We have been asked, from various quarters and on several occasions, to bring together in volume the articles that we have published, in the review Etudes Traditionnelles, on questions relating directly to initiation; it was not possible for us to immediately satisfy these requests, because we consider that a book should be something more than a simple collection of articles, and this all the more so since, in the present case, these articles , written according to circumstances and often to answer questions that were put to us, were not linked together like the successive chapters of a book; we therefore had to revise them, complete them and arrange them differently, and that is what we have done here. This is not to say, moreover, that we wanted to produce a kind of more or less complete treatise and in a way "didactic"; this would still be conceivable, strictly speaking, if it were only a question of studying a particular form of initiation, but, since it is a question, on the contrary, of initiation in general, this would be a task quite impossible, because the questions that can arise in this respect are not limited in number, the very nature of the subject being opposed to any rigorous delimitation, so that we cannot in any way claim to treat them all. and not to omit any. All one can do, in short, is to consider certain aspects, to place oneself at certain points of view, which certainly, even if they are those whose importance appears most immediately for one reason or for another, they nevertheless leave out many points that it would also be legitimate to consider; this is why we thought that the word "insights" was the one that could best characterize the content of this work, especially since, even with regard to the questions dealt with, it is probably not possible to "exhaust" one completely. It goes without saying, moreover, that there could be no question of repeating here what we have already said in other books on points touching on the same subject; we must content ourselves with referring the reader to it whenever necessary; moreover, in the order of knowledge to which all our writings refer, everything is linked in such a way that it is impossible to proceed otherwise.

We have just said that our intention has been essentially to deal with questions concerning initiation in general; it must therefore be clearly understood that, whenever we refer to such and such a determined initiatory form, we do so solely by way of example, in order to specify and make better understood what, without the support of these particular cases, would run the risk of remaining a little too vague. It is important to insist on this, especially when it comes to Western forms, in order to avoid any ambiguity and any misunderstanding: if we allude to it often enough, it is because the "illustrations" which can be drawn from them seem to us, in many cases, to be more easily accessible than others to the generality of readers, or even already more or less familiar to a certain number of them; it is obvious that this is entirely independent of what everyone may think of the present state of the organizations by which these initiatory forms are preserved and practiced. When one realizes the degree of degeneration to which the modern West has arrived, it is only too easy to understand that many things of a traditional order, and a fortiori of an initiatory order, can hardly be there. to subsist only in the state of vestiges, almost misunderstood even by those who have custody of them; this is moreover what makes possible the hatching, alongside these authentic remains, of the multiple "counterfeits" of which we have already had the opportunity to speak elsewhere, because it is only under such conditions that 'they can delude themselves and succeed in being taken for what they are not; but, however that may be, the traditional forms always remain, in themselves, independent of these contingencies. Let us add further that, when on the contrary we happen to consider these same contingencies and to speak, no longer of initiatic forms, but of the state of initiatic and pseudo-initiatic organizations in the current West, we are not doing this only to state the statement of facts where we are obviously for nothing, without any other intention or concern than that of telling the truth in this respect as for any other thing that we have to consider during our studies, and of a as completely disinterested as possible. Everyone is free to draw such consequences from it as they see fit; as for us, we are in no way responsible for bringing or removing members from any organization whatsoever, we do not urge anyone to ask for initiation here or there, nor to abstain from it, and we even consider that this does not concern us in any [9] way and cannot in any way fit into our role. Some will perhaps be surprised that we believe ourselves obliged to insist on it so much, and, to tell the truth, it should indeed be useless if it were not necessary to reckon with the incomprehension of the majority of our contemporaries, and also with the bad faith from too many of them; we are unfortunately too accustomed to seeing all sorts of intentions attributed to us that we have never had, and this by people coming from the most opposite sides, at least in appearance, not to take all the necessary precautions in this regard ; we dare not add sufficient, for who could foresee all that some are capable of inventing?