1 Authority and Hierarchy

history properly understood also has its place in integral knowledge, though it has no value in this respect except insofar as it enables us to find a point of support, in the very contingencies that constitute its immediate object, from which to raise ourselves above these same contingencies. As for the point of view of ‘profane history’, which clings exclusively to facts without going beyond them, it is of no interest in our eyes, like all else that belongs to the field of mere erudition. It is then not at all as an historian, taking the term in the latter sense, that we consider the facts, and this is what allows us to ignore certain ‘critical’ prejudices particularly dear to our age. It does seem moreover that the exclusive use of certain methods may have been imposed on modern historians solely to prevent them from seeing clearly in matters that were not to be broached, for the simple reason that they might have led to conclusions contrary to the ‘materialistic’ tendencies that ‘official’ teaching has made it its mission to uphold. 242-249

Merlin and Arthur, who are in fact the boar and the bear. 270

2 Functions of Priesthood and Royalty

having first been subject to the spiritual authority, warriors, the holders of the temporal power, revolt against this authority and declare themselves independent of all superior power, even trying to subordinate to themselves the spiritual authority that they had originally recognized as the source of their own power, and finally seeking to turn the spiritual authority to the service of their own domination. 293-299

we prefer to use the word ‘authority’ rather than the word ‘power’ for the spiritual order. The word ‘power’ can then be reserved for the temporal order, to which it is better suited when taken in its strictest sense. In fact, the word ‘power’ almost inevitably evokes the idea of strength or force, and above all the idea of a material force, 304

On the contrary, spiritual authority, interior in essence, is affirmed only by itself, independently of any sensible support, and operates as it were invisibly. If we can speak in this context of strength or force, it is only by analogical transposition, and, at least in the case of a spiritual authority—in its purest state so to speak—it must be understood that it is an entirely intellectual strength whose name is ‘wisdom’ and whose only force is that of truth. 310

The true function of the priesthood, then, is above all one of knowledge and teaching, and this is why, as we said above, its proper attribute is wisdom. 332

If the ‘priesthood’ is in essence the depository of traditional knowledge, this is not to say that it has a monopoly on it, since its mission is not only to conserve it integrally but also to communicate it to all who are fit to receive it, to distribute it hierarchically, so to speak, according to the intellectual capacity of each. 346

(‘Isis and Osiris’, in Plutarch: Moralia, vol.v, tr. Frank Cole Babbitt [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993], par. 9, p23). It is to be noted that the end of this passage contains a very explicit indication of the double meaning of the word ‘revelation’ (cf. The King of the World, chap. 4, n5). 458

3 Knowledge and Action

Those who are made for action are not made for pure knowledge, and in a society constituted on truly spiritual bases each person must fulfill the function for which he is really ‘qualified’; otherwise, all is confusion and disorder and no function is carried out as it should be—which is precisely the case today. 497

the East maintains the superiority of knowledge over action whereas the modern West affirms on the contrary the superiority of action over knowledge (when it does not go so far as to deny knowledge completely). We refer here only to the modern West since things were quite otherwise in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. 517

All action that does not proceed from knowledge is lacking in principle and thus is nothing but a vain agitation; likewise, all temporal power that fails to recognize its subordination vis-à-vis spiritual authority is vain and illusory: separated from its principle, it can only exert itself in a disorderly way and move inexorably to its own ruin. Since we have just spoken of the ‘mandate of Heaven’, it will not be out of place to relate here how, according to Confucius himself, this mandate was to be carried out: ‘In order to make the natural virtues shine in the hearts of all men, the ancient princes first of all applied themselves to governing their own principality well. In order to govern their principality well, they first restored proper order in their families. In order to establish proper order in their families, they worked hard at perfecting themselves first. In order to perfect themselves, they first regulated the movements of their hearts. To regulate the movements of their hearts, they first perfected their will. To perfect their will, they developed their knowledge to the highest degree. One develops knowledge by scrutinizing the nature of things. Once the nature of things is scrutinized, knowledge attains its highest degree. Knowledge having arrived at its highest degree, will becomes perfect. Will being perfect, the movements of the heart are controlled. The movements of the heart having been controlled, every man is free of faults. After having corrected oneself, one establishes order in the family. With order reigning in the family, the principality is well-governed. With the principality being well-governed, the empire soon enjoys peace.’7 537-544

there subsists not even the slightest vestige of ‘sacred science’, so that the reign of ‘profane knowledge’ is ushered in, the reign, that is, of ignorance pretending to be science and taking pleasure in its nothingness. All of which can be summed up in a few words: the supremacy of the Brahmins maintains doctrinal orthodoxy; the revolt of the Kshatriyas leads to heterodoxy; but with the domination of the lower castes comes intellectual night, and this is what in our day has become of a West that threatens to spread its own darkness over the entire world. 557-564

‘Luciferianism’ is the refusal to recognize a superior authority whereas ‘Satanism’ is the reversal of normal relationships and of the hierarchical order, the latter being often a consequence of the former, just as after his fall Lucifer became Satan. 593-603

5 The Dependency of Royalty on Priesthood

we do not mean to suggest any sort of comparison of the collectivity to a living being, especially as certain people have abused this notion in the strangest way in recent times, mistaking what is mere analogy and correspondence for a true identity. 767-774

in the Western Middle Ages; indeed, Saint Thomas Aquinas expressly declares that all human functions are subordinate to contemplation as their superior end, ‘so that, when considered properly, they all seem to be in the service of those who contemplate the truth,’ the true raison d’être of the entire government of civil life fundamentally lying in the assurance of the peace necessary for this contemplation. 774-781

which in the context cited was religious, whence the theological nuance that Saint Thomas always attached to contemplation, whereas in the East the latter has always been envisaged in the order of pure metaphysics. 781

in the Catholic tradition Saint Peter is depicted holding in his hands not only the golden key of sacerdotal power but also the silver key of royal power. 801-808

parable of the blind man and the lame man, which in one of its principal meanings actually represents the relationship between the active life and the contemplative life: action left to itself is blind, and the essential immutability of knowledge is expressed outwardly by an immobility comparable to that of the lame 821-828

in China the distinction between Taoism, which is a purely metaphysical doctrine, and Confucianism, which is a social doctrine (both proceeding moreover from the same integral tradition, which represents their common principle) corresponds very exactly to the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal. 828-834

We should, however, carefully note that it is the lame man who plays the leading role in the association of the two men, and that his very position—mounted on the blind man’s shoulders—symbolizes the superiority of contemplation over action, 834

claiming to subordinate the spiritual to the temporal, that is to say, knowledge to action. This error, which completely reverses the normal relationship, corresponds to the tendency that generally characterizes the modern West, and it can obviously occur only in a period of very advanced intellectual decadence. In our time, moreover, some go yet further in this direction, even as far as to deny the very value of knowledge as such, and also, proceeding quite logically—for the two things are closely linked—to the negation pure and simple of all spiritual authority. 841

instead of regarding the entire social order as deriving from religion, as being suspended from it so to speak and finding its principle therein (as was the case in medieval Christendom, and as it was equally in Islam, which is quite similar to it in this respect), today people see religion at most only as one element of the social order, one element among others of equal value. This is the enslavement of the spiritual to the temporal, even its absorption by it, pending the inevitable complete negation. 848

There is another application of the same parable, no longer social but cosmological, to be found in the doctrines of India, specifically in the Sānkhya. The lame man is Purusha insofar as he is immutable or ‘non-acting’, and the blind man is Prakriti, the undifferentiated potentiality of which is likened to the darkness of chaos. 898

This division of the Far-Eastern tradition into two distinct branches was accomplished in the sixth century before the Christian era, an epoch the special character of which we have previously drawn attention to (The Crisis of the Modern World, chap. 1), and to which we shall return later on. 14. We say ‘from the outside’ because, from the inner point of view, ‘non-action’ is in reality supreme activity in all its plenitude; but, precisely because of its total and absolute character, this activity does not appear outwardly like activities that are particular, determined, and relative. 15. It is clear from this that there is no opposition in principle between Taoism and Confucianism, which are not and cannot be rival schools, since each has its own sharply distinct domain. If there have nevertheless been disputes, at times even violent ones (as we noted above), these were due above all to the misunderstandings and the exclusivism of the Confucianists, who were forgetful of the example given by their own master. 898-906

6 The Revolt of the Kshatriyas

individualism being precisely the reduction of the whole of civilization to human elements alone. 926

individualism and naturalism are quite closely interdependent, for they are basically only two aspects of one and the same thing, looked at either with respect to man or to the world; and it may be said generally that ‘naturalistic’ or anti-metaphysical doctrines appear in a civilization when the element representing the temporal power becomes predominant over that representing the spiritual authority. 926

change is inconceivable and contradictory without reference to an immutable principle. Any conception that denies the immutable by placing the being entirely in the world of ‘becoming’ involves an element of contradiction; it will be eminently anti-metaphysical since the metaphysical domain is precisely that of the immutable, of what is beyond nature or ‘becoming’; 933-939

that Christ too is descended, not from the priestly tribe of Levi, but from the royal tribe of Judah. 6. It is also worth noting that theories of ‘becoming’ tend quite naturally toward a certain ‘phenomenalism’, even though in its strictest sense this is an entirely modern concept. 975-984

A government in which men of inferior caste arrogate to themselves the title and functions of royalty is what the ancient Greeks called ‘tyranny’, from which it can be seen that the original sense of this word is remote indeed from the modern understanding, where it is used rather as a synonym of ‘despotism’. 984

7 The Usurpations of Royalty and their Consequences

in France where from the time of Philip the Fair, who must be considered one of the principal authors of the deviation characteristic of the modern epoch, royalty worked almost continually at becoming independent of the spiritual authority, while conserving however, by a singular illogicality, the outward sign of its original dependence since, as we have explained, the anointing of kings represented nothing else than this. Long before the ‘humanists’ of the Renaissance, the ‘jurists’ of Philip the Fair were already the real precursors of modern secularism; and it is to this period, that is, the beginning of the fourteenth century, that we must in reality trace the rupture of the Western world from its own tradition. 1015-1022

One may be tempted to object that even if this destruction was deliberately desired by the king of France, it was at least implemented with the agreement of the papacy; but the truth is that it was imposed upon the papacy, which is something altogether different. By thus reversing the normal relationship, the temporal power henceforth began to use the spiritual authority for its own ends of political domination. 1029

the spiritual authority can and must always control the temporal power, and that it cannot itself be controlled by anything else, at least outwardly.6 However shocking such a statement may seem in the eyes of most of our contemporaries, we do not hesitate to declare that this is but the expression of an undeniable truth. 1048

Let us add that temporal ‘centralization’ is generally the sign of an opposition to the spiritual authority, the influence of which governments try to neutralize in order to substitute their own. 1062

The modern epoch, which is that of rupture from tradition, could be characterized from a political point of view as the substitution of the national system for the feudal system; and it was in fact during the fourteenth century that ‘nations’ began to form through the agency of that ‘centralization’ we just spoke of. It is right to say that the formation of the ‘French nation’ in particular was the work of its kings, but in doing this they unwittingly prepared their own ruin;9 and if France was the first European country where the monarchy was abolished, it is because ‘nationalization’ had started there. 1068

During the Middle Ages there existed throughout the West a real unity, based on properly traditional foundations, which we call ‘Christendom’, but when these secondary unities of a purely political—that is to say temporal and no longer spiritual—order were formed, this great unity of the West was irremediably broken and the effective existence of Christendom came to an end. 1076-1083

Now spirit is unity, matter is multiplicity and division; and the more one removes oneself from spirituality, the more antagonisms are accentuated and amplified. 1083

for it seems clear that Luther was hardly anything more, at least politically, than an instrument of the ambitions of certain German princes; and it is moreover quite likely that if the revolt against Rome had taken place without such support its consequences would have been quite as negligible as those of many other short-lived incidents of dissent. 1096

every mufti is infallible insofar as he is an authorized interpreter of the shari‘a, that is of the legislation based essentially on the religion, even though his competence may not extend to a more interior order. 1153

This is why the idea of a ‘league of nations’ can only be a utopian one with no real significance; the national form is essentially hostile to the recognition of any unity superior to its own. 1170

As we have noted elsewhere (The Crisis of the Modern World, chap. 5), by compelling all men indiscriminately to take part in modern wars, the essential distinctions among the social functions are entirely ignored, this being moreover a logical consequence of ‘egalitarianism’. 1170

It is worth noting that Protestantism suppresses the clergy, and though it claims to uphold the authority of the Bible, it in fact ruins it by ‘free inquiry’. 1180

8 The Terrestrial and the Celestial Paradises

Thus the reins of man are held by a double driver according to man’s twofold end; one is the supreme pontiff, who guides mankind with revelations to life eternal, and the other is the emperor, who guides mankind with philosophical instructions to temporal happiness. 1222-1227

Those who would see in this nothing but ‘borrowings’ for which to reproach Catholicism only display thereby a totally profane mentality; but we on the contrary see in this a proof of that traditional regularity without which no doctrine could be valid and which can be traced back step by step to the great primordial tradition; 1331

One also encounters this image in India, sometimes framed by expressions strangely resembling those used by Dante, as in this passage from Shankarāchārya: ‘The Yogi, having crossed the sea of passions, is united with tranquility and possesses the "Self" in plenitude.’ 1338

9 The Immutable Law

Disorder is fundamentally the same thing as disequilibrium, and in the human domain it manifests itself through what is called injustice, for there is an identity between the notions of justice, order, equilibrium, and harmony; or, to be more precise, these are only diverse aspects of one and the same thing envisaged in different and multiple ways according to the domains to which they apply.2 Now, according to Far-Eastern doctrine, justice is composed of the sum of all injustices, and in the total order all disorders are compensated by other disorders; 1467-1473

all things depending only on the contingent and transitory inevitably pass away and that disorder always disappears and order is finally restored, 1500

in their essence and in their profound reality, intellectuality and spirituality are absolutely one and the same thing under two different names? 1513-1519

how many envisage the truth for its own sake, in a totally disinterested way, independent of every sentimental preoccupation, of every party or ideological passion, of all concern for domination or proselytism? Among those who understand that it is necessary above all to denounce the vanity of ‘democratic’ and ‘egalitarian’ illusions in order to escape the social chaos in which the Western world is foundering, how many have a notion of true hierarchy based essentially on the differences inherent in the very nature of human beings and on the degrees of knowledge to which they have effectively attained? Among those who declare themselves adversaries of ‘individualism’, how many are conscious of a reality that transcends the individual? 1519-1525