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The Beginning

In order to understand both the spirit of Tradition and its antithesis, modern civilization, it is necessary to begin with the fundamental doctrine of the two natures. According to this doctrine there is a physical order of things and a metaphysical one; there is a mortal nature and an immortal one; there is the superior realm of “being” and the inferior realm of “becoming.” Generally speaking, there is a visible and tangible dimension and, prior to and beyond it, an invisible and intangible dimension that is the support, the source, and true life of the former.

Anywhere in the world of Tradition, both East and West and in one form or another, this knowledge (not just a mere “theory”) has always been present as an unshakable axis around which everything revolved. Let me emphasize the fact that it was knowledge and not “theory.” As difficult as it may be for our contemporaries to understand this, we must start from the idea that the man of Tradition was aware of the existence of a dimension of being much wider than what our contemporaries experience and call “reality.” Nowadays, after all, reality is understood only as something strictly encompassed within the world of physical bodies located in space and time. Certainly, there are those who believe in something beyond the realm of phenomena. When these people admit the existence of something else, however, they are always led to this conclusion by a scientific hypothesis or law, or by a speculative idea, or by a religious dogma; they cannot escape such an intellectual limitation. Through his practical and immediate experiences, modern man, no matter how deep his “materialistic” or “spiritual” beliefs may be, develops an understanding of reality only in relation to the world of physical bodies and always under the influence of his direct and immediate experiences. This is the real materialism for which our contemporaries should be reproached. All the other versions of materialism that are formulated in scientific or in philosophical terms are only secondary phenomena. The worst type of materialism, therefore, is not a matter of an opinion or of a “theory,” but it consists in the fact that man’s experience no longer extends to nonphysical realities. Thus, the majority of the intellectual revolts against “materialistic” views are only vain reactions against the latest peripheral effects stemming from remote and deeper causes. These causes, incidentally, arose in a different historical context from the one in which the “theories” were formulated.

The experience of traditional man used to reach well beyond these limits, as in the case of some so-called primitive people, among whom we still find today a faint echo of spiritual powers from ancient times. In traditional societies the “invisible” was an element as real, if not more real, than the data provided by the physical senses. Every aspect of the individual and of the social life of the people belonging to these societies was influenced by this experience.

On the one hand, from the perspective of Tradition, what today is usually referred to as “reality,” was only a species of a much wider genus. On the other hand, invisible realities were not automatically equated with the “supernatural.” Traditionally speaking, the notion of “nature” did not correspond merely to the world of bodies and of visible forms—the object of research of contemporary, secularized science—but on the contrary, it corresponded essentially to part of an invisible reality. The ancients had the sense of a dark netherworld, populated by obscure and ambiguous forces of every kind (the demonic soul of nature, which is the essential substratum of all nature’s forms and energies) that was opposed to the superrational and sidereal brightness of a higher region. Moreover, the term nature traditionally included everything that is merely human, since what is human cannot escape birth and death, impermanence, dependence, and transformation, all of which characterize the inferior region. By definition, “that which is” has nothing to do with human and temporal affairs or situations, as in the saying: “The race of men is one thing, and the race of the gods is quite another.” This saying retains its validity even though people once thought that the reference to a superior, otherworldly domain could effectively lead the integration and the purification of the human element in the direction of the nonhuman dimension. Only the nonhuman dimension constituted the essence and the goal of any truly traditional civilization.

The world of being and the world of becoming affect things, demons, and men. Every hypostatic representation of these two regions, whether expressed in astral, mythological, theological, or religious terms, reminded traditional man of the existence of the two states; it also represented a symbol to be resolved into an inner experience, or at least in the foreboding of an inner experience. Thus, in Hindu, and especially in Buddhist tradition, the idea of saṁsāra—the current that dominates and carries away every form of the inferior world—refers to an understanding of life as blind yearning and as an irrational identification with impermanent aggregates. Likewise, Hellenism saw nature as the embodiment of the eternal state of “deprivation” of those realities that, by virtue of having their own principle and cause outside of themselves, flow and run away indefinitely (ἀεὶ ρεοντα). In their becoming, these realities reveal a primordial and radical lack of direction and purpose and a perennial limitation.^[1] According to these traditions, “matter” and “becoming” express the reality that acts in a being as an obscure necessity or as an irrepressible indetermination, or as the inability to acquire a perfect form and to possess itself in a law. What the Greeks called ἀναηκαîον and ἄπειρον, the Orientals called adharrna. Christian Scholastic theology shared similar views, since it considered the root of every unredeemed nature in terms of cupiditas and of appetitus innatus. In different ways, the man of Tradition found in the experience of covetous identification, which obscures and impairs “being,” the secret cause of his existential predicament. The incessant becoming and the perennial instability and contingency of the inferior region appeared to the man of Tradition as the cosmic and symbolical materialization of that predicament.

On the other hand, the experience of asceticism was regarded as the path leading to the other region, or to the world of “being,” or to what is no longer physical but metaphysical. Asceticism traditionally consisted in values such as mastery over oneself, self-discipline, autonomy, and the leading of a unified life. By “unified life” I mean an existence that does not need to be spent in search of other things or people in order to be complete and justified. The traditional representations of this other region were solar symbols, heavenly regions, beings made of light or fire, islands, and mountain peaks.

These were the two “natures.” Tradition conceived the possibility of being born in either one, and also of the possibility of going from one birth to another, according to the saying: “A man is a mortal god, and a god is an immortal man.”^[2] The world of Tradition knew these two great poles of existence, as well as the paths leading from one to the other. Tradition knew the existence of the physical world and the totality of the forms, whether visible or underground, whether human or subhuman and demonic, of ὑπερκοσµία, a “world beyond this world.” According to Tradition, the former is the “fall” of the latter, and the latter represents the “liberation” of the former. The traditional world believed spirituality to be something beyond life and death. It held that mere physical existence, or “living,” is meaningless unless it approximates the higher world or that which is “more than life,” and unless one’s highest ambition consists in participating in ὑπερκοσµία and in obtaining an active and final liberation from the bond represented by the human condition. According to Tradition, every authority is fraudulent, every law is unjust and barbarous, every institution is vain and ephemeral unless they are ordained to the superior principle of Being, and unless they are derived from above and oriented “upward.”

The traditional world knew divine kingship. It knew the bridge between the two worlds, namely, initiation; it knew the two great ways of approach to the transcendent, namely, heroic action and contemplation; it knew the mediation, namely, rites and faithfulness; it knew the social foundation, namely, the traditional law and the caste system; and it knew the political earthly symbol, namely, the empire.

These are the foundations of the traditional hierarchy and civilization that have been completely wiped out by the victorious “anthropocentric” civilization of our contemporaries.

Footnotes

1. See Plotinus, Enneads, 1.8.4–7; 6.6.18.

2. Heraclitus, frag. 62 Diels; Corpus Hermeticum 12.1.