6

SYNTHESIS AND SYNCRETISM

 
     We were just saying that it is not only useless but sometimes even dangerous to mix ritual elements belonging to different traditional forms, and that this is true not only for the initiatic domain, which was what we first had in mind, but in reality is so for the entire traditional domain. We believe it will not be without interest to consider this question in all its generality, although it may seem to divert us somewhat from considerations relating more directly to initiation. Since the mixing in question represents moreover only a particular case of what can properly be called ‘syncretism’, we should begin by clarifying what is meant by this word, all the more so in that those of our contemporaries who claim to study traditional doctrines – without at all getting to their essence, especially those who consider them historically and in a purely scholarly way – very often have the irksome tendency of confusing ‘synthesis’ with ‘syncretism’. This observation applies generally to the ‘profane’ study of doctrines of the exoteric order as well as to those of the esoteric order; moreover, the distinction between them is rarely made as it should be, and thus the so-called ‘science of religions’ treats of a multitude of things that in reality have nothing ‘religious’ about them, as, for example, the initiatic mysteries of antiquity mentioned above. This ‘science’ clearly affirms its ‘profane’ character, in the worst sense of the word, by asserting in principle that only someone outside all religions and so having only an altogether external understanding of them (we should rather say ‘outside of tradition’, without specifying any of its particular modalities), is qualified to consider religion ‘scientifically’. The truth is that under the pretext of disinterested knowledge there hides a clearly anti-traditional motive, a ‘criticism’ that for its promoters, and perhaps less consciously for their followers, is meant to destroy all tradition, and of which the prejudice is to see in tradition only a collection of psychological, social, or other purely human facts. We will not dwell on this further, for besides the fact that we have often spoken of it elsewhere, our present intention is only to point out a confusion that, although very characteristic of this special mentality, can obviously also exist independently of this anti-traditional motive.
 
     ‘Syncretism’ in its true sense is nothing more than a simple juxtaposition of elements of diverse provenance brought together ‘from the outside’ so to speak, without any principle of a more profound order to unite them. Obviously such an aggregation cannot really constitute a doctrine any more than a heap of stones makes a building, and if it sometimes gives the impression of doctrine to those who look at it only superficially, this is an illusion that cannot stand up under even modest scrutiny. One need not look very far to find good examples of such syncretism. Modern counterfeits of tradition like occultism and Theosophy are basically nothing else,¹ fragmentary notions borrowed from different traditional forms, generally poorly understood and more or less deformed, are herein mixed with ideas belonging to philosophy and to profane science. There are also philosophical theories patched together almost entirely from fragments of other theories, where syncretism usually takes the name of ‘eclecticism’, but in the final analysis this is less serious than the preceding situation since it is, after all, only philosophy, that is to say profane thought, which at least does not pretend do be something it is not.
 
     In every case syncretism is an essentially profane process by virtue of its very ‘exteriority’; not only is it not synthesis, but in a certain sense it is even the contrary, for synthesis by definition starts from principles, that is to say from what is most interior; it goes, one might say, from center to circumference, whereas syncretism remains on the circumference itself, in the pure and as it were ‘atomic’ multiplicity of an indefinite multitude of elements taken one by one and considered in themselves, for themselves, and apart from their principle, that is from their true raison d’être. Syncretism thus has willy-nilly a wholly analytic character. It is true that none speak so often or so readily of synthesis as certain ‘syncretists’, but this proves only that they sense that if they were to recognize the true nature of their composite theories they would thereby have to admit that they are not the depositories of any tradition and that the task to which they have devoted themselves in no way differs from what any ‘researcher’ who happened along could do by piecing together various notions he has taken from books.
 
     If such people have an evident interest in passing their syncretism off as a synthesis, the error of those of whom we spoke earlier is generally the reverse: finding themselves in the presence of a true synthesis, they rarely refrain from calling it syncretism. The explanation for such an attitude is in essence quite simple. Clinging to the most narrowly profane and exterior point of view that can be imagined, they have no notion of anything pertaining to another order, and since they will not or cannot admit that some things elude them, they naturally try to reduce everything to procedures they can understand. Imagining that all doctrine is no more than the work of one or several individuals without any intervention of higher elements (for it must not be forgotten that this is the fundamental postulate of all their ‘science’), they attribute to these individuals what they themselves would be capable of doing in like case; and it hardly needs saying that they take no pains at all to ascertain whether or not the doctrine they are investigating after their own fashion is the expression of the truth, for since such a question is not ‘historical’ it never occurs to them. It is even doubtful whether they have ever suspected that there may be a higher truth than the mere ‘factual truth’ that is the sole object of their erudition; as for the interest that this kind of investigation seems to hold for them under such conditions, we must admit that it is quite impossible for us to comprehend, so foreign is this mentality to ours.
 
     However that may be, what is particularly important to note is that the false conception that sees syncretism in traditional doctrines has as a direct and inevitable consequence what can be called the theory of ‘borrowings’: when the existence of similar elements is noted in two different doctrinal forms it is immediately supposed that one must have borrowed them from the other. This, of course, has nothing to do with the question of the common origin of traditions, or of their authentic filiation and the regular transmission and successive adaptation that this implies, all of which entirely elude the methods of investigation at the disposal of the profane historian and therefore literally do not exist for him. Those who hold this theory think only of borrowings in the crudest sense of the word, of a sort of copying or plagiarizing of one tradition by another with which it happens to come into contact through entirely contingent circumstances, and of an accidental incorporation of unconnected elements answering to no deeper cause;² and this is in fact precisely what the very definition of syncretism implies. Furthermore, it is never asked whether one and the same truth should not normally have more or less similar or at least comparable expressions, apart from any question of borrowing; but this cannot even be asked because, as we have just said, the existence of this truth is itself resolutely ignored. This last explanation would be insufficient in any case without the notion of the primordial unity of tradition, but it would at least convey a certain aspect of reality; and let us add that this explanation must never be confused with another theory, no less profane than that of ‘borrowing’ although differing in kind, which appeals to what is called by some the ‘unity of the human spirit’, taking this in an exclusively psychological sense (although in fact no such unity exists) and implying further that all doctrine is simply a product of the ‘human spirit’, so that this ‘psychologism’ no more considers the question of doctrinal truth than does the ‘historicism’ of the partisans of the syncretistic explanation.³
 
     A further point is that when this same idea of syncretism and ‘borrowing’ is applied to the traditional scriptures, it gives birth to the search for hypothetical ‘sources’ and supposed ‘interpolations’ which, as we know, is one of the greatest resources of ‘criticism’ in its work of destruction, a work the only real aim of which is the negation of any ‘supra-human’ inspiration.⁴ This is closely connected with the anti-traditional motive that we noted at the beginning, and what we must keep especially in mind here is the incompatibility of any ‘humanist’ explanation with the traditional spirit, an incompatibility, moreover, that is obvious, since not to take into account the ‘non-human’ element is strictly to misunderstand the very essence of tradition, without which there is nothing left worthy to bear this name. On the other hand, in order to refute the syncretistic idea it suffices to recall that every traditional doctrine necessarily has a knowledge of metaphysical principles as its center and point of departure, and that everything else it may include in a more or less secondary way is, in the final analysis, only the application of these principles to different domains; this amounts to saying that it is essentially synthetic, and, as we said above, synthesis by its very nature excludes all syncretism.
 
     One can take this still further: if it is impossible that there should be syncretism within traditional doctrines themselves, it is equally impossible that it should find a place among those who have truly understood these doctrines and who by this fact have perforce understood the vanity of such a procedure, as well as of all others proper to profane thought, and thus have no need of it. Whatever is truly inspired by traditional knowledge always proceeds from ‘within’ and not from ‘without’; whoever is aware of the essential unity of all traditions can, according to the case, use different traditional forms to expound and interpret doctrine, if there happens to be some advantage in doing so, but this will never even remotely resemble any sort of syncretism or the ‘comparative method’ of scholars. On the one hand, the central and principial unity illuminates and dominates all; on the other, if this unity is absent or, better, hidden from the sight of the profane ‘scholar’, he can do no more than grope in the ‘outer darkness’, vainly busying himself amid a chaos that can be put to order only by the initiatic Fiat Lux, which, failing the necessary ‘qualification’, will never be uttered for him.


——————————
[1] Cf. Reign of Quantity, chap. 36.
[2] An example of how this way of seeing things is applied to the esoteric and initiatic domain is furnished by the theory that sees in the tasawwuf of Islam a borrowing from India on the grounds that similar methods are found in both. The orientalists who maintain this theory have evidently never thought of asking themselves whether these methods were not equally required in both cases by the very nature of things, something that nonetheless seems rather easy to understand, at least for anyone who has no preconceived ideas.
[3] Cf. Reign of Quantity, chap. 13.
[4] The multiple-source theory of the early books of the Old Testament does not in itself contradict the view that the material is of supra-human inspiration. Furthermore, the evidence for this theory is overwhelming, and to call it syncretistic would be too much of a simplification. Ed.