art

The modes are not always intelligible at first sight; for example, one might wonder what the relevance is of a discipline such as the Tea Ceremony, which combines ascesis with art, while being materially based on manipulations that seem a priori unimportant, but are ennobled by their sacralization. First of all, one must take into account the fact that in the Far Easterner, sensorial intuition is more developed than the speculative gift; also, that the practical sense and the aesthetic sense, as well as the taste for symbolism are at the basis of his spiritual temperament. In the Tea Ceremony, the symbolic and morally correct act — the “profound” act if one will — is supposed to bring about a sort of Platonic anamnesis or a unitive consciousness, whereas with the white man of the East and the West it is the Idea that is supposed to lead to correct and virtuous acts. The man of the yellow race goes from sensorial experience to intellection, roughly speaking, whereas with the white man, it is the converse that takes place: in starting out from concepts, or from habitual mental images, he understands and classifies phenomena, without, however, feeling the need to consciously integrate them into his spiritual life, except incidentally or when it is a question of traditionally accepted symbols. 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

Skeptical rationalism and titanesque naturalism are the two great abuses of intelligence, which violate pure intellectuality as well as the sense of the sacred; (NA: By a curious and inevitable backlash, the abuse of intelligence is always accompani ed by some inconsequentiality and some blindness: on the plane of art for example, it is inconsequential to copy nature when one is condemned in advance to stop halfway, for in painting, one can realize neither total perspective nor movement, any more than one can realize the latter in sculpture, without mentioning the impossibility of imitating the living appearance of surfaces.) it is through this propensity that thinkers “are wise in their own eyes” and end by “calling evil good, and good evil” and by “putting darkness for light, and light for darkness” (Isaiah, 5:20 and 21); they are also the ones who, on the plane of life or experience, “make bitter what is sweet,” namely the love of the eternal God, and “sweet what is bitter,” namely the illusion of the evanescent world. sophiaperennis: Skeptical rationalism and titanesque naturalism

If Plato maintains that the philosophos should think independently of common opinions, he refers to intellection and not to logic alone; whereas a Descartes, who did everything to restrict and compromise the notion of philosophy, means it while starting from systematic doubt, so much so that for him philosophy is synonymous not only with rationalism, but also with skepticism. This is a first suicide of the intelligence, inaugurated moreover by Pyrrho and others, by way of a reaction against what was believed to be metaphysical “dogmatism.” The “Greek miracle” is in fact the substitution of the reason for the Intellect, of the fact for the Principle, of the phenomenon for the Idea, of the accident for the Substance, of the form for the Essence, of man for God; and this applies to art as well as to thought. The true Greek miracle, if miracle there be – and in this case it would be related to the “Hindu miracle” – is doctrinal metaphysics and methodic logic, providentially utilized by the monotheistic Semites. sophiaperennis: Difference between Philosophy, theology and gnosis

The principle of “normal” and “providential” limitation of the data of experience applies moreover also to art: art has need of limits imposed by nature, at any rate insofar as it concerns a collectivity, which by definition is passive and “unconscious”; one has only to put the resources of machines and of the chemical industry at the disposal of a whole people or of their artisans and their art will be corrupted, not, of course, in all its manifestations, but insofar as it belongs to everyone. sophiaperennis: Scepticism

The cosmic, or more particularly the earthly function of beauty is to actualize in the intelligent creature the Platonic recollection of the archetypes, right up to the luminous Night of the Infinite. (NA: According to Pythagoras and Plato, the soul has heard the heavenly harmonies before being exiled on earth, and music awakens in the soul the remembrance of these melodies.) This leads us to the conclusion that the full understanding of beauty demands virtue and is identifiable with it: that is to say, just as it is necessary to distinguish, in objective beauty, between the outward structure and the message in depth, so there is a distinguo to make, in the sensing of the beautiful, between the aesthetic sensation and the corresponding beauty of soul, namely such and such a virtue. Beyond every question of “sensible consolation” the message of beauty is both intellectual and moral: intellectual because it communicates to us, in the world of accidentality, aspects of Substance, without for all that having to address itself to abstract thought; and moral, because it reminds us of what we must love, and consequently be. In conformity with the Platonic principle that like attracts like, Plotinus states that “it is always easy to attract the Universal Soul . . . by constructing an object capable of undergoing its influence and receiving its participation. The faithful representation of a thing is always capable of undergoing the influence of its model; it is like a mirror which is capable of grasping the thing’s appearance.” (NA: This principle does not prevent a heavenly influence mani festing itself incident ally or accidentally even in an image which is extremely imperfect – works of perversion and subversion being excluded – through pure mercy and by virtue of the ‘exception that proves the rule”.) This passage states the crucial principle of the almost magical relationship between the conforming recipient and the predestined content or between the adequate symbol and the sacramental presence of the prototype. The ideas of Plotinus must be understood in the light of those of the “divine Plato”: the latter approved the fixed types of the sacred sculptures of Egypt, but he rejected the works of the Greek artists who imitated nature in its outward and insignificant accidentality, while following their individual imagination. This verdict immediately excludes from sacred art the productions of an exteriorizing, accidentalizing, sentimentalist and virtuoso naturalism, which sins through abuse of intelligence as much as by neglect of the inward and the essential. sophiaperennis: Plato

If Plato maintains that the philosophos should think independently of common opinions, he refers to intellection and not to logic alone; whereas a Descartes, who did everything to restrict and compromise the notion of philosophy, means it while starting from systematic doubt, so much so that for him philosophy is synonymous not only with rationalism, but also with skepticism. This is a first suicide of the intelligence, inaugurated moreover by Pyrrho and others, by way of a reaction against what was believed to be metaphysical “dogmatism.” The “Greek miracle” is in fact the substitution of the reason for the Intellect, of the fact for the Principle, of the phenomenon for the Idea, of the accident for the Substance, of the form for the Essence, of man for God; and this applies to art as well as to thought. The true Greek miracle, if miracle there be – and in this case it would be related to the “Hindu miracle” – is doctrinal metaphysics and methodic logic, providentially utilized by the monotheistic Semites. sophiaperennis: Plato

As for Aristotelianism, we can limit ourselves here to the following consideration: on the one hand the Stagirite teaches the art of thinking correctly, but on the other hand he also induces one to think too much, to the detriment of intuition. Assuredly, the syllogism is useful, but on the express condition that it be necessary; that it not be superimposed as a systematic luxury upon a cognitive capacity which it smothers and the impossibility of which it seems to postulate implicitly. It is as if, through groping continually, one no longer knew how to see, or as if the possession of an art compelled its being used, even abusively; or again, as if thought were there for logic, rather than logic for thought. sophiaperennis: Comparison between Plato and Aristotle

One must react against the evolutionist prejudice which makes out that the thought of the Greeks “attained” to a certain level or a certain result, that is to say, that the triad Socrates -Plato -Aristotle represents the summit of an entirely “natural” thought, a summit reached after long periods of effort and groping. The reverse is the truth, in the sense that all the said triad did was to crystallize rather imperfectly a primordial and intrinsically timeless wisdom, actually of Aryan origin and typologically close to the Celtic, Germanic, Mazdean and Brahmanic esoterisms. There is in Aristotelian rationality and even in the Socratic dialectic a sort of “humanism” more or less connected with artistic naturalism and scientific curiosity, and thus with empiricism. But this already too contingent dialectic – and let us not forget that the Socratic dialogues are tinged with spiritual “pedagogy” and have something of the provisional in them – this dialectic must not lead us into attributing a “natural” character to intellections that are “supernatural” by definition, or “naturally supernatural”. On the whole, Plato expressed sacred truths in a language that had already become profane – profane because rational and discursive rather than intuitive and symbolist, or because it followed too closely the contingencies and humours of the mirror that is the mind – whereas Aristotle placed truth itself, and not merely its expression, on a profane and “humanistic” plane. The originality of Aristotle and his school resides no doubt in giving to truth a maximum of rational bases, but this cannot be done without diminishing it, and it has no purpose save where there is a withdrawal of intellectual intuition; it is a “two-edged sword” precisely be-cause truth seems thereafter to be at the mercy of syllogisms. The question of knowing whether this constitutes a betrayal or a providential readaptation is of small importance here, and could no doubt be answered in either sense. (NA: With Pythagoras one is still in the Aryan East; with Socrates-Plato one is no longer wholly in that East – in reality neither “Eastern” nor “Western”, that distinction having no meaning for an archaic Europe – but neither is one wholly in the West; whereas with Aristotle Europe begins to become speci fically “Western” in the current and cultural sense of the word. The East – or a particular East – forced an entry with Christianity, but the Aristotelian and Caesarean West finally prevailed, only to escape in the end from both Aristotle and Caesar, but by the downward path. It is opportune to observe here that all modern theological attempts to “surpass” the teaching of Aristotle can only follow the same path, in view of the falsity of their motives, whether implicit or explicit. What is really being sought is a graceful capitulation before evolutionary ” scientism”, before the machine, before an activist and demagogic socialism, a destructive psychologism, abstract art and surrealism, in short before modernism in all its forms – that modernism which is less and less a “humanism” since it de-humanizes, or that individualism which is ever more infra-individual. The moderns, who are neither Pythagoricians nor Vedantists, are surely the last to have any right to complain of Aristotle.) What is certain is that Aristotle’s teaching, so far as its essential content is concerned, is still much too true to be understood and appreciated by the protagonists of the “dynamic” and relativist or “existentialist” thought of our epoch. This last half plebeian, half demonic kind of thought is in contradiction with itself from its very point of departure, since to say that everything is relative or “dynamic”, and therefore “in movement”, is to say that there exists no point of view from which that fact can be established; Aristotle had in any case fully foreseen this absurdity. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle

The mentality of today seeks in fact to reduce everything to categories connected with time; a work of art, a thought, a truth have no value in themselves and independently of any historical classification, but their value is always related to the time in which they are rightly or wrongly placed; everything is considered as the expression of a “period” and not as having a timeless and intrinsic value; and this is entirely in conformity with modern relativism, and with a psychologist or biologist that destroys essential values. sophiaperennis: Philosophy and modern times

If Plato maintains that the philosophos should think independently of common opinions, he refers to intellection and not to logic alone; whereas a Descartes, who did everything to restrict and compromise the notion of philosophy, means it while starting from systematic doubt, so much so that for him philosophy is synonymous not only with rationalism, but also with skepticism. This is a first suicide of the intelligence, inaugurated moreover by Pyrrho and others, by way of a reaction against what was believed to be metaphysical “dogmatism.” The “Greek miracle” is in fact the substitution of the reason for the Intellect, of the fact for the Principle, of the phenomenon for the Idea, of the accident for the Substance, of the form for the Essence, of man for God; and this applies to art as well as to thought. The true Greek miracle, if miracle there be – and in this case it would be related to the “Hindu miracle” – is doctrinal metaphysics and methodic logic, providentially utilized by the monotheistic Semites. sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito

It is not surprising that the aesthetics of the rationalists admits only the art of classical Antiquity, which in fact inspired the Renaissance, then the world of the Encyclopedists of the French Revolution and, to a great extent, the entire nineteenth century. Now this art – which, by the way, Plato did not appreciate – strikes one by its combination of rationality and sensual passion: its architecture has something cold and poor about it – spiritually speaking – while its sculpture is totally lacking in metaphysical transparency and thereby in contemplative depth. (NA: In Greek art there are two errors or two limitations: the architecture expresses reasoning man inasmuch as he intends to victoriously oppose himself to virgin Nature; the sculpture replaces the miracle of profound beauty and life by a more or less superficial beauty and by marble.) It is all that the inveterately cerebral could desire. A rationalist can be right – man not being a closed system – as we have said above. In modern philosophy, valid insights can in fact be met with, notwithstanding that their general context compromises and weakens them. Thus the “categorical imperative” does not mean much on the part of a thinker who denies metaphysics and with it the transcendent causes of moral principles, and who is unaware that intrinsic morality is above all our conformity to the nature of Being. sophiaperennis: Rationalism

This is what is ignored by naturalistic art, which by wishing to imitate living beings in an absolute manner, reaches a dead point where the work becomes something useless and no longer fits into any spiritual context; it is a kind of sin in that it promises what it cannot fulfill, since it is incapable of animating bodies that require life. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

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

But there is something else: the notion of naturalism is rather loose because it expresses not only an excess but also a tendency that is legitimate and on the whole logical: when a work imitates nature by observing certain principles, that is, by insisting upon what is essential and not what is merely accidental, (NA: In addition, the work ought to conform to the material utilized by the artist, and also – in the case of painting – to the rules required by the flat surface, and other conditions of the kind.) it may be called naturalistic without this term having to evoke the faults of total naturalism. The work of art is then valid, not because it copies nature, but because it does so in a certain manner. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

Independently of any question of naturalism, it frequently happens in modern art – as in literature – that the author wishes to say too much: exteriorization is pushed too far, as if nothing should remain within. This tendency appears in all modern arts, including poetry and music; here again, what is lacking is the instinct of sacrifice, sobriety, restraint; the creator completely empties himself, and in so doing, he invites others to empty themselves as well and thereby to lose all the essential, namely the taste for the secret and the sense of inwardness, whereas the work’s reason for being is contemplative and unitive interiorization. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

It is significant that in extra-traditional art (NA: We are not speaking of ultra-modern pseudo-art, which for us does not exist.) valid works – which may be masterpieces – are necessarily accompanied by a flood of meaningless or subversive productions, and these often by one and the same author; this is the ransom of an excess of liberty, or let us say of an absence of truth, of piety, of discipline based on spiritual foundations. Unquestionably, this is the drama of all modern “culture” and has been so since its beginnings; and let us add that this culture ends by destroying itself, precisely owing to the contradiction between the rights it claims and the duties it ignores. Semitic iconophobia seems to be aware of this implicitly, even though its principal motivation is the danger of idolatry; this danger, in any case, contains in a certain manner and secondarily that of the cult of “genius” and of “culture.” sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

It is necessary to distinguish between an idolatry that is objective and another that is subjective: in the first case, it is the image itself that is erroneous, because it is supposed to be a god; in the second case, the image may pertain to sacred art and it is the lack of contemplativity that constitutes idolatry; it is because man no longer knows how to perceive the metaphysical transparency of phenomena, images and symbols that he is idolatrous. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

As regards sacred art, it must be said that painted and sculpted images also have God as their author since it is He who reveals and creates them through man; He offers the image of Himself by humanizing it, for if man is “made in God’s image,” it is because God is the prototype of the human image. If virgin Nature is the image of God, then man, who is situated at the center of this Nature is so as well; on the one hand, he is witness to the Divine image that surrounds him, and on the other hand, he is himself this image when God, in sacred art, takes on the form of man. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

ESOTERISM comprises four principal dimensions: an intellectual dimension, to which doctrine bears witness; a volitive or technical dimension, which includes the direct and indirect means of the way; a moral dimension, which concerns the intrinsic and extrinsic virtues; and an aesthetic dimension, to which pertain symbolism and art from both the subjective and objective point of view. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS

In sacred art, one finds everywhere and of necessity, regularity and mystery. According to a profane conception, that of classicism, it is regularity that produces beauty; but the beauty concerned is devoid of space and depth, because it is without mystery and consequently without any vibration of infinity. It can certainly happen in sacred art that mystery outweighs regularity, or vice versa, but the two elements are always present; it is their equilibrium which creates perfection. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS

This passage states the crucial principle of the almost magical relationship between the conforming recipient and the predestined content or between the adequate symbol and the sacramental presence of the prototype. The ideas of Plotinus must be understood in the light of those of the “divine Plato”: the latter approved the fixed types of the sacred sculptures of Egypt, but he rejected the works of the Greek artists who imitated nature in its outward and insignificant accidentality, while following their individual imagination. This verdict immediately excludes from sacred art the productions of an exteriorizing, accidentalizing, sentimentalist and virtuoso naturalism, which sins through abuse of intelligence as much as by neglect of the inward and the essential. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS

TRADITIONAL art derives from a creativity which combines heavenly inspiration with ethnic genius, and which does so in the manner of a science endowed with rules and not by way of individual improvisation; ars sine scientia nihil. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

The work of the artist or craftsman comprises two perfections, namely perfection of surface and perfection of depth. At surface level, the work must be well done, in conformity with the laws of the art and the demands of the style; in depth, it must be able to communicate the reality which it expresses. This explains why traditional art is related to esoterism as regards its form and to spiritual realization as regards its practice; for the form expresses the essence, and an understanding of the form awakens the need to transcend it with a view to its essence or archetype. 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

No art in itself is a human creation; but sacred art has this particularity, that its essential content is a revelation, that it manifests a properly sacramental form of heavenly reality, such as the icon of the Virgin and Child, painted by an angel, or the icon of the Holy Face which goes back to the holy shroud and to St Veronica; or such as the statue of Shiva dancing or the painted or carved images of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Taras. To the same category – in the widest acceptation of the term – belong ritual psalmody in a sacred language – among others Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic – and, in certain cases, the calligraphic copying – likewise ritual – of the sacred Books; architecture, or at least the decoration of sanctuaries, liturgical objects and sacerdotal vestments are in general of a less direct order. It would be difficult to do justice in a few lines to all possible types of sacred expression, which comprises such diverse modes as recitation, writing, architecture, painting, sculpture, the dance, the art of gestures, clothing; in what follows we shall be concerned only with the plastic arts, or even only with painting, the latter being moreover the most immediately tangible and also the most explicit of the arts. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

Besides the icons of Christ and the Virgin, there are also a multitude of other hieratic images, relating the facts of sacred history and the lives of the saints; likewise in Buddhist iconography, after the central images come the numerous representations of secondary personifications; it is this more or less peripheral category which may be called indirect sacred art, even though there may not always be a rigorous line of demarcation between it and direct or central sacred art. The function of this ramification – apart from its didactic significance – is to enable the spirit of the central images to shine through a diverse imagery which rivets the movement of the mind by infusing into it the radiance of the Immutable, and which, in so doing, imposes on the moving soul a tendency towards interiorization; this function is thus entirely analogous to that of hagiography or even to that of tales of chivalry, not forgetting fairy stories whose symbolism, as is well known, belongs to the realm of the spiritual and so to that of the sacred. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

Sacred art is far from always being perfect, although it is necessarily so in its principles and in the best of its productions; nevertheless in the great majority of imperfect works, the principles compensate for the accidental weaknesses, rather as gold, from a certain point of view, can compensate for the but slight artistic value of a given object. Two pitfalls lie in wait for sacred art and for traditional art in general: a virtuosity tending towards the outward and the superficial, and a conventionalism without intelligence and without soul; but this, it must be stressed, rarely deprives sacred art of its overall efficacy, and in particular of its capacity to create a stabilizing and interiorizing atmosphere. As for imperfection, one of its causes can be the inexperience, if not the incompetence of the artist; the most primitive works are rarely the most perfect, for in the history of art there are periods of apprenticeship just as later there are periods of decadence, the latter often being due to virtuosity. Another cause of imperfection is unintelligence, either individual or collective: the image may be lacking in quality because the artist – the word here having an approximate meaning – is lacking in intelligence or spirituality, but it may likewise bear the imprint of a certain collective unintelligence that comes from the sentimental conventionalization of the common religion; in this case, the collective psychism clothes the spiritual element with a kind of “pious stupidity”, for if there is a naïveté that is charming, there is also a naiveté that is moralistic and irritating. This must be said lest anyone should think that artistic expressions of the sacred dispense us from discernment and oblige us to be prejudiced, and so that no one should forget that in the traditional domain in general, there is on all planes a constant struggle between a solidifying tendency and a tendency towards transparency which draws the psychic back to the spiritual. All of this may be summed up by saying that sacred art is sacred in itself, but that it is not necessarily so in all its expressions. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

Sacred art is vertical and ascending, whereas profane art is horizontal and equilibrating. In the beginning, nothing was profane; each tool was a symbol, and even decoration was symbolistic and sacral. With the passage of time, however, the imagination increasingly spread itself on the earthly plane, and man felt the need for an art that was for him and not for Heaven alone; the earth too, which in the beginning was experienced as a prolongation or an image of Heaven, progressively became earth pure and simple, that is to say that the human being increasingly felt himself to possess the right to be merely human. If religion tolerates this art, it is because it nevertheless has its legitimate function in the economy of spiritual means, within the horizontal or earthly dimension, and with the vertical or heavenly dimension in view. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

Nevertheless, it must be reiterated here that the distinction between a sacred and a profane art is inadequate and too precipitate when one wishes to take account of all artistic possibilities; and it is therefore necessary to have recourse to a supplementary distinction, namely that between a liturgical and an extra-liturgical art: in the first, although in principle it coincides with sacred art, there may be modalities that are more or less profane, just as inversely, extra-liturgical art may comprise some sacred manifestations. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

The term “sensible consolation”, wrongly applied by theologians to sacred art itself, as also, moreover, to the beauties of virgin nature – as if beauty had nothing to transmit other than consolation (NA: It is true that this notion of ” consolation” has a deeper import in the mystical realm.) – best fits the simpler types of art and the secondary charms of nature. The purpose of such arts is to communicate a climate of holy childhood, which the culturistic poisoners – always aggressive and megalomaniac – will doubtless qualify as “affectation”, which is just a slanderous misuse of language; in reality art has no right – insofar as it is unpretentious, and even without this reservation – to be grandiloquent and titanesque, the mission of the artist being to produce work that is sane and balanced and not an expression of useless turmoil. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

At all events, the “sensible consolation” is in the work before being in the result; the sanctification of the religious artist precedes that of the spectator. Every legitimate art satisfies both emotivity and intelligence, not only in the finished work, but also in its production. There is likewise in art a desire to pin down the visual, auditive or other forms which escape us, and which we wish to retain or possess; to this desire for fixation or possession there is added quite naturally a desire for assimilation, for a quality must not only be beautiful, it must also be entirely ours, which brings us back directly or indirectly, depending on the case, to the theme of union and love. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

The Hindu, or more particularly the Vishnuite miniature, is one of the most perfect extraliturgical arts there is, and we do not hesitate to say that some of its productions are at the summit of all painting. Descended from the sacred painting of which the Ajanta frescoes afford us a final trace, the Hindu miniature has undergone Persian influences, but it remains essentially Hindu and is in no wise syncretistic; (NA: Whether it be a case of art, doctrine or anything else, there is syncretism when there is an assemblage of disparate elements, but not when there is a unity which has assimilated elements of diverse provenance.) it has in any event achieved a nobility of draughtsmanship, of colouring, and of stylization in general, and over and above this, a climate of candour and holiness, which are unsurpassable and which, in the best of its examples, transport the viewer into an almost paradisiac atmosphere, a sort of earthly prolongation of heavenly childhood. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

The Hindu miniature, whether centered on Krishna or on Rama, renders visible those spiritual gardens which are the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata-Purana, and the Ramayana, but it also conveys musical motifs with rich inventiveness, as well as the contradictory sentiments to which love may give rise in diverse situations; most of these subjects hold us, willingly or not, under the spell of Krishna’s flute. Some of these paintings, in which a maximum of rigour and musicality is combined with a vivid spiritual expressiveness, unquestionably pertain to sacred art inasmuch as the epithet “profane” can no longer be applied to them; spiritus ubi vult spirat. This is a possibility that we also encounter in other domains, for example, when we are forced to admit that the Bhagavad-Gita, which logically pertains to secondary inspiration, is in reality an Upanishad, and thus a revelation of a major kind, or when a particular saint, who socially belongs to a lower caste, is recognized as personally possessing the rank of brahman. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

Another type of extra-liturgical art that captivates by its powerful and candid originality is Balinese art, in which Hindu motifs combine with forms proper to the Malay genius; the fact that this genius – apart from the Hindu influence – has expressed itself principally in the sphere of craftsmanship and in that of architecture in wood, bamboo and straw, does not prevent one from seeing in it qualities which sometimes become great art; there can be no doubt that from the point of view of intrinsic values, and not merely from that of a particular taste, a fine barn in Borneo or Sumatra has much more to offer than has the plaster-nightmare of a baroque church. (NA: One can say the same of Shinto sanctuaries, which have been described as ” barns’, especially those at Ise.) sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

In the case of the examples just mentioned, we are obviously at the antipodes, not perhaps of certain medieval miniatures nor of the noblest and most spring-like works of the Quattrocento, but of the dramatic titanism, and the fleshly and vulgar delirium, of the megalomaniacs of the Renaissance and the 17th century, infatuated with anatomy, turmoil, marble and gigantism. Non-traditional art, about which a few words must be said here, embraces the classical art of antiquity and the Renaissance, and Continues up to the 19th century which, reacting against academicism, gives rise to impressionism and analogous styles; this reaction rapidly decomposes into all sorts of perversities, either “abstract” or “surrealistic”: in any case, it is of “subrealism” that one ought to speak here. It goes without saying that worthwhile works are to be found incidentally both in impressionism and in Classicism – in which we include romanticism, since its technical principles are the same -, for the cosmic qualities cannot but manifest themselves in this realm, and a given individual aptitude cannot but lend itself to this manifestation; but these exceptions, in which the positive elements succeed in neutralizing the erroneous or insufficient principles, are far from being able to compensate for the serious drawbacks of extratraditional art, and we would gladly do without all its productions if it were possible to disencumber the world from the heavy mortgage of Western culturism, with its vices of impiety, dispersion and poisonousness. The least that one can say is that it is not this kind of grandeur that brings us closer to Heaven. “Suffer the little children to come unto ME and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

As we have mentioned on other occasions, what must be blamed in artistic naturalism is not its exact observation of nature, but the fact that this observation is not compensated and disciplined by an equivalent awareness of that which transcends nature, and so of the essences of things, as happens for example in Egyptian art; in all sacred arts it is the style, which indicates a mode of inwardness, that corrects such outwardness, contingency and accidentality as the imitation of nature may involve; we would even say that an awareness of essences to a certain extent compromises or retards, if not a sufficient observation of outward things, at least their exact expression in graphic terms, although – and one must insist on this – there is no incompatibility in principle between exact draughtsmanship and contemplativity, the latter conferring on the former the imprint of inwardness and essentiality. Moreover, this combination is prefigured by the almost inward quality of normative forms, a quality that requires, precisely, an artistic treatment that is capable of giving it full expression in accordance with the laws of the fixative or crystallizing dimension that is figurative art. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

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

Stylization, as we have seen, permits a maximum of naturalism where it is able to impose on it a maximum of essentiality; in other words, a summit of creative exteriorization calls for a summit of interiorizing power and consequently demands a mastery of the means whereby this power may be realized. In the majority of cases art stops half-way and there is nothing wrong in this, since concretely there is no reason why it should go further; traditional art perfectly fulfils its role; art is not everything, and its productions do not have to be absolute. But this is independent of the principle that sacred art must satisfy every sincere believer; it fails in its mission if its crudeness, or on the contrary its superficial virtuosity, leaves unsatisfied or even troubles believers of good will, namely those whom humility preserves from all intolerance and worldly acrimony. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

We have already remarked that there is a relative but not irremediable incompatibility – an incompatibility of fact and not of principle – between the spiritual content or the radiance of a work of art and an implacable and virtuosic naturalism: it is as if the science of the mechanism of things killed their spirit, or at least ran the grave risk of killing it. On the one hand we have a treatment that is naive, but charged with graces and diffusing an atmosphere of security, happiness and holy childhood; while on the other hand – in classical antiquity and from the Cinquecento onwards – we have on the contrary a treatment that is scientifically executed but the content is human and not heavenly – or rather it is “humanistic” – and the work suggests, not a childhood still close to Heaven, but an adulthood fallen into disgrace and expelled from Paradise. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

When calling the art of exactly copying nature an abuse of intelligence, we have indicated its analogy with modern science: artistic naturalism and exact science both comprise some valid aspects since they are true in a certain respect, but in fact the average man is incapable of completing this wholly outward truth, or these respective truths, by means of their indispensable complements, without which science and art cannot realize the equilibrium that is in conformity with the total reality which logically determines them. Everyone, today is aware that the efficacy of the experimental sciences is no longer an argument in their favour, since the calamities they engender arc precisely a function of their efficacy; likewise, it is not enough that artistic naturalism should represent a maximum of adequation, since it is just for this reason, given the use that has been made of it for all too long, that it has finished by depriving souls of a healthy nourishment adapted to their true needs. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

It may be added that an element which in one way or another has powerfully contributed to the ruination of art is ambition and the search for originality; by and large and in spite of laudable exceptions, these are all that are necessary to deprive art of that atmosphere of candour and calm happiness, or of sanctity, which is one of the reasons for its existence. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

If the deviation of art is a possibility, the rejection of art is another. To speak of a great civilization which rejects, not one particular art, but all art, is a contradiction in terms; the more or less iconoclastic point of view of a St Bernard or a Savonarola cannot be the attitude of a whole city-based civilization. But this point of view, or a point of view that is in practice analogous, can exist traditionally outside civilization of this type, for example in the nomadic or semi-nomadic world of the North American Indians: the Redskins properly so-called – not all the aboriginal inhabitants of America – are indeed more or less hostile to the plastic arts, as doubtless were also their distant congeners the ancient Mongols, and perhaps also the ancient Germans and Celts. According to the Indians, virgin nature, which is sacred, is of an unequalled beauty, and it contains every conceivable beauty; it is thus vain and indeed impossible to seek to imitate the works of the Great Spirit. It is curious to note that the classical world, that of naturalism and anthropolatry, looks upon itself as a conqueror as far as nature is concerned; the cult of man involves contempt for surrounding nature, whereas for the Indian, as moreover for the Far-Easterners, nature is a mother, and also a fatherland, of which man is indeed the centre, but not the absolute proprietor, still less the enemy. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

It must nevertheless be admitted that the Indians of whom we are speaking did not completely abstain from figurative drawings. They decorated their tents with a kind of pictography representing men and animals, and they also had the practice of sparingly carving their calumets, but in both cases the art is integrated into objects that are both useful and sacred, and it consequently conforms to the sobriety and holy poverty of a world that is committed to taking no thought for the morrow. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

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

The de facto ambiguity of beauty, and consequently of art, comes from the ambiguity of Maya: just as the principle of manifestation and illusion both separates from the Principle and leads back to it, so earthly beauties, including those of art, can favour worldliness as well as spirituality, which explains the diametrically opposed attitudes of the saints towards art in general or a given art in particular. The arts reputed to be the most dangerous are those engaging hearing or movement, namely poetry, music and dancing; they are like wine, which in Christianity serves as the vehicle for a deifying sacrament, while in Islam it is prohibited, each perspective being right despite the contradiction. That the intoxicating element – in the widest sense – particularly lends itself to sanctification, Islam recognizes in its esoterism, in which wine symbolizes ecstasy and in which poetry, music and dancing have become ritual means with a view to “remembrance”. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

The vocation sine qua non of man is to be spiritual. Spirituality manifests itself on the planes which constitute man, namely intelligence, will, affectivity, production: human intelligence is capable of transcendence, of the absolute, of objectivity; the human will is capable of liberty, and thus of conformity to what is grasped by the intelligence; human feeling (affectivity), which is joined to each of the preceding faculties, is capable of compassion and generosity, by reason of the objectivity of the human mind, which takes the soul out of its animal egoism. Finally, there is the specifically human capacity for production, and it is because of this that man has been called homo faber, and not homo sapiens only: it is the capacity for producing tools and constructing dwellings and sanctuaries, and if need be for making clothes and creating works of art, and also for spontaneously combining in these creations symbolism and harmony. The language of harmony may be simple or rich, depending on needs, perspectives and temperaments; decoration too has its purpose, both from the point of view of symbolism, and from that of musicality. This amounts to saying that this fourth capacity must also have a spiritual content on pain of not being human; its role moreover is simply to exteriorize the three preceding capacities by adapting them to material needs or the needs of worship, or let us simply say by projecting them into the sensible order otherwise than by rational discourse or writing. Exiled on earth as we are, unless we are able to content ourselves with that shadow of Paradise that is virgin nature, we must create for ourselves surroundings which by their truth and their beauty recall our heavenly origin and thereby also awaken our hope. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

The two Hindu notions of darshan and satsanga sum up, by extension, the question of human ambience as such, and so also that of art or craftsmanship. Darshan, is above all the contemplation of a saint, or of a man invested with a priestly or princely authority, and recognizable by the vestimentary or other symbols which manifest it; satsanga is the frequentation of holy men, or simply men of spiritual tendency. What is true for our living surroundings is likewise true for our inanimate surroundings, whose message or perfume we unconsciously assimilate to some degree or another. “Tell ME whom thou frequentest and I shall tell thee who thou art.” sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

Be that as it may, we should like to point out here that the chronic imbalance that characterizes Western humanity has two principal causes, the antagonism between Aryan paganism and Semitic Christianity on the one hand, and the antagonism between Latin rationality and Germanic imaginativeness on the other. (NA: From the point of view of spiritual worth, it is contemplativity that is decisive, whether it is combined with reason or with imagination, or with any kind of sensibility.) The Latin Church, with its sentimental and unrealistic idealism, has created a completely unnecessary scission between clergy and laity, whence a perpetual uneasiness on the part of the latter towards the former; it has moreover, without taking account of their needs and tastes, imposed on the Germanic peoples too many specifically Latin solutions, forgetting that a religious and cultural framework, in order to be effective, must adapt itself to the mental requirements of those on whom it is imposed. And since, in the case of Europeans, their creative gifts far exceed their contemplative gifts – the role of Christianity should have been to re-establish equilibrium by accentuating contemplation and canalizing creativity, – the West excels in “destroying what it has worshipped”; also the history of Western civilization is made up of cultural treacheries that are difficult to understand, – one is astonished at so much lack of understanding, ingratitude and blindness, – and these treacheries appear most visibly, it goes without saying, in their formal manifestations, in other words, in the human ambience which, in normal conditions, ought to suggest a sort of earthly Paradise or heavenly Jerusalem, with all their beatific symbolism and stability. The Renaissance, at its apogee, replaces happiness with pride; the baroque reacts against this pride or this crushing coldness with a false happiness, cut off from its divine roots and full of a bragadoccio that is both exaggerated and frenzied. The reaction to this reaction was a pagan classicism leading to the bourgeois ugliness, both crude and mediocre, of the 19th century; this has nothing to do with the real people or with a popular craftsmanship that is still authentic, and which remains more or less on the margin of history and bears witness to a wholesomeness very far from all civilizationist affectation. (NA: Popular art moreover is often the vehicle of primordial, especially solar, symbols, and one finds it in peoples very far removed from one another, sometimes in forms that are identical down to the last detail.) sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

Philosophers with justice define beauty as the harmony of diversity, and they properly distinguish beauty of form from beauty of expression, as well as the beauty of art from the beauty of nature; similarly, it has been very justly said that the beautiful is distinguished from the useful by the fact that it has no objective outside itself or outside the contemplation of which it is the object, and also that the beautiful is distinguished from the agreeable by the fact that its effect surpasses mere pleasure; and finally that it is distinguished from truth by the fact that it is grasped by immediate contemplation and not by discursive thought. (NA: Truth in the current sense of the word, that of a concordance between a state of fact and our consciousness, is indeed situated on the plane of thought, or at least it applies a priori to that plane. As for pure Intellection, its object is ” reality” of which ” truth” is the conceptual clothing. But in practice the terms ” reality” and “truth” usually merge into one another.) sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

On the other hand, one cannot maintain unequivocally, as some people have done, that beauty of expression is always more important than beauty of form, for this is either to underestimate beauty of form or to overestimate the importance of the moral factor on the plane of aesthetics. It is true that expression has priority over form when an interior beauty coincides with an exterior beauty, but the case is different when it is superimposed on ugliness, for then it belongs to the sphere of morality rather than to that of pure aesthetics. It may also be admitted with good reason that expression takes precedence over form when a loss of beauty in one sense gives rise to a new kind of beauty, as is the case with old people-when age has simply transferred a preexisting beauty on to another plane, or has even created physical beauty. Lastly, the primacy of expression can again be acknowledged in the case of the artistic representation of living beings, where beauty is affirmed through a distorting stylization which is far removed from nature, and where form has not got to copy the specific beauty of life. (NA: Looked at in this way, all art is ” abstract.” The stylized image is in effect a new being side by side with its living model, and thus it realizes a beauty of an entirely different kind.) 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

In an analogous order of ideas, the affirmation that “the beautiful is the useful” is doubly false. In the first place, what is it that determines in an absolute way the utility of an object or of its purpose, if it is not that spiritual hierarchy of values which the utilitarians entirely ignore? In the second place, if only the useful is beautiful, what of the decorative art which for thousands of years has everywhere been applied to tools, and what of the stylization which transfigures crude objects and which, being universal and immemorial, is natural to man? In a world that lives by the creation and maintenance of artificial needs, the notion of utility becomes singularly arbitrary; (NA: All too often things which some people call “useful” arc anything but useful in their results. “Progress” is healing a paralytic while depriving him of his sight.) those who ill treat that notion at least owe some explanation, not only of the ornamental arts already mentioned but also of the figurative arts, not forgetting music, dance, and poetry, for they too are beautiful without being useful in a crudely practical sense. The arts are in no way identifiable either with practical work or with any kind of tool, and they therefore go beyond the narrow sphere of the “useful”; even architecture and the art of clothing are almost nowhere reduced to mere utility alone. There is no question here of denying that a tool as such possesses, or can possess, a beauty arising from the intelligibility of its symbolism, nor are we maintaining that ornamentation or stylization are conditions of its aesthetic value; we are simply rejecting the assertion that the beautiful is the useful. What must be said is that the useful can be beautiful, and is so to the extent that the tool meets a need, whether this be simply normal and legitimate, or exalted in the hierarchy of values and functions. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

At the opposite pole to this utilitarian sophism is situated another error, which paradoxically resembles the former in its exaggeration and intolerance, and has even contributed to its development in conformity with the undulatory movement of so-called progress, and this is “classical” and “academic” aestheticism. (NA: It has also provoked the art called ” abstract,” which proves once again that the ” evolution” of the West consists in descending from one extreme to the other. It is ridiculous to despise ” academicism” in the name of the art that is at the moment accepted as “modern”; all such judgments depend on fashion and proceed from no objective criterion. Critics no longer work with anything but wholly extrinsic pseudocriteria, such as contemporaneity or novelty, as if a masterpiece were a masterpiece for a reason situated outside itself.) According to this way of looking at things, there exists a unique and exclusive canon of human and artistic beauty, an “ideal beauty” in which beauty of form and of content and of kind coincide. This third point is contestable, if not wholly false, for the “kind,” in direct proportion to the elevation of its rank, comprises a whole scale of perfect types, diversified so far as their mode is concerned, but aesthetically equivalent. There can be no question, therefore, of a combing out of individuals so as to obtain a single ideal type, either within humanity as a whole, where the point is self-evident since the races exist, or even within a single race, since the races are complex. The “canons of beauty” are either a matter of sculptural or pictorial style, or a matter of taste and habit, if not of prejudice. In this last case, they are connected more or less with the instinct of self-preservation of a racial group, so that the question is one of natural selection and not of intelligence nor of aesthetics; aesthetics is an exact science and not the mental expression of a biological fatality. These general remarks apply, mutatis mutandis, to the whole domain of the beautiful, and they have a bearing even beyond that domain, in the sense that there may be affinities, and a need for complementary compensations, on every plane of intelligence and of sensibility, and notably on the plane of spiritual life. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

Some people doubtless think that beauty, whatever merits it may possibly possess, is not necessary to knowledge. To this it may be answered first that strictly speaking there is no contingency that is in principle indispensable to knowledge as such, but neither is there any contingency totally separated from it; second that we live among contingencies, forms, and appearances, and consequently cannot escape them, not least because we ourselves belong to the very same order as they; third that in principle pure knowledge surpasses all else, but that in fact beauty, or the comprehension of its metaphysical cause, can reveal many a truth, so that it can be a factor in knowledge for one who possesses the necessary gifts; fourth that we live in a world wherein almost all forms are saturated with errors, so that it would be a great mistake to deprive ourselves of a “discernment of spirits” on this plane. There can be no question of introducing inferior elements into pure intellectuality; on the contrary, it is a case of introducing intelligence into the appreciation of forms, among which we live and of which we are, and which determine us more than we know. The relationship between beauty and virtue is very revealing in this connection: virtue is the beauty of the soul as beauty is the virtue of forms; and the Angels or the Devas are not only states of knowledge but also states of beauty comparable to the phenomena we admire in nature or in art. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

Under normal conditions spiritual life is plunged in beauty for the simple reason that the environment is unbrokenly traditional; in such a framework, harmony of forms is omnipresent like air and light. In worlds like those of the Middle Ages and the Orient man cannot escape from beauty, (NA: Nor from ugliness, in so far as it is a part of life and of truth; but then it is a natural ugliness carrying no suggestion of a diabolical confes sion of faith. One might say that natural ugliness is framed in beauty.) and the material forms themselves of every traditional civilization – buildings, clothes, tools, sacred art – prove that beauty is wholly unsought, that is to say that in such a civilization the question of seeking it does not arise; an analogous observation could be made concerning virgin nature, direct work of the Creator. The aesthetic environment of traditional man plays an indirectly didactic part. It “thinks” on his behalf and furnishes him with criteria of truth, if he is capable of understanding them, for “beauty is the splendor of the true.” In a word, for traditional man a certain beauty that can be thought of as a mean is part of his existence, it is a natural aspect of truth and of the good. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

It may seem surprising that we should introduce a subject which not only appears to have little or no connection with anything that has gone before, but also in itself seems to be of secondary importance; in fact, however, this question of forms in art is by no means a negligible one and is closely connected with the general questions dealt with in this book. First of all, however, there is a matter of terminology which calls for a few words of explanation: in speaking of ‘forms in art’ and not just ‘forms’, our purpose is to make it clear that we are not dealing with ‘abstract’ forms, but, on the contrary, with things that are ‘sensible’ by definition; if, on the other hand, we avoid speaking of ‘artistic forms’, it is because the epithet ‘artistic’ carries with it, in present-day language, a notion of ‘luxury’ and therefore of ‘superfluity’, and this corresponds to something diametrically opposed to what we have in mind. The expression ‘forms in art’ is really a pleonasm, inasmuch as it is not possible, traditionally speaking, to dissociate form from art, the latter being simply the principle of manifestation of the former; however, we have been obliged to use this pleonasm for the reasons just given. 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

In order to give an idea of the principles of traditional art, we will point out a few of the most general and elementary ones: first of all, the work executed must conform to the use to which it will be put, and it must translate that conformity; if there be an added symbolism, it must conform to the symbolism inherent in the object; there must be no conflict between the essential and the accessory, but a hierarchical harmony, which will moreover spring from the purity of the symbolism; the treatment of the material used must be in conformity with the nature of that material in the same way that the material itself must be in conformity with the use of the object; lastly, the object must not give an illusion of being other than what it really is, for such an illusion always gives a disagreeable impression of uselessness, and when this illusion is the goal of the finished work, as it is in the case of all ‘classicist’ art, it is the mark of a uselessness which is only too apparent. The great innovations of naturalistic art can be reduced in fact to so many violations of the principles of normal art: firstly, as far as sculpture is concerned, violation of the inert material used, whether it be stone, metal or wood, and secondly, in the case of painting, violation of the plane surface. In the first example, the inert material is treated as if it were endowed with life, whereas it is essentially static and only allows, because of this fact, the representation either of motionless bodies or of essential or ‘schematic’ phases of movement, but not that of arbitrary, accidental or almost instantaneous movements; in the second example, that of painting, the plane surface is treated as if it had three dimensions, both by means of foreshortening and by the use of shadows. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

It will be appreciated that rules such as these are not dictated by merely ‘aesthetic’ reasons and that they represent, on the contrary, applications of cosmic and divine laws; beauty will flow from them as a necessary result. As regards beauty in naturalistic art, it does not reside in the work as such, but solely in the object which it copies, whereas in symbolic and traditional art it is the work in itself which is beautiful, whether it be abstract’ or whether it borrows beauty in a greater or lesser degree from a natural model. It would be difficult to find a better illustration of this distinction than that afforded by a comparison between so-called ‘classical’ Greek art and Egyptian art: the beauty of the latter does not, in fact, lie simply and solely in the object represented, but resides simultaneously and a fortiori in the work as such, that is to say in the ‘inward reality’ which the work makes manifest. The fact that naturalistic art has sometimes succeeded in expressing nobility of feeling or vigorous intelligence is not in question and may be explained by cosmological reasons which could not but exist; but that has no connection with art as such, and no individual value could ever make up for the falsification of the latter. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

The majority of moderns who claim to understand art are convinced that Byzantine or Romanesque art is in no way superior to modern art, and that a Byzantine or Romanesque Virgin resembles Mary no more than do her naturalistic images, in fact rather the contrary. The answer is, however, quite simple: the Byzantine Virgin – which traditionally goes back to Saint Luke and the Angels – is infinitely closer to the ‘truth’ of Mary than a naturalistic image, which of necessity is always that of another woman. Only one of two things is possible: either the artist presents an absolutely correct portrait of the Virgin from a physical point of view, in which case it will be necessary for the artist to have seen the Virgin, a condition which obviously cannot be fulfilled – setting aside the fact that all naturalistic painting is an abuse – or else the artist will present a perfectly adequate symbol of the Virgin, but in this case physical resemblance, without being absolutely excluded, is no longer at all in question. It is this second solution – the only one that makes sense – which is realized in icons; what they do not express by means of a physical resemblance, they express by the abstract but immediate language of symbolism, a language which is built up of precision and imponderables both together. Thus the icon, in addition to the beatific power which is inherent in it by reason of its sacramental character, transmits the holiness or inner reality of the Virgin and hence the universal reality of which the Virgin herself is an expression; in contributing both to a state of contemplation and to a metaphysical reality, the icon becomes a support of intellection, whereas a naturalistic image transmits only the fact – apart from its obvious and inevitable lie – that Mary was a woman. It is true that in the case of a particular icon it may happen that the proportions and features are those of the living Virgin, but such a likeness, if it really came to pass, would be independent of the symbolism of the image and could only be the result of a special inspiration, no doubt an unconscious one on the part of the artist himself. Naturalistic art could moreover be legitimate up to a certain point if it was used exclusively to set on record the features of the saints, since the contemplation of saints (the Hindu darshan) can be a very precious help in the spiritual way, owing to the fact that their outward appearance conveys, as it were, the perfume of their spirituality; but the use in this limited manner of a partial and ‘disciplined’ naturalism corresponds only to a very remote possibility. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

To come back to the symbolic and spiritual quality of the icon: one’s ability to perceive the spiritual quality of an icon or any other symbol is a question of contemplative intelligence and also of ‘sacred science’. However, it is certainly false to claim, in justification of naturalism, that the people need an ‘accessible’, that is to say a platitudinous art, for it is riot the ‘people’ who gave birth to the Renaissance; the art of the latter, like all the ‘fine art’ which is derived from it, is on the contrary an offence to the piety of the simple person. The artistic ideals of the Renaissance and of all modern art are therefore very far removed from what the people need, and, in fact, nearly all the miraculous Virgins to which people are attracted are Byzantine or Romanesque; and who would presume to argue that the black colouring of some of them agrees with popular taste or is particularly accessible to it? On the other hand, the Virgins made by the hands of the people, when they have not been corrupted by the influence of academic art, are very much more ‘real’, even in a subjective way, than those of the latter; and even if one were prepared to admit that the majority demand empty or unintelligent images, can it be said that the needs of the elite are never to be taken into consideration? sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

In the preceding paragraphs, we have already implicitly answered the question as to whether sacred art is meant to cater for the intellectual elite alone, or whether it has something to offer to the man of average intelligence. This question solves itself when one takes into consideration the universality of all symbolism, for this universality enables sacred art to transmit – apart from metaphysical truths and facts derived from sacred history – not only spiritual states of the mind, but psychological attitudes which are accessible to all men; in modern parlance, one might say that such art is both profound and ‘naïve’ at the same time, and this combination of profundity and ‘naivety’ is precisely one of the dominant characteristics of sacred art. The ‘ingenuousness’ or ‘candour’ of such art, far from being due to a spontaneous or affected inferiority, reveals on the contrary the normal state of the human soul, whether it be that of the average or of the aboveaverage man; the apparent ‘intelligence’ of naturalism, on the .other hand, that is to say, its wellnigh satanic skill in copying Nature and thus transmitting nothing but the hollow shell of beings and things, can only correspond to a deformed mentality, we might say to one which has deviated from primordial simplicity or ‘innocence’. It goes without saying that such a deformation, resulting as it does from intellectual superficiality and mental virtuosity, is incompatible with the traditional spirit and consequently finds no place in a civilization that has remained faithful to that spirit. Therefore if sacred art appeals to contemplative intelligence, it likewise appeals to normal human sensibility. This means that such art alone possesses a universal language, and that none is better fitted to appeal, not only to an elite, but also to the people at large. Let us remember, too, as far as the apparently ‘childish’ aspect of the traditional mentality is concerned, Christ’s injunction to be ‘as little children’ and ‘simple as doves’, words which, no matter what may be their spiritual meaning, also quite plainly refer to psychological realities. 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

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

True aesthetics (NA: This word is used in its ordinary present-day meaning; it is not used to designate theories of sensory knowledge.) is nothing else than the science of forms and its aim must therefore be what is objective and real, not subjectivity as such. Forms, intellections: the whole of traditional art is founded on this correspondence. Moreover, a feeling for form may also play an important part in intellective speculation. The rightness – or the logic – of proportions is a criterion of truth or error in every domain into which formal elements enter. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

In beauty man ‘realizes’ in a passive way – as to its perception – and outwardly – as to its production – that which he should himself ‘be’ in an active or inward fashion. When man surrounds himself with the ineptitudes of a deviated art how can he still ‘see’ what he should ‘be’? He runs the risk of ‘being’ what he ‘sees’ and assimilating the errors suggested by the erroneous forms among which he lives. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

From an ascetico-mystical or penitential point of view beauty may appear as something worldly, because such a point of view tends to look at everything with the eye of the will; beauty is then confounded with desire. But from the intellective point of view – which is that of the nature of things and not that of expediency – beauty is spiritual, since in its own way it externalizes Truth and Bliss. That is why the born contemplative cannot see or hear beauty without perceiving in it something of God; and this Divine content allows him the more easily to detach himself from appearances. As for passional man, he sees in beauty the world, seduction, the ego; it distances him from the ‘one thing needful’, at least in the case of natural beauty, though not in the case of the beauty of sacred art, for then the ‘one thing needful’ harnesses the need for beauty in the cause of piety, of fervour and of heaven. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Each of these two points of view should take account of the truth of the other. The perspective of merit cannot prevent truth from imposing itself in principle on every man, even on those who are weak, and it is just this which gives to sacred art its universal validity. The perspective of the intellect, for its part, will not preclude all men – even the strong – from being by nature corruptible. A distinction must be made, not only between contemplatives and passional men, but also between man in so far as he is contemplative and man in so far as he is passional. It may on occasion be useful to slander beauty; but to do so is always a kind of outrage. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Art should have both a human and a Divine character: human with respect to surrounding nature, which serves as its materia prima, and Divine with respect to the undetermined and unqualified human being, to the bare fact of our psychological existence. In the first case art detaches the human work from nature by reason of the fact that – far from being merely imitated – nature is interpreted and transfigured according to spiritual and technical laws; in the second case the raw human being receives an ideal content which organizes, directs and raises him above himself in accordance with the sufficient reason of our human state. It is these two characteristics which determine art and are the justification for its existence. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Side by side with their intrinsic qualities, the forms of art answer a strictly useful purpose. In order that spiritual influences may be able to manifest themselves without encumbrance, they have need of a formal setting which corresponds to them analogically. Without this they cannot radiate, even if they remain always present. It is true that in the soul of a holy man they can shine in spite of everything, but not everyone is a saint, and a sanctuary is constructed to facilitate resonances of the spirit, not to oppose them. (NA: It will be said that angels are at ease in a stable. But a stable, precisely, is not a baroque or surrealist church.) sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Sacred art is made as a vehicle for spiritual presences, it is made at one and the same time for God, for angels and for man; profane art on the other hand exists only for man and by that very fact betrays him. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Sacred art helps man to find his own centre, that kernel the nature of which is to love God. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Apart from its function of ‘conserving’ and ‘suggesting’, which concerns both the collectivity and, more directly, certain contemplatives who draw inspiration from its symbolism and breathe its beauty, sacred art belongs to the order of ‘sensible consolations’. Such consolations may draw a man nearer to God or may distance him from God according to the subjective dispositions of the individual, and independently of the objective value of the forms. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

If a contemplative ‘can’ turn aside from art as such in so far as he seeks God in the void, he ‘must’ on the other hand reject an art that is individualist and which inevitably offers, on one level or another, false suggestions and a false plenitude. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

There is something in our intelligence which wants to live in repose, something in which the conscious and the unconscious meet in a kind of passive activity, and it is to this element that the lofty and easy language of art addresses itself. The language is lofty because of the spiritual symbolism of its forms and the nobility of its style; it is easy because of the aesthetic mode of assimilation. When this function of our spirit, this intuition which stands between the natural and the supernatural and produces incalculable vibrations, is systematically violated and led into error, the consequences will be extremely serious, if not for the individual, at all events for the civilization concerned. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

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

The reproach of ‘naturalism’ cannot properly be levelled merely at a capacity to observe nature; it concerns rather the prejudice which would reduce art simply and solely to the imitation of nature. A more or less exact observation of nature may quite well coincide with art which is traditional, symbolical and sacred, as is proved by the art of the Egypt of the Pharaohs or that of the Far East; it is then the result, not of a passionate and empty naturalism, but of an objectivity which is fundamentally intellectual. The spiritualized realism of Chinese landscape painters has nothing in common with worldly aestheticism. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

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

‘Truth’ in art can by no means be reduced to the subjective veracity of the artist; it resides first and foremost in the objective truth of forms, colours and materials. Thus an ignorant and profane art will be far more ‘false’ than a faithful copy of an ancient work, for the copy will at least transmit the objective truth of the original, whereas the invented work will transmit only the psychological ‘truth’ – and thus the error – of its author. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

It is by re-establishing links with ancient truth that one would come to understand it and find a new and spiritually legitimate originality. An art that “seeks” is always false. Ancient art never sought for anything; if sometimes it changed, that was as a result of inspiration and not as the result of an effort that could have no motive. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

We must never lose sight of the fact that as soon as art ceases to be a pure and simple ideography – which is perfectly within its rights, for how should the decorative element of art be banned when it is everywhere in nature? – it has a mission from which nothing can make it deviate. This mission is to transmit spiritual values, whether these are saving truths or cosmic qualities, including human virtues. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Poetry should express with sincerity a beauty of the soul; one might also say: “with beauty, sincerity”. It would serve no purpose to make so obvious a point but for the fact that in our days definitions of art have become increasingly falsified, either through the abuse of attributing to one art the characteristics of another, or by introducing into a definition of one art, or of all art, perfectly arbitrary elements such as a PRE-occupation with its date; as though the value or lack of value of a work of art could depend on the knowledge of whether it is modern or ancient, or on one s believing it to be ancient if it is modern or vice versa. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

The pseudo-Christian art inaugurated by the neo-paganism of the Renaissance seeks and realizes only man. The mysteries it should suggest are suffocated in a hubbub of superficiality and impotence, inevitable features of individualism; in any case it inflicts very great harm on society, above all by its ignorant hypocrisy. How should it be otherwise, seeing that this art is only disguised paganism and takes no account in its formal language of the contemplative chastity and the immaterial beauty of the spirit of the Gospels? How can one unreservedly call ‘sacred’ an art which, forgetful of the quasi-sacramental character of holy images and forgetful, too, of the traditional rules of the craft, holds up to the veneration of the faithful carnal and showy copies of nature and even portraits of concubines painted by libertines? In the ancient Church, and in the Eastern Churches even down to our own times, icon painters prepared themselves for their work by fasting, by prayer and by sacraments; to the inspiration which had fixed the immutable type of the image they added their own humble and pious inspirations; and they scrupulously respected the symbolism – always susceptible of an endless series of precious nuances – of the forms and colours. They drew their creative joy, not from inventing pretentious novelties, but from a loving recreation of the revealed prototypes, and this resulted in a spiritual and artistic perfection such as no individual genius could ever attain. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Late Gothic statuary has all the characteristics of a dense and unintelligent bourgeois art; the Renaissance was in a strong position in setting against it the noble and intelligent art of a Donatello or a Cellini. But none the less, taken as a whole, the misdeeds of Gothic art are a small matter beside those of the profane, passionate and pompous art of the Renaissance. No doubt bad taste and incapacity are to be met with everywhere, but tradition neutralizes them and reduces them to a minimum that is always tolerable. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Humanly speaking some artists of the Renaissance are great, but with a greatness which becomes small in the face of the greatness of the sacred. In sacred art genius is as it were hidden; what is dominant is an impersonal, vast and mysterious intelligence. A sacred work of art has a fragrance of infinity, an imprint of the absolute. In it individual talent is disciplined; it is intermingled with the creative function of the tradition as a whole; this cannot be replaced, far less can it be surpassed, by human resources. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Hindu art has in it both something of the heavy motion of the sea and at the same time something of the exuberance of virgin forest; it is sumptuous, sensual and rhythmical; intimately linked with dancing, it seems to originate in the cosmic dance of the Gods. In certain respects the Tamil style is heavier and more static than that of the Aryan Hindus of northern India. Islamic art is abstract, but also poetical and gracious; it is woven out of sobriety and splendour. The style of the Maghreb is perhaps more virile than are the Turkish and Persian styles; but these – and especially the latter – are by way of compensation more varied. Within the field of Chinese art, which is rich, powerful and full of the unexpected and the mysterious, the Japanese style represents a tendency towards soberness and elegance. The Tibetan style is midway between that of the Chinese and the Hindus and is heavy, sombre, at times rough and often fierce; the Burmese and Siamese style is delicate, lively and precious. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Islamic art allies the joyous profusion of vegetation with the pure and abstract severity of crystals: a prayer niche adorned with arabesques owes something to a garden and to snowflakes. This mixture of qualities is already to be met with in the Koran where the geometry of the ideas is as it were hidden under the blaze of forms. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

Islam, being possessed by the idea of Unity, if one may so put it, has also an aspect of the simplicity of the desert, of whiteness and of austerity, which, in its art, alternates with the crystalline joy of ornamentation. The cradle of the Arabs is a landscape of deserts and oases. Moslem art shows in a very transparent way how art should repeat nature – understood in the widest possible sense – in its creative modes without copying it in its results. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

When the arts are enumerated the art of dress is too often forgotten though it none the less has an importance as great, or almost as great, as architecture. Doubtless no civilization has ever produced summits in every field. Thus the Arab genius, made up of virility and resignation, has produced a masculine dress of unsurpassed nobility and sobriety, whereas it has neglected feminine dress, which is destined in Islam, not to express the ‘eternal feminine’ as does Hindu dress, but to hide woman’s seductive charms. The Hindu genius, which in a certain sense divinizes the ‘wife-mother’, has on the other hand created a feminine dress unsurpassable in its beauty, its dignity and its femininity. One of the most expressive and one of the least-known forms of dress is that of the Red Indians, with its rippling fringes and its ornaments of a wholly primordial symbolism; here man appears in all the solar glory of the hero, and woman in the proud modesty of her impersonal function. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

The art of dress of every civilization, and even of every people, embraces many varying forms in time and space, but the spirit always remains the same, though it does not always reach the same heights of direct expression and immediate intelligibility. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

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

What is true for a certain Buddhism is true a priori for Hinduism, the sacred art of which exposes and accentuates the message of both human bodies, the masculine and the feminine: message of ascending and unitive verticality in both cases, certainly, but in rigorous, transcendent, objective, abstract, rational and mathematical mode in the first case, and in gentle, immanent, concrete, emotional and mus ical mode in the second. On the one hand, a path centered on the metaphysical Idea and Rigor, and on the other hand, a way centered on the sacramental Symbol and Gentleness; not to mention diverse combinations of the two perspectives, temperaments or methods, for the absolute male cannot exist any more than can the absolute female, given that there is but one sole anthropos. Thus, there are spiritualities, and even religions, which could be qualified as “feminine,” without this character signifying that their adepts lose anything whatever of their virility; (NA: In Krishnaism, the masculine adepts consider themselves as gopis, lovers of Krishna, which is all the more plausible in that in relation to the Divinity every creature has something feminine about it.) and the converse is equally true, for there have been women in paths which are the least representative of their mentality; both possibilities seem sufficiently evident so as to dispense us from entering into the meanders of this paradox. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

One may wonder why the Hindus, and still more so the Buddhists, did not fear to furnish their sacred art with occasions for a fall, given that beauty – sexual beauty above all – invites to “let go of the prey for its shadow,” that is, to forget the transcendent content through being attached to the earthly husk. Now it is not for nothing that Buddhist art, more than any other, has given voice to the terrible aspects of cosmic manifestation, which at the very least constitutes a “reestablishing of the balance”: the spectator is warned, he cannot lose sight of the everywhere present menace of the pitiless samsâra, nor that of the Guardians of the Sanctuary. Darshan – the contemplation of the Divine in nature or in art – quite clearly presupposes a contemplative temperament; now it is this very temperament that comprises a sufficient guarantee against the spirit of compliance and profanation. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

The morality and mysticism of the West see carnal sin exclusively in concupiscence, which is one-sided and insufficient; in reality, sin here lies just as much in the profanation of a theophanic mystery; it is in the fact of pulling downwards, towards the frivolous and the trivial, that which by its nature points upwards and towards the sacred; but sin or deviation is also, at a level which in this case is not deprived of nobility, in the purely aesthetic and individualistic cult of bodies , as was the case in classical Greece, where the sense of clarity, of measure, of finite perfection, completely obliterated the sense of the transcendent, of mystery and of the infinite. Sensible beauty became an end in itself; it was no longer man who resembled God, it was God who resembled man; whereas in Egyptian and Hindu art, which express the substantial and not the accidental, one feels that the human form is nothing without a mystery which on the one hand fashions it and on the other hand transcends it, and which calls both to Love and to Deliverance. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

Pure and simple logic amounts only to a very indirect manner of knowing things; it is, before all else, the art of coordinating data (whether true or false) according to a given need of causal satisfaction and within the limits of a given imagination, so much so that an apparently faultless argument can yet be quite erroneous in function of the falseness of its premisses; the more elevated the order of the thing to be made known, the more vulnerable will be the mind in that case. sophiaperennis: Science and logic

Pure and simple logic amounts only to a very indirect manner of knowing things; it is, before all else, the art of coordinating data (whether true or false) according to a given need of causal satisfaction and within the limits of a given imagination, so much so that an apparently faultless argument can yet be quite erroneous in function of the falseness of its premisses; the more elevated the order of the thing to be made known, the more vulnerable will be the mind in that case. sophiaperennis: Science and mythologies

If machines could be suppressed and the ancient crafts restored with all their aspects of art and dignity, the ‘problem of the workers’ would cease to exist; this is true even as regards purely servile functions or more or less quantitative occupations for the simple reason that machines are in themselves inhuman and anti-spiritual. Machines kill not only the soul of the worker, but the soul as such and so also the soul of the exploiter: the coexistence of exploiter and worker is inseparable from mechanization; the crafts by their human and spiritual quality prevent this gross alternative. Mechanization of the world, after all, means the triumph of ponderous and treacherous iron-mongery; it is the victory of metal over wood, of matter over man, of cunning over intelligence; (NA: Somewhere we have read that only the advances in technology can explain the new and catastrophic character of the first world war, and this is very true. Here it is machines that have made history, just as elsewhere they are making men, ideas and an entire world.) expressions such as ‘mass’, ‘block’ and ‘shock’ that occur so commonly in the vocabulary of industrialized man, are very significant in a world more proper to termites than to humans. sophiaperennis: Science and mythologies

If there are no grounds for finding fault with modem science in so far as it studies a realm within the limits of its competence – the precision and effectiveness of its results leave no room for doubt on this point – one must add this important reservation, namely, that the principle, the range and the development of a science or an art is never independent of Revelation nor of the demands of spiritual life, not forgetting those of social equilibrium; it is absurd to claim unlimited rights for something in itself contingent, such as science or art. By refusing to admit any possibility of serious knowledge outside its own domain, modem science, as has already been said, claims exclusive and total knowledge, while making itself out to be empirical and non-dogmatic, and this, it must be insisted, involves a flagrant contradiction; a rejection of all “dogmatism” and of everything that must be accepted a priori or not at all is simply a failure to make use of the whole of one’s intelligence. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

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