But there is something else as well, and something more directly connected with our subject: from among the psychic influences with which they deal, the ‘shamans’ quite naturally distinguish two kinds, one benefic and the other malefic, and as there is obviously nothing to be feared from the former, they pay attention almost exclusively to the latter: such at any rate appears most often to be the case, though it may be that ‘shamanism’ includes various forms that might show differences in that respect. But there is never any question of a ‘cult’ devoted to the malefic influences, which would be a sort of conscious ‘satanism’, as has often been wrongly imagined; the only objective is, in principle, that of preventing them from doing harm, or of neutralizing or diverting their activity. The same could be said with truth of other supposed ‘devil-worshippers’ living in various places: in a general way it is scarcely likely that real ‘satanism’ could be characteristic of an entire people. Nevertheless, it is still true that, whatever may be the original intention, the handling of influences of this sort, when no appeal is made to influences of a superior order (still less to truly spiritual influences), finally leads by force of circumstances to real sorcery, which is a very different thing of course from the sorcery of the common ‘rustic magician’ of the West, for this last represents no more than the last scraps of a magical knowledge as degenerate and diminished as it could be, and on the point of complete extinction. The magical part of ‘shamanism’ doubtless has a vitality of quite a different order, and that is why it is something really to be feared in more than one respect; for the practically constant contact with inferior psychic forces is as dangerous as could be, first for the ‘shaman’ himself, as is to be expected, but also from another point of view of a much less narrowly ‘localized’ interest. There are indeed people who, by working more consciously and with a more extensive knowledge (and this does not mean knowledge of a higher order) might be able to make use of these same forces for quite different ends, unbeknown to the ‘shamans’ or those whose work is similar, for they act as nothing more than mere instruments for accumulating the forces in question at pre-determined points. It is known that there are in the world a certain number of ‘repositories’ of influences, the distribution of which is certainly no matter of chance, serving only too well the designs of the ‘powers’ responsible for the whole modern deviation; but that demands some further explanations, for it may seem surprising at first sight that the remains of what was once an authentic tradition should lend themselves to a ‘subversion’ of this kind.
27
Psychic Residues
The last point mentioned in connection with ‘shamanism’ needs to be clarified, for it contains the main reason for the introduction of the subject; for this purpose it must be made clear that the case of the persistent vestiges of a degenerate tradition that has lost its superior or ‘spiritual’ part is fully comparable to the case of the psychic remains left behind by a human being in passing to another state, for these remains can be used for any purpose once they have been abandoned by the ‘spirit’. Whether they be made use of consciously by a magician or a sorcerer, or unconsciously by spiritualists, the more or less malefic effects that can accrue obviously have nothing to do with the inherent character of the being to whom they belonged before; they are no longer anything but a special category of ‘wandering influences’, to use the terminology of the Far-Eastern tradition, and they have kept at the most a purely illusory likeness to the said being. Comparisons of this kind can only be fully understood if it is remembered that even spiritual influences themselves must necessarily, if they are to come into action in our world, take appropriate ‘supports’, first of all in the psychic order, then in the corporeal order itself, so that the result is something analogous to the constitution of a human being. If later on the spiritual influences for any reason withdraw themselves, their former corporeal supports, whether places or objects (and when places are in question their situation is naturally connected with the ‘sacred geography’ mentioned earlier) will nonetheless remain charged with psychic elements that will be all the stronger and more persistent through having previously served as the intermediaries and the instruments of a yet more powerful action. It would be logical to conclude that important traditional and initiatic centers, more or less long since extinct, must in general be the most important potential sources of danger, whether arising from violent reactions provoked in the psychic conglomerates persisting in such places by sheer imprudence, or more especially from the seizure of these elements by ‘black magicians’, to use the accepted expression, who could then manoeuvre them at will in order to obtain results conforming to a plan.
The existence of the first of these two sources of danger goes a long way toward explaining the harmful character of certain vestiges of extinct civilizations when they come to be exhumed by people who, like the modern archaeologists, know nothing of such matters, and so inevitably fail to act with prudence. That is not to say that there may not sometimes be other factors in the situation: for instance, a particular ancient civilization may have degenerated through an excessive development of magic in its final phases,[123] and its remains will naturally then always bear the imprint of that development in the shape of psychic influences of a very inferior order. It is also possible, even in the absence of any degeneration of that sort, that places or objects may have been specially prepared by way of defensive action against anyone who might touch them improperly, for precautions of this kind are in no way illegitimate as such, although the fact of attaching too great an importance to them is none too favorable an indication, for it affords evidence of preoccupations rather remote from pure spirituality, and even perhaps of a certain lack of knowledge of the power possessed by pure spirituality, which should make it unnecessary to resort to such ‘extras’. But apart from all this, persistent psychic influences, when deprived of the ‘spirit’ that formerly directed them, are reduced to a sort of ‘larval’ state, and can easily by themselves react to a particular provocation, however involuntary it may be, in a more or less disordered manner, and in any case in a manner quite unrelated to the intentions of those who used them formerly for purposes of quite another order. Just in the same way the gruesome manifestations of psychic ‘corpses’ that sometimes occur in spiritualist seances, have absolutely no relation in any circumstances whatever to the possibilities of action or of desire of the individualities whose subtle forms they were, and whose posthumous ‘identity’ they imitate more or less badly, to the great amazement of the ingenuous who are all too ready to take them for ‘spirits’.
So under many conditions the influences in question can be quite pernicious enough, even when they are simply left to themselves; this fact is merely a result of the inherent nature of the forces of the ‘intermediary world’, about which nobody can do anything, any more than they can prevent ‘physical’ forces, meaning the forces belonging to the corporeal order studied by the physicists, from acting in certain circumstances so as to cause accidents for which no human will can be held responsible; what is revealed by all this is the true significance of modern antiquarian researches, and the part they actually play in opening up some of the ‘fissures’ previously referred to. But in addition, these same influences are at the mercy of anyone who knows how to ‘capture’ them, just as are ‘physical’ forces; it goes without saying that either can be made to serve the most diverse and even the most contradictory ends, according to the intentions of whoever has taken control of them and can direct them to his chosen purpose; and, when subtle influences are involved, if their controller happens to be a ‘black magician’, it is obvious that they will be used by him for a purpose quite contrary to that for which they might have been used in earlier times by the qualified representatives of a regular tradition.