René Guénon maintains that, in spite of every obstacle, truth is unshakeable. He draws on the motto of an ancient Western initiatic brotherhood of the Middle Ages, often summed up in the Latin phrase "vincit omnia veritas" ("truth conquers all"), thereby illustrating the idea that truth always triumphs. This principle carries a profoundly positive message, affirming that the materiality that predominates in the modern world finds its meaning only when a civilisational cycle reaches its point of saturation, having exhausted all its lower potentialities.
At this critical moment, what Guénon describes as "the great wall" gives way before the baleful influences that begin to spread through our world. We are living this moment of tipping-point in 2023, marked by the dissemination of forces contrary to the traditional spirit.
Guénon develops his thought by examining the doctrine of cycles and of the four ages: the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. According to him, we are at the end of the Iron Age, a period dominated by the most harmful and anti-traditional influences. He distinguishes tradition, which raises the human towards the divine, from counter-tradition, which, through deviation and subversion, marks the triumph of individualism and materiality.
Counter-initiation, the antithesis of traditional initiation, promotes a reversal of spiritual values. This inversion, taking root in the individual, privileges the human at the expense of the divine, thereby unduly conflating the psychic and the spiritual. Tradition, for its part, seeks to transcend the human in order to reintegrate the divine, illustrating the fundamental distinction between the soul (the psyche) and the spirit.
The symbol of the mustard seed, borrowed from Christianity, embodies this aspiration to spiritual growth. Like the smallest of seeds, capable of becoming the greatest of plants, this symbol reminds us that faith, however small, can bring forth a monumental impact. The Qur'an reinforces this metaphor by teaching that human life truly begins with the breath of the spirit, likened to a seed within us.
The recognition and embrace of this spiritual "seed" are crucial to the evolution of the human being towards higher states of consciousness. By accepting and understanding the nature of the spirit within us, we transcend our human condition to attain a higher plane of existence, where the human being becomes more spiritual than material.