If we view the history of humanity as taught by traditional doctrines, in conformity with cyclical laws, we must say that in the beginning man had the full possession of his state of existence and with it he naturally had the possibilities corresponding to all the functions prior to any distinction of these. The division of these functions came about in a subsequent phase, representing a state already inferior to the -primordial state", in which however every human being, while having as yet only some definite possibilities, still spontaneously had the effective consciousness of them. It is only in a period of greater obscuration that this consciousness became lost; hence initiation became necessary so as to enable man to find once more along with consciousness, also the former state in which it inheres; this is, in fact, the first of its aims, and the one at which it aims immediately. In order to be possible, this implies a transmission going back by an uninterrupted "chain" to the state to be restored and thus step by step to the "primordial state" itself; still, the initiation does not stop there and the "lesser mysteries" being but the preparation for the "great mysteries", that is for the taking possession of the superior states of the being, one has to go back even beyond the origins of humanity. In fact, there is no true initiation, even , in the most inferior and elementary degree, without the intervention of a "non-human" element, which is the "spiritual influence" regularly communicated by the initiatory rite. If this is so, there is obviously no room for searching "historically" for the origin of initiation-a search which now appears bereft of sense-nor the origin of the crafts, arts and sciences, viewed according to their traditional and "legitimate" conception, for all these, through multiple, but secondary, differentiations and adaptations, derive similarly from the "primordial state" which contains them all in principle, and from there they link up with other orders of existence, even beyond humanity itself; this is necessary so that all and each, according to its rank and measure, can concur effectively in the realisation of the plan of the Great Architect of the Universe. Journal of The Indian Society of Oriental Art, Volume VI. 1938 INITIATION AND THE CRAFTS