In Japanese Buddhism, one distinguishes between “self-power,” jiriki, and “Other-power,” tariki; the first refers to Immanence and the second to Transcendence. The first means that everything, in the Path, depends on our own strength and initiative; the second means that everything depends on CELESTIAL Grace. In reality, even if one of the viewpoints predominates, both viewpoints have to be combined; for on the one hand, we cannot save ourselves by relying entirely on our own strength, and on the other hand, Heaven will not help us if we, who are created intelligent and free, do not collaborate in our own salvation. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
What the natural gnostic seeks, from the point of view of “realization”, is much less a “path” than a “framework” – a traditional, sacramental and liturgical setting which will allow him to be ever more genuinely “himself’, namely a particular archetype of CELESTIAL “iconostasis”. This puts us in mind of the sacred art of India and the Far East which demonstrates in supernaturally evocative fashion the heavenly models of earthly spirituality; therein lies, in fact, the raison d’être of that art which is at once “mathematical” and “musical” and which is founded upon the principle of the “darsana”, the visual and intuitive assimilation of the symbol-sacrament. Moreover, this symbol does not belong to art alone but rises up also – and a priori – from animate and inanimate nature for there is, in all beauty, a liberating and, in the final account, saving element; which enables us to voice the esoteric paraphrase: “He that hath eyes to see, let him see!” Essays A NOTE ON RENÉ GUÉNON
“Know thyself” was the inscription written above the portico of the Temple of Delphi; that is, know thine immortal essence but also, by that very token, know thine archetype. This injunction no doubt applies in principle to every man, but it applies to the pneumatic in a far more direct manner, in the sense that he has, by definition, awareness of his CELESTIAL model in spite of the flaws which his earthly shell may have undergone in contact with an all too uncongenial ambience. Paradox is part of the economy of this world below, given that the limitlessness of Universal Possibility necessarily implies unexpected, if not incomprehensible, combinations of things; phenomena can be what they are, but vincit omnia veritas. Essays A NOTE ON RENÉ GUÉNON
It may be objected that our preceding considerations on the human phenomenon are not an exposition of anthropology properly so called, since we offer no information on the “natural history” of man nor a fortiori on his biological origin, and so on. Now such is not our intention; we do not wish to deal with factors that escape our experience, and we are very far from accepting the “stopgap” theory of transformist evolutionism. Original man was not a simian being barely capable of speaking and standing upright; he was a quasi-immaterial being enclosed in an aura still CELESTIAL, but deposited on earth; an aura similar to the “chariot of fire” of Elijah or the “cloud” that enveloped Christ’s ascension. That is to say, our conception of the origin of mankind is based on the doctrine of the projection of the archetypes ab intra; thus our position is that of classical emanationism – in the Neoplatonic or gnostic sense of the term – which avoids the pitfall of anthropomorphism while agreeing with the theological conception of creatio ex nihilo. Evolutionism is the very negation of the archetypes and consequently of the divine Intellect; it is therefore the negation of an entire dimension of the real, namely that of form, of the static, of the immutable; concretely speaking, it is as if one wished to make a fabric of the wefts only, omitting the warps. sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
In reality, the evolutionist hypothesis is unnecessary because the creationist concept is so as well; for the creature appears on earth, not by falling from heaven, but by progressively passing – starting from the archetype – from the subtle to the material world, materialization being brought about within a kind of visible aura quite comparable to the “spheres of light” which, according to many accounts, introduce and terminate CELESTIAL apparitions. (From the Divine to the Human, p. 88) sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
Saints and heroes are like the appearance of stars on earth; they rescind after their death to the firmament, to their eternal home; they are almost pure symbols, spiritual signs only provisionally detached from the CELESTIAL iconostasis in which they have been enshrined since the creation of the world. sophiaperennis: Jacques Maritain
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
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
From a certain point of view, the Christian argument is the historicity of the Christ-Saviour, whereas the Platonic or “Aryan” argument is the nature of things or the Immutable. If, to speak symbolically, all men are in danger of drowning as a consequence of the fall of Adam, the Christian saves him-sell by grasping the pole held out to him by Christ, whereas the Platonist saves himself by swimming; but neither course weakens or neutralizes the effectiveness of the other. On the one hand there are certainly men who do not know how to swim or who are prevented from doing so, but on the other hand swimming is undeniably among the possibilities open to man; the whole thing is to know what counts most in any situation whether individual or collective.6 We have seen that Hellenism, like all directly or indirectly sapiential doctrines, is founded on the axiom man – intelligence rather than man – will, and that is one of the reasons why it had to appear as inoperative in the eyes of a majority of Christians; but only of a majority because the Christian gnostics could not apply such a reproach to the Pythagoreans and Platonists; the gnostics could not do otherwise than admit the primacy of the intellect, and for that reason the idea of divine redemption meant to them something very different from and more far-reaching than a mysticism derived from history and a sacramental dogmatism. It is necessary to repeat once more – as others have said before and better – that sacred facts are true because they retrace on their own plane the nature of things, and not the other way round: the nature of things is not real or normative because it evokes certain sacred facts. The principles, essentially accessible to pure intelligence – if they were not so man would not be man, and it is almost blasphemy to deny that human intelligence considered in relation to animal intelligence has a supernatural side – the universal principles confirm the sacred facts, which in their turn reflect those principles and derive their efficacy from them; it is not history, whatever it may contain, that confirms the principles. This relationship is expressed by the Buddhists when they say that spiritual truth is situated beyond the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, and that it derives its evidence from the depths of Being itself, or from the innateness of Truth in all that is. In the sapiential perspective the divine redemption is always present; it PRE-exists all terrestrial alchemy and is its CELESTIAL model, so that it is always thanks to this eternal redemption – whatever may be its vehicle on earth – that man is freed from the weight of his vagaries and even, Deo volente, from that of his separative existence; if “my Words shall not pass away” it is because they have always been. The Christ of the gnostics is he who is “before Abraham was” and from whom arise all the ancient wisdoms; a consciousness of this, far from diminishing a participation in the treasures of the historical Redemption, confers on them a compass that touches the very roots of Existence. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity
In our vital experiences and in our artistic productions, the influx of the CELESTIAL Benediction is conditional upon the sacrificial element; on the contrary, in totally naturalistic art – since it exhausts the creative trajectory – nothing spiritual is left, nothing sacred, hence no longer any radiation. It is true that a naturalistic work may have an interiorizing effect through its content, but in this case it is the model that has this effect and not the work as such; the naturalistic contradiction between the appearance of life and inert matter can only harm the message. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS
The artist, in fashioning the work – the form – fashions himself; and as the purpose of the form is to communicate the essence or CELESTIAL content, the artist sees this a priori in the formal container; realizing the form from the starting-point of the essence, he becomes the essence by realizing the form. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
Within the framework of a traditional civilization, there is without doubt a distinction to be made between sacred art and profane art. The purpose of the first is to communicate, on the one hand, spiritual truths and, on the other hand, a CELESTIAL presence; sacerdotal art has in principle a truly sacramental function. The function of profane art is obviously more modest: it consists in providing what theologians call “sensible consolations”, with a view to an equilibrium conducive to the spiritual life, rather in the manner of the flowers and birds in a garden. The purpose of art of every kind – and this includes craftsmanship – is to create a climate and forge a mentality; it thus rejoins, directly or indirectly, the function of interiorizing contemplation, the Hindu darshan: contemplation of a holy man, of a sacred place, of a venerable object, of a Divine image. (NA: When one compares the blustering and heavily carnal paintings of a Rubens with noble, correct and profound works such as the profile of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Ghirlandaio or the screens with plum-trees by Korin, one may wonder whether the term ” profane art” can serve as a common denominator for productions that are so fundamentally different. In the case of noble works impregnated with contemplative spirit one would prefer to speak of ” extra-liturgical art”, without having to specify whether it is profane or not, or to what extent it is. Moreover one must distinguish between normal profane art and a profane art which is deviated and which has thereby ceased to be a term of comparison.) sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
The multiform beauty of a sanctuary is like the crystallization of a spiritual flux or of a stream of blessings. It is as though invisible and CELESTIAL power had fallen into matter – which hardens, divides and scatters – and had transformed it into a shower of precious forms, into a sort of planetary system of symbols, surrounding us and penetrating us from every side. The impact, if one may so call it, is analogous to that of the benediction itself; it is direct and existential; it goes beyond thought and seizes our being in its very substance. There are blessings which are like snow; and others which are like wine; all can be crystallized in sacred art. What is exteriorized in such art is both doctrine and blessing, geometry and the music of Heaven. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
This allusion to the primordial androgyne – which divided in two well before the successive entry of its halves into matter (NA: And which is realized a posteriori in sexual union.) – permits us to insert a parenthesis here. The human form cannot be transcended, its sufficient reason being precisely to express the Absolute, hence the untranscendable; and this cuts short the metaphysically and physically aberrant imaginations of the evolutionists, according to whom this form would be the result of a prolonged elaboration starting from animal forms; an elaboration which is at once arbitrary and unlimited. Materialists, even those who consider transformist evolution inexplicable and even contradictory, accept this hypothesis as an indispensable idea, which moreover carries us outside of science and into philosophy, or more exactly into rationalism with its reasonings cut off from the very roots of knowledge; and if the evolutionist idea is indispensable to them, it is because in their minds it replaces the concept of a sudden creation ex nihilo, which to them seems the only other possible solution. In reality, the evolutionist hypothesis is unnecessary because the creationist concept is so as well; for the creature appears on earth, not by falling from heaven, but by progressively passing – starting from the archetype – from the subtle to the material world, materialization being brought about within a kind of visible aura quite comparable to the “spheres of light” which, according to many accounts, introduce and terminate CELESTIAL apparitions. (NA: One will recall the ” chariot of fire” that lifted up Elijah, and the “cloud” which veiled the Christ during the Ascension.) 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
According to the observations of experimental science, the blue sky which stretches above us is not a world of bliss, but an optical illusion due to the refraction of light by the atmosphere, and from this point of view, it is obviously right to maintain that the home of the blessed does not lie up there. Nevertheless it would be a great mistake to assert that the association of ideas between the visible heaven and CELESTIAL Paradise does not arise from the nature of things, but rather from ignorance and ingenuousness mixed with imagination and sentimentality; for the blue sky is a direct and therefore adequate symbol of the higher and supra-sensory degrees of Existence; it is indeed a distant reverberation of those degrees, and it is necessarily so since it is truly a symbol, consecrated by the sacred Scriptures and by the unanimous intuition of peoples. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations
A symbol (NA: The word “symbol” implies “participation” or “aspect”, whatever the difference of level may be involved.) is intrinsically so concrete and so efficacious that CELESTIAL manifestations, when they occur in our sensory world, “descend” to earth and “reascend” to Heaven; a symbolism accessible to the senses takes on the function of the supra-sensible reality which its reflects. Light-years and the relativity of the space-time relationship have absolutely nothing to do with the perfectly “exact” and “positive” symbolism of appearances and its connection at once analogical and ontological with the CELESTIAL or angelic orders… sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations
For the same reasons it also denies Revelation, which alone rebuilds the bridge broken by the fall. According to the observations of experimental science, the blue sky which stretches above us is not a world of bliss, but an optical illusion due to the refraction of light by the atmosphere, and from this point of view, it is obviously right to maintain that the home of the blessed does not lie up there. Nevertheless it would be a great mistake to assert that the association of ideas between the visible heaven and CELESTIAL Paradise does not arise from the nature of things, but rather from ignorance and ingenuousness, mixed with imagination and sentimentality; for the blue sky is a direct and therefore adequate symbol of the higher and supra-sensory degrees of Existence; it is indeed a distant reverberation of those degrees, and it is necessarily so since it is truly a symbol, consecrated by the sacred Scriptures and by the unanimous intuition of peoples. (NA: The word “symbol” implies “participation” or “aspect”, whatever the difference of level may be involved.) sophiaperennis: Science and negation of Transcendence
A symbol is intrinsically so concrete and so efficacious that CELESTIAL manifestations, when they occur in our sensory world, “descend” to earth and “reascend” to Heaven; a symbolism accessible to the senses takes on the function of the supra-sensible reality which its reflects. Light-years and the relativity of the space-time relationship have absolutely nothing to do with the perfectly “exact” and “positive” symbolism of appearances and its connection at once analogical and ontological with the CELESTIAL or angelic orders, The fact that the symbol itself may be no more than an optical illusion in no way impairs its precision or its efficacy, for all appearances, including those of space and of the galaxies, are strictly speaking only illusions created by relativity. (Light on the Ancient Worlds, 36-37). sophiaperennis: Science and negation of Transcendence
The question of knowing which detail it is that impugns the authenticity of a CELESTIAL apparition depends either on the nature of things or else on a particular religious perspective. That is to say there are elements which in themselves, and from every religious or spiritual point of view, are incompatible with CELESTIAL apparitions … (To speak of these) discordant elements which are intrinsically incompatible with a CELESTIAL manifestation, there are first of all — and quite obviously — elements of ugliness or grotesque features, not only in the actual form of the apparition but also in its movements or even simply in the surroundings of the vision; then there is the question of speech, both from the point of view of content and of style, for Heaven neither lies nor gossips. (NA: Which puts paid to a whole series of apparitions or “messages” of which one hears talk in the second half of the 20th century.) “God is beautiful and He loves beauty”, the Prophet said. Loving beauty, He also loves dignity, He who combines beauty (jamal) with majesty (jalal). “God is love”, and love, if it does not exclude holy wrath, assuredly excludes ugliness and pettiness. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism
A decisive criterion of authenticity, on the basis of necessary extrinsic criteria, is the spiritual or miraculous efficacy of the apparition. If nothing that is spiritually positive results from the vision, it is of doubtful validity in proportion to the imperfection of the visionary, without necessarily being false even in such a case as this, for the motives of Heaven may escape men; if, on the contrary, the visionary draws a permanent grace from the vision so that he becomes a better man, (NA: Which either modifies his habitual behavior or leads to a change in his character, the former being an extrinsic result, the latter an intrinsic one; in any case the one is not entirely independent of the other.) or if the vision is the source of miracles without being accompanied by any discordant elements, there can be no doubt that this is a case of a true CELESTIAL apparition. A fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos. (Esoterism as Principle and as Way, pages 211-218) sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism
As to individual prayer, grounds for its existence are incontestably to be found in our nature, since individuals do in fact differ from one another and have different destinies and desires. The aim of this prayer is not only to obtain particular favors, but also the purification of the soul : it loosens psychological knots or, in other words, dissolves subconscious coagulations and drains away many secret poisons ; it eternalizes before God the difficulties, failures and distortions of the soul, always supposing the prayer to be humble and genuine, and this externalization — carried out in relation to the Absolute — has the virtue of reestablishing equilibrium and restoring peace, in a word, of opening us to grace. (NA: The Christian sacrament of confession is founded on these data, and is an addition balanced by the action of a special CELESTIAL grace (absolution). Psychoanalysis offers an analogous process, but one satanic in form, for it replaces the supernatural by the infra-natural : in the place of God, it puts nature with all its blind, dark and inhuman aspects. For psychoanalysts evil is not what is contrary to God and to the final ends of man, but what troubles the soul, however beneficial the cause of disquiet may be ; further, the equilibrium resulting from psychoanalysis is basically of an animal order, and this is entirely contrary to the requirements of our immortality. In man, his disequilibria can and must be resolved with a view to a higher equilibrium, conformable to a spiritual hierarchy of values, and not in some quasi-vegetative state of bliss; a human evil cannot be cured apart from God. (Stations of Wisdom, p. 125-126).) sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism
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
Feminism, far from being able to confer on woman ‘rights’ that are non-existent because contrary to the nature of things, can only remove from her her specific dignity; it is the abolition of the eternal-feminine, of the glory that woman derives from her CELESTIAL prototype. After all, the revolt of one sex against the other, like the cult of youth or the contempt of intelligence, is indirectly a revolt against God. (Gnosis, Divine Wisdom, page 54). sophiaperennis: Femininity