Post by giovanni on Nov 6, 2006 18:44:46 GMT
MAGIC AND MYSTICISM
Bro. René Guénon
The confusion of initiation with mysticism is largely due to those who for whatever reasons wish to deny expressly the reality of initiation by reducing it to something else; on the other hand, in such circles as those of the occultists, replete with all their unwarranted initiatic pretensions, there is a tendency to include as integral aspects, if not as essential elements, of the initiatic domain numerous things altogether foreign to it, among which magic is often the most prominent. The factors behind this error also explain why magic presents especially grave dangers for modern Westerners, the chief one being the tendency to attribute excessive importance to ‘phenomena’, to which their development of the experimental sciences bears witness. If they are so easily seduced by magic and entertain such illusions as to its real import, this is because it is indeed also an experimental science, although certainly quite different from those the academic world designates by this term. We must not deceive ourselves on this point: this is an order of things that contains absolutely nothing ‘transcendent’; if such a science, like every other science, can be legitimized by its connection with those higher principles upon which everything depends, in accordance with the general conception of the traditional sciences, it can still only be situated in the last rank of secondary and contingent applications, among those furthest from these principles, which therefore must be regarded as the most inferior of all. This is how magic is considered in all the civilizations of the East, and although it cannot be denied that magic exists there, it is far from being held in esteem as Westerners very often imagine because they are too easily disposed to project onto others their own tendencies and ideas.
Even in Tibet, as well as in India and China, where the practice of magic is something of a ‘specialty’, it is left to those incapable of rising to anything higher. This of course does not imply that others cannot in exceptional circumstances and for limited purposes also occasionally produce phenomena outwardly similar to those of magic, but the objective and even the means employed are really altogether different. Besides, confining ourselves to what is known of these things in the West, we need only consider the stories surrounding both saints and sorcerers to see how similar are the facts in both cases; and this shows quite clearly, contrary to the belief of the modern ‘man of science’, that phenomena of whatever kind can never prove anything in themselves.(1)
Now it is obvious that illusions about the value and importance of these things considerably augment their danger, and what is particularly problematic for those Westerners who ‘dabble in magic’ is their complete ignorance, unavoidable in the current state of affairs and in the absence of any traditional teaching, of what is involved in such matters. Even leaving aside both the many mountebanks and charlatans who in short do nothing but exploit the credulous, and the simple-minded fantasists who would improvise a ‘science’ of their own design, those who would seriously study these phenomena lack both the necessary data to guide them and an organization to support and protect them and are thus reduced to a sort of crude empiricism, reminding one of children who, left to themselves, want to handle redoubtable forces without knowing anything about them; and if deplorable accidents too often result from such imprudence we should not be unduly surprised.
Speaking of accidents, we especially want to point out the risks of mental imbalance to which those who act in this way are exposed, such disequilibrium being an all too frequent consequence of communication with what some call the ‘vital plane’, which is nothing other than the domain of subtle manifestation envisaged particularly in those modalities nearest to the corporeal order and so most easily accessible to the average man. The explanation is simple enough, for it is exclusively a matter of the development of certain individual possibilities,, often of a rather inferior order; and if this development proceeds in an abnormal, that is, disordered and inharmonious way that precludes the development of higher possibilities, it is natural and even inevitable that such a result should follow, not to mention the reactions - in no way negligible and sometimes even terrible - of all types of forces with which the individual unthinkingly puts himself in contact. We say ‘forces’ with no inclination to be more specific because the matter is of little importance to our present concerns; vague as it is, we prefer this word to ‘entities’, which, at least for those not sufficiently accustomed to certain symbolic ways of speaking, has the risk of too easily evoking more or less fantastical ‘personifications’. As we have often had occasion to explain, this ‘intermediary world’ is much more complex and extensive than the corporeal world; still, the study of both worlds comes within the purview of the ‘natural sciences’ in the truest sense of the term, and to see in the former anything more is, we repeat, to delude oneself in a most peculiar way. There is absolutely nothing in this intermediary world that belongs to the ‘initiatic’ any more than to the ‘religious’ domain; indeed, we find herein many more obstacles than supports to reaching a genuinely transcendent knowledge, a knowledge completely different from that of the contingent sciences, a knowledge which contains no trace of any ‘phenomenalism’, depending only on pure intellectual intuition, which alone is pure spirituality.
After applying themselves for a considerable time to the search for extraordinary phenomena, or what passes for such, some people for various reasons eventually tire of it all or become disappointed by insignificant results that fall short of their hopes. It is worth noting that often these same people then turn to mysticism,(2) for astonishing as it may seem at first glance, this latter still satisfies similar needs and aspirations, although under another form. Certainly, we are far from denying that mysticism in itself may have a character much more elevated than magic; nonetheless, if we look more deeply, we soon realize that at least from a certain point of view the difference is not as great as one might imagine, for here again it is in fact only a matter of ‘phenomena’, visions, or the other tangible and sentimental manifestations that characterize the domain of individual possibilities alone.(3) In mysticism, then, illusion and disequilibrium are far from being left behind, and although they may manifest themselves here in unaccustomed forms they are no less dangerous and are even aggravated in a sense by the passive attitude of the mystic who, as stated before, leaves the door open to every influence that may present itself, whereas the magician is granted at least a measure of protection by the active attitude he attempts to maintain with respect to these same influences, which certainly does not mean, however, that in the end he is not often overwhelmed by them. Moreover, it is also true that the mystic is almost always too easily the dupe of his own imagination, the productions of which, without his suspecting it, become almost inextricably mixed with his genuine ‘experiences’. For this reason we must not exaggerate the importance of the ‘revelations’ of the mystics, or at least we should never accept them without verification.(4) The interest of certain visions consists only in their many points of agreement with traditional information clearly unknown to the mystic concerned;(5) but it would be a mistake, and even a reversal of normal relationships, to wish to find in this a ‘confirmation’ of this traditional information, which in no way requires it and which is on the contrary the only guarantee that the visions in question are something more than the mere product of individual imagination or fantasy.
1 Cf. Reign of Quantity, chap. 39
2 It also sometimes happens that others, after having truly entered into the initiatic way, and not just into the illusions of the pseudo-initiation about which we have been speaking, abandon that way for mysticism; the motives are then naturally quite different and mainly of a sentimental order, but whatever they may be we must see above all in such cases the consequence of some defect in initiatic qualifications, at least as concerns the aptitude to realize effective initiation; as a typical example one could cite Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.
3 Naturally, this is not to say that the phenomena in question pertain solely to the psychological order, as certain moderns claim.
4 This attitude of prudent caution, necessitated by the natural tendency of mystics to ‘divagation' in the proper sense of the word, is in any case the one that Catholicism invariably observes with respect to them.
5 The visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich can be cited here as an example. [See The King of the World, chap. 8, n12, ED]
Bro. René Guénon
The confusion of initiation with mysticism is largely due to those who for whatever reasons wish to deny expressly the reality of initiation by reducing it to something else; on the other hand, in such circles as those of the occultists, replete with all their unwarranted initiatic pretensions, there is a tendency to include as integral aspects, if not as essential elements, of the initiatic domain numerous things altogether foreign to it, among which magic is often the most prominent. The factors behind this error also explain why magic presents especially grave dangers for modern Westerners, the chief one being the tendency to attribute excessive importance to ‘phenomena’, to which their development of the experimental sciences bears witness. If they are so easily seduced by magic and entertain such illusions as to its real import, this is because it is indeed also an experimental science, although certainly quite different from those the academic world designates by this term. We must not deceive ourselves on this point: this is an order of things that contains absolutely nothing ‘transcendent’; if such a science, like every other science, can be legitimized by its connection with those higher principles upon which everything depends, in accordance with the general conception of the traditional sciences, it can still only be situated in the last rank of secondary and contingent applications, among those furthest from these principles, which therefore must be regarded as the most inferior of all. This is how magic is considered in all the civilizations of the East, and although it cannot be denied that magic exists there, it is far from being held in esteem as Westerners very often imagine because they are too easily disposed to project onto others their own tendencies and ideas.
Even in Tibet, as well as in India and China, where the practice of magic is something of a ‘specialty’, it is left to those incapable of rising to anything higher. This of course does not imply that others cannot in exceptional circumstances and for limited purposes also occasionally produce phenomena outwardly similar to those of magic, but the objective and even the means employed are really altogether different. Besides, confining ourselves to what is known of these things in the West, we need only consider the stories surrounding both saints and sorcerers to see how similar are the facts in both cases; and this shows quite clearly, contrary to the belief of the modern ‘man of science’, that phenomena of whatever kind can never prove anything in themselves.(1)
Now it is obvious that illusions about the value and importance of these things considerably augment their danger, and what is particularly problematic for those Westerners who ‘dabble in magic’ is their complete ignorance, unavoidable in the current state of affairs and in the absence of any traditional teaching, of what is involved in such matters. Even leaving aside both the many mountebanks and charlatans who in short do nothing but exploit the credulous, and the simple-minded fantasists who would improvise a ‘science’ of their own design, those who would seriously study these phenomena lack both the necessary data to guide them and an organization to support and protect them and are thus reduced to a sort of crude empiricism, reminding one of children who, left to themselves, want to handle redoubtable forces without knowing anything about them; and if deplorable accidents too often result from such imprudence we should not be unduly surprised.
Speaking of accidents, we especially want to point out the risks of mental imbalance to which those who act in this way are exposed, such disequilibrium being an all too frequent consequence of communication with what some call the ‘vital plane’, which is nothing other than the domain of subtle manifestation envisaged particularly in those modalities nearest to the corporeal order and so most easily accessible to the average man. The explanation is simple enough, for it is exclusively a matter of the development of certain individual possibilities,, often of a rather inferior order; and if this development proceeds in an abnormal, that is, disordered and inharmonious way that precludes the development of higher possibilities, it is natural and even inevitable that such a result should follow, not to mention the reactions - in no way negligible and sometimes even terrible - of all types of forces with which the individual unthinkingly puts himself in contact. We say ‘forces’ with no inclination to be more specific because the matter is of little importance to our present concerns; vague as it is, we prefer this word to ‘entities’, which, at least for those not sufficiently accustomed to certain symbolic ways of speaking, has the risk of too easily evoking more or less fantastical ‘personifications’. As we have often had occasion to explain, this ‘intermediary world’ is much more complex and extensive than the corporeal world; still, the study of both worlds comes within the purview of the ‘natural sciences’ in the truest sense of the term, and to see in the former anything more is, we repeat, to delude oneself in a most peculiar way. There is absolutely nothing in this intermediary world that belongs to the ‘initiatic’ any more than to the ‘religious’ domain; indeed, we find herein many more obstacles than supports to reaching a genuinely transcendent knowledge, a knowledge completely different from that of the contingent sciences, a knowledge which contains no trace of any ‘phenomenalism’, depending only on pure intellectual intuition, which alone is pure spirituality.
After applying themselves for a considerable time to the search for extraordinary phenomena, or what passes for such, some people for various reasons eventually tire of it all or become disappointed by insignificant results that fall short of their hopes. It is worth noting that often these same people then turn to mysticism,(2) for astonishing as it may seem at first glance, this latter still satisfies similar needs and aspirations, although under another form. Certainly, we are far from denying that mysticism in itself may have a character much more elevated than magic; nonetheless, if we look more deeply, we soon realize that at least from a certain point of view the difference is not as great as one might imagine, for here again it is in fact only a matter of ‘phenomena’, visions, or the other tangible and sentimental manifestations that characterize the domain of individual possibilities alone.(3) In mysticism, then, illusion and disequilibrium are far from being left behind, and although they may manifest themselves here in unaccustomed forms they are no less dangerous and are even aggravated in a sense by the passive attitude of the mystic who, as stated before, leaves the door open to every influence that may present itself, whereas the magician is granted at least a measure of protection by the active attitude he attempts to maintain with respect to these same influences, which certainly does not mean, however, that in the end he is not often overwhelmed by them. Moreover, it is also true that the mystic is almost always too easily the dupe of his own imagination, the productions of which, without his suspecting it, become almost inextricably mixed with his genuine ‘experiences’. For this reason we must not exaggerate the importance of the ‘revelations’ of the mystics, or at least we should never accept them without verification.(4) The interest of certain visions consists only in their many points of agreement with traditional information clearly unknown to the mystic concerned;(5) but it would be a mistake, and even a reversal of normal relationships, to wish to find in this a ‘confirmation’ of this traditional information, which in no way requires it and which is on the contrary the only guarantee that the visions in question are something more than the mere product of individual imagination or fantasy.
1 Cf. Reign of Quantity, chap. 39
2 It also sometimes happens that others, after having truly entered into the initiatic way, and not just into the illusions of the pseudo-initiation about which we have been speaking, abandon that way for mysticism; the motives are then naturally quite different and mainly of a sentimental order, but whatever they may be we must see above all in such cases the consequence of some defect in initiatic qualifications, at least as concerns the aptitude to realize effective initiation; as a typical example one could cite Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.
3 Naturally, this is not to say that the phenomena in question pertain solely to the psychological order, as certain moderns claim.
4 This attitude of prudent caution, necessitated by the natural tendency of mystics to ‘divagation' in the proper sense of the word, is in any case the one that Catholicism invariably observes with respect to them.
5 The visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich can be cited here as an example. [See The King of the World, chap. 8, n12, ED]