Conditions of Initiation

Des conditions de l'initiation, October 1932.

The confusion between the esoteric, initiatic domain and the mystic do- main seems to have never been as widespread as it is today, and the find- ings we have had the opportunity to make recently in this regard has committed us to formulate some considerations that seem appropriate and even necessary. Indeed, it is now fashionable, if we may say so, to call the Eastern doctrines 'mystic,' including those where there is not even a shadow of an appearance which could give rise to such a qualifi- cation; this is a fact that appears to be quite new and it may be interesting to look at what tendencies or intentions it corresponds with. The origin of this false interpretation is naturally attributable to certain Orientalists, who may not have been brought to this conclusion by an ulterior motive, but only by the more or less unconscious bias which is ordinary for them to bring everything back to Western viewpoints.^[281] But others came then, seizing this assimilation, and who, seeing the part they could extract for purposes which do not seem entirely selfless, strive to spread the idea outside of the special world all in all in a quite limited way, reaching only the Orientalists and their clientele; and this is more serious because it is not difficult to perceive unequivocal marks of an 'annexationist' attempt, against which it is important to guard against; moreover, we have re- cently given two examples of this here. We do not propose to expose all the differences which separate the two initiatic and mystic points of view here, because it would necessitate a whole volume, or even to specify the essential distinction of the do- mains to which they correspond or give access to respectively. For the moment, our intention is only to insist on what may be called a difference of 'modality,' according to which initiation, in its very process, presents characters which are quite different from those of mysticism; this suffices to show at least that there are two very distinct 'paths' here, although it remains to be established, despite some apparent analogies which may delude the observer 'from outside,' that these two paths do not lead to the same goal. What is most often said in this regard is that mysticism is 'passive,' while initiation is 'active;' this is true, on the condition of specifying in what sense it is precisely understood. Above all, this means that, in the case of mysticism, the individual confines himself to simply receiving what is presented to him and as such he presents himself without himself being there; let us say that it is in this that the principal danger lies for him, because it is thus 'open' to all influences of whatever order and that, in general, he does not have the preparation that would be necessary to allow him to establish any discrimination between them. ^[282] On the con- trary, in the case of initiation it is to the individual that an initiative of 'realization' belongs, which will continuing methodically under rigorous and incessant control, and will ordinarily lead to overcoming the possi- bilities of the individual; it is essential to add that this initiative is not enough, because it is quite obvious that the individual cannot surpass himself by his own means, but it is he who necessarily constitutes the starting point of any 'realization' for the initiate, while the mystic has none, even for things which go no farther than the realm of individual possibilities. This distinction may already appear clear enough, but it will not suf- fice; we could even say that it answers only the most ‘exoteric' aspect of the question, and in any case, it is too incomplete with regards to initia- tion, from which it is very far from including all the necessary conditions. Let us say first of all, although it goes without saying, that the first of these conditions is a certain natural aptitude or disposition, without which all effort is in vain, for the individual can develop only the possi- bilities he carries within himself from the beginning; this aptitude, which may be called 'initiability,' properly constitutes the 'qualification' re- quired by all initiatic traditions. Moreover, this condition is the only one which is, in a certain sense, common to initiation and mysticism, for it is clear that the mystic must also have a special natural disposition, though it is entirely different from that of the 'initiable,' it is even opposed in some aspects; but this condition, for him if it is also necessary, is suffi- cient; there is nothing else which must be added to it, and circumstances alone can do the rest, passing at their pleasure from 'power' to 'deed' in the possibilities of the provision in question. This is a direct result of the character of 'passivity' of which we have just spoken: in such a case, it cannot be an effort or personal work of any kind which the mystic will never have to perform, and of which he must even carefully guard him-self from, as something which would be in opposition to its 'way,' whereas, for initiation, due to its 'active' character, such work constitutes another condition which is no less strictly necessary than the first, and without which the passage of 'power' to 'deed' cannot be accomplished in any other way.^[283]

However, this is not all: in sum, we have only developed the first dis-tinction, to draw the consequences, for initiation, there is a condition which does not exist with regards to mysticism; but there is another con-dition, which is no less necessary, of which we have not spoken and which is placed between those just mentioned. This condition is even the most characteristic of all, that which makes it possible to preclude any misunderstanding of initiation and to avoid confusing it for something else altogether; in this case, initiation is much better determined than that which place themselves in the conditions required to obtain it; one of these conditions is precisely the one of which we speak, as another condition is an effort of which the men of the first ages did not have any need for, since spiritual development was fulfilled in them just as natu-rally as physical development. Therefore, it is a necessary condition in accordance with the laws that govern our world today; to make it easier to understand, we can resort here to an analogy: all the beings that will develop during a cycle are contained from the beginning, in the state of subtle germs, within the 'Egg of the World;' thenceforth, why should they not be born to the cor-poreal state on their own and without parents? This is no longer an ab-solute impossibility, and one can conceive of a world where it may be so; but, in fact, this world is not ours. Of course, we do not deal with ques-tions of anomalies; there may be exceptional cases of 'spontaneous gen-eration,' and in the spiritual order we have applied this very expression to the case of the mystic, but we have also said that it is 'irregular,' while initiation is essentially a 'regular' thing, which has nothing to do with anomalies. It would still be necessary to know exactly how far they can go; they must also finally enter into some law, for all things can exist only as elements of the total and universal order. If one is willing to think about this, it may suggest that the states realized by the mystic are not exactly the same as those of the initiate, and that, if their realization is not subject to the same laws, it is actually something else entirely; but this is a question of the distinction between the two initiatic and mystic domains themselves, a question which we have declared from the begin-ning as not wishing to tackle here; and besides, we can now leave the case of mysticism entirely, on which we have said enough for what we propose to establish, so as to not consider initiation exclusively.

What remains for us is to specify the role of attachment to a tradi-tional organization, which cannot exempt the internal work which each must accomplish by oneself, but which is required for this work itself in order for it to bear fruit. It must be understood that those who have been made the depositories of initiatic knowledge cannot communicate it in a way which is more or less comparable to that which the teacher, in pro-fane education, communicates to his pupils in bookish formulas that they will only have to store in their memory; the question here is of something which, in its very essence, is properly 'incommunicable,' since they are states which are realized internally. What can be taught are only prepar-atory methods to obtain these states; what can be provided from the out-side in this regard, in sum, is an aid, a support which greatly facilitates the work to be done, and also a control that removes obstacles and dan-gers that may arise; all this is far from being negligible, and the one who is deprived of it runs a great risk of failure, but even that would not fully justify what we said when we spoke of a necessary condition. This is not what we had in mind, at least in an immediate way; all this intervenes only secondarily, and to some extent as consequences, after initiation understood in the strictest sense, as we indicated above, and when it comes to effectively developing the virtuality that it constitutes; but it is still necessary that this virtuality pre-exists. It is therefore otherwise that the initiatic transmission must be properly understood, and we can char-acterize it better only by saying that it is essentially the transmission of a 'spiritual influence;' we propose to return to this amply in future stud-ies, for the moment, we will confine ourselves to more precisely deter-mining the role played by this influence, between the natural aptitude previously inherent to the individual and the work of realization which he will accomplish later. We have remarked elsewhere that the phases of initiation, as well as those of the Hermetic ‘Great Work' which is at its to step through the various stages of the initiatic hierarchy, to lead it to the final goal of 'Deliverance' or 'Supreme Identity.'

Initiatic Regularity De la régularité initiatique, November 1932.

We said in our previous article that initiation implies as a necessary con-dition the attachment to a regular traditional organization; it is this very connection which constitutes initiation in the strictest meaning, as de-fined by the etymology of the word which designates it, and it is it which is everywhere represented as a 'second birth' or as a 'regeneration:' a 'second birth' because it opens the being up to a world other than the one where the activity of the corporeal mode is exercised, a world which will be for him the field of development for possibilities of a superior order; a 'regeneration' because it thus restores the being to its preroga-tives that were natural and normal in the early ages of humanity, where it had not moved away from the original spirituality, towards materiality as it is in subsequent eras, and because it must lead it foremost as an essential step in its realization, to the restoration of the 'primordial state' within itself, which is the fullness and perfection of human individuality residing at the unique and invariable central point from which the being can rise to higher states. We must now insist upon a crucial point in this respect: it is that the attachment in question must be real and effective, and that a so-called 'ideal' attachment, as some people have sometimes like to considerate in our time, as entirely in vain and effectively null. This is easy to under-stand, since it is properly the transmission of a 'spiritual influence,' which must be carried out according to defined laws; and these laws, which are obviously quite different from those that govern the forces of the physical world, are no less rigorous, and they even present them-selves in spite of the profound differences separating them, a certain analogy, the virtue of the continuity and correspondence that exist be-tween all states of the Universal Existence. It is this analogy that allowed us, for example, to speak of 'vibration' regard the Fiat Lux by which the chaos of spiritual potentialities is illuminated and ordered, although it is by no means a vibration of a sensory order such as those studied by phys-icists, any more than the 'light' in question can be identified by that which is grasped by the visual faculty of the corporeal organism; but these ways of speaking, while necessarily are symbolic since they are based upon analogy, are none the less strictly legitimate, for this analogy exists in the very nature of things and, in a certain sense, are much more distant than one might assume. ^[286] We will return to these considerations more fully when we discuss, in the following studies, initiatic rites and their efficacy; for the moment, it is sufficient to remember that there are laws that must be taken into account, otherwise the desired result could no more be achieved than a physical effect cannot be obtained if one does not work within the conditions required by the laws which govern the productions of its subject; since it is a question of a transfer to operated effectively, it obviously implies a real contact, whatever the manner may be in which it is established, terms which will naturally be determined by these laws of action of the 'spiritual influences' which we have just alluded to. It follows from the necessity of an effective attachment there are sev-eral extremely important consequences, either in regards to the individ-ual who aspires to initiation, or in regards to the initiatic organizations themselves; these are the consequences which we intend to presently ex-amine. We know that there are some, even many, to whom these consid-erations will appear unpleasant, because they will disturb the idea which is too convenient and 'simplistic' that they had formed of initiation, or because it will destroy certain unjustified pretensions and certain more or less self-interested assertions, but which are devoid of any authority; but these are things to which we cannot stop, having, here as always, no concern other than the truth. Firstly, as far as the individual is concerned, it is clear from what has just been said that his intention is to be initiated, even admitting for him this intention to be attached to a tradition of which he may have some 'exterior' knowledge, cannot by itself be sufficient to assure him an ef-fective initiation. Indeed, it is not a question of 'erudition,' which, like all that concerns profane knowledge, is without any value here; it is no more a question of dreams and imaginations, nor of sentimental aspirations. If it were sufficient to simply read books in order to be called initiated, even if they were Sacred Scriptures of an authentic orthodox tradition, or to reflect on more or less vague past or present organizations to which one indulges his own 'ideal' (this word, which is used at all times nowadays, and which signifies all that one wants, does not mean anything at its essence), would be all too easy; the preliminary question of 'qualification' would therefore be entirely abolished, since everyone is naturally inclined to call themselves 'well and duly qualified,' and thus being both judge and party in his own case, would undoubtedly discover without any difficulty excellent reasons (excellent, at least, in his own eyes and according to the ideas he has forged) with which to consider himself an initiate without formality, and we do not even see why he would hesitate to claim himself in one fell swoop as being of the most transcendent degrees. Do those who imagine that one 'initiates' oneself, as we have said before, have ever thought of the rather unfortunate consequences of their affirmation? In these conditions, there is no more selection or control, no more 'means of recognition,' in the sense that we have already used this expression, there is no more possible hierarchy, and, of course, no more transmission of anything; in a word, nothing that essentially characterizes initiation and what constitutes it in fact; yet this is what some, with astonishing unconsciousness, dare to present as a 'modernized' concept of initiation (well modernized indeed, and well worthy of lay, democratic, and egalitarian 'ideals'), without even doubting that, instead of having at least 'virtual' initiates, which after all is something altogether, we would no longer have simple laymen who would undeservedly pose as initiates. But let us leave these ramblings, which may seem negligible, if we have thought it our duty to speak only of it a little, it is because the misunderstanding and the intellectual disorder which unfortunately characterizes our time allows them to propagate with deplorable ease. What must be understood is, since it is a question of initiation, that it is about earnest things and 'positive' realities, we would say so willingly if the profane 'scientist' had not abused this word; that one accepts these things as they are, or that one no longer speaks of initiation at all; we do not see any possible middle way between these two attitudes, and it would be better to frankly renounce any initiation than to attribute to the name what would be nothing more than a vain parody, without even the external appearances that at least seek to safeguard other counterfeits we have spoken of earlier. To return to what was the starting point of this digression, we will say that the individual must not only intend to be initiated, but 'accepted' by a regular organization, having the quality to confer to him initiation, which is to say to transmit to him the 'spiritual influence' of which without it would be impossible for him, in spite of all of his efforts, to never exit from the limitations and obstacles of the profane world. It may happen that, due to his lack of 'qualification,' his intention is met with no response, however sincere it may be, because that is not the question, and in all this it is not question of 'morality,' but of 'technical' rules re- ferring to 'positive' laws (we repeat this word for want of finding another more adequate one), and which are an inescapable necessity as, in an- other order, the physical conditions are indispensable for the exercise of certain professions.^[287] In such a case, he will never be able to consider himself an initiate, whatever theoretical knowledge he may acquire; moreover, it is to be presumed that, even in this regard, he will never go very far (we speak naturally of a true understanding, though still exter- nal, and not of mere erudition, that is, of an accumulation of memory- based notions, as it occurs in profane education), because theoretical knowledge itself, going beyond certain degrees, already presupposes the 'qualification' required to obtain the initiation which will allow to be transformed, by internal ‘realization,' into true knowledge, so no one can be prevented from developing the possibilities he really carries within himself; in the end, only those who deceive themselves on their own ac- count are excluded, believing that they can obtain something which, in reality, has been incompatible with their individual nature.^[288] Continuing on to the other side of the question, which is to say the one which refers to the initiatic organizations themselves, we will say this: it is too obvious that one can only transmit what one possesses one- self; therefore, an organization must necessarily have a 'spiritual influ- ence' in order to communicate it to the individuals attached to it; and this immediately excludes all pseudo-initiatic organizations which are so nu- merous in our time, and which are devoid of any authentic traditional character. Indeed, under these conditions an initiatic organization must not be the product of an individual fantasy; it cannot be founded, like a profane association, on the initiative of some people who decide to meet by adopting a form; and even if these forms are not invented from scratch, but borrowed from truly tradition rites, whose founders would have had by knowledge of 'erudition,' they will not be any more valid due to this, because, in the absence of a regular filiation, the transmission of the 'spiritual influence' is impossible and non-existence, so that in all cases we are dealing only with a vulgar counterfeit of initiation. This is even more the case when we are dealing only with pure hypotheticals, not to say imaginary reconstructions of traditional forms that have dis- appeared since a more or less remote time, for example, such as those of ancient Egypt of Chaldea; and even if, in the use of such forms, there was a serious desire to be attached to the tradition to which they belonged, they would not be more efficacious, for one can only relate something to reality which has a present existence, and yet it is necessary for that, as we said with regards to individuals, to be 'accepted' by the authorized representations of the tradition to which we are referring, so that an ap- parently new organization can only be legitimate if it is an extension of a pre-existing organization, so as to maintain without interruption a con- tinuity of the initiatic 'chain.'

In all this, we only are expressing in other words, what we have al- ready said above about the need for an effective and direct attachment and the vanity of an ‘ideal' connection; we must not be deceived in this respect by the denominations attributed to certain organizations which have no right to them, but who try to give to themselves an appearance of authenticity. Thus, to take as an example, there is a multitude of groups, of recent origin, called 'Rosicrucians,' without having ever had any contact with those of the Rose-Cross, even by some indirect and di- verted means, and without even knowing what they were in reality, since they almost invariably represent them as having constituted a 'society,' which is a gross error, as we have explained on a variety of occasions. It is necessary to see there, most often, the need to adorn itself with a title that will have an effect or the will to impose on the naïve; even if one considers the most favorable cases, which is to say one that admits that the constitutions of some of these groups proceed from a desire to attach oneself 'ideally' to the Rose-Cross, it will still be, from the initiatic point of view, a pure nothingness. What we say about this particular example applies equally to all the organizations invented by the ‘occultists' and other 'neo-spiritualists' of every kind and denomination, organizations which, whatever their pretensions, can in all truth be described as 'pseudo-initiatic,' because they have absolutely nothing authentic to transmit, and what they present is only a counterfeit, or even too often a parody or caricature of initiation.^[289]

Let us add, another consequence of the preceding is that, even though it is an authentic initiatic organization, its members do not have the power to change its forms at will or to alter them in their own essential way; this does not exclude certain possibilities of adaptation to circum- stances which are imposed on individuals rather than deriving from their will, but which are limited in any case by the condition of not undermin- ing the means by which the preservation and transmission of the 'spir- itual influence' of which the depository organization in question is en- sured; if this condition were not observed, it would result in a real break with tradition, which would cause the organization to lose its 'regular- ity.' Moreover, an initiatic organization cannot validly incorporate into its rites elements which are borrowed from traditional forms other than the one in which it is regularly constituted; such elements, the adoption of which would have an entirely artificial character, would only repre- sent mere superfluous fantasies, without any efficiency from the initiatic point of view, and which consequently would add absolutely nothing real, but whose presence would be, because of their heterogeneity, a cause of disorder and disharmony. The laws which preside over the han- dling of 'spiritual influences' are too complex and too delicate a matter for those who do not have complete knowledge of it to be able to afford, with impunity, more or less arbitrary modifications to ritual forms, where everything has its raison d'être, and whose exact scope is likely to escape them.

What clearly results from all this is the nullity of individual initiatives concerning the constitution of initiatic organizations, either in regard to their origin or in terms of their forms; and it may be remarked in this connection that there are no traditional ritual forms to which particular individuals can be assigned as authors. It is easy to understand that this is, if we recall that the essential and final goal of initiation goes beyond the realm of individuality and its particular possibilities, which would be imposed if we were to reduce it to purely human means; from this simple remark, and without even diving deeper into things, we can immediately conclude that the presence of a 'non-human' element is necessary, and as such is the character of the 'spiritual influence,' whose transmission constitutes a proper initiation. What remains for us to specify, as far as possible, the conditions under which this transmission can actually take place, which is to say, in sum, to give a clearer idea of what the different traditions agree to designate as the initiatic 'chain,' and this will be subject of a future article.

Initiatic Transmission De la transmission initiatique, December 1932.

We have said previously that proper initiation is essentially the trans- mission of a 'spiritual influence,' a transmission that can only be made by means of a regular traditional organization, so that one cannot speak of initiation outside of the attachment to such an organization. We also specified that 'regularity' should be understood as excluding all pseudo- initiatic organizations, which is to say all those, whatever their preten- sions and whatever appearances they take, which are not actually depos- itories of any 'spiritual influence,' and therefore cannot in reality convey anything. Therefore, it is easily understood the paramount importance that all traditions place on what is designated as the initiatic 'chain,' which is to say, a succession ensuring the transmission of what acts in an uninterrupted way; without this succession, the very observation of ritual forms would be in vain, because there is no vital element which is vital to their efficacy. We propose to return more specifically to the question of initiatic rites later, but we must now answer an objection that may arise here: These rites, it will be said, do they not themselves have an efficacy which is inherent to them? They do indeed have an efficacy, since, if they are not observed, or if they are altered in one of their essential elements, no real result can be obtained; but, if it is a necessary condition for the effi- cacy of rites, it is not sufficient, moreover, it is necessary for these rites to have their effect, to be accomplished by those who have the capacity to accomplish them. This is by no means peculiar to initiatic rites, but applies equally to religious rites which are equally efficacious in their own right, but which cannot be validly performed by anyone; thus, if a religious rite requires a priestly ordination, he who has not received this ordination will not be able to observe all the forms and bring the desired intention, ^[290] he will not obtain any result from it, because he does not carry the 'spiritual influence' which must operate by taking these ritual forms as support. Even in rites of a very inferior order, of a magical order for example, in which an influence intervenes which is not spiritual, but which is merely psychic (understanding that, in the most general sense, it means that which belongs to the domain of the subtle elements of hu-man individuality), the production of a real effect is conditioned in many cases by a certain transmission; and the most vulgar country sorcery would suffice for a number of examples. We do not have to insist on this final point, which is entirely outside our current subject; we indicate this only to make it clearer that, 'a fortiori,' a regular transmission is indis-pensable to enable the rites involving the action of an influence of a su-perior order, which may be properly said to be 'non-human,' of which is the case with both initiatic rites and religious rites. Indeed, this is the essential point, and we must insist upon it: we have already said that the formation of regular initiatic organizations is not at the disposal of individual initiates, and the same can be said for religious organizations, because in both cases, it requires the presence of some-thing that cannot originate from individuals, being beyond the realm of human possibilities. We can even combine these two cases by saying that we are talking here of all organizations that can truly be described as 'traditional;' it will be understood then why we refuse, as we have said on many occasions, to apply the name 'tradition' to what is only purely human, as profane language does this profusely; and it will not be with-out interest to remark that that very word 'tradition,' in its original mean-ing, expresses nothing but the very idea of transmission which we are currently considering. Now, for the sake of convenience, we can divide traditional organiza-tions into the 'exoteric' and 'esoteric,' although these two terms, if we wished to understand them in their most precise meaning, may not apply everywhere with equal accuracy, but for what we have in mind, it will suffice to understand by 'exoteric,' the organizations which, in a certain form of civilization, are open to all indistinctly, and by 'esoteric,' those which are reserved for an elite or, in other words, where only those who have a particular 'qualification' are admitted. The latter are properly in-itiatic organizations; as for the others, they do not include only religious organizations, but also, as can be seen in Oriental civilizations, social or-ganizations that do not carry a religious character, while simultaneously being attached to a principle of a higher order, which the essential con-dition for them to be recognized as being traditional. Since we do not have to consider exoteric organizations in themselves here, only to com-pare their case with that of esoteric or initiatic organizations, we can limit ourselves to the consideration of religious organizations, because they are the only ones of the type known in the West, and so what is related to it will be more immediately understandable. We will say this: all religion, in the true sense of the word, has a ‘non-human' origin and is organization in such a way as to preserve the deposit of an element which is also ‘non-human' in that it derives from this origin; this element, which is order of the order of what we call 'spiritual influences,' exerts its effective action by means of appropriate rites, and the fulfillment of these rites, to be valid, provide a real support for the influence in question, requires direct and uninterrupted transmission within the religious organizations. If this is true in the purely exoteric order (and it is well understood that what we say is not addressed to denying 'critics' who claim to reduce religion to a 'human fact,' while we do not take this opinion into consideration), then it is even more so in the higher order, such as in the esoteric order. The terms which we have just used are broad enough to apply here without change, replacing only the word 'religion' with that of 'initiation;' the entire difference is in the exact nature of the 'spiritual influences' that come into play (for there are many distinctions to be made in this domain, where we understand, in sum, all that pertains to supra-individual possibilities), and especially the respective ends of the action they perform in each case. If we make ourselves better understood, we refer more specifically to the case of Christianity in the religious order, we can add this: the rites of initiation, aiming at the transmission of the 'spiritual influence' from one individual to another who can then transmit it in turn, are exactly comparable to ordination rites in this respect;^[291] and it may even be remarked that both are similarly susceptible to several degrees, since the fullness of the 'spiritual influence' is not necessarily communicated at once with all the prerogatives that it implies, especially with regards to the current aptitude to perform such and such functions within the traditional organization. ^[292] Now we know how important the question of 'apostolic succession' is to the Christian churches, and this is understandable without any difficult, since, if this succession were to be interrupted, no ordination would be valid, and consequently most of the rites would be nothing more than vain formalities without any real impact.^[293]Those who rightly admit the necessity of such a condition in the religious order should not have the slightest difficult in understanding that it does not impose itself any less rigorously in the initiatic order, or, in other terms, that a regular transmission, constituting the 'chain' of which we spoke above, is just as strictly indispensable. We said earlier that initiation must have a 'non-human' origin, for otherwise it could not achieve its ultimate goal in any way, which goes beyond the realm of individual possibilities; that is why the true initiatic rites, as we have indicated before, cannot be related to human authors, and, in fact, we never know such authors, ^[294] any more than we know the inventors of traditional symbols, and for the same reason, because these symbols are also 'non-human' in their origin and essence.^[295] It can be said in all seriousness that in cases like these there is no ‘historical' origin, since the real origin is in a world to which the conditions of time and place, which define historical facts, do not apply; and this is why these things will always inevitably escape the profane methods of re-search, which can give valid results only in the purely human order. ^[296] Under such conditions, it is easy to understand that the role of the individual who confers initiation on another takes the role of ‘transmit- ter,' in the most precise meaning of the word; he does not act as an indi- vidual, but as a support for an influence that does not belong to the indi- vidual order; it is only a ring of the 'chain' whose starting point is outside and beyond humanity. This is why he cannot act in his own name, but in the name of the organization to which he is attached and whose pow- ers he possesses, or, more specifically, in the name of the principle that this organization visibly represents. This explains that the efficacy of the rite performed by an individual is independent of the value of the indi- vidual and as such is also true of religious rites; and we do not mean this in the 'moral' sense, which would be too obviously irrelevant in a ques- tion which is in fact exclusively 'technical' in nature, but in the sense that, even if the individual does not possess the degree of knowledge necessary to understand the profound meaning of the rite and the essen- tial reason for its various elements, this rite will have its full effect if, being regularly invested with the function as 'transmitter,' he performs it in observing all the proscribed rules, and with an intention sufficient to determine the consciousness of his attachment to the traditional or- ganization. From this comes the immediate consequences, that even an organization where it would not be at a certain moment more than we can call 'virtual' initiates would still be able to continue to transmit the 'spiritual influence' of which it is a depository; it suffices for the 'chain' not to be interrupted; in this respect, the well-known fable of the 'the ass bearing relics' is likely to have an initiatic significance worthy of consid- eration. ^[297]

On the contrary, the complete knowledge of a rite, if it has been ob- tained outside the regular conditions, is entirely devoid of any value; thus, to take a simple example (since the rite is reduced to the pronunci- ation of a formula), in the Hindu tradition, a mantra that has been learned otherwise from the mouth of an authorized guru is without effect, be- cause it is not 'vivified' by the presence of the 'spiritual influence' of which it is only intended to serve as the vehicle. ^[298] This extents to one degree or another, to all that is attached to a 'spiritual influence:' thus, the study of the sacred texts of a tradition, made in books, can never supplement their direct communication; and this is why, even where the traditional teachings have been more or less completely written down, they nevertheless continue to regularly be the subject of oral transmis- sion, which, at the same time is essential to give them their full effect (since it is not a question of adhering to merely theoretical knowledge), which ensures the perpetuation of the 'chain' to which the very life of tradition is linked. Otherwise, we would only be dealing with a dead tra- dition, to which no actual attachment is possible; and if the knowledge of what remains of such a tradition may still have some theoretical inter- est (apart, of course, from the point of view of mere profane erudition, whose value here is null, and as it may help to understand certain doc- trinal truths), it cannot be of any direct benefit for any 'realization. '^[299] In all this, it is so completely a matter of communicating something 'vital' that, in India, no disciple can ever sit facing the guru, in order that the action of prana, which is linked to the breath and the voice, is not exercised too directly so that it produces a violent shock which, conse- quently, could be without danger, both psychically and even physi- cally. ^[300] This action is all the more powerful in the prana itself, in such a case, it is only the vehicle or the support of the 'spiritual influence' which is transmitted from the guru to the disciple; and the guru, in the exercise of his own function, must not be considered as an individuality (which then disappears truly, except as a mere support), but only as the repre- sentative of the very tradition, which he embodies in a way in relation to his disciple, which is indeed the role of 'transmitter' as we spoke above. We think that we have said enough to show, as clearly as possible, the necessity of the initiatic transmission, and to make it clear that these are not more or less vague and nebulous things, but extremely precise and well-defined things. In order to complete what we have said on this question, we would still have to speak a little regarding the spiritual cen- ters from which any regular transmission proceeds, directly or indirectly; although we have already had occasion to give many notes elsewhere in this regard, ^[301] this subject is rather important from the point of view the effective receptacle of 'spiritual influences,' without which the presence and action of the rites to which they are to serve would be ineffective.

where we place ourselves, so that it is not without benefit to return to it in another article.