On the contrary an intellectual deviation as the one started with the modern world we never saw as such in the course of human history as known today. 5
RETURN TO BASIC
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Part One Summary of “La Questione dell’elite”. The essential of the thesis Here we will summarize the central thesis expressed in La Questione dell’elite (“The Question of the elite in Guénon’s Work”, 2000-1, corrections of 2004). We go back over the proceeding of the writing in question (waiting for its eventual translation into English). Even if there are many observations that referred to the situation of 2000-1, the very essence of the thesis remains. The “Issue of the elite” is at the centre of a long controversy among the scholars of Guénon’s Work. This is because Guénon expounded different scenarios of the question itself in the course of the development of his Work. To spread light upon the question it’s necessary to turn back to the first book of Guénon (Introduction) and to analyze the three possibilities he expounded there, in the late Twenties of the former century (the XX°). Guénon expressed these pictures as “hypotheses” that dealt with “the fates of the West”. We consider these hypotheses like schemes, and schemes do exist but are what they have to. The first hypothesis affirms that the West will return to the barbarity, as it is happened to many civilizations in the past. The second affirms that the help of the East (of course, traditional East) will avoid this fate of the West, but, in order to act in concrete Western context, there is the necessity of a spiritual elite. The third possibility is (but we must definitively say: was) that the West, finding in itself the necessary spiritual force, would react and prove to be capable of returning to its own Traditional form by its own means. In both the second and the third hypotheses the spiritual occidental elite is necessary. In the first hypotheses the final fall is due because of the absence of the elite itself. With Vâlsan we considered the two possibilities of mediation between the first and the second one and between the second and the third. We excluded this last mediating possibility, and so we are practically left with the first hypothesis and the possibility between the first and the second Guénon’s hypotheses. Also with Vâlsan, we considered that Guénon’s Work is quite a complete, even if not exhaustive (for “systematization” is always to be fought, and the tendency to “systematize” is very spread among readers and scholars of Guénon’s Work: in this way they prove not to be ready for it and not to be ready for real esotericism). The continuation of this Work cannot stand on the level of “expounding”, but on a very more “practical” level. The second problem we had to face is related to the means by which it is possible for the Occidental elite to be built. At the beginning, Guénon considered Catholicism to be the only possible way, later he kept this idea no more as a possibility to “construct” elite, but only to give it the possibility to impact the Western society. The problem is the concrete formation of Occidental elite. Catholicism proved not to be apt to this aim, but elite must remain Occidental (this has been underlined by J. Robin), so it is impossible the East, even the “near” East of Islâm, to concretely build the elite itself. Its role is fundamental, but only – as Guénon pointed out – after the elite has been already built. 7
The aim of the “Oriental help” (Guénon) is not at all to construct the elite, but to give it the opportunity to have access to spiritual forces that still exist in the East. Behind this way of reasoning there is a postulate not openly expressed by Guénon but implicit in his discourse: that in its expansion-explosion, modern West consumed great part of the spiritual energy that Christianity accumulated in the past, especially in the Middle Ages. Therefore, even if the elite would be built and effective, it would run the big risk to have no chance for action at all, because the elite necessarily needs sufficient energies. In fact, energies of Christianity have been greatly reduced, as they were wasted in the process of the expansion of the modernity to the whole world. This last point helped us not to consider the other possibility contained in Guénon’s hypotheses, that the East concretely invades modern West and this is the way by which the “Occidental deviation” (Guénon) arrives at the end. The same Guénon would have left this idea in the development of his Work, in which he will point out the nature of exception that our age has, for it is the end of a Great Cycle (Manvântara, 64.800 years). Therefore it is impossible to resolve the problem of the “crisis of the modern world” (that is to say the crisis that modern world represents for the whole mankind) by means of a mere substitution of a Traditional form by another one. Of course this point has become a reason of strong quarrels between scholars and readers of Guénon belonging to different exotericisms, that is to say Christian and Islamic (a concrete negation of the famous “Transcendent Unity of Traditional forms”..., just to mention the “coherence” of certain individuals absolutely not ready to really understand Guénon’s Work). And another point has become a reason to quarrel: according to Guénon, even if the Orient will be always more “Occidentalized”, a complete separation from the Centre cannot happen for the simple reason that Centre is actually in the Orient. But this is not the case for the Occident. So, has Occident already broken the link with the Centre or not? As it often happens it is possible to quote portions of Guénon’s Work that seem to say one thing while other quotes seem to indicate the opposite. As always the problem is to consider the single sentences in their proper context. When Guénon wrote that modern Occident broke the bonds with the Centre, he meant Occident as general civilization, not Occident as initiation. In other words: Occident as exoterism, not as esoterism (of course, real esoterism). And so there are those passages that speak about the fact that Catholicism was far from the Centre, and other passages that say that the true RoseCrosses retired in the “East”, that is in the very Centre of the world, “where all the initiatic forms retire when they have no means to act any more”. This point is very important. In fact if Catholicism proved to be incapable of constructing the “ark” and Eastern help can intervene only after the elite has been constructed (there can be mediators, but it’s another question), it remains only one way: that the initiatic path, always existing “potentially” in the Centre, manifest itself again thus giving birth to the elite. This is very, very difficult possibility. Only a great reason can justify things like these. 8
Therefore we return to the basic picture that the last Guénon expounded: there is no possibility that one Traditional form whatsoever can solve the problem of the “crisis of modern world” for the whole mankind by its only means. It is necessary a “help from Above”, from Heaven. But, tocome to this point, it is necessary that modern world continues in its path, passing from the stage of anti-Tradition to the stage of counterTradition. This last stage must continue up to its final end: the “Reign of the Antichrist” or the “Great Parody”. For J. Robin this time, not far from us, means also that no Occidental elite is necessary any more. On the contrary we considered that this inevitable “inverse Advent” can leave Occident completely dismantled, considering also the crisis that is going on in the East; therefore there is such a difficult situation that can justify the use of great means. This is the essence of the thesis. Of course, one should read all the original sources, but this is sufficient.
Part Two Methodological Considerations If things do not function properly, at the very base there is always a lack of “knowledge”, a fundamental incomprehension that makes us go on a wrong path. So, the continuous polemics and the attempt to strictly “Islamize” Guénon’s Work prove, beyond any possible doubt, that there is a lack in knowledge and a strong narrowing of vision. So it has become difficult to find a real defence against the attempt to make Guénon’s Work be dragged by the dragon of so-called “integralism” and therefore dragooned into that maelstrom and so destroyed in the wreck of “integralism” itself. The recently appeared article on newspaper like N.Y. Times is a clear sign of this tendency. “Integralism” is not at all to take the traditional matters in its “integrality”, that is “as one”. On the contrary, it is the definitive autonomization of exotericism, but an exotericism that has become political and therefore interested in a lost fight against the remnants of modern world. This happens just when modernism is at the end and the second stage of the “crisis of modern world” arrives at its necessary goal: the coming “Great Parody”. Of this parody of traditional realities, “integralism” is a great example. Guénon is the greatest enemy for “integralists” of every kind for the basic doctrine of the Unity of the Traditional forms, absolutely unacceptable by this kind of individuals. Guénon’s Work is not at all Islamistic. The author “became” Islamic, but not the Work, in which Islamism objectively plays a secondary role face to face to the importance of Hindu tradition and Chinese tradition. But how did we arrive at this situation of lack of defence? This is the key question. There is a diffuse bad situation in which it has become quite usual “to see the tree but not the forest”. An enormous importance is given to mere words but a lack of attention towards the basic parts of the vision. The general vision is taken for granted while this is not true at all. Lots of criticisms about “you told ‘x’ at page ‘y’”, but it’s impossible to completely share ideas. There is no “perfect author” as too many people think of 9
Guénon’s Work. If we can find problems in Sacred Texts, how could we not in a Work like that of Guénon’s, a Work that belongs to smriti level? And, notwithstanding all this incomprehension, Guénon’s Work still remains unique in its capabilities of opening unlimited possible developments. There is an essential coherence and a formal coherence. This last can go together with the betrayal. The other cannot. So it is fundamental to consider carefully the state of the things today. We have to consider properly the direction we’re going. The greatness of Guénon’s Work in the past is not at all a visa for the future. We’re at a turning point. Unilateralism and superficiality: these are the real inner enemies. But how diffuse are them…! Unilateralism is to see only a small thing but to forget the whole. I saw this too much spread among the scholars of Guénon’s Work. Let’s consider this: Dis Guénon speak about great perspectives or little ones? A great Work NEEDS, CALLS FOR, URGES, And IS THIRST OF GREAT PERSPECTIVES. Isn’t it true that everything in modern world tends to transform into a ‘sect’? And to conftont with Guénon’s Work with a sectarian perspectiveis a good or bad deal? On these bases we’ll never be able to respond to challenges that do exist. Guénon’s Work can never be ‘sectarian’, for he opened a path of indefinite developments. Modern man sees all at the opposite; even in the case in which he accepts the truth, his tendency is to remain “close from the Above” and to look for a space “of his own”. This attitude is typical of modernity. It’s not right to believe that after reading Guénon one is free from the modern way of thinking, for modernity is more a “style” of (pseudo-)thinking that a precise expression and this style can be applied to everything. Guénon always often repeated: “what you consider ‘comprehension’ is only the possibility to have – then – comprehension itself”. That is to say: you have to look inside deeply and work hard to arrive at a real comprehension. Real comprehension is always a victory upon us. It’s an inner fight to transcend the “limits of the mental”, as Guénon called them. So, for instance, it is reductive to just to relate two passages on Guénon’s Work only because the author himself says this in a footnote. The whole Work must be considered as a unity. You need to look deeply inside to understand all the connections, the mediating stages and the inner coherence, more important than the outer coherence that so much impressed too many “exteriorists”. Guénon’s Work must be considered as a whole. One needs to have in mind a sort of hierarchic precise pyramid of relations and not a flat platitude with some rocks somewhere, rocks around which fights for appearances happen. The second enemy is called “superficiality”. It is the tendency to “minimize”, as I say. It is false sense of security that falls on the volcanic poisonous rock of modernity. You know the tale of the fox and the raven? The fox “minimizes” the cheese the raven has in the mouth for the fox cannot have it...! And so they tend to minimize the danger of the Adversary, while Guénon always thought and acted in the opposite way. 10
So, in these cases, too frequent to be casual, I think this: Guénon’s Work is like wine, you must not drink too much of it or you get drunk. Wine must be “sustained” by the individual; on the contrary it will have “counter-effects”. This means that wine must never be drunk alone, always on food. Guénon’s Work has the sense of giving light both to Traditional data and to the flow of the world, the “signs of the Times” (Guénon). It cannot be understood but in this complex picture. The whole Work is superior to the sum of its parts. And I say “superior” but not “major” for it is not a “quantitative” bond but a “qualitative” connection. Guénon told and retold it many and many times, using different symbolisms, but it seems that it rained on a glass of a window: all disappeared... The final integration is always a synthetic operation that cannot be on the same level of the mere sum of the steps that brought to it. It is a direct insert, an operation acted in a moment of synthesis. This has enormous consequences in order to really understand the final synthesis of our cycle. But, to return to the methodological questions about Guénon’s Work, the main mistake committed by too many people is just to consider this Work analytically, but not at all synthetically. The excess of analytical proceedings is arrived at the point to cover the real proportions of Guénon’s Work. All these wrong views can only fail to face the fundamental question we have in front of us. I insist and underline: we have in front basic essential knots. The excess in analyzing, the excesses in being unaware of the true nature of the End of the Cycle won’t change the essence of the problem. God won’t be deceived. Real comprehension claims to recognise the true nature, the true Message from God hidden in the knot of this present world. He cannot be deceived.
Part Three Return to Basic If things do not functionproperly, at the very base there is always a lack of “knowledge”, a fundamental incomprehension that make us go on a wrong path, as I told above. But it’s not sufficient to point out the errors, what really matters is to find the way out. The way out is to return to the basic of the vision Guénon expounded, really very far from sectarianism and from fanaticism. If someone is making a hole in the hull of a ship and trying to make it wreck, are the colours of the little tents upon the windows of a cabin so important? I don’t think... We have seen in Part Two that the fundamental things that lack are a sense of proportion (that is harmony) and the awareness to look for the real “inner connections”. This last mental attitude should be normal for an “esotericism”, but we know that this term is misused very much today. At their essence, the lack of harmony and profundity is lack of knowledge, oblivion of the main milestones, of the fundamental pillars of Guénon’s Work. In this situation it is vital to point out the bases 11
of the construction, bases that tremble by the continuous earthquake our world is in. If we point out and maintain still these main pillars, it will be more difficult to misuse Guénon’s Work. Having been sunk in oblivion the bases is the real cause of the situation we’re in. In fact only the general picture can “unite what is dispersed”, while lots of little questions can only divide. It’s important to point out two milestones. The Tradition is the main pillar. What is the Tradition? It is the flow of the Divine into the human, the River of the Divine into the human. Initiation and religion are – in the Kali-Yuga (6.480 years), especially its last half – the two paths of the Tradition. But they are consequences, not causes. In another cyclical situation things could have been different and though Tradition would have been all the same. As consequence, this brings the affirmation of the Unity beyond the differentiation. This has as consequence that there must exist a Primordial Tradition at the origin of all the other Traditional forms. But not at all in the sense of “Perennialism”, that is an academic term to indicate the teaching of Guénon. What really Guénon taught is more subtle. He did not say that there is only one light, that all the colours of the light are one, but, and it’s very different, that all the colours remain as they are, but are a peculiar form of the light itself, that is white. Light is white in this sense: it contains all the colours. And it has no distinctive colour in itself. An object is red (or blue, yellow and so on) not for the light in itself, but for the object. An object is red for it absorbs all the spectrum of the light but the red. What makes the colour of the object that colour is its “being”, and not the light itself. So, the difference among the traditional forms comes from their being (“sat”, “ontos”) and not by the light; that is only ONE. The second pillar is the destiny of the cycle. When, at the end of our cycle, which is now very very near to us, the “Traditio Primordialis” will manifest itself again also in the apparent part of our world, it will be as an unveiling, a thing we never knew in known history. Therefore: there is no possible “example” to follow. Our age is an exception, but finds its sense considering the whole of our cycle. Before the “Traditio Primordialis” appears again in the concrete part of the world, there will be, necessarily, the Reign of the Antichrist (even if conceived very differently from usual conception of it). This Reign is the necessary end of the Reign of Quantity that is the modern world. What Guénon taught - he conceived the Antichrist in a different way from the usual re-known ways, different especially from the American ways of conception of him - allows to think about the classical ancient Christian (especially orthodox, in the sense of Greek Orthodoxy) ways of conceiving the Antichrist’s Reign is the question of the Third Temple in Jerusalem, question that is beyond the whole turmoil in Middle East. In 2001 they put the First Stone of the Third Temple in the middle of Jerusalem, even if this Temple won’t be the mere reconstruction of the Second Temple of Herod. And the “time of the end” started. It’s not at all a chance this coincidence. “Reconstruction”, by the way, won’t be a mere fact of “archaeology”. Its meaning does not mean the fact that it will be “philologically” reconstructed “as it was” in the times of Jesus. This is impossible. The central idea is to reconstruct the 12
situation in which Jesus existed, but a parodist reconstruction. The idea is to do “as if” Jesus never was on Earth. But the result is a parody: a parody of Roman Empire – in the “American Empire” of the Bush family – and a parody of the Reconstruction, a parody of the Third Temple itself, where perhaps the “façade” will be the same but into a modern style building. On the contrary the interiors will be correctly done and also the instruments of the cult. In other words: what’s fundamental is the cult that will done inside of it again. As if Jesus never was on Earth. Firfis Conan 27 September - 4 October 2004 A. D. Corrections: 11 November 2005 A. D. P.S. A thanks to the ones who gave me a hand for te translation and corrected the Summary, the Introductive Part, and up to N°6 of these Excerpts. On the contrary, I paraphrased the second part, for I had too few time to revise the translation as it would have been right to do and, on the other side, I could not disturb the ones who helped me for the first part up to N°6 of these Excerpts. I was forced to do so in order to arrive at the goal. O wrote a Summary of the remaining time (in 2010), again with the aim of arriving at a definitive form, even if uncomplete and briefed.
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THE ISSUE OF THE ELITE IN René Guénon’s WORK Excerpts (nn 1-2-6-7-8-10)
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“AN ANCIENT STRATEGIST SAID: I DO NOT DARE TO BEHAVE MYSELF AS A HOST I PREFER TO BEHAVE MYSELF AS A GUEST I DO NOT DARE TO ADVANCE BY AN INCH I PREFER TO RETREAT BY A FOOT THIS MEANS TO PROCEED WITHOUT TO PROCEED TO TUCK THE SLEEVES WITHOUT TO COME TO HANDS TO FIGHT WITHOUT ARMIES TO FIGHT WITHOUT OPPOSING NOTHING’S WORSE THAN TO UNDERESTIMATE THE ADVERSARY WHO UNDERESTIMATES THE ADVERSARY PUTS UNDER RISK JUST HIS OWN TREASURE WHEN THE CRASH COMES ALSO THOSE WHO WINS CRIES”. TAO-TE-CHING [DAODEJING], LXIX
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NOTICE
It is a partial translation of the first part of La Questione dell’elite (nn. 1-15), an essay in Italian language. This essay is part of a wider Work entitled Firfis. This part (1-15) is from years 2000-2001. As I told before (in the Advertise) I translated only the numbers 1-2-6-7-8-10. No revision or editing of this writing has been done and I must apologise for the errors I can commit in the translation, even if I simplified some passages of the sections I translated, other passages have been really changed. Guénon’s books quoted have been translated from the Italian version. For this reason it’s very probable that English speaking individuals could find sometimes hard to recognize the text as it is in English in available translations, but unfortunately it could not be otherwise. By using this sign, ‘…’, I mean the point from which a part of the sections translated from the original Italian version is not reported, usually some “excursus”. Fundador, End of 2006 A.D.
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N° 1 The “Issue of the elite” is embedded in all Guénon’s work, but in some of his books the question is dealt with more thoroughness and richness: East and West, The Crisis of the modern World, but also in some chapters of Considerations on the initiatic way and the Conclusions of Introduction to the study of Hindu doctrines. In this last chapter of the last quoted Guénon’s book the “issue of the elite” is inserted in its full picture: the destiny (or doom) of modern West as being bound to the destiny of the whole world. The original Guénon’s aim was that the Western spiritual elite should change this fate. Of course, it is necessary to point out that comments on this “question of the elite” can be found both in other Guénon’s books and in his private correspondence: for instance in the letters to Evola, when Guénon expresses opinions on the idea of Evola to found an “Order”, called by him “Order of the Iron Crown”, name particularly badly chosen. Well, Guénon did not agree with such idea. However this fact shows that there exist other passages beyond those to which here we will refer to. The first book in the above list, East and West, is from 1924 (with addiction, short but meaningful, of 1948, one of the last expressions of Guénon); the second book is of 1927, and the third book is of 1946 (while Introduction is the first published Guénon’s book, it is of the now very afar from us – in glimpses and glamour - 1921). … Therefore, our speech will hold always very firm the aim to “weigh the pros and cons” of this issue all. As ulterior contributions to the study of this complex and articulated issue …, let’s consider only those interpreters of Guénon’s Work who was been able to give an interpretation of their own, without merely repeating Guénon’s. Therefore we won’t consider even the ones who only exposed Guénon’s Work (like Sérant, for example, in his biography of Guénon). It is since a long time ago that we condemned the sectarian, even pharisaic attitude of great part of those who had tried, for good or for worse, to follow the Work of Guénon, so it is useless for us to return on this point and to return to this topic: we give this view for accepted. And for those who disagree with this view, I do not know what to do or say more, everyone will remain on their own. Coming to the contributions of more serious reflection, I consider practically only two contributions (which is saying a lot about how are indeed these issues as a matter of fact): they are the works of M. Vâlsan and of J. Robin. Among all the books in which the idea of the western elite has more weight and importance, of course there is East and the West that is the one where the topic of the elite finds more space. And it is starting from this book that we will leave for our travel around and within the Work of Guénon... … If we want indeed to have light on this problem, without to behave like an ostrich that hides the head under the sand, we mustput in comparison the ideas opportunely expressed by Guénon with the cyclical situation which we are in, and to see what comes out from this comparison. As I said before, I’ll repeat here that we entered the sandhya, by now, and that the 19
“Reign of the Antichrist” is indeed next, the Reign of the great deceit, of the counterfeiting. And when one looks at how vulgus vult decipi (we come from that famous “obscene” (= “of bad auspice”) thing called “elections”, of the democracy that Guénon abhorred, and therefore we know as the things go), and how much are swarming today those people which add: ergo decipiatur, it is evident that there are clear and definitive signs the way the things will go indeed... But let’s return to us, always remembering that we live hic et nunc ... If then to all this degenerated heap the formless neospiritualism joins, than we can understand how the situation exceeded the things Guénon saw when he was alive. And so we have seen in recent years the construction of true and real psychical cults (like that of the UFO, but also like the so-called “Wicca”, Anglo-Saxon word from which it comes the English word “witch”), whose dangers are very underestimated today by too many. We express our though firmly and clearly against these sects, we are anti-sect. and Guénon is fundamental to follow on this point for only Guénon’s Work can give the awareness of what these movements really are. I could say that the real enemy of all these false movements is Guénon’s Work. But you need to change radically your preceding views to understand what the forces back these movements really are. For they are incapable of doing this that both state authorities and the authorities of the exterior common religions are incapable of doing something real on this question. And protests and speeches cannot but remain sterile. You need to change the way you think, you need to change many things in you and start to think on a different level3. … The general picture from which we start is always the same, which is: the modernity has deviated radically from the line of Traditional civilizations, and this is under everyone’s eyes. But this is not the end of the process: and here Guénon changes all, because deviation then becomes degenerescence, that is to say that the antitradition of modernity turns more and more towards the counter-Tradition, passing from the deviating line to degenerescence. And, as degenerescence cannot stop itself, once we enter into the path of the degenerescence, degenerescence itself starts to become true and real subversion (as it is well explained in Guénon’s The Reign of the Quantity and the Signs of the Times). From the beginning of the process of modern deviation, begun in the Autumn of the Middle Ages (XIV sec.) starting from the dies nefastus of the end of the New Temple of the Knights Templar, a true cut of the bonds with the Centre produced. After the end of the Templars, the contacts with the Centre were maintained by the true Rosicrucians, but then also this last hidden bond was broken off fatally (for the influence of the counter-initiation, to tell the truth). With the XVIIth century Western civilization entered indeed and irreversibly in the first phase of modern Times (in order to follow the division of the modern times in two phases, as Guénon made of it The Reign). We must now explain a point that is very characteristically misunderstood by modern followers of Guénon’s Work. The bond with the Centre must be maintained for an entire civilization can be called “traditional”. That the fact of this bond is “esoterical” and so the greatest part of men Anyway Guénon’s Work, in the parts in which he spoke about the starting – in his historical period – age of the sects should be an important, never lacking reading for the anti-sect movements. 20 3
won’t ever even imagine of its existence does not deny the point that this contact must exist. First of all we can say that this criterion of “traditionality” absolutely is “out of order” for the so-called (by themselves) “traditionalists” of “newmind” of present day. Secondly we arrive at the other consequence of this point that it is almost never underlined when someone speaks about Guénon’s Work: the bond with the Centre can be maintained in some closed and very very small group and – notwithstanding this – the course of civilization can continue as it never was. In other words: there is a contact with the Centre and a constant bond with it. This last is necessary to have a true traditional civilization. The first, the contact, is not continuous and cannot exceed the small group in which it happens. The contact is necessary to have the continuous bond, but this last is the aim. What Guénon meant speaking of the intellectual (= spiritual) Western elite was to have the contact first and then construct the bond. If the contact was not evident in what remained of the Western initiatic ways – which Guénon did not deny – it had to be reconstructed, but the aim remained to “stop the modern Western deviation”. That was the original aim. But let’s not anticipate the results of this little essay. Having the bond with the Centre broken means that there is no more a Western elite as such. But not having an elite does not mean that you cannot find any initiatic form in the West from the XVIIth century, because it is not this what it means. It means instead that the traditional West does not have any representatives in the Centre of the World. In other words: this means that exoterism and esoterism are definitively separated in the West. It remains the religion but with no bonds to the Supreme Centre, and it can be that some possible contact with the Centre could always be reopened, but it’s not possible to re-attach the two parts of the unique sword. So, the fact that “the traditional West does not have any representative in the Centre of the World” does not mean at all, as someone understood, that in the Supreme Centre there exist no more representatives of Western esoterism is a complete misunderstanding of my words. I also know very well what Guénon said, that is when an esotericism cannot exists anymore in its determined context it is re-absorbed into the Centre where all the forms do exist (but as a synthesis, like the white that has all the different colours: and this understood by very few). They interpret this way my words because they think that only esotericism matters, and this is wrong. Religion has a great importance, the importance of binding the esotericism – whose summit (that is not all the esotericism) must be in contact (continuous) with the Supreme Centre – to the common people, thus making the entire civilization Traditional. They are also very wrong interpreting true Guénon’s Work, where he spoke about the intellectual elite, and its original aim to stop the deviation of modern West, that is to contact the Centre, reconstruct a continuous bond with It, and then make this contact vital for the entire civilization binding – the Western spiritual elite I mean – with the religion. In this sense, very coherently, Guénon thought that Catholicism had to be the base for the action of the elite and it could not be Masonry or other organizations. Even exoterism has its place when the fate of the world is in question. They heavily misunderstood Guénon’s words. The problem, then, has been aggravated from the cut that the Catholicism, refusing every esotericism, has more and more operated in the relations with the Supreme 21
Centre, and, for this reason, Catholicism is becoming more and more a gigantic psychical body, but that is going away and irreversibly departed from the Spirit. A phase of crisis without precedent has been opened in the Catholicism (as in many other religions, by the way, because if West weeps East does not rejoice). Anyway those two groups are both wrong, the ones who refuse every esotericism and the ones for whom if there is a binding with the Centre, a contact on the esoteric level and they think it is enough, it sufficient, it is quite all is needed. They are both wrong. Every one of them chooses a piece of the sword, but it’s a broken sword, broken in two parts. And a sword in two parts is only a broken sword and not at all a sword4. This is the fundamental picture we can find in the books of Guénon, with their little limitations and the facts due to the historical period in which Guénon lived, even if we must underline that this does not touch the basic Principles contained in Guénon’s Work. In those books it is given for granted that the East is quite immune from such fatum of the modern West. On the contrary the world of the period after the worldwide Conflicts of the XX° century (A. D.) has shown, with overabundance of confirmations, than the East is not at all immune from the virus of modernity, and today we have among them some hybrid civilizations, hybrids between traditional survivals and the modernity. This is the real, concrete and historical East, today. Guénon himself examined again the picture and returned on this point in the Introduction of The Reign, admitting that the East (historical, of course) was not immune from the virus of modernity, and so that the East would be modernized for sure, but it would have been issue of Westernization, Occidentalization (and the term is not sure accidental). The growing serious degenerescence that has taken Islamism and those, less serious but still very true, that got Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, all in “nationalistic” sense, are an illustrious sign of the fact that the degenerescence of the “religious” side of the traditional forms now has extended well beyond the borders of Catholicism. And this too means something. Now, to come back to our topic, even if oriental elites continue to exist, they also turned out from the concrete complete “management” of their countries. And so we return, in a weaker less heavy state, to the “sword problem”. Anyway it remains that an elite, in the sense of a more complete construction that has some influence on the religion, even if way less than in other times, still remains in the East. In the West this influence is now reduced to almost nothing, restrained in very small spaces, closed in some short corner. Why this difference? For a fact that we have not decided, and for which I pray indeed to make a bonfire of all those speeches and all those affirmations of “parochial” type between the East and the West. The fact is this: “everywhere it can be found the formal affirmation that the Primordial Tradition of the cycle has come from the hyperborean regions. Later on, there have been several secondary currents, correspondent to various periods, among which one of the more important - among those, at least, whose vestigia are still recognizable - turned incontestably from the West towards East. Sure, it’s true that the hilt is the part of the sword that is handled by the hand, that is the superior esotericism that has with aim to maintain a continuous contact with the Supreme Centre. But if you have the hilt and a mere half of the blade have you a sword? Not at all. The sword is the hint and the whole blade. But the very secret of the Graal lies in the way to re-unite the two arts of the blade to reconstruct the true sword. 22 4
But all this goes back to the farthest ages, commonly said ‘prehistoric’ and we do not have in sight such horizons. What we say is, first of all, that the deposit of the Primordial Tradition has been moved since long time ago in the East and that there it can be still found the more directly derived traditional forms; secondly that, at the present state of the things, if you still want to find some authentic representatives of the traditional spirit with all that it implies, is in East that, in spite of all, you have to seek them” (Guénon: The crisis of modern World, Mediterranee 1972, p. 44, Guénon’s italics). Said otherwise: the Centre, to the beginning, had an Hyperborean, Nordic Centre, and then, as we can read into Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles, it has been moved to the West (and this is confirmed from the amazing analogies with the pre-Columbian traditional forms). Then, there was a shift from the West towards the East, following to the fall of Atlantis; finally this current one, joining to the one now descending from the North, to go to the East. This last was the definitive movement (and sealed the definitive abandonment of the Hyperborean Earth). From the beginning of the KaliYuga at least (actually, to tell the truth, even from before), that is to say from approximately 6480 “years” ago, it is in the East that lies the Centre of the World, that is “where” the Lord of the World resides. There is someone who says that the Centre is in Tibet or in the Himalayas, but it is not so: these are extensions; it is worth to say that the fall of Tibet did not touch the Centre. By the way we also have to consider that there are (were) another extension of the Centre, and among the more important, in the Iràn’s orients, the Bactrian (the zone of Balkh, among the Uzbekistàn, the Tadzhikistàn and the Afghanistàn put together); in historical age, the place of outer extension of the Centre would have been taken by the zone of Afghanistàn, a zone of the earth that not for chance has been theater of wars and destructions. Indeed, if it we look at the pitiful state in which it has been reduced the Afghanistàn, we can become aware of the game that is going on in the world, a game guided by the counter-initiation: to stop at all the still existing extensions of the Centre. The modern Western, become the instruments of the dominion of the Adversary, as in The Reign Guénon clearly spoke of, then spread their virus to all the globe, even the East. The deviations in Muslim religion, the wahhabite Arabia before, then the Shiite Iràn, finally, the lowest level, the Afghanistàn of the Talibàn, re-enter easily in such a complete subversion... “It is necessary that the scandal is, but troubles to those who make to happen the scandal”, says the Gospel, and by purpose this passage was quoted by Guénon … in Crisis. By the way, and this idea can perhaps surprise someone, Tibet was less important than Afghanistàn, as bonds with the Centre, because it was the land of important groups, among which the “famous”, if one may use this expression, Brotherhood Sarmoung, with which Gurdjieff asserts to have had contacts. This last point must make us to vanish our negative judgment on the same Gurdjieff, who had incontestably contacts with the Ahl-i-Haqq, the Yezidì and the Alî Elahî (an extremist Shiite group that deifies literally Alî Ibn Abû Tâlib, cousin of the Prophet and first Imâm of the Shiism). The Alî Elahî are also called “Alevi”, and carry the red turban in honour of the First Imâm. The Alevies deify the First Imâm, like the Christians 23
Christ. The Alevies are called in Syria Alawî, that is Alawites, that, according to some sources, are considered “crypto-Christians”, but in effect they are only extremist Shiites. During the Crusades, in that labyrinth of relationships between Crusaders and Assassins, these last were in part accepted as Christians, and then they returned to be Muslims again. They were considered in a “half-status” also in the opinion of some Crusaders themselves. In order to understand these labyrinths, it is necessary to understand how Shiism is. As Schuon stated, Shiism can be considered the entering of the Christian perspective in the Muslim perspective. The central problem of Shiism was always the problem of the relationship between the Imâm and the Prophet: where the Imâm is only partly beyond the limit of Sunnism, we have the Iranian and Lebanese Shiism, in their prekhomeinist forms (from Khomeinì it began the political drift and the ominous politicization); where the Imâm is pushed beyond the limits of Sunnism, even beyond Iranian Shiism itself, we have Fatimite Ismailism. Where the Imâm is clearly superior to the Prophet and quite eclipses the figure of the Prophet himself we have the Assassins of Syria, the Druses, and the Alawites. While the Alawites are extremist Shiites who deify Alî, the Yezidì, on the contrary, are extremist Sunnites. Now, apart the importance that these divisions can have inside the Muslim world, the true point of these sects is another very different issue: these sects conserved uses and doctrines that belonged to previous substrata: precisely to Zoroastrian and Zurvanite strata. This last stratum was in “magical” degenerescence and it came directly from the Babylonian age. Now, Gurdjieff was famous for his connections to such Babylonian substratum. The counter-initiatic possibility that is put into effect in such groupings is the use of “psychical residues” of real ancient traditional forms, but now in dissolution. The fact that Gurdjieff was in contact with the extensions of the Centre in Afghanistàn and, at the same time, he was part also of counter-initiatic groups is not contradictory, for who has tried to enter in contact with the Centre in the course of the history did not do this always for “good” reasons. Therefore to enter in contact with the Centre does not imply necessarily that he did not belong to the counter-initiation. And we also have to consider another point, very important: that just for these counter-initiatic contacts Gurdjieff fell in a serious crisis, and in order to exit from this crisis (if we read attentively the unsaid in the lines of Gurdjieff’s book Life is real only then when I am) he had to renounce to his powers and to leave the way of the powers (siddhis), way that Gurdjieff followed until then. After said this, the Gurdjieff’s issue has engaged us even too much, and what really matters to us is that there were, and still are, those people who entered in contact with the Supreme Centre for aims of (psychical) power, kind of power that in the Centre is especially contained. An excursus. Let’s return to the Afghanistàn issue: we cannot hesitate to say that the invasion of the Afghanistàn contributed much to the fall of USSR. The end of USSR, then, was an other sign of the next advent of the Antichrist that is the definitive end of “what withholds him”. In fact, for many Fathers of the Church, what did hold the 24
manifestation of the Antichrist was the Christianized Roman Empire. This last one in the West ended with the Treaty of Westphalia, and survived only very partly in the Habsburg Empire until its end decreed by Napoleon in the beginning of the XIX sec. Instead, after the fall of Constantinople in 1454, the translation of the imperial idea happened, and this idea passed into Russia. Now, when the revolutionaries of the 1917 pulled down the Republic that pulled down the czar, so to say they “cut the head” of the old Empire, and stuck over it in a rough bad way a very different head which had a very different nature. But they safeguarded the body of the Russian Empire, and, by the way, Stalin made it even bigger. With the 1991 it was definitively dismembered that body: here is the sign. Of course, from our point of view the Bolshevik doctrine is not at all acceptable, but: “After the Vaishya are now the Shûdra to aspire to the power: it is this, exactly, the first meaning of the Bolshevism” (Guénon: Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power, Rusconi 1972, p. 115). So the Western block defeated the Bolshevik block no more as “bourgeois”, Vaishya, but by the unchainment of the lowest passions of man, looking for the material success at all costs, that is the “doctrine” of the chandala, the under-caste. Indeed, the under caste is, following the Hindu Tradition, a son of a Shûdra and of a female daughter of a Brâhmana; so the under-caste joins the thirst for the material things only, typical of his father, with the intelligence of the mother. Said otherwise: his intelligence is totally enslaved to the matter. The under-caste is ingenious, but lacking in values. Look at the world today: it is the world of the search of material success at every cost, and this is no more “bourgeois”, because the bourgeois replaced the values of the honour of the warrior caste (Kshatriya) with the values of the material production, of progress and of the material success, but obtained following certain rules, reached within some sure values. And are precisely these last values that the whole world is seduced today in every aspect. But Guénon was right also on another argument: he thought that after the stage of the decadence of these values a successive stage would have been the stage of the false return to the Traditional values. Precisely what we saw starting form the 80’s of the last century! HE WAS COMPLETELY RIGHT, AND HE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO SAW THIS. All the other “weepers” of the “end of values” failed completely to understand this very fact. So they were wrong and Guénon was and still is right. This danger, more subtle and therefore much more dangerous of the plain and open fight, was called by Guénon “traditionalism”; he distinguished with much rigour and clear-cut words between the Tradition and the “traditionalism”. Therefore today the real danger comes not at all from the “modernist” but precisely from the “return to the values” and the “return to the identity”. Let’s not forget for a moment the great lessons of History, the great lesson given us from Protestantism, the “only religious creation of modernity” (Guénon). Protestantism did not claim that we should go into the “modern”, but that Protestantism was the “real” return to the “purity” of Sacred Writings (Sola Scriptura). In other words: it was the dream to return to the purity of the origins. The origins were surely purer of the more aged parts of the History of Christianism, but their return was extremely poor: their return was the return to a very aged idea of the origins themselves. The origins of Christianism were not at all so “simple” as the Protestants thought and still think. Into the Origins, as Guénon taught, 25
there are all the possibilities, both the ones that will develop and the ones that won’t ever develop. But they are contained “synthetically”, Guénon added. ... Let’s return to us. The last fragment of the Christianized Roman Empire, though become unrecognisable, however has been destroyed, and so the path for the total domination, therefore the way for the Reign, was definitively opened to the Antichrist. The Centre, then, does not take place in Tibet, and not even in Afghanistan. It is important to say clearly that the Centre is not bodily, even if IT has corporeal “moorings” that should correspond to a “place” on the earthly surface, the place where, to say it in language of the West Medieval age, the Priest John “resides”, Priest John called in Latin Presbyter Johannes. This place walked for all Central Asia, and then went even in the land correspondingly to present Ethiopia. We see, instead, what can be read into Marco Polo’s The Million, where the author reported some traditions that he listened but clearly did not understand, for Marco Polo thought that Priest John was a temporal sovereign not Christian but friend of the Christians, or that he was the Nestorian Ung Khan that Genghis Khan defeated. Well, Marco Polo said, without being aware of the contradiction to put in a desolate place a Prince that would have had lands and splendid “palagi”, that the lands of the Priest John are those of the river that he called, with Mongolian name, Caramoràn, that is the Black River, the Huang He (or Huang Ho, it is the same), the Chinese Yellow River (“yellow” because of the loess of the zone). The Huang He is born between the Tibet and the Chinese region of the West Sichuan. Then it goes to North, towards the Mongolia, turning finally to East into the Chinese plains. The river contributes to form a large bend around the region between China and Mongolia, region called the Ordos. Then it returns towards the South and takes the definitive road for the sea, after having gone through the immense and very populous Chinese plains. The Ordos region takes place in the so-called “Inner” Mongolia, that is part of today’s China, different from the “Exterior” Mongolia, that was also Chinese in the age of Qing [Ch’ing] Dynasty, but that today is independent for it was “Russian” Mongolia before the end of Russian Czarist Empire (the “Inner” is also called “Chinese” Mongolia). Beyond the northern part of the bend there is the Gobi, the smaller part in the Inner Mongolia, the bigger one in the Exterior Mongolia. Since Marco Polo … then does not talk about the source of the river, but of the zone … of the Ordos and beyond, that is the Gobi. The Gobi is an uninhabited place above 500m of altitude, with an impossible weather, characterized by furious and crazy winds, winds that the Mongolian stories want full of malicious “spirits”: the hordes of Gog and Magog. By the way, Marco Polo places not very distant from the Gobi the “Dry Tree” (in his Million he met two of them, in the Khorasàn and in the zone of the Ordos). The Presbyter Johannes is considered the one who owns the mastery on the hordes of Gog and Magog, as we can read in the Letter of the Priest John, that really was sent to the Emperor of Byzantium, to the pope of Rome, but also to Federico II of Swabia in Sicily. These last important individuals, especially the pope, tried to recolleague themselves with Him but the mission, that was really sent therein, never came back, 26
lost in what then was called “Iscurità” (“Darkeness”). If the Lord of the World owns mastership on Gog and Magog, He has a large power on the psychological and vital forces; how could it be astonishing in itself that lots tried to recolleague with Him, “with the Centre” (Guénon), precisely for such purposes? If, however, in Asia really the Centre has its “seat”, this is not corporeal, even if it has a corporeal anchorage in those mysterious towns that some legend says that exist in the Gobi. Of these mysterious “cities” speak the stories both Mongolian and of Islamic Chinese Türkistàn. What can be seen in the hidden sense of these stories is that in Asia, in the “East”, it can never be lacking the intellectual spiritual “elite”, in a way or in another. But I want to say that, even if it still exists, it can become incredibly hidden, however it cannot vanish, for metaphysical necessity. On the contrary, in fact, all connections between the reality of the Spirit and the bodily world would vanish. As consequence corporeal world would have to be of destroyed completely, entirely. If every recolleaguement to the Centre in the East disappeared totally we would not be at the conclusion of one cycle, but we would be at the conclusion of all the cycles, of every mankind. On the contrary we are at the end of one cycle and of one mankind. Therefore we can also speak of the reconnection of a cycle with the following and this speech has some sense to this point. So it exists Eastern spiritual elite until the conclusion of the cycle, inevitably, also in the most difficult conditions. Though I remark that Eastern elite is today very very closed and hidden. In other words it does not at all correspond to the “Eastern” and “Oriental” things that go on currently today. On the contrary, in the West the “cut” with the Centre happened, even if some much hidden rivulet still exists. In this precise point resides the difference between East and West on “the issue of the elite” as Guénon presented it. It is very important to point out the following issue. Even if there still exists a rivulet of the Tradition in the West the difference between East and West lies in this: in the West it happened a “break”, an “abruptness” between this rivulet and the religion of the majority. This did not happen at the same level in the East. Again this does not imply that religions in the East are completely in the control of the elite: it is the precise opposite that we see today. These speeches are so difficult, people interested in them so easily misunderstand and attribute to the others affirmations they did never do just for the peculiar incredibly imbecile way of thinking they have. They have their idea and they do not interest at all if things “match”, if affirmations can correspond to a certain reality. Reality must follow what they think, and not the opposite. They affirm they can walk but have no legs and have not the problem of legs. In other words: they dream. If there had been the elite in Guénon’s sense in the West the whole flow of modern world would have been different. But this never happened. The West must return to have its representatives in the Centre of the World, and that not only as “particularly elect” individualities, because this is not sufficient (there always was and still are the exceptions and the privileged individualities, but the exception confirms the rules). This as civilisations in other words. Western civilization must return to the Tradition. This is the “goal” of Guénon’s original “project”, let’s call it so in its etymological sense, pro-jectum, something put outside for the “benefit” of a certain purpose. The elite, in Guénon’s original sense, meant 27
that Western civilization stopped to be modern, even if this action the elite itself had to act in a hidden sense but with the help of Catholic Church. This help never came. So the “intellectual (=spiritual) elite” Guénon thought of had this aim. In the flowing of time not only in the West no elite in this sense, and notwithstanding some exceptional individuals, was not but also in the East spiritual decadence, especially but not only in Islamic world, grew much. The only difference is that in the East, even if religions are no more in complete control of the elite, no definitive break happened, while in the West it happened. This difference is not at all a question of greater “spiritual sensibility” – as Guénon said in his age and on this he was wrong but of the Presence in the East of the Supreme Centre. Nothing more nothing less than this. Having reached this point, three issues come under limelight. 1) How can Western spiritual elite reach more influence in the West … . 2) How can intellectual Western elite constitute in the West … . 3) The purposes of the construction of the elite links us immediately to the problem of the difference between the cyclic situation in which Guénon made the proposition of his projectum of the “intellectual elite” and the actual cyclic situation, the situation which we currently are. As I said many times, the real and true problem is the third one not because the other two problems are trifles, but because the third one is the intractable problem, the real stumbling-block, the rock, the quite unseen reef, where individual dowries, even special recolleaguements can nothing. There is, in other words, one truly damned (in all the senses...) difficulty on the third point. And it is that it exists both the opportunity and the true impasse, the true reef on the surface of the water, the perilous passage, the true Cape Horn. But let’s not run too fast. For now let’s go slowly dealing with the first two problems that, I repeat, are not so little things of small account. Moreover, an important warning: the three points will not be examined here as three separate points and subsequently ordered to the reader. Instead we will deal with them in the course of the writing itself. …
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N° 2 The general picture that Guénon will develop in The East and the West, in The Crisis of modern world, and in some passages in Considerations, was sketched from the beginning in the first book of Guénon: Introduction to the study of Hindu doctrines. And it is from there that we will start, always after having again emphasized that our situation is very much worse than the situation of Guénon’s time... Therefore some of the things said by Guénon at its age are clearly dated, but not the problem he saw. As I said many times, what really matters is the big picture. Indeed, it is the direction that counts, it is the spirit of the Work that really matters, a spirit today still alive and that they won’t succeed to capture. The religions are in a deep serious crisis, the Great Wall is has now holes in many points, and the Adversary invites to the “return to the spirituality”. Such an invite comes from the ones who would have always fought the spirituality! It becomes more and more difficult to separate the false from the truth because the false has “respectable” appearances ... The wicked jinn’s are in holiday... Even if Guénon’s individuality had his limits, this point takes a backseat if we have the clear mind to ponder attentively these phrases: “We enter in an age in which it will be particularly difficult ‘to distinguish the grain from the bad weed’, to go ahead with what the theologians call ‘the discrimination of the spirits’; because the disordinate manifestations will intensify and multiply, and also for the lack of true knowledge in those people, whose normal function would have been to guide the others, while today too many are often nothing else but ‘blind guides’. We will see then if in such conditions the dialectic sharpness is of some usefulness and if ‘philosophy’, even if the best possible, is enough in order to arrest the manifestation of the ‘infernal powers’” (Guénon: The Crisis …, cit., p. 160). Who reads those phrases must have very clear the knowledge of such a situation. Sure, one can also not want to see it, but what’s the use? What does this blindness incline, cause, and bear? On the contrary to see this point has a “cathartic” value, and kàtharsis is purificatio by means of the fire. The truth is that those Guénon’s words were written but it is as they were never said. However, the purificatio with pýr, the fire, has sense if and only if you know how to resist to the impact of the suggestions of the Adversary, to his descensive and depressive influence. A winning army from about nearly six hundred years has on its side the most important thing: the “aura” of invincibility. The battles are fought in the heart of the men like the first Kurukshetra, and it is precisely there that they are lost. The issue of the elite is not an issue that has no consequences. What can be only imagined by us would have happened in the world if the western elite had been indeed formed and made operating and would have operated indeed. The true key of the issue is in fully understand why the constitution of the elite was never made something of vital importance. The existence of the elite would have had incredible consequences that the one who watches from the outside these things can hardly perceive… . Indeed all metaphysical things are likewise and who watches them from the outside literally does not know what he believes are only words, does not comprehend the incredible consequences on all the levels 29
consequences that make the metaphysics the most serious thing that exists. In comparison with metaphysics the rest is indeed a poor thing. We say that not taking the resolution to constitute the Western elite , even if Guénon always said that it was only a possibility and not a necessity (that is to say that it was not obligatorily to happen) has had devastating consequences into the Traditional world and consequently onto and into the whole terrestrial globe. This also means that a small change in relation to this issue is potentially bearer of large consequences. We need to become acutely aware of this precise point; on the contrary it seems that we are dealing of a nonexistent issue, like the thread of a cobweb passing for the air. Let’s deal with the picture sketched in Guénon’s Introduction, picture that is always necessary to consider as the basic for the simple fact that every other development had its roots here. Another important point has been said, whose decisive importance has perhaps not been comprised, and it is a point that prevents the concept of an “Islamization” of the idea of Guénon’s elite… … because “in itself” everyone can think anything but those who attribute the “Islamization” to Guénon himself are in bad faith. For Guénon the “construction” of the elite must be Western, while in East there is a different case. The justifications that Guénon gave of such difference made some torrents of ink flowing on the Orient/Occident issue in the Work of Guénon. Guénon gave to the East an advanced role in comparison to the West, even Traditional Western (that is Medieval in his idea). On the contrary modern West was a different thing. … This does not mean that Guénon denied the Traditionality of Medieval Occident but he objectively overestimated the Traditional East and its civilizations. Anyway we must remember two things: 1) he himself was the first to return on such issue and “to readjust the shooting”, accepting that the East could waste itself with the only difference that the Supreme Centre was in the Orient from the beginning of KaliYuga, the Dark Age, till the end of our cycle; 2) the metaphysical necessity of this difference had not to be confused with a superiority of the historical East, even if there is a certain superiority that characterized it. It cannot be put on the same level a Dante with an associate to some Muslim brotherhood who only has begun virtual initiation or real initiation but on the lower levels. … However, it cannot be denied that in the work of Guénon, before the very opportune rectification he himself operated, two real errors can be found: 1) the error on Buddhism, 2) the overestimation of the historical Traditional East of the XX° century d.C., not of the metaphysical East and not even of the East as the “residence of the Supreme Centre from the beginning of the Kali-Yuga”. The first point, is something secondary: one banal lack of reliable information, as Coomaraswamy demonstrated to Guénon, with worthy traditional data, and Guénon rectified, as one can read in “On Buddhism”, in Introduction, where he wrote: “We take the opportunity in order to add that we are always disposed to recognize the traditional value of every doctrine, wherever it can be found, if we have sufficient proofs; but unfortunately, if the new informations we have obtained are entire favorable to the doctrine of Shâkya-Muni 30
(that it does not imply the same for all the Buddhist schools indifferently), it is very different for all the things we have denounced the anti-traditional character of” (Guénon: Introduction to the study of the Hindu Doctrines, Adelphi 1989, p. 140). It is a remarkable change … but it is a sign of the mental agility and of the objectivity of René Guénon … The change is meaningful, and the Buddha will figure like “the Avatar” par excellence in the final part of The Great Triad. … Though such an error is indeed little thing [id est: the under-estimation of Buddhism], and has been easily readjusted: I mean that it does not touch in some way the essential thing, because everyone can commit errors for lack of reliable information, as “omniscience” is not a human possibility. More seriously, on the contrary, as it touches more closer the very bases of the same Guénon’s Work in themselves, it was the over-appreciation and the over-estimation of the state of the historical traditional East, as it can be read in East and West, even if there Guénon rectified some of his affirmations in the Addiction of 1948. The Reign, on the contrary, starts from the point of view that also the traditional historical East can deviate, so not the symbolic East-Orient, even if the two do correspond. But in this last Work of his the second (symbolic) is not merely the first (the historical Orient): and it is a deep meaningful change. The key point is in correctly understand these two points: such an overappreciation touch the very bases of the Guénon’s speech; and, if so, then why Guénon operated such an over-appreciation? In fact such an overestimation is contrary to the other bases of his Work itself. Such an over appreciation touches the bases of the Work because one of the firmest positions of Guénon’s Work has always been to consider our age as the last part of the Kali-Yuga. Now, if it is true that the Centre must exists until the End of the Cycle (and, as I said it more times, we are entered into the sandhya between two cycles), and is equally true that from the beginning (at least) of the Kali-Yuga the Centre is in the East (Central Asia), nevertheless it is also true that this existence in Asia of the Centre itself cannot and could not prevent that even the historical Orient entered and it is now totally in the age of most serious darkening that we are living, even if with modalities different and less intense than those of the modern West. But to say that one has the fever to 38 while the other to 40 does not remove the fever to who has it to 38. So, as indeed a fever is there, then we cannot think that the historical East can in some way escape the fatum of the whole Earth. Thinking this would mean to assert that the historical East, as a human entirety, not like “islands” that remain here and there in immense perilous sea full load of jaws and monsters, a perilous sea in which there could be the Great Wave (like that of Hokusai’s in the half of XIX the century in Japan) of the Western invasion, the historical Orient – I meant – did and does not make part of the Kali-Yuga. On the contrary to the same premises of Guénon’s Work – that the whole world is into the end of Kali-Yuga -, the same Guénon too many times wrote affirmations that can make us resemble the “untouched and pure Orient”. ... It was a subjectivist element of illusion that characterized here Guénon’s Work … though an element that we must not overestimate for it does not touch the very bases of the Work itself. … Division between East and the West, according to Guénon, and as expressed in 31
“Introduction”, must be compared to the shunting line of a branch from a tree, for it is the West that started moving from the East, not vice versa. This phenomenon Guénon calls the “divergence”, than it is not still the shunting line, but it is the base without which the ollowing shunting line could not have been. After having to haclearly said that the historical traditional East is made up of several civilizations and races, while the West, plural in its composition, is composed by Greco-Roman, Germanic and Jewish (the Christianity) cultural currents, we must also underline that the West comes from even the composition of these races. So this is a difference in the beginning between West and East. On the other hand the West has stiff to amalgamate them in an unstable composition, and this is another fundamental point. Guénon adds, returning to outline the “divergence”, “than its main defect [of the outline], however unavoidable in every outline, it is to simplify things rather too much, because this represents the divergence as if it were increased in continuous way from the antiquity to the days of ours. In reality this divergence has been taken place in one moment and indeed, in less far ages, the West has newly received the direct influence of the East: we allude above all to the Alexandrine period, and also to that the Arabs gave to Europe in the Middle Ages, and of which a part belonged to them, while the rest reached from India (...). The divergence returned to emphasize itself in the Renaissance, where the cleanest breach with the previous age was produced, and in reality … in Renaissance was the end for many things … above all from the intellectual point of view” (Guénon: Introduction to …, Adelphi …, pp. 2526). Particular researches demonstrated that in the Renaissance, and with tails that will reach until the French Revolution, there were conserved elements of the previous age: but new dawn must not be taken for the Glory of the sunset ... The Reform gave birth to the Protestantism, according to Guénon the only religious produced of the modern spirit when it was still religious. This last point is fundamental for it demonstrates that between religion and modernity there is not an absolute incompatibility, as there is between the Tradition and modernity5. It was however with the French Revolution that, more than with the American Revolution, more moderate, it will inaugurate the precipitation of the modern times from the starting point of initiatic lvel onto the social-political level. All that would have been impossible without the modern science-technics, and without that this last one was applied to economy by the Industrial Revolution and its machinism. It was made more for the Industrial Revolution and its triumph, today concluded, applauded and stable, by the modern science-technics, that is the “Reign of the Quantity” as Guénon called it, than the applications of the industry made for the science-technics. … It’s the idolatry of science and the technics, the economy and the exchange, that I have always considered obscene. It’s the psychical cult of what Shrî Aurobindo called the “vital Barbarians” of the modern world. Barbarians because deprived of a clear light, of a traditional note, that may give order to their chaotic activities. But, The absolute, incredible, total incapability of undertsanding this very precise point makes the “traditionalists” failing in re-balancing the modern world (even to think this, though, was and still is too much for their feeble minds…), that these “integralists” are Islamic or Christian or Buddhist or Hindu or everything else. 32 5
differently from the old Barbarians, these last ones move on the vital plan, that is the plan of passions, of production, rather than only on the mere corporeal plan of the historical Barbarians … Guénon considered these last ones, the classical “Barbarians”, not at all as they were “nearer to the origin”, but only populations which one time had their own tradition, tradition that now they lost. The western world, in Guénon’s idea, went and goes more and more towards a renewed state of Barbary, but by means of the scientificeconomic activity and by means that it produces, not by means of the forfeiture. This last is the way commonly accepted to understand and conceive the degenerescence, rather on the model of the end of the Roman Empire, for giving an image impressed with the fire in the “social sub consciousness” of the West. This degeneration happening by an excess of activity rather than by classical “barbarism” is the shunting line of which it Guénon spoke, this active process of degenerescence, that he skillfully illustrated in The Reign of the Quantity and the Signs of the Times. This picture was in nuce already present in the Conclusion of Introduction, and developed partly in East and the West and Crisis. In reality, Guénon spoke of these arguments also in the books here quoted, but above all in The Reign. In this last work he said that, behind all this process of degeneration, there is the counter-initiation. Modern science is an ignoring knowledge (cfr. Guénon: East and West, Ediz. Traditional Studies Italy 1965, p. 51). The base of modern science is this: “the idea that exist pure ‘material’ things, conception exclusively proper to such mentality, does not correspond to anything else, (...) cleared up from all the secondary complications over placed above them by the particular theories of the physicists, but to the idea that there exist only corporeal beings and things, whose existence and whose constitution would not involve some element of other nature” (Guénon: The Reign of the Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Adelphi 1982, pp. 173-174). It is just this basic kernel of the modern science-technics, whose belief is simply this: “only that which is measurablewith my means is true, recognized as really existing; the rest for me does not exist”. If every thing is only body, if therefore only corporeal beings and things exist, ergo, says their belief, following again The Reign of the Quantity, every thing can be manipulated. Modern science potentially begins the reign of the absolute manipulability. The limit to the manipulability depends on the liability and the limits of the instruments themselves, that is to say by the means. Theoretically, basing on the premises of the same modern science-technics-economy, all is under potential manipulability. If this manipulabilty has to be arrested to the humans and to the living beings it must be only for lack of tools. But now these tools exist, and so all the speech about the “ethics”, the most fashionable word from the Eighties (’80’s) of the last century, vanish ... The “ethical” limits? They are exactly external to modern science. In fact the technical power deprived of compromises in order not to hit too much a society would have made the society to react very badly, even if this same society is accustomed to the superpower of the technical power itself … It is a compromise and an external limit, not ever a truly substantial limit. This mentality for which there exist “only corporeal” things is a “necessary condition because if it admitted that the things are in an other way, it would have meant to recognize that the true nature of its 33
object escapes to its comprehension” (ibid., p. 174). The quotations made hereon come from the CAP. XXVI of The Reign, entitled “Shamanism and witchcraft”. In such vision-of-the-world (Weltanschauung), Guénon wrote about the Shamanism, and, in order to speak of this ast, he had to examine the idea of the so-called “animism”, an idea frontally opposed to the idea that only corporeal things exist. According to Guénon, it would be better, by the point of view of the language, to assert that every object or living being has a psyche: there is a psychical aspect, of the beings and the world. If we want to use the term “animism” it would not be a problem, for to the Greek word psychè it corresponds the Latin term “anima”. The true problem is to understand the true meaning of the terms, and to speak of the “psychic character”, that is “animism”, practically refers to the existence, for every thing under Heaven, and for same astral skies, of a “subtle” aspect. A “conception of this kind is ‘primitive’, but that simply because it is true, which is quite exactly the opposite of what ‘evolutionists’ mean when they characterize this conception in such a way. At the same time, (...) this conception is a common necessity for all the traditional doctrines; we can say that it is ‘normal’, while the opposite idea, that is that of the ‘inanimate’ things (which found one of its extreme expressions in the Cartesian theory of the ‘animals-machine’), constitute a true anomaly (...). But it must be very clear that this is not at all a ‘personification’ of those natural forces that the physicists study in their way, and even less this means theirs ‘adoration’, as they think those people for which ‘animism’ constitutes what they believe they can call the ‘primitive religion’; truly this is a conception that only belongs to the domain of cosmology, conception anyway which can find its application in different traditional sciences. It is also axiomatic that when ‘psychic’ elements inherent to the things enter in argument, or forces that are expressed and manifested through them, we must always underline these forces have absolutely nothing of ‘spiritual’. Confusion in these two realm is also a characteristic of modern thought, and undoubtedly this confusion is not stranger than the idea to make a ‘religion’ of what is “science” in the most exact sense of the word. Notwithstanding their claim of ‘clear and distinctive ideas’ (direct inheritance even this of the mechanicism and of the ‘universal mathematicism’ of Cartesius), our contemporaries mix in the strangest way the most heterogeneous things and most essentially distinguished. What is important to us here to underline, is to point out as the ethnology usually considers ‘primitive’ forms what on the contrary are degenerated forms in a more or less variable proportion, even if, many times, they are not to such a low level as it would have been supposed following the ethnologists’ interpretations” (ibid., p. 176).
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N°6 In Introduction, in the “Conclusions”, Guénon returns to speak about the divergence between East and West. He said that the divergence, everything considered, began with Ancient Greece, and that, without divergence, then there would not have been the Western shunting line, but he said also that the divergence between East and Wets is not merely the shunting line itself (important point). In other words, Ancient Greece, even if being the starting pointed Western deviation itself, was not that same deviation and moreover still was a traditional civilization though in spiritual decadence from a certain moment of its history. The first task of the Western spiritual elite, according to Guénon, is therefore to sign an end or, said in better way, an “abruptness” to that same divergence, become, in the modern world, very very greater than in the so-called “classical” world (Greco-Roman civilization). The means to arrive at this goal are the “agreement on the Principles” (as he wrote in East and the West), where the Principles are rigorously the metaphysics. This last one is not merely religion, as it is asserted clearly in Introduction, and developed both in East and West and in Considerations. As a result of that, the mere return to the Christianity (conceived exoterically, cfr. East and West, cit., pp. 179-180) on one hand would meet with not easy difficulties and on another hand would not have been able to reach that agreement on the Principles that Guénon has always said to be the main goal. The true point, here, is to understand well what he meant when he spoke about “agreement on the Principles”. He wanted to say that the Western elite, definitively formed, would have placed itself on the metaphysical plan, therefore beyond the religious points of view. This is the most important point of the elite as seen and conceived by Guénon, usually not well understood completely in its implications: It is the very “core” and here lies the very root of the difficulties for the elite. It also contains “in nuce” the difficulty to find individuals with these exceptional qualifications necessary to even see this goal. Let us remember the two ways: The metaphysic way and the religious way, the first ending into the metaphysical realization, or realization of the Supreme Unity, or in whichever other way we can call it; the second way brings instead to the salvation, that is the stop of the “second death” in a post-mortem state, that it’s called “paradise” or dewachèn in another religious Kosmos. … Anyway, both ways are valid in themselves. But what really matters for our aim is to notice that, in order to form the elite, there is the fundamental need of individualities who are, from the beginning, capable of putting themselves on a relatively esoteric plan, even without arriving at the realization of the goals of the metaphysical way. We know, from Guénon, that the way of the Small Mysteries, in which the top of the Cosmic Mountain of the Purgatory (in order to say it with Dante) lies, is the Real Unity of the different Ways possible on this Earth. Well, these individualities must try to get nearer to this goal, to see it at least from afar but perceptibly, really, conretely. In other words, from the beginning they must see this Unity, even if they won’t really arrive at its realization in themselves. Only in such case, in fact, the understanding on the Principles Guénon spoke of could effectively be realized. … This vision, from the beginning on a relatively esoteric plan, the only 35
one on and in which it can be spoken about “agreement on the Principles”, remembers the Christianity of the origins as conceived by Guénon, and also some ideas in the Pauline Letters (always as interpreted from Guénon) as I had already noticed it … It is necessary that we reflect rather better on the issue of the “agreement on the Principles”. “When we speak about Principles in absolute way and without no other specification, or of pure intellectual truth, we always and exclusively refer to the sphere of the Universal … whose nature is beyond the individual and beyond the rational. Moreover it must be added that the intellectual intuition by means of which such acquaintance can be obtained, does not have absolutely nothing to share with the infra rational intuitions - which are of sentimental, instinctive, or pure sensitive order - (...). (...) it is necessary to distinguish the metaphysical conception of the truth from its formulation in which the discoursive reason can take part secondarily (of course if it receives a glare direction by the pure Intellect [the Buddhi]) in order to express it as concretely possible. Such truth immensely exceeds its [of the discoursive reason, that is dialectic] sphere and its capacity…” (East and West, cit., pp. 165-166). It’s just the universality of the metaphysics that concurs, even if very difficultly, to see the obstacles and the mass of errors and of “false departures” that have been accumulating in the course of the times on this issue… “It is in virtue of the same universality of the Principles that the agreement must be … realizable just in this field in the more immediate way... The truth is only One, and equally it imposes itself to all those who know it, at the clear condition, of course, that they effectively know it and with certainty… In this sphere … the differences always consist … in the more or less external expressions which are only a secondary adaptation, and not in the Principles, which are essentially ‘informal’” (ibid., p. 167). The nature of the metaphysics cannot be asserted more explicitly … If the elite has to follow the line of the agreement on the Principles, it must place itself necessarily on the metaphysical plan, “relatively informal”, in order intentionally to use the rather vague term of Guénon… On one side, therefore, it cannot be that the Western elite is Muslim or of other type, because in this case it would be situated on the religious plan, which Guénon refused as a base for the elite, seen the high task … that Guénon reserves to the elite itself. On the other side, I have emphasized the term “relatively ‘informal”, because necessarily the form needs its toll. And then, the only road is: That the elite admits different possible forms… without falling into the syncretism, and this can be if and only if the elite places itself onto the metaphysical plan. … The aim that Guénon suggested, then, was – and is - “understanding not fusion”, as expressed in East and West. … so it’s not that Western elite has to take a form the Orient for, in that case, it would not be any more the “Western elite”. As it has been said, the Alexandrine period, that by the way influenced a lot the rise of Christianity, was a crucial period of fusion that can be taken as model. But even the period of the origins of Christianism itself can have some parallelisms with the contruction of the elite. The “agreement on the Principles” is the datum metaphysicum. “Agreement not fusion”, instead, fore we do not deal with the formal aspect (in the sense of the 36
traditional forms) in this complex problem of the elite. In the “Conclusions” of his book Introduction, Guénon, after having said that the aim of the elite is that of making the divergence between traditional East and the West to be solved, Guénon spoke of the problem of the future development – from the point of view of his age! - of modern West. As something gets nearer to the quantity that something becomes more unstable; As a result, as more a development goes in the single material direction, as more it is unstable. (…) The noisy and chaotic tendency to assimilate all the globe to the modern West, the famous Westernization, has continued unabated up to now, even if it is unstable, lacking to modern Western and “Westernized” world “the ethnic-racial” sense of compactness of the Chinese (…). Therefore this development, though winning, is “one sided” and superficial, as today many can recognize, noticing that under the varnish of the westernization there remain background stable thought and behaviours (…).Guénon added this consequence from the preceeding observations: It would have been impossible for this world to continue for still too much time on this road. And the Time of the End of this development is near. It’s a reasoning developed in Crisis with more particulars and references. In Crisis, Guénon leaves to the imagination of everyone as it will happen the stop of the run driven crazy run of the “chaotic development” of the modern world. As he said: If it does not happen for an inner collapse of the West, it can happen for an invasion of Westernized East (in Crisis Guénon began to change the picture of the East immune from modernity, for his book East and West preceded Crisis), or for a cataclysm or a series of cataclysms due to Nature. In any case, the development will stop subitaneously for an upsetting (upsetting is the literal translation of the Greek catastrophe). (…) The point which changed in relation to many positions of the “guénonists” is that the so-called “integralism” is a form of modernism, and so, it enters in the possibility of destruction of the Western world acted by the Westernized East. Apart the insufficiencies contained in Guénon’s East and West, [Summarization of the remaining part] Guénon changed his views in the last books of his. He analyzed the pictures and made the final choice for the last one, toward catastrophe, leaving aside the other two pictures, the first being the one in which the elite acted in the sense of remaking Western civilization traditional, and the second is the intervention of the **traditional** East, **not** of the Westernized East, though “integralist” we may think it. This for integrism is a modern phenomenon. The reaction that should have been happened from the inside of the West could not change the fatal route, because of the mediocrity of the same reaction. The route has benne definitively chosen, and with accelerated velocity; All the signs say that we entered into the sandhya and that the Reign of the Antichrist is ad portas. The main sign is the degenerated end of the last small remnant of the Christianized Roman Empire, Bolshevik Russia. In “The Reign” Guénon decidedly and definitively decided for the third picture. Have 37
we understood well? Guénon spoke, and clearly. Guénon presupposed a strong reaction strong enough to provoke the abandonment of the European civilization, today world-wide, inoculate like a pathogenic virus to the entire globe. But today, in the conditions which we are in, this can be practically provoked only by a catastrophic cataclysm or by series of small kataklìsmata. One or many – in our point of view – has not great importance, it’s the basic poiunt that matters, the basic concept. In fact, Guénon said that we are in the end of the Kali-Yuga and that, after, there would have been a new humanity of a new a great Cycle, which is the Manvântara, which is the semi period of precession of the equinoxes whose fifth part corresponds to the semi period, is of 12.960 “years”. In this picture, what may it be the role of the elite, if there is one? Of course no more the “rectification” of the Western civilization, and neither being the mere help for the Eastern elite to make Western civilization to return to the Right Path.
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N°7 An excursus... [not reported] In order to return to the problem of the elite, we start from Guénon’s article about Joseph de Maistre: “Without doubt the Masonry of the end of XVIII the century [ the age of de Maistre] didn’t possessed any more what was necessary for this ‘Great Work’ [Magnum Opus], and however, some conditions demanded by it probably escaped to the same Joseph de Maistre’s understanding; But this necessarily does not mean that such a work cannot be resumed, under a form or an other [the elite ones!], by some organization having an authentically initiatic character [not Masonry, because the Masonry is only virtually initiatic] and in possession of the ‘thread of Ariadna’ that may allow it to see within the maze of the innumerable forms under which the only Tradition is hidden, in order to find again finally the ‘Lost’ Word and to let ‘the Light get out from the Darkness’, ‘the Order from the Chaos’” (“Joseph de Maistre and the Masonry”, in Guénon: Studies on Masonry and Compagnonage, Arktos 1991, vol. I, pp. 21-22). It’s a passage of great importance. Apart the limits of Masonry, parallel to those of Catholicism, this passage makes us understand what must we have to think of the elite to be “authentical”, not only virtual: So, the aim of the elite is to complete a form of “Great Work” (with consequences and effects in and on the exoteric and social field). Elite then must possess the “thread of Ariadna”, which will concur to find the Centre of all the traditional forms, recognized under and over the differences of form. At the Centre of the picture there is the Lost Word, and therefore the task of the elite is to find It again. This Lost Word is the Grail, for Guénon, in his articles about Lost Word, said that the Lost Word and the Grail are the same. I invite to reread the writings of Guénon about the Order from the Chaos and the Light from the Darknesses, using of as clavis the fact that the Grail and The Lost Word are the same. But this must be seen in the third picture, that if the Final Days and of the End Times. This is a real key, for, lacking this point of view, all has no sense, for it would maintain a no-more existing pictures. Guénon, in the quoted article, continues: “We do not want minimally to anticipate the future, but sure signs allow to think, in spite of the unfavorable appearances of the world put into effect them, than this work is not perhaps an impossible task at all. We will conclude quoting a rather prophetic phrase of the same Joseph de Maistre: ‘It is necessary to be ready for an immense event in the divine order, towards which we march to an accelerated speed (…). Frightening Oracle announces that the times are arrived’” (ibid., underline of Guénon). Other key: it is spoken about the end of the times, for this citation of Joseph de Maistre finds just to the end of The Lord of the World, published in 1927 in France, two years after the quoted article; the first edition of The Lord of the World appeared in Italy, on the Italian magazine “Atanòr”, of December 1924, therefore before the article quoted here, and in that version, if I am not wrong, it is not cited to the end Joseph de Maistre like in the definitive version of 1927. This article, therefore, had influence on The Lord of the World ... 39
Indeed the most important point of the passage quoted here on, is the following: The issue of the elite is connected, incontestably, with the last times. There is therefore a tie between elite and the eschatological events. This is the Great Key, the Silver Key which may close the Door of Hell which is near us.
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N°8 An excursus... [not reported] There is a decisive point. The Parusia breaks the picture we inherited from the Kali Yuga. There is therefore an eschatological role of the elite ones, connected (the role) to the Great Work, and the Graal.
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N°10 Another important point: Guénon spoke openly about the fate of all mankind, no more of the West only! Moreover: The elite can have a role in the phase of Passage between the Ages, what Guénon called “The Passage of the Waters” between two Cycles. This is very, very important. about the cataclysm and its origins Guénon spoke of the metallurgy, for they will open the cracks in the Great Wall, and those forces he also called the “Hordes of Gog and Magog”, that Robin connected then, and rightly, with the so-called “UFOs”, a phenomenon known from many centuries but wrongly, completely wrongly interpreted in modern times. So the elite has the role in the rescue and defense against the Reign of the Antichrist. In the final part of Crisis, Guénon alludes to our age, that is the one immediately previous to the Reign of the Great Parody. “It is even probable that we are not much far from the age which this prediction of the Gospel refers to, prediction we have already remembered elsewhere: ‘There will rise false Christs and false prophets that will make great miracles and wonders to seduce, if it were possible, even the very elects’” (ibid., p. 159). It is our age. And therefore it continues, commenting the word of the Gospel: “They are the ‘elects’, as the word indicates, those who are part of the elite in the completeness of its true sense: For this reason (…) we have used the word in spite of the abuse that of it the ‘profane’ world makes. (…) We enter into an age in which it will be particularly difficult ‘to distinguish the grain from bad grass’, to really carry out what the theologians call ‘the discrimination of spirits’ [these words are of 1927, let us not forget it]; That, for the disordered manifestations that will intensify and multiply, and also for the defect of true knowledge in those people, the normal function of whom would have been to guide the others, while today they are often too many times ‘blind guides’. We will see then if, in such conditions, the dialectic refinement will be of some usefulness, and if a ‘philosophy’, even if the best possible one, will be sufficient in order to arrest the unchainment of the ‘infernal powers’” (ibid., pp. 159-160). We have seen, then, that the function of the elite can find again a place, but in really different direction, and that this different function has been discreetly asserted and exposed by Guénon. Before examining the remained problem (…), we quote last part of the Crisis. “Those people who will succeed to overcome all these obstacles [that Guénon has roughly summarized before] and to prevail of the hostility of an atmosphere opposite to all spirituality will be without doubt few ones. But, once again, it is not the number that really matters here, since we are in a field whose laws are very different from those of the material world. Therefore there is no reason to be without hope. And even if we won’t have any hope to achieve concrete results before the modern world falls, this would not be a reason in order not to begin a work whose real reason goes far beyond our age” (ibid., pp. 160-161). Here he repeated his basic concept: Probably the Western elite would not have succeeded in the aim of having sensitive results before the precipitation (as it has been). But the work of the elite would have gone beyond the age. Read among the lines: The role of elite is in connecting this Ending Cycle with the one which has to 42
come (if we are in the sandhya, there is still a time interstice before the precipitation). Then he continued, making resound a phrase (of Rosicrucian origin) that from much, much time in the West was not heard. “Those who would be tempted to feel the lack of courage [facing such terrible knots, my observation] must think that nothing of what is completed in this order can be lost; That the disorder and the error can only prevail in appearance and in a momentary way only; That all the partial and transitory imbalances must necessarily concur to the constitution of the great Total Balance and that nothing will be able to prevail in definitive way against the power of the truth. Their uniform must be the one adopted in other times by some initiatic organizations of the West: Vincit omnia Veritas” (ibid., p. 161). Vincit omnia Veritas.
Firfis Conan (Philosophiæ Barbarus) 2000-2001 A.D. Corrections of Italian original version: April 2004 Translation: 24 ... 2005 - A. D.
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Posts from Internet community “The Diogenes Club_ René Guénon”, Founded by myself (Posts of October 2005 A. D.)
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Yes, Aghà Khans were supporters of British Empire - and by the way ... supporters of the game Polo among the nobles of the Empire... and even diamonds for the Indian community principally lived by diamond commerce. It’s not a surprise, for they are descendants of Hassàn al-Sabbah (Hasàn-i Sabbah, in Persian), even if in a disputed way ... In fact there are also the descendants of the famous “Shaykh al-Jabal”, descendant of Hasàn-i Sabbah from ‘Alamùt, in the Elburz (“Alborj”, analogue to the “Meru” of Hindus) over Teheràn of today (by the way even Khomeinì - even if absolutely against him as theorical positions - admired him and inspired to him, and also the false prophet of the false “holy” war, “Been Laid-in”, as I call him...). Descendants of the “Shaykh al-Jabal”, in Syria, do not correspond plainly to the descendants of Hasàn-i Sabbah of ‘Alamùt. There had been problems among them for “descendance”... No surprise: it’s typical historical that the ones who started criticizing the fact that Muhammad al-Mahdî must not necessarily “descendant for the flesh” then deviated for a problem of corporeal descendance, following the ”flesh”...! Two observations. Even for Corbin the valid part of Ismailism went into Sufism, and influenced strongly Ibn ‘Arabî, as we see. Second observation. “The initiatic chain ‘singularly deviated’ among Ishmaelites”, as Guénon would’ve said. For the problem of al-Mahdî I will say something about it in the following post. Fundador
So let’s retake back the “sutra” of our speech - ‘sutra’ in its literal meaning, of course... The Two conceptions of al-Mahdî. Precisation. The Twelfth Imamite Shi’a affirms that Muhammad al-Mahdî must necessarily come from the Prophet Family. Therefore Muhammad al-Mahdî is never died. There is the “Minor Occultation” and the “Major Occultation” started in IXth century after Christ’s birth. Practically, in certain path of Shi’ism, today not vital, al-Mahdî acts like the al-Khidr in Sufism, the same way exactly. For the Twelfth Imâm is the “never died”... But let’s arrive at the pint of the two conceptions. We must return to the picture sketched above. First conception. The first conception - spread into both Shi’a and Sunnah - affirms that al-Mahdî will be a “Saviour with the Sword” who will defeat the “kafirùn” and impose practically Islamic 46
Law to the whole world. The whole world will be Islamic, told in other words. Jesus? Jesus will be Islamic. Stop the question. This conception is very alive even among the Sufi orders of today. I asked to an authoritative source and more or less he told me this. The order which is the nearer to this topic is the Naqshbandi order. If you make a search you’ll discover that it exists a Temple common to Hindus, to Buddhists and to Islamists. It is Kataragama in Shri Lanka. The reason for this particular “universalism” is due to the fact that in Sri Lanka or Ceylon (Serendip from which “serendipity”) there exists the Adam’s Peak, sacred to Buddhists, Islamists and Christians, for these last is Saint Thomas’s Place6. In this the Master of Naqshbandi order speaks about al-Mahdî and of the Anti-Christ. Many and many things he says are very right and I do agree with him in many many points, but one point I don’t agree. He depicts al-Mahdî as a man of enormous power who will bring Sharî’ah to dominate the whole world. And this is the faith of many. He weakens and deepens this argument when he says that real Moslems do not need bombs or guns and so we have a real clear-cut sharp sword capable of individuating real and false Moslems: the ones who bring arms are wrong, for they have the “fitna” in their hearts. He also says interesting things. For example he says that Muhammad al-Mahdî won’t be killed by missiles or bombs, for every missile has one jinn controlling it. So if you have magic powers upon subtle creations you can directly control the subtle part of the material part everyone can see and so control this last one. More or less what Solomon did. But the point is that al-Mahdî more or less will make Islamism dominate the whole world, in a very different way from the ways Khomeinì - by revolution in full “Bolshevik style” - or Mr. “Been Laid-in” - in full “anarcho-nihilist style” - wanted. BUT THE AIM DOES NOT CHANGE. The other conception of the al-Mahdî changes this very point. It changes the aim. Fundador P.S. Another interesting link is as follows: http://kataragama.org/news/gaffar-interview.htm.
Second conception of al-Mahdî. A precisation. Even the Naqshband shaykh speaks 6
Well, I can give you the link: http://kataragama.org/al-mahdi.htm. 47
about “Jesus at the Second Come” - or the Tenth of “Dasavatâras” (Kalki) in Hindu language - but in this case there’s no problem for the specifically spiritual role attributed to them. No, the problem is - and remains - al-Mahdî, precisely for His role so-to-say is “half spiritual - half material (=social)”. These two halves are a problem... So let’s return to the second Conception. This says a very different thing: the Coming of al-Mahdî is the al-Qiyâmah, the Resurrection and the end of the slavery to the Law that does not necessarily mean that Law won’t be but that Law will be underput the domination of a superior aim. This last point is unacceptable to modern and ancient ‘ulamà. The key of this point is in Ibn ‘Arabî’s “Fuçûç”, chapt. “Seth”, when “Shaykh al-Akbar” wrote that Jesus Second Coming will be the “Seal” of Abrahamic ways. And the other ones? Al-Mahdî will be the “Seal” of Prophecy from the beginning (theory made by Shaykh to reconcile the former Shi’ite, especially Ishmaelite, thought of Islâm as a seal and so the seal of all the ways and the Christian doctrines accepted into Islamism, especially Sunni). In fact al-Mahdî will be the “Seal” of ALL ANBIYA’, that they come from the spiritual “Abraham’s Seed” or not. The Seed of Abraham - it’s not at all a chance... - is that of Rùsul. But “anbiyâ” existed from the beginning of human Cycle itself, independent of Sacred Law. Abd they too demand to be synthesized (or “sealed” in ancient language). For the law of compensation (“yin-yang” phenomenon) the One who will seal the Abramic paths will be spiritual. On the contrary He who will seal the non-Abramic paths will have a mixed spiritual-social function. In other words: Jesus Second Coming acts as the last of Rùsul, while the Mahdî acts as the last of Prophet. Prophet in the sense of “nabî”! Please understand well! For the particular conditions of the last part of the last age (Kali-Yuga), of the “phase of passage” (“sandhya”) between two Cycles, the last of Rùsul will act as the last of Saints while the last of Prophet will act as the last of Rùsul. I called this phenomenon - unique of the last part of the last Cycle (Kali-Yuga) in a certain way in one writing of mine in Italian language. But I could write volumes upon this very point. No matter, what matters is to understand this “compensative phenomena”. So, to sum-up, the Mahdî won’t be a mere “Great Warrior” - even if this side will be for 48
Kataragama is the shrine to Skanda, the “General of gods” in Hindu mythology. This is the second Conception. He will also re-interpret the Sharî’ah itself. He won’t be one who merely repeats and accept what the historical development made grow. He won’t accept to stay under the guidance of ‘ulamâ or even Sufi orders. Perhaps a part of these last will accept but do you really think that the first ones will accept...?! I’m laughing under moustache... No church ever accepted an authority superior to itself but purely and merely theorically speaking. So will they accept? ... They can only accept a kind of “super-man”, gifted by enormous psychic powers, capable to dominate jinn like Solomon did. I don’t deny at all this point. I only say that what they are waiting for is a partial representation, unaware of the truly spiritual aim of the whole thing: Qiyâmah. And Qiyâmah - that they like it or not - goes beyond Law (Sharî’ah). For He must have even a social function, it’s on the other hand necessary that Sharî’ah won’t be merely abolished, moreover re-interpreted. But from what spiritual level must it be re-interpreted? This is the key point. If one understands this point immediately sees that Mahdî cannot accept the guidance of ‘ulamà but act starting from a deep inspiration that arrives to Him by God Himself. There’s no other interpretation possible. And this inner inspiration can even change the letter of things. And this point will make Islamic world explode in anger. They are like the Hebrews in Jesus’ times: they look for someone who will never come in the way they think. They are like the once who wait for the Third Temple to be re-constructed as a copy of the Second. The Anti-Christ is not an “archaeologist”! The real problem is the meanings of things not their form. But the ones who are completely dominated by the form cannot see beyond it... Unfortunately in this way they lose the meaning... The Way is like a nut. You must break it to eat. 49
If you won’t break it you won’t eat it... Fundador
About the powers of al-Mahdî. I don’t deny them. I repeat: I don’t deny them. They seem “impossible” to modern mind, but they definitively are not impossible at all. Even a theorical study of the complex and contradictory - surely dangerous - universe of “Magic” lato sensu conceived, will demonster you - “beyond every possible doubt” as they say in tribunals... to be ironic against the “fix for law” of Islamic world ... - that all this is possible. It does exist a “subtle” side - “animic” in Guénon’s Work’s words - in everything under Heaven. To master it means to master even the corporeal side of things. Of course: it’s not easy at all!!! The Koranic texts affirms that only to Solomon God Himself gave “a ‘Reign’ no-one ever will have”. Ibn ‘Arabî interpretated this as follows: “God gave Solomon the ‘subtle regions’ of aljinn in the complete extension of it, it does not at all mean that God gave only to Solomon the ‘capacity’ to dominate jinn”. And he added - in Fuçùç, chpt. dedicated to Solomon - that even Muhammad had the domination of certain kinds of jinn, the extension of the dominance being given to Solomon and not at all the capacity in itself. And so there is no problem to admit that al-Mahdî will own capacity to dominate kinds of jinn specifically for the war reasons. He will have the possibility and capability to dominate the jinn that rule missiles, Atomic bombs (similar to a certain kind of half-jinn of Gog and Magog hordes), and so on. Fundador
By the way, if we think that Mahdî is similar in certain things to Gesar of Ling of Tibetan legends and epic, it must be that He must be gifted by a certain kind of “psychic power”, but absolutely dominated by the Spirit. This last point is fundamental. Two last observation, to end on this very very important argument, on which there should be very much to be said, but the point is to understand its basic. 1. Even Gesar has a knowledge, a sacred knowledge: he’s not a mere executor of Lamaism. He’s - as everyone who knows these things can easily argue - very very akin to the socalled “ancient” Tibetan tradition (the so-called “Red Hats” to be understood, the “ones 50
of ‘Padmasâmbhava’s’ dispensation”). The “Gesar’s Epic Deeds” are the Padmasàmbhava’s epic. The same name of “Gesar” as an Italian orientalist demonstered (Mario Bussagli) is neither than a corruption of “Kesar”, Cesar in english, as proniunced in ancient, where “c” was always “k”, as it’s remained in Celtic language (“Celtic” pronounced “Seltik” in moderen english but in truly british pronunciation it should be “Keltik”, with the “Celtism” of “c” being “k”, a linguistic “archaism”, as they say today). Again: the bond Iranian tradition > old Aryan > Roman tradition. Again the bond with the “non-Abrahamic” traditional forms. 2. Last but first, this “Mahdî’s metaphysical-eschatological problem” immediately remembers what Robin should have said. He said that - if a possibility of solution would not have found by the means and in the terms of traditional forms of the last part of Kali-Yuga - then this “double Coming”, “will break the ‘traditional’ picture” we inherited from recent past. Fundador
If these are the two conceptions, why not the first conception? Why it is more “believable” the second one? For this is the very point underlying the whole problem. Well, the main basic problem can be expressed as follows: if whole mankind must be “salvated” as mankind is now (important precisation), then there must be a form “for all and everyone”. Consequently the Sharî’ah must be “extended” to the whole world for the easy and very fact that no other traditional form owns such a complicated system of ”legal” form as Islamism has, and for whole mankind not for a specific Ethnic group, as it is for Jews. The Islamists all say and re-say this point and underline it in very sauces possible, being well aware of the “point of force” they own. But, thinking like this, we unfortunately forget a small “wee bit” void-of-consequences little “nothingness”... In fact, did Guénon say that before the “end” - in whatever way we can choose to imagine it (in whatever...) - there must come before the “Final Judgment”. Even Naqshbandi shaykh agrees with this. The key-word is: that “before”... So something” - and “someone” - must intervene to act the “separation of sheep and goats”, in Biblical words. 51
Someone... And that’s Mahdî. Now, how this separation must happen? This is the key-question. On one side from the Anti-Christ. First point: do the ones who won’t accept him make their non-acceptance basing on a “confessional” point? In other words: only the member of a specific confession refuse the Anti-Christ? Highly improbable. Let’s imagine for a moment this separation that happens “at last”, so-to-say. Will the criterion of this phenomenon happen basing on a confessional truth or basing on something else? Basing on something else. Therefore the affirmation of a specific faith cannot operate the “Final Separation”, that we like it or not. Consequently only the outer expression of data considered today “esoteric” will be able to make this separation to happen. This does not necessarily mean that Islamism won’t be a sort of “Ark”, but absolutely not as Islamism is today. And that’s the very point that separates the two versions, the two conceptions. Fundador
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