We have frequently said that the “profane” conception of the sciences and the arts, such as is now current in the West, is a very modern one and implies a degeneration with respect to a previous state in which both of them had an altogether different character. The same can be said about the crafts; the distinction, moreover, between arts and crafts or between “artist” and “craftsman” is also specifically modern, as if it were born of this profane deviation and had no meaning outside it. The “ARTIFEX”, with the ancients is without differentiating, a man who practises an art or a craft. He is neither an artist nor a craftsman in the sense these words have today, but something more than the one or the other, for his activity, in its origins at least, issues from principles of a far more profound order. Journal of The Indian Society of Oriental Art, Volume VI. 1938 INITIATION AND THE CRAFTS