Moreover, the mere propagation of predictions such as those alluded to is only the most elementary part of the work now going on in this field, for almost all the propagation that needs to be done has already been done, though unwittingly, by the ‘seers’ themselves; other parts of the work demand the elaboration of subtler interpretations if the predictions are to be made to serve the desired ends. The predictions used in this way are more particularly those that are based on certain forms of traditional knowledge, and then it is their obscurity that is chiefly taken advantage of for the purpose in view;[152] some of the Biblical prophecies themselves are for the same reason the objects of this kind of ‘tendentious’ interpretation, the authors of which are incidentally often acting in good faith, but can only be regarded as the victims of ‘suggestion’ and as being made use of to apply ‘suggestion’ to others. It is as if there were a sort of highly contagious psychic ‘epidemic’, but it fits too neatly into the plan of subversion to be ‘spontaneous’; on the contrary, like all other manifestations of the modern disorder (including the revolutions, which the ingenuous also believe to be ‘spontaneous’) it necessarily presupposes a conscious will at its starting-point. The worst form of blindness would be to see nothing more in all this but a mere question of ‘fashion’ without real importance;[153] and the same could be said of the growing diffusion of certain ‘divinatory arts’, which are certainly not as inoffensive as people who do not get to the bottom of things may suppose: they are generally the uncomprehended residues of ancient traditional sciences now almost entirely lost, and, apart from the danger already attached to them by virtue of their ‘residual’ character, they are arranged and combined in such a way that their employment opens the door, under the pretext of ‘intuition’ (and this approach to the ‘new philosophy’ is in itself rather remarkable), to the intervention of all those psychic influences that are most dubious in character.[154]
Use is also made, along with appropriate interpretations, of predictions more suspect in origin but nonetheless fairly old; these were perhaps not originally made in order to be of use in present circumstances, although the powers of subversion had evidently acquired some considerable influence at the time of their origin (the time in question being that at which the modern deviation may be said to have begun, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries), and it is not impossible that those powers then had in view, not only some more special and immediate objective, but also the preparation for a work not intended to be accomplished until after a long interval.[155] This preparation has in fact never ceased: it has been carried out in other modalities, of which the ‘suggestion’ applied to modern ‘seers’ and the organization of ‘apparitions’ of a very unorthodox kind represent an aspect in which the direct intervention of subtle influences is most clearly shown; but this aspect is not the only one, and, even when it is a question of predictions apparently manufactured ‘from start to finish’, similar influences may very well come into play to no less an extent, firstly for the very reason that their original inspiration emanates from a ‘counter-initiatic’ source, and secondly because of the nature of the elements that are taken to serve as ‘supports’ to their elaboration.
These last words are written with an example in mind that is quite astonishing, as much in itself as in the success it has had in many quarters; for those reasons it deserves rather more than a mere mention: the example is that of the so-called ‘prophecies of the Great Pyramid’, widely disseminated in England and thence to the whole world for ends that are perhaps in part political, but which certainly go beyond politics in the ordinary sense of the word. They are closely linked to another piece of work undertaken in order to persuade the English that they are the descendants of the ‘lost tribes of Israel’; but here again it would be impossible to go into details without getting involved in developments that would be out of place here. However that may be, here is the gist of the matter in a few words: by measuring, in a manner not wholly free from arbitrariness (all the more so because nobody is in fact quite sure about the measures actually used by the ancient Egyptians), the various parts of the corridors and chambers of the Great Pyramid,[156] an attempt has been made to discover ‘prophecies’ in the form of correspondences between the numbers thus obtained and the dates of history. There is in this an absurdity so manifest that one cannot but wonder how it is that nobody seems to notice it; it only shows the extent to which our contemporaries are victims of ‘suggestion’, for even supposing that the constructors of the Pyramid really did build some sort of ‘prophecies’ into it, there are two things that would on the whole be plausible: either that the ‘prophecies’, which would necessarily have to be based on some knowledge of cyclic laws, should be related to the history of the world in general and of humanity, or that they should be adapted so as to deal more particularly with Egypt; but in fact neither turns out to be the case, for all the information extracted is in a form related to the point of view of Judaism in the first place, and of Christianity in the second, so that the only logical conclusion would be that the Pyramid is not an Egyptian monument at all, but a ‘Judeo-Christian’ monument! This alone should be enough to put this unlikely story into its proper place; but it is worth adding that the whole is conceived in accordance with a so-called ‘chronology’ of the Bible that is highly contestable and conforms to the narrowest and most Protestant ‘literalism’, doubtless because the material had to be adapted to the special mentality of the environment in which it was to be chiefly circulated in the first place. Many other curious features could be noted: thus it appears that no date since the beginning of the Christian era can have been of sufficient interest to be recorded before that of the invention of railways; if that were so one would have to believe that these ancient builders brought a very modern perspective to bear on their appreciation of the importance of events; in this appears the element of the grotesque never lacking in that sort of thing, and it is precisely that which betrays their real origin: the devil is no doubt very clever, but he can never help being ridiculous in one way or another![157]
152
The predictions of Nostradamus provide the most typical and the most important example; the more or less extraordinary interpretations assigned to them, particularly in the last few years, are almost numberless.
153
‘Fashion’ itself, an essentially modern invention, is in its real significance something not entirely devoid of importance: it represents unceasing and aimless change, in contrast to the stability and order that reign in traditional civilizations.
154
Much could be said in this connection about the use of the Tarot in particular. It contains vestiges of an undeniably traditional science, whatever may have been its real origin, but it also has some very tenebrous aspects; no allusion is intended here to the many occultist fantasies to which the Tarot has given rise, for they are mostly negligible; the concern is with something much more effective, making its handling really dangerous for anyone not sufficiently protected against the action of the ‘underground forces’.
155
Anyone who may be desirous of learning some details of this aspect of the question might usefully consult, in spite of the reservations that would have to be made on certain points, a book called
156
The Great Pyramid is in truth not so very much bigger than the two others, especially than its nearest neighbor, so that the difference is not very striking; but without any very evident reason all the modern ‘seekers’ have been as it were ‘hypnotized’ almost exclusively by this one; to it are always related all their most fanciful hypotheses, many of which could better be described as ‘fantastic’, including, to give only two of the queerest examples, one that attempts to find in its interior arrangements a map of the sources of the Nile, and another that makes out that the ‘Book of the Dead’ is no more than an explanatory description of those same arrangements.
157
Before leaving the subject of the Great Pyramid, attention should be drawn to another modern fantasy connected with it: some people attach much importance to the fact that it was never finished; the summit is in fact missing, but all that can be said for certain about it is that the most ancient authors whose evidence is available, but who are nevertheless relatively recent, all describe it as truncated, as it is today; but it is a long step from this to the claim, as expressed word for word by an occultist, that ‘the hidden symbolism of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is directly related to events that took place in the course of the building of the Great Pyramid’; indeed, this is another assertion that seems singularly lacking in plausibility on all counts! It is a strange fact that the official seal of the United States bears the truncated pyramid, and over it is a triangle with rays, separated and isolated from it by a surrounding circle of clouds, but apparently intended to replace the summit. There are other decidedly strange details in this seal as well, and the ‘pseudo-initiatic’ organizations rampant in America try to make good use of them by interpreting them in conformity with their own ‘doctrines’; they certainly seem to indicate an intervention by suspicious influences: thus, the number of the courses of the Pyramid is thirteen (this number reappearing somewhat insistently in other features, notably that of the letters of which the motto