The question has been asked why Guénon “chose the Islamic path” and not another; the “material” reply is that he really had no choice, given that he did not admit the initiatic nature of the CHRISTIAN sacraments and that Hindu initiation was closed to him because of the caste system; given also that at that period Buddhism appeared to him to be a heterodoxy. The key to the problem is that Guénon was seeking an initiation and nothing else; Islam offered this to him, with all the essential and secondary elements that must normally accompany it. Again, it is not certain that Guénon would have entered Islam had he not settled in a Muslim country; he had already been given an Islamic initiation in France through the intermediation of Abdul-Hadi, and at that time he did not dream of practicing the Muslim religion. Thus, in accepting a Shadilite initiation, it was initiation that Guénon chose, and not a “path”. Essays A NOTE ON RENÉ GUÉNON
As for Gnosticism, whether it arises in a CHRISTIAN, Moslem or other climate, it is a fabric of more or less disordered speculations, often of Manichean origin; and it is a mythomania characterizd by a dangerous mixture of exoteric and esoteric concepts. Doubtless it contains symbolisms that are not without interest – the contrary would be astonishing – but it is said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”; it could just as well be said that it is paved with symbolisms. sophiaperennis: Gnosis
When one has experienced the usual pious sophistries of voluntaristic and moralistic doctrines, it becomes quite clear that gnosis is not a luxury, and that it alone can extricate us from the impasses of the alternativism that is part and parcel of the confessional spirit. There is, for instance, the stupefying thesis of the Asharites, according to which there are no natural causes: fire burns, not because it is in its nature to burn, but because, each time something burns, it is God who intervenes directly and who “creates” the burning. (NA: Equally antimetaphysical is the CHRISTIAN opinion that the hypostases are neither substances nor modes, that they are merely “relations” and yet that they are persons. It is appropriate to distinguish between the Trinity and Trinitarian theology, and no less so between Unity and unitarian theology.) Ibn Rushd pertinently objects – against Ghazali, who made this holy absurdity his own – that “if something did not have its specific nature, it would have no name proper to it . . . Intelligence is nothing else than the perception of causes . . . and whoever denies causes must also deny the intellect.” sophiaperennis: Gnosis
If the Westerner – “free thinker” or not – has a tendency to “think for himself,” wrongly or rightly according to the case, this is due to distant causes; the Western mind expressed itself through Plato and Aristotle before having undergone the influence of CHRISTIAN fideism, and even then, and from the very outset, it could not help having recourse to the Greek philosophers. sophiaperennis: Extenuating circumstances for rationalism
To wish to replace reasoning by experience on the practical plane and in a relative fashion could still be meaningful; but to do so on the intellectual and speculative plane, as the empiricists and existentialists wish to do is, properly speaking, demented. For the inferior man, only what is contingent is real, and he seeks by his method to lower principles to the level of contingencies, when he does not deny them purely and simply. This mentality of the shudra has infiltrated CHRISTIAN theology and has committed its well-known ravages. (NA: Some modernist theologians readily admit that there is a God – they find a few reasons for doing so – but they wish to justify this in a “provisional” and not in a “fixed” manner, while refusing of course the definitive formulations of the scholastics; whereas on this plane the truth is either definitive or it is not. A mode of knowledge which is incapable of furnishing the truth to us now, will never furnish it.) sophiaperennis: Existentialism
On the other hand, it is strange to note how far certain minds within the Latin Church have gone towards the acceptance not only of philosophical thought as such, but even of specifically modern thought: this attitude has led to a particularly regrettable lack of understanding of certain traditional modes of CHRISTIAN thought itself, a lack of understanding which reveals itself above all in an inability to conceive of the intrinsic truth of those modes, or let us say in a fixed determination to reduce ideas to the level of historical facts. sophiaperennis: Philosophy and CHRISTIANity
As for the profane and properly rationalistic philosophy of the Greeks, which is personified especially by Protagoras and of which Aristotle is not completely free, it represents a deviation of the perspective which normally gives rise to gnosis or jnana; when this perspective is cut off from pure intellection, and thus from its reason for existence, it becomes fatally hostile to religion and open to all kinds of hazards; the sages of Greece did not need the Fathers of the Church to know this, and the Fathers of the Church could not prevent the CHRISTIAN world from falling into this trap. Moreover through the civilizationism which it claims as its own, so as not to lose any glory, the Church paradoxically assumes responsibility for the modern world – described as “CHRISTIAN civilization” – which nevertheless is nothing other than the excrescence of that human wisdom stigmatized by the Fathers. sophiaperennis: Protagoras
Contrary to too widespread an opinion, the moral doctrine of Aristotle, who advocated the golden mean inasmuch as this is situated between two excesses, is not an invitation to mediocrity, nor is it responsible for the secular bourgeois respectability that it may have occasioned. However, this moral doctrine is to be distinguished from CHRISTIAN morality which sees in morals a spiritual means – whence its sacrificial character – whereas for the Greeks, as for most Orientals, moral equilibrium is spiritually a basis and not a means. sophiaperennis: Aristotle
A certain underlying warrior or chivalric mentality does much to explain both the theological fluctuations and their ensuing disputes (NA: Let us not lose sight of the fact that the same causes produce the same effects in all climates – albeit to very varied extents and that India is no exception; the quarrels of sectarian Vishnuism are a case in point.) – the nature of Christ and the structure of the Trinity having been, in the CHRISTIAN world, among the chief points at issue – just as it explains such narrownesses as the incomprehension and the intolerance of the ancient theologians towards Hellenism, its metaphysics and its mysteries. It is moreover this same mentality which produced, in the very bosom of the Greek tradition, the divergence of Aristotle with regard to Plato, who personified in essence the brahmana spirit inherent in the Orphic and Pythagorean tradition, (NA: It goes without saying that in the classical period – with its grave intellectual and artistic deviations – and then in its re- emergence at the time of the Renaissance, we have obvious examples of luciferianism of a warrior and chivalric, and therefore, kshatriya type. But it is not deviation proper that we have in mind here, since we are speaking on the contrary of manifestations that are normal and acceptable to Heaven, otherwise there could be no question of voluntarist and emotional upayas.) whereas the Stagirite formulated a metaphysics that was in certain respects centrifugal and dangerously open to the world of phenomena, actions, experiments and adventures. (NA: But let us not make Aristotelianism responsible for the modern world, which is due to the confluence of various factors, such as the abuses – and subsequent reactions – provoked by the unrealistic idealism of Catholicism, or such as the divergent and unreconciled demands of the Latin and Germanic mentalities; all of them converging on Greek scientism and the profane mentality.) sophiaperennis: Comparison between Plato and Aristotle
One can be a CHRISTIAN and at the same time a Platonist, given that there is no competition between mystical voluntarism and metaphysical intellectuality, leaving aside the Semitic concept of the creatio ex nihilo. sophiaperennis: Platonism and CHRISTIANity
When one speaks of CHRISTIAN esoterism, it can only be one of three things: firstly, it can be Christly gnosis, founded on the person, the teaching and the gifts of Christ, and profiting in certain eventualities from Platonic concepts, a process which in metaphysics has nothing irregular about it; (NA: In a general manner, intertraditional influences are always possible under cert ain conditions, but without any syncretism. Unquestionably Buddhism and Islam had an influence on Hinduism, not of course by adding new elements to it, but by favouring or determining the blossoming of PRE-existing elements. 20. In other words, one finds elements of esoterism in orthodox gnosticism – which is prolonged in the theosophy of Boehme and his successors – then in the Dionysian mysticism of the Rhinelanders, and of course in Hesychasm; without forgetting that partial element of methodic esoterism constituted by the quietism of Molinos, traces of which can be found in St Francis of Sales.) this gnosis was manifested in particular, although in a very uneven way, in writings such as those of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Denis the Areopagite – or the Theologian or the Mystic, if one prefers – Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Jakob Boehme and Angelus Silesius. sophiaperennis: Platonism and CHRISTIANity
From the point of view of the Platonists – in the widest sense – the return to God is inherent in the fact of existence: our being itself offers the way of return, for that being is divine in its nature, otherwise it would be nothing; that is why we must return, passing through the strata of our ontological reality, all the way to pure Substance, which is one; it is thus that we become perfectly “ourselves”. Man realizes what he knows: a full comprehension – in the light of the Absolute – of relativity dissolves it and leads back to the Absolute. Here again there is no irreducible antagonism between Greeks and CHRISTIANs: if the intervention of Christ can become necessary, it is not because deliverance is something other than a return, through the strata of our own being, to our true Self, but because the function of Christ is to render such a return possible. It is made possible on two planes, the one existential and exoteric and the other intellectual and esoteric; the second plane is hidden in the first, which alone appears in the full light of day, and that is the reason why for the common run of mortals the CHRISTIAN perspective is only existential and separative, not intellectual and unitive. This gives rise to another misunderstanding between CHRISTIANs and Platonists: while the Platonists propound liberation by Knowledge because man is an intelligence (NA: Islam, in conformity with its ” paracletic” charact er, reflects this point of view – which is also that of the Vedanta and of all other forms of gnosis – in a Semitic and religious mode, and realizes it all the more readily in its esoterism; like the Hellenist, the Moslem asks first of all: “What must I know or admit, seeing that I have an intelligence capable of objectivity and of totality?” and not a priori “What must I want, since I have a will that is free, but fallen?”) the CHRISTIANs envisage in their over-all doctrine a salvation by Grace because man is an existence – as such separated from God – and a fallen and impotent will. Once again, the Greeks can be reproached for having at their command but a single way, inaccessible in fact to the majority, and for giving the impression that it is philosophy that saves, just as one can reproach the CHRISTIANs for ignoring liberation by Knowledge and for assigning an absolute character to our existential and volitive reality alone and to means appropriate to that aspect of our being, or for taking into consideration our existential relativity and not our “intellectual absoluteness”; nevertheless the reproach to the Greeks cannot concern their sages, any more than the reproach to the CHRISTIANs can attack their gnosis, nor in a general way their sanctity. sophiaperennis: Platonism and CHRISTIANity
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
The Semites reproach the iconodules for worshipping wood, stone and metal, and images made by man; they are right when they are speaking either of their own past or present paganism, or that of their habitual pagan neighbours, but not when they include in their reproach CHRISTIAN or Asiatic iconodules. The sacred images of these communities are, precisely, not made by human hand; CHRISTIANs express this by attributing the first icon to an angel, with or without the participation of St Luke. As for the inert matter which the idolaters seem to worship – in reality it contains a magical power – it ceases to be inert in sacred art because it is inhabited by a heavenly or divine presence; the sacred image is created by God, and it is sanctified and as if vivified by His presence. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
When 3 is multiplied by 4, the product is 12; it is neither 11 nor 13, but expresses exactly the conjugated powers of the multiplicand and of the multiplier. Likewise, metaphorically speaking, when the CHRISTIAN religion is multiplied by Western humanity, the product is the Middle Ages; it is neither the age of the barbarian invasions nor that of the Renaissance. When a living organism has reached its maximum of growth, it is what it should be; it should neither stop short at the infantile state nor should it grow on indefinitely. The norm does not lie in hypertrophy, it lies at the exact limit of normal development. The same holds good for civilizations. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
Outward forms are criteria in this regard. It is either false or insufficient to allege that St Louis wore the costume of his period and that, mutatis mutandis, Louis XIV did the same; the truth is that St Louis wore the dress of a Western CHRISTIAN king, whereas Louis XIV wore that of a monarch who was already more “civilized” than CHRISTIAN, the first epithet referring, needless to say, to “civilizationism” and not to civilization in the general sense of the word. The appearance of St Louis is that of an idea which has reached the fullness of its ripening; it marks, not a phase, but a thing accomplished, a thing which is entirely what it ought to be. (NA: The appearance of Clovis or Charlemagne might be that of a perfect Germanic type or of a perfect monarch, but it could not epitomize Western Christendom in an age when its constituent elements were as yet uncombined and had not yet interpenetrated.) The appearance of a king of the Renaissance or of the age immediately following is the appearance, not of a thing, but of a phase – nor yet even a phase, but an extravagant episode; whereas we have no difficulty in taking seriously the appearance not only of a St Louis, but also of a Pharoah, an Emperor of China, or for that matter, a Red Indian chief, it is impossible to escape an impression of ridiculousness when confronted by the famous portraits of certain kings. These portraits, or rather these poses and these accoutrements, which the portraits so humourlessly and pitilessly fix, are supposed to combine all imaginable sublimities, some of which cannot in fact be fitted together into a single formula, for it is impossible to have everything at one and the same time; the hieratic and as it were incorporeal splendour of a CHRISTIAN emperor cannot be piled up on top of the paradisal naked splendour of an ancient hero. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
St Louis, or any other CHRISTIAN prince of his time, could figure amongst the kings and queens – in the form of columns – of the cathedral of Chartres; the later kings – those more marked by an invading worldliness – would be unthinkable as sacred statues. (NA: The column statues of Chartres have, like an iconostasis, the value of a criterion of formal orthodoxy: no exhibition of individualism or of profanity could find a place amongst them.) Not that all the princes of the Middle Ages were individually better than those of the Renaissance and later ages, but this is not the question; it is a question exclusively of demeanour and dress in so far as these are adequate manifestations of a norm that is both religious and ethnic, and thus of an ideal which allies the divine with the human. The king, like the pontiff, is not merely an official, he is also, by reason of his central position, an object of contemplation, in the sense of the Sanskrit term darshan: to benefit from the darshan of a saint is to be penetrated by his appearance in all its unassessable aspects if not also by the symbolism of his pontifical robes, as the case may be. St Louis is one of those sovereigns who spiritually incarnate the ideal which they represent so to speak liturgically, whereas the majority of the other medieval princes represent this ideal at least in the second way which, let it be said once more, is far from being without importance from the point of view of the concrete intelligibility of the royal function, whose undertones are both earthly and heavenly. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
In saying this, we know only too well that visual criteria are devoid of significance for the “man of our time”, who is nevertheless a visual type by curiosity as well as from an incapacity to think, or through lack of imagination and also through passivity: in other words he is a visual type in fact but not by right. The modern world, slipping hopelessly down the slope of an irremediable ugliness, has furiously abolished both the notion of beauty and the criteriology of forms; this is, from our point of view, yet another reason for using the present argument, which is like the complementary outward pole of metaphysical orthodoxy, for, as we have mentioned elsewhere in this connection, “extremes meet”. There can be no question, for us, of reducing cultural forms, or forms as such, objectively to hazards and subjectively to tastes; “beauty is the splendour of truth”; it is an objective reality which we may or may not understand. (NA: What is admirable in the Orthodox Church is that all its forms, from the iconostases to the vestments of the priests, immediately suggest the ambience of Christ and the Apostles, whereas in what might be called the post-Gothic Catholic Church too many forms are expressions of ambiguous civilizationism or bear its imprint, that is, the imprint of this sort of parallel pseudo-religion which is “Civilization” with a capital C: the presence of Christ then becomes largely abstract. The argument that ” only the spirit matters” is hypocrisy, for it is not by chance that a CHRISTIAN priest wears neither the toga of a Siamese bonze nor the loin-cloth of a Hindu ascetic. No doubt the ” cloth does not make the monk”; but it expresses, manifests and asserts him!) One may wonder what would have become of Latin CHRISTIANity if the Renaissance had not stabbed it. Doubtless it would have undergone the same fate as the Eastern civilizations: it would have fallen asleep on top of its treasures, becoming in part corrupt and remaining in part intact. It would have produced, not “reformers” in the conventional sense of the word – which is without any interest to say the least – but “renewers” in the form of a few great sages and a few great saints. Moreover, the growing old of civilizations is a human phenomenon, and to find fault with it is to find fault with man as such. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
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
Sensible forms therefore correspond with exactness to intellections, and it is for this reason that traditional art has rules which apply the cosmic laws and universal principles to the domain of forms, and which, beneath their more general outward aspect, reveal the ‘style’ of the civilization under consideration, this ‘style’ in its turn rendering explicit the form of intellectuality of that civilization. When art ceases to be traditional and becomes human, individual, and therefore arbitrary, that is infallibly the sign – and secondarily the cause – of an intellectual decline, a weakening, which, in the sight of those who know how to ‘discriminate between the spirits’ and who look upon things with an unprejudiced eye, is expressed by the more or less incoherent and spiritually insignificant, we would go even as far as to say unintelligible character of the forms. (NA: We are referring here to the decadence of certain branches of religious art during the Gothic period, especially in its latter part, and to Western art as a whole from the Renaissance onward: CHRISTIAN art (architecture, sculpture, painting, liturgical goldsmithery, etc.), which formerly was sacred, symbolical, spiritual, had to give way before the invasion of neo-antique and naturalistic, individualistic and sentimental art; this art, which contained absolutely nothing ‘miraculous’- no matter what those who believe in the ‘Greek miracle’ may care to think – is quite unfitted for the transmission of intellectual intuitions and no longer even answers to collective psychic aspirations; it is thus as far removed as can be from intellectual contemplation and takes into consideration feelings only; on the other hand, feeling lowers itself in proportion as it fulfils the needs of the masses, until it finishes up in a sickly and pathetic vulgarity. It is strange that no one has understood to what a degree this barbarism of forms, which reached a zenith of empty and miserable exhibitionism in the period of Louis XV, contributed – and still contributes – to driving many souls (and by no means the worst) away from the Church; they feel literally choked in surroundings which do not allow their intelligence room to breathe. Let us note in passing that the historical connection between the new St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome – of the Renaissance period, therefore anti-spiritual and rhetorical, ‘human’ if so preferred – and the origin of the Reformation are unfortunately very far from fortuitous.) sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
In order to forestall any possible objection, we would stress the fact that in intellectually healthy civilizations – the CHRISTIAN civilization of the Middle Ages for instance – spirituality often affirms itself by a marked indifference to forms, and sometimes even reveals a tendency to turn away from them, as is shown by the example of St. Bernard when he condemned images in monasteries, which, it must be said, in no wise signifies the acceptance of ugliness and barbarism, any more than poverty implies the possession of things that are mean in themselves. But in a world where traditional art is dead, where consequently form itself is invaded by everything which is contrary to spirituality and where nearly every formal expression is corrupted at its very roots, the traditional regularity of forms takes on a very special spiritual importance which it could not have possessed at the beginning, since the absence of the spirit in forms was then inconceivable. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
We may perhaps be allowed to add a remark here which seems to take us rather outside our subject, though some readers, at least, will understand its appropriat eness: an objection might be raised to what we have just been saying on the grounds that Shri Chaitanya bestowed initiation not only on Hindus but on Moslems as well; this objection, however, is pointless in the present case, for what Shri Chaitanya, who was one of the greatest spiritual Masters of India, transmitted first and foremost, was a current of grace resulting from the intense radiation of his own holiness; this radiation had the virtue of in some degree erasing or drowning formal differences, which is all the more admissible in that he was ‘bhaktic’ by nature. Besides, the fact that Shri Chaitanya could accomplish miracles in no wise implies that another guru, even if he were of the same initiatory lineage and therefore a legitimate successor of Chaitanya, could do the same; from another point of view which, though less important, is by no means negligible, one must also take into consideration should never be forgotten is the fact that the absence of the formal element is not equivalent to the presence of the unformed, and vice-versa; the unformed and the barbarous will never attain the majestic beauty of the void, whatever may be believed by those who have an interest in passing off a deficiency for a superiority. (NA: The claim has sometimes been put forward that CHRISTIANity, on the ground that it stands above forms, cannot be identified with any particular civilization; it is indeed understandable that some people would like to find consolation for the loss of CHRISTIAN civilization. including its art, but the opinion we have just quoted is none the less inexcusable. The recent new ecclesiastical canon concerning the laws of sacred art really has only a negative bearing, in the sense that it maintains a minimum of tradition simply in order to avoid seeing forms become so imaginative that the identification of their subjects is no longer possible; in other words, all that can be expected from this Canon is that the faithful may be saved from mistaking a church steeple for a factory-chimney, and viceversa. Apart from that, the aforesaid Canon sanctions all the errors of the past when it declares that religious art must ‘speak the language of its period’, without even pausing to put the question of just what ‘a period’ means, and what rights it possesses, given that it does possess any; such a principle, in the name of which men have gone as far as to proclaim that ‘modern ecclesiastical art is searching for a new style’, implicitly contains another misunderstanding and a fresh repudiation of CHRISTIAN art.) This law of compensation, by virtue of which certain relationships become gradually inverted during the course of a traditional cycle, can be applied in all spheres: for instance, we may quote the following saying (hadith) of the Prophet Mohammed: ‘In the beginning of Islam, he who omits a tenth of the Law is damned; but in the latter days, he who shall accomplish a tenth thereof will be saved.’ sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
The analogical relationship between intellections and material forms explains how it became possible for esotericism to be grafted on to the exercise of the crafts and especially architectural art; the cathedrals which the CHRISTIAN initiates left behind them offer the most explicit as well as the most dazzling proof of the spiritual exaltation of the Middle Ages. (NA: When standing before a cathedral, a person really feels he is placed at the Centre of the world; standing before a church of the Renaissance, Baroque or Rococo periods, he merely feels himself to be in Europe.) This brings us to a most important aspect of the question now before us, namely, the action of esotericism on exotericism through the medium of sensible forms, the production of which is precisely the prerogative of craft initiation. Through these forms, which act as vehicles of the integral traditional doctrine, and which thanks to their symbolism translate this doctrine into a language that is both immediate and universal, esotericism infuses an intellectual quality into the properly religious part of the tradition, thereby establishing a balance the absence of which would finally bring about the dissolution of the whole civilization, as has happened in the CHRISTIAN world. The abandoning of sacred art deprived esotericism of its most direct means of action; the outward tradition insisted more and more on its own peculiarities, that is to say, its limitations, until finally, by want of that current of universality which, through the language of forms, had quickened and stabilized the religious civilization, reactions in a contrary sense were brought about; that is to say, the formal limitations, instead of being compensated and thereby stabilized by means of the supra-formal ‘interferences’ of esotericism, gave rise, through their ‘opacity’ or ‘massiveness’, to negations which might be qualified as ‘infra-formal’, resulting as they did from an individual arbitrariness which, far from being a form of the truth, was merely a formless chaos of opinions and fancies. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
It has often been noticed that Oriental peoples, including those reputed to be the most artistic, show themselves for the most part entirely lacking in aesthetical discernment with regard to whatever comes to them from the West. All the ugliness born of a world more and more devoid of spirituality spreads over the East with unbelievable facility, not only under the influence of politico-economic factors, which would not be so surprising, but also by the free consent of those who, by all appearances, had created a world of beauty, that is a civilization, in which every expression, including the most modest, bore the imprint of the same genius. Since the very beginning of Western infiltration, it has been astonishing to see the most perfect works of art set side by side with the worst trivialities of industrial production, and these disconcerting contradictions have taken place not only in the realm of ‘art products’, but in nearly every sphere, setting aside the fact that in a normal civilization, everything accomplished by man is related to the domain of art, in some respects at least. The answer to this paradox is very simple, however, and we have already outlined it in the preceding pages: it resides in the fact that forms, even the most unimportant, are the work of human hands in a secondary manner only; they originate first and foremost from the same supra-human source from which all tradition originates, which is another way of saying that the artist who lives in a traditional world devoid of ‘rifts’, works under the discipline or the inspiration of a genius which surpasses him; fundamentally he is but the instrument of this genius, if only from the fact of his craftsman’s qualification. (NA: ‘A thing is not only what it is for the senses, but also what it represents. Natural or artifi cial objects are not . . . arbitrary ” symbols” of such or such a different or superior reality; but they are.., the effective manifestation of that reality: the eagle or the lion, for example, is not so much the symbol or the image of the Sun as it is the Sun under one of its manifest ations (the essential form being more important than the nature in which it manifests itself); in the same way, every house is the world in effigy and every altar is situated at the centre of the earth . . . ‘ (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: ‘The Primitive Mentality’ in Etudes Traditionnelles, Paris, Chacornac, August-September-October, 1939). It is solely and exclusively traditional art – in the widest sense of the word, implying all that is of an externally formal order, and therefore a fortiori everything which belongs in some way or other to the ritual domain – it is only this art, transmitted with tradition and by tradition, which can guarantee the adequate analogical correspondence between the divine arid the cosmic orders on the one hand, and the human or ‘artistic’ order on the other. As a result, the traditional artist does not limit himself simply to imitating Nature, but to ‘imitating Nature in her manner of operation’ (St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I, qu. 117, a. I) and it goes without saying that the artist cannot, with his own individual means, improvise such a ‘cosmological’ operation. It is by the entirely adequate conformity of the artist to this ‘manner of operation’, a conformity which is subordinated to the rules of tradition, that the masterpiece is created; in other words, this conformity essentially presupposes a knowledge, which may be either personal, direct and active, or inherited, indirect and passive, the latter case being that of those artisans who, unconscious as individuals of the metaphysical content of the forms they have learned to create, know not how to resist the corrosive influence of the modern West.) Consequently, individual taste plays only a relatively subordinate part in the production of the forms of such an art, and this taste will be reduced to nothing as soon as the individual finds himself face to face with a form which is foreign to the spirit of his own Tradition; that is what happens in the case of a people unfamiliar with Western civilization when they encounter the forms imported from the West. However, for this to happen, it is necessary that the people accepting such confusion should no longer be fully Conscious of their own spiritual genius, or in other terms, that they should no longer be capable of understanding the forms with which they are still surrounded and in which they live; it is in fact a proof that the people in question are already suffering from a certain decadence. Because of this fact, they are led to accept modern ugliness all the more easily because it may answer to certain inferior possibilities that those people are already spontaneously seeking to realize, no matter how, and it may well be quite subconsciously; therefore, the unreasoning readiness with which only too many Orientals (possibly even the great majority) accept things which are utterly incompatible with the spirit of their Tradition is best explained by the fascination exercised over an ordinary person by something corresponding to an as yet unexhausted possibility, this possibility being, in the present case, simply that of arbitrariness or want of principle. However that may be, and without wishing to attach too much importance to this explanation of what appears to be the complete lack of taste shown by Orientals, there is one fact which is absolutely certain, namely that very many Orientals themselves no longer understand the sense of the forms they inherited from their ancestors, together with their whole Tradition. All that has just been said applies of course first and foremost and a fortiori to the nations of the West themselves who, after having created – we will not say ‘invented’- a perfect traditional art, proceeded to disown it in favour of the residues of the individualistic and empty art of the Graeco-Ro mans, which has finally led to the artistic chaos of the modern world. We know very well that there are some who will not at any price admit the unintelligibility or the ugliness of the modern world, and who readily employ the word ‘aesthetic’, with a derogatory nuance similar to that attaching to the words ‘picturesque’ and ‘romantic’, in order to discredit in advance the importance of forms, so that they may find themselves more at ease in the enclosed system of their own barbarism. Such an attitude has nothing surprising in it when it concerns avowed modernists, but it is worse than illogical, not to say rather despicable, coming from those who claim to belong to the CHRISTIAN civilization; for to reduce the spontaneous and normal language of CHRISTIAN art – a language the beauty of which can hardly be questioned – to a worldly matter of ‘taste’- as if medieval art could have been the product of mere caprice – amounts to admitting that the signs stamped by the genius of CHRISTIANity on all its direct and indirect expressions were only a contingency unrelated to that genius and devoid of serious importance, or even due to a mental inferiority; for ‘only the spirit matters’- so say certain ignorant people imbued with hypocritical, iconoclastic, blasphemous and impotent puritanism, who pronounce the word ‘spirit’ all the more readily because they are the last to know what it really stands for. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
In order to understand better the causes of the decadence of art in the West, one must take into account the fact that there is in the European mentality a certain dangerous ‘idealism’ which is not without relevance to that decadence, nor yet to the decay of Western civilization as a whole. This ‘idealism’ has found its fullest, one might say its most ‘intelligent’ expression in certain forms of Gothic art, those in which a kind of ‘dynamism’ is predominant, which seems to aim at taking away the heaviness from stone. As for Byzantine and Romanesque art, as well as that other side of Gothic art wherein a ‘static’ power has been preserved, it might be said that it is an essentially intellectual art, therefore ‘realistic’. The ‘flamboyant’ Gothic art, no matter how ‘passionate’ it became, was nevertheless still a traditional art except in the case of sculpture and painting which were already well on the way to decadence; to be more exact, it was the ‘swansong’ of Gothic art. From the time of the Renaissance, which represents a sort of ‘posthumous revenge’ on the part of classical antiquity, European ‘idealism’ flowed into the exhumed sarcophagi of the Graeco-Roman civilization. By this act of suicide, idealism placed itself at the service of an individualism in which it thought to have rediscovered its own genius, only to end up, after a number of intermediate stages, in the most vulgar and wildest affirmations of that individualism. This was really a double suicide: firstly the forsaking of medieval or CHRISTIAN art, and secondly the adoption of Graeco-Roman forms which intoxicated the CHRISTIAN world with the poison of their decadence. But it is necessary here to consider a possible objection: was not the art of the first CHRISTIANs in fact Roman art? The answer is that the real beginnings of CHRISTIAN art are to be found in the symbols inscribed in the catacombs, and not in the forms that the early CHRISTIANs, themselves in part belonging to the Roman civilization, temporarily borrowed in a purely outward manner from the ‘classical’ decadence. CHRISTIANity was indeed called upon to replace this decadence by an art springing spontaneously from an original spiritual genius, and if in fact certain Roman influences have always persisted in CHRISTIAN art, this only applies to more or less superficial details. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
The monks of the eighth century, very different from those religious authorities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who betrayed CHRISTIAN art by abandoning it to the impure passions of worldly men and the ignorant imagination of the profane, were fully conscious of the holiness of every kind of means able to express the Tradition. They stipulated, at the second council of Nicaea, that ‘art’ (i.e. ‘the perfection of work’) alone belongs to the painter, while ordinance (the choice of the subject) and disposition (the treatment of the subject from the symbolical as well as the technical or material points of view) belongs to the Fathers. (Non est pictoris – ejus enim sola ars est-rerum ordinatio et dispositio Patrum nostrorum.) This amounts to placing all artistic initiative under the direct and active authority of the spiritual leaders of CHRISTIANity. Such being the case, how can one explain the fact that during recent centuries, religious circles have for the most part shown such a regret table lack of understanding in respect of all those things which, having an artistic character, are, as they fondly believe, only external matters? First of all, admitting a priori the elimination of every esoteric influence, there is the fact that a religious perspective as such has a tendency to identify itself with the moral point of view, which stresses merit only and believes it is neces sary to ignore the sanctifying quality of intellectual knowledge and, as a result, the value of the supports of such knowledge; now, the perfection of sensible forms is no more ‘meritorious in the moral sense than the intellections which those forms reflect and transmit, and it is therefore only logical that symbolic forms, when they are no longer understood, should be relegated to the background, and even forsaken, in order to be replaced by forms which will no longer appeal to the intelligence, but only to a sentimental imagination capable of inspiring the meritorious act – at least such is the belief of the man of limited intelligence. However, this sort of speculative provocation of reactions by resorting to means of a superficial and vulgar nature will, in the last analysis, prove to be illusory, for, in reality, nothing can be better fitted to influence the deeper dispositions of the soul than sacred art. Profane art, on the contrary, even if it be of some psychological value in the case of souls of inferior intelligence, soon exhausts its means, by the very fact of their superficiality and vulgarity, after which it can only provoke reactions of contempt; these are only too common, and may be considered as a ‘rebound’ of the contempt in which sacred art was held by profane art, especially in its earlier stages. (NA: In the same way, the hostility of the representatives of exotericism for all that lies beyond their comprehension results in an increasingly ‘massive’ exotericism which cannot but suffer from ‘rifts’; but the ‘spiritual porousness’ of Tradition – that is to say the immanence in the ‘substance’ of exotericism of a transcendent ‘dimension’ which makes up for its ‘massiveness,’- this state of ‘porousness’ having been lost, the above-mentioned ‘rifts’ could only be produced from below; which means the replacement of the masters of medieval esotericism by the protagonists of modern unbelief.) It has been a matter of current experience that nothing is able to offer to irreligion a more immediately tangible nourishment than the insipid hypocrisy of religious images; that which was meant to stimulate piety in the believer, but serves to confirm unbelievers in their impiety, whereas it must be recognized that genuinely sacred art does not possess this character of a ‘two-edged weapon’, for being itself more abstract, it offers less hold to hostile psychological reactions. Now, no matter what may be the theories that attribute to the people the need for unintelligent images, warped in their essence, the elites do exist and certainly require something different; what they demand is an art corresponding to their own spirit and in which their soul can come to rest, finding itself again in order to mount to the Divine. Such an art cannot spring simply from profane taste, nor even from ‘genius’, but must proceed essentially out of Tradition; this fact being admitted, the masterpiece must be executed by a sanctified artist or, let us say, by one in a state of grace’. (NA: The icon-painters were monks who, before setting to work, prepared themselves by fasting, prayer, confession and communion; it even happened that the colours were mixed with holy water and the dust from relics, as would not have been possible had the icon not possessed a really sacramental character.) Far from serving only for the more or less superficial instruction and edification of the masses, the icon, as is the case with the Hindu yantra and all other visible symbols, establishes a bridge from the sensible to the spiritual: ‘By the visible aspect’, states St. John Damascenus, ‘our thoughts must be drawn up in a spiritual flight and rise to the invisible majesty of God.’ 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
Latin CHRISTIANity has never been able to eradicate completely the paganism of antiquity. After having smouldered for centuries beneath the spiritual and artistic marvels of medieval civilization, it broke out and appeared in a heavier and more brutal form. It took its revenge by destroying, on the intellectual level as well as on the artistic (NA: We are here referring to the full development of the Renaissance style, as found in Michelangelo, Titian or Correggio, not to the painting of the Quattrocento, which is often virginal and tender and is in any case still CHRISTIAN.) and other levels, the normal expressions of the CHRISTIAN genius. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
As for Gnosticism, whether it arises in a CHRISTIAN, Moslem or other climate, it is a fabric of more or less disordered speculations, often of Manichean origin; and it is a mythomania characterized by a dangerous mixture of exoteric and esoteric concepts. Doubtless it contains symbolisms that are not without interest — the contrary would be astonishing — but it is said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”; it could just as well be said that it is paved with symbolisms. (To Have a Center, p. 67-68, chapter Gnosis is Not Just Anything). 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
CHRISTIAN theology, by concerning itself with sin and seeing a seductress in Eve in particular and in woman in general, has been led to evaluate the feminine sex with a maximum of pessimism. According to some, it is man alone and not woman who was made in the image of God, whereas the Bible affirms, not only that God created man in His image, but also that “male and female created He them”, which has been misinterpreted with much ingenuity…. A first proof — if proof be needed — that woman is divine image like man, is that in fact she is a human being like him; she is not vir or anër, but like him she is homo or anthropos; her form is human and consequently divine. Another proof — but a glance ought to suffice — resides in the fact that, in relation to man and on the erotic plane, woman assumes an almost divine function — similar to the one which man assumes in relation to woman — which would be impossible if she did not incarnate, not the quality of absoluteness, to be sure, but the complementary quality of infinitude; the Infinite being in a certain fashion the shakti of the Absolute.(Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.135-136). sophiaperennis: Femininity
In Islam, woman is not regarded under her malefic aspect, since she is not involved in the fall of Adam; it is Iblis alone who causes the fall of the first couple and their exile from the earthly Paradise. In the conception of Jannah, “Garden” or Paradise, woman is spiritualized, not by virtue of an exceptional function analogous to that of “Co-Redemptress”, but simply as the instrument of love, in the form of the Huris, “the gazelle-eyed”; besides, traditional CHRISTIAN iconography nearly always represents angels with feminine features. It would be easy to give other and quite varied examples of the beatific symbolism of woman, for instance: Sita and Radha; the goddess Kali in the bhakti of Shri Ramakrishna; the wives of David, Solomon, Muhammad; the knights’ ladies, such as Beatrice in the life and work of Dante. (The Eye of the Heart, p. 95, note 1.) sophiaperennis: Femininity