Some Guénonian reasoning on the "residual" character of modern sciences in comparison to traditional ones and on the existence of "subtle" elements ("soul" and "psychic") in the same, as well as in shamanism and witchcraft.
di René Guénon
Adapted from The Kingdom of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, 1945
The current era, for the very reason that it corresponds to the last phases of a cyclical manifestation, must exhaust its lower possibilities; this is why it uses in some way everything that had been neglected by previous eras: if one observes carefully, the experimental and quantitative sciences of the moderns and their industrial applications, in particular, have no other character; it depends on this that the profane sciences often constitute, as we said, real "residues" of some of the ancient traditional sciences [1], and this not only with reference to their content, but even from a purely historical point of view.
Another fact that agrees with the previous ones, even if one is barely able to grasp its true meaning, is the tenacity with which modern people have undertaken to exhume the vestiges of past eras and disappeared civilizations, of which in truth they are absolutely incapable of understanding anything; and this is a rather unreassuring symptom, due to the nature of the subtle influences that remain linked to such vestiges, which, without those who investigate having the slightest suspicion of it, are thus brought to light with them and thus made say in freedom from the very act of their exhumation.
In order to better understand this, we will be obliged to deal briefly with certain things which, in themselves, are actually completely outside the modern world, but are nevertheless such that they can be used to exercise this a particularly "disaggregating" action. What we will say about it will therefore only appear to be a digression, and at the same time an opportunity to highlight certain issues that are too little known.
It is appropriate, first of all, to dispel a confusion and an error of interpretation due to the modern mentality: the idea that purely "material" things exist, a conception exclusively specific to this mentality, does not correspond to anything else, after all, freed from all the secondary complications superimposed on you by the particular theories of physicists, if not on the idea that there are only corporeal beings and things, whose existence and constitution would not involve any element of a different nature.
This idea is, upon closer inspection, directly linked to the profane point of view in itself, as it is affirmed in its somewhat more complete form in current sciences, since, the latter being characterized by the absence of any possible link with principles of a higher order, the things that form the object of their study must also be conceived as lacking the same connection (and here the "residual" character of these sciences); one could say that this is a necessary condition for science to be adequate to its object, because if it admitted that things are another way, it would thereby have to recognize that the true nature of its object escapes it.
The reason why is perhaps not to be looked elsewhere the «scientists» have been so keen to discredit all conceptions different from this one, making them appear to be simple «superstitions» due to the imagination of «primitives», who, for them, can only be savages, or men with an infantile mentality, as "evolutionary" theories would have it; in fact, whether it is a question of pure and simple misunderstanding on their part or of voluntary bias, they manage to suggest an idea that is sufficiently caricatured for this appreciation to seem perfectly justified to all those who take their word for it, that is, to the great majority of our contemporaries. This happens, in particular, for the theories of ethnologists regarding what they have agreed to call the «animism»; strictly speaking, a term of this kind could also have an acceptable sense, but, of course, on the condition of understanding it in a completely different way from theirs, and of seeing nothing in it other than its etymological meaning.
In fact, in reality the corporeal world cannot be considered as a whole sufficient in itself, nor as something isolated in the whole of universal manifestation; whatever the appearances currently due to "solidification" may be, it, on the contrary, proceeds entirely from the subtle order, where it can be said to have its immediate principle and through which it is connected, by ever closer degrees, first to the informal manifestation and then to the non-manifested; if things were not this way, his existence would be a pure and simple illusion, a sort of phantasmagoria behind which there would be nothing, which all things considered amounts to saying that he would not exist in any way. In these conditions there cannot be, in the corporeal world, anything whose existence does not ultimately rest on elements of a subtle order and, beyond these, on a principle that can be called "spiritual", without which no manifestation is possible, at whatever level you want to think about it.
To stop at the consideration of the subtle elements, which consequently must be present in all things, even if they are more or less hidden depending on the case, we can say that they correspond, in things, to that which forms in a proper way the "psychic" order in the human being; it will therefore be possible, by virtue of a perfectly natural extension which does not involve any "anthropomorphism", but rather exclusively a perfectly legitimate analogy, to call them also "psychic" in all cases (and this is the reason why we have already spoken previously of «cosmic psychism»), or "soul", since these two terms, when referring to their primitive meaning, given their Greek and Latin derivations respectively, are basically exactly synonymous.
From all this it follows that "inanimate" objects cannot really exist, and this is the reason why "life" is one of the conditions to which every corporeal existence is subjected without exception; this also explains why no one has ever been able to satisfactorily define the distinction between "living" and "non-living", a question which, like many others found in modern philosophy and science, is insoluble only because it has no reason to really ask itself, since the "non-living" has no place in the sphere considered, and since, ultimately, everything is reduces, in this respect, simply to a difference of degrees.
One can therefore, if one wishes, call such a way of seeing things "animism", meaning with this word nothing else or more than the affirmation that in the latter there are "animic" elements; and it is clear that "animism" is directly opposed to mechanism, in the same way that reality itself is opposed to simple external appearance; it is also evident that a conception of this kind is "primitive", but this is simply because it is true, which is almost exactly the opposite of what the "evolutionists" mean when they characterize it in this way. At the same time, and for the same reason, this conception is of necessity common to all traditional doctrines; we could therefore say that it is "normal", while the opposite idea, that of "inanimate" things (which found one of its extreme expressions in Cartesian theory of «animal-machines»), constitutes a true anomaly, as is the case for every specifically modern and profane idea.
But it must be very clear that we are not at all faced with a "personification" of those natural forces that physicists study in their own way, and even less with their "worship", as those for whom "animism" claim constitutes what they believe they can call the "primitive religion"; these are actually concepts that belong solely to the field of cosmology, which can find their application in different traditional sciences. It is also axiomatic that when "psychic" elements inherent in things, or forces of this order that express themselves and manifest themselves through them, come into question, it is always about something that has absolutely nothing "spiritual" about it. The confusion of these two areas is also purely modern, and is undoubtedly not foreign to the idea of making a "religion" of what is science in the most exact sense of the word. Despite their claim to "clear and distinct ideas" (also a direct legacy of mechanism and Descartes' "universal mathematics"), our contemporaries mix the most heterogeneous and essentially distinct things in a very strange way!
What we want to do here is to point out how ethnologists are in the habit of considering certain forms as "primitive" which, on the contrary, have degenerated in more or less variable proportions, even if, very often, they are not of such a low level as their interpretations would suggest. Whatever the case may be, this explains how "animism", which all in all constitutes only a particular point of a doctrine, could be assumed to characterize it in its entirety. Indeed, in cases of degeneration, it is naturally the superior part of the doctrine, that is to say its metaphysical and "spiritual" side, which always disappears more or less completely; consequently, what was originally only secondary, and in particular the cosmological and "psychic" aspect, to which "animism" and its applications properly belong, inevitably assumes a preponderant importance; the rest, even if it still persists, at least to a certain extent, can easily escape those who observe things from the outside, especially since they, ignoring the profound meaning of the rites and symbols, will be incapable of recognizing in them what belongs to a higher sphere (in the same way that they do not recognize it in the vestiges of civilizations that have entirely disappeared), and will believe that they can indiscriminately explain everything in terms of «magic", if not even, sometimes, of "witchcraft» pure and simple.
A very clear example of what we are saying can be found in a case like that of «shamanism», which is generally considered one of the typical forms of «animism»; its very name, whose etymology is rather uncertain, properly designates the set of traditional doctrines and practices of certain Mongolian populations of the Siberia; but some extend it to what, even in other localities, presents more or less similar characteristics. For many, "shamanism" is almost synonymous with witchcraft, which is certainly incorrect, since it is something completely different; this word has undergone in a certain way an inverse deviation from that of «fetishism», which indeed has, from an etymological point of view, the sense of witchcraft, but has instead been applied to things in which, similarly, something else is also found. In this regard, we will point out that the distinction wanted by some to establish between "shamanism" and "fetishism", considered as two varieties of "animism", cannot be either as clear or as important as they believe it to be: that they are human beings, as in the first case, or any objects, as in the second, to act mainly as "supports" or "condensers", if one may say so, for certain subtle influences, it is just a simple difference in "technical" modalities, which, ultimately, has nothing absolutely essential [2].
If we examine "shamanism" properly speaking, we note the existence of a highly developed cosmology, which could provide the reason for comparisons with those of other traditions on numerous points, starting with the division of the "three worlds" which seems to constitute its very foundation. Furthermore, we find in it rites comparable to some of those that belong to traditions of the highest rank: some, for example, recall in an astonishing way certain Vedic rites, among those, also, which most clearly proceed from the primordial tradition, such as the rites in which i tree and de symbolsl swan have a predominant role. Therefore there is no doubt that it is something that, at least in its origins, constituted a regular and normal traditional form; on the other hand, a certain "transmission" of the powers necessary for the exercise of the functions of the "shaman" has been preserved in "shamanism" up to the present era; but, when we see that he devotes his activity above all to the lower traditional sciences, such as magic and divination, it is relatively easy to suspect that a very real degeneration must have occurred, and one wonders whether it has not even gone as far as to become a real deviation, a deviation to which things of this order can only too easily give rise when they take on such an excessive development.
To tell the truth, there are some rather disturbing clues in this regard: one of these is the bond that is established between the "shaman" and an animal, a bond that exclusively concerns an individual, and which consequently is in no way comparable to the collective bond that constitutes what, rightly or wrongly, is called «totemism». It must be said, however, that what we are faced with could, in itself, be susceptible to a completely legitimate interpretation, without any relation to witchcraft; except that what gives it a more suspicious character is the fact that at least among certain populations, if not in all, the animal is then considered in some way as a form of the "shaman" himself; and from an identification of this kind to the «lycanthropy», which exists in particular among peoples of the black race [3], the step is not as long as one might be tempted to think.
But we still need to add something that has more direct relevance to our topic: the "shamans", among the psychic influences with which they deal, very naturally distinguish two types, one beneficial and the other malevolent, and since there is evidently nothing to fear from the former, it is with the latter that they concern themselves almost exclusively; this at least seems to be the most frequent case, since it could also be that "shamanism" includes relatively various forms, among which it would perhaps be appropriate to make certain differences in this regard. Moreover, it is not at all a question of a "cult" given to evil influences, which would then be a kind of conscious "Satanism"., as has sometimes been wrongly supposed; it is only a matter, in principle, of preventing them from harming, neutralizing or averting their action. The same consideration could also be applied to other alleged "devil worshipers" who exist in different regions; Generally speaking, it is not very likely that real "Satanism" could affect an entire population.
Nonetheless, it is no less true that, whatever the primitive intention may be, the manipulation of influences of this kind, without appealing to influences of a higher order (and even more so to strictly spiritual influences), necessarily leads to things to constitute real witchcraft, even if very different from that of the vulgar «country sorcerers» Westerners, which consists only of the last remains of a magical knowledge reduced and degenerated to the highest degree and on the verge of disappearing completely.
The magical part of "shamanism" certainly has a completely different vitality, and this is why it is something truly fearsome in more than one respect; effectively the so to speak constant contact with the lower psychic forces is among the most dangerous, first of all for the "shaman" himself, this is evident, then also from another aspect, the interest of which is much less strictly "localized". In fact, it can happen that certain individuals, operating in a more conscious way and with broader knowledge - which does not mean of a higher order at all - use these same forces for completely different ends, without the knowledge of the "shamans" or those who act in the same way, who will then represent only the simple part of instruments for the accumulation of the forces in question at specific points.
We know in fact that there exists in the world a certain number of "reservoirs" of influences whose disposition certainly has nothing "fortuitous" about them, and which only serve the designs of certain "powers" responsible for all modern deviation too well.; however this requires other explanations, since one might, at first glance, be surprised that the remains of what was once an authentic tradition lend themselves to a "subversion" of this kind.
NOTE:
[1] Let's talk about just a few, since there are other traditional sciences of which not the slightest trace remains in the modern world, however deformed or deviated one may imagine. On the other hand, it is axiomatic that all the enumerations and classifications of philosophers concern only the profane sciences, and that the traditional sciences absolutely cannot fit into restricted and "systematic" schemes; In this regard, the Arab saying according to which "there are many sciences, but few scientists" can be applied to our era better than to any other (el-ulûm kathîr, walaken el-ulamâ qalîl).
[2] In what follows we will make use of a certain number of indications regarding "shamanism" contained in an exposition entitled Shamanism of the Natives of Siberia, by IM Casanovicz (extracted from Smithsonian Report for 1924), the communication of which we owe to the kindness of AK Coomaraswamy.
[3] According to credible testimonies, there exists, in particular, in a remote area of Sudan, an entire population of "werewolves", made up of at least twenty thousand individuals; There are also, in other parts of Africa, secret organizations, such as the one given the name "Leopard Society", in which certain forms of "lycanthropy" have a preponderant importance.
always very interesting