As time moves on and the reign of quantity solidifies itself in the world it leads to a series of effects arising from what we can refer to as a ‘profane perspective’ upon the mysteries. This profane perspective is one rooted in customs and opinions, where awe for the opinion of the masses rules experience and attitudes. We are emerged in a world of conditioning of a strictly mundane order. These factors are typical for the spirit of modernity where acts and words are in a greater and greater speed emptied for meaning and thus labels are made ready for receiving new contents that belong of the same inferior order of human conditioning on a social level. This is quite salient in the abuse of the term ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional’ in modern days, a word that, again on a profane level, do signify something handed down. ‘Tradition’ from a metaphysical perspective do indicate the involvement of the supra-human, which brings tradition into a superior order and reflects the timeless truth found in point and circle and the interplay between possibility and its manifestation. Since ‘tradition’ today is largely understood on premises inferior to its metaphysical implications it do lead to a large amount of acts and words without meaning being exercised, because this is after all the premise of conditioning. Conditioning does not search a metaphysical meaning, but a compliancy within the mundane order. When words and acts loose their traditional meaning and they fall into matter they are subject to be filled with the illusions and fantasy of actors moving around in the same order of being. This leads to a passive attitude where any suggestion or flights of fantasy can be brought to occupy the vacancy now left in the acts and words of tradition. This only leads to tradition being emptied of meaning being replaced by customs that are wholly invented due to lack of connection with source. This leads to empty exercises of meaningless rituals and initiations that don’t seed anything of a supra-natural order and the kernel remains dormant and dying.
Today ‘tradition’ is often used to signify a custom that has been going on for some time, but less and less is the meaning and promise of the ritual explored. Rather, many actors prefer and seems to be fulfilled by the empty exercise of sentiments and whims of the fantasy to experience a sensation of connection with source and it ends up being oriented towards appearance. What happens as the world disintegrate is remarkably similar to the perception found in Arabic lands where men where distinguished from each other by the depth of knowledge, ancestry came later to be important, then with the rise of capitalism material wealth was what distinguished men from each other, finally bringing the mere appearance to be the factor that created division between men. In the words of Guénon, this leads to a reign of the Shudra where custom moves in and replaces tradition proper. For when exercising ‘customs’ the man dislocated from source stands free to fill it with whatever ideas of a, naturally inferior order, that makes the custom to appear as tradition. In the end man modern tradition are indeed customs loaded with wholly mundane and inferior sentiments and illusions, lacking foundation in traditional doctrine and metaphysics. Again, in the words of Guénon: “the husk is mistaken for the kernel.” Herein lies the true fall, but with the fall comes also the promise of reintegration – but reintegration rests on traditional initiation.