A New Book on the Order

of the Elect Priests Un nouveau livre sur l'Ordre des Elus Coens, December 1929.

Mr. R. Le Forestier, who specializes in the historical studies of secret, ma- sonic, and other such organizations of the second half of the eighteenth century, published an important volume a few months ago about Occult- ist Freemasonry in the Eighteenth Century and the Order of the Elus Coens. This title calls for a slight reservation, because the word 'occultist,' which seems to have never been used before Eliphas Lévi, appears to be an anachronism; perhaps it would have been better to find another term, this is not a mere question of words, because what was properly called ‘occultism' is really a product of the nineteenth century. The work is divided into three sections: the first deals with the 'doc- trines and practices of the Elus Coens;' the second, relations between 'the Elus Coens and the occultist tradition' (the word 'esoteric' would cer- tainly have been the most appropriate here); the third, with the 'founding and history of the Order.' All which is properly historical is very well written and supported by a very serious study of the documents that the author had at his disposal, and we cannot recommend reading it enough. From this point of view, there is very little to regret, but a few shortcom- ings become apparent in regard to the biography of Martinez de Pasqually, of which there are some dim points; the Voile d'Isis will soon publish new documents that may help to elucidate them. The first part is an excellent overview of the content of the Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings, a rather confusing book, written in an im- proper style which is sometimes unintelligible, and which, furthermore, remained unfinished; it was not easy to draw a coherent statement from it, and we must praise Mr. Le Forestier for succeeding in this. There re- mains, however, a certain ambiguity as to the nature of the ‘operations' of the Elus Coens: were they actually 'theurgic' or only 'magic?' The au- thor does not seem to perceive that these are two essentially different things which are not of the same order; it is possible that this confusion existed among the Coens themselves, whose initiation always seemed to have remained rather incomplete in many respects, but it would be beneficial to have pointed this out. We would gladly say that it appears to be rituals of 'ceremonial magic' with theurgic pretensions, which opens the door to many illusions; and the importance attributed to mere 'phenomenal' manifestations, for what Martinez called the 'passes' were nothing more than this, proves that the domain of illusions was never surpassed. What is more sad in this story, in our opinion, is that the founder of the Elus Coens may have thought himself in possession of transcendent knowledge, where as it was only knowledge that, although real, was still only of a secondary order. There must have been, for these reasons, a certain confusion between the 'initiatic' point of view and the 'mystic' point of view, because the doctrines he expresses always have a religious form, whereas his 'operations' have no such character; it is unfortunate that Mr. Le Forestier seems to accept this confusion and does not have a clear enough idea of the distinction of the two points of view in question. Furthermore, it should be noted that what Martinez calls ‘reintegration' does not exceed the possibilities of the individual human being; this point is very clearly established by the author, but it would have been necessary to draw from it some very important consequences as to the limits of the teachings which the leader of the Elus Coens could distribute to his disciples, and, consequently, of the ‘realization' which he could lead them.

The second portion is the least satisfactory, and Mr. Le Forestier, perhaps in spite of himself, has not been able to free himself from a certain spirit that we can describe as 'rationalist,' and this must be due to his university education. Some similarities between various traditional doctrines does not necessarily imply borrowing or direct influence; wherever the same truths are expressed, it is natural that such similarities exist; and this applies in particular to the science of numbers, whose meanings are by no means a human invention or an arbitrary conception. We will say the same for astrology; these are cosmic laws which do not depend on us, and we do not see why everything connected to them should be borrowed from the Chaldeans, as if they had a monopoly on this knowledge; the same holds true of angelology, which is closely connected with it, and it is not possible, unless one accepts all the prejudices of modern 'criticism,' to look upon it as having been ignored by the Hebrews until the time of Babylon's captivity. Let us add that Mr. Le Forestier does not seem to have a perfectly correct notion of Kabbalah, whose name simply means 'tradition' in the most general sense, but which he equates with a certain particular state of the teachings in the written wordings of such or such teachings, so that it happens that “Kab- balah was born in southern France and northern Spain" and dates its origins to the thirteenth century; here again, the 'critical' mind, which is unaware of any form of oral transmission, has gone too far. Let us finally note here a last point: the word Pardes (which is, as we explained in other circumstances, the Sanskrit Paradesha, ‘supreme land,' and not a Persian word meaning 'animal park', which does not seem to us to have a profound meaning despite the link with the Cherubim of Ezekiel) does not designate a mere 'mystical speculation,' but rather the obtaining of a certain state, which is the restoration of the 'primordial' or 'Edenic state,' which shares a close similarity with the 'reintegration' envisaged by Martinez.^[91] All these reservations made, it is quite certain that the form of which Martinez has taken as his teachings is of a strictly Jewish inspiration, which moreover does not imply that he himself was of a Jewish origin (this is one of the points which has not been sufficiently clarified so far) nor that he was insincerely Christian. Mr. Le Forestier is right to speak of 'Esoteric Christianity' in this connection, but we do not see why conceptions of this order would be denied the right to call themselves authentically Christian; to maintain the modern ideas of an exclusively and narrowly exoteric religion is to deny to Christianity any really profound meaning, and it is also to disregard all that there was in the Middle Ages, and of which, precisely, we find as a reflection, perhaps weakened, in organizations like that of the Elus Coens.^[92] We know well what hinders our contemporaries here: it is their tendency to reduce everything to a question of 'historicity,' a preoccupation that seems to be common now to the partisans and opponents of Christianity, although the opponents are certainly the first to have brought the debate to this level. Let us say it very clearly, if Christ were to be considered only as a historical figure, he would be largely uninteresting; the consideration of the Christ-principle has an entirely different importance; and, furthermore, one does not exclude the other, because, as we have already said often, the histor-ical facts themselves have a symbolic value and express the principles in their own way and in their own order; for the moment we cannot press on this point further, which seems quite clear to us. The third portion is devoted to the history of the Order of the Elus Coens, whose actual existence was rather brief, the exposition of which one can learn of the various ranks, which seems to have never been fully completed and developed, any more than those of the famous 'opera-tions.' It may not be correct to label it as 'Scottish,' as Mr. Le Forestier does, all systems of high Masonic ranks without exception, or to see, as it were, a mere mask in the Masonic character given by Martinez to the Elus Coens; but a comprehensive discussion of these issues may drag us too far astray.^[93] We only wish to draw attention to, in a more specific way, the name of ‘Réau-Cross' given by Martinez to the highest ranks of his 'regime,' as it was then called, and in which Mr. Le Forestier only wishes to see an imitation, or even counterfeiting, of the 'Rose-Cross;' for us, this is something else. In the mind of Martinez, the 'Réau-Cross' was to be, on the contrary, the true 'Rose-Cross,' while the rank which bore the latter name in ordinary Masonry was only 'apocryphal,' follow-ing the expression he uses often; but where does this strange name of 'Réau-Cross' come from, and what does it mean? According to Martinez, the true name of Adam was “Roux in the vernacular and Réau in He-brew," meaning the “Man-God who was very strong in wisdom, virtue, and power," an interpretation which, at first sight at the least, seems quite fanciful. The truth is that Adam literally means 'red;' adamah is red clay, and damah is blood, which is also red; Edom, a name given to Esau, also has the meaning of 'red;' and this red color is most often taken as a symbol of strength or power, which partly justifies Martinez's explana-tion. As for the form of Réau, it certainly has nothing to do with Hebrew; but we think that it must be seen as a phonetic assimilation with the word roeh, 'seer,' which was the first designation for the prophets, and whose meaning is quite comparable to that of the Sanskrit rishi; this sort of phonetic symbolism is not exceptional, as we have indicated on a va-riety of occasions, and it would hardly be surprising that Martinez has^[94] used it here to refer to one of the principal characters inherent in the 'Edenic state,' and, consequently, to signify the possession of this state. If this is true, the expression 'Réau-Cross,' by the addition of the 'Re-storer' Cross to this first name of Réau, indicates the ‘minor restored in his prerogatives,' to speak the language of the Treatise on the Reintegra-tion of Beings, which is to say the 'restored man,' who is indeed the 'sec-ond Adam' of Saint Paul, and who is also the true 'Rosicrucian.'^[95] Indeed, it is not an imitation of the term ‘Rose-Cross,' it would have been much easier to simply appropriate it as many others have done, but it is one of the many interpretations or adaptations to which it can legitimately give rise, which, of course, does not mean that Martinez's claims as to the real effects of his "ordination of the Réau-Cross” were fully justified. To finish this all too brief examination, let us mention one last point: Mr. Le Forestier is quite right in seeing in the expression 'glorious form,' which is frequently used by Martinez, and where 'glorious' is in a way synonymous with 'luminous,' an allusion to the Shekinah (which some old Masonic rituals, by an odd deformation, call the Stekenna);^[96] but it is exactly the same with that of the 'glorious body,' which is commonplace in Christianity, even exoterically, ever since Saint Paul: “Sown in corrup-tion, resurrected in glory...," and also of the designation from the 'light of glory' in which, according to the most orthodox theology, the 'beatific vision' takes place. This shows that there is no opposition between ex-oterism and esoterism; there is only a superposition of the latter on the former, esoterism giving, to the truths expressed that are veiled by ex-oterism, the fullness of their superior and profound meaning.

About the 'Lyonnais Rose-Cross' À propos des « Rose-Croix Lyonnais », January 1930.

The number of studies on Martinez de Pasqually and his disciples are increasing at this moment in a curious way: after the book of Mr. Le For- estier, of which we spoke of last month, Mr. Paul Vulliaud, in turn, has published a volume entitled The Lyonnais Rose-Cross in the Eighteenth Century.^[97] This title does not seem to us to be justified, because, to tell the truth, if we put aside the introduction there is no inquiry into the Rose-Cross in the book; would it not have been inspired by the famous name of 'Réau-Cross,' of which Mr. Vulliaud, was not preoccupied in seeking an explanation? It is possible; the use of this term does not imply any historical connection between the Rosicrucians proper and the Elus Coens, and in any case, there is no reason to include under the same name organizations such as the Strict Observance and the Rectified Scot- tish Regime, which, in their spirit and in their form, certainly had no Rosicrucian character. We will go even further: in the Mason rites where there is a 'Rose-Cross rank,' this one symbol has only been borrowed from the Rosicrucians, and to qualify its possessors as 'of the Rose- Cross,' without further explanations, would be a rather unfortunate equivocation; there is something of the same sort in the title used by Mr. Vulliaud. For him, other words still, such as ‘illuminated' for example, do not seem to have a very precise meaning either; these appear quite hap- hazardly and capable of substituting one another, which can only create confusion in the mind of the reader, who will already have enough trou- ble recognizing himself in the multitude of the Rites and Orders existing at the time in question. However, we do not wish to believe that Mr. Vulliaud himself has not recognized this, and we prefer to see in this incorrect use of technical vocabulary, an almost obligatory consequence of the 'profane' attitude that he likes to put on display, which was not without causing us some shock, because, until now, we had met many people attaching a kind of glory to the 'profane' in the academic and ‘of- ficial' circles, which, we believed, Mr. Vulliaud has no more esteem for these types than we ourselves have.

This attitude has yet another consequence: it is that Mr. Vulliaud has thought it necessary to adopt, almost constantly, an ironic tone which is rather embarrassing and which risks giving the impression of a partiality that a historian should carefully avoid. Already in Vulliaud's Joseph de Maistre Franc-Maçon we have been given the same impression; would it be so difficult for a non-Mason (we will not say a 'layman') to approach questions of this order without using controversial language that should be left specifically to anti-Masonic publications? To our knowledge, only Mr. Forestier is an exception; and we regret not finding another exception in Mr. Vulliaud, since his regular studies have had more serenity. All this, of course, does not detract from the value or interest of the many documents published by Mr. Vulliaud, although some of them are not so completely unpublished as he believes;^[98] and we cannot help but wonder that he has devoted a chapter to 'Sleepers' without even mentioning that it has already appeared, precisely under the same title, a work by Mr. Emile Dermenghem. However, we believe that the extracts of the 'initiatic notebooks' transcribed by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin are actually unpublished; the strange nature of these notebooks raises many questions that have not been clarified. We once had the opportunity to see some of these documents; the bizarre and unintelligible scribbles which they are filled with gave us a very clear impression that the 'unknown agent' who was the author was nothing more than a somnambulist (we do not say a 'medium' because it would be a serious anachronism); they would therefore simply represent the experiments of the same kind as the ‘Sleepers,' which greatly diminishes their ‘initiatic' impact. In any case, what is certain is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the Elus Coens; who, by the way, had already ceased to exist as an organization; and we will add that there is nothing directly related to the Rectified Scottish Regime, although it is frequently referred to as the 'Lodge of the Beneficence.' The truth is that Willermoz and other members of this Lodge, who were interested in magnetism, had to form between them a sort of 'study group,' as is said today, to which they had given the somewhat ambitious title of 'Society of the Initiates;' this title, which does appear in the documents, cannot be explained otherwise, by showing very clearly, that the use of the word 'society,' shows that the group in question, although composed of Masons, had in itself no Masonic character. Even now, it often happens that Masons form, for any purpose, what is called a 'fraternal group,' whose meetings are devoid of any ritual form; the 'Society of the Initiates' must not have been anything other than this; such is at least the only plausible solution to this rather unclear question. We think that the documents that related to the Elus Coens are of another significance which is of the initiatic point of view, in spite of the gaps of this type that have always existed in the teachings of Martinez of which we have mentioned in our last article. Mr. Vulliaud is quite right to insist that those who wish to make Martinez a Kabbalist are in error; of what is involved that is undeniably Judaic does not imply any knowledge of what is properly termed as Kabbalah, which is often used incorrectly. On the other hand, the bad orthography and defective char- acter of Martinez, which Mr. Vulliaud emphasizes a little too compla- cently, proves nothing against the reality of his knowledge of a certain order; we must not confuse profane instruction with initiatic knowledge; an initiate of a supreme order (which Martinez was certainly not) can even be illiterate, and this is seen quite often in the Orient. It seems, fur- thermore, that Mr. Vulliaud was pleased to present the enigmatic and complex character of Martinez in the worst light; Mr. Le Forestier has certainly been much more impartial; and even after this, there are still many points to be elucidated. These persistent obscurities show the difficulty in these studies on things which sometimes seem to have been confused intentionally; therefore, we should be grateful for Mr. Vulliaud for his contribution and, although he does not make any definitive conclusions, his work at least provides some new material that is, as a whole, very interesting.^[99] Also, since this work is sure to have a sequel, we hope that Mr. Vulliaud does not make his readers wait too long, who will certainly find many more curious and attention worthy notes, and perhaps even a starting point of reflection that the author, confining himself in the role of a historian, does not wish to express himself.

The Symbolism of Weaving Le Symbolisme du Tissage, February 1930.

In the Oriental doctrines, traditional books are frequently referred to by terms which, when taken in their literal sense, relate to weaving. Thereby, in Sanskrit, sutra properly means 'thread' (this word is identical to the Latin sutura, consisting of the same root, with the meaning of 'to sew,' being also in both languages): a book can be formed by a set of sutras, as a fabric is formed by an assembly of threads;^[100] tantra also has the meaning of 'thread' and that of 'fabric,' and more specifically the 'warp' of a fabric. ^[101] Similarly, in Chinese, king is the 'warp' of a fabric, and wei is its 'weft;' the first of these words designates at the same time a fundamental book, while the second designates its commentaries. This distinction of the 'warp' and 'weft' in the set of traditional scriptures corresponds, according to Hindu terminology, to that of the Shruti, which is the fruit of direct inspiration, and of the Smriti, which is the product of reflection exercising on the data of the Shruti. To fully understand the meaning of the symbolism, it must first be noted that the warp, formed of threads stretched over the craft, repre- sents the immutable and principal element, while the threads of the weft passing between those of the warp by the seesawing of the shuttle, rep- resents the variable and contingent element, which is to say the applica- tions of the principle to particular conditions. Moreover, if we consider a thread of the warp and a thread of the weft, we immediately perceive that their union forms the symbol of the cross, of which they are respec- tively the vertical line and the horizontal line; and every point of fabric, thus being the meeting point of two wires perpendicular to each other is thereby the center of the cross. Now, according to the general symbolism of the cross, the vertical line represents that which unites all the states of being or all the degrees of existence, while the horizontal represents the development of one of these states or of these degrees. If we relate this to what we said earlier, we can say that the horizontal direction will be, for example, the human state, and the vertical sense which is trans- cendent with respect to this state; this transcendent character is indeed that of the Shruti, which is essentially ‘non-human,' whereas the Smriti includes the applications to degrees of the human order and is the prod- uct of the exercise of human faculties. We can add here another remark which will bring to light out the concordance of various symbolisms more closely related to each other than might be supposed at first glance: in a somewhat different aspect from that which we have just considered, the vertical line represents the active or masculine principle (Purusha), and the horizontal line the pas- sive or feminine principle (Prakriti), every manifestation being produced by the influence of the 'non-acting' from the first to the second. Or, from another point of view, the Shruti is equated to direct light, represented by the Sun, and the Smriti is the reflected light, represented by the Moon; but, at the same time, the Sun and the Moon, in almost every tradition, also symbolize respectively the masculine principle and the feminine principle of universal manifestation. ^[102] To return to the symbolism of weaving, it is not applied exclusively to traditional scriptures; it is also used to represent the world, or more exactly, the set of all the words, which is to say the states or degrees, in definite multitude, that constitute universal existence. Thus, in the Upan- ishads, the Supreme Brahma is designated as "what the world is woven on, by warp and weft," or by other similar formulas. ^[103] The warp and the weft naturally have, here again, the same respective meanings which we have just defined; and, moreover, there is all the more connection be- tween these two applications that the Universe itself, in certain tradi- tions, is sometimes symbolized by a book: we will only remind ourselves of the Liber Mundi of the Rose-Cross, and also the well-known symbol of the 'Book of Life,' which would give rise to some very interesting re- marks, but it deviates a little too much from our subject so we cannot consider formulating them just now. ^[104] Another form of this same symbolism, which is also found in the Hindu tradition, is the image of the spider weavings its web, an imagine which is all the more proper as the spiders forms the web from its own substance.^[105] Due to the circular shape of the web, which is also the blue-print of the cosmogonic spheroid, the warp is represented here by the wires radiating around the center, and the weft by the lines arranged in concentric circumferences.^[106] To return from this back to the ordinary image of weaving, one has only to consider the center as indefinitely dis-tant, so that the rays become parallel, in the vertical direction, while the concentric circumferences become perpendicular to these rays, which is to say horizontal.The warp, according to what we have said above, are the principles which connect all the worlds or states to each other, each of its children connecting at corresponding points in different states; the weft is the sets of events that occur in each of the worlds, and each thread of this frame is thus the unfolding of events in a given world. We can also take up here the symbolism of the book, and say that all the events, envisaged in the simultaneity of the 'timeless,' are thus inscribed in this book, each of which is, so to speak, a character identifying itself at a single point on the fabric.From another point of view, it can be said again that the manifestation of a being in a certain state of existence is, like any event, determined by the meeting of a thread of the warp with a thread of the weft. Each thread of the chain is then a being envisaged in its essential nature, which, as a direct projection of the principal 'Self,' makes the link of all its states, maintaining its own unity through their indefinite multiplicity. In this case, the thread of the weft that the thread of the warp encounters at a certain point corresponds to a definite state of existence, and their inter-section determines the relations of this being in its manifestation in this state, with the cosmic environment. For example, the individual nature of a human being is the result of the meeting of these two children; in other words, it will always be necessary to distinguish two kinds of ele-ments, which must be reported respectively in the vertical sense and the horizontal sense: the first expresses what belongs to the being, whereas the second comes from the conditions of the environment.Let us add that the threads of which the ‘cloth of the world' is formed are still designated, in another equivocation, as 'the hair of Shiva.' One could say that these are, in a way, the manifested Universe's 'lines of force,' and that the 'directions of space' are their representation in the corporeal order. It is easy to see how many different applications of these considerations are likely; but we wished to indicate here the essential meanings of the symbolism of weaving, which is, we believe, largely unknown in the West.^[107] Atma-Gita Âtmâ-Gîtâ, March 1930.

In our most recent work we have alluded to an interior sense of the Bha- gavad-Gita, which, when considered from that point of view, takes the name of Atma-Gita;^[108] as we have been asked for further explanations on this subject, we thought it would not be without interest to share them here. The Bhagavad-Gita, which is, as we know, a detached installment from the Mahabharata,^[109] has been so often translated into Western lan- guages that it should be well known to everyone; but this is not so, be- cause, to tell the truth, none of these translations show a real understand- ing. The title itself is generally rendered somewhat inaccurately as the 'Song of the Happy' because in reality Bhagavat's principal meaning is that of the 'glorious' and 'venerable;' a meaning of 'happiness' also ex- ists, but in a very secondary way, and besides, it is not appropriate enough for the case in question. ^[110] Indeed, Bhagavat is an epithet that applies to all divine aspects, and also to beings who are considered par- ticularly worth of worship;^[111] the idea of happiness, which is, in fact, es- sentially individual and human, is not necessarily contained in it. No wonder this particular epithet is given to Krishna, who is not really a venerable person, but who, as the eighth avatara of Vishnu, truly corre- sponds to a divine aspect; but there is still something more profound here.

To understand this, it must be remembered that the two points of view of Vaishnaivist and Shaivist, which correspond to two great paths suitable to beings of different natures, each take, as a support to rise to the supreme principle, one of the two divine aspects, complementary in some aspects, to which they owe their respective designations, and transpose this aspect in such a way that it identifies with the same principle, envisaged without any restriction and beyond any determination or specification whatsoever. This is why the Shaivists designate the supreme principle as Mahadeva or Maheshwara, which is properly equivalent to Shiva, while the Vaishnavists refer to it by the names of Vishnu, such as Narayana or Bhagavat, the latter being mostly employed by a certain branch which bears the name of Bhagavatas for this reason. There is in all this no element of contradiction: the names are multiples as the paths to which they relate, but these paths, more or less directly, all lead to the same goal; the Hindu doctrine knows nothing of the sort similar to Western exclusivism, for which one and the same way should equally suit all beings, without taking into account the differences in nature that exist between them. Now, it will be easy to understand that Bhagavat, being identified with the Supreme Principle, is none other than the unconditioned Atma; and this is true in all cases, whether this Atma is considered in the ‘macroscomic' order or in the 'microscomic' order, according to whether one wishes to apply this to different points of view; we obviously cannot think of reproducing all the developments that we have already given elsewhere on this subject. ^[112] What interests us most directly here is the application that we can label as 'microcosmic,' which is to say the one that is made according to each being considered in particular: in this respect, Krishna and Arjuna respectively represent the ‘Self” and the 'me,' the personality and the individuality, which are unconditioned Atma and jivatma. The teaching given by Krishna to Arjuna is, from this point of view, the intellectual, supra-rational intuition by which the 'Self” is communicated to the 'me' when it is 'qualified' and prepared in such a way that this communication can be effectively established. It should be noted, because this is of great importance, that Krishna and Arjuna are represented as mounted on the same chariot; this chariot is the 'vehicle' of being considered in its state of manifestation; and, while Arjuna fights, Krishna leads the chariot to battle, that is to say without himself being engaged in the action. Indeed, the battle in question symbolizes the action, in a general way, in a form appropriate to the nature and function of the Kshatriyas, to whom the book is intended for;^[113] the field of battle (Kshetra) is the field of action in which the indi-vidual develops his possibilities; and this action in no way affects the principal, permanent, and immutable being, but concerns only the indi-vidual 'living soul' (jivatma). The two who are mounted on the same chariot are therefore the same as the two birds spoken of in the Upani-shads: "Two birds, inseparably united companions reside on the same tree; one eats the fruit of the tree, the other looks on without eating."^[114] Here too, with a different symbolism to represent the action, the first of these two birds is jivatma, and the second is the unconditioned Atma; it is the same for the “two who entered the cave,” which is mentioned in another text;^[115] and, if these two are always closely united, it is because they are really only one in the light of absolute reality, for jivatma is distinguished from Atma only in an illusory mode. There is also, to express this union, and precisely in a direct relation with the Atma-Gita, a term which is particularly remarkable: it is that of Naranarayana. We know that Narayana, 'he who walks (or is carried) on the waters,' is a name of Vishnu, applied by transposition to Paramatma or the Supreme Principle, as has been said above; the waters here repre-sent the formal or individual possibilities.^[116] Furthermore, nara or nri is the man. The individual being as belonging to the human species; and it is necessary to notice the close relation which exists between this word and that of nara which designates the waters;^[117] however this may lead us to stray too far from our subject. Thus, Nara and Narayana are respec-tively the individual and the Universal, the 'me' and the 'Self,' the mani-fested state of being and its unmanifested principle; and they are of an indissoluble union in the whole of Naranarayana, of which it is some-times spoken of as two ascetics dwelling upon the Himalayas, which re-minds us especially of the last of the texts of the Upanishads which we mentioned a moment ago, in which the “two who entered the cave” are simultaneously designated as "dwelling on the highest peak."^[118] It is also said that in this same ensemble, Nara is Arjuna, and Narayana is Krishna; it is the two who are mounted on the same chariot, and it is always, under one term or another, and whatever the symbolic forms employed, jivatma and Paramatma. These indications will make it possible to understand what the inner meaning of the Bhagavad-Gita is, and all other meanings are in fact only more or less contingent applications. This is particularly true of the social meaning, in which the functions of contemplation and action, respectively relating to the supra-individual and the individual, are considered to be those of the Brahmin and the Kshatriya.^[119] It is said that the Brahmin is the type of fixed or immutable beings (sthavara), and that the Kshatriya is the type of moving or changeable beings (jangama);^[120] it is easy to see the analogy between these two classes of beings on one hand, and the immutable personality and the individuality that is subject to change on the other hand; and this immediately establishes the link between this meaning and the preceding one. We can also see that where the Kshatriya is specifically mentioned, the latter, because of the action of its own function, can be taken to symbolize the individuality in whatever form, which is necessarily also engaged in the action by the very conditions of its existence, while the Brahman, because of its function of contemplation or pure knowledge, represents the higher states of being;^[121] and thus one could say that every being has within him the Brahmin and the Kshatriya, but with predominance of one or the other of the two natures, according to his tendencies which bear him principally on the side of contemplation or on the side of action. This shows that the scope of the teaching contained within the Bhagavad-Gita is far from being limited to the Kshatriyas, understood literally, although the form in which this teaching is exposed suits them particularly; and, if Westerners, in whom the nature of Kshatriya manifests much more frequently than that of the Brahmin, returned to the understanding of traditional ideas, such a form is undoubtedly also that which would be the most immediately accessible to them.

The Greater Holy War La Grande Guerre sainte, May 1930.

In our last article, we mentioned, while referencing the Bhagavad-Gita, the symbolic significance of war, and we pointed out that this conception is found not only in Hindu doctrine, but also in Islamic doctrine, which is the real meaning of jihad or 'holy war.'

In a very general way, it can be said that the essential raison d'être of war, from whatever point of view and in any field, is to put an end to disorder and restore order; it is, in other words, the unification of a multiplicity, by means that belong to the world of multiplicity itself; it is in this capacity, and only in this capacity, that war can be considered just. Moreover, disorder is, in a sense, inherent in every manifestation within itself, since manifestation, outside of its principle, therefore as a nonunified multiplicity, is only an indefinite series of breaks in equilibrium. War, understood as we have just presented, and not limited to an exclusively human sense, therefore represents the cosmic process of reintegration of the manifested into the unity of principal; and this is why, from the point of view of the manifested itself, this reintegration appears as destruction, as we can see very clearly by certain aspects of the symbolism of Shiva in the Hindu doctrine.

If we say that war itself is still disorder, it is true in a certain relation, by the very fact that it is accomplished in the world of manifestation and multiplicity; but it is a disorder which is destined to compensate for another disorder, and, as the doctrines of the far East teach, it is the sum of all the disorders, or all the imbalances, which constitute the total disorder. Order, moreover, appears only if we rise above multiplicity, if we cease to consider each thing in isolation in order to consider all things in unity. This is the point of view of reality, because multiplicity, out of principal, has only an illusory existence; but this illusion, with the inherent disorder of it, subsists as long as it has not arrived in a fully effective manner (and not as a mere theoretical conception), from this point of view of the 'unity of existence' (wahdat al-wujud) in all modes and degrees of universal manifestation.

From what we have just established, the very purpose of war is the establishment of peace, because peace is nothing but order, balance, or harmony, these three terms being more or less synonymous and desig-nating all, in somewhat different aspects, the reflection of unity in mul-tiplicity itself when related to this principle. Indeed, multiplicity, then, is never really destroyed, but it is ‘transformed;' and when all things are brought back to unity, this unity appears in all things, which, far from ceasing to exist, on the contrary, acquire the fullness of reality. It is then that the two complementary points of view of 'unity in multiplicity' and 'multiplicity in unity' (al-wahdah fil-kathrah wa'l-kathrah fi al-wahdah) are united at the central point of all manifestation, which is the 'divine place' (al-maqām al-ilāhī) where all the contrasts and oppositions are re-solved. For one who has reaching this point, there are no more opposites, therefore no more disorder; it is the very place of order, of balance, of harmony, of peace, while outside of this place, and for one who has a tendency towards it without having arrived yet, it is the state of war as we have defined it, since the oppositions, in which the disorder resides, are not yet definitely overcome. All traditional doctrines are in complete agreement, whatever form these ideas may be expressed in; and all be-stow the same importance to the symbolism of the central point, which is the 'pole' around which the revolutions of the manifested universe are completed. Even taken within its external and social sense, the just war, directed against those who would disturb the order and aim to bring them back, appears essentially as a function of 'justice,' which is to say, in short, as a balancing function, whatever the secondary and transient appearances may be; but this is only the ‘lesser holy war,' which is only an image of the other, of the 'greater holy war,' which is of a purely interior and spir-itual order. Here we can apply what we have said many times about the symbolic values of historical facts, which can be considered as repre-sentative, according to their mode, of realities of a higher order. The 'greater holy war' is the struggle of man against the enemies he carries within himself, which is to say against all the elements which, in him, are contrary to order and unity. It is not, however, to destroy these elements, which, like all that exists, also have their reason for being and their place as a whole; it is rather, as we said earlier, to 'transform' them by bringing them back to unity, by reabsorbing them in some way. Man must tend first and foremost to realize unity within himself, in all that constitutes himself, according to all the modalities of his human mani-festation: unity of thought, unity of action, and also, which is perhaps the most difficult, unity between thought and action. It is important to note that, as far as action is concerned, what is essentially true is inten-tion (niyyah), for it is this alone which depends entirely on man himself, without being affected or modified by external contingencies as are al-ways the results of the action. Unity in intention and a constant will im-merged within the invariable and immutable center are represented sym-bolically by ritual orientation (qiblah), terrestrial spiritual centers being visible images of the true and unique center of all manifestation, which has elsewhere its direct reflection in all the worlds, at the central point of each of them, and also in all beings, where this central point is figura-tively designated as the heart, because of its effective correspondence within the corporeal organism.

For the one who has succeeded in perfectly realizing unity with itself, all opposition having ceased, the state of war also ceases by this very fact, because there is only absolute order, according to the total point of view which is beyond all particular points of view. To such a being, nothing can harm him henceforth, for there is no longer any enemies for him, neither in him nor out of him; the unity carried on inside, is also at the same time outside, or rather there is neither inside nor outside, this still being only one of those oppositions which have now been erased from his view (the gaze of Shiva's third eye according to the Hindu tradition). Established definitively within the center of all things, this one is to him-self his own law, because his will is one with the universal Will; he has obtained the 'great peace,' which is truly the 'divine presence' (As-Sa-kinah, identical to the name of Shekinah in Hebrew Kabbalah); being identified, by his own unification, with the principal unity itself, he sees unity in all things and all things in unity, in the absolute simultaneity of the 'eternal present.'

Regarding Pilgrimages A propos des pèlerinages, June 1930.

The recent republication, in the Voile d'Isis, of the remarkable article by Mr. Grillot de Givry on the pilgrimage sites brings us back to the question to which we have previously alluded to, and which Mr. Clavelle recalls in his introduction of the article. Let us first note that the Latin word peregrinus, from which 'pilgrim' derives, can mean both ‘traveler' and 'stranger.' This simple note already gives rise to some rather curious comparisons: indeed, on the one hand, among the Compagnons, there are some who describe themselves as 'passers-by' and other as 'strangers,' which corresponds precisely to the two meanings of peregrinus (which are also found in the Hebrew ger- shon); furthermore, in Masonry, alike in modern and 'speculative' Ma- sonry, the symbolic tests of initiation are called 'journeys.' Moreover, in many different traditions, the different initiatic stages are described fre- quently as the stages of a journey; sometimes it is a regular trip, some- times it is a navigation, as we have occasion to point out previously. This symbolism of travel is perhaps more widely used than that of war, of which we spoke in our last article; the one and the other, moreover, are not without presenting between them a certain relation, which has even sometimes translated outwards into historicity; we are thinking in par- ticular here of the close link that existed in the Middle Ages between the pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the Crusades. Let us add that, even in the most ordinary religious language, earthly life, considered as a period of hardship, is often assimilated to a journey, and even more expressly qualified as a pilgrimage to the celestial world, the goal of this pilgrimage being also symbolically identified with the 'Holy Land' of the 'Land of the Living. '^[122] The state of 'wandering,' so to speak, or of migration, is, in general, a state of 'probation;' and here again we can notice that this is indeed the character of such organizations such as the Compagnonnage. Further- more, what is true in this respect for individuals can be true, in some cases at least, for people taken collectively: a very clear example is that of the Hebrews wandering for forty years in the desert before reaching the promised land. We must also make a distinction here, because this state, which is essentially transitory, must not be confused with the no- madic state that is normal to certain peoples: even when the Hebrews arrived at the Promised Land, and until the time of David and Solomon, this nomadism did not have the same character as their pilgrimage in the desert. ^[123] There is even reason to consider a third state of ‘wandering,' which may be more properly described by the word 'tribulation:' it is that of the Jews after their dispersion, and also in all similarity to the Jews, the Bohemians; but this would bring us too far astray, and we will only say that this case also applies to communities and individuals. We can see how complex these things are and how many distinctions can be made among men presenting themselves externally under the same ap- pearances, which are confused with pilgrims in the ordinary sense of the word, especially since it is still necessary to add that: it sometimes hap- pens that insiders, who have reached the goal, even 'followers,' repeat, for special reasons, the same appearance as 'travelers.' But let us return to the pilgrims: we know that their distinguishing marks were the shells (named as Saint James) and the staff; the latter, which also has a close relation to the compagnonnic cane, is naturally an attribute of the traveler, but it has many other meanings, and perhaps we will devote a special study to this question one day. As for the shell, in certain regions it was called 'creusille,' and this word is similar to that of 'crucible,' which brings us back to the idea of tests, envisaged more par- ticularly according to an alchemic symbolism, and understood in the sense of 'purification,' the Katharsis of the Pythagoreans, which was pre- cisely the preparatory phase of initiation. ^[124] The shell being viewed especially as an attribute of Saint James, we are then led to make a remark about the pilgrimage of Santiago de Com- postela. The routes formerly followed by pilgrims are often called, even today, 'paths of Saint James;' but this expression has at the same time an entirely different application: the 'path of Saint James,' indeed, in the language of the peasants, it is also the Milky Way; and this may seem less unexpected if one observes that Compostela, etymologically, is noth- ing less than the 'starry field.' Here we stumble across another idea, that of 'celestial journeys,' incidentally correlated with terrestrial journeys; this is still a point on which it is not possible for us to press at present, and we will only indicate that we can sense by this a certain correspond- ence between the geographical situation of the pilgrimage sites and the actual order of the celestial sphere; here, 'sacred geography' to which we have alluded previously will thus be integrated into a true 'sacred cos- mography.' Still speaking of the pilgrimage routes, it should be remembered that Mr. Joseph Bédier had the merit to recognize the link between the sanc- tuaries that marked the steps and the formation of the chansons de geste. It seems to us that this fact can be generalized, and one could say the same thing with regards to the propagation of a multitude of legends whose real initiatic scope is unfortunately almost always unknown to moderns. Due to the plurality of their meanings, stories of this kind could be addressed to both pilgrims and... others; each one understood them according to the measure of his own intellectual capacity, and only some of them penetrated the deep essence of it, as it happens with all initiatic teachings. It should also be noted that, however diverse the people who roamed the roads, including the peddlers and even the beggars, there is established between them, for reasons no doubt rather difficult to define, a certain solidarity translating into the common adoption of a special conventional language, 'slang of the Shell' or the 'language of the pil- grims.' Interestingly, Mr. Léon Daudet pointed out in one of his recent books that many words and phrases belonging to this language are found at Villon and at Rabelais;^[125] and at the latter, he also indicates, which is worthy of note from the same point of view, that for several years, "he wandered through Poitou, a province that at that time was celebrated for the mysteries and the jokes that were performed there and also by the legends that ran there; in Pantagruel, we find traces of these legends, these jokes, and a number of terms belonging to the Poitevins."^[126] If we quote this last sentence, it is because, besides mentioning these legends of which we spoke a moment ago, it raises yet another question in con- nection with what is at stake here, that of the origins of theater: this, firstly, was one part essentially ambulant, and on the other hand veiled in a religious character, at least in regards to external forms, religious character, which is to be compared with that of the pilgrims and people who adopted these appearances. What is most important about this fact is that it is not peculiar to Europe within the Middle Ages; the history of theater in ancient Greece is quite similar, and similar examples can be found in most of the Oriental countries.

But we must limit ourselves, and we will consider only one final point regarding the expression ‘noble travelers' that is applied to the initiates, or at least to some of them, precisely because of their journeys. Regarding this subject, Mr. Oscar Milosz wrote the following:

““Noble travelers' is the secret name for the initiates of antiquity, transmitted via oral tradition to those of the Middle Ages and modern times. It was last uttered in public on May 30, 1786, in Paris during a sitting of the Parliament devoted to the interrogation of a famous defendant (Cagliostro), a victim of the pamphleteer Théveneau de Morande. The journeys of the initiates were distinguished from ordinary study trips only by the fact that their itinerary coincided rigorously under the appearance of an adventurous race, with the most aspirations and secrets of the adepts. The most illustrious examples of these pilgrimages are offered to us by Democritus, who was initiated into the secrets of alchemy by the Egyptian priests and the magician Ostanes, as for the Asiatic doctrines from his stays in Persia, and according to some historians, in India; Thales, matured in the temples of Egypt and Chaldea; Pythagoras, who visited all the countries known to the ancients (and most likely India and China) and whose stay in Persia was marked by the conversations there with the magician Zaratas, in Gaul by his collaboration with the Druids, finishing in Italy with his speeches to the Assembly of the Ancients of Croton. Adding to these examples, Paracelsus' travels should be added to France, Austria, Germany, Spain and Portugal, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Wallachia, Carniola, Dalmatia, Russia, and Turkey, as well as Nicholas Flamel's travels to Spain where Maistres Canches taught him to decipher the famous hieroglyphic figures of the Jewish book of Abraham. The poet Robert Browning has defined the secret nature of these scientific pilgrimages in a singularly rich stanza of intuition: 'I see my way as birds their trackless way; In some time – his good time – I shall arrive; He guides me and the bird.' Wilhelm Meister's years of travel also have the same initiatic meaning."^[127]

We wished to reproduce this passage in its entirety, despite its length, because of the interesting examples it contains; no doubt we can find many more known or less known examples, but these are particularly characteristic, although they may not all relate to the same case among those we have distinguished above, and this we should not confuse with 'study trips,' even legitimately initiatic ones with the special missions of the adepts or even of certain initiates of a lesser degree.

To return to the expression ‘noble travelers,' what we wished to draw attention to is that the epithet ‘noble' seems to indicate that it should designate, not all initiation indistinctly, but more properly an initiation of Kshatriyas, or what may be called the 'royal art,' according to the word preserved until today by Masonry. In other words, it would be an initia-tion referring to the cosmological order and not one of a purely meta-physical order, and the applications that are attached to it, or to all that in the West, has been understood the general name of ‘hermeticism.’^[128] If this is so, Mr. Clavelle was quite right in saying that while Saint John corresponds to the purely metaphysical point of view of Tradition, Saint James corresponds rather to the point of view of 'traditional sciences;' and, even without mentioning the plausible connection with the 'Master James' of the Compagnonnages, many consistent indications would tend to prove that this correspondence is effectively justified. It is indeed in this area that we can qualify as an 'intermediary,' which indeed refers to all that has spread through pilgrimages, as well as traditions of the Com-pagnonnage or those of the Bohemians. The knowledge of 'lesser mys-teries,' which is that of the laws of 'becoming,' is acquired by traversing the 'wheel of things;' but the knowledge of the 'greater mysteries,' being that of the immutable principles, requires the immobile contemplation in the 'great solitude,' at the fixed point which is the center of the wheel, the invariable pole around which the revolutions of the manifested Uni-verse are accomplished.