INITIATION

1.Qualifications: Are not qualified to be initiated: the blind, the one-eyed, the hunched-back, the stammerer, the lame, the one-armed, the eunuch, and all other incomplete beings. These qualifications are the same for clergy. However, if one was to loose a member or sight in the exercise of function, then the initiate remains so for eternity.

2.Conditions : One cannot be self-initiated (initium = coming in, entering, commencing). The initiation is a second birth, the transmission of spiritual influence. The adherence to a traditional regular organisation is the necessary condition of initiation, adherence to which, must be real and effective. A pretended joining to lost traditional forms is vain and in effect, null and void. Indeed, the passing of spiritual influence is done according to precise and definite laws, in this case, without these, there would be no transmission at all. The simple will of an individual to be initiated (or think to be) is not enough to ensure true or effective initiation following the worth of the initiation-seeker. It is not enough to read texts or Holy scriptures, or their comments, to be initiated. Those who think likewise, can't they see that in this way, there can be no qualification, then no selection, no selection, then no control, no control, then no means of recognition, no recognition, then no hierarchy, and worst, no transmission- therefore, nothing which characterises and constitutes true initiation? For the profane individual to be initiated, there must be acceptance by a traditional organisation having the quality and power to confer the initiation and transfer the spiritual influence. An initiatory organisation can not be founded like a profane association, that is by people, or by the sole personal initiative of certain individuals taking certain rules and taking the names of lost initiatory lineages. Such an organisation has no value whatsoever, neither in the right to pretend to the power to, or to confer the initiation. A new organisation is legitimate only if: it perpetuates a pre-existing organisation, and maintaining without interruption an initiatory chain.


Initiatory Transmission.

The initiatory chain is a succession ensuring in a continuous way the initiation. A true initiation must be non-human in origin and essence. One never knows the author of the rites, nor of the traditional symbols, which cannot have an historical origin.

He who confers the initiation is but the transmitter, he never acts as an individual, but as a support of the spiritual influence that he has received. He is but a link in the chain whose origin is outside and beyond humanity. In this situation, no one can act in his name, only in the name of the organisation to which he belongs and from which he receives his power to act.

UISSURIX

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For more detail please consult René Guénon's fundamental work entitled : Aperçu sur l'initiation, librairie Chacornac, and also in: Aperçus sur l'initiation de Jean Reyor in Études Traditionnelles n^o 9 de 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951.