It will doubtless be asked why cyclic development must proceed in this manner, in a downward direction, from higher to lower, a course that will at once be perceived to be a complete antithesis to the idea of progress as the moderns understand it. The reason is that the development of any manifestation necessarily implies a gradually increasing distance from the principle from which it proceeds

Rene Guenon, The Essential Rene Guenon

Hermetic Quote Guenon Essential Any Manifestation

Consider also:

  1. Greater Feast of Saint Theodor Reuss
  2. Robomancy
  3. “Lo I have slain dragons,” Chess muttered, leaning against the counter as she struggled with the temptation to open the book and lose herself in it. “And lo have I rescued maidens. But lo, oh lo, I can’t for the life of me conquer all the idiocy in the world.”
  4. “It seemed absolutely clear that industry did not require the presence of a rational being to maintain itself. Basically, industry consisted of manual laborers, always performing the selfsame tasks, who could easily be replaced by apes; and, at a higher level, of executives whose function was to draft certain reports and pronounce certain words under given circumstances.”
  5. “For he who is not pure in body and mind he who is enslaved by passions and desires, or by bondage to the material interests of this world, is, by the very fact of his uncleanness, prevented from passing on. Nothing unclean or that defileth a man, we are told, can enter into the kingdom; and, therefore, our candidates are told that if they have ‘money or metals about them’; if, that is, they are subject to any physical attraction or mental defilement, their real initiation into the higher things, of which our ceremony is but a dramatic symbol, must be deferred and repeated again and again until they are cleansed and fitted to pass on.”