THE FISSURES IN THE GREAT WALL
Rene Guenon
Except from The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times
HOWEVER far the " solidification " of the sensible world may
have gone, it can never be carried so far as to turn the world into a "
closed system " such as is imagined by the materialists. The very nature
of things sets limits to " solidification " and the more nearly those
limits are approached the more unstable is the corresponding state of affairs;
in actual fact, as we have seen, the point corresponding to a maximum of "
solidification " has already been passed, and the impression that the
world is a " closed system " can only from now onwards become more
and more illusory and inadequate to the reality. " Fissures " have
been mentioned previously as being the paths whereby certain destructive forces
are already entering, and must continue to enter ever more freely; according to
traditional symbolism these " fissures " occur in the " Great
Wall " which surrounds the world and protects it from the intrusion of
maleficent influences coming from the inferior subtle domain.116 In order that
this symbolism may be fully understood in all its aspects, it is important to
note that a wall acts both as a protection and as a limitation: in a sense
therefore it can be said to have both advantages and inconveniences; but in so
far as its principal purpose is to ensure an adequate defence against attacks
coming from below, the advantages are incomparably the more important, for it
is on the whole more useful to anyone who happens to be enclosed within its
perimeter to be kept out of reach of what is below, than it is to be
continuously exposed to the ravages of the enemy, or worse still to a more or
less complete destruction. In any case, a walled space as such is not closed in
at the top, so that communication with superior domains is not prevented, and
this state of affairs is the normal one; but in the modern period the "
shell " with no outlet built by materialism has cut off that
communication. Moreover, as already explained, since the " descent "
has not yet come to an end, the " shell " must necessarily remain
intact overhead, that is, in the direction of that from which humanity need not
be protected, on the contrary, only beneficient influences can come that way;
the " fissures " occur only at the base, and therefore in the actual
protective wall itself, and the inferior forces which make their way in through
them meet with a much reduced resistance because under such conditions no power
of a superior order can intervene in order to oppose them effectively. Thus the
world is exposed defenceless to all the attacks of its enemies, the more so
because, the present-day mentality being what it is, the dangers which threaten
it are wholly unperceived.
In the Islamic tradition these " fissures " are those by
which, at the end of the cycle, the devastating hordes of Gog and Magog will
force their way in,117 for they are unremitting in their efforts to invade this
world; these " entities " represent the inferior influences in
question. They are considered as maintaining an underground existence, and are
described both as giants and as dwarfs; they may thus be identified, in
accordance with what was said earlier on the subject, and at least in certain
connections, which the " guardians of the hidden treasure " and with
the smiths of the " subterranean fire", who have, it may be recalled,
an exceedingly maleficent aspect; in all such symbolisms the same kind of
" infra-corporeal " subtle influences are really always involved.118
If the truth be told, the attempts of these " entities " to insinuate
themselves into the corporeal and human world are no new thing, for they go
back at least to somewhere near the beginning of the Kali-Yuga., a period far
more remote than that of "classical" antiquity, by which the horizon
of profane historians is bounded. In this connection, the Chinese tradition
relates in symbolical terms that " Niu-Koua (sister and wife of Fo-hi, who
is said to have reigned jointly with him) melted stones of five colours in
order to repair a tear in the sky made by a giant " (apparently, though it
is not made quite clear, the tear was situated on the terrestrial horizon) ;
and this took place at a period not more than a few centuries after the
beginning of the Kali-Yuga.
Nevertheless, although the Kali-Yuga as a whole is intrinsically a
period of obscuration, so that " fissures " have been possible ever
since it began, the degree of obscuration pervading its later phases is far
from having been attained at once, and that is why " fissures " could
be repaired relatively easily in earlier times; it was none the less necessary
to maintain a constant vigilance against them, and this task was naturally
among those assigned to the spiritual centres of the various traditions. Later
on there came a period when, as a consequence of the extreme "
solidification " of the world, these same " fissures " were much
less to be feared, at least temporarily; this period corresponds to the first
part of modern times, the part that can be defined as being characteristically
mechanistic and materialistic, in which the " closed system " alluded
to was most nearly realized, at least to the extent that any such thing is
actually possible. Nowadays, that is to say, in the period which can be called
the second part of modern times and which has already begun, conditions are
certainly very different from the conditions obtaining in all earlier periods:
not only can " fissures " occur more and more extensively, and be
much more serious in character, because a greater proportion of the descending
course of manifestation has been accomplished, but also the possibilities of repairing
them are not the same as they used to be; the action of the spiritual centres
has indeed become ever more enclosed, because the superior influences which
they normally transmit to our world can no longer be manifested externally,
since they are held back by the " shell " alluded to above; and when
the whole of the human and cosmic order is in such a condition, where could a
means of defence possibly be found such as might be effective in any way
against the " hordes of Gog and Magog " ?
But that is not all: what has been said so far covers so to speak only
the negative side of the growing difficulties encountered by all attempts to
oppose the intrusion of maleficent influences, among these difficulties is a
sort of inertia resulting from the general ignorance of such matters, and from
" survivals " of the materialistic mentality and of the outlook it
engenders; this inertia may endure longer than it otherwise would because the
outlook in question has become more or less instinctive in the moderns and is
now incorporated in their very nature. Of course a majority of "
spiritualists " and even of " traditionalists ", or of people
who call themselves such, are in fact quite as materialistic as other people
when matters of this kind are in question, so that the situation is made even
more irremediable by the fact that those who. most sincerely want to combat the
modern spirit are almost all unwittingly affected by it, and all their efforts
are therefore condemned to remain without any appreciable result; for these are
matters in which good-will is far from being sufficient; effective knowledge is
needed as well, indeed it is more needed than anything else. But effective
knowledge is the very thing that is made impossible by the influence of the
modern spirit with all its limitations, even in the case of those who might
have some intellectual capabilities of the required kind if conditions were
less abnormal.
But apart from all these negative elements, the difficulties now under
review have an aspect which can be called positive, and it may be taken to
include everything in our world as we know it actively favourable to the
intervention of subtle influences of an inferior kind, whether its work be done
consciously or unconsciously. The logical sequence here would be to consider in
the first place the more or less " determining " part played by the
actual agents of the whole modern deviation, since the intervention of inferior
influences really represents a new phase in the said deviation, and fits in
exactly with the sequence of the " plan " by which it is brought
about; it would clearly be necessary to seek in some such direction for the
conscious auxiliaries of the maleficent forces; nevertheless the extent to
which they are individually conscious of what they are doing may actually
differ greatly in particular cases. As for the other auxiliaries, those who act
in good faith and, because they know nothing of the true nature of the forces
involved (thanks to the recently mentioned influence of the modern spirit) they
are never anything but mere dupes, though this does not prevent their activity
from being proportional to their sincerity and to their blindness; these
auxiliaries are already virtually numberless, and they can be placed .in many
categories, ranging from the ingenuous adherents of all sorts of "
neo-spiritualist " organizations to the " intuitionist "
philosophers, by way of the " metapsychic " scientists and the
psychologists of the more recent schools. This matter need not be pursued any
farther for the moment, for to do so would be to anticipate what will come
later; in the meantime some examples must be given of some of the ways in which
" fissures " can actually be brought about, also of the "
supports " which the inferior order of subtle or psychic influences (for
the terms " subtle " and " psychic " applied to a domain
are for present purposes synonymous) are able to find in the cosmic environment
itself, to assist them in bringing their action to bear on the human world and
to enable them to propagate themselves therein.