body (FS) – SPECULUM

Creation – or “creations” – should then be represented not as a process of transformism taking place in “matter” in the naively empirical sense of the word, but rather as an elaboration by the life-principle, that is to say, something rather like the more or less discontinuous productions of the imagination: images arise in the soul from a non-formal substance with no apparent link between them; it is not the images which transform themselves, it is the animic substance which causes their arising and creates them. That man should appear to be the logical issue, not indeed of an evolution, but of a series of “sketches” more and more centered on the human form – sketches of which the apes seem to represent disparate vestiges – this fact, or this hypothesis, in no way signifies that there is any common measure, thus a kind of psychological continuity, between man and the anthropomorphic and in some sense “embryonic” bodies which may have preceded him. The coming of man is a sudden “descent” of the Spirit into a receptacle that is perfect and definitive because it conforms to the manifestation of the Absolute; the absoluteness of man is like that of the geometrical point, which, strictly speaking, is quantitatively unattainable starting from the circumference. (NA: The same thing is repeated in the womb: as soon as the BODY is formed the immortal soul is suddenly fixed in it like a flash of lightning, so that there is complete discontinuity between this new being and the embryonic phases which have prepared its coming. It has quite rightly been maintained, against transformism, not only that “the greater cannot come from the less” (Guénon), but also that even though something existent may gain more precision or become atrophied, there cannot on the other hand be a motive, in a species, for the adjunction of a new element, not to mention that nothing could guarantee the hereditary character of such an element (according to Schubert-Soldern).) (Stations of Wisdom, p.89). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress

There are two points to consider in created things, namely the empirical appearance and the mechanism; now the appearance manifests the divine intention, as we have stated above; the mechanism merely operates the mode of manifestation. For example, in man’s BODY the divine intention is expressed by its form, its deiformity, (NA: We should specify: total or integral deiformity, for in animals too there is – or can be – a deiformity, but it is partial; similarly for plants, minerals, elements and other orders of phenomena.) its symbolism and its beauty; the mechanism is its anatomy and vital functioning. The modern mentality, having always a scientific and “iconoclastic” tendency, tends to overaccentuate the mechanism to the detriment of the creative intention, and does so on all levels, psychological as well as physical; the result is a jaded and “demystified” mentality that is no longer “impressed” by anything. sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress

One point that certain physicists do not seem to understand is that the mechanism of the world can be neither purely deterministic nor a fortiori purely arbitrary. In reality, the universe is a veil woven of necessity and freedom, of mathematical rigor and musical play; every phenomenon participates in these two principles, which amounts to saying that everything is situated in two apparently divergent but at bottom concordant dimensions, exactly as the dimensions of space are concordant while giving rise to divergent appearances that are irreconcilable from the standpoint of a planimetric view of objects. (NA: Let us take the example of the human BODY: its principial form, which cannot be other than what it is, stems from the Absolute and from necessity, whereas its actual form – a particular BODY, and not the BODY as such which gives rise to innumerable variations, stems from the Infinite and from freedom. Its principial form is as it were mathematical, it is measurable; on the contrary, its actual form is as it were musical, its beauty is unfathomable. Anatomy has its limits, beauty does not; but beauty can be relative, whereas anatomy cannot.) sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress

To return to what was said above about the understanding of ideas, a theoretical notion may be compared to the view of an object. Just as this view does not reveal all possible aspects, or in other words the integral nature of the object, the perfect knowledge of which would be nothing less than identity with it, so a theoretical notion does not itself correspond to the integral truth, of which it necessarily suggests only one aspect, essential or otherwise. (NA: In a treatise directed against rationalist philosophy, El-Ghazzâli speaks of certain blind men who, not having even a theoretical knowledge of an elephant, came across this animal one day and started to feel the different parts of its BODY; as a result each man represented the animal to himsel f according to the limb which he touched: for the first, who touched a foot, the elephant resembled a column, whereas for the second, who touched one of the tusks, it resembled a stake, and so on. By this parable El-Ghazzâli seeks to show the error involved in trying to enclose the universal within a fragment ary notion of it, or within isolated and exclusive ‘aspects’ or ‘points of view’. Shri Ramakrishna also uses this parable to demonstrate the inadequacy of dogmatic exclusiveness in its negative aspect. The same idea could however be expressed by means of an even more adequate example: faced with any object, some might say that it ‘is’ a certain shape, while others might say that it ‘is’ such and such a material; others again might maintain that it ‘is’ such and such a number or such and such a weight and so forth. 2. The Angels are intelligences which are limited to a particular ‘aspect’ of Divinity; consequently an angelic state is a sort of transcendent ‘point of view’. On a lower plane, the ‘intellectuality’ of animals and of the more peripheral species of the terrestrial state, that of plants for example, corresponds cosmologically to the angelic intellectuality: what differentiates one vegetable species from another is in reality simply the mode of its ‘intelligence’; in other words, it is the form or rather the integral nature of a plant which reveals the state – eminently passive of course – of contemplation or knowledge of its species; we say ‘of its species’ advisedly, because, considered in isolation, a plant does not constitute an individual. We would recall here that the Intellect, being universal, must be discoverable in everything that exists, to whatever order it belongs; the same is not true of reason, which is only a specifi cally human faculty and is in no way identical with intelligence, either our own or that of other beings.) sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

A science of the finite cannot legitimately occur outside a spiritual tradition, for intelligence is prior to its objects, and God is prior to man; an experiment which ignores the spiritual link characterizing man no longer has anything human about it; it is thus in the final analysis as contrary to our interests as it is to our nature; and “ye shall know them by their fruits.” A science of the finite has need of a wisdom which goes beyond it and controls it, just as the BODY needs a soul to animate it, and the reason an intellect to illumine it. The “Greek miracle” with its so-called “liberation of the human spirit” is in reality nothing but the beginning of a purely external knowledge, cut off from genuine Sophia. sophiaperennis: Modern philosophers

Profane philosophy is ignorant not only of the value of truth and universality in Revelation, but also of the transcendence of the pure Intellect; (NA: For example, the Cartesian Cogito is neither conformable to Revelation, nor the consequence of a direct intellection: it has no scriptural basis, since according to Scripture the foundation of existence is Being and not some experience or other; and it lacks inspiration, since direct intellective perception excludes a purely empirical process of reasoning. When Locke says Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, the statement is false in the same two respects; firstly, Scripture affirms that the intellect derives from God and not from the BODY – for man, “made in the image of God,” is distinguished from animals by the intelligence not by the senses – and secondly, the intellect conceives of realities which it does not discern a priori in the world, though it may seek their traces a posteriori in sensory perceptions.) it entails therefore no guarantee of truth on any level, for the quite human faculty which reason is, insofar as it is cut off from the Absolute, is readily mistaken even on the level of the relative. The efficacy of reasoning is essentially conditional. sophiaperennis: Profane “thinkers”

For Socrates, in Plato’s dialogues, the “true philosopher” is one who consecrates himself to “studying the separation of soul from BODY, or the liberation of the soul,” and “who is always occupied in the practice of dying”; it is one who withdraws from the bodily – and therefore from all that, in the ego, is the shadow or echo of the surrounding world – in order to be nothing other than absolutely pure Soul, immortal Soul, Self: “The Soul-in-itself must contemplate Things-in-themselves” (Phaedo). Thus the criterion of truth – and the basis of conviction, this reverberation of Light in the “outer man” – is Truth in itself, the prephenomenal Intelligence by which “all things were made” and without which “nothing was made that was made.” sophiaperennis: Plato

In Plotinus the essence of Platonism reveals itself without any reserves. Here one passes from the passion-centered BODY to the virtuous soul and from the soul to the cognizant Spirit, then from and through the Spirit to the suprarational and unitive vision of the ineffable One, which is the source of all that exists; in the One the thinking subject and the object of thought coincide. The One projects the Spirit as the sun projects light and heat: that is to say, the Spirit, Nous, emanates eternally from the One and contemplates It. By this contemplation the Spirit actualizes in itself the world of the archetypes or ideas – the sum of essential or fundamental possibilities – and thereafter produces the animic world; the latter in its turn engenders the material world – this dead end where the reflections of the possibilities coagulate and combine. The human soul, brought forth by the One from the world of the archetypes, recognizes these in their earthly reflections, and it tends by its own nature toward its celestial origin. With Aristotle, we are much closer to the earth, though not yet so close as to find ourselves cut off from heaven. If by rationalism is meant the reduction of the intelligence to logic alone and hence the negation of intellectual intuition (which in reality has no need of mental supports even though they may have to be used for communicating perceptions of a supramental order), then it will be seen that Aristotelianism is a rationalism in principle but not absolutely so in fact, since its theism and hylomorphism depend on Intellection and not on reasoning alone. (NA: Hylomorphism is a plausible thesis, but what is much less plausible is the philosopher’s opposition of this thesis to the Platonic Ideas, of which it is really only a prolongation, one that tends to exteriorize things to a dangerous degree just because of the absence of those Ideas.) And this is true of every philosophy that conveys metaphysical truths since an unmitigated rationalism is possible only where these truths or intellections are absent. (NA: Kantian theism does not benefit from this positive reservation; for Kant, God is only a “postulate of practical reason,” which takes us infinitely far away from the real and transcendent God of Aristotle.) sophiaperennis: Plato

Plato has been reproached for having had too negative an idea of matter, but this is to forget that in this connection there are in Plato’s thought (NA: By “thought” we mean here, not an artificial elaboration but the mental crystallization of real knowledge. With all due deference to anti-Platonic theologians, Platonism is not true because it is logical, it is logical because it is true; and as for the possible or apparent illogicalities of the theologies, these can be explained not by an alleged right to the mysteries of absurdity, but by the fragment ary character of particular dogmatic positions and also by the insuffi ciency of the means of thought and expression. We may recall in this connection the alternativism and the sublimism proper to the Semitic mentality, as well as the absence of the crucial notion of Maya -. at least at the ordinary theological level, meaning by this reservation that the boundaries of theology are not strictly delimited.) two movements: the first refers to fallen matter, and the second to matter in itself and as a support for the spirit. For matter, like the animic substance that precedes it, is a reflection of Maya: consequently it comprises a deiform and ascending aspect and a deifugal and descending aspect; and just as there occurred the fall of Lucifer – without which there would not have been a serpent in the Earthly Paradise – so also there occurred the fall of man. For Plato, matter – or the sensible world – is bad in so far as it is opposed to spirit, and in this respect only; and it does in fact oppose the spirit – or the world of Ideas – by its hardened and compressive nature, which is heavy as well as dividing, without forgetting its corruptibility in connection with life. But matter is good with respect to the inherence in it of the world of Ideas: the cosmos, including its material limit, is the manifestation of the Sovereign Good, and matter demonstrates this by its quality of stability, by the purity and nobility of certain of its modes, and by its symbolist plasticity, in short by its inviolable capacity to serve as a receptacle for influences from Heaven. A distant reflection of universal Maya, matter is as it were a prolongation of the Throne of God, a truth that a ”spirituality” obsessed by the cursing of the earth has too readily lost sight of, at the price of a prodigious impoverishment and a dangerous disequilibrium; and yet this same spirituality was aware of the principial and virtual sanctity of the BODY, which a priori is “image of God” and a posteriori an element of “glory”. But the fullest refutation of all Manicheism is provided by the BODY of the Avatara, which is capable in principle of ascending to Heaven – by ”transfiguration” – without having to pass through that effect of the “forbidden fruit” which is death, and which shows by its sacred character that matter is fundamentally a projection of the Spirit. (NA: The “Night Journey” (isra, mi ‘raj) of the Prophet has the same significance.) Like every contingent substance, matter is a mode of radiation of the Divine Substance; a partially corruptible mode, indeed, as regards the existential level, but inviolable in its essence. (NA: All the same, the biblical narrative regarding the creation of the material world implies symbolically the description of the whole cosmogony, and so that of all the worlds, and even that of the eternal archetypes of the cosmos; traditional exegesis, especially that of the Kabbalists bears witness to this.) sophiaperennis: Plato

For Plato’s Socrates, the ‘true philosopher’ is he who consecrates himself to ‘studying the separation of soul from BODY, or the liberation of the soul’, and ‘who is always occupied in the practice of dying’; it is he who withdraws from the bodily – and therefore from all which, in the ego, is the shadow or echo of the surrounding world – in order to be no more than absolutely pure soul, immortal Soul, Self: ‘The Soul-in-itself must contemplate Things-in-themselves’ (Phaedo). Thus the criterion of truth – and the basis of conviction, this reverberation of Light in the ‘outer man – is Truth in itself, the PRE-phenomenal Intelligence by which ‘all things were made’ and without which ‘was not anything made that was made’. sophiaperennis: Plato

Plato in his Symposium recalls the tradition that the human BODY, or even simply any living BODY, is like half a sphere; all our faculties and movements look and tend towards a lost centre – which we feel as if “in front” of us – lost, but found again symbolically and indirectly, in sexual union. But the outcome is only a grievous renewal of the drama: a fresh entry of the spirit into matter. The opposite sex is only a symbol: the true centre is hidden in ourselves, in the heart-intellect. The creature recognizes something of the lost centre in his partner; the love which results from it is like a remote shadow of the love of God, and of the intrinsic beatitude of God; it is also a shadow of the knowledge which consumes forms as by fire and which unites and delivers. sophiaperennis: Plato

Aristotle, in erecting his table of categories – substance, quantity, quality, relation, activity, passivity, place, moment, position, condition – seems to have been more concerned about the rational classification of things than about their concrete nature. (NA: The Greek word kategoria, “argument,” means in the last analysis: an ultimate form of thought, that is to say a key-notion capable of classifying other notions, or even all the notions having a bearing on existence.) Our own standpoint* being closer to cosmology than to Peripatetic logic – although the boundaries fluctuate – we give preference to the following enumeration: object and subject, space and time, which are container-categories; matter and energy, form and number, which are content-categories; quality and quantity, simplicity and complexity, which are attribute categories; the first term of each couple being static, and the second, dynamic, approximately and symbolically speaking. This being granted, we cannot exclude other possible angles of vision, whether they be more analytic, or on the contrary more synthetic; and always prefigured by some symbolism of nature. (NA: Let us mention this fundamental enumeration: space, time, form, number, matter – fundamental because of its relation to the symbolism of the pentagram, the human BODY, the hand, the five elements. There are some who put “life” in place of matter, thinking no doubt of energy, which penetrates everything.) sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle

The BODY invites to adoration by its very theomorphic form, and that is why it can be the vehicle of a celestial presence that in principle is salvific; but, as Plato suggests, this presence is accessible only to the contemplative soul not dominated by passion, and independently of the question of whether the person is an ascetic or is married. Sexuality does not mean animality, except in perverted, hence sub-human, man; in the properly human man, sexuality is determined by that which constitutes man’s prerogative, as is attested, precisely, by the theomorphic form of his BODY. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle

In the Cogito ergo sum all is lost, since consciousness of being is subordinated to the experience of thought; when being is thus blurred it carries thought downwards with it, for if it is necessary to prove being, it is necess ary also to prove the effi cacy of the intelligence, hence the validity of its conclusions, the soundness of the ergo. Guénon, who had the great merit of restoring to the conceptions of intellectuality and of orthodoxy their true and universal meaning, once wrote to us on the subject of the Cogito: “In order to see all that is involved in Descartes’ saying ‘I think, therefore I am,’ it is necessary to consider the twofold reduction which this effects: firstly, the ‘I’ is reduced to the soul alone (the BODY being excluded); and secondly, the soul itself is reduced to thought, ‘a substance the whole nature of which consists solely of thinking’; the distinction which he maintains between substances and their respective principal attributes seems to be primarily verbal since for him the principal attribute expresses completely the essence or the nature of the substance. There has been much discussion on the question of knowing whether the Cartesian formula ought really to be considered as an argument or line of reasoning; the ergo however does not seem open to any interpretation other than as signifying a deduction. The same objection can also be applied to the famous ‘ontological argument’; everything that it contains which is true and metaphysically valid comes down to the affirmation ‘Being is,’ where there is no trace of argument. In this connection one could recall the absurd philosophical question of the ‘criterion of truth,’ that is to say the search for an external sign by which truth would infallibly be recognized; this question is among those that cannot be solved becaus e they do not really arise.” sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito

It is clearly the deiformity of the human BODY that has inspired sacred nudity; discredited in the Semitic religions for reasons of spiritual perspective and social opportuneness – although it has been manifested sporadically among contemplatives disposed to primordiality – it is still the order of the day in India, immemorial homeland of the “gymnosophists.” Krishna, in removing all clothing from the adoring gopis, “baptized” them so to speak: he reduced them to the state before the “fall.” (NA: In the climate of Semitic monotheism, dress doubtless represents the choice of the “spirit” against the “flesh”; nonetheless the BODY intrinsically expresses deiformity, hence primordial “divinity” and immanence. In a certain sense, if dress indicates the soul or the function, the BODY indicates the Intellect.) The path of liberation is to rebecome what one is. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

The argument that aesthetic quality is far from always coinciding with moral quality and that it is consequently superfluous – an argument that is just in its observation but false in its conclusion – overlooks an obvious fact, namely that the ontological and in principle spiritual merit of beauty remains intact on its own level; the fact that an aesthetic quality may not be fully exploited does not mean that it could not and should not be, and it would then prove its spiritual potentiality and so its true nature. Inversely, ugliness is a privation even when it is allied to sanctity, which cannot make it positive, but which obviously neutralizes it, just as moral badness sterilizes beauty, but without abolishing it as far as the existential, not the volitive, aspect is concerned. (NA: There is all the difference, in a face, between the features as such and the expression, or between the form of a BODY and its gestures, or again, between the form of an eye and its look. Nevertheless, even the look of a morally imperfect person can have beauty when it expresses spring, or youth, or simply happiness, or a good sentiment, or sadness; but all of this is a question of degree, either in respect of natural beauty or in respect of moral imperfection.) sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS

A naturalistic work of art of the most academic kind can be perfectly pleasing and nobly suggestive by virtue of the natural beauty that it copies, but it is nevertheless mendacious, to the extent that it is exact, that is to say, to the extent that it seeks to pass off a flat surface for threedimensional space, or inert matter for a living BODY. In the case of painting, it is necessary to respect both the flat surface and immobility: it is consequently necessary that there should be neither perspective, nor shadows, nor movement, except in the case of a stylization which, precisely, permits the integration of perspective and shadows in the work, while conferring on the movement an essential, and so symbolic and normative quality. In the case of sculpture, not only is it necessary to respect the immobility of matter by suppressing movement or by reducing it to an essential, balanced and quasi-static type; it is also necessary to take account of the particular substance used. When expressing the nature of a living BODY, or some essential aspect of its nature and thus some underlying “idea”, it is important to take account of the nature of clay, of wood, of stone, of metal; thus wood permits different modalities from those permitted by mineral substances and, amongst the latter, metal enables different qualities of expression to be brought into relief than does stone. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

No piece of knowledge at the phenomenal level is bad in itself; but the important question is that of knowing, firstly, whether this knowledge is reconcilable with the ends of human intelligence, secondly, whether in the last analysis it is truly useful, and thirdly, whether man can support it spiritually; in fact there is proof in plenty that man cannot support a BODY of knowledge which breaks a certain natural and providential equilibrium, and that the objective consequences of this knowledge correspond exactly to its subjective anomaly. Modern science could not have developed except as the result of a forgetting of God, and of our duties towards God and towards ourselves; in an analogous manner, artistic naturalism, which first made its appearance in antiquity and was rediscovered at the beginnings of the modern era, can be explained only by the explosive birth of a passionately exteriorized and exteriorizing mentality. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

But as a general rule form takes a higher place, aesthetically speaking, than expression – unless the latter is deliberately concerned with stressing ugliness – in the sense that its normative character and thus its regularity of substance and of proportions constitutes the prime condition of aesthetic value; for wherever harmony or balance are lacking in the form itself, beauty of expression no longer appears as a decisive factor in the order of sensible beauty, this order being by definition that of formal perfection or of truth in form. Beauty of soul can indeed enhance that of the BODY, or even assert its supremacy to the point of submerging or extinguishing the corporeal, but it cannot purely and simply replace the beauty of the BODY as though the BODY did not exist and did not itself have a right to the perfection which is its existential norm. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

Beauty, being essentially a deployment, is an “exteriorization,” even in divinis, where the unfathomable mystery of the Self is “deployed” in Being, which in its turn is deployed in Existence; Being and Existence, Ishvara and Samsâra, are both Mâyâ, but Being is still God, whereas Existence is already the world. All terrestrial beauty is thus by reflection a mystery of love. It is, “whether it likes it or not,” coagulated love or music turned to crystal, but it retains on its face the imprint of its internal fluidity, of its beatitude and of its liberality; it is measure in overflowing, in it is neither dissipation nor constriction. Human beings are rarely identified with their beauty, which is lent to them and moves across them like a ray of light. Only the Avatara is a priori himself that ray, he “is” the beauty that he manifests corporeally, and that beauty is Beauty as such, the only Beauty there is. (NA: When the psalmist sings: “Thou art fairer than the children of men” (Psalms, XLV, 2), these words cannot but be applicable to the BODY of Christ. So also in regard to the Blessed Virgin: “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair.” “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” (The Song of Solomon, 1, 15 and IV, 7).) sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

If the importance of forms is to be understood, it is necessary to appreciate the fact that it is the sensible form which, symbolically, corresponds most directly to the Intellect, by reason of the inverse analogy connecting the principial and manifested orders. (NA: ‘Art’, said St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘is associated with knowledge.’ As for the metaphysical theory of inverse analogy, we would refer the reader to the doctrinal works of René Guénon, especially to ‘L’homme et son devenir selon le Vêdânta’ (Man and his Becoming according to the Vedanta, Luzac, 1946).) In consequence of this analogy the highest realities are most clearly manifested in their remotest reflections, namely, in the sensible or ‘material’ order, and herein lies the deepest meaning of the proverb ‘extremes meet’; to which one might add that it is for this same reason that Revelation descended not only into the souls of the Prophets, but also into their bodies, which presupposed their physical perfection. (NA: René Guénon (Les deux nuits -The Two Nights, in Etudes Traditionnelles, Paris, Chacornac, April and May, 1939) in speaking of the laylat el-qadr, night of the ‘descent’ (tanzil) of the Koran, points out that ‘this night, according to Mohyiddin ibn Arabi’s commentary, is identified with the actual BODY of the Prophet. What is particularly important to note is the fact that the ” revelation” is received, not in the mind, but in the BODY of the being who is commissioned to express the Principle: “And the Word was made flesh” says the Gospel (” flesh” and not “mind”) and this is but another way of expressing, under the form proper to the Christian Tradition, the reality which is represented by the laylat el-qadr in the Islamic Tradition.’ This truth is closely bound up with the relationship mentioned as existing between forms and intellections.) sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

But let us return to the errors of naturalism. Art, as soon as it is no longer determined, illuminated and guided by spirituality, lies at the mercy of the individual and purely psychical resources of the artist, and these resources must soon run out, if only because of the very platitude of the naturalistic principle which calls only for a superficial tracing of Nature. Reaching the dead-point of its own platitude, naturalism inevitably engendered the monstrosities of ‘surrealism’, The latter is but the decomposing BODY of an art, and in any case should rather be called ‘infra-realism’; it is properly speaking the satanic consequence of naturalistic luciferianism. Naturalism, as a matter of fact, is clearly luciferian in its wish to imitate the creations of God, not to mention its affirmation of the psychical element to the detriment of the spiritual, of the individual to the detriment of the universal, of the bare fact to the detriment of the symbol. Normally, man must imitate the creative act, not the thing created; that is what is done by symbolic art, and the results are ‘creations’ which are not would-be duplications of those of God, but rather a reflection of them according to a real analogy, revealing the transcendental aspects of things; and this revelation is the only sufficient reason of art, apart from any practical uses such and such objects may serve. There is here a metaphysical inversion of relation which we have already pointed out: for God, His creature is a reflection or an ‘exteriorized’ aspect of Himself; for the artist, on the contrary, the work is a reflection of an inner reality of which he himself is only an outward aspect; God creates His own image, while man, so to speak, fashions his own essence, at least symbolically. On the principial plane, the inner manifests the outer, but on the manifested plane, the outer fashions the inner, and a sufficient reason for all traditional art, no matter of what kind, is the fact that in a certain sense the work is greater than the artist himself and brings back the latter, through the mystery of artistic creation, to the proximity of his own Divine Essence. (NA: This explains the danger, so far as Semitic peoples are concerned, that lies in the painting and especially in the carving of living things. Where the Hindu and the inhabitant of the Far East adores a Divine reality through a symbol – and we know that a symbol is truly what it symbolizes as far as its essential reality is concerned – the Semite will display a tendency to deify the symbol itself; one of the reasons for the prohibition of plastic and pictorial arts amongst the Semitic peoples was certainly a wish to prevent naturalistic deviations, a very real danger among men whose mentality demanded a Tradition religious in form.) sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

Disproportions do not make sacred art, any more than correctness of proportion by itself involves the defects of naturalism. Christian art has had an undue contempt for nature and thus no doubt also for a certain aspect of intelligence; consequently the naturalism of late Gothic statuary, and particularly that of the Renaissance, was able to appear superior in the eyes of men who no longer understood the spiritual value of such art as that of Autun, or Vezelay or Moissac. In principle Christian art could have combined a deeper observation of nature with its wholly symbolistic spirituality; and indeed ln certain works it has succeeded in doing so, at least partially and in so far as the symbolism did not require particular proportions. (NA: This is not a reference to the disproportions, motivated simply by regard for perspective, in Byzantine cupolas or in the facades of some cathedrals.) But in fact it was difficult in this art to reconcile perfection of observation with perfection of the symbol, granted the contempt for the BODY – and for nature in general – which the Christian perspective involves. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Dress exteriorizes either the spiritual or social function, or the soul: and these two aspects may be combined. Clothing is opposed to nakedness as the soui is opposed to the BODY, or as the spiritual function – the priestly function for example – is opposed to animal nature. When clothing is combined with nakedness – as in the case of the Hindus, for example, – then the latter appears in its qualitative and sacred aspect. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

To say that man, and consequently the human BODY, is made in the image of God,” means a priori that it manifests something absolute and for that very reason something unlimited and perfect. What above all distinguishes the human form from animal forms, is its direct reference to absoluteness, indicated by its vertical posture; as a result, if animal forms can be transcended – they are by man, precisely – such could not be the case for the human form; the human form marks not only the summit of earthly creatures, but also – and for that very reason – the exit from their condition, or from the Samsâra as the Buddhists would say. To see man, is to see not only the image of God, but also a door open towards Bodhi, liberating Illumination; or let us say towards a blessed fixing in the divine Proximity. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

Being absolute, the supreme Principle is ipso facto infinite; the masculine BODY accentuates the first aspect, and the feminine BODY, the second. On the basis of these two hypostatic aspects, the divine Principle is the source of all possible perfection, this is to say that, being the Absolute and the Infinite, It is necessarily also Perfection or the Good. Now each of the two bodies, the masculine and the feminine , manifests modes of perfection by definition evoked by their respective sex; all cosmic qualities are divided in fact into two complementary groups: the rigorous and the gentle, the active and the passive, the contractive and the expansive. The human BODY, as we have said, is an image of Deliverance: now the liberating Way may be either “virile” or “feminine,” although it is not possible to have a strict line of demarcation between the two modes for man (homo, anthropos) is always man; the non-material being that was the primordial androgyne, survives in each of us. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

With all deference to certain ancient moralists who had difficulty reconciling femininity with deiformity, it is nonetheless quite clear that the latter essentially implies the former, and this for simply logical as well as metaphysical reasons. Even without knowing that femininity derives from an “Eternal Feminine” of transcendent order, one is obliged to take note of the fact that woman, being situated like the male in the human state, is deiform because this state is deiform. Thus it is not astonishing that a tradition as “misogynist” as Buddhism finally consented – within the Mahayâna at least – to make use of the symbolism of the feminine BODY, which would be meaningless and even harmful if this BODY, or if femininity in itself, did not comprise a spiritual message of the first order; the Buddhas (and Bodhisattvas) do not save solely through doctrine, but also through their suprahuman beauty, according to the Tradition; now who says beauty, says implicitly femininity; the beauty of the Buddha is necessarily that of Mâyâ or of Tara. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

The “misogyny” of Buddhism is explained by the fact that its method, at its origin and in general at least, essentially appeals to the characteristics of masculine psychology, which is to say that it operates basically with intellection, abstraction, negation, strength and with what Amidism calls “power of oneself’; the same observation applies, if not to Hinduism as such, at least to certain of its schools and doubtless to its general perspective, which perspective culminates, as in Buddhism, in the excessive, and at the very least schematic, idea that woman as such cannot attain Deliverance, that she must first be reborn in a masculine BODY and follow the methods of men. Ancient discussions on the question of knowing whether or not woman possesses a “soul,” have an analogous meaning: it is a question not of the immortal soul, but of the intellect in its most specifically masculine aspect. However that may be, what is decisive is not that woman be capable concretely of given methods, it is simply that, being human, she is clearly capable of sanctity. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

What we have just said results moreover from the bodily form: first of all, the feminine BODY is far too perfect and spiritually too eloquent to be no more than a kind of transitory accident; and then, due to the fact that it is human, it communicates in its own way the same message as the masculine BODY, namely, we repeat, the absolutely Real and thereby the victory over the “round of births and deaths;” thus the possibility of leaving the world of illusion and suffering. The animal, which can manifest perfections but not the Absolute, is like a closed door, as it were enclosed in its own perfection; whereas man is like an open door allowing him to escape his limits, which are those of the world rather than his own. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

In an old book of legends, the chronicler who recounts an apparition of the Blessed Virgin with the Child-Jesus observes that the Virgin was sublimely beautiful, but that the Child was “far more beautiful,” which is absurd in more than one respect. First of all, there is no reason for the Child to be more beautiful than the Mother; (NA: Which would imply that Mary be ” less beautiful” than Jesus, something inconceivable, because meaningless.) the divine nature possessed by the Child indeed requires perfect physical beauty, but the supereminent nature of the Virgin requires it equally as much; what the Christ possesses in addition to what is possessed by the Virgin could not determine a superior degree of beauty, given precisely that the beauty of the Virgin must be perfect; physical beauty of the formal order, and form is by definition the manifestation of an archetype, the intention of which excludes an indefinite gradation. In other words, form coincides with an “idea” which cannot be something other than what it is; the human BODY has the form which characterizes it, and which it cannot transcend without ceasing to be itself; an indefinitely augmentable beauty is meaningless, and empties the very notion of beauty of all its content. It is true that the mode or degree of divine Presence can add to the BODY, and above all to the face, an expressive quality, but this is independent of beauty in itself, which is a perfect theophany on its own plane; this is to say that the theophanic quality of the human BODY resides uniquely in its form, and not in the sanctity of the soul inhabiting it nor, at the purely natural level, in the psychological beauty of an expression added to it, whether it be that of youth or of some noble sentiment. Hence it is necessary to distinguish between the theophanic quality possessed by the human BODY in itself – beauty coinciding then with the wholeness and the intelligibility of this message – and the theophanic quality possessed in addition by the BODY in the case of the Avatâras, such as the Christ and the Virgin. In these cases, as we have said, bodily beauty must be perfect, and it may also distinguish itself by an originality emphasizing its majesty; but beauty of spiritual expression is of an altogether different order and, if it presupposes physical perfection and enhances it, it cannot, however, create it. The BODY of the Avatâra is therefore sacred in a particular sense, one that is supereminent and so to speak sacramental in virtue of its quasi-divine content; however the ordinary BODY is also sacred, but in an altogether different respect, simply because it is human; in addition, physical beauty is sacred because it manifests the divine Intention for that BODY, and thus is fully itself in proportion to its regularity and nobility. (NA: This – be it said in passing – is totally independent of ques tions of race: every race, excepting more or less degenerate groups – although even a collective degeneration does not necessarily exclude cas es of individual beauty – comprises modes of perfect beauty, each expressing a fundamental aspect of human theophany in itself.) sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

There is not only the beauty of the adult, there is also that of the child as our mention of the Child Jesus suggests. First of all, it must be said that the child, being human, participates in the same symbolism and in the same aesthetic expressivity as do his parents – we are speaking always of man as such and not of particular individuals – and then, that childhood is nevertheless a provisional state and does not in general have the definitive and representative value of maturity. (NA: But it can when the individual value of the child visibly over rides his state of immaturity; notwithstanding the fact that childhood is in itself an incomplete state which points towards its own completion.) In metaphysical symbolism, this provisional character expresses relativity: the child is what “comes after” his parents, he is the reflection of Atmâ in Mâyâ, to some degree and according to the ontological or cosmological level in view; or it is even Mâyâ itself if the adult is Atmâ. (NA: Polarized into “Necessary Being” and “All-Possibility.”) But from an altogether different point of view, and according to inverse analogy, the key to which is given by the seal of Solomon, (NA: When a tree is mirrored in a lake, its top is at the bottom, but the image is always that of a tree; the analogy is inverse in the first relationship and parallel in the second. Analogies between the divine order and the cosmic order always comprise one or the other of these relationships.) the child represents on the contrary what “was before,” namely what is simple, pure, innocent, primordial and close to the Essence, and this is what its beauty expresses; (NA: We do not say that every human individual is beautiful when he is a child, but we start from the idea that man, child or not, is beautiful to the extent that he is physically what he ought to be.) this beauty has all the charm of promise, of hope and of blossoming, at the same time as that of a Paradise not yet lost; it combines the proximity of the Origin with the tension towards the Goal. And it is for that reason that childhood constitutes a necessary aspect of the integral man, therefore in conformity with the divine Intention: the man who is fully mature always keeps, in equilibrium with wisdom, the qualities of simplicity and freshness, of gratitude and trust, that he possessed in the springtime of his life. (NA: “Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)) Since we have just mentioned the principle of inverse analogy, we may here connect it with its application to femininity: even though a priori femininity is subordinate to virility, it also comprises an aspect which makes it superior to a given aspect of the masculine pole; for the divine Principle has an aspect of unlimitedness, virginal mystery and maternal mercy which takes precedence over a certain more relative aspect of determination, logical precision and implacable justice. (NA: According to Tacitus, the Germans discerned something sacred and visionary in women. The fact that in German the sun (die Sonne) is feminine whereas the moon (der Mond) is masculine, bears witness to the same perspective.) Seen thus, feminine beauty appears as an initiatic wine in the face of the rationality represented in certain respects by the masculine BODY. (NA: Mahâyanic art represents Prajnâpâramitâ, the “Perfection of Gnosis,” in feminine form; likewise, Prajnâ, liberating Knowledge, appears as a woman in the face of Upâya, the doctrinal system or the art of convincing, which is represented as masculine. The Buddhists readily point out that the Bodhisattvas, in themselves asexual, have the power to take a feminine form as they do any other form; now one would like to know for what reason they do so, for if the feminine form can produce such a great good, it is because it is intrinsically good; otherwise there would be no reason for a Bodhisattva to assume it.) sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

A priori, virility refers to the Principle, and femininity to Manifestation; but in an altogether different respect, that of complementarity in divinis, the masculine BODY expresses Transcendence, and the feminine BODY, Immanence; the latter being near to Love, and the former to Knowledge. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

Much could be said concerning the abstract and concrete symbolism of the different regions or parts of the BODY. A symbolism is abstract inasmuch as it signifies a principial reality; it is concrete inasmuch as it communicates the nature of this reality, that is, makes it present to our experience. One of the most salient characteristics of the human BODY is the breast, which is a solar symbol, with an accentuation differing according to sex: noble and glorious radiation in both cases, but manifesting power in the first case and generosity in the second; the power and generosity of pure Being. (NA: The ritual dance of the dervishes – setting aside the variety of its forms – is often designat ed by the term dhikr assadr ” remembrance (of God) by the breast,” which evokes this verse of the Koran: “Have We (God) not expanded thy breast?” (Sura Alam Nashrah, 1) Koranic language moreover establishes a relationship between the acceptance of Islam – as ” resignation” or ” abandon” (islam) to the divine Will – and dilation of the breast; calm and deep respiration expressing truth, peace, happiness.) The heart is the center of man, and the breast is so to speak the face of the heart: and since the heart-intellect comprises both Knowledge and Love, it is plausible that in the human BODY this polarization manifests itself by the complementarity of the masculine and feminine breasts. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

The human BODY comprises three fundamental regions: the BODY properly so-called, the head, the sexual parts; these are almost three different subjectivities. The head represents both intellectual and individual subjectivity; the BODY, collective and archetypal subjectivity, that of masculinity or femininity or that of race or caste; finally, the sexual parts manifest, quite paradoxically, a dynamic subjectivity at once animal and divine, if one may express it thus. In other words, the face expresses a thought, a becoming aware of something, a truth; the BODY, for its part, expresses a being, an existential synthesis; and the sexual parts, a love both creative and liberat ing: mystery of the generous substance that unfolds in the accidents, and of the blessed accidents that flow back towards the substance; glory of self-giving and glory of delivering. The human BODY in its integrality is intelligence, existence, love; certitude, serenity and faith. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

One of the functions of dress is, no doubt, to isolate mental subjectivity, that which thinks and speaks, from the two existential subjectivities which risk disturbing the message of thought with their own messages; but this is nonetheless a question of temperament and custom, more or less primordial man having in this respect reflexes other than those of man too marked by the fall; of man become at once too cerebral and too passional, and having lost much of his beauty and also his innocence. The gait of the human being is as evocative as his vertical posture; whereas the animal is horizontal and only advances towards itself – that is, it is enclosed within its own form – man, in advancing, transcends himself; even his forward movement seems vertical, it denotes a pilgrimage towards his Archetype, towards the celestial Kingdom, towards God. The beauty of the anterior side of the human BODY indicates the nobleness, on the one hand of man’s vocational end, and on the other hand of his manner of approaching it; it indicates that man directs himself towards God and that he does so in a manner that is “humanly divine,” if one may say so. But the posterior side of the BODY also has its meaning: it indicates, on the one hand the noble innocence of the origin, and on the other hand the noble manner of leaving behind himself what has been transcended; it expresses, positively, whence we have come and, negatively, how we turn our backs to what is no longer ourselves. Man comes from God and he goes towards God; but at the same time, he draws away from an imperfection which is no longer his own and draws nearer to a perfection which is not yet his. His “becoming” bears the imprint of a “being”; he is that which he becomes, and he becomes that which he is. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

We have alluded above to the evolutionist error which was inevitable in connection with our considerations on the deiformity of man, and which permits us here to insert a parenthesis. The animal, vegetable and mineral species not only manifest qualities or combinations of qualities, they also manifest defects or combinations of defects; this is required by All-Possibility, which on pain of being limited – of not being what it is – must also express “possible impossibilities,” or let us say negative and paradoxical possibilities; it implies in consequence excess as well as privation, thereby emphasizing norms by means of contrasts. In this respect, the ape, for example, is there to show what man is and what he is not, and certainly not to show what he has been; far from being able to be a virtual form of man, the ape incarnates an animal desire to be human, hence a desire of imitation and usurpation; but he finds itself as if before a closed door and falls back all the more heavily into its animality, the perfect innocence of which, it can no longer recapture, if one may make use of such a metaphor; it is as if the animal, prior to the creation of man and to protest against it, had wished to anticipate it, which evokes the refusal of Lucifer to prostrate before Adam. (NA: According to the Talmud and the Koran.) This does not prevent the ape from being sacred in India, perhaps on account of its anthropomorphism, or more likely in virtue of associations of ideas due to an extrinsic symbolism; (NA: As was the case for the boar, which represents sacerdotal authority for the Nordics; or as the rhinoceros symbolizes the sannyâsi.) this also would explain in part the role played by the apes in the Ramayana, unless in this case it is a question of subtle creatures – the jinn of Islam – of whom the ape is only a likeness. (NA: The story recounted in the Râmayana is situated at the end of the ” silver age” (Treta- Yuga) and consequently in a climate of possibilities quite different from that of the ” iron age” (Kali- Yuga); the partition between the material and animic states was not yet ” hardened” or ” congealed” as is above all the case in our epoch.) One may wonder whether the intrinsically noble animals, hence those directly allowing of a positive symbolism, are not themselves also theophanies; they are so necessarily, and the same holds true for given plants, minerals, cosmic or terrestrial phenomena, but in these cases the theomorphism is partial and not integral as in man. The splendor of the stag excludes that of the lion, the eagle cannot be the swan, nor the water lily the rose, nor the emerald the sapphire; from a somewhat different point of view , we would say that the sun doubtless manifests in a direct and simple manner the divine Majesty, but that it has neither life nor spirit; (NA: It can nevertheless have a sacrament al function with regard to men who are sensitive to cosmic barakah.) only man is the image-synthesis of the Creator, (NA: And this in spite of the loss of the earthly paradise. One of the effects of what monotheist symbolism calls the ” fall of Adam,” was the separation between the soul and the BODY, conjointly with the separation between heaven and earth and between the spirit and the soul. The ” resurrection of the flesh” is none other than the restoration of the primordial situation; as the BODY is an immanent virtuality of the soul, it can be remanifested as soon as the separative ” curse” has drawn to its close, which coincides with the end of a great cycle of humanity.) owing to the fact that he possesses the intellect – hence also reason and language – and that he manifests it by his very form. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

Let us return now to the question of traditional misogynist viewpoints: Buddhism, as we have noted, is es sentially a masculine, abstract, negative, ascetic and heroic spirituality, at least a priori and in its broad outlines; the feminine BODY must appear to it as the very embodiment of seduction and thereby of samsâra, of the round of births and deaths. But here we are in the presence of that inverse analogy to which we referred above: what pulls downward is in this case what, in reality, lies above; and femininity, inasmuch as it seduces and binds, has this aspect precisely because it offers, in itself and in the intention of the Creator, an image of liberating Bliss; now a reflection is always “something” of what it reflects, which amounts to saying that it “is” this reality in an indirect mode and on the plane of contingency. This is what the Buddhists grasped in the framework of Mahayanic esoterism – the Tibetans and the Mongols above all – and it is this which permitted them to introduce into their sanctuaries nude Târâs and Dakinis in gilded bronze; the corporeal theophany of feminine type being intended to actualize in the faithful the remembrance of the merciful and beatific dimension of Bodhi and of Nirvana. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

A science of the finite has need of a wisdom which goes beyond it and controls it, just as the BODY needs a soul to animate it, and the reason an intellect to illumine it. The “Greek miracle” with its so-called “liberation of the human spirit” is in reality nothing but the beginning of a purely external knowledge, cut off from genuine Sophia. (NA: It is said that Einstein, for example, revolutionized the vision of the world as Galileo or Newton had done before him, and that the usual conceptions which he overturned – those of space, time, light and matter – are “as naive as those of the Middle Ages”; but then there is nothing to guarantee that his theory of relativity will not bejudged naive in its turn, so that, in profane science, it is never possible to escape the vicious circle of “naivety.” — Moreover, what could be more naive than to seek to enclose the Universe in a few mathematical formulae, and then to be surprised to find that there always remains an elusive and apparently “irrational” element which evades all attempts to “bring it to heel”? — We shall no doubt be told that not all scientists are atheists, but this is not the question, since atheism is inherent in science itself, in its postulates and its methods. The Einsteinian theories on mass, space and time are of a nature to demonstrate the fissures in the physical universe, but only a metaphysician can profit from them; science unconsciously provides keys, but is incapable of making use of them, because intellectuality cannot be replaced by something outside itself. The theory of relativity illustrates of necessity certain aspects of metaphysics, but does not of itself open up any higher perspective; the way in which Euclidean geometry is improperly relativized goes to prove this. On the one hand the philosophical point of view trespasses on science, and on the other the scientific point of view trespasses on metaphysics. — As for the Einsteinian postulate of a transmathematical absolute, this absolute is not supra-conscious: it is not therefore more than ourselves and could not be the Cause of our intelligence; Einstein’s “God” remains blind just as his relativized universe remains physical: one might as well say that it is nothing. Modern science has nothing it can tell us – and this not by accident but by principle – about the miracle of consciousness and all that is connected with it, from the most minute particles of consciousness to be found in creation up to the pure and trans-personal Intellect.) (Stations of Wisdom, p. 26-27). sophiaperennis: Science and rationalism

Man is at once subject and object: he is subject in relation to the world that he perceives and the Invisible that he conceives of, but he is object in relation to his “own Self”; the empirical ego is really a content, hence an object, of the pure subject or of the ego-principle, and all the more so in relation to the immanent Divine Subject which, in final analysis, is our true “One-Self”. This brings us to the Advaitin inquiry “Who am I?”, made famous by Shri Ramana Maharshi; I am neither this BODY, nor this soul, nor this intelligence; what alone remains is Âtmâ. sophiaperennis: Ramana Maharshi

Sometimes the concept of “image” can be understood in a larger sense, going beyond the question of works of art: it may be acknowledged that in the case of Shri Ramana Maharshi, for example, it is the sacred mountain of Shiva, Arunâchala, that serves as a permanent symbol of the Principle that was concurrently “incarnated” in the sage, and which was thus his true BODY; inversely, one might say that the BODY of the Maharshi was a manifestation of Arunâchala, of the earthly lingam of Paramashiva, in human mode. In an analogous way, the disciples of Ma Ananda Moyi might consider her as a human manifestation of the Ganges in its aspect of “Mother,” which is to say that worship in the environment of this saint could coincide, in the absence of other supports, with the traditional worship of Mother Ganga. In the case of Ramakrishna, there is no doubt that the image which represents him adequately, and for purposes of worship, is that of the Shakti, not under the terrible aspect alone but rather, indeed, as she appeared to the saint, under the aspect of beauty and maternal love. sophiaperennis: Ramana Maharshi

… Rûmi considers, with finesse and profundity and not without humor, that the sage is conquered by woman whereas the fool conquers her: for the latter is brutalized by his passion, and does not know the barakah of love and delicate sentiments, whereas the sage sees in the lovable woman a ray from God, and in the feminine BODY an image of creative Power. (Sufism, Veil and Quintessence, p. 69, note 19). sophiaperennis: Femininity

… the feminine BODY is far too perfect and spiritually too eloquent to be no more than a kind of transitory accident. (From the Divine to the Human, p. 91) sophiaperennis: Femininity

One of the most salient characteristics of the human BODY is the breast, which is a solar symbol, with an accentuation differing according to sex: noble and glorious radiation in both cases, but manifesting power in the first case and generosity in the second; the power and generosity of pure Being. The heart is the center of man, and the breast is so to speak the face of the heart: and since the heart-intellect comprises both Knowledge and Love, it is plausible that in the human BODY this polarization manifests itself by the complementarity of the masculine and feminine breasts. (From the Divine to the Human, p. 94-95) sophiaperennis: Femininity

The human being is compounded of geometry and music, of spirit and soul, of virility and femininity: by geometry, he brings the chaos of existence back to order, that is, he brings blind substance back to its ontological meaning and thus constitutes a reference point between Earth and Heaven, a “sign-post” pointing towards God; by music he brings the segmentation of form back to unitive life, reducing form, which is death, to Essence — at least symbolically and virtually — so that it vibrates with a joy which is at the same time a nostalgia for the Infinite. As symbols, the masculine BODY indicates a victory of the Spirit over chaos, and the feminine BODY, a deliverance of form by Essence; the first is like a magic sign which would subjugate the blind forces of the Universe, and the second like celestial music which would give back to fallen matter its paradisiac transparency, or which, to use the language of Taoism, would make trees flower beneath the snow. (Stations of Wisdom, p. 80). sophiaperennis: Femininity