Perspectives on initiation

Perspectives on initiation is the English translation of a book written in French by René Guénon ("Aperçus sur l'initiation") and firstly published in 1946 at the Editions Traditionnelles publishing house.

Table of contents

1. Preface
2. The initiatic and mystical paths
3. Magic and mysticism
4. Various errors concerning initiation
5. Conditions for initiation
6. Initiatic regularity
7. Synthesis and syncretism
8. Against mixing traditional forms
9. Initiatic transmission
10. Tradition and transmission
11. Initiatic centers
12. Initiatic organizations and religious sects
13. Initiatic organizations and secret societies
14. The initiatic secret
15. Initiatic qualifications
16. Initiatic rites
17. Rite and symbol
18. Myths, mysteries and symbols
19. Symbolism and philosophy
20. Rites and ceremonies
21. Ceremonial magic
22. Psychic 'powers'
23. The rejection of 'powers'
24. Sacraments and initiatic rites
25. Prayer and incantation
26. Initiatic trials
27. Initiatic death
28. Profane and initiatic names
29. The symbolism of the theater
30. 'Operative' and 'speculative'
31. Effective and virtual initiation
32. Initiatic teaching
33. The limits of the mental
34. Initiatic knowledge and profane 'culture'
35. Academic mentality and pseudo-initiation
36. Initiation and 'passivity'
37. Initiation and 'service'
38. The gist of tongues
39. Rose-cross and rosicrucians
40. Greater and lesser mysteries
41. Sacerdotal and royal initiation
42. Some reflections on hermeticism
43. Transmutation and transformation
44. The notion of an elite
45. The initiatic hierarchy
46. Traditional infallibility
47. Two initiatic devices
48. Verbum, Lux, and Vita
49. The birth of the Avatara
50. Index

Lesser and greater mysteries

In his book Perspectives on initiation, Guénon clarifies the signification given by the ancient Greeks to the classical names of lesser and greater mysteries: "they are not different "types" of initiations, but stages or degrees of a same initiation".^[1]

Hermes' caduceus: example of a symbol associated to the possession of lesser mysteries, and showing an example of horizontal duality (the two snakes' heads are placed in the horizontal dual position, hence referring to apparent dualities such as life and death). In Studies in Hinduism, René Guénon mentions a relation between the symbol and the Kundalini shakti.

Lesser mysteries lead to the "perfection of the human state", in other words to "something traditionally designated by the restoration of the "primordial state",^[2] a state that Dante, in the Divine comedy, relates symbolically to the "terrestrial paradise".^[3] On another hand, "greater mysteries" refer properly to "the realization of supra-human states";^[1] they correspond to the Hindu doctrine of "delivrance" (Moksha) and to what Islamic esoterism calls the "realization of the Universal Man": in that latter tradition, "lesser" and "greater" mysteries correspond exactly to the signification of the terms "el-insân el-qadîm" and "el-insan el-kâmil".^[1] These two phases are related to an interpretation of the symbolism of the cross with the notions of "horizontal" and "vertical" realization. They also correspond respectively to what is traditionally designated in western hermeticism by the terms royal initiation and sacerdotal initiation:^[1]

Pure metaphysical knowledge relates consequently to "greater mysteries", and the knowledge of traditional sciences to the "lesser mysteries". From an historical perspective, the "lesser mysteries" being merely a preparation to the "greater mysteries" [...] ultimately one has to go back beyond the very origin of humanity, and this is why a question such as an "historical" origin of initiation appears to be devoid of the least signification.

The traditional sciences whose knowledge provides restoration of "primordial state" are known under the name of cosmological sciences: among them, one can quote alchemy, astrology, the science of letters, and more generally what is referred under the name Hermeticism. In the West, the Brothers of the Ross-Cross were beings that had effectively achieved the completion of lesser mysteries, and Rosicrucian initiation inspired by them was a particular form linked to Christian Hermeticism. René Guénon writes moreover that this Rosicrucian initiation is lost today and is completely unrelated to the various modern organizations bearing that name Rosicrucian, as they belong to modern fallacies falling under the general denomination of pseudo-initiation given by Guénon to them – more on this later. That word 'Hermeticism' indicates a tradition of Egyptian origin, afterward clothed in a Hellenized form, and in the Middle Ages transmitted in this form both to the Islamic and Christian worlds, and, to the second in great part by the intermediary to the first (something which relates to the relationship that Rosicrucianism had at its origin with Islamic esoterism), as is proven, writes René Guénon, by the numerous Arabic or Arabized terms adopted by the European Hermeticists, beginning with the word 'alchemy' itself (al-kimya).^[4] 'Hermeticism' designates a doctrine related to Hermes "insofar as the latter was considered by the Greeks to be identical with the Egyptian Toth".^[4] Hermeticism cannot be regarded as constituting a traditional doctrine complete in itself, "for here we are dealing with knowledge that is not of a metaphysical order, but is only cosmological". Hence, Hermeticism was later incorporated into Islamic esoterism where it was rooted into a purely metaphysical doctrine, as it is shown for instance with Mohyddin Ibn Arabi who is both designated as the Seal of Saints and The Master of Red Sulfur, that latter designation referring to a very high degree of the initiatic hierarchy.

Notes and references

See also

René Guénon