Profane Names and Initiatic Names

Noms profanes et noms initiatiques, January 1935.

Speaking in our previous articles of the various kinds of secrets of a more or less external order which may exist in certain organizations, initiatic or not, we have mentioned among others the secret concerning the names of their members; it may well seem that this is to rank among the simple precautionary measures intended to be protected against dangers which can come from any enemy, without there being any reason to look for a more profound reason. In fact, this is certainly the case in many instances, and at least in those where we are dealing with a purely pro- fane secrete organization; but yet, when it comes to initiatic organiza- tions, there may be something else, and this secret, like everything else, is truly symbolic. It is all the more interesting to dwell some on this point, that the curiosity of names is one of the most common manifestations of modern 'individualism,' and when it claims to apply to things of the ini- tiatic domain it bears witness to a serious misunderstanding of the real- ities of this order and an unfortunate tendency to want to reduce them to the level of profane contingencies. The ‘historicism' of our contempo- raries is satisfied only if a name is placed on everything, which is to say it attributes them to specific human individualities, according to the most restricted conception that can be made of it, that which takes place in profane life and which takes into account only the corporeal mode. How- ever, the fact that the origin of initiatic organizations can never be related to such individualities should already give food for thought in this re- gard; when it comes to those of the most profound order, their members themselves cannot be identified, not because they hide themselves, which, whatever carefulness is devoted towards it, cannot always be ef- fective, but because, strictly speaking, they are not 'personages' in the sense that historians would like, so that whoever believes they can name them will inevitably be in error. Before entering into further explanations on this point, we shall say that something analogous is found propor- tionally at all stages of the initiatic scale, even at the most elementary levels, so that, if an initiatic organization is really what it ought to be, the designation of any of its members by a profane name, even if it is exactly 'materially,' will always be tainted with falsity, just as the confusion that would exist between an actor and a character whose role he plays and whose name one would persist in applying to him in all circumstances of his existence. We have already had occasion to speak of initiation conceived as a 'second birth'; it is by an immediate logical consequence of this concep- tion that in many organizations the initiate receives a new name, differ- ent from his profane name. This is not a mere formality, for this name must correspond to a mode equally different from its being, the one whose realization is made possible by the action of the 'spiritual influ- ence' transmitted by initiation; it may also be remarked that, even from the exoteric point of view, the same practice exists with a similar reason in certain religious orders. We then have two distinct modes for the same being, one manifesting itself in the profane world, and the other within the initiatic organization; normally, each of them must have its own name, that of one not suitable to the other, since they are in two truly different orders. We can go further: to every degree of actual initiation corresponds yet another mode of being; he should therefore receive a new name for each of these degrees, and even if this name is not given to him in fact, there is nonetheless, one may say, as a characteristic ex- pression of this mode, because a name is nothing else than that in reality. Now, since these modes are hierarchical in being, so are the names that represent them respectively: a name will therefore be all the truer since it will correspond to a mode of a more profound order, since, by this, it will express something that will be closer to the true essence of the being. Contrary to common opinion, it is therefore the profane name which, being attached to the most external mode and the most superficial man- ifestation, is the least true of all; it is especially so in a civilization which has lost all traditional character, and where such a name expresses al- most nothing of the nature of the being. As for what may be called the true name of the human being, the most true of all, a name which is also a 'number,' in the Pythagorean and Kabbalist meaning of this word, is the one that corresponds to the central mode of its individuality, which is to say, its restoration in the 'primordial state,' because it is that which constitutes the integral expression of its 'individual essence.' It follows from these considerations that an initiatic name does not have to be known in the profane world, since it represents a mode of the being which cannot be manifested in the profane world, so that its knowledge would somehow fall into the void, finding nothing to which it could really apply. Inversely, the profane name represents a mode that the being must discard when he returns to the initiatic domain, which is then for him only a mere role that he plays on the exterior; therefore, this name cannot be valid in this domain, in relation to which what it expresses is in a way non-existent, as belonging to a lower degree of re-ality. Moreover, it goes without saying that these profound reasons for the distinction and, so to speak, the separation of the initiatic name and the profane name, as designating actually different ‘entities,' may not be entirely conscious everywhere where the name change takes place; it may happen that, as a result of a degeneration of certain initiatic organ-izations, we come to try to explain it by motives which are entirely ex-ternal, for example by presenting it as a simple measure of prudence, which is worth the interpretations of rituals and symbolism in a moral or political sense, and in no way precludes that there was anything else at the origin. On the contrary, if it concerns only profane organization, these same external motives are really valid, and there can be nothing more, unless, in some cases, these also concern rites as we have already said, the desire to imitate the uses of initiatic organizations, but, natu-rally, without this being able to respond to the slightest reality; this again shows that similar appearances can, in fact, cover the most different things.

Now, all that we have said so far about this multiplicity of names, representing so many modes of being, relates only to extensions of hu-man individuality included in its integral realization, which is to say, in-itiatically, to the domain of ‘lesser mysteries.' When the being passes into the 'greater mysteries,' which is to say the realization of supra-individual states, he passes also beyond name and form, since, as is taught in the Hindu doctrine, these are the respective expressions of the essence and substance of individuality. Truly, such a being has no name since this is a limitation from which he is henceforth free; he may, if necessary, take any name to manifest himself in the individual domain, but this name will not affect him in any way and will be just as 'accidental' as a simple garment that can be discarded or changed at will. This is the explanation of what we have said at the beginning: when it comes to organizations of this order, their members have no names, and moreover they them-selves do not have even have a name; in this conditions, what is there to give rise profane curiosity? If even they manage to discover some names, they will have only one of conventional value; this can already happen, very often, for organizations of a lower order than that, in which 'collec-tive signatures' will be used, representing either these organizations themselves as a whole, or functions envisaged regardless of the individ-ualities that fill them. We repeat, all this results from the very nature of things of an initiatic order in which individual considerations count for nothing and which is not intended to confuse research, although this a consequence; but how can the profane suppose anything other than in-tentions they themselves have?

Hence in many cases the difficulty or even the impossibility of identifying the authors of works having a certain initiatic character: they are entirely anonymous, or, what amounts to an equivalent, they have as a signature only a symbolic mark or a conventional name; moreover, there is no reason for their authors to have played any apparent role in the profane world. On the contrary, when such works bear the name of an individual who is otherwise known to have lived, they may not be much more advance, because that is not why we will know exactly who or what we are dealing with: this individual may very well have been a spokesperson, even a mask; in such a case, his purported work may imply knowledge he never really had, he may be only an initiate of a lower degree, or even a mere layman who has been chosen for any contingent reason, as we have explained in connection with the sagas of the Holy Grail, and then it is obviously not the author who matters, but the organization that inspired him.

Moreover, even in the profane order, we can be astonished at the importance attributed nowadays to the individuality of an author and to everything that touches it: does the value of the work depend in any way on these things? On the other hand, it is easy to see that the concern to attach one's name to any work is less so in a civilization that is more closely related to the traditional principles, of which, indeed, 'individualism' in all its forms is in a sense a negation. We can easily understand that all this is fulfilled and we do not wish to insist upon it more, but it was not without benefit to emphasize it again, on this occasion, the role of the anti-traditional spirit, characteristic of the modern epoch, as the principal cause of the misunderstanding of initiatic things and the tendency to reduce them to profane points of view. It is this spirit which, under names such as those of ‘humanism' and ‘rationalism,' it has endeavored for a few centuries to reduce everything to the proportions of vulgar human individuality restricted to the knowledge of the profane, and to deny everything that goes beyond this narrowly limited domain, which is everything that comes under initiation in any degree. It is scarcely necessary to remark that these considerations which we have just expounded upon here are essentially based on the metaphysical doctrine of the multiple states of being, of which they are a direct application. How could this doctrine be understood by those who claim to make of the individual man, and even exclusively his corporeal mode, a complete and closed whole, a self-sufficient being, instead of seeing what it is in reality, the contingent and transient manifestation of a being in a very particular domain among the indefinite multitude of those whose whole constitutes the Universal Existence, and to which correspond, for this same being, so many different modes and states, from which it will be possible for him to become consciously precisely by following the path opened to him by initiation?