REVIEWS

ENEL: Les Origines de la Genèse et l'enseignement des Temples de l'ancienne Egypte. vol. 1, 1re et 2e parties. (Cairo: Institut français d'Archéologie orientale, 1935). It is assuredly very difficult, and perhaps even wholly impossible today, to know what the ancient Egyptian tradition, extinct for so many centuries, really was. Thus, the various interpretations and reconstructions attempted by Egyptologists are largely hypothetical and, moreover, often contradict each other. The present work is distinguished from the usual Egyptological works by a laudable concern for doctrinal comprehension which is generally absent from them, and also by the great importance it rightly gives to symbolism, which the ‘official’ scholars for their part tend to deny or to ignore purely and simply; but is this to say that the views expressed here are less hypothetical than the others? We rather doubt this, especially seeing that they are inspired by a sort of prejudice toward finding a constant parallelism between the Egyptian and Hebraic traditions, for although the basis is essentially the same everywhere, nothing proves that the two forms in question have truly been so close to one another, and the direct filiation which the author seems to imagine between them and which the title itself probably means to suggest, is more than contestable. From this result more or less forced assimilations; it must be asked, for example, whether it is really certain that the Egyptian doctrine considered universal manifestation under the aspect of ‘creation’, which seems so peculiar to the Hebraic tradition and to those that are linked to it. The testimony of the ancients, who ought to have known better than we what they believed, does not support it in any way; and on this point our suspicion increases further when we note that the same principle is sometimes called ‘Creator’ and sometimes simply ‘Demiurge’; one must at least choose between these two obviously incompatible roles... On the other hand, the linguistic considerations put forward doubtless call for many reservations as well, for the language in which the Egyptian tradition expresses itself is no better known than is that tradition itself; and we should add that some interpretations are clearly too much influenced by occultist ideas. But despite everything, this is not to say that there is not in this volume, whose first part is devoted to the Universe and the second to Man, a fairly great number of remarks worthy of interest, of which some could even be confirmed by comparison with the Eastern traditions, which unfortunately the author seems to ignore almost completely, much better than by biblical references. Naturally, we cannot enter into details here; to give one example, we will only point out, in this order of ideas, what is said concerning the constellation of the Thigh, a designation of the 'Great Bear', and the expression 'Master of the Thigh', which applies to the Pole. There would be some curious connections to point out here. Finally, let us note the opinion of the author on the Great Pyramid, which he sees as both a 'Solar Temple' and a monument to 'immortalize the knowledge of the laws of the Universe.' This supposition is at least as plausible as many others that have been put forward on the subject; but as for saying that 'the hidden symbolism of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures relates directly to facts which took place during the construction of the Great Pyramid', this is an assertion which seems to us to lack plausibility in every respect!

ENEL: A Message from the Sphinx (London: Rider & Co., 1936). The reservations we expressed last year in connection with another work of the same author as to the purely hypothetical character of all attempts at the reconstitution and interpretation of the ancient Egyptian tradition apply equally to this one, where we find once again in the first part, treated more briefly, some of the same ideas. The book opens with a study of hieroglyphic writing based on perfectly sound principles, which are moreover quite generally known, concerning the plurality of meanings of this writing. But when these are to be applied in detail, how can we really be certain not to mix in a greater or lesser measure of fantasy? Let us also note that the term 'ideographic' does not apply, as is claimed, to the simple representation of sensible objects, and that when it is a question of writing it is in short synonymous with 'symbolic'; and there are many other improprieties of language which are no less regrettable. For example, it is quite certain that the Egyptian doctrine must have been at root 'monotheistic', for all traditional doctrines without exception are so in the sense that they cannot but affirm principial unity. But if the word 'monotheism' thus has an acceptable meaning, even outside of specifically religious forms, has one the right to call 'pantheism' what everyone else is accustomed to call 'polytheism'? Another more serious error concerns magic, which the author clearly confuses in many cases with theurgy (a confusion which amounts in the final analysis to that between the psychic and the spiritual), for he sees it wherever the 'power of the word' is involved, which leads him to believe that it must have had a major role at the very beginning, whereas on the contrary its predominance, as we have often explained, could only have been in Egypt, as elsewhere, a more or less late degeneration also. Let us note before going further a rather unfortunate concession made to modern 'evolutionist' theories: if the men of those ancient times possessed the crude or rudimentary mentality ascribed to them, where could they ever have recruited those 'initiates' in whom, at the same time, one observes precisely the opposite? One must necessarily choose between anti-traditional 'evolutionism' and the acceptance of traditional facts, and any compromise can only lead to insoluble contradictions.

The second part of the book is devoted to the Hebrew Kabbalah, which might be surprising if we were not already familiar with the ideas of the author on this subject. For him the Hebrew tradition is directly descended from the Egyptian tradition; they are like 'two consecutive links of the same chain.' We have already said what we think about this, but we will clarify the point further: the author is certainly right when he says that the Egyptian tradition was derived from Atlantis (which, we can say more clearly than he does, was not therefore itself the seat of the primordial tradition), but it was not the only one. And the same thing seems true particularly of the Chaldean tradition; the Arab teaching on the 'three Hermes', of which we spoke elsewhere, shows this descent quite clearly. But, if the principal source is thus the same, the difference of these forms was probably determined by the meeting with other currents, one coming from the South in the case of Egypt, and the other from the North in that of Chaldea. Now the Hebrew tradition is essentially 'Abrahamic', hence of Chaldean origin; the 'readaptation' effected by Moses was no doubt able, because of circumstances of place, to make accessory use of Egyptian elements, especially as regards certain more or less secondary traditional sciences; but it could never have had the effect of causing this tradition to depart from its own lineage so as to transfer it into another lineage foreign to the people for whom it was expressly destined and in whose language it had to be formulated. Besides, as soon as one recognizes the common origin and foundation of all traditional doctrines, the observation of certain similarities does not in any way imply a direct filiation; this is the case for example with links like those the author wishes to establish between the Sephiroth and the Egyptian 'Ennead', assuming that they are justified; and strictly speaking, even if the resemblances seem to be based on points too particular to go back as far as the primordial tradition, the kinship of the Egyptian and Chaldean traditions would in any case amply suffice to explain it. As for claiming that primitive Hebraic writing was derived from hieroglyphs, this is an entirely gratuitous hypothesis, since no one in fact knows exactly what this writing was; all the indications that one can find concerning them tend rather to make one think the contrary; moreover, it is not at all clear how the association of numbers with letters, which is essential for Hebrew, could really have been borrowed from the hieroglyphic system. What is more, the close similarities between Hebrew and Arabic, to which not the least allusion is made here, clearly runs counter to this hypothesis, for it would be very difficult to seriously maintain that the Arab tradition also had to come from Egypt! We will pass rapidly over the third part, where we first find views on art which, if they do in spite of everything contain some truth, nonetheless still start from an affirmation that is questionable at the very least; it is not possible to say, at least without more clarification, that 'there is only one art', for it is obvious that the underlying unity, namely ideas expressed symbolically, in no way excludes the multiplicity of forms. In the chapters that follow the author gives a survey, not of authentic traditional sciences as one might wish, but of more or less distorted fragments that have survived until our time, especially under the 'divinatory' aspect; the influence of 'occultist' conceptions appear here in a particularly regrettable way. Let us state once again that it is wholly inaccurate to say that certain sciences taught in the temples of antiquity were purely and simply equivalent to modern 'academic' sciences; in reality, even where there is an apparent similarity of object, the point of view was still totally different, and there is always a veritable abyss between the traditional sciences and the profane sciences. Finally, we cannot refrain from pointing out some errors of detail that are truly astonishing; thus the well known image of the 'churning of the sea' is said to be that of a 'god, Samudra Mutu' [sic]! But this is perhaps still more excusable than the errors about things which should be more familiar to the author than the Hindu tradition, particularly the Hebrew language. We will not speak of mere errors of transcription, although this is terribly careless; but how can one continually call Ain Bekar that which is really Aiq Bekar (a cryptographic system that is as well-known in Arabic as in Hebrew, where one can find the prototype of the Masonic alphabets), confuse the final form of kaph with that of nun with regard to their numerical value, and even mention a 'final samek', which has never existed and which is nothing but a mem? How can one insist that the translators of Genesis have rendered tehōm by 'waters', in a place where the word in the Hebrew text is maim and not thehōm, or that Ain Soph literally means the 'Ancient of Years' when the strictly literal translation of this name is 'without limit'? Yetsirah is 'Formation' and not 'Creation' (which is Beriah); Zohar does not mean 'celestial Chariot' (an obvious confusion with the Merkabah) but 'Splendor'; and the author seems to be wholly ignorant of what the Talmud is, since he thinks it is formed from the Notarikon, the Temourah, and the Gematria, which however are not 'books', as he says, but kabbalistic methods of interpretation! We shall stop here, but it will be agreed that such errors hardly encourage one to blindly accept the author's assertions on less easily verifiable points and to grant an unreserved confidence to his Egypto-logical theories...

XAVIER GUICHARD: Eleusis Alesia: Enquête sur les origines de la civilisation européenne (Abbeville: F. Paillart, 1936). Whatever one may think of the views expressed in this work, it is nonetheless fitting to pay tribute to the work it represents, and to the patience and perseverance shown by the author, who for more than twenty years dedicated to this research all the spare time left him by his professional duties. He has studied all the places, not only in France but in all of Europe, with a name that seems to be derived, sometimes under rather altered forms, from Alesia. He has found a considerable number of these, and has noticed that all share certain common topographical particularities: they 'occupy sites surrounded by more or less important water courses which isolate them almost into islands,' and 'all possess a mineral spring.' From a 'prehistoric' or at the very least 'proto-historic' epoch, these 'alesian sites' were chosen, because of their privileged locations, as 'meeting-places' (this is the original meaning of their name) and soon became centers of habitation, which would seem to be confirmed by the numerous traces generally found there. In short, all of this is perfectly plausible, and only shows that in those regions what is called 'civilization' goes back very much further than is ordinarily supposed, and that since that time there has not been any real interruption. But we do have reservations about the assimilation of certain names; even that of Alesia with Eleusis is not as obvious as the author seems to believe, and in general it is regrettable that certain of his speculations bear witness to insufficient or unsure linguistic knowledge on many points; but even leaving the more doubtful cases aside, there still remain enough, especially in Western Europe, to justify what we have just said. Moreover, it goes without saying that the existence of this ancient 'civilization' does not in any way surprise us, whatever its origin and characteristics may have been—questions to which we shall return later. But there is still something else which seems even more extraordinary: the author has noted that the 'alesian sites' were regularly laid out according to lines radiating from a center and running from one end of Europe to the other; he has found twenty four such lines, which he calls 'alesian itineraries', and which all converge on Mount Poupet near Alaise, at the Doubs.^[13] Besides this system of geodesic lines there is even a second system formed by a 'meridian', an 'equinoctial', and two 'solstitials', whose center is in another point of the same 'alesia', marked by a place with the name of Myon. And there is even a series of 'alesian sites' (some of which coincide with the preceding ones) marking out lines that correspond exactly to the different degrees of longitude and latitude. All this forms a rather complex ensemble, and unfortunately it cannot be said that everything seems to be absolutely rigorous. Thus the twenty-four lines of the first system do not all form equal angles; moreover, one needs only a very slight error of direction in the starting-point in order to have a considerable deviation at a certain distance, something that leaves a rather larger degree of 'approximation'; there are also isolated 'alesian sites' outside of these lines, hence exceptions or anomalies... On the other hand, it is hard to see what the special importance of the central 'alesia' can have been; it is possible that it really did have one at some distant period, but it is rather astonishing that no trace of it has survived apart from a few 'legends' which are in no way exceptional, and which are also associated with many other places. In any case, this is an unresolved question that in the present state of things is perhaps even insoluble. Be that as it may, there is another more serious objection which the author has not considered and which is as follows: on the one hand, as we saw earlier, the 'alesian sites' are defined by certain conditions that relate to the natural configuration of the terrain; on the other hand, they are situated on lines which were traced artificially by the men of a certain age: how can these two things of a wholly different order be reconciled? The 'alesian sites' thus have as it were two distinct definitions, and it is hard to see how they can be reconciled; at the very least this calls for an explanation, and as long as one is looking it must be recognized that all of this has a certain air of probability. It would be different if one were to say that most of the places showing 'alesian' characteristics were naturally distributed according to certain determinate patterns; this might be strange, but not impossible, for it is possible that the world is really much more 'geometric' than is thought; and in this case, people would only have had to recognize the existence of these lines and to transform them into roads linking their different 'alesian' establishments; if the lines in question are not a simple 'cartographic' illusion, we hardly see how they can be accounted for otherwise. We have just spoken of roads, and it is really this which implies the existence on the 'alesian itineraries' of certain 'distance markers' consisting of places most of which bear names like Calais, Versailles, Myon, and Millières. The distances of these places from the center are exact multiples of a unit of measure to which the author gives the conventional name 'alesian stadium'; and what is particularly remarkable is that this unit, which would have been the prototype of the Greek stadium, the Roman mile, and the Gallic league, is equal to the sixth part of a degree, which implies that the men who determined its length knew with precision the true dimensions of the terrestrial sphere. On this subject, the author points to facts indicating that the knowledge possessed by the geographers of 'classical' antiquity such as Strabo and Ptolemy, far from being the result of their own discoveries, represented the remnants of a much more ancient or even 'prehistoric' science, of which the greater part had by then been lost. What is astonishing is that in spite of such acknowledgments, he accepts the 'evolutionist' theories on which 'prehistory' such as is taught 'officially' is built. Whether he truly accepts them or simply does not dare risk contradicting them, there is something in his attitude which is not entirely logical and which greatly weakens his thesis. In fact, this aspect of the question can only be clarified by the idea of traditional sciences, and this appears nowhere in this study; there is not the least suspicion that there even existed a science whose origin was other than 'empirical' and which was not formed 'progressively' by a long series of observations by means of which man is supposed to have emerged little by little from a so-called 'primitive' ignorance, which is here simply carried back a little further into the past than is common. Of course the same lack of any traditional information also affects the way the origin of the 'alesian civilization' is envisaged; the truth is that at the beginning, and even much later, all things had a ritual and 'sacred' character; thus there is no need to ask whether 'religious' influences (an inappropriate word in any case) affected this or that particular point, a question which comes from an all too modern point of view and sometimes even has the effect of completely reversing certain relationships. Thus, even if it is conceded that the designation 'Champs-Elysées' is related to the 'alesian' names (which seems rather hypothetical), one cannot conclude that the abode of the dead was conceived after the model of the inhabited areas near which the bodies were buried, but on the contrary, that these places themselves were chosen or arranged in conformity with the ritual exigencies governed by that idea, which at that time certainly counted for much more than simple 'utilitarian' preoccupations, even if these latter really existed as such at a time when human life was entirely regulated by traditional knowledge. On the other hand, it is possible that the 'elysian myths' were connected with 'chthonian' cults (and what we have explained about the symbolism of the cave would even explain in certain cases their relationship with the initiatic 'mysteries'), but again it would have been appropriate to explain more fully the meaning attributed to this assertion. In any case, the 'Mother-Goddess' was undoubtedly something quite different than 'Nature', unless by this are understood Natura naturans, which is no longer a 'naturalist' conception at all. We must add that a predominance given to the 'Mother-Goddess' does not seem to go back beyond the beginning of the Kali-Yuga, of which it is quite a clear characteristic; and this perhaps allows one to 'date' the 'alesian civilization' more exactly, that is, to determine the cyclic period to which it must be connected. Here there is assuredly something earlier than 'history' in the ordinary sense of the word, but nonetheless already very far removed from the true origins.

Finally, the author seems bent on establishing that 'European civilization' had its origin in Europe itself, apart from any foreign influences, especially Eastern ones; but this is not really how the question should be put. We know that the primordial origin of tradition, and accordingly of all 'civilization', was in fact hyperborean, and neither Eastern nor Western; but at the age in question, it is evident that one can envisage a secondary current that more directly gave birth to this 'alesian civilization', and in fact various indications make us think especially here of the Atlantean current during the period when it was spreading from West to East after the disappearance of Atlantis itself. Of course this is only a suggestion, but it is one that at least is able to include in the framework of traditional data all that can justifiably be based on the results of those investigations. In any case, there is no doubt that a question such as that of the 'alesian sites' can only be treated completely and accurately from the point of view of 'sacred geography'; but it must be said that among the ancient traditional sciences, the reconstruction of this science would today raise altogether insurmountable difficulties; and in the presence of certain enigmas encountered in this domain, one may wonder whether, even during periods where no notable cataclysm occurred, the 'countenance' of the terrestrial world has not sometimes changed in a very strange way.

NOËL DE LA HOUSSAYE: Les Bronzes italiotes archaïques et leur symbolique. (Paris: Éditions du Trident, 1938). This study begins with a consideration of the origins of coinage in the Mediterranean basin, a rather obscure subject for which, as for so many other things, it does not seem possible to go back beyond the sixth century BC. In any case, the author understands well enough that 'for the ancients coinage was a sacred thing', contrary to the wholly profane conception that the moderns have of it—and that this explains the character of the symbols which it bore; one could go even further, we think, and see these symbols as the mark of control exercised by a spiritual authority. What follows more particularly concerns Rome and Italy, and is much more hypothetical: relating the name of Aeneas to the Latin name for bronze [aeneus], that even if not impossible, seems rather questionable; and it is perhaps a rather restricted interpretation of the legend of Aeneas to see in the different stages of his journeys nothing more than the spread of bronze coinage. Whatever importance this may have had, however, it can only be a secondary fact, doubtless linked to an entire tradition. Be that as it may, what seems to us most improbable is the idea that the Aeneas legend can have any connection with Atlantis. To begin with, Aeneas's journeys from Asia Minor to Italy obviously do not have their starting-point in the West; next, they refer to a time which, even if it cannot be precisely determined, is in any event several thousand years after the disappearance of Atlantis. But this over-imaginative theory, as well as some linguistic fantasies on which we shall not dwell, must probably be attributed to the fact that the study in question first appeared in part in the journal Atlantis...

The enumeration of the symbols figuring on the coins seems to be as complete as possible, and synoptic tables have been added at the end of the work that allow one to see their distribution on the circumference of the Mediterranean basin; but there could have been much more to say on the meaning of these symbols, and in this respect there are indeed some quite astonishing gaps. Thus, we do not understand how one can say that the prow of a ship associated with the figure of Janus on the Roman as,^[14] 'concerns Saturn, and him alone', when it is quite well known that the ship or the barque was one of the attributes of Janus himself; and it is curious too that with regard to Saturn, what is called the 'pastoral era' is really the 'agricultural era', that is to say exactly the opposite, since the shepherds are essentially nomadic peoples while the farmers are sedentary. How then could the 'pastoral era' really coincide with the 'formation of towns'? What is said of the Dioscuri^[15] scarcely clarifies the meaning, and the same goes for the Kabiri.^[16] But above all, how is it that the author does not seem to have observed that the symbolism of the latter is closely related to metallurgy, and even more particularly to copper, something which would have had a direct bearing on his subject?

NOËL DE LA HOUSSAYE: Le Phoenix, poème symbolique. (Paris: Éditions du Trident, n.d.). We are not qualified to appraise a poem as such, but, from the symbolic point of view this poem seems to us less clear than might be hoped, and even the essentially 'cyclic' and 'solar' character of the myth of the phoenix does not emerge very clearly; as for the symbol of the egg, we confess that we have not managed to grasp how it is envisaged here. In spite of its title, the inspiration of the whole gives the impression of being more 'philosophical' than symbolic; on the other hand, the author appears to seriously believe in the existence of an organization called the 'Brothers of Heliopolis' and in its links with an Egyptian tradition. Europeans do have rather curious ideas about Egypt... Moreover, is he quite sure that it is the Heliopolis in Egypt with which the phoenix was originally associated? There was also a Heliopolis in Syria, and if one recalls that the region of Syria did not always coincide exactly with the country that bears this name today, this can bring us nearer to its origins. The truth, in fact, is that these various relatively recent 'Cities of the Sun' were only secondary images of the hyperborean 'solar earth', and thus, beyond all the derivative forms that are 'historically' known, the symbolism of the phoenix is directly linked to the primordial tradition itself.

Lettres d'Humanité (Paris: Société d'éditions 'Le Belles Lettres', ser. 1942–45). Lettres d'Humanité, a publication of L'Association Guillaume Budé, contains in its third volume (1944) a curious essay by Paul Maury entitled Le Secret de Virgile et l'architecture des Bucoliques. The author in fact has discovered there a veritable 'architecture', almost as astonishing as that of the Divine Comedy. It would be difficult to summarize all this, but we shall try to point out at least its principal features. Firstly he has noticed a symmetry between eclogues I and IX (the ordeals of the Earth), II and VIII (the ordeals of Love), III and VII (the liberating Music), and IV and VI (the supernatural Revelations); these eight eclogues form a double progression, ascending for the first four and descending for the last four, that is to say a sort of double ladder whose summit is occupied by eclogue V (Daphnis), which he calls 'the Bucolic major'. There remains eclogue X (Gallus), which is opposed to eclogue V 'as profane love is opposed to sacred love, as is the imperfectly initiated man of flesh to the ideal of man reformed'; these are 'the two limits between which the souls circulate, between the terraqueous globe and Olympus.' The whole thus forms the plan of a kind of 'chapel', or rather of a 'Pythagorean basilica', of which eclogue V constitutes the apse while eclogue X is at the opposite extremity; between the two the other eclogues are ranged laterally on one side and the other, those which are in symmetry naturally facing each other. But this is not all, and the remarks which follow are even more extraordinary. These refer to the number of the verses of the different eclogues, in which are found other multiple symmetries which certainly can only be intentional. At first glance, it is true, a few of these numerical symmetries appear to be only approximate; but the slight differences thus noted have led the author to work out and 'localize' certain alterations of the text (verses omitted or added), but these are very few in any event and coincide precisely with those which had already been suspected for purely philological reasons. That done, the symmetries all become exact; unfortunately, it is not possible for us to reproduce here the various tables in which these symmetries are presented and without which they can hardly be comprehensible. We will only say, therefore, that the principal numbers evident here and which are repeated with an emphasis that is significant, are 183 (a number by which, according to a passage from Plutarch, 'the Pythagoreans represented the harmony of the great Cosmos itself'), 333, and 666; the last is also 'a Pythagorean number, a triangular number of 36, itself a triangle of 8, the double Ogdoad of the Tetrad'; we shall add that this is essentially a 'solar' number, and point out that the meaning attributed to it in the Apocalypse does not constitute a 'reversal of values' as the author says, but really represents an application of the opposite aspect of that number, which possesses itself, as do so many other symbols, both a 'benefic' and a 'malefic' meaning. It was obviously the first of these two meanings that Virgil had in view; now is it correct to say that he wished particularly to make the number 666 'the cipher of Caesar', which would appear to be confirmed by the fact that, according to the commentator Servius, the Daphnis of the central eclogue V would be none other than Caesar himself? There is certainly nothing implausible in this, and other rather remarkable parallels are invoked in support of this interpretation. Let us add that this cannot be seen as a mere 'political' application in the ordinary sense of the word, if one thinks of the not even exclusively 'religious' side of Caesar (which the author recognizes) but of his truly 'esoteric' role. We cannot pursue this question any further, but we think we have said enough to show the value of this work, and we particularly recommend it to those interested in the symbolism of numbers.

In the same publication, other articles devoted to Hippocrates call for a few remarks. Much is presently being said in medical circles of a 'return to Hippocrates', but strangely enough this seems to be viewed in two different and even contrary ways, for while some understand it, and rightly so, in the sense of a restoration of traditional ideas, others, as is the case here, would like to turn it altogether into its opposite. The latter would attribute to Hippocratic medicine a 'philosophical' character, that is, according to the meaning they give to the word 'rationalist', even a 'secular' character (do they forget then that Hippocrates himself came from a priestly family, failing which he could not have been a physician?), and with this as justification oppose it to the ancient sacerdotal medicine, in which they naturally see, in conformity with the customary modern prejudice, only 'empiricism' and 'superstition'! We do not believe it pointless to draw this to the attention of the partisans of traditional Hippocratism and to urge them, when the occasion arises, to set things right and to react against this unfortunate interpretation. It would be truly regrettable to allow a movement which, even if as yet it indicates no more than a tendency, is certainly not lacking in interest from more than one point of view, to be diverted from its normal and legitimate aim.

Lettres d'Humanité, volume four (1945) contains a long study of Pierre Grimal's Le Dieu Janus et les origines de Rome, where there are found many interesting and little known historical facts, although unfortunately no really important conclusions can be drawn from them. The author is certainly right in criticizing the 'historians of religions' who wish to reduce everything to 'ideas' as 'simple and crude' as those of 'forces of nature' or 'social functions'; but are his own explanations, even if more subtle, really any more satisfactory? Whatever one might think of the more or less hypothetical existence of an ancient word ianus, meaning the 'action of going' and consequently having the meaning of 'passage', we do not see how this allows one to maintain that there was originally no relationship between this word and the name of the god Janus, for a simple difference of declension most certainly does not prevent their sharing a common root; in truth, these are nothing but philological subtleties with no serious import. Even if one admits that the name of Janus was initially not Latin (because, for Grimal, Janus would have been first and foremost a 'foreign god'), why would the root i, 'to go', which is common to Latin and Sanskrit, not be found in other languages? Another rather plausible hypothesis could still be put forward: why could not the Romans, when they adopted this god, have translated his name, whatever it may have been, by an equivalent in their own language, just as they later changed the names of the Greek gods in order to assimilate them to their own? In sum, Grimal's thesis is that the ancient Janus could never have been a 'door god', and that this attribute would have been attached to him only 'belatedly', as a result of a confusion between two words which were quite different although quite similar in form. But all this does not seem at all convincing to us, for the assumption of a so-called 'fortuitous' coincidence never explains anything. Moreover, it is obvious that the deeper significance of the symbolism of the 'door god' escapes him; has he even noticed its close connection with the role of Janus in the annual cycle, which nevertheless brings him back quite directly to the fact that this same Janus was, as he says, a 'god of Heaven' as well as a god of initiation? This last point, moreover, is passed over entirely in silence; it is well said, however, that 'Janus was an initiator, the very god of initiators,' but this term is taken there only in an indirect and wholly profane sense which in reality has absolutely nothing to do with initiation... Some rather curious remarks are made on a god Bifrons existing elsewhere than in Rome, especially in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, but it is very much out of proportion to wish to conclude from this that 'in Rome Janus is only the incarnation of a Syrian Uranus,' since, as we have often said, similarities between different traditions are very far from necessarily implying 'borrowings' from the one to the other. But can one ever make this understood to those who believe that the 'historical method' is applicable to everything?

In the same volume there is an article entitled 'Béatrice dans la vie et l'oeuvre de Dante' which does not present any interest from our point of view, but which does call for a remark: how is it possible, after the appearance of so many works on the Fedeli d'Amore written by Luigi Valli and many others, that one can be ignorant when dealing with Dante (or at least affect such ignorance) of the existence of an esoteric and initiatic significance? The only allusion here is to the theological interpretation by R. P. Mandonnet, which is certainly quite insufficient but which, although wholly exoteric, at least acknowledges a meaning higher than the crude 'literalism' which only sees in Beatrice 'a woman of flesh and blood'. Nevertheless, this 'literalism' is still upheld as lending itself to 'a more psychological and more human explanation,' that is to say, in short, one more to the taste of the moderns and more in conformity with 'esthetic' and 'literary' prejudices which were quite foreign to Dante and his contemporaries!

GEORGES DUMÉZIL: L'Héritage indo-européen à Rome (Paris: Gallimard, 1949). Dumézil set out from an altogether secular point of view, but in the course of his researches he came across certain traditional data from which he drew conclusions which are not without interest but which are not always entirely justified and should not be accepted without reservations, all the more so as he almost always tries to support them with linguistic considerations of which the least that can be said is that they are very hypothetical. Furthermore, as the data is necessarily very fragmentary, he has 'fastened' exclusively and as it were systematically on certain things such as the 'tripartite' division, which he insists on finding everywhere, and which in fact does exist in many cases, but which is not the only one to be taken into account here, even if we confine ourselves to his specialized domain. In this volume he has undertaken to sum up the present state of his labors, for it must be recognized that he at least does not claim to have succeeded in reaching any final results, and moreover his continuing discoveries have already led him to modify his conclusions on several occasions. What is essentially involved here is the sifting out of those elements in the Roman tradition which appear to go back directly to the epoch when the peoples called by common consent 'Indo-European' had not yet split into distinct branches which thereafter existed independently of the others. The basis of his theory is the ternary of divinities consisting of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus,^[17] which he regards as corresponding to three social functions; moreover, he seems to try rather too hard to reduce everything to the social point of view, which easily risks leading to a reversal of the real relationships between principles and their applications. With him there is even a certain rather 'juridical' turn of mind which obviously limits his horizon; we do not know whether he acquired this because he devoted himself primarily to the study of the Roman civilization, or on the contrary because, already having this tendency, Roman civilization particularly attracted him, but in any case the two do not seem entirely unconnected. We cannot enter here into the details of the questions treated in this book, but we must at the very least point out a truly curious remark, all the more so because upon it a great part of these considerations rest. This is that many accounts of events presented elsewhere as 'myths' are found again, with all their principal features, in what is given as the history of the first days of Rome, whence it should be concluded that the Romans transformed into 'ancient history' what was really originally their 'mythology'. To judge from the examples Dumézil gives it does appear that there is some truth in this, although one should perhaps not misuse this interpretation by generalizing it beyond measure. It is true that one could also ask whether history, especially 'sacred history', may not in certain cases indeed reproduce the myth and offer a 'humanized' image of it; but it goes without saying that such a question, which in short is none other than that of the symbolic value of historical facts, cannot even occur to the modernist spirit.