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OUR SOCIAL THESIS

This article appeared in La Flèche No. 1, October 15, 1930. Naglowska signed it with one of her favorite pseudonyms, “Auguste Apôtre.”

In our days, an occultist publication cannot fail to take a position in the domain of the great general ideas concerning the reorganization of social regimes. It’s not that such a duty is imposed on us by the public, which in any case cares little about occult action, hardly knowing the profound reality of it, but it is the stage where magic operating in the world currently finds itself that demands that each one that becomes a leading organ pose and respond to these questions: Is modern life healthy or unhealthy? Does it represent progress or a retrogression? If it is sick, where is the remedy?

We owe the uninitiated reader some clarifications, for we cannot assume that each will interpret the phrase “magic operating in the world” in the way that we do ourselves. Here, then, is what we understand by it:

Magic is the science-life-action that accomplishes, in a manner that is undecipherable by ordinary understanding, a given and continued work, whose definitive end cannot be expressed in current terms, for it is just there that the word of Christ is verified: “Do not cast your pearls before swine, that they not turn against you and destroy both your pearls and you.”^*17 For the rest, the definitive goal of magical action does not directly concern humankind and its wellbeing, for Man, his joys, and his sorrows are nothing more than quite insignificant dust in comparison to eternity and the Great Unknown that rules the universe—it is perhaps this that explains and in a way perhaps even justifies the indifference in His sight of mortals in general—but, nevertheless and however it may seem, humanity is effectively a collaborator in the magical Work, and whether it wishes it or not, it is above all through humanity that the Unknown acts and brings about on the earth.

One of the principal tasks of La Flèche will be to make these primordial truths known and recognized, but for the moment, we shall content ourselves with only stating some points that are directly connected to the thesis at hand.

There was a time, and history has kept its memory, when civilized humans, that is to say organized and disciplined, presented themselves as a pyramid composed of four castes that were quite distinct and superimposed one upon the other. At the bottom there were the people devoted to manual works and to all practical needs. Their fate was deplorable, and their characteristic was lamentation, but they obeyed the law of life and that was the essential thing. Over these people and living from their labor, there were the businessmen and merchants of all kinds. They generally had material wealth, but discontent was rife, for egotism does not give happiness. Still, they were useful, because “waste needs sewers.” Higher still, the civilized human pyramid was comprised of the nobles or warriors whose joy was combat and whose goal was victory. Those people had within them the beginning of spiritual life, because their appetites were not only material. They often had less wealth than the merchants, but their heart drove them elsewhere. The highest caste, in this distant time, was represented by the teachers and masters of religion—the terms varied according to the races and nations—and these people who were relatively few in number were the true directors of the social life of the time. They accomplished their task as directors according to the wisdom that was vested in them, and what they did was good, because the Light was in them. The culminating point of the Pyramid was formed by the sacred King, neither clergy nor lay, whose justice was real because it was divine. Through the human pyramid, the hidden magical action of the Unknown was spread and worked in the world.

But the Unknown has an Enemy. It is the symbolic Serpent that wishes that each individual should go through the complete evolutionary cycle alone and arrive by his own merit (isolated) at the summit of the world’s edifice. Speaking to Man the language that is to him the most comprehensible, he incites him to revolt against the pyramidal organization of society by means of the unchaining of the physical appetites. Where does this force come from, and where is it going? We will speak of it in our next article, which will be titled The Symbolic Serpent.^*18 Here, we give our general thesis without too many details.

The symbolic Serpent—we shall not give it any other name at the moment—has slowly but victoriously fought with the Unknown, throughout modern times. What happened with it in still earlier times does not concern us here. Early on it filled the kings with pride, then the religious masters, then the warriors and merchants, and finally, the masses of working people. The picture that humanity presents now is the perfect result of its work. The Light no longer exists anywhere, that is to say in any specified human category, and if a few weak voices arise here and there to remind one of the Sun and indicate its orientation, they are certainly neither listened to nor respected by the crowds. The unleashing of passions is general, the anarchy of customs complete. To extricate itself from the darkness where it is about to capsize, humanity has today a single lantern of which it is very proud: science. The latter alleviates its misery a bit, vaguely cures it of some physical pains, reduces its expenditure of muscular energy in the conversion to machines, but gouges the real wound: pride. Worse still: it makes the veil lowered over the eyes of Man thicker and thicker, to prevent him from seeing clearly and from knowing what the miracle is. . . . Your smile, reader, confirms this truth.

Now, where is magical solar action in all of that? Is it vanquished, dead? Has it abdicated?

That is the true subject of our present discourse. The social problem only interests us as in relation to this question. Would reestablishing the pyramid, as some suggest, smooth the ways of the Unknown and remove the shadow for the triumph of the light? Scorning the present status and returning to an old regime?

No, categorically no, for that would be a foolish work, accomplished by fools. It would be theater, without the divine comedy. And, besides, humanity can do nothing in the catastrophe from which it suffers. When a serious doctor proposes to cure a sick person, he studies his case, analyzes to the extent that he can, the set of contrary forces that struggle for or against the illness, and attempts, within the scope of his weak means, to strengthen the good against the bad. That is all that Man can do, the rest does not depend on him.

In the defeat of the Unknown and the victory of the symbolic Serpent, those who feel within themselves the reawakening of truth can do only, according to us, one useful thing: identify themselves, as much as possible, with the essence of the Light and thus become again its active rays. The selection of those who are strongest spiritually will then happen by itself and the hierarchy of real values will be reestablished as a consequence. The one who shall effectively be the king, that is to say the true summit of the human mass, will of necessity receive the solemn anointing, and each one will voluntarily obey his word, because what he will say will be just. But human revolutions and reorganizations under current spiritual conditions are all equally senseless.

Our position with regard to the social problem is then, definitively, the following: we abstain from taking part in human struggles having material aims, but we hold that what is happening today before our eyes is anarchy and barbarity. It is the agony of the Pyramid whose stones are now all on the ground. But since it is foolish to dream of the reconstruction as long as the night is dark, we will only do one thing: with all the strength of our interior will, we shall call the Light-Spirit of which we wish to be the conducting cables. We hope actively, that is magically, that by the force of our energy, offered voluntarily and consciously to the Great Unknown, the latter will shine again through us and will put an end to the destructive work of today. We shall say to him “come,” until such time as He shall come. . . .

But magically hoping does not mean crossing one’s arms and passively awaiting the good time. On the contrary, the good time, the new era, the rebirth of the light on the earth, must be our creation.

The difficult point is exactly that: to act personally and willingly without care for one’s own person, for one’s own appetites, to go beyond oneself while at the same time remaining essentially oneself. The individual will must decentralize itself, stretch itself, so to speak, to become the axis, while ceasing to be the center of one’s own movement. Be your pivot, don’t be your center of gravitation—that is the formula that we propose. Straighten yourself, become stiff as an arrow, it is thus that you will launch yourself in the right direction, carrying along those who are like you. A great effort is necessary and patient teaching to arrive at this realization; we wish that La Flèche may obtain this success.