THE SUPREME CENTER CONCEALED DURING THE KALI-YUGA

AGARTTHA, it is said, was not in fact always underground, and will not always remain so. According to Ossendowski's report, a time will come when 'the peoples of Agharti will come up from their subterranean caverns to the surface of the earth.'^[1] Before its disappearance from the visible world, this center bore another name, for 'Agarttha', which means 'imperceptible' or 'inaccessible' (and also 'inviolable', since it is Salem, the 'Abode of Peace'), would not yet been appropriate; Ossendowski clearly states that it withdrew underground 'more than six thousand years ago,' indicating thereby a date which, as it happens, very closely approximates the beginning of the Kali-Yuga or 'dark age' (the 'iron age' of the ancient West), which is the last of the four periods into which the Manvantara is divided;^[2] its reappearance is to coincide with the ending of this same period. We have already mentioned the allusions in all traditions to something that is lost or hidden, ^[3] which is represented under various symbols; taken in the general sense that concerns terrestrial humanity as a whole, this loss corresponds precisely to the conditions of humanity during the Kali-Yuga. The present period is therefore one of obscuration and confusion;^[4] its conditions are such that, as long as they endure, initiatic knowledge must necessarily remain hidden, and this explains the character of the Mysteries of 'historical' antiquity (which in fact does not even reach back to the beginning of this period)^[5] and the secret societies of all peoples. Such organizations transmit an effective initiation wherever a true traditional doctrine still subsists, but offer no more than its pale shadow when the spirit of this doctrine has ceased to vivify the symbols that are only its outward representation; this happens when for various reasons all conscious connection with the spiritual center of the world has finally been broken. This is the more particular meaning of the loss of tradition as concerns specific secondary centers, which consists in a rupture of effective relations with the supreme center. Thus, as we have already said, one should speak of something that is hidden rather than of something truly lost, for it is not lost to everyone, and some few still possess it in its integrality; and if such is the case, others always have the possibility of recovering it provided they search for it in the right way, which is to say that their intention must be directed so that through the harmonic vibrations it awakens, according to the law of 'concordant actions and reactions',^[6] they are enabled to establish an effective spiritual communication with this supreme center.^[7] In all traditional forms, this directing of the intention is, moreover, always symbolically represented by ritual orientation; properly speaking, the latter is in fact the direction toward some spiritual center, which, no matter what particular center it may be, is always an image of the true 'Center of the World'.^[8] But the further the Kali-Yuga progresses, the more difficult it becomes to establish contact with this center, which becomes increasingly more closed and hidden at the same time that these secondary centers representing it externally become increasingly more rare;^[9] yet when this period comes to an end the tradition will be manifested anew in its integrality, for the beginning of each Manvantara, coinciding with the end of the preceding one, necessarily implies for terrestrial humanity the return to the 'primordial state'.^[10] In Europe, every consciously established link with the center by means of regular organizations is now broken, and this has been so for several centuries; moreover, this rupture was not accomplished all at once, but in many successive stages.^[11] The first stage dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century; what we have already said elsewhere makes it understandable that one of the principal roles of the Orders of Chivalry was to assure communication between East and West, the true importance of which will be readily grasped when it is recalled that the center here in question has always been depicted as located somewhere in the East, at least with respect to 'historical' times. Nevertheless, after the destruction of the Order of the Templars, the Brotherhood of the Rose-Cross (or what was later to be given that name) continued to assure this same communication, albeit in a more hidden way. ^[12] The Renaissance and the Reformation marked a new critical phase, after which, as Saint-Yves appears to suggest, came the complete and final rupture, coinciding with the Treaties of Westphalia that, in 1648, ended the Thirty Years War. Now it is remarkable that numerous writers have affirmed precisely that the true Brotherhood of the Rose-Cross left Europe shortly after the Thirty Years War to withdraw into Asia; and in this regard we recall that the Rosicrucian adepts were twelve in number, as were the members of the innermost circle of Agarttha, in conformity with the constitution common to so many other spiritual centers formed in the image of that supreme center. Since this last period, the deposit of effective initiatic knowledge has not truly been preserved by any Western organization; thus, Swedenborg declared that the 'Lost Word' must henceforth be sought among the sages of Tibet and of Tartary; and according to the visions of Anne-Catherine Emmerich, the mysterious place that she calls the 'Mountain of Prophets' ^[13] is also set in the same regions. And let us add that the fragmentary information Madame Blavatsky was able to gather on this subject, though without fully understanding its true significance, gave rise to her idea of the 'Great White Lodge', which we would call, not an image, but quite simply a caricature or fanciful parody of Agarttha.^[14]

Footnotes

[1]Ossendowski, Beasts, Men and Gods, p314. These are the concluding words of a prophecy that the 'King of the World' is said to have made in 1890, when he appeared at the monastery of Narabanchi.

[2]The Manvantara, or era of a Manu, also called Mahā-Yuga, comprises four Yugas or secondary periods: the Krita-Yuga (or Satya-Yuga), the Tretā-Yuga, the Dvāpara-Yuga, and the Kali-Yuga, which are identified respectively with the 'age of gold', the 'age of silver', the 'age of bronze', and the 'age of iron' of Greco-Roman antiquity. In the succession of these periods there is a kind of progressive materialization resulting from the gradual distancing from the Principle that necessarily accompanies the development of the cyclical manifestation in the corporeal world, starting from the 'primordial state'.

[3]See especially chap. 5. ED.

[4]In biblical symbolism the beginning of this age is notably represented by the Tower of Babel and the 'confusion of tongues'. One could quite logically think that the Fall and the Deluge correspond to the end of the first two ages, but in reality the starting-point of the Hebrew tradition does not coincide with the beginning of the Manvantara. It must not be forgotten that the cyclical laws are applicable in different degrees and for periods of unequal extent, periods that also sometimes encroach upon each other; hence the complications that may at first sight seem inextricable and that can be resolved only by considering the order of hierarchic subordination of the corresponding traditional centers.

[5]It appears that proper notice has never been taken of the fact that historians generally find it impossible to establish an accurate chronology for anything prior to the sixth century before the Christian era.

[6]This expression has been borrowed from Taoist doctrine; also, we take the word 'intention' here in a sense exactly equivalent to that of the Arabic niyah, which is usually translated thus, conforming in this with the Latin etymology (from intendere, ‘to tend toward’).

[7]What we have just said allows us to interpret with great precision the Gospel saying 'And I tell you, ask, and it will be given you; knock, and it will be opened to you' (Luke 11:9). Here one must naturally refer to the earlier discussion concerning 'right intention' and 'good will', which will at the same time make clear the meaning of the expression Pax in terra hominibus bonae voluntatis [‘Peace on earth to men of good will'].

[8]In Islam, this orientation (qiblah) is something like the materialization, if we may put it so, of intention (niyah). The orientation of Christian churches is another particular case essentially related to the same idea.

[9]Here only a relative exteriorization is meant, of course, for these secondary centers have themselves been more or less strictly closed since the beginning of the Kali-Yuga.

[10]This is the manifestation of the Celestial Jerusalem, which, with respect to the cycle that is ending, is the same thing that the Terrestrial Paradise is with respect to the cycle that is beginning, as we explained in The Esoterism of Dante.

[11]In the same way, from another and broader point of view, there are for human beings degrees in their remoteness from the primordial center, and it is to these degrees that the distinction of the different Yugas corresponds.

[12]Here again we must refer to our study The Esoterism of Dante, where we have given everything necessary to justify this assertion.

[13]Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824), who was born in Westphalia and became an Augustinian nun in 1803, apparently lived from early childhood with almost continual inner visions of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Upon the disbanding of the convents in 1811, the chroncially ill Anne Catherine withdrew to a small room in Dülmen, where in 1812 she received the stigmata. In 1818 the well-known poet of the German Romantic movement, Clemens Brentano, paid her a visit, whereupon she immediately recognized him as the 'pilgrim' sent to record her visions, a task he soon undertook. The recorded visions were eventually organized and published in several collections, those in English being (in various editions): the four-volume The Life of Christ and Biblical Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, and two separate compilations, one focusing on the Virgin Mary, entitled The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the other treating in great detail the events surrounding the Passion, entitled The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Anne Catherine's visions are remarkable in their apparent factual accuracy, which has even been confirmed by archeologists, the best-known case being that of the discovery of the 'House of the Virgin' in Ephesus. The passage Guénon cites here regarding the 'Mountain of the Prophets', is found in the Very Reverend Carl E. Schmöger's The Life of Anne Catherine Emmerich, vol. 1 (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1976), chap. XLI. Of particular interest in the present context is Anne Catherine's observation in that chapter, regarding the top of this 'Mountain of the Prophets', that 'the whole country was like a beautiful green island up in the clouds.' ED.

[14]Those who have followed the considerations set forth here will understand why we cannot possibly take seriously the many pseudo-initiatic organizations that have sprung up in the contemporary West, not one of which, if put to the test—and not even a very strict test at that could furnish the least proof of 'regularity'.