Spirited: No, Guenon was fully aware of what James was doing, which is why he described him as a modernist, Guenon's term for evolutionary naturalist.
James was a radical empiricist, a Darwinist who held that since life evolved from matter (nature) then the human mind had evolved as well.
James was among a group of scholars (Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Dewey)who founded an entire school of philosophy (pragmatism) on Darwinian materialism. Their goal was to expand Darwinian naturalism into a complete worldview to rival the supernatural Biblical worldview.(Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity, Nancy Pearce, pp. 228-229)
With respect to the mind (spirit) pragmatists held that Darwinian naturalism means that mind is nothing more than an emergent property of nature. They utterly rejected the "non-scientific" view of man created in the spiritual image of God, thereby rejecting the view that mind transcends matter in favor of the Darwinian view that mind is produced by matter.
In one fell stroke they reversed the natural order.
Naturalism is a modern form of monism and refers to the view that nature (or matter) is the Ultimate Substance of which the universe and all life consist, thus "all is one." C. S. Lewis describes naturalism as a box with its top sealed tightly closed in order to keep out God and the supernatural realm.
There are two basic kinds of modern Naturalism: materialism (i.e., Atomism) and occult pantheism (i.e., New Age spirituality).
The two kinds differ chiefly about whether the First Cause or Absolute Substance is physical matter or psychic matter---an unknowing, unknowable, amoral mind (i.e., Brahman, Void).
However, both kinds are united by their rejection of the transcendent, personal God and the supernatural realm and by their acceptance of some form of evolution, which serves as an impersonal, mechanical process of development.
Modern naturalism of the materialist kind originated in the metaphysics of the ancient Ionians and Stoics during the sixth century BC. However, it was the Atomists (Leucippus/Democritus, 460-357 BC; Epicurus, 342-270 BC; and Lucretius, 96-55 BC) who methodically developed philosophical materialism.
Atomism set all things in ceaseless, purposeless motion by reducing everything---including man, his soul, and even his thoughts---to mindless atoms perpetually colliding with each other in a void. Man was reduced to a soulless, mindless machine that could only ‘see' a tree because the tree emitted atoms which entered machine-man's eyes and implanted themselves onto his brain. This view has changed very little:
"We are descended from robots, and composed of robots..." --Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds
Plato and Aristotle were the most forceful and compelling critics of Atomism. In Book X of Laws, Plato indicts the Atomists for reversing the natural order by placing brute matter before Nous (mind/soul), and for the reductionism that sets everything in motion and reduces man to a machine. Plato foresees only misery, social disintegration and ultimately, "the ruin of both states and families" should Atomism become the accepted view.
Though Christianity reared a mighty barrier against Atomism, it would be resurrected--- along with its occult pantheist counterpart--during the Renaissance, thence by stages to rationalists, empiricists, etc., and finally to America's pragmatists who in one fell stroke, not only reversed the natural order but because Darwinism posits an inverted exegesis, inverted it as well.
What this means is that since there was no fall from God's good creation, then Lucifer is not the Devil but like man, an upward evolving conscious product of nature. This is why modernists laughed at the idea of Lucifer as the devil and why Guenon described James, et al as unconscious Satanists.
Guenon describes James as an unconscious Satanist not only because his way of thinking reverses and inverts the order of nature (the classic definition of Satanism), but for his dangerous view regarding Satan and because of his equally dangerous spiritist related activities.
Luc Sante, reviewing The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult by Clement Cheroux, wrote that James was "sympathetically inclined, if not actually enlisted in the ranks" of the spiritualist movement.
James was as well a founding member of the American Society for Psychical Research and a member of its Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena. As part of his research, James attended séances and sessions with mediums for more than two decades, and died hopeful that future investigators might discover the "dramatic possibilities of nature" by verifying the existence of spirit phenomena as a product of nature.
source: http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=William_James
In conclusion, not only does James way of thinking reverse and invert the order of nature (classic Satanism) but reduces man to a conscious product of evolution and shuts God the Father out of His own creation in favor of other spirits.
In an interesting yet somewhat obscure book (I think by James Kennedy) titled Teaching Through The Tabernacle, the author relates the construction of the tent tabernacle to the way God made Adam and his descendants, with an outer court (the body), and inner court (the behavior mechanism, or soul), and the innermost sanctum (the spirit).
I wonder how much confusion would melt away if we had a standard of terms, so that soul would not be referring to the spirit within the soul(?) ... and when using spirit, we would be referring to the innermost nature of humankind to which God sends an earnest of our inheritance in His Spirit life when salvation happens?
I'd be skeptical of the objectivity of the source given the background and agenda of Mr. Warren Allen Smith, but that's just me.
Thank you, spirited irish, for this post!
In his little book, "Your God is Too Small", J.B. Phillips describes a number of belief constructs that entail a "diminished God". However, Phillips (IIRC) did not refer to them as "Satanic". Nor did he, IMO, discuss some of the most prevalent vociferous, unenlightened and abrasive God-limiting religious postures (not necessarily "modern" ones).
I find my thinking to be more aligned with that of Guernon.
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Recently, I encountered a small, innocuous, factual video that tests and stresses one's belief system and subtly reveals any personal tendency toward diminishing God (or vainly aggrandizing Mankind or Earth):
I strongly recommend viewing it for its sheer inspirational value (or, even, as a "self-test").
No matter how many times I view the video, I find myself overwhelmed by the incomprehensibly awesome mightiness of our Creator God. Viewing it (in the proper spiritual attitude) can result in a profound, joyous exerience of worshiping, glorifying and praising our Creator. In fact, I'm considering making my own, private "meditation piece" version -- with the soundtrack replaced with Verdi's "Magnificat" and Handel's "Halleluia!".
But, I must admit, it also unequivocally "puts me in my proper place" -- and that is not an ego-building experience, at all.. '-)
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Be advised: if your belief system relies in any way on placing God in a "Man-sized box", you may find the revealed facts mildly to strongly disturbing. I have observed viewers who are visiby "shaken" by it. And I have observed a few who literally tremble and sweat while viewing it; and others who turn it off -- or, even fear and refuse to view it at all. YMMV...
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As one of my all-time favorite FReepers has said,
"Man is not the measure of God"
Or, as Scripture says:
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."
Psalm 19:1 -- King James Version (KJV)