truths

The Advaitic Doctrine comprises the crucial idea of hierarchized Truth: first of all there is the one and absolute Truth, but this latter does not exclude the diverse and relative TRUTHS; on the contrary, it supports them, since they offer to common mortals all they are able to understand and all that can save them. On the one hand, what is true saves ipso facto; on the other hand, that is true which possesses a saving power. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

This is what must not be lost sight of when considering the perplexing diversity of liberating Paths — not just any sects, but the intrinsically orthodox Paths, whatever the demerits of the men who represent them. Doubtless there are demanding doctrines that cannot satisfy every need for causal explanations; but there are TRUTHS all men must acknowledge, actions all must perform, beauties all must realize; which is to say that there is a Message for the least of mortals. Truth, Prayer and Virtue; everything is there. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

The phenomena of evolution and transmutation exist within the limits of certain contingencies, otherwise the seed would never become a tree and a plant would never modify its shape under given conditions, such as a change of soil or climate; but these two factors – evolution and transmutation – are altogether secondary in relation to the principle of qualitative anticipation of effects within their own cause. These TRUTHS assume a particular importance when it is a question of Revelations and traditions, for the slightest error on this plane can be devastating to the soul and to the intelligence. (Treasures of Buddhism, p27). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress

In this connection, we must again point out that a religious dogma is not a dogma in itself but solely by the fact of being considered as such and through a sort of confusion of the idea with the form in which it is clothed; on the other hand, the outward dogmatization of universal TRUTHS is perfectly justified in view of the fact that these TRUTHS or ideas, in having to provide the foundation of a tradition, must be capable of being assimilated in some degree by all men. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

Dogmatism reveals itself not only by its inability to conceive the inward or implicit illimitability of the symbol, the universality which resolves all outward oppositions, but also by its inability to recognize, when faced with two apparently contradictory TRUTHS, the inward connection which they implicitly affirm, a connection which makes of them complementary aspects of one and the same truth. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

One might illustrate this in the following manner: whoever participates in universal Knowledge will regard two apparently contradictory TRUTHS as he would two points situated on one and the same circumference which links them together by its continuity and so reduces them to unity; in the measure in which these points are distant from, and thus opposed to, one another, there will be contradiction, and this contradiction will reach its maximum when the two points are situated at the extremities of a diameter of the circle; but this extreme opposition or contradiction only appears as a result of isolating the points under consideration from the circle and ignoring the existence of the latter. One may conclude from this that a dogmatic affirmation, that is to say an affirmation which is inseparable from its form and admits no other, is comparable to a point, which by definition, as it were, contradicts all other possible points; a speculative formulation, on the other hand, is comparable to an element of a circle, the very form of which indicates its logical and ontological continuity and therefore the whole circle or, by analogical transposition, the whole Truth; this comparison will, perhaps, suggest in the clearest possible way the difference which separates a dogmatic affirmation from a speculative formulation. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

At all events, no infallibility exists which a priori encompasses all possible contingent domains; omniscience is not a human possibility. No one can be infallible with regard to unknown, or insufficiently known, phenomena; one may have an intuition for pure principles without having one for a given phenomenal order, that is to say, without being able to apply the principles spontaneously in such and such a domain. The importance of this possible incapacity diminishes to the extent that the phenomenal domain envisaged is secondary and, on the contrary, that the principles infallibly enunciated are essential. One must forgive small errors on the part of one who offers great TRUTHS – and it is the latter that determine how small or how great the errors are – whereas it would obviously be perverse to forgive great errors when they are accompanied by many small TRUTHS. (NA: There is certainly no reason to admire a science which counts insects and atoms but is ignorant of God; which makes an avowal of not knowing Him and yet claims omniscience by principle. It should be noted that the scientist, like every other rationalist, does not base himself on reason in itself; he calls ” reason” his lack of imagination and knowledge, and his ignorances are for him the ” data” of reason. 2 . Always respect ful of this form, the Holy Spirit will not teach a Moslem theologian the subtleties of trinitarian theology nor those of Vedanta; from another angle, it will not change a raci al or ethnic mentality; neither that of the Romans in view of Catholicism, nor that of the Arabs in view of Islam. Humanity must not only have its history, but also its stories.) sophiaperennis: The notion of philosophy

There is a total truth which is such because it embraces, in principle, all possible TRUTHS: this is metaphysical doctrine, whether its enunciation be simple or complex, symbolical or dialectical; but there is also a truth which is total on the plane of spiritual realization, and in this case “truth” becomes synonymous with “reality.” Since on the plane of facts there is never anything absolute – or more precisely, nothing “absolutely absolute” – the “totality,” while being perfect and sufficient in practice, is always relative in theory; it is indefinitely extensible, but also indefinitely reducible; it can assume the form of an extended doctrine, but also that of a simple sentence, just as the totality of space can be expressed by a system of intertwining patterns too complex for the eye to unravel, but also by an elementary geometrical figure. sophiaperennis: What is the intellect and Intellection?

The fatal result of a “reflexivity” that has become hypertrophied is an exaggerated attention to verbal subtleties which makes a man less and less sensitive to the objective value of formulations of ideas; a habit has grown up of “classifying” everything without rhyme or reason in a long series of superficial and often imaginary categories, so that the most decisive – and intrinsically the most evident – TRUTHS are unrecognized because they are conventionally relegated into the category of things “seen and done with”, while ignoring the fact that “to see” is not necessarily synonymous with “to understand”; a name like that of Jacob Boehm, for example, means theosophy, so “let’s turn over”. sophiaperennis: Jacques Maritain

That is why each of the great and intrinsically orthodox religions can, through its dogmas, rites and other symbols, serve as a means of expressing all the TRUTHS known directly by the eye of the Intellect, the spiritual organ which is called in Moslem esotericism the ‘eye of the heart’. We have just stated that religion translates metaphysical or universal TRUTHS into dogmatic language. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy

Now, though dogma is not accessible to all men in its intrinsic truth, which can only be directly attained by the Intellect, it is none the less accessible through faith, which is, for most people, the only possible mode of participation in the divine TRUTHS. As for intellectual knowledge, which, as we have seen, proceeds neither from belief nor from a process of reasoning, it goes beyond dogma in the sense that, without ever contradicting the latter, it penetrates its ‘internal dimension’, that is, the infinite Truth which dominates all forms. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy

Far from proving that modern man “keeps a cool head” and that men of old were dreamers, modern unbelief and “exact science” are to be explained at bottom by a wave of rationalism – sometimes apparently antirationalist – which is reacting against the religious sentimentalism and bourgeois romanticism of the previous epoch; both these tendencies have existed side by side since the “age of reason.” The Renaissance also knew such a wave of false lucidity: like our age, it rejected TRUTHS along with outworn sentimentalities, replacing them with new sentimentalities that were supposedly “intelligent.” To properly understand these oscillations it must be remembered that Christianity as a path of love opposed pagan rationalism; that is to say, it opposed emotional elements possessing a spiritual quality to the implacable, but “worldly,” logic of the Greco-Romans, while later on absorbing certain sapiential elements which their civilization comprised. sophiaperennis: Nature of Modern man

The fact that the philosophic mode of thought is centered on logic and not directly on intuition implies that intuition is left at the mercy of logic’s needs: in Scholastic disputations it was a question of avoiding certain TRUTHS which, given the general level of mentality, might have given rise to certain dangerous conclusions. sophiaperennis: Scholasticism

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

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

It is indispensable to know at the outset that there are TRUTHS inherent in the human spirit that are as if buried in the “depths of the heart,” which means that they are contained as potentialities or virtualities in the pure Intellect: these are the principial and archetypal TRUTHS, those which prefigure and determine all others. They are accessible, intuitively and infallibly, to the “gnostic,” the “pneumatic,” the “theosopher” – in the proper and original meaning of these terms – and they are accessible consequently to the “philosopher” according to the still literal and innocent meaning of the word: to a Pythagoras or a Plato, and to a certain extent even to an Aristotle, in spite of his exteriorizing and virtually scientistic perspective. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity

The Renaissance also knew such a wave of false lucidity: like our age, it rejected TRUTHS along with outworn sentimentalities, replacing them with new sentimentalities that were supposedly “intelligent.” To properly understand these oscillations it must be remembered that Christianity as a path of love opposed pagan rationalism; that is to say, it opposed emotional elements possessing a spiritual quality to the implacable, but “worldly,” logic of the Greco-Romans, while later on absorbing certain sapiential elements which their civilization comprised. sophiaperennis: Philosophy and modern times

If we take the example of a doctrine in appearance completely intellectual and inaccessible to the emotions, namely Kantianism, considered as the archetype of theories seemingly divorced from all poetry, we shall have no difficulty in discovering that its starting point or “dogma” is reducible to a gratuitous reaction against all that lies beyond the reach of reason; it voices, therefore, a priori an instinctive revolt against TRUTHS which are rationally ungraspable and which are considered annoying on account of this very inaccessibility. All the rest is nothing but dialectical scaffolding, ingenious or “brilliant” if one wishes, but contrary to truth. sophiaperennis: Kantianism

A word concerning metaphysical certitude, or the infallibility of pure intellection, is perhaps called for here. “I think, therefore I am,” said Descartes; aside from the fact that our existence is not proven by thought alone, he should have added: “I am, therefore Being is”; or he could have said in the first place: “I think because I am.” In any event, the foundation of metaphysical certitude is the coincidence between truth and our being; a coincidence that no ratiocination could invalidate. Contingent things are proven by factors situated within their order of contingency, whereas things deriving from the Absolute become clear by their participation in the Absolute, hence by a “superabundance of light” – according to Saint Thomas – which amounts to saying that they are proven by themselves. In other words, universal TRUTHS draw their evidence not from our contingent thought, but from our transpersonal being, which constitutes the substance of our spirit and guarantees the adequacy of intellection. sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito

… Rationalism admits as true only what can be proven, without taking into account on the one hand that truth is independent of our willingness to admit it or not, and on the other hand that a proof is always in proportion to a need for causality, so that there are TRUTHS that cannot be proven to everybody; strictly speaking, rationalist thought admits something not because it is true, but because it can be proven–or appear to be proven–which amounts to saying that for rationalism dialectic outweighs truth, in fact, if not in theory. Specifically rationalist thought, moreover, readily overlooks the fact that there are mental needs due only to a deviation or a hypertrophy and which are consequently unable to provide legitimate points of departure for axiomatic formulations: if blind men could see light they would not dream of asking for proofs of its existence. sophiaperennis: Rationalism

In proportion to the loftiness of its aspects, Truth wishes to be “seen” and not simply “thought”; when it is a question of transcendent TRUTHS, the mental operation can have only two functions, which are rather the positive and negative modes of one function: to contribute to the individual’s assimilation of the intellectual vision, and to eliminate the mental obstacles that interfere with this vision, or in other words, that veil “the Eye of the Heart.” sophiaperennis: Rationalism

Art has a function that is both magical and spiritual: magical, it renders present principles, powers and also things that it attracts by virtue of a “sympathetic magic”; spiritual, it exteriorizes TRUTHS and beauties in view of our interiorization, of our return to the “kingdom of God that is within you.” The Principle becomes manifestation so that manifestation might rebecome the Principle, (NA: Saint Irenaeus: “God became man that man might become God.”) or so that the “I” might return to the Self; or simply, so that the human soul might, through given phenomena, make contact with the heavenly archetypes, and thereby with its own archetype. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

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

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

FOR exoterism, appearances have little importance, unless it be that Revelation and Tradition concern themselves with them to a certain degree; for pure esoterism, on the contrary, appearances have all the importance that results from their nature on the one hand, and from the nature of man on the other. For an absurd appearance is an error, and many errors in history would have been avoided, if one had not created a framework of appearances that favoured them, and made them appear precisely as TRUTHS or at least as very venial sins. Certainly, it is the spirit that counts, not forms, when the alternative arises; in normal conditions it arises seldom, and in any case the primacy of the spirit does not require falseness on the part of forms, to say the least. Perfect virtue includes everything that is within our reach, just as the total truth includes everything that is. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF 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

Forms allow of a direct and ‘plastic’ assimilation of the TRUTHS – or the realities – of the spirit. The geometry of the symbol is steeped in beauty, which in its turn and in its own way is also a symbol. The perfect form is that in which truth is incarnate in the rigour of the symbolical formulation and in the purity and intelligence of the style. 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

Metaphysical or mystical poets such as Dante and some of the troubadours, and also the Sufi poets, expressed spiritual realities through the beauty of their souls. It is a matter of spiritual endowment far more than a question of method, for it is not given to every man sincerely to formulate TRUTHS which are beyond the range of ordinary humanity. Even if the concern was only to introduce a symbolical terminology into a poem, it would still be necessary to be a true poet in order to succeed without betrayal. Whatever one may think of the symbolistic intention of the Vita Nuova or the ‘Song of Wine’ (by Omar ibn al-Färidh) or the quatrains of Omar Khayyam, it is not possible knowingly to deny the poetical quality of such works, and it is this quality which, from an artistic point of view, justifies the intention in question; moreover the same symbiosis of poetry and symbolism is to be found in prototypes of Divine inspiration such as the ‘Song of Songs’. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

There are TRUTHS which intuitive intellection alone allows one to attain, but it is not a fact that such intellection lies within the capacity of every man of ordinarily sound mind. Moreover the Intellect, for its part, requires Revelation, both as its occasional cause and as vehicle of the ‘Perennial Philosophy,’ if it is to actualize its own light in more than a fragmentary manner. sophiaperennis: Science and mythologies

“The TRUTHS … expressed (by the Sophia Perennis) are not the exclusive possession of any school or individual; were it otherwise they would not be TRUTHS, for these cannot be invented, but must necessarily be known in every integral traditional civilization. It might, however, reasonably be asked for what human and cosmic reasons TRUTHS that may in a very general sense be called “esoteric” should be brought to light and made explicit at the present time, in an age that is so little inclined to speculation. There is indeed something abnormal in this, but it lies, not in the fact of the exposition of these TRUTHS, but in the general condition of our age, which marks the end of a great cyclic period of terrestrial humanity — the end of a maha-yuga according to Hindu cosmology — and so must recapitulate or manifest again in one way or another everything that is included in the cycle, in conformity with the adage : “extremes meet”; thus things that are in themselves abnormal may become necessary by reason of the conditions just referred to. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

From a more individual point of view, that of mere expediency, it must be admitted that the spiritual confusion of our times has reached such a pitch that the harm that might in principle befall certain people from contact with the TRUTHS in question is compensated by the advantages other will derive from the selfsame TRUTHS; again, the term “esoterism” has been so often misused in order to cloak ideas that are as unspiritual as they are dangerous, and what is know of esoteric doctrines has been so frequently plagiarized and deformed — not to mention the fact that the outward and readily exaggerated incompatibility of the different religious forms greatly discredits, in the minds of most of our contemporaries, all religions – that it is not only desirable but even incumbent upon one to give some idea, firstly, of what true esoterism is and what it is not, and secondly, of what it is that constitutes the profound and eternal solidarity of all spiritual forms. (The Transcendent Unity of Religions, p.33-34) sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

This neo-yogism, like other similar movements, pretends that it can add an essential value to the wisdom of our ancestors; it believes that the religions are partial TRUTHS which it is called upon to stick together, after hundreds or thousands of years of waiting, and to crown with its own naive little system. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism