Rite & Symbol
We have shown that rites and symbols, both of which are essential elements of every initiation, and, more generally are associated with everything traditional, are in fact closely linked by their very nature. All the constituent elements of a rite necessarily have a symbolic sense, whereas, inversely, a symbol produces-and this indeed is its essential purpose-in one who meditates upon it with the requisite aptitudes and disposition, effects rigorously comparable to those of rites properly speaking, with the reservation of course that when this meditation is undertaken there be, as a preliminary condition, that regular initiatic transmission failing which the rites would be in any case nothing more than a vain counterfeit, as with their pseudo-initiatic parodies. We must also add that the origin of authentic rites and symbols (anything less does not deserve the name, since it amounts in the end to entirely profane and fraudulent imitations) is likewise 'non-human'. Thus the impossibility of assigning to them any definite author or maker is not due to a lack of information, as profane historians suppose (that is, if for want of a better solution they have not been driven to look on them as the product of a sort of 'collective consciousness', which, even if it existed, would in any case be quite incapable of producing things of a transcendent order, such as these), but is a necessary consequence of that very origin, something that can only be contested by those who completely misunderstand the true nature of tradition and of all its integral parts, as is evidently the case with rites and symbols.
If the fundamental identity of rites and symbols is more closely examined, it will first be noted that a symbol, understood as a 'graphic' figuration, as it is most commonly, is only as it were the
fixation of a ritual gesture. [1] In fact it often happens that for a symbol to be regular, its actual tracing must be accomplished under conditions that confer upon it all the characteristics of a true rite. A very clear example of this in a lower domain, that of magic (which is nonetheless a traditional science), is provided by the preparation of talismanic figures; and in the order that more immediately concerns us the tracing of yantras in the Hindu tradition provides a no less striking example. [2]
But this is not all, for the above-mentioned concept of the symbol is really much too narrow: there are not only figurative or visual symbols but also auditory symbols, two fundamental catcgories that in the Hindu doctrine are called the yantra and the inantra. [3] Their respective predominance characterizes the two categories of rites that originally related to the traditions of sedentary peoples in the case of visual symbols and to those of nomadic peoples in the case of auditory ones; it should of course be understood that no absolute separation can be made between the two (for which reason we speak only of predominance), for every combination is possible as a result of the multiple adaptations that have arisen with the passage of time and produced the various traditional forms we know today. These considerations clearly show the bond that exists in general between rites and symbols, but we may add that in the case of mantras this bond is more immediately apparent, for once it has been traced out, the visual symbol remains or may remain in a permanent state (which is why we have spoken of a fixed gesture), while the auditory symbol, on the contrary, is manifested only in the actual performance of the rite. This difference is attenuated, however, wherra correspondence is established between visual and
auditory symbols, as in writing, which represents a true fixation of sound (not of sound as such, of course, but of a permanent possibility of reproducing it); and it need hardly be recalled in this connection that all writing, at least in its origin, is essentially symbolic figuration. The same is true of speech itself, in which the symbolic character is no less inherent by its very nature, for it is quite clear that every word is nothing more than a symbol of the idea it is intended to express. Thus all language, whether spoken or written, is truly a body of symbols, and it is precisely for this reason that language, despite all the 'naturalistic' theories contrived in modern times to explain it, cannot be a more or less artificial human creation nor a simple product of man's individual faculties. [4]
Among visual symbols themselves there is an example very similar to that of auditory symbols. These are symbols that are not permanently traced but only employed as signs in initiatic rites (notably the 'signs of recognition' mentioned earlier) [5] and even in religious ones (the 'sign of the cross' is a typical example known to all), [6] where the symbols are truly one with the ritual gesture itself. [7] It would in any case be altogether futile to make of these signs yet a third category of symbols distinct from those of which we have already spoken; certain psychologists would probably consider them to be such, and call them 'active' symbols, or some such thing, but
they are obviously made to be visually perceptible and thus belong to the category of visual symbols; among these, by reason of their 'instantaneity', if one may put it so, are those that are most similar to the complementary category of auditory symbols. In any case, a 'graphic' symbol, we repeat, is itself the fixation of a gesture or a movement (that is, the actual movement, or the totality of more or less complex movements, required to trace it, which in their specialized jargon psychologists would no doubt call an 'action gestalt'), [8] and with auditory symbols one can also say the movement of the vocal organs required to produce them, whether it be a matter of uttering ordinary words or musical sounds, is as much a gesture as all the other kinds of bodily movement, from which in fact it can never be entirely isolated. [9] Thus the notion of the gesture, in its widest meaning (which indeed accords better with the real meaning of the word than the more restricted meanings currently allowed), brings all these different cases back to unity, so that we can discern in them their common principle; and this fact has a profound significance in the metaphysical order which we cannot enlarge upon without straying far from the subject of our present study.
It will now be casy to understand that every rite is litcrally made up of a group of symbols which include not only the objects used or the figures represented, as we might be tempted to think if we stopped at the most superficial meaning, but also the gestures effected and the words pronounced (the latter, as we have said, really constituting moreover only a particular case of the former); in a word, all the elements of the rite without exception; and these elements then have a symbolic value by their very nature and not by
virtue of any superadded meaning that might attach to them from outward circumstances without really being inherent to them. Again, it might be said that rites are symbols 'put into action', or that cvery ritual gesture is a symbol 'enacted', [10] but this is only another way of saying the same thing, highlighting more particularly the rite's characteristic that, like every action, it is something necessarily accomplished in time, [11] whereas the symbol as such can be envisaged from a timeless point of view. In this sense one could speak of a certain pre-eminence of symbols over rites; but rites and symbols are fundamentally only two aspects of a single reality, which is, after all, none other than the 'correspondence' that binds together all the degrees of universal Existence in such a way that by means of it our human state can enter into communication with the higher states of being.