MISCELLANEA IBD

Sinopsis

René Guénon (1886-1951) is undoubtedly one of the luminaries of the twentieth century, whose critique of the modern world has stood fast against the shifting sands of recent philosophies. His oeuvre of 26 volumes is providential for the modern seeker: pointing ceaselessly to the perennial wisdom found in past cultures ranging from the Shamanistic to the Indian and Chinese, the Hellenic and Judaic, the Christian and Islamic, and including also Alchemy, Hermeticism, and other esoteric currents, at the same time it directs the reader to the deepest level of religious praxis, emphasizing the need for affiliation with a revealed tradition even while acknowledging the final identity of all spiritual paths as they approach the summit of spiritual realization. Miscellanea gathers together for Anglophone readers various articles by René Guénon and by âÇÖPalingeniusâÇÖ, his pseudonym during the time of La Gnose, a journal he founded in 1909. These articles have been divided into three categories: âÇÖMetaphysics and CosmologyâÇÖ, âÇÖTraditional Arts and SciencesâÇÖ, and âÇÖSome Modern ErrorsâÇÖ. A sampling of chapters: âÇÖMonotheism and AngelologyâÇÖ, âÇÖSpirit and IntellectâÇÖ, âÇÖSilence and SolitudeâÇÖ, âÇÖThe Empiricism of the AncientsâÇÖ, âÇÖGnosis and the Spiritist SchoolsâÇÖ, âÇÖThe Origins of MormonismâÇÖ, âÇÖOn the Production of NumbersâÇÖ, âÇÖOn Mathematical NotationâÇÖ, âÇÖInitiation and the CraftsâÇÖ, and âÇÖThe Arts & their Traditional ConceptionâÇÖ. In the latter two chapters the author explains why initiation became necessary in the measure that humanity receded from the âÇÖprimordial stateâÇÖ, explaining the reasons for the degeneration of the arts and crafts due to the âÇÖfallâÇÖ or descending trajectory of the present cycle. He nonetheless points out the possibility of an initiation into the âÇÖlesser mysteriesâÇÖ based upon the craft of building which still exists validly in the West.What is here presented as a miscellany of essays would in the case of most other writers on metaphysical subjects be considered a major work, both in breadth and depth. Some claim that GuénonâÇÖs views never 'developed,' that his knowledge of metaphysics was innate-as primordial and unchangeable as truth itself. Though clearly an exaggeration (for example, A.K. Coomaraswamy and Marco Pallis led Guénon to considerably revise his views Buddhism), there is still a remarkable degree of truth to this claim. Information must be acquired, and in the process erroneous notions will be corrected, yet the capacity for intellective insight is not an acquisition, but a gift, it is developed not by adding something but by removing a veil. Some of the essays collected in this text could be considered GuénonâÇÖs 'juvenalia,' yet the unerring instinct for metaphysical truth is already there, fully formed, along with the first stirrings of the authorâÇÖs lifelong preoccupation with initiatic spirituality, the cosmological sciences, and the errors of modernity, there is