The 'Religion' of a Philosopher

La « religion » d'un philosophe, January 1934.

We are not used to paying attention to manifestations of profane 'thought,' so we should not have read the recent book by Mr. Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and still less would we have spoken of it had we not been informed that it was on things which are normally not the responsibility of a philosopher. In fact, the author talks about 'religion,' 'mysticism,' indeed even of 'magic;' we must say at once that this is not one of those things which can be accepted as the idea they are, rather it is the custom of the philosophers to divert the words from their meanings to tune with their particular conceptions. First, with respect to religion,^[374] the origins of the thesis which M. Bergson backs are not mysterious and are very simple in their essence; it is quite astonishing that those who spoke about his book do not seem to have noticed this. We know that all the modern theories in this regard have in common the attempt to reduce religion to something purely hu- man, which amounts to denying it, consciously or unconsciously, since it is to refuse to consider what forms its very essence, which is precisely the 'non-human' element. As a whole, these theories can be reduced to two types: the 'psychological' one, which pretends to explain religion by the nature of the human individual, and the other 'sociological,' which wishes to see it as an exclusively social thing, the product of a kind of 'collective unconsciousness' that dominates individuals and imposes it- self on them. The originality of Mr. Bergson is that he has sought to com- bine these two kinds of explanations: instead of viewing them as more or less exclusive of each other, as their respective supports usually do, he accepts them both at the same time by relating them to different things, but nevertheless designated by the same word 'religion;' the 'two sources' he envisions are nothing other than this in reality. There are two types of religions for him, one 'static' and the other 'dynamic,' which, oddly enough, he also calls ‘closed religion' and 'open religion;' the first is of a social nature, the second of a psychological nature; natu- rally, it is it where his preferences led and that which he considers as the superior form of religion, we say this, because it is quite obvious that in a 'philosophy of becoming' such as his, it cannot be otherwise. In fact, such a philosophy admits no immutable principle, which is the very ne- gation of metaphysics; putting all reality into change, he considers that, whether in doctrines or in external forms, that which does not change responds to nothing real, and even prevents man from grasping reality as he conceives it. But, it will be said, if one denies that there are immu- table principles and 'eternal truths, '^[375] we must logically refuse all values, not only metaphysics, but also in religion; this is indeed what happens, for religion in the true meaning of the word is what Mr. Bergson calls 'static religion,' and in which he only wishes to see an imaginary 'fabu- lation;' as for his 'dynamic religion,' it is not religion at all. This so-called 'dynamic religion' does not even have any characteris- tic elements that constitute the very definition of religion: no dogmas, since this is immutable and, as Mr. Bergson says, 'frozen;' no rites, of course, for the same reason, and also because of their social character; both must be left to 'static religion,' and, as far as morality is concerned, Mr. Bergson started by setting it aside as something that does not fit into religion as he sees fit. Then there is nothing left, or at least there remains only a vague 'religiosity,' a sort of confused aspiration towards an ‘ideal' of some kind, in fact it is quite close to that of the modernist and liberal Protestants which also recalls, in many ways, the 'religious experience' of William James. It is this ‘religiosity' that Mr. Bergson takes for a higher religion, thus believing to 'sublimate' religion when he has emptied it of all of its content, because there is nothing in this which is compatible with his conceptions; besides, it is undoubtedly all that can be extracted from a psychological theory, for we have never seen that such a theory has proved itself capable of going beyond 'religious sentiment,' which, once again, is not religion. The 'dynamic religion,' in Mr. Bergson's eyes, finds its highest ex- pression in 'mysticism,' seen through its worst side, because he does not exalt it except for what benefits the 'individual,' which is to say vaguely, inconsistently, and somehow 'anarchically;'^[376] what pleases him about the mystics, let us say it clearly, is their tendency towards rambling... As for what constitutes the very basis of mysticism, which is to say, whether we like it or not, its attachment to a 'static religion,' he obviously views it as negligible; we also feel that there is something that bothers him be-cause his explanations on this point are rather embarrassing. What may seem curious from a ‘non-Christian' is that, for him, 'complete mysti-cism' is that of the Christian mystics, indeed, he forgets a little too easily that these are Christians before they are mystic; or, at least to justify them as Christians, he unduly poses mysticism at the very origins of Christianity. To establish a kind of continuity in this regard between it and Judaism, he succeeds in transforming the Jewish prophets into 'mys-tics,' obviously, he has not slightest idea of the character of the mission of the prophets and the nature of their inspiration... Now, if Christian mysticism, no matter how distorted the conception of it, is for him the very type of mysticism, the reason for this is very easy to understand: it is because there is hardly any mysticism other than that one, and perhaps even mysticism itself is, deep down, something specifically Christian. But this too escapes Mr. Bergson, who tries to discover before Christianity, 'sketches of the future mysticism,' whereas it is totally different; there are some pages on India which bear witness to an incredible incompre-hension! There are also the Greek mysteries, and here the approximation is reduced to a very bad play on words; moreover, Mr. Bergson is forced to confess himself that “most mysteries have nothing mystical about them;" but then why does he speak of it under this term? As to what these mysteries were, it is the most 'profane' representation that they can be; ignorant of everything relating to initiation, how could he under-stand that there was there, as well as in India, something which at first was in no way religious, and which went on incomparably beyond his 'mysticism,' and even beyond authentic mysticism? But then how could a philosopher understand that he should, like all ordinary mortals, re-frain from talking about what he does not know?^[377] If we return to the 'static religion,' we see that Mr. Bergson accepts, on its so-called origins, all the nonsense of the 'sociological school,' in- cluding the most questionable gossip: 'magic,' 'totemism,' 'taboo,' 'mana,' 'animal cult,' 'spirit cult,' ‘primitive mentality,' nothing is miss- ing from all the usual 'junk,' if it is permissible to express oneself as such... Perhaps what belongs to him in his own right is the role he assigns in all this to a so-called 'fabulous function,' which seems to us much more truly 'fabulous' than what it serves to explain, but it is necessary to im- agine some theory which makes it possible to deny en bloc all real foun- dations which one agrees to treat as 'superstitions;' a 'civilized' philoso- pher, what is more, a philosopher 'of the twentieth century,' obviously considers that any other attitude would be unworthy of him! We stop only on one point, that which concerns ‘magic;' this is a great resource for some theorists, who probably do not know what it is very well, but who wish to draw out religion and science at the same time. This is not precisely the position of Mr. Bergson: seeking a 'psychological origin' for magic, he makes it into “the externalization of a desire whose heart is filled," and he claims that “if we reconstruct, by an introspective effort, the natural reaction of man to his perception of things, we find that magic and religion are held together, and that there is nothing in common between magic and science." It is true that there is some waver- ing: if we take a certain point of view, "magic is obviously part of reli- gion;" but, from another point of view, “religion is opposed to magic;" what is clearer is the assertion that “magic is the opposite of science," and that 'far from preparing the coming of science, as has been claimed, it was the great obstacle against which methodical knowledge had to struggle." All this is exactly the opposite of the truth: as we have ex- plained quite often, magic has absolutely nothing to do with religion, and it is not the origin of all sciences, but simply a particular science among others, and, more precisely, an experimental science, but Mr. Bergson is no doubt convinced that there can be no other sciences than those enu- merated by modern 'classifications'... Speaking of 'magical operations' with the assurance of something who has never seen one, he writes this amazing phrase: “If the primitive intelligence had begun here by conceiv- ing of principles, it would soon have gone to experience, which would have proved its falsity." We admire the intrepidity with which this phi- losopher, shut up in his cabinet, denies 'a priori' all that does not fit within the framework of his theories! How can he believe that men were foolish enough to have repeated indefinitely, even without 'principles,' 'operations' that would never have succeeded? What would he say if it rather laudable frankness; since it is he who says so, and quite spontaneously so, we readily believe him at his word!

happened that, on the contrary, “experience demonstrated the falsity" of his own assertions? Obviously, he does not even conceive that such a thing is possible; such is the strength of preconceived ideas, in him and his ilk, that they do not even doubt for a moment that the world is strictly limited to the measure of their conceptions. Now it happens that this is truly remarkable: it is that magic is cruelly avenging itself of the negations of Mr. Bergson; reappearing in its most base and rudimentary form, under the disguise of 'psychic science,' it succeeds in being admitted by him without recognizing it, not only as real, but as playing a vital role for the future of his 'dynamic religion!' We do not exaggerate anything: he speaks of 'survival' just like a vulgar spiritist, and he believes in an 'experimental deepening' that makes it possible "to conclude the possibility and even the probability of a survival of the soul," however without being capable of saying if it is 'for a time or forever'... But this unfortunate restriction does not prevent him from proclaiming in a dithyramb: It does not take any more to convert into a living and active reality a belief in the afterlife that seems to run across most men, but which remains mostly verbal, abstract, and ineffective... In truth, if we were sure, absolutely sure of survival, we could not think of anything else.” Ancient magic was more ‘scientific' and had no such pretentions; it was necessary for some of its most elementary phenom-ena to give rise to such interpretations, to await the invention of spiritu-alism, to which the deviation of the modern mind alone could give birth, and it is indeed the theory of spirituality, pure and simple, that Mr. Berg-son, like William James before him, accepts with a 'joy' which 'pales in all pleasures'... and who fixes us on the degree of discernment of which he is capable: in fact, 'superstition,' there was never anything better! That is where his book ends; we cannot, certainly, wish for a better proof of the nothingness that is all this philosophy!

The Holy Grail Le Saint Graal, February 1934.

Mr. Arthur Edward Waite recently published a work on the legends of the Holy Grail,^[378] imposing in its size and the amount of research it rep- resents, and in which all those interested in this question can find a very complete and methodical account of the contents of the many texts re- lating to it, as well as the various theories that have been proposed to explain the origin and meaning of these very complex and sometimes contradictory legends in some of their elements. It must be added that Mr. Waite did not intend to do any scholarly work, and it should also be praised, because we are entirely of his opinion regarding the value of any work that does not pass beyond this point of view, and whose interest can only be 'documentary;' he wished to identify the real and 'inner' meaning of the symbolism of the Holy Grail and the 'quest.' Unfortu- nately, we must say that this side of his work is that which seems to be the least satisfactory; the conclusions it reaches are rather disappointing, especially if one thinks of all the work done to reach it, and this is the point on which we would like to make a few observations, which will quite naturally be related to questions which we have already dealt with on other occasions. We believe it is not insulting to Mr. Waite to say that his work is somewhat one-sighted; should we translate this into French as 'partial?' This may not be strictly accurate, and in any case we do not mean to say that it should be so; rather, there is something of the defect which is so common in those who, having 'specialized' in a certain order of studies, are inclined to reduce everything to it, or to neglect that which cannot be reduced. That the legend of the Grail is Christian is certainly not ques- tionable, and Mr. Waite is right to say so; but does this necessarily pre- vent it from being something else at the same time? Those who are con- scious of the fundamental unity of all traditions will see no incompatibil- ity, but Mr. Waite, for his part, wishes to see this as something specifi- cally Christian, thus being closed in a traditional form, whose links with other forms, precisely because of its 'inner' aspect, seems to escape him. It is not that he denies the existence of elements from another source, one probably prior to Christianity, because it would go against the obvi-ous, but he gives it only a very slight importance, and he seems to regard them as 'accidental,' as having been added to the legend 'from the out-side,' simple because of the milieu in which it was developed. These ele-ments are regarded by him as belonging to the so-called folklore, not al-ways by disdain as the word may suggest, but rather to satisfy a kind of 'fashion' of our time, without always being aware of the intentions in-volved in it; it may be useful to dwell on this point a little further. The very conception of folklore, as it is usually understood, rests on a radically false idea, the idea that there are 'popular creations,' spontane-ous products of the mass of people; we immediately see the close rela-tionship of this view with 'democratic' prejudices. As has been rightly said, "the profound appeal of all popular traditions lies in the fact that they do not have a popular origin;"^[379] we will add that, if it is, as is almost always the case, traditional elements in the true sense of the word, so distorted, diminished, or fragmented as they sometimes may be, and things having a real symbolic value, all this, far from being of a popular origin, is not even of a human origin. What can be popular alone is the fact of 'survival,' when these elements belong to vanished traditional forms; in this respect the term folklore takes on a meaning quite similar to that of 'paganism,' taking into account only the etymology of the lat-ter, less with the 'polemic' and injurious intention. The people thus pre-serve, without understanding it, the remains of ancient traditions, some-times even going back to a past so remote that it would be impossible to determine it, and we are content to report, for this reason, the obscure domain of 'prehistory;' it fulfills in this the function of a kind of collective memory which is more or less ‘subconscious,' whose content has obvi-ously come from elsewhere.^[380] What may seem astonishing is that, when one goes to the essence of things, one finds that what is thus preserved contains, in a more or less veiled form, a considerable amount of esoteric data, which is to say, everything that is less popular in essence; this fact itself suggests an explanation that we will confine ourselves to indicating in a few words. When a traditional form is about to be extinguished, its last representatives may very willingly entrust, to the collective memory of which we have just spoken, what otherwise would be lost without return; it is the only way to save what can be saved to some degree, and, at the same time, the natural incomprehension of the mass is a sufficient guarantee that what possessed an esoteric character will not be stripped of it, but will only remain, as a kind of testimony of the past, for those, in other times, will be able to understand it. That being said, we do not see why it is attributed to folklore, without further examination, all that belongs to traditions other than Christian- ity, which alone is an exception; such seems to be the intention of Mr. Waite, when he accepts this denomination for the 'pre-Christian' and particularly Celtic elements which are encountered in the legends of the Grail. There is no privileged traditional form in this respect; the only dis- tinction to be made is that of extinct forms and those which are now alive, and therefore the whole question would be whether the Celtic tra- dition had really ceased to live when they form the legends in question. This is at least questionable: on the one hand, this tradition may have lasted longer than what is commonly believed, with an organization which is more or less hidden, and, on the other hand, these legends them- selves may be older than the 'critics' think, not that there were neces- sarily texts which are lost today, which we do not believe any more than Mr. Waite does, but by an oral transmission that may have lasted several centuries, which is far from being an exceptional fact. We see here the mark of a 'junction' between two traditional forms, one old and the other new, the Celtic tradition and the Christian tradition, a junction by which what was preserved from the first was incorporated in the second, prob- ably changing to a certain extent in its external form by adaptation and assimilation, but not by transposing itself to another plane, as Mr. Waite would have it, for there are equivalences between all the regular tradi- tions; there is much more than just a question of 'sources,' in the sense that scholars understand it. It may be difficult to specify exactly where and when this junction took place, but it has only a secondary and almost historical interest; it is also easy to conceive that these things are of those that leave no trace in written 'documents.' Perhaps the ‘Celtic Church' or the 'Culdean Church' deserves, in this regard, more attention than Mr. Waite seems willing to grant it; its very name could be interpreted, and there is nothing improbable about the fact that there is something behind it which is of another order, no longer religious, but initiatic, because, like all that relates to the links existing between the different traditions, what is involved here is necessarily the initiatic or esoteric domain. Ex- oterism, whether religious or otherwise, never goes beyond the limits of the traditional form to which it belongs; what goes beyond these limits as such cannot belong to a 'church,' but it can only be its external ‘sup- port,' and this is a point on which we will have the opportunity to return later.

Another observation, more particularly concerning symbolism, is also essential: there are symbols that are common to the most diverse and distant forms of tradition, not as a result of 'borrowing' which, in many cases would be impossible, but because they actually belong to the Pri- mordial Tradition of which these forms are all directly or indirectly de- rived. This case is precisely that of the vase or cup; why is it only folklore when it comes to ‘pre-Christian' traditions, whereas in Christianity alone it would essentially be a 'Eucharistic' symbol? It is not the assimilations envisaged by Burnouf or by others who are here to reject, but rather the 'naturalistic' interpretations that they wished to extend to Christianity as to all the rest, and which are valid nowhere. We should therefore do exactly the opposite of what Mr. Waite does, who, stopping at external and superficial explanations, which he accepts with confidence as long as it is not about Christianity, seeing radically different and unrelated meanings where there are only more or less multiple aspects of the same symbol or its various applications; no doubt it would have been other- wise if he had not been constrained by his preconceived idea of a kind of heterogeneity of Christian in relation to other traditions. Similarly, Mr. Waite quite rightly rejects, with regards to the legend of the Grail, theo- ries which call upon so-called 'gods of vegetation,' but it is regrettable that it is much less clear with regards to the ancient Mysteries, which never had anything in common with this 'naturalism' which is an en- tirely modern invention. The 'gods of vegetation' and other similar sto- ries have never existed except in the imagination of Frazer and his ilk, whose anti-traditional intentions are not doubted.

In truth, it also seems that Mr. Waite is more or less influenced by a certain 'evolutionism;' this tendency is betrayed in particular when he declares that what matters is much less the origin of the legend than the last state to which it has subsequently arrived, and he seems to believe that there must have been, from one stage to the next, a kind of progres- sive improvement. In reality, if it is something that has a truly traditional character, everything must be on the contrary from the beginning, and later developments only make it more explicitly, without adding new el- ements from without. Mr. Waite seems to admit a kind of 'spiritualiza- tion,' by which a higher meaning could have been grafted onto some- thing that did not have it in the first place; in fact, it is rather the opposite that generally occurs, and this is a little too reminiscent of the profane views of 'historians of religion.' We find, with regard to alchemy, a very striking example of this kind of reversal: Mr. Waite thinks that material alchemy preceded spiritual alchemy, and that it only appeared with Khunrath and Jacob Boehme; if he knew certain Arab treatises much ear- lier than these, he would be obliged, even if he stuck with written docu- ments, to modify this opinion, and besides, since he recognizes that the language used is the same in both cases, we could ask him how he can be sure that, in this or that text, it is only material operations. The truth is that we have not always felt the need to expressly declare that it was something else, which must, on the contrary, be veiled precisely by the symbolism put into use; if it has happened later that some have declared it, it was especially in the presence of degeneration due to the fact that there were then people who, ignorant of the value of the symbols, took all literally and in an exclusively material sense: they were the 'blowers,' the precursors to modern chemistry. To think that a new meaning can be given to a symbol which does not possess in itself, is almost to deny symbolism entirely, because it is to make it artificial, if not entirely arbi- trary, and any case purely human. In this order of ideas, Mr. Waite goes so far as to say that everyone finds in a symbol that which he finds in himself, so that his signification would change with the mentality of each epoch; here we recognize the 'psychological' theories dear to many of our contemporaries, were not right to speak of ‘evolutionism?' We have said it often, and we cannot repeat it enough: every true symbol carries its multiple meanings in itself, and that from the beginning, be- cause it is not constituted as such by virtue of a human convention, but by virtue of the 'law of correspondence' which connects all the worlds to each other; whereas, while some see these meanings, others do not see them or see only a part of them, they are none the less contained within, and the 'intellectual horizon' of each makes all the difference. Symbolism is an exact science, not a reverie where individual fantasies can be given free rein.

Therefore, we do not believe in things of this order, ‘the invention of poets,' which Mr. Waite seems disposed towards; these inventions, far from concentrating on the essential, only conceal it, voluntarily or not, enveloping it in the deceptive appearances of any 'fiction.' Sometimes they conceal it all too well, because when they become too invasive, it ends up becoming almost impossible to discover the profound and orig- inal meaning; is it not so that, among the Greeks, symbolism degenerated into 'mythology?' This danger is especially to be feared when the poet himself is not conscious of the true value of the symbols, for it is evident that this case may occur; the apologue of 'the ass bearing relics' applies here as in many other things, and the poet, then, will play a role analo- gous to that of the profane people without knowingly conserving and transmitting initiatic data, as we said above. The question arises here in particular: were the authors of the Grail sagas in the latter case or, on the contrary, were they aware of the deeper meaning in one degree or an- other of what they were expressing? It is certainly not easy to answer with certainty, because, again, appearances can be an illusion: in the presence of a mixture of insignificant and incoherent elements, one is tempted to think that the author did not know what he was talking about, nevertheless, it is not necessarily so, for it has often happened that the obscurities and even the contradictions were precisely desired as such, and that the useless details are expressly intended to mislead the attention of the layman, in the same way as a symbol may be intentionally concealed in a more or less complicated ornamental pattern; especially in the Middle Ages, example of this kind are abound, even if it is just among Dante and the 'Fedeli d'Amore.' The fact that the higher meaning is less apparent in Chrétien de Troyes, for example, than in Robert de Borron, does not necessarily prove that the former was less aware of it than the latter; still less would it be necessary to conclude that this meaning is absent from his writings, which would be an error comparable to that which consists in attributed to the former alchemists only what concerns the material, for the sole reason that they have not thought to write in letters that their science was actually of a spiritual nature.^[381] Moreover, the question of the 'initiation' of the authors of the sagas may be less important than one might think at first sight, since it does not change the appearances under which the subject is present in any case; since it is an 'externalization' of esoteric data, but in no way a 'polarization,' it is easy to understand that it must be so. We will go even further: a layman may even, for such an 'externalization,' have served as a 'spokesperson' for an initiatic organization, which will have chosen him for this purpose simply for his qualities as a poet or writer, or for any other contingent reason. Dante wrote in perfect knowledge of the facts; Chrétien de Troyes, Robert de Borron, and many others were probably far less aware of what they were saying, and perhaps not even some of them were; it does not really matter, for if there was an initiatic organization behind them, whatever it may be, the danger of a distortion due to their misunderstanding was thereby removed, this organization being able to guide them constantly without them even suspecting it, either through some of its members providing them with the elements to be implemented, or by suggestions or influences of another kind, more subtle and less 'tangible' but no less real or effective. It will be easy to understand that this has nothing to do with the so-called poetic 'inspiration,' as the modern ones understand it, and which is in reality only pure and simple imagination, nor with 'literature,' in the profane sense of the word; we will immediately add that it is no more a matter of ‘mysticism,' but this last point touches indirectly on other questions, which we will consider in the second part of this study.

The Holy Grail II Le Saint Graal II, March 1934.

It does not seem doubtful to us that the origins of the legend of the Grail must be related to the transmission of traditional elements of the initiatic order from Druidism to Christianity; this transmission having been made regularly, and no matter through which modes, these elements were from then on an integral part of Christian esoterism, we agree with Mr. Waite on this second point, but we must say that the first seems to have escaped him. The existence of Christian esoterism in the Middle Ages is an absolutely certain things; proofs of every kind are abound, and the denials of modern incomprehension, whether from partisans or adversaries of Christianity, can do nothing to change this fact. We have had enough opportunity to talk about this issue so that it need not be emphasized here. But even among those who admit the existence of this esoterism, there are many who make it into an inaccurate conception, and such appears to be the case of Mr. Waite, judging by his conclusions; there are confusions and misunderstandings that are important to dispel.

First, observe that we say 'Christian esoterism' and not 'esoteric Christianity;' it is not a special form of Christianity, it is the 'inner' side of the Christian tradition, and it is easy to understand that there is more than just a simple nuance. Moreover, when it is necessary to thus distinguish in a traditional form two faces, one exoteric and the other esoteric, it must be understood that they do not relate to the same domain, so that there can be no conflict or opposition between them; in particular, when exoterism is of a specifically religious character, as is the case here, the corresponding esoterism, while taking it as a base and support, has in itself nothing to do with the religious domain and is in a totally different order. It immediately results that this esoterism can in no way be represented by 'Churches' or 'sects' which, by definition, are always religious and therefore exoteric; this is another point which we have already dealt with in other circumstances and is therefore enough for us to only briefly recall. Certain 'sects' may have arisen from a confusion between the two domains, and from an erroneous ‘externalization' of esoteric data that is poorly understood and misapplied, but the true initiatic organizations, keeping strictly on their own ground, remain necessarily foreign to such deviations, and their 'regularity' even obliges them to recognize only what presents a character of orthodoxy, even in the exoteric order. We are therefore assured that those who wish to link ‘sects’ to esoterism or initiation are wrong and can only go astray; there is no need for further examination to rule out any such hypothesis, and if we find in some ‘sects’ elements which appear to be of an esoteric nature, it must be concluded, that they had their origin therein, but, on the contrary, that they have been diverted from their true meaning.

That being so, certain apparent difficulties are immediately resolved, or, to be more precise, we notice that they are non-existent: thus, there is no need to ask what the situation may be in relation to Christian orthodoxy understood in the ordinary sense, to a line of transmission outside the ‘apostolic succession,’ such as the one which is in question in some versions of the Grail legend; if it is an initiatic hierarchy, the religious hierarchy can in no way be affected by its existence, moreover, it does not even have to know of it ‘officially,’ if it can be said, since it itself has legitimate jurisdiction only in the exoteric domain. Similarly, when it comes to a secret formula in relation to certain rites, there is, frankly, an odd naïvety to wonder whether the loss or omission of this formula is likely to prevent the celebration of the mass and its validity; mass, as it is, is a religious rite and this is an initiatic rite. Each is worth its own order, and even if both have a ‘Eucharistic’ character in common, this does not change this essential distinction, any more than the fact that the same symbol can be interpreted at the same time from both the exoteric and esoteric points of views prevents them from being entirely distinct and from referring to totally different domains; whatever might sometimes be the external resemblances, which are explained by certain correspondences, the scope and purpose of the initiatic rites are quite different from those of religious rites. All the more, there is no need to inquire whether the mysterious formula in question could not be identified with a formula used in this or that Church possessing a more or less special ritual; first, as long as it is about orthodox Churches, the variants of the ritual are quite secondary and can in no way relate to something essential; secondly, these various rituals can never be other than religious, and as such they are perfectly equivalent, the consideration of one or the other does not bring us any closer to the initiatic point of view; useless research and discussion would be spared if we were fixed upon the principles above all things!

Now, the fact that the writings concerning the Grail legend are emanated, directly or indirectly, from an initiatic organization does not mean that they constitute a ritual of initiation, as some people have rather oddly supposed; it is curious to note that this hypothesis has never been made, to our knowledge at least, for works which more clearly describe an initiatic process, such as the Divine Comedy or the Roman de la Rose, it is quite obvious that not all writings that are esoteric are rituals. Mr. Waite, who rightly rejects this assumption, points out the improbabilities: in particular, the fact that the alleged recipient would have a question to ask, instead of having to answer the question of the initiator as usually takes place, and we might add that the divergences which exist between the different versions are incompatible with the character of a ritual, which necessarily has a fixed and definite form. But how does all this prevent the legend from being attached, in any other respect, to what Mr. Waite calls Instituted Mysteries, which we more simply call initiatic organizations? It is because they have an idea that is much too narrow and inaccurate in more than one way: on the one hand, he seems to conceive of them as something almost exclusively 'ceremonial,' which, let us remark by the way, is a way of seeing that is quite typically Anglo-Saxon; on the other hand, following a common error, he regards them as more or less 'societies,' while if some of them have come to take such a form, it is only the effect of a kind of modern degeneration. He has undoubtedly experienced, by direct experience, a good number of these pseudo-initiatic associations which are now common in the West, and, despite seeming to have been rather disappointed, he has nonetheless remained influence by what he saw in one specific sense: we mean that, failing to clearly perceive the difference between authentic initiation and counter-initiation, he wrongly attributes characters comparable to those of the counterfeits he has been in contact with to true initiatic organizations, and this misunderstanding leads to other consequences, directly affect, as we shall see, the positive conclusions of his study. In fact, it is clear that anything of an initiatic order can in no way fit into a framework as narrow as that of ‘societies' constituted in the modern way, but precisely where Mr. Waite does not find anything that resembles his 'societies' near or far, he is lost, and he comes to admit the fantastic assumption of an initiatic that can exist outside any organization and any regular transmission; we cannot do better here than to refer to the articles we have previously devoted to this question. Apart from the so-called 'societies,' he apparently sees no other possibility than that of a vague and indefinite thing which he calls the 'Secret Church' or the 'Inner Church,' according to expressions borrowed from mystics such as Eckartshausen and Lopoukine, and in which even the very word 'Church' indicates that one is, in fact, returned purely and simply to the religious point of view, perhaps by one of those more or less aberrant varieties in which mysticism tends to develop spontaneously as soon as it escapes the control of rigorous orthodoxy. Effectively, Mr. Waite is still one of those, unfortunately so numerous today, who, for various reasons, confuse mysticism and initiation; he comes to speak somehow indiffer-ently to one or the other of these two things, incompatible with each other as they are, as if they were synonymous. What he believes to be initiation ultimately resolves itself as a mere ‘mystic experience,' and we wonder whether he really does not conceive of this 'experience' as something 'psychological,' which would bring us back to a level even lower than that of mysticism understood in its proper meaning, because the true mystic states are already entirely outside the realm of psychology, despite all the modern theories of the kind whose most famous repre-sentative is William Jones. As for the interior states whose realization is of the initiatic order, they are neither psychological states nor even mys-tic states; they are something much more profound, and at the same time they are not of those things of which we cannot say where they come from or what they are, but rather they imply an exact knowledge and a precise technique. Sentimentality and imagination no longer hold the slightest part here. To transpose the truths of the religious order into the initiatic order is not to dissolve them in the clouds of any ‘ideal;' it is, on the contrary, to penetrate the deepest and most 'positive' meaning at the same time, by removing all the clouds which arrest and limit the intel-lectual view of ordinary humanity. To tell the truth, in a conception such as that of Mr. Waite, it is not transposition that is involved, but at most, if you will, a kind of prolongment or extension in the ‘horizontal' sense, since all that is mysticism is included in the religious domain and does not go beyond it; in order to go beyond it, something other than aggre-gation to a 'Church' labelled as 'Inner' is needed above all, as it seems, because it has only an 'ideal' existence, which, translated in clearer terms, amounts to saying that it is in fact only a dream organization.

There cannot really be the 'secret of the Holy Grail,' nor any other initiatic secret; if we want to know where this secret lies, we must refer to the very 'positive' constitution of the spiritual centers, as we have in-dicated quite explicitly in our study on The King of the World. In this respect, we will confine ourselves to pointing out that Mr. Waite some-times touches on things whose scope seems to elude him: this is how he sometimes speaks of ‘substituted' things, which may be symbolic words or objects, but this may refer either to the various secondary center as images or reflections of the Supreme Center, or to the successive stages of 'obscuration' which occurs gradually, in accordance with the cyclic laws, in the manifestation of these same centers in relation to the exterior world. Besides, the first of these two cases returns in a certain way to the second, since the very constitution of the secondary centers, correspond-ing to the particular traditional forms, whatever they may be, already marks an initial degree of obscurity vis-à-vis the Primordial Tradition; in fact, the Supreme Center is no longer in direct contact with the exterior, and the link is maintained only through the secondary centers. On the other hand, if one of these disappears, one can say that it is in away re- sorbed in the Supreme Center, of which it was only an emanation; more- over, here again there are degrees to be observed: it may happen that such a center becomes only more hidden and more closed, and this fact may be represented by the same symbolism as its complete disappear- ance, any distance from the exterior being at the same time, and to an equivalent extent, a return to the Principle. We wish to refer here to the symbolism of the final disappearance of the Grail: whether it has been taken to Heaven, according to certain versions, or has been transported to the 'Kingdom of Prester John,' according to others, it means precisely the same thing, which Mr. Waite hardly seems to suspect.^[382] It is always the same withdrawal from the exterior to the interior, because of the state of the world at certain times, or, to speak more precisely, of that portion of the world that is related to the traditional form in question; this withdrawal applies here only to the esoteric side of the tradition, the exoteric side being, in the case of Christianity, remaining without appar- ent change, but it is precisely on the esoteric side that the effective and conscious links with the Supreme Center are established and maintained. The fact that something subsists, but the traditional form remains vivi- fied necessitates that it remains invisibly in some way; if it were other- wise, it would amount to saying that the 'spirit' has entirely withdrawn from it and there remains only a dead body. It is said that the Grail was no longer seen as before, but it is said that no one saw it anymore; cer- tainly, in principle at least, it is always present for those who are 'quali- fied,' but, in fact, these have become more and more rare, to the point of constituting only a minute exception, and since the time when it is said that the Rose-Cross retreated to Asia, whether literally or symbolically, what possibilities to achieve effective initiation can still be found before them in the Western world?