The Traditionalist School of thought (not to be confused with Traditionalist Catholicism), attained its current form with the French metaphysician René Guénon, although its precepts are considered to be timeless and to be found in all authentic traditions. It is also known as perennialism, the perennial philosophy, or Sophia Perennis . The term Philosophia Perennis goes back to the Renaissance, while the ancient Hindu expression Sanatana Dharma - Eternal Doctrine or Norm - has much the same signification. Traditionalist Catholic and Traditional Catholic are broad terms used to denote Roman Catholics who reject some or all of the reforms that were instituted after the Second Vatican Council, in particular the revised rite of Mass, which was promulgated in 1969 by Pope Paul VI as part of the process... Plato and Aristotle, by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome). ... René Jean Marie Joseph Guénon (November 15, 1886 – January 7, 1951) also named Sheikh Abd al-Wahid Yahya upon his acceptance of Islam, was a French-born author. ... The Perennial Philosophy (Latin philosophia perennis) is the idea that a universal set of truths common to all people and cultures exists. ... Sophia Perennis or Eternal wisdom that is the same in all authentic religions and metaphysics. ... This article is about the Hindu religion; for other meanings of the word, see Hindu (disambiguation). ...

The other founding figures of the Traditionalist School were the German-Swiss philosopher Frithjof Schuon and the Ceylonese scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy. To these were added over time such figures as Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, Michel Valsan and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Frithjof Schuon (June 18, 1907 – May 5, 1998) was a metaphysician, poet, painter, Sufi, and a leading figure of traditional metaphysics. ... Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy // Life of Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (22 August 1877 Colombo - 9 September 1947 Needham, Massachusetts) was the son of the famous Sri Lankan legislator and philosopher Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. ... Titus Burckhardt, a German Swiss, was born in Florence in 1908 and died in Lausanne in 1984. ... Martin Lings Martin Lings (Abu Bakr Siraj Ad-Din) (January 24, 1909 – May 12, 2005) was a lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon and a British scholar of Sufism. ... Michel Valsan (born in Romania, 19- ; death in Paris (France), 1974) Romanian islamologist and sufi shaykh under the name of Mustafa Abd al-Aziz. ... Nasr is an internationally acclaimed scholar [1]. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (Persian: سيد حسين نصر) A lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon, Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion, is a prominent authority in the fields of Islamic esoterism, sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. ...

Tradition and Religious Pluralism

Rejecting the idea of progress and the enlightenment paradigm, Perennialist authors describe modern civilization as a pseudo and decadent civilization, which manifests the lowest possibilities of the Kali Yuga (the Dark Age of the Hindu cosmology). To the “modern error,” the Perennialists oppose an everlasting wisdom of divine origin, “a Primordial Tradition”, transmitted from the very origin of humanity and partially restored by each genuine founder of a new religion. Perennialists have a very specific definition of “Tradition.” Tradition implies the idea of a transmission (tradere), but for Guénon and his followers, tradition does not have a human origin and may be considered as principles revealed from Heaven and binding man to his divine origin. Beyond the diversity of religious forms, they discern a single Tradition (with a capital letter), what Schuon called a “transcendent unity”. They claim that the historically separated traditions share not only the same divine origin but are based on the same metaphysical principles, sometimes called philosophia perennis. So far as can be discovered, the term “philosophia perennis” is modern, first appearing in the Renaissance. Though the term “philosophia perennis” is widely associated with the philosopher Leibniz who himself owes it from the sixteenth century theologian Augustinus Steuchius. But the ideal of such a philosophy is much older and one could easily recognize it in the Golden Chain (seira) of Neoplatonism, in the Patristic Lex primordialis, in the Islamic Din al- Fitra or even in the Hindu "Sanathana Dharma. Kali Yuga is also the title of a book by Roland Charles Wagner. ... Raphael was famous for depicting illustrious figures of the Classical past with the features of his Renaissance contemporaries. ... Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (July 1, 1646 in Leipzig - November 14, 1716 in Hannover) was a German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer of Sorb descent. ... Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is the modern term for a school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists. ...

The Rediscovery of the Sophia Perennis

The French author, René Guénon (1886-1951) was in a certain sense a pioneer in the rediscovery of this Philosophia Perennis or better Sophia Perennis in the 20th century. His view largely shared with later Perennialist authorities, is that Semitic religions have an exoteric/esoteric structure. Exoterism, the outward dimension of religion, is constituted by religious rites and a moral but also a dogmatic theology. The exoteric point of view is characterized by its “sentimentalist”, rather than purely intellectual nature and remains fairly limited. Based on the doctrine of creation and the subsequent duality between God and creation, exoterism does not offer means to transcend the limitations of the human state. The goal is only religious salvation that Guénon defines as a perpetual state of beatitude in a celestial paradise. In the Traditionalist view, esoterism is more than the complement of exoterism, the spirit as opposed to the letter, the kernel with respect to the shell. Esoterism has at least de jure, a total autonomy with respect to religion for its innermost substance is the Primordial Tradition itself. Based on pure metaphysics -by which Guénon means a supra-rational knowledge of the Divine, a gnosis, and not a rationalist system or theological dogma- its goal is the realization of the superior states of being and finally the union between the individual self and the Principle. Guénon calls this union “the Supreme Identity”. By Principle, Guénon and Schuon means more than the personal God of exoteric theology: the suprapersonal Essence, the Beyond-Being, the Absolute both totally transcendent and immanent to the manifestation. In their view the innermost essence of the individual being is non-different from the Absolute itself. Guénon refers here to the Vedantic concepts of Brahman (Principle), Atma (Self) and Moksa (Deliverance). This reference is not accidental or circumstantial. For Guénon, the Hindu Sanathana Dharma represents in fact “the more direct heritage of the Primordial Tradition”. More generally, the great traditions of Asia (Advaita Vedanta, Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism) play a paradigmatic function in his writings. He considers them as the more rigorous expression of pure metaphysics, this supra-formal and universal wisdom being nevertheless in itself neither eastern nor western. Contrary to the Semitic religions, those Asian religions don’t have an esoterism/exoterism structure which has emerged only later in the historical cycle, at a time of growing spiritual decadence, where the vast majority of the people were no longer “qualified” to understand metaphysical truths and transcendent possibilities of the human state. Sophia Perennis or Eternal wisdom that is the same in all authentic religions and metaphysics. ... René Jean Marie Joseph Guénon (November 15, 1886 – January 7, 1951) also named Sheikh Abd al-Wahid Yahya upon his acceptance of Islam, was a French-born author. ... Sophia Perennis or Eternal wisdom that is the same in all authentic religions and metaphysics. ... Theology (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason) means reasoned discourse concerning religion, spirituality and God. ... Esotericism refers to knowledge suitable only for the advanced, privileged, or initiated, as opposed to exoteric knowledge, which is public. ... Plato and Aristotle, by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome). ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ... Brahman (Devanagari: ब्रह्म ) in the Vedantic schools of Hindu philosophy, is the signifying name given to the concept of the unchanging, infinite, immanent and transcendent reality of all things in this universe. ... Atma is a derivation of the sanskrit word atman and means individual soul. ... This article is about a religious term. ... Advaita Vedanta (IAST ; Devanagari ; IPA []) is probably the best known of all Vedanta schools of philosophy of Hinduism, the others being Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita (total six). ... Taoism (sometimes written as and actually pronounced as Daoism (dow-ism)) is the English name for: Dao Jia [philosophical tao] philosophical school based on the texts the Tao Te Ching (ascribed to Laozi [Lao Tzu] and alternately spelled Dào Dé JÄ«ng) and the Zhuangzi; a family of organized... Relief image of the bodhisattva Guan Yin from Mt. ...

The Criticism of Modernity

For Guénon, the author of the Crisis of the Modern World, the end of this descending process is modernity itself, which manifests the lowest possibilities of the Kali Yuga. Guénon also called our age the Reign of the Quantity, because man and the cosmos are more and more determined, ontologically speaking, by matter. The tragedy of the Western world since the Renaissance is, in his view, that it has lost almost any contact with the Sophia Perennis and the Sacred. Consequently, in the Western context, it is virtually impossible for a spiritual seeker to receive a valid initiation and to follow an esoteric path.
It is important to mention here that although Guénon has influenced a figure such as Julius Evola, none of the main traditionalist authors have shared Evola's political views. As a matter of fact, his writings are commonly seen in most traditionalist circles as an anti-traditional deviation, based on an inversion of the hierarchy between contemplation and action. Traditionalists authors were rather apolitical, although conservatively-inclined, avoiding any political activity. It has been suggested that Modern Times (history) be merged into this article or section. ... Kali Yuga is also the title of a book by Roland Charles Wagner. ... Raphael was famous for depicting illustrious figures of the Classical past with the features of his Renaissance contemporaries. ... Sophia Perennis or Eternal wisdom that is the same in all authentic religions and metaphysics. ... Julius Evola born Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola, aka Baron Evola (May 19, 1898-June 11, 1974), was a controversial Italian esotericist and occult author, who wrote prolifically on matters political, philosophical, historical, racial, and religious from a Traditionalist School point of view. ...

The Initiatory Path

Although, he has pleaded in his first books for a restoration of traditional “intellectualité” in the West on the basis of Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry, it is clear that Guénon, very early on, gave up the idea of a spiritual resurrection of the West on a purely Christian basis. Having denounced the lure of Theosophism and neo-occultism, two influential movements that were flourishing in his lifetime, Guénon was initiated in 1912 in the Shadhili order and moved to Cairo in 1930 where he spent the rest of his life as a Sufi Muslim. To his many corresponds, he clearly designated Sufism as the more accessible form of traditional initiation for Westerns eager to find what does not exist any more in the West: a initiatory path of knowledge (Jnana or Gnosis), comparable to Advaita.
As a matter of fact, although Ananda Coomaraswamy was an Hindu, many followers of Guénon such as Frithjof Schuon, Martin Lings, Titus Burckhardt have been initiated into Sufism. Other remains Christians such as the religious philosopher Jean Borella. Marco Pallis was a Buddhist. The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... The Masonic Square and Compasses. ... Seal of the Theosophical Society Theosophy is a body of belief which holds that all religions are attempts by man to ascertain the Divine, and as such each religion has a portion of the truth. ... Sufism (Arabic تصوف taṣawwuf) is a system of esoteric philosophy commonly associated with Islam. ... Sufism is a mystic tradition of Islam encompassing a diverse range of beliefs and practices dedicated to Allah/God, divine love and sometimes to help a fellow man. ... For other uses, see Initiation (disambiguation). ... Advaita Vedanta is probably the best known of all Vedanta schools of Hinduism, the others being Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita. ... Frithjof Schuon (June 18, 1907 – May 5, 1998) was a metaphysician, poet, painter, Sufi, and a leading figure of traditional metaphysics. ... Martin Lings Martin Lings (Abu Bakr Siraj Ad-Din) (January 24, 1909 – May 12, 2005) was a lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon and a British scholar of Sufism. ... Titus Burckhardt, a German Swiss, was born in Florence in 1908 and died in Lausanne in 1984. ... Sufism is a mystic tradition of Islam encompassing a diverse range of beliefs and practices dedicated to Allah/God, divine love and sometimes to help a fellow man. ... Jean Borella (born in Nancy, France, 1930). ...

Academic Influence

It could be argued that Traditionalism has a strong, although discrete impact in the field of Comparative Religion and particularly on the young Mircea Eliade, although he was not himself a member of this school. Contemporay scholars such as Huston Smith, William Chittick, Harry Oldmeadow, James Cutsinger and Seyyed Hossein Nasr have advocated Perennialism as an alternative to secularist approach to religious phenomena. Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes interpretive differences of common themes and ideas among the worlds religions. ... Mircea Eliade Mircea Eliade (March 13, 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian, theorist of religion, and novelist notably in the fantasy and autobiographical genres. ... Huston Smith is among the preeminent religious studies scholars in the United States. ... Nasr is an internationally acclaimed scholar [1]. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (Persian: سيد حسين نصر) A lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon, Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion, is a prominent authority in the fields of Islamic esoterism, sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. ...

References

• Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (1989) ISBN 0-7914-0177-4
• Harry Oldmeadow, Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy (2000) ISBN 955-9028-04-9
• Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions (1976), reprint ed. 1992, Harper SanFrancisco, ISBN 0-06-250787-7

Nasr is an internationally acclaimed scholar [1]. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (Persian: سيد حسين نصر) A lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon, Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion, is a prominent authority in the fields of Islamic esoterism, sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. ... Huston Smith is among the preeminent religious studies scholars in the United States. ...

See also

Sophia Perennis or Eternal wisdom that is the same in all authentic religions and metaphysics. ... The Perennial Philosophy (Latin philosophia perennis) is the idea that a universal set of truths common to all people and cultures exists. ... The Study of Traditionalism (or of the Traditionalist School) is a sub-field of intellectual history, religious studies, and political science. ... Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes interpretive differences of common themes and ideas among the worlds religions. ... Esotericism refers to knowledge suitable only for the advanced, privileged, or initiated, as opposed to exoteric knowledge, which is public. ... Exoteric knowledge is knowledge that is publicly available and pertains solely to what is thought to be reality considered manifest outside oneself. ... Advaita Vedanta (IAST ; Devanagari ; IPA []) is probably the best known of all Vedanta schools of philosophy of Hinduism, the others being Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita (total six). ... Sufism is a mystic tradition of Islam encompassing a diverse range of beliefs and practices dedicated to Allah/God, divine love and sometimes to help a fellow man. ... René Jean Marie Joseph Guénon (November 15, 1886 – January 7, 1951) also named Sheikh Abd al-Wahid Yahya upon his acceptance of Islam, was a French-born author. ... Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy // Life of Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (22 August 1877 Colombo - 9 September 1947 Needham, Massachusetts) was the son of the famous Sri Lankan legislator and philosopher Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. ... Frithjof Schuon (June 18, 1907 – May 5, 1998) was a metaphysician, poet, painter, Sufi, and a leading figure of traditional metaphysics. ... Martin Lings Martin Lings (Abu Bakr Siraj Ad-Din) (January 24, 1909 – May 12, 2005) was a lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon and a British scholar of Sufism. ... Huston Smith is among the preeminent religious studies scholars in the United States. ... Nasr is an internationally acclaimed scholar [1]. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (Persian: سيد حسين نصر) A lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon, Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion, is a prominent authority in the fields of Islamic esoterism, sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. ... Titus Burckhardt, a German Swiss, was born in Florence in 1908 and died in Lausanne in 1984. ... Ivan Aguéli (Johan Gustaf Agelii or Sheikh Abd Al-Hadi Aqhili), (Sala, Sweden May 24, 1869 - Barcelona, Spain October 1, 1917) was a Swedish-born Impressionist painter and Sufi scholar. ... Michel Valsan (born in Romania, 19- ; death in Paris (France), 1974) Romanian islamologist and sufi shaykh under the name of Mustafa Abd al-Aziz. ...

Books and resources

• Books related to Traditionalism
• World Wisdom Books
• Fons Vitae Books
• A web site on the Perennialist/Traditionalist School
• Interview of Huston Smith on the primordial tradition