Academic Mentality & Pseudo-Initiation
One of the characteristic marks of most modern pseudo-initiatic organizations is the way they employ certain terms of comparison drawn from 'ordinary life', which, in short, is to say from profane activity under one or another of its contemporary forms. It is not only a question of analogics that despite the annoying banality of the images used and the fact that they are as far removed as possible from any traditional symbolism could still be more or less useful within certain limits (we say 'more or less' because it must not be forgotten that, in the end, the profane point of view as such always contains within itself something illegitimate inasmuch as it is really a negation of the traditional point of view); but what is more serious still is that these things are taken in the most literal way, to the point that there is a kind of assimilation of so-called spiritual realities to forms of activity that, at least in present conditions, are strictly opposed to any spirituality. Thus, in certain occultist schools with which we were once acquainted, a recurrent theme was that of 'debts to pay', a theme that was pushed to the point of obsession; and in Theosophy and its various more or less direct derivatives one constantly heard the refrain of 'lessons to learn', everything being described in 'academic' terms-which brings us again to the confusion of initiatic knowledge with profane teaching. The entire universe is here conceived as nothing more than a vast school in which beings progress from one class to another in the measure that they have 'learned their lessons'; and this image of successive classes is furthermore intimately linked to the idea of 'reincarnation'. But this is not the point that interests us
presently, for we propose to draw attention to the error inhering in these 'academic' metaphors and to the essentially profane mentality from which they proceed, independently of the relationship they may have in fact with this or that particular theory.
Profane instruction as it exists in the modern world, and on which all the figures of speech under discussion are modeled, is obviously one of those things that exhibit an anti-traditional character in the highest degree. One can cven say that in a way it was devised only for this purpose, or at least that its primary and principal purpose lies in this characteristic, for it is evident that it is one of the most powerful instruments for achieving the destruction of the traditional spirit. It would be useless to dwell on these considerations again, but there is one other point that might seem less evident at first glance, which is that even if such a deviation had not occurred, 'academic' representations of this sort would still be erroneous once one intended to apply them to the initiatic order; for although it would not then be profane as it is today but, on the contrary, legitimate and even traditional in its own order, outward instruction is always, by its very nature and purpose, something entirely different from what relates to the initiatic domain. In any case, there would thus be a confusion between exoterism and esoterism, a confusion testifying not only to an ignorance of the true nature of esoterism but even to the loss of the traditional sense in general, which indeed is itself a manifestation of the profane mentality. But in order to understand this still better, we should clarify a bit more than we have up till this point certain profound differences that exist between outward instruction and initiation; and this will make more apparent a defect that already appears in certain authentic though degenerate traditional organizations, and which naturally is found all the more in the pseudo-initiatic organizations to which we have alluded, accentuated to the point of caricature.
In this regard it must first be said that in university instruction, or rather, university instruction as first instituted, there is something much less simple and even more enigmatic than is ordinarily believed, at least until one asks oneself a question that ought nonetheless to arise immediately for anyone capable of the least reflection. If there is an obvious truth, it is that one cannot confer or
transfer to others something that one does not oneself possess; [1] how then could university degrees have been originally instituted unless through the intervention under one form or another of an authority of a superior order? There must therefore have been a veritable 'exteriorization', [2] which can also be considered as a 'descent' into that lower order to which all 'public' teaching necessarily belongs even if it be established on the most strictly traditional bases (which we will then gladly call 'scholastic' according to the usage of the Middle Ages, reserving for the word 'academic' its usual profane meaning); and it is by virtue of this 'descent' that this teaching could, within the limits of its own domain, effectively participate in the very spirit of the tradition. This fits well on the one hand with what is known of the general characteristics of the age to which the origin of the universities belongs, that is to say, the Middle Ages, and on the other hand more particularly with the little-noted fact that the distinction of the three university degrees is quite obviously modeled after the form of an initiatic hierarchy. [3] Let us also recall here that, as we have already said elsewhere, [4] while the sciences of the trivium and the quadrivium in their exoteric sense were the divisions of a university curriculum, they also corresponded, by an appropriate transposition, to the degrees of initiation. [5] But it goes without saying that if such a correspondence strictly respects the
normal relationships between the different orders, it could never imply the transfer into the initiatic domain of such things as a system of classes and examinations such as those necessarily included in outward teaching. And it should hardly be necessary to add that since, in modern times, Western universities have turned entirely away from their original spirit and thus can no longer have the least connection with a higher principle able to legitimize them, the degrees they have preserved, instead of being a sort of outward image of initiatic degrees, are no more than a parody of them, just as a profane ceremony is the parody or counterfeit of a rite, and the profane sciences themselves, in more than one respect, are a parody of the traditional sciences. This last case, moreover, is altogether comparable to that of university degrees, which, even if there has been continuity in their preservation, are really only a 'residue' of what they were originally, just as the profane sciences are a 'residue' of the ancient traditional sciences, as we have explained on more than one occasion.
We have just alluded to examinations, and it is on this point that we now wish to dwell. As can be seen by their continual use in the most varied civilizations, these examinations have their place and purpose even in outward instruction, traditional instruction not excepted, where, almost by definition, they include no criterion of another order. But when, on the contrary, it is a matter of a purely inward domain such as that of initiation they become entirely vain and ineffectual and can normally play no more than an exclusively symbolic role, somewhat as the secret concerning certain ritual forms is only a symbol of the true initiatic secret; besides, they are perfectly useless in an initiatic organization as long as this is truly all
that it ought to be. However, it is necessary in fact to account for certain cases of degeneration where, because no one can any longer apply correct criteria (especially in consequence of a complete forgetfulness of the traditional sciences that alone can furnish them, as we have said in connection with initiatic qualifications), this is compensated for as much as possible by establishing, for the sake of passing from one degree to the next, examinations similar in form if not in content to university examinations, which, like the former, can only bear on things 'learned', just as, in the absence of any effective interior authority, one establishes administrative forms comparable to those of profane governments. Since these two things are really only two effects of the same cause, they appear quite closely connected, and are almost always found together in the same organizations; this not only in real organizations but also in the imaginary framework of pseudo-initiatic organizations. Thus the Theosophists, who are so fond of 'academic' formulations, also imagine what they call the 'occult government of the world' divided up into different 'departments' of which the attributes are all too obviously inspired by the ministrics and bureaucracies of the profane world. This last remark leads us moreover to what might be the principal source of this sort of error: since the fabricators of pseudo-initiatic organizations have not even an outward knowledge of any authentically initiatic organization other than those fallen into this state of degeneration (and naturally so, since only these still exist in the West today), they think they can do no better than imitate them, and it is inevitable that they should imitate what is most outward, which is also what is most affected by the degencration in question since this is where that degeneration is most clearly affirmed by things such as those we are considering. And, not content with introducing this imitation into the constitution of their own organizations, they have also, so to speak, pi ojected it imaginatively onto an 'other world', that is, onto the image they have made for themselves of the spiritual world, or what they believe to be such. The result is that whereas as long as they have not undergone any deviation, initiatic organizations are constituted in the image of the true spiritual world, the caricature of this spiritual world is, inverscly, made in the image of pseudo-initiatic organizations that, wishing to
copy the appearance of certain initiatic organizations, have imitated only those aspects that have been deformed by borrowings from the profane world.
Whether it be a matter of more or less degenerate initiatic organizations or of pseudo-initiatic organizations, one can sec that what is wrought by the introduction of profane forms is exactly the inverse of the 'descent' we had in mind when speaking of the origins of university institutions, and by which, in an age of traditional civilization, exoterism modeled itself in a certain way on esoterism, and the inferior on the superior. But the great difference between the two cases is that, with an initiation that is diminished or even deviated up to a point, the presence of these parasitic forms does not, despite everything, prevent the continued transmission of a spiritual influence; whereas in pseudo-initiation there is nothing behind these same forms but the void pure and simple. What the promoters of the pseudo-initiation are evidently unaware of is that in bringing their 'academic' ideas, and other things of the sort, into their image of the universal order, they have simply marked it with their own profane mentality. What is most regrettable is that those to whom they present these fantasies are no more able than they to discern this mark, which, if they were able to fathom all that it signifies, would suffice to put them on guard against such undertakings, and even to turn them away from them forever.