The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

by René Guénon

  26

  Shamanism and Sorcery

  The present period corresponds to the final phases of a cyclical manifestation, and for that reason must exhaust its most inferior possibilities; that is why the period can be said to be using up everything that had been set aside in earlier periods: that and nothing else is truly characteristic of the modern experimental and quantitative sciences in particular, together with their industrial applications. For similar reasons the profane sciences, as has been said, even when considered from a historical point of view as well as from the point of view of their content, are really and truly ‘residues’ of some of the traditional sciences.[120] There is yet another fact that accords with those just mentioned, though its real significance is scarcely ever grasped, and that is the frenzy with which the moderns have undertaken the exhumation of the vestiges of past periods and vanished civilizations, despite their incapacity really to understand anything about them. This in itself is not a very reassuring symptom, because of the nature of the subtle influences that remain attached to such vestiges and are brought back into the light of day with them, and are so to speak set at liberty by the exhumation as such, without raising any suspicion in the minds of the investigators. In order to explain this more fully, it will first be necessary to deal briefly with certain things that in themselves are as a matter of fact wholly outside the modern world, but are not for that reason any the less capable of being used so as to exert a particularly ‘disorganizing’ influence in that world; the rest of this chapter is therefore a digression only in appearance, and it will incidentally provide an opportunity for the elucidation of certain matters about which too little is generally known.

  In the first place, yet one more confusion and error of interpretation arising from the modern mentality must be dissipated, and that is the idea that there exist things that are purely ‘material’. This conception belongs exclusively to the modern mentality, and when it is disencumbered from all the secondary complications added to it by the special theories of the physicists, it amounts to no more than the idea that there exist beings and things that are solely corporeal, and that their existence and their constitution involve no element that is not corporeal. This idea is directly linked to the profane point of view as expressed, perhaps in its most complete form, in the sciences of today, for these sciences are characterized by the absence of any attachment to principles of a superior order, and thus the things taken as the objects of their study must themselves be thought of as being without any such attachment (whereby the ‘residual’ character of the said sciences is once again made evident); this kind of outlook can be regarded as indispensable in order to enable science to deal with its object, for if a contrary admission were made, science would at once be compelled to recognize that the real nature of its object eludes it. It may perhaps be superfluous to seek elsewhere the reason for the enthusiasm displayed by scientists in discrediting any other conception, by presenting it as a ‘superstition’ arising in the imagination of ‘primitive’ peoples, who, it is suggested, can have been nothing but savages or men of an infantile mentality, as the ‘evolutionist’ theories make them out to have been; but whether the reason be mere incomprehension on their part or a conscious partisanship, the scientists do succeed in producing a caricature of the situation convincing enough to induce a complete acceptance of their interpretation in everyone who believes implicitly in whatever they say, namely, in a large majority of our contemporaries. This is what has happened in the particular case of the ethnologists’ theories about what they have agreed to call ‘animism’; strictly speaking this word might well possess an unobjectionable meaning, but only on condition that it were understood quite otherwise than they understand it, and that no meaning which is not justifiable etymologically were admitted.

  The truth is that the corporeal world cannot be regarded as being a whole sufficient to itself, nor as being isolated from the totality of universal manifestation: on the contrary, whatever the present state of things may look like as a result of ‘solidification’, the corporeal world proceeds entirely from the subtle order, in which it can be said to have its immediate principle, and through that order as intermediary it is attached successively to formless manifestation and finally to the non-manifested. If that were not so, its existence could be nothing but a pure illusion, a sort of phantasmagoria behind which there would be nothing at all, which amounts to saying that it would not really exist in any way. That being the case, there cannot be anything in the corporeal world such that its existence does not depend directly on elements belonging to the subtle order, and beyond them, on some principle that can be called ‘spiritual’, for without the latter no manifestation of any kind is possible, on any level whatsoever. Confining attention to the subtle elements, which must therefore be present in everything and are merely more or less hidden according to circumstances, it can be said that they correspond to that which properly speaking constitutes the ‘psychic’ order in the human being; it is therefore legitimate in every case, by a natural extension implying no ‘anthropomorphism’ but only a perfectly valid analogy, also to call them ‘psychic’ (and that is why a cosmic psychism was spoken of previously), or even ‘animic’, for these two words, according to their original meanings and their respectively Greek and Latin derivations, are really precisely synonymous. It follows from this that there can in fact be no ‘inanimate’ objects in existence, and also that ‘life’ is one of the conditions to which all corporeal existence without exception is subject; and that is why nobody has ever arrived at a satisfactory definition of the difference between the ‘living’ and the ‘non-living’, for that question, like so many others in modern philosophy and science, is only insoluble because there is no good reason for posing it, since the ‘non-living’ has no place in the domain to which the question is related, and the only differences involved are really no more than mere differences of degree.

  Such a way of looking at things can be called ‘animism’ without objection, if that word is held to imply nothing more or other than the affirmation that there are ‘animic’ elements in all things; it is clear that this kind of animism is directly opposed to mechanism, just as reality itself is opposed to mere outward appearance. It is equally clear that this conception is ‘primitive’, but it is so quite simply because it is true, which is almost exactly the opposite of what the evolutionists mean when they qualify it in that way. At the same time, and for the same reasons, this conception is necessarily common to all the traditional doctrines; it can therefore be said to be ‘normal’, whereas the opposite idea, that of ‘inanimate’ things (of which one of the most extreme expressions is found in the Cartesian theory of ‘animal-machines’) represents a real anomaly, but then so do all specifically modern and profane ideas. But it must be clearly understood that the traditional conception in no way implies any ‘personification’ of the natural forces that are studied by the physicists after their own fashion, and still less any ‘adoration’ of those forces, as is made out to be the case by those for whom ‘animism’ is something they think they can call ‘primitive religion’; in actual fact the only considerations involved are such as belong exclusively to the domain of cosmology, and they can find their applications in various traditional sciences. It should be superfluous to point out that the question of the ‘psychic’ elements inherent in things, or of forces of that order expressed or manifested through things, has nothing whatever to do with the ‘spiritual’; the confusion of these two domains is yet another purely modern phenomenon, and is doubtless not unconnected with the idea of making a ‘religion’ out of what is really science in the most precise sense of the word; our contemporaries, despite their pretensions to ‘clear ideas’ (evidently a direct inheritance from the mechanism and ‘universal materialism’ of Descartes) mix up in a very curious way the most heterogeneous things and those that are the most essentially distinct!

  It is important to note at this point, in view of what is to follow, that the ethno
logists habitually treat as ‘primitive’ forms that are only degenerate to a greater or less extent; and these forms are in any case very often not really on as low a level as might be supposed from the accounts that are given of them; however that may be, this explains how ‘animism’, which is in itself only a particular feature of a doctrine, has come to be taken as characterizing a doctrine in its entirety. Indeed, where there is degeneration, it is naturally the superior part of the doctrine, its metaphysical or spiritual side, that disappears more or less completely, so that something that was originally only secondary, and in particular the cosmological and ‘psychic’ side — to which ‘animism’ and its applications properly belong — inevitably assumes a preponderant importance. The remainder, even if it still persists to some extent, may easily elude the observer from outside, all the more so because that observer, being ignorant of the profound significance of rites and symbols, is unable to recognize in them any elements belonging to a superior order (any more than he can recognize them in the vestiges of completely extinct civilizations) and thinks that everything can be explained indifferently in terms of magic, or even sometimes of mere ‘sorcery’.

  A very clear example of this sort of thing can be found in a case such as that of ‘shamanism’, which is generally regarded as one of the typical forms of ‘animism’; the derivation of the word is rather uncertain, but it is generally used to denote the aggregate of the traditional doctrines and practices of certain Mongol peoples of Siberia, though a few people extend its meaning to cover anything that may present similar features in any country. Many people regard ‘shamanism’ as almost synonymous with sorcery, but it certainly should not be so, for the two things are quite distinct; the word has undergone a deviation opposite to that of ‘fetishism’, which really has etymologically the meaning of ‘sorcery’, but has been applied to things that include nothing of the kind. It may be noted in this connection that the distinction some people have tried to establish between ‘shamanism’ and ‘fetishism’, regarded as being two varieties of ‘animism’, is neither as clear nor as important as they think: whether human beings, as in the first case, or various objects, as in the second, chiefly serve as ‘supports’ or ‘condensers’, if that is the right word, for certain subtle influences, the difference is only one of ‘technical’ modalities involving in themselves no truly essential differences.[121]

  If we consider ‘shamanism’ properly so called, the existence of a highly developed cosmology becomes apparent, of a kind that might suggest concordances with other traditions in many respects, and first with respect to a separation of the ‘three worlds’, which seems to be its very foundation. ‘Shamanism’ will also be found to include rites comparable to some that belong to traditions of the highest order: some of them, for example, recall in a striking way the Vedic rites, and particularly those that are most clearly derived from the primordial tradition, such as those in which the symbols of the tree and of the swan predominate. There can therefore be no doubt that ‘shamanism’ is derived from some form that was, at least originally, a regular and normal traditional form; moreover it has retained up to the present day a certain ‘transmission’ of the powers necessary for the exercise of the functions of the ‘shaman’; but as soon as it becomes clear that the ‘shaman’ directs his activity particularly toward the most inferior traditional sciences, such as magic and divination, a very real degeneration must be suspected, such as may sometimes amount to a real deviation, as can happen all too easily to such sciences whenever they become over-developed. There are indeed some rather disquieting indications in that direction, one of them being the connection established between the ‘shaman’ and an animal, a connection restricted to a single individual and so in no way assimilable to the collective connection rightly or wrongly called ‘totemism’. It should be added that all this could in itself receive a perfectly legitimate explanation quite unconnected with sorcery; what gives it a suspicious character is the fact that among some peoples, if not among all, the animal is considered as being more or less a form of the ‘shaman’ himself; and there may be no great distance between an identification of that kind, and ‘lycanthropy’ as it exists more particularly among the black races.[122]

  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’.