For this reason, perhaps more than for any other, it is impossible to be too mistrustful of every appeal to the ‘subconscious’, to ‘instinct’, and to sub-rational ‘intuition’, no less than to a more or less ill-defined ‘vital force’ — in a word to all those vague and obscure things that tend to exalt the new philosophy and psychology, yet lead more or less directly to a contact with inferior states. There is therefore all the more reason to exercise extreme vigilance (for the enemy knows only too well how to take on the most insidious disguises) against anything that may lead the being to become ‘fused’ or preferably and more accurately ‘confused’ or even ‘dissolved’ in a sort of ‘cosmic consciousness’ that shuts out all ‘transcendence’ and so also shuts out all effective spirituality. This is the ultimate consequence of all the anti-metaphysical errors known more especially in their philosophical aspect by such names as ‘pantheism’, ‘immanentism’, and ‘naturalism’, all of which are closely interrelated, and many people would doubtless recoil before such a consequence if they could know what it is that they are really talking about. These things do indeed quite literally amount to an ‘inversion’ of spirituality, to a substitution for it of what is truly its opposite, since they inevitably lead to its final loss, and this constitutes ‘satanism’ properly so called. Whether it be conscious or unconscious in any particular case makes little difference to the result, for it must not be forgotten that the ‘unconscious satanism’ of some people, who are more numerous than ever in this period in which disorder has spread into every domain, is really in the end no more than an instrument in the service of the ‘conscious satanism’ of those who represent the ‘counter-initiation’.
There has been occasion elsewhere to call attention to the initiatic symbolism of a ‘navigation’ across the ocean (representing the psychic domain), which must be crossed while avoiding all its dangers in order to reach the goal;[145] but what is to be said of someone who flings himself into the ocean and has no aspiration but to drown himself in it? This is very precisely the significance of a so-called ‘fusion’ with a ‘cosmic consciousness’ that is really nothing but the confused and indistinct assemblage of all the psychic influences; and, whatever some people may imagine, these influences have absolutely nothing in common with spiritual influences, even if they may happen to imitate them to a certain extent in some of their outward manifestations (for in this domain ‘counterfeit’ comes into play in all its fullness, and this is why the ‘phenomenal’ manifestations so eagerly sought for never by themselves prove anything, for they can be very much the same in a saint as in a sorcerer). Those who make this fatal mistake either forget about or are unaware of the distinction between the ‘upper waters’ and the ‘lower waters’; instead of raising themselves toward the ‘ocean above’, they plunge into the abyss of the ‘ocean below’; instead of concentrating all their powers so as to direct them toward the formless world, which alone can be called ‘spiritual’, they disperse them in the endlessly changeable and fugitive diversity of the forms of subtle manifestation (this diversity corresponding as nearly as possible to the Bergsonian conception of ‘reality’) with no suspicion that they are mistaking for a fullness of ‘life’ something that is in truth the realm of death and of a dissolution without hope of return.
36
Pseudo-Initiation
The anti-traditional activity now being studied in its various aspects has been called ‘satanic’, but it must be clearly understood that this word is used quite independently of any particular idea that anyone may have formed, whether in conformity with some theological outlook or otherwise, of any so-called ‘Satan’; it is superfluous to say that ‘personifications’ have no importance from the present point of view and can have nothing to do with the matter in hand. What has to be taken into account is, on the one hand, the spirit of negation and of subversion into which ‘Satan’ is resolved metaphysically, whatever may be the special forms assumed by that spirit in order to be manifested in one domain or another, and, on the other hand, the thing that can properly be held to represent it and so to speak to ‘incarnate’ it in the terrestrial world, in which its action is being studied — and this thing is precisely what has been called the ‘counter-initiation’. It should be noted that the expression ‘counter-initiation’ has been used here, and not ‘pseudo-initiation’, for the two are quite different, and it is important moreover not to confuse the counterfeiter with the counterfeit. ‘Pseudo-initiation’ as it exists today in numerous organizations, many of them attached to some form of ‘neo-spiritualism’, is but one of many examples of counterfeit, comparable to others to which attention has already been directed in their various orders; nevertheless, as a counterfeit of initiation, ‘pseudo-initiation’ has perhaps an importance even more considerable than that of the counterfeit of anything else. It is really only one of the products of the state of disorder and confusion brought about in the modern period by the ‘satanic’ activity that has its conscious starting-point in the ‘counter-initiation’; it can also be, although unconsciously, an instrument of the latter, though this is no less true in the end of all the other counterfeits, whatever their degree, in the sense that they are all just so many means contributing to the realization of the same plan of subversion, so that each plays exactly the part, whether it be of greater or of lesser importance, that is assigned to it within the whole, this state of affairs itself constituting moreover a sort of counterfeit of the very order and harmony against which the whole plan is directed.
As for the ‘counter-initiation’, it is certainly not a mere illusory counterfeit, but on the contrary something very real in its own order, as the effectiveness of its action shows only too well; at least, it is not a counterfeit except in the sense that it necessarily imitates initiation like an inverted shadow, although its real intention is not to imitate but to oppose. This intention is inevitably doomed to failure, for the metaphysical and spiritual domain is completely closed to it, being inherently outside all oppositions; all it can do is to ignore or to deny that domain, and it can in no case get beyond the ‘intermediary world’; the psychic domain is indeed in all respects the privileged sphere of influence of ‘Satan’ in the human order and even in the cosmic order;[146] but the intention exists nonetheless, and it implies a policy of working consistently in direct opposition to initiation. As for ‘pseudo-initiation’, it is no more than a mere parody, and this is as much as to say that it is nothing in itself, that it is devoid of all profound reality, or, if preferred, that its intrinsic value is neither positive like that of initiation nor negative like that of ‘counter-initiation’, but is quite simply nil. That being the case, one might be tempted to think that it is nothing but a more or less harmless amusement, but it is not merely that, for reasons that have been stated in the general explanations given of the true character of counterfeits and the part they are destined to play — and with the additional reason in this particular case that rites, by virtue of their nature, which is ‘sacred’ in the strictest sense of the word, are such that they can never be imitated with impunity. It can be said too that the ‘pseudo-traditional’ counterfeits, to which belong all the denaturings of the idea of tradition dealt with hitherto, take their most dangerous form in ‘pseudo-initiation’, first because in it they are translated into effective action instead of remaining in the form of more or less vague conceptions, and secondly because they make their attack on tradition from the inside, on what is its very spirit, namely, the esoteric and initiatic domain.
146
According to the Islamic doctrine it is through the