The initiate encourages the mystic and uses him as you might use a telephone, to establish long-distance contact, or as a chemist might use litmus paper, to detect the action of a particular substance. The mystic is useful, because he is conspicuous. He broadcasts himself. Initiates, on the contrary, are recognizable only to one another. Mysticism is a democratic, if not demagogic, phenomenon; initiation is aristocratic.

— In our words · Source: Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)