Correspondence Cairo-Amiens (6): unpublished letters of René Guénon
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Unpublished letters of René Guénon
Throughout his life, René Guénon kept up a very abundant correspondence, chiefly with French-speaking people who had taken an interest in his work. The passages we publish here are extracted from a correspondence comprising 73 letters written between 1932 and 1950. The recipient of these letters was a Frenchman living in Amiens, an assiduous reader of Guénon’s works, who played an important part in the emergence of a Sufi way on Western soil. Through the answers and clarifications Guénon offers his correspondent, one can glean elements of information on doctrinal points, but also certain practical aspects and counsels for the use of those drawn to an attachment to a Sufi way while living in a non-Muslim country such as France.
The winter has been exceptionally cold and long this year, hence colds and influenzas; but it is over at last, and apart from that my health is not bad now; let us hope it will continue thus…
[…]
I think you do very well to remain prudent with D. If he should speak again of an Eastern attachment, the best would no doubt be, as you say, that you first set out the difficulties to him, which are indeed quite real; if he then persisted despite that, there would always be time to see what should be done…
[…]
As for what masonry lacks, since it has become simply ‘speculative’, it is in sum the means of passing from a virtual initiation (always valid as such) to an effective initiation; unfortunately, there is something there which, for many reasons (and even if the state of mind were more favourable than it presently is), appears rather difficult to restore in fact, although naturally the possibility of it always subsists in principle; there are, in the ritual itself, multiple points that pose almost insoluble enigmas!
What you say of the abnormal and anti-traditional conditions of Western existence is certainly only too true, and it is sure that this is a source of additional difficulties that it is impossible not to take into account; one must obviously try to ‘neutralise’ all this as much as possible, but I acknowledge that it is not always easy; only he who had already reached the goal would be entitled to consider himself entirely freed from all these contingencies… As for going to live elsewhere, where circumstances are less unfavourable, that is not always feasible either, and there is then also another question, that of adaptation to the environment, which in many cases can bring difficulties of another kind…
On the states of concentration you speak of, I believe like you that there is nothing but to continue thus, at least until further notice; besides, there is rarely advantage in wanting to hasten results overmuch; and it is not for nothing that patience is so often recommended in the Qur’an!
As for your other question, there is in reality a great difference between the ‘pitri-yana’ (the one who follows the ‘way of the ancestors’) and those cases, rather exceptional as you say, of individuals who have led a sort of ‘backwards’ life; this difference is besides formally indicated at the end of the fatiha, and you may refer to what I have said on this subject in the Symbolisme de la croix (pp. 185-187). In fact, it is the pitri-yana which, especially in the conditions of the Kali-Yuga, corresponds to the case of the immense majority of men; ‘deferred’ deliverance is the only one that could be envisaged for them, if any deliverance could be envisaged; but what would you do, for example, with all those who are effectively attached to no tradition, as is the case with most present-day Westerners?…
Letter to L. C., Cairo, 4 April 1938
Concerning brother D.’s projects (to fill the present gaps of masonry), I continue to believe that their realisation risks meeting with many difficulties, the first of which will be to find 6 other masons of the requisite spirit; it is not as simple as one might think, and, given especially the ‘occultist’ mentality of the milieu where he no doubt expects to find them, I very much fear he will have great trouble completing the number… Then, it is certain that, in principle, a lodge can exist independently of any obedience; but it is no less certain that, in fact, and in present conditions, this situation runs up against almost insurmountable obstacles. As it is hardly possible to explain all this by correspondence with the requisite precision, I think the best would be for him to ask for an appointment with my friend H., whom I shall inform besides, and who will be able, better than anyone, to give him all these explanations.
[…]
It is well understood that relations between organisations belonging to different traditional forms are never ‘of right’ and cannot have an ‘official’ character, if that word may be used in such a case. Even the existence of common members may have no further consequences: here, for example, there are members of various turuq who are masons at the same time, but it goes no further and masonry does not thereby have the least support of the turuq as such. In any case, it goes without saying that an organisation could ask for any support only if it already had valid and serious results to present; it is therefore certainly far too early to envisage this question and to wonder under what form such support would be possible.
Letter to L. C., Cairo, 20 May 1938
Surely the present situation is far from reassuring; it is said, though, that there is some improvement these days, but for how long?
I am glad to know that you have managed to interest still other people in my books, but above all by what you tell me (of a positive kind) about Madame C. (your wife), from which you must derive a very great satisfaction. Yet I must warn you on one point: the reconstitution of the primordial androgyne cannot result from the fusion of two different beings, but indeed from the balance of the complementaries that each being bears within himself (with a predominance of one or the other in the ordinary state); every outward union can here be only an image or a likeness, and nothing more; and any other way of envisaging the matter belongs only to ‘pseudo-mystical’ reveries that can sometimes be quite dangerous…
[…]
It is certain that the question (of the revivification of masonry) has hardly more than a rather theoretical interest, and you are quite right to think that this shows once again that there are no longer any real initiatic possibilities for the West outside the Islamic side.
Letter to L. C., Cairo, 23 September 1938
Many thanks indeed for your new and important parcel, which reached me yesterday. Surely, when we are able to have a house of our own, it will be one great worry less for me; so I am very grateful to all those who are helping me reach that result. Especially with the instability of the situation in Europe, it is unfortunately not useless to take precautions in case communications should come to be interrupted… let us hope nevertheless, since things have settled themselves this time, that it can last thus; but who can know for how long?
I am glad that my explanations on the question of the androgyne have satisfied you; it is in sum a matter of balancing the yin by the yang and reciprocally, and this in all domains. It is not, moreover, so much the corporeal balance that is to be considered (which can rather be attained as a consequence than directly) as the psychic balance, for man and woman differ no less from each other in this respect; this does not concern, of course, superficial and simply psychological differences, but something inherent in the very constitution of the individuality (which does not mean that the undeveloped complementary elements do not also exist potentially within it, since without that the balance would evidently be impossible to realise).
For those who follow the pitri-yana, one may no doubt indeed speak, as you do, of a ‘descent into hell’, at least in the general sense of that expression; but to be more precise, certain further distinctions would perhaps have to be made according to cases, for this is a most complex question with multiple aspects. In any case, it is evident that, to pass into another state of manifestation, the being necessarily leaves behind it, in the manner of a sort of ‘psychic corpse’, the properly constitutive elements of the individuality, which would no longer answer to anything in the conditions of that other state.
As for the effects of the repetition of a mantra, it is not necessary, indeed, to know its meaning, but there must have been a transmission by which it has been vivified. Otherwise, and especially in the case of someone belonging to another traditional form, if certain effects do nonetheless occur, they are most likely to be rather malefic…
Next letter: Correspondence Cairo-Amiens (7)
