Rene Guénon - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Rene Guénon (November 15th 1886 with Blois - January 7th 1951 with the Cairo) is a French thinker, author of about thirty works (for some of them published in posthumous title) having milked, mainly, with the Métaphysique and the esotericism.

This work, which is opposed to the Modernité in the name of the “Tradition”, unmemorable and transcendent wisdom, modified in-depth the reception of the esotericism in Occident in second half of the 20th century, and had an outstanding influence on authors as various as Mircea Eliade, Raymond Queneau or André Breton.

Biography

First years and first Masters

Rene Guénon was born on November 15th, 1886 in Blois, in a catholic family resulting from the lower middle class. In spite of its fragile health, it is an excellent pupil, as well in sciences as in letters. In 1904 it is registered with the Rollin college, with Paris, in preparatory class of elementary mathematics.

According to Jean-Pierre Laurant, it is at that time that young Guénon makes two important meetings for its later intellectual course: The abbot Gombault (1858-1947): doctor of philosophy, this one was the author of various works in which “one found an echo of the rearguard actions to defend the literality of the crowned texts”, as well as a denunciation of the misdeeds of spiritism ( Future of hypnosis… ) whose certain elements, according to J.P. Laurant, will find an echo direct in the spiritistic Error that Guénon publishes in 1923. The future author of the Aperçus on initiation would have in particular retained lessons of the abbot his vision of the mystic exclusively characterized as being a passive state.

Albert Leclère, his professor of philosophy to the Rollin college, whose Rene Guénon follows the courses between 1904 and 1906. Leclère, specialist in the philosophers Présocratiques, evoked with sympathy the assumption of an uninterrupted transmission of a metaphysical knowledge, Master with disciple, since Parménide until Socrate, knowledge relating in particular to the relationship between the Being and the Non-being. Guénon would have especially taken again the developments of Leclère on the continuity of the matter, whose certain aspects would be included in its Principes of the infinitesimal calculus (1946).

The Discovery of the occultism

Its health, always precarious, obliges it with frequent absences, and it fails the entrance examination at the universities in 1905. It is at that time that it fits in a school of a very different nature: the hermetic School of Papus.

Papus, of its true name Gerard Encausse (1865 - 1916), doctor of formation, is then one of the “popes” of the Parisian esotericism: this “Balzac of the Occultism”, author of two hundred and sixty works, was in particular: Large Master about Memphis-Misraïm, president of the order kabbalistic of the Rosicrucian brotherhood, founder of the order martinist, founder of the Group independent of esoteric studies, founder of the reviews Initiation, the Veil of Isis , the Almanac of the magist , etc

Rene Guénon is quickly integrated in the “networks” of Papus: he is initiated in the Martiniste order, in which he reaches quickly the rank of “Unknown Superior”, then is introduced into the maconnic cabins Humanidad and INRI . Papus also opens the doors of the review to him the Initiation, in which the young man publishes his first articles at the beginning of 1909.

During this same year, two events however will precipitate the rupture with the papusiens groups: on the one hand, the initiation of Guénon with the gnostic Church, organization not-dependant on Papus whose Guénon quickly becomes patriarch under the name of Palingenius (Rene). In addition, formation the previous year of mysterious “an Order of the renovated Temple”, whose Guénon becomes the chief following a decision obtained by “automatic writing”. The order attracts several members of the Martiniste Order, which alerts the entourage of Papus, which, wrongly or rightly, there sees a company directed against the Master: “entreated” are put in charge in front of the cabin Humanidad , and three of them, whose Guénon, are excluded from Freemasonry papusienne, as well as Order martiniste.
The Order of the renovated Temple is officially dissolves in 1911.

the Eastern Gnosis and contacts

Following its ousting of the circles papusiens, Guénon devotes the essence of its activities to the gnostic Church, and creates in November 1909 the review the Gnosis , “official body of the universal gnostic Church”, in which it publishes articles under its name of initiate: Palingenius. But, starting from 1910, the fields of investigation are extended to the “esoteric studies and metaphysics” in general, as with collaborators who do not belong to gnostic mobility. Appears in particular in the list of the collaborators, under the name of Abdul Hadi, a Swedish painter initiated with the Sufism and been dependant on the Société Théosophique: Ivan Aguéli (1869 - 1917). One finds also Matgioi (Albert de Pouvourville, 1861 - 1940), several times deserter of the French Army to the Tonkin, friend of Victor Segalen, initiated with the Taoism (like for the use of opium) with the Vietnamese soldier-Nâm.

Rene Guénon will affirm later to have had an direct access with the traditions Hindu, Islamic taoist and . But, if it is known that it is via Ivan Aguéli that it is initiated with the Soufisme in 1912 (it takes then the name of Abdel Wahid Yahia), on the other hand, for the two first, the doubt remains, and the commentators of Guénon lost themselves in conjectures on this subject: by is the direct knowledge of the Taoism, necessary to hear the frequentation of Matgioi? The name of a Vietnamese soldier-nâmien (Nguyen Van Cang), whom had known this last, is sometimes advanced, but without no convincing element coming to confirm this hypothèse.
It is the same concerning knowledge of Hindouisme (and more precisely of the Vêdânta), for which Guénon would have profited from the contribution of mysterious Eastern Masters, with which it would have remained in epistolary contact until in 1927. Nevertheless, these contacts with representatives of the Hindu tradition seem probable.

Christian Esotericism and Freemasonry

Guénon also writes articles for the review antimaconnic France , which had given up its crusade to concentrate on the “deviations” of contemporary Freemasonry compared to its origins like on the occultism and the religions not-Christian women. It then meets the catholic anti-mason Olivier de Frémont (1854 - 1940), with whom it will be in correspondence until the death of this last, which will put it later in relation to the Christian iconographe Louis Charbonneau-Lassay. This one will inform Guénon of the existence of a Christian initiatory organization whose founding documents would have gone back to the whole beginning of XVIème century: The “fraternity of Paraclet”.

Collaboration with this review becomes regular, in particular after the disappearance of the review the Gnosis (in 1912). Guénon tackles relative questions with symbolism there maconnic, without hiding its quality of Freemason: indeed, in addition to its old membership of masonry papusienne, it integrates in October 1911 the Thebah Cabin, attached to the Big room of France, via Oswald Wirth, former secretary of the occultist Stanislas de Guaïta. It leaves it in 1913 or 1914.

More hypothetical on the other hand is its fastening with a very secret “grouping of Masters to all ranks whose oral tradition went up at the time artisanal of the French masonry” of which it would have informed a Dutch friend, Franz Vreede.

Profane life

The year 1912 is one year decisive for Rene Guénon: not only it was initiated with the Sufism, but it Marie, according to the catholic rite. It resumes studies with the Sorbonne and obtains its license of letters into 1915 before obtaining a Diploma of higher learning in philosophy of sciences with a “Examination of the ideas of Leibnitz on the significance of the infinitesimal calculus.” He on the other hand will be refused with the oral examination of the aggregation of philosophy in 1918.

He will teach nevertheless philosophy in various private establishments of 1916 to 1929, of which a year with Sétif, in Algérie (1917).

In parallel, Guénon attends the circle of the philosophers and theologists thomists gathered around Jacques Maritain, with which it will try, vainly, to make accept the idea of the possibility of the existence of a Christian esotericism. It is thanks to the intercession of Maritain that the young man finds to publish his first works: the general Introduction to the study of the Hindu doctrines and Théosophisme, history of a pseudo-religion , in 1921.

First publications and first ruptures

the general Introduction to the study of the Hindu doctrines was to be used to open in Rene Guénon the doors of the University: the project, subjected to the indianist Sylvain Lévi, had received the agreement in principle of this last, which will retract by taking note of its contents and the adopted methods of approach: in his report/ratio, Lévi reproaches the author of this thesis “for excluding all the elements which do not correspond to its design (Bouddhisme and Protestantisme)” and for being “very ready to accept the mystical transmission of a truth first appeared with the human genius as of the first ages of the world”. This rejection of the University institution is very badly accepted by Guénon.

The publication of the Introduction… in bookstore was to enable him on the other hand to be made new contacts in the intellectual and artistic mediums Parisian: it thus becomes acquainted with the painter cubist Albert Gleizes (who opens the doors of the living room to him that it holds in Paris with his wife) as well as writer and editor Gonzague Truc, who then becomes “his main thing adviser out of leading matter”.

It is however via the catholics thomists that Rene Guénon publishes, the same year, a meticulous study, very documentéeet corrosive of the Société Théosophique founded by Héléna Blavatsky in 1875, under the evocative title of: Théosophisme, history of a pseudo-religion .

This work was likely to like the preserving and cultivated catholic mediums: one denounced there, in particular, the revolutionary antecedents and anti-Christians of Annie Besant, president in exercise of the company theosophist, like, more generally, the claim of the organization to reverse the established religions, and in particular the Christianisme. But these circumstantial convergence points could not mask a long time the major dissension between the design guénonienne of the “Tradition” and catholic traditionalism: the relations with the Maritain circle distend as from 1923, while the collaboration of Guénon with Regnabit , “re-examined universal of the Sacred Heart”, stops brutally in 1927, under the pressure of the Archbishop's palace.

From 1925, Rene Guénon, whose works already published attracted a certain notoriety to him, will publish his articles in the review: the Veil of Isis , which under its impulse loses its orientation occultist, until becoming, as from 1936, the traditional Études .

The Departure for the East

In 1928, following family mournings whose death of his wife, the health of Guénon worsens, and he complains to suffer from strange evils, of which he detects the origin in “psychic attacks” directed against him. It will however make in Egypt, in the search of texts esoteric soufis and will remain with the Cairo, remaining under very precarious conditions until its meeting with the Sheik Mohammad Ibrahim, of which it will marry the girl, in 1934.

Rene Guénon lives in Cairo under the name which had been given to him during its soufie initiation: Abdel Wahid Yahia, adopting the traditional Egyptian costume, speaking Arab and not attending the French community of Egypt (it will be naturalized Égyptien in 1949). It spends most clearly its time to write in its house of the suburb of Dukki, vis-a-vis the Pyramides: its articles and its works, first of all, but also a bulky correspondence with its readers, thanks to which it follows the evolution of the ideas to Occident, and which enables him to collect sufficient information to support several controversies, in particular with the director of the review Atlantis , Paul the Court, or with two writers of the antijudaïque and antimaconnic review of Monseigneur Jouin: the International Review of the secret societies . From 1929 to 1933, Guénon writes several reports and articles denouncing the attempts of RISS to exhume and try to make pass for authentic a document revealing the alleged secret lower parts of Freemasonry (in the line of the Canular of Taxil).

These polemics do not prevent Guénon from continuing the drafting of its works, whose interest that they wake up at Jean Paulhan makes it possible some of them to be published in the editions Gallimard, in a collection whose name, “Tradition”, return directly to the lexicon guénonien.

The Faithful ones

With the passing of years and of the publications, a group of faithful and close relations will constitute themselves around Rene Guénon. In addition to the Christian iconographe Louis-Charbonneau-Lassay and the editor Paul Chacornac, already mentioned, one can quote the Sri-Lankais Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), specialist in the Buddhist art, which maintains a regular correpondance with Guénon between 1935 and 1947. It is him which convinces the author of the man and its to become according to Vêdânta that Buddhism is a tradition with whole share, with its own legitimacy, and not a heresy of Hindouisme.

One also meets Islamized Europeans there living in Cairo: the English Martin Lings (1909-2005), which teaches the English literature at the University there, and especially the Rumanian diplomat Michel Vâlsan (1907-1974), which will become of 1960 with its death the director of the traditional Études (succeeding another faithful of the first hour: Jean Reyor, which had known Guénon whereas this last still lived in Paris).

The Alsatian artist Frithjof Schuon (1907-1988) also has him considering his destiny upset by the meeting with the work of Guénon (discovery since 1924, with Orient and Occident ), which pushes it to go to Algeria to receive soufie initiation. He becomes thereafter the moqadem (representative) of the sheik who initiated it, and sees himself authorized to found a new branch of the Tariqa (brotherhood) in Europe: it is towards it that Guénon will return a hundred readers (as Michel Vâlsan) who will enter the way soufie thus.

The relations between Schuon and Guénon will worsen following a controversy of a doctrinal nature: Schuon estimates indeed (and he writes it in the traditional Études ) that the Christian sacraments can be regarded as initiatory sacraments. Guénon writes in answer several articles on the initiation, of which a part is collected in volume in 1946 pennies the title Aperçus on initiation. a last article of Schuon in the traditional Studies , in July 1948, consumes the rupture between the two men. Michel Vâlsan remaining faithful to Guénon, the European tariqa is divided then into two branches.

It is finally necessary to quote the Italian writer Julius Evola, with which Guénon maintains a cordial and personal correspondence, in spite of the theoretical divergences which separate the cantor from the action and the defender of contemplation.

Died and survivals of Rene Guénon

Rene Guénon dies on January 7th, 1951, after having pronounced the name of Allah. He is largely given of it an account in the press of the French-speaking community of Cairo (about fifty articles published), and in the French press: he will be made by it mention in Le Figaro , Combat , Rivarol , etc the National radio also comments on the event.

After the death of Guénon, its faithful will continue the publication of its work (a little more than one ten posthumous works - primarily of the collections of articles and reports - will be born) and will be devoted to the interpretation of the various religious and initiatory traditions, within the traditional Études (primarily, as from 1959 and under the impulse of Michel Vâlsan, being studied of the esoteric doctrines of Islam) and elsewhere.

The principal works of Rene Guénon were translated in all the European languages and the influence of its thought, since its disappearance, did not cease extending.

Work

The work of Rene Guénon, such as its author conceived it, should not be included/understood as the expression of an individual thought who would have built himself with the passing of years and of the works, even less like one philosophical system, but like an exposure of the “traditional doctrines”, corpus of knowledge of transcendent origin which constitutes the core (esotericism) various religions and authentic traditions of humanity. Guénon asserted in this respect only one function of transmission of these doctrines with exclusive destination of those which, according to him very few, are ready to include/understand them and to benefit from it. This will not to see itself allotting the paternity of the ideas that it exposed went hand in hand with the will to preserve greatest discretion on its private life which in any event, added he, cannot help of anything with comprehension of its works.

The work of Rene Guénon can be divided into four main roads:

talks of principles metaphysics (the General Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines , the man and its To become according to Vêdânta , the Symbolism of the Cross and multiple States to be it , Principles of the Infinitesimal calculus );
studies on symbolism (in particular the many articles which he wrote for the “traditional Studies”, later compiled by Michel Vâlsan under the title Symboles of Crowned Science ; or the Large Triad );
relative studies with initiation ( Esotericism of Dante , Seen on Initiation, Initiation and spiritual Réalisation , etc)
critic of the modern world ( the East and Occident , the Crisis of the Modern world , spiritual Authority and Temporal power , the Reign of the Quantity and Signs of Times , etc).

The bulk-heading between these four axes is not however hermetic, Guénon recalling that “the diversity of the subjects which we cover in our studies does not prevent the unit of the design which chairs it and we also make a point of expressly affirming this unit which could not be seen those which consider the things too superficially. ”. This “unit of the design” being guaranteed by the fastening of the various items discussed with the “principles metaphysics”, which constitute of it at the same time the heart and the top.

Metaphysics

Some precise details

Guénon often insisted on the fact that the word of “metaphysics”, in the direction where he heard it, “is of nothing comparable to scientific or philosophical designs”, but that he appeared legitimate to him to use it, because he employed it in his direction first and according to him etymological: what is “beyond physics. ”

According to Guénon, true metaphysics about entirely does not exist any more but in the East, while it is in Occident “thing forgotten, ignored in general, lost”, even if it could exist, with the Middle Ages, doctrines purely and truly metaphysics reserved for a restricted and closed elite. It should be said that, already at Aristote, this knowledge was considered only “partial and incomplete way”, like “knowledge to be it as being”, and thus reduced with the ontology. However, if the latter is indeed integral part of metaphysics, it could not according to Guénon constitute totality of it, nor even the principal part: metaphysics being “truly and absolutely unlimited”, its field largely exceeds that of the Being, also including what Guénon proposes to call the “Non-being. ”

The Being and Non-being

The term of Non-being should not be taken in a privative direction, like the index of a lack or an absence, but on the contrary like meaning it beyond the Being: the Being is indeed only the principle of the “universal demonstration”, the substrate of all that exists. But the Infinite one cannot be reduced with what is expressed, because “there can nothing be which is apart from the Infinite one, since that would be a limitation, and that then he would not be any more the Infinite one. ” But, the universal demonstration does not exhaust all possible the Infinite one, because for the possibilities of demonstration, it is necessary to consider the possibilities of not-demonstration, and “if one asked however why any possibility should not appear, i.e. why there are at the same time possibilities of demonstration and not-demonstration, it would be enough to answer that the field of the demonstration, being limited consequently which it is a whole of worlds or states conditioned, could not exhaust the universal Possibility in its totality: it leaves apart from him all inconditionné, i.e. precisely what, métaphysiquement, imports more. ”

The Non-being thus represents the whole of the “possibilities of not-demonstration, with the possibilities of demonstration themselves as them are in an not-expressed state; and the Being itself is included there, because, not being able to belong to the demonstration, since it is the principle, it itself not-is expressed. ” Guénon takes as metaphor the reports/ratios of silence and the word to illustrate its matter: Like the Non-being, or not-expressed, or the Being wraps includes/understands, or the principle of the demonstration, silence comprises in itself the principle of the word; in other words, just as the Unit (the Being) is only Zero metaphysics (non-being) affirmed, the word is only expressed silence; but, conversely, Zero metaphysics, while being the not-marked Unit, is also something moreover (and even infinitely more), and the same the silence, which is an aspect with the direction that we have just specified, is not only the not-expressed word, because it is necessary to let there remain moreover what is inexpressible, i.e. nonlikely of demonstration… ( multiple States To be it , p. 29)

Knowledge and realization

The ultimate goal of metaphysical knowledge is thus nothing less than the realization of this beyond the Being, “the state absolutely inconditionné, freed from any limitation”, than the Hindu doctrines call the “Delivery”. It is indeed an effective realization, and not only theoretical, since any true knowledge “implies an identification of the subject with the object, or, if one prefers to consider the report/ratio in opposite direction, an assimilation of the object by the subject. ”

In fact, this knowledge cannot be acquired by the means of the reason, faculty purely human and individual which, being only one “knowledge per reflection”, can be used only as preparation theoretical (but essential) with the comprehension of the traditional doctrines whose effective knowledge can be realized only by the means of “the pure intellectual intuition”, that Guénon also calls “transcendent intellect”: contrary to rational faculties of the man, “this beyond the reason is truly " non-humain" ”, it is not any more one “individual faculty” but is truly “of a universal nature”.

Tradition and transmission

Initiation

The accession with this “transcendent intellect”, which only allows the spiritual realization, is conditioned with the fastening of the applicant to a traditional initiatory line: those are indeed agents of “influence spiritual” that they transmit to initiate (what constitutes transmission initiatory itself, which is comparable with that which is implemented in certain religious rites, for example that of the ordination of the priests in the Catholic religion). In the absence of such a transmission, it is impossible “to be able to never affanchir obstacles and limitations of the profane world. ” Indeed, … the aptitudes or possibilities included in individual nature are not first of all, in themselves, that a will matiera PRIMA , i.e. a pure potentiality, where it anything of is not developed or of differentiated; it is then the chaotic and dark state, which initiatory symbolism precisely makes correspond to the profane world, and in which the being is which did not arrive yet at the second birth. So that this chaos can start to take form and to be organized, it is necessary that an initial vibration to him is communicated by the spiritual powers, that the Hebraic Genesis indicates like the Elohim ; this vibration, it is the FIAT Lux which illuminates the chaos, and which is the starting point necessary of all the later developments; and, from the initiatory point of view, this illumination is precisely consisted the transmission of the spiritual influence… ( Seen on initiation, pp. 33-34) One thus needs to the applicant being attached to an organization authentically initiatory and to truly holder of the spiritual influence, “what excludes all the pseudo-initiatory formations immediately, if many at our time” (for example, “multitude of groupings, very recent origin, which are entitled " rosicruciens" , without to have ever had the least contact with the Rosicrucian brotherhood, of course, this by some indirect and diverted way was”.) Such an organization cannot be made up by the simple will of some individuals: to be truly “traditional”, it indeed must, as well as the religions, being attached to a higher, “not-human” and “transcendent principle. ” Which more is, on this “vertical” fastening is superimposed some another, “horizontal” and historical, which connects the inititatic organization at the origins of humanity: it with what applies the name of tradition, it is what is all in all, in its content even, if not inevitably in its external expression, remained such as it was in the beginning; it is thus well there about something which was transmitted, could one say, of a state former of humanity in its state present. ( Seen on initiation, p. 63)

Virtual initiation with effective initiation

If the fact of being integrated in a traditional organization constitutes initiation itself, this one is at the beginning only virtual: it is the interior work of the initiate who must “allow the development " in acte" possibilities to which virtual initiation gives access. ” This work, “effort constant of assimilation”, (which makes initiatory way “an active” way, that Guénon opposes to the mysticism, which would be a passive way purely “. ”), and the results which result from this for the initiate constitute “effective initiation”: “to enter the way, it is virtual initiation; to follow the way, it is effective initiation. ” Initiatory work is primarily consisted the “concentration”, which must tend towards “the unification of all the elements to be it in interior work, necessary so that the " takes place; descente" spiritual influence in the center of this being”. The meditation on the symbols and the participation in the rites have as a function to facilitate this concentration and can be compared “with a horse with the help of which a man will arrive more quickly and more easily at the end of his voyage, but without which it could reach also that point. ”

Unfortunately, Guénon observeobserves, “much remain on the threshold”, and never arrive at the least beginning of spiritual realization. The obstacles which prevent it can come from the initiatory organization to which the individual is attached, “especially under the current conditions of the western world”: in consequence of the degeneration of certain organizations which, become only speculative consequently cannot the initiates who are attached there to help in any way for operative work, was this in its most elementary stages, and do not provide them anything which can even enable them to suspect the existence of an unspecified realization. ( Seen on initiation, p. 198) But the obstacles can also come from the person even of the initiate, who does not have the necessary qualifications to bring up to date his initiation: indeed, just as in the field of the “profane activities”, “what is possible with the one it is not with the different one, and that, for example, the exercise of such or such trade, requires certain aptitudes special, mental and body at the same time”, it is necessary to have “the necessary aptitudes” to reach the initiatory realization. Those can be variable according to the initiatory organizations: each one of them having its “" technique" particular”, … it will not be able naturally to admit that those which will be able to conform to it and to withdraw from it an effective benefit, which supposes, as for the qualifications, the application of a whole whole of special, valid rules only for the organization considered, and not excluding at all, for those which will be drawn aside by there, the possibility of finding elsewhere an initiation equivalent, provided that they have the general qualifications which are strictly essential in all the cases. ( Seen on initiation, p. 99) Among these general qualifications, “the essential qualification, that which dominates all the others, is a question of “intellectual horizon” more or less wide. ” But there is the different one, which also has their importance, and Guénon on this subject mentions the need for not being reached by certain infirmities (for example, stammering, or “notable dissymmetries of the face or the members”) which are “the sign external of corresponding defects in the subtle elements to be it. ”

Small mysteries and great mysteries

The initiatory way such as described Guénon can be divided into two great stages, which are sometimes considered, according to him wrongly, like two different types of initiation: “royal initiation” and “sacerdotal initiation”, still called, by reference to the ancient doctrines, “Small mysteries” and “Great mysteries”. Actually, explains Guénon, these two ways are complementary, the first being subordinated to the second.

The Small mysteries, to which belong the purpose of “traditional sciences” (for example, the Alchimie or the Astrologie) are to restore the individual in “the paramount state”, the state which was that of humanity in the beginnings and which Guénon, being pressed on the work of Dante, brings closer to the “terrestrial Paradise”. That which reached this stage thus reached “the plenitude of the human state”, which is at the same time the “center” of this state.

It arrived only once to this center that it can “communicate directly with the higher states to be it” and thus reach the supra-individual states which, only, “have as a field pure metaphysical knowledge” and can be truly qualified the “spiritual ones”. At the end of his advance, the initiate, released of all the contingencies, carries out what the esotericism Islamic names “the Supreme Identity”, which for Dante is “the celestial Paradise”, and which he becomes thus “the Universal Man”.

Esotericism and exoterism

The Bark and the core

Taking again the distinction “which existed, in certain philosophical schools of ancient Greece, if not in all between two aspects of the same doctrines, one more external and the other more external”, Guénon defines the respective fields of the exoterism and the esotericism: the first, accessible to the greatest number, constitutes, according to a metaphor used by Ibn Arabi, the “bark” of the doctrines, while the second is the “core” and is reserved for it for a “elite”, only ready to benefit truly from it.

This distinction between esotericism and exoterism, if it recontre in the majority of the orthodoxe traditions, is not therefore universal: the Hindu doctrines, for example the Upanishads, do not know this distinction, those being purely metaphysics (and thus esoteric) without one being able to detect there anything which would hold place of exoterism. On the other hand, the Islamic tradition is “perhaps that where most clearly the distinction of the exoterism and the esotericism is marked”, the exoteric way, “commune with all”, being illustrated by the '' shariyah '', while the " vérité" interior, reserved for the elite (the mutaçawwuf , that one generally indicates, wrongly according to Guénon, under the name of " soufis"), is called haqîqah . This esotericism “is not something of " surajouté" with the Islamic doctrines, something which would have come to associate with it afterwards and of the outside”, but “of it is on the contrary an essential part since, without him, it would be obviously incomplete, and even incomplete by in top, i.e. as for its principle even”.

This heart of the doctrines is at the same time what is common to all the authentic spiritual traditions, “the bottom which remains always rigorously identical to itself”, whereas the exoterism, which constitutes the form “in these doctrines is to some extent built-in”, is likely various adaptations according to the places and the times, giving to those which are held at surface of the things the impression to be vis-a-vis different traditions, even antagonistic

The esotericism, as it constitutes the bottom of truth common to all the authentic spiritual traditions of humanity, is thus hierarchically higher than the exoterism. It however does not follow only the initiate, who has access to the field esoteric of a given tradition, can exempt practice of the exoterism corresponding, would be this only because “the " plus" must inevitably include/understand the " moins" ” and that it is by the exoterism that one reaches the esotericism: … where the exoterism and the esotericism are directly dependant in the constitution of a traditional form, in order to be to some extent only like the two outsides and interior of only one and even thing, it is immediately comprehensible for each one which initially should be adhered outside to then be able to penetrate inside, and which it would not know to have there of another way that one. ( Initiation and spiritual realization , p. 73)

Catholicism and Freemasonry

In Occident, the exoterism took a religious form: that of the Christianity, and more precisely of the Catholicism, which according to Guénon is the only exoteric organization authentically traditional, to the exclusion thus of the Protestantisme. Nevertheless, the representatives of the catholic tradition seem to him to have lost sight of the fact its major significance: it is rather doubtful that the deep sense is still understood by it indeed, even by an elite very few, whose existence would undoubtedly appear by an action or rather by an influence that, in fact, we do not note nowhere ( the Crisis of the modern world , p. 115).

Who more is, the Occident for a long time broke with the traditional social organization whose Catholic religion was the keystone: The exact date of this rupture is marked in the history external of Europe, by the conclusion of the Traités of Westphalia, which reflect fine with what still remained of the " Chrétienté" medieval to substitute an organization for it purely " politique" , with the modern direction and layman of this mot. ( Seen on initiation, p. 243, note 3)

With this weakening of “the traditional spirit” in the Catholicism, where it is preserved more only in “the latent state” corresponds the quasi-total disappearance of the organizations authentically initiatory in Occident, with on the one hand, the destruction of the Ordre of the Temple, and on the other hand the departure for the East of true the Rosicrucian brotherhood. Those were actually the initiates with the Christian esotericism which, “of agreement with the initiates with the Islamic esotericism reorganized to maintain, as far as possible, the bond which had been broken by this destruction. ” If one excludes some very restricted and very closed groups which can still remain, the modern Westerner who would like to reach initiation, if however it does not turn to the Eastern traditions, does not have an other choice to only reach the only initiatory organization still in activity in Occident: the Freemasonry. This one nevertheless is regarded by Guénon as being a “degeneration” of the original Freemasonry, which was not only “speculative”, but also “operative. ” Guénon indeed disputes the opinion according to which “the Masons " opératifs" were exclusively experts”, which little by little “" acceptèrent" among them, on a purely honorary basis to some extent, foreign people with art to build”, which would have marked the passage of an operative Masonry to a speculative Masonry. Far from being a progress, he explains, it is about a diminution which “consists in the negligence and the lapse of memory of all that is " réalisation" , because it is there what is truly " opératif" , not to more let remain but one purely theoretical sight of initiation. ”

The consequences of this diminution are impossibility for the initiate of passing from virtual initiation to effective initiation: … the initiatory transmission well always remains, since the " chaîne" traditional was not stopped; but, instead of the possibility of an effective initiation all the times that some individual defect does not come to make obstacle there, one have nothing any more but one initiation virtual, and condemned to remain such by the force even things, since the limitation " spéculative" properly mean that this stage cannot any more be exceeded, all that further goes being from the order " opératif" by definition even. That does not want to say, of course, that the rites in such a case do not have any more an effect, because they always remain, and even if those which achieve them of it are not conscious any more, the vehicle of the spiritual influence; but this effect is so to speak " différé" as for its development " in acte" , and it is only as one germ that the requirements with its blossoming is missing, these conditions residing in work " opératif" by which only initiation can be made effective. ( Seen on initiation, pp. 95-196)

This degeneration is not however inescapable, since the “essential nature” of the organization remains the same one as long as the “continuity of the initiatory transmission” is assured: a restoration is always possible, “this restoration in front of then necessarily being conceived like a return to the state " opératif". ”

Contemporary Pseudo-esotericism

At all events of the actual position of Freemasonry, Guénon refuses to put it on the same plan as the “pseudo-initiatory” organizations which, being attached to any authentic “chain”, are not even ready to transmit a virtual initiation: it is thus various currents occultists, contemporary Anglo-Saxon “theosophy” or of all the movements which claim to be attached to the current rosicrucian: the common point between all these organizations is that they do not profit from any real fastening to a regular spiritual tradition and that they have a tendency marked with the “syncretism”, i.e. to juxtapose outside “of the fragmentary concepts borrowed from various traditional forms, and generally badly included/understood and more or less deformed frays with designs belonging to philosophy and profane science”.

Rene Guénon, who also uses in his talks of the examples drawn from various traditions (Hindouisme, Islamisme and Taoism mainly) held with well marking the basic difference which exists between the “synthesis” to which there was delivered, and the “syncretism” which it allotted to the “pseudo-initiatory” organizations: All that is really inspired by traditional knowledge always proceeds " intérieur" and not " extérieur" ; whoever is aware of the essential unit of all the traditions can, to expose and to interpret the doctrines, to appeal, according to the cases, with means of expression coming from various traditional forms, if it estimates that there is favors; but there will be never there nothing which can be comparable of near or by far with an unspecified syncretism… ( Seen on initiation, p. 47)

Who more is, according to Guénon, these organizations generally propose to develop “psychic capacities” latent at the ordinary man. However, these capacities (of which reality is not denied), as they belong to the “psychic” field, remain by là-même individual, and have nothing to do with the true spirituality, which in its gasoline is supra-individual. Who more is, the search for these capacities is not without presenting dangers of all kinds: … is as for the mental health disorders and even physiological which are the usual accompaniment of these sorts of thing, that is to say as for the more distant consequences, even more serious, of a hap-hazard building of lower possibilities which goes directly to the wrong way of spirituality. ( Seen on initiation, p. 149)

Guénon reconsidered on several occasions “the expansion of these various theories which were born since less than one century, and which one can indicate, generally, under the name of " néo-spiritualisme" ”, in which he saw a symptom worrying of the “crisis of the modern world”.

Critic of the modern world

The Origin of the modern “deviation”

According to Guénon, the modern Occident is a “extraordinary anomaly” taking into consideration civilization other, last and present (in the East), in what it is primarily characterized by the lapse of memory (or the rejection) of its tradition, in other words principles which must normally organize any company according to a precise and invariable hierarchy, whose Hindu castes provide a clear model:

At the top of the social hierarchy, the Brâhmanes (the sacerdotal caste), representing “the pure intellectuality”, to which all the other fields must be subordinates.
the Kshatriyas (the caste of the kings and the warriors), representing the action, are the guarantors of the protection of the spiritual authority which, in return, founds the legitimacy to be able to them and to which they must be subordinates.

Guénon was interested less in the two last castes (the Vaisyas and the Sudras), since it is according to him in the “revolt of Kshatriyas”, in other words in the will of the temporal power to free itself from the supervision of the spiritual authority whom the origin of the modern “deviation resides”. As from the moment when this subordination connection was broken in Occident, this one lost its traditional character more and more, until coming to this “anomaly” that Guénon did not cease denouncing.

Characteristics of “the Western anomaly”

The rupture of the bond of dependence with the spiritual authority has as a corollary the rupture with the transcendent principles of which this one was the guarantor: the Western company thus deprived of true principles is thus in the situation of a “decapitated organization which would continue to live of one at the same time intense and disordered life”.

This body without head, which lost any guiding principle, is characterized above all by its “need for ceaseless agitation”: … need for ceaseless agitation, continual change, unceasingly increasing speed as that with which the events themselves are held. It is dispersion in the multiplicity, and a multiplicity which is unified any more by the conscience of no higher principle… ( the Crisis of the modern world , p. 71 of the edition Gallimard Folio) Who more is, having forgotten what is true intellectuality, the Occident came from there to priviégier only material progress, that he considers wrongly as the sign of the superiority of the Western company: “material development and pure intellectuality are really in opposite direction; who is inserted in one necessarily moves away from the other”. The intellectual field being regarded as the higher field and the material field like the lower field, it follows that Western “progress” is actually a “forfeiture”, and that the claim of the Occident to impose its domination on the rest of the world, in the name of this illusory superiority, is as absurd as unjustified.

Lastly, the modern Occident is individualistic and democratic. By individualism, it is necessary to hear “the negation of any principle higher than the individual and, consequently, the reduction of civilization, in all the fields, with the only purely human elements”, which leads to “the negation of the intellectual intuition, as this one is primarily an supra-individual faculty”.

Individualism implying “necessarily refusal to admit an authority higher than the individual”, the Occident naturally came from there to rather set up the idea of the equality between the individuals in theory, or in “pseudo-principle”, from which it founded the democratic legitimacy, which according to Guénon is a lure for two reasons. On the one hand because “the superior cannot emanate from the inferior”, that “the true capacity only from in top, and this is why it can come can be legitimated only by the sanction of something of superior to the social order, i.e. of a spiritual authority. ” In addition because the concept of people controlling itself is a logical impossibility: “it is contradictory to admit that the same men can be at the same time controlling and controlled. ”

Thus, the idea according to which the people would control itself can be only one illusion which the leaders manage to make him admit that parce “that it is flattered by it and that besides it is unable to reflect enough to see what there is the impossible one”.

Against-initiation and Kali-Yuga

These leaders who print their mark with the development of the modern Occident are not only those which present themselves like such, and which are generally unconscious antitraditionnelle range of their action: it is the different one, which acts in the shade, while knowing very well that the way in which the Occident is committed (and in which they push it to persevere) can only lead it to the catastrophe and the ruin. Guénon calls these individuals the emissary of “against-initiation”: true agents with the service of the forces of the evil (personified in Occident in the figure Satan, to which is allotted a real existence and not simply symbolic system), these men and these women work with an aim of replacing authentic spirituality by its parody and of preparing the advent of that which the Christians and the Moslems name the Antéchrist. It is them the persons in charge and the true instigators of the Western deviation. The final victory of against-initiation is at the same time inescapable and illusory. It is inescapable because it is registered in the movement even history: taking again the vocabulary of the cyclic design of the history of the Hindu doctrines (where a historical cycle Manvantara is called), Guénon affirms that we arrived at the last of the four ages of current humanity: the Kali Yuga. During this period, he explains: … the truths which were formerly accessible to all the men became increasingly hidden and difficult to reach; those which have them are less and less numerous, and, if the treasure of wisdom " non-humaine" , former to all the ages, can never lose itself, it wraps increasingly impenetrable veils, which dissimulate it with the glances and under which it is extremely difficult to discover it. ( the Crisis of the modern world , pp. 21-22)

This progressive forfeiture of the humanity, which opposes radically any concept of historical progress, is the consequence necessary of “increasingly large distance of the principle of which it proceeds”. Indeed, … on the basis of the point highest, it tends inevitably to the bottom, and, like the heavy bodies, it tends there with an unceasingly increasing increasing speed, until it meets finally a stagnation point. (ibid) This movement going down, if it is not linear (there exists also an opposite movement which tends towards a return to the principle), is not inescapable, and its result will mark the victory of against-initiation, or “spirituality with wrong way. ”

But this victory of against-initiation will be at this transitory point which it can justifiably be described as illusory: indeed, the final catastrophe, marking the stagnation point of the fall of humanity, will also mark, in same time, the integral and instantaneous rehabilitation of humanity in its “paramount state”, i.e. the restoration of a new “Golden age”, and the complete defeat of the forces of against-initiation.

It is with an aim of contributing to slow down this irremediable fall, by warning its contemporaries of the dangers which watch for them, that Guénon affirms to have written its work. And when well even it would be too late to avoid it, the destiny of humanity necessarily leading it to the final catastrophe, … completed work in this intention would not be useless, because it would in any case be used to prepare, as in a remote way as it is, this " discrimination" about which we spoke at the beginning, and to thus ensure the conservation of the elements which will have to escape the shipwreck from the current world to become the germs of the world futur." ( the Crisis of the modern world , pp. 60-61)

Reception of the work of Rene Guénon

Continuators and exégètes

The “infallible Compass” and the “impenetrable armor”

Rene Guénon had written in Orient and Occident , that the traditional doctrines could be described of “infallible compass” and “impenetrable armor”. One will hardly have to wait a long time after its death so that these qualifiers are taken again and associated with its work: thus as of the publication of the special issue of the traditional Studies appeared in November 1951 at the time of the death of Guénon, Michel Vâlsan was to conclude his article initulé “the function from Rene Guénon and the fate of the Occident. ” In this one, it gave a providential significance to the existence of the author of the King of the world : The matrices of Wisdom had predisposed and formed its entity according to an economy specifies and its career is achieved under time by a constant correlation between its possibilities and the external cyclic conditions. Become as from 1960 director of the traditional Studies , Michel Vâlsan will contribute to develop and fix this providential image of Rene Guénon, parallel to the publication of article devoteds to primarily to the deepening of the doctrines soufies such as they are presented in the work of Ibn Arabî. He will come from there to regard as an attack with the integrity of work guénonienne any approach criticizes university, inviting the researchers to rather work starting from work than on work.

This direction that Vâlsan had printed with the reception of work guénonienne will be taken again and accentuated by Charles-Andre Gillis who, at the head of sound Introduction to the teaching and the mystery of Rene Guénon will place this warning: The teaching of Rene Guénon is the particular expression, revealed in the contemporary Occident, of metaphysical and initiatory doctrines which are that of the single and universal Truth. It is inseparable from a crowned function, supra-individual origin, that Michel Vâlsan defined as a “supreme recall” of the held truths, nowadays still, by the immutable East, and like an ultimate “convocation” comprising, for the western world, a warning and a promise as well as the advertisement of its “judgment”. Under these conditions, any “profane” approach of work becomes suspect, in particular that which would seek historical sources to explain work: … a method whose limits are known of all for the interpretation of the literary texts is used, without understanding but not without ulterior motive, to give an account of writings whose inspiration is primarily different.

The “same will to unify life and work in a crowned epic”, to take again an expression of Jean-Pierre Laurant, is manifest in the writings of Jean Robin, in particular in pilot Rene Guénon of the Tradition , in which are assigned a magic function with the various pseudonyms under which Rene Guénon wrote, in connection with the doctrines Tibetan of the Tulkous. One can also quote Muhammad Vâlsan, which puts in correspondence the first names of Jean-Marie Rene Joseph Guénon with the acronym christic INRI.

The Catholics guénoniens

Mircea Eliade pointed out that the majority of the “followers” of the work of Guénon “are converts with Islamism or deliver themselves to the study of the tradition indo-Tibetan. ” They were fewer on the other hand to try to reconcile the study of work guénonienne and the practice of Christianity, in particular because of the important reserves expressed by the catholic mediums on this work, already of living of Guénon (Jacques Maritain who wrote that “the esoteric hyperintellectualisation Knowledge is not that a specious mirage leads the reason to the absurdity, the heart with second dead”), but also after its death, whether they are “the integrist” catholics or progressists.

Some attempts were made however, inside even of the Catholic church, to reconcile Christianity and the “traditional doctrines”: one can quote in particular a work entitled Doctrine of the not-duality (Advaita-vada) and Christianity and published in 1982 “with the permission of the superiors” by an anonymous “monk of Occident”, which represents an attempt at conciliation between Vêdânta (by taking again to analyzes of the man and its to become according to Vêdânta , published by Guénon in 1925) and Christian theology.

But one will retain especially work of the abbot Henri Stephan who, having discovered the works of Guénon seems it in 1942, very wrote many texts recuillis in two volumes published under the title guénonien of: Seen on the Christian esotericism .

The case of the Stephan abbot remains nevertheless insulated, like was this one, which did not exert officially any ministry, if it is not, after the Concile Vatican II, but “in an almost clandestine way”, bound for a “group of Christians anxious to preserve the Latin tradition in the Church had required of the abbot to say each week a mass of the old rite and to pronounce the homélie”.

Critical Guénonien: Frithjof Schuon

The same special issue of the traditional Études in which Michel vâlsan analyzed the providential function of the work of Rene Guénon accommodated another contribution, much more moderate in the praise: that of Frithjof Schuon. This article, initulé “the Spirit of a work”, started by pointing out the “universal” character and especially “traditional” of this work “in the sense that the fundamental data that it transmits are strictly in conformity with the teaching of the great traditions, or the one of them when it is about a particular form. ” Nevertheless, it made a point of marking its distances with the position defended by Michel Vâlsan: “the unicity” of work guénonienne could not be held for “prophetic. ” Which more is, it is in the stating of the principles that its intellectual genius be exerted with an undeniable control; but that one admits without reserve all them examples and all the deductions which the author proposes to us during its many writings, that appears to us to be a question of opinion, even of faith, as much more than your knowledge of the facts depends on contingencies which would not know to intervene in principielle knowledge (ibid) In fact, Frithjof Schuon will raise thereafter in work of Guénon several points of details which seem to him erroneous, that it acts of the assertion according to which Hindousime is not a religion, guénonienne definition of the methods of the body existence, or of its presentation of the Hindu doctrines of the “cosmic cycles. ” More basically, on several important doctrinal points, Frithjof Schuon deviated from the analyzes guénoniennes, affirming that the Christian rites had an undoubtedly initiatory character, or that soufie initiation was not incompatible with the membership of a religion other than Islam: such an interpretation, observes Jean-Pierre Laurant, “ruin the building guénonien built on the strict separation of the esotericism and the exoterism”.

Lastly, a “Note” devoted to Rene Guénon, published in the Books of Herne, defines the position of Schuon with respect to the individuality of the author of the multiple States Être : Guénon according to him would have been a “" pneumatique" " type; gnostique" ”, in other words that it would have been born “with a state from knowledge which, for others, would be precisely the goal and not the starting point”. Thus Guénon, “personification, not of spirituality very short, but of the only intellectual certainty”, would have been led, “partly reason of traumatisms, reinforced by the absence of compensatory factors in the heart and environment”, to underestimate “and the values esthetic and the values morals, especially under the report/ratio of their spiritual functions. ”

Academics

On several occasions in his works, Rene Guénon scoffed the claims at the modern Occident to have a whole of sciences which would put it at the avant-garde knowledge of the world: these “profane” sciences, affirms the author of the Crisis of the modern world , are only the “residues” of crowned sciences whose direction was lost, residues unable to make reach that which studies them with some certainty that it is concerning the world which surrounds it. The totality of the knowledge taught in the universities, since philosophy until sociology, while passing by the history, the geography, the ethnology or psychology is thus disqualified with the profit of the “traditional knowledge”, only ready to transmit true knowledge.

These criticisms radical will not prevent the academics from dealing of the work and the step of Guénon, in a more or less critical way.

Umberto Eco

Thus for Umberto Eco, Rene Guénon shows “a sovereign contempt for any historical and philological criterion”. He explains his matter in the limits of interpretation , where he devotes himself to a critical study of the hermetic thought in general:

Almost all the characteristics of the hermetic thought are joined together in the processes of argumentation of one of its contemporary epigones: Rene Guénon

Eco supports its matter by a critical study of the work of Guénon: the king of the World which he studies according to the approach of semiotics and in which he raises in particular the very frequent use, and according to him abusive, of assertions without sources, " one dit" , of etymologies supposed often founded on simple phonological proximities and vague analogies which form with final speech more aiming at consolidating the reader in his convictions that to show its assertions rationally:

All in all, Guénon suggests a system, but a system which does not authorize any exclusion through an interlacing of associations, some founded on the phonetic similarity, others on a supposed etymology, in a ceaseless relay between synonymies, homonymies and polysemias, in a continual shift in meaning where all new association forsakes what caused it to point towards new shores, and where the thought permanently cuts the bridges behind it .

These analyzes of Umberto Eco were disputed by Patrick Geay who, in his thesis of doctorate published under the title of Hermes Trahi (1996), reproach with the Italian semiotician to have missed rigor in its step and of prudence in its conclusions.

Mircea Eliade

On the other hand, the historian of the religions Mircea Eliade was shown rather receptive with the theses guénoniennes, considering “that these doctrines are considerably more rigorous and valid that of the occultists and hermetic of XIXe and XXe centuries. ” He in addition notices the radical and paradoxical antithesis with which the historian of the religions is confronted, enters, on a side: an explosion of occultism, left religion " pop" characteristic especially of the counter-culture of the American youth, which proclaims the great consecutive revival at the age of Aquarius and other: the discovery and acceptance of the traditional esotericism, such as reformulated Rene Guénon for example, an esotericism which rejects the optimistic hope of a cosmic and historical revival without the catastrophic precondition disintegration of the modern world This last still modest but “gradually increasing” tendency being.
It should be noted that Mircea Eliade was in contact with Guénon, to which it sent a specimen of its work Techniques of yoga . Guénon wrote on this occasion which Eliade was “actually much more close to the traditional ideas that its writings do not give of it sometimes the impression”, but that its “great defect” was “not to dare to put itself too clearly in opposition with the officially allowed ideas”.

Artists and writers

The atypical work of Rene Guénon, development polysemous of a critical thought of the modern world, marked several artists and writers, who they were in war against their time and the values of the Occident, or attracted by an exposure of spirituality distinct from the Christian morals as opposed at the same time to all the forms of occultism in vogue at the beginning of the XXe century: one will not be astonished to find there several authors who took part, or were “fellow travellers”, movement Surréaliste.

Albert Gleizes

Rene Guénon attended in the years 1920 the Parisian living room that Albert Gleizes held with his wife, and followed with sympathy the attempts of the painter Cubiste to find the “tradition in the trade” and commented on with benevolence the theoretical tests of this last, which tried to reconcile the approaches artistic of the avant-garde with the sacred art while being released from the constraints perspectivists and mimetic inherited the Rebirth.

He showed himself however more held in his private correspondence, estimating that work of Gleizes, if they were full with good ideas, remained disordered. It seems indeed that Gleizes, at the time when he meets Guénon, already completed its intellectual formation (he is forty six years old in 1927) and that if its theories concerning art and the craft industry often join those defended by Rene Guénon, it does not remain about it less than this agreement was done while following “of the radically different ways”, although to a certain extent parallels.

André Breton

André Breton expressed on several occasions the interest which the work of Rene Guénon inspired to him, in particular the multiple States Être , of which a long passage is quoted at the end of the text Surrealism in its works sharp , gone back to 1953. The same year, in an article entitled “Rene Guénon judged by surrealism”, the author of Arcane 17 defined the position of the movement with regard to the author of the Crisis of the modern world : Always requesting the spirit, never the heart, Rene Guénon carry our very great respect and anything else. Surrealism, while joining so that there is of essence in its critic of the modern world, by making bottom like him on the supra-rational intuition (found by other ways), even by strongly undergoing the attraction of this thought known as traditional that, of hand of Master, it disencumbered with its parasites, deviates as much the reactionary as he was on the social plan as of the contemptuous blind man of Freud, for example, than he showed himself. It does not honor with it less the large solitary adventurer who pushed back the faith by knowledge, opposed the delivery to the HELLO and released the metaphysics of the ruins of the religion which recovered it.

On the other hand, in the few occasions where it was expressed on the subject, Guénon was firmly to condemn the surrealist company based on a form of intuition which, largely calling upon the theories then recent of the Psychanalyse, could only be based on “the lower psychic field”, i.e. on “what it moreover moved away there from any spirituality. ”
As Guénon judged it as the surrealist ones were part-fascinating general plan of subversion of authentic traditional spirituality, in other words which they were “agents of execution of the plan luciférien . ” Even if, in its eyes, they constituted before all a “small group of young people who have fun with jokes of a doubtful taste”.

Antonin Artaud

Guénon showed itself however more receptive with the theses exposed by Antonin Artaud on the Eastern theater and the distance which separates it from the Western theater. Return-account of an article published in the N.R.F. under the title “the setting in scene and the metaphysics”, in which it was quoted besides Guénon, although deploring that the remarks of Artaud are sometimes confused, sees there “to some extent as an illustration of this itself said on the degeneration which made Western theater something of purely " profane" , while the Eastern theater always preserved its spiritual value. ”

If it made “great case of the works of Rene Guénon”, “ Orient and Occident and the multiple States Être more particularly drawn its attention”, it is difficult to precisely know which impact had this work in the advance of Antonin Artaud, which will explain a few years later to have wanted “to flee European civilization, resulting from seven to eight centuries of middle-class culture” in order to go to the Mexico, “the only place of the ground which proposes an occult life to us, and proposes it on the surface life ”.

Rene Daumal

The poet Rene Daumal, that his spiritual search brought to learn the Sanskrit and to translate Hindu crowned texts, could not pass beside the work of Rene Guénon: not only they share the same interest for Eastern metaphysics, but one finds in the tests of Daumal a vocabulary close to that used by Guénon (the “traditional” adjective is thus used in a direction close, if not identical, by one and the other. One is even astonished not to find at the first of the more references to work by the second.

The poet of the Big game wrote all the same an article in the form of homage in 1928 (“Still on the books of Rene Guénon”), in which the convergence points and the limits of its adhesion are specified. After having noted that “the Western hands change gold into lead”, and that between these hands Hindu metaphysics “émiette in curiosities of mythology and exoticism, in searchs well comforting for precise paradise, as salutary councils that would not repudiate a clergyman… ”, Daumal rents in Guénon that which “never betrays the Hindu thought with the profit of particular needs for Western philosophy”: If he speaks about the Véda, he thinks Véda, he is Véda.

This justice returned to the “Hindu thought” has however according to Daumal like corrolaire the incomprehension of Western philosophy: What there is of deeper in thinkers of Europe like Spinoza, Hegel or post-Kantian German, escapes to him completely.

This incomprehension, nevertheless, is in the content of little importance, Daumal acknowledging to prefer to see Guénon “keeping this hard law, palpable in the tone of its sentences, which defends it of very compromised”. Where on the other hand the author of the Similar Mont is detached from the metaphysician, it is in the refusal of the latter to interfere itself with the fights its time against the established order and in its choice to place itself exclusively on the plan of the doctrinal principles: Rene Guénon, I do not know anything of your properly human life; I know only that you hope little to convince of the multitudes. But I fear that happiness to think does not divert you EC law - history to the full extent - which pushes necessarily what there is of man in us towards the revolt; revolt that we consider not as a task that we are charged to carry out, but as a work which we let achieve by the means of the human envelopes that wrongly we name " nôtres".

Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau was an attentive and assiduous reader work of Rene Guénon, whom he discovers with astonishment as of the publication of the general Introduction to the study of the Hindu doctrines , in 1921. Starting from this date and until the end of the years 1920, Queneau gets the works of Guénon as of their publication, and the articles published in the review the Veil of Isis does not omit to read, thinking that it should seek to become acquainted with their author, and will exchange even a short correspondence with him in 1936.

This influence of the “traditional” thought, such as Guénon exposeexposes it, on the work of Raymond Queneau, is definitely perceptible in a curious unfinished test writes about 1936-1937, and which will be published only in posthumous title in 1993: the Small treaty of the democratic virtues , in which “another world is proposed, another civilization”, whose fine last is “Peace on ground - and elsewhere - for all the Men of good will and any man will be of good will. ” This company, which would have taken note of the “treason” of the social democracy, which would defy Fascism like Communism, without to pour in anarchism, will have to go to see side of the East or medieval Occident, from which it describes the “democracy thus”: “equality of all the men in front of God, freedom of the Grace; fraternity: society based on the love. Discipline, hierarchy, rigor. ”

The personal and intellectual evolution of Raymond Queneau will make him give up this draft treaty, which will remain with the state of draft, and it also relativizes the range of the work of Guénon, continuing however to be interested in the mathematical designs of the author of the Principes of the infinitesimal calculus
Queneau will turn over to the reading of the works of Guénon since 1969 and this until the end of its life, including in Elementary Morale (1975) of the developments resulting from the Man and its to become according to Vêdânta . He about this time would have entrusted to his Jean-Marie son: “I read Rene Guénon too much. ”

Appendices

Works

Books of Rene Guénon

Seen on Initiation, (1946) Editions Traditional, Paris. ISBN 2-7138-0064-1.
spiritual Authority and temporal power , (1952) Guy Trédaniel/Editions of Maisnie, Paris. ISBN 2-85-707-142-6.
general Introduction to the study of the Hindu doctrines , (1921) Guy Trédaniel/Editions of Maisnie, Paris. Without ISBN.
the spiritistic Error , (1923) Traditional Editions. ISBN 2-7138-0059-5.
the Man and his to become according to Vêdânta , (1925) Traditional Editions. ISBN 2-7138-65-X.
the Crisis of the modern world , (1927) Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-023005-8.
the Large Triad , (1946) Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-023007-4.
Eastern Metaphysics , (1939) Traditional Editions, Paris. Without ISBN.
the Reign of the Quantity and Signs of Times , (1945) Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-023003-1.
the King of the World , (1927) Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-023008-2.
the Symbolism of the Cross , (1931) Guy Trédaniel/Editions of Maisnie, Paris. ISBN 2-85-707-146-9.
Théosophisme, history of a pseudo-religion , (1921) Editions Traditional, Paris. Without ISBN.
multiple States To be it , (1932) Guy Trédaniel/Editions of Maisnie, Paris. ISBN 2-85-707-143-4.
Principles of the Infinitesimal calculus , (1946) Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-023004-X.
the East and Occident , (1924) Guy Trédaniel/Editions of Maisnie, Paris. ISBN 2-85829-449-6.
Holy Bernard , (1929) Traditional Editions. Without ISBN.
Esotericism of Dante , (1925) Traditional Editions. Without ISBN.

Posthumous collections of articles of Rene Guénon

Seen on the Christian esotericism , Traditional Editions. Without ISBN.
Seen on the Islamic esotericism and the taoism , Gallimard, Paris, ISBN 2-07-028547-2.
Reports , Traditional Editions. Without ISBN.
Studies on Hindouisme , Traditional Editions, Paris. Without ISBN.
Studies on Freemasonry and the Trade-guild , T. 1, Traditional Editions, Paris. ISBN 2-7138-0066-8.
Studies on Freemasonry and the Trade-guild , T. 2, Traditional Editions, Paris. ISBN 2-7138-0067-6.
cosmic traditional Forms and cycles , Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-027053-X.
Initiation and spiritual Réalisation , Traditional Editions, Paris. Without ISBN.
Mixtures, Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-072062-4.
Symbols of crowned Science , Gallimard, Paris. ISBN 2-07-029752-7.

Various bibliography

Collective works about Rene Guénon and of the traditional doctrines

Traditional Studies N. 293-295: Special issue devoted to Rene Guénon . Without ISSN.
the Letter G - maconnic in French language and Italian Review. Without ISSN.
Sigaud, Pierre-Marie (ED.): File H Rene Guénon , the Age of Man, Lausanne. ISBN 2-8251-3044-3.
(Collective), Rene Guénon: conference of the centenary Domus Medica , the circle of light. ISBN 2-909972-00.
Laurant, Jean-Pierre and Barbanegra, Paul (éds.): Books of Herne 49: Rene Guénon , Editions of Herne, Paris. ISBN 2-85-197-055-0.
(Collective), Which humanity? tomorrow… , Towards the Tradition, Châlons-sur-Marne (France). Without ISSN.
(Collective), fifty years ago, Rene Guénon… , Traditional Editions, Paris. ISBN 2-7138-0180-X. (Notes.)

Other works about Rene Guénon

Accart, Xavier: the Hermit of Duqqi , Arch. ISBN 88-7252-227-7. (Notes.)
Accart, Xavier: Guénon or inversion of clearnesses: Influence of a metaphysician on the literary and intellectual life French (1920-1970), 2005, Edidit. ISBN 978-2912770035.

Chacornac, Paul: simple Life of Rene Guénon , Editions Traditional, Paris. Without ISBN.

Gattegno, David: Guénon: who am I? , Pardès, Puiseaux (France). ISBN 2867142385.

Geay, Patrick: Hermes Betrayed: Philosophical impostures and néo-spiritualism according to the work of Rene Guénon Dervy. ISBN 2-85076-816-2.

Gilis, Charles-Andre: Introduction to the teaching and the mystery of Rene Guénon , Editions of Work, Paris. ISBN 2-904011-03-X.

Grossato, Alessandro: Psychology (allotted to Rene Guénon), Arch. ISBN 88-7252-231-5. (Notes.)

James, Marie-France: Esotericism and Christianisme around Rene Guénon , New Latin Editions, Paris. ISBN 2-7233-0146-X.

Maxence, Jean-Luc: Rene Guénon, the invisible Philosopher , Presses of the Rebirth, Paris. ISBN 2-85-616-812-4. (Notes.)

Montaigu, Henry: Rene Guénon or the injunction . The Royal Place, Gaillac (France). ISBN 2-906043-00-1.

Nutrizio, Pietro (E altri): Rene Guénon E Occidente , Luni Editor, Milano/Trento, 1999.

Robin, Jean: Rene Guénon, the last chance of the Occident , Guy Trédaniel/Editions of Maisnie. ISBN 2-85-707-102-7.

Robin, Jean: Rene Guénon, witness of the Tradition , 2nd edition, Guy Trédaniel Editor. ISBN 2-85-707-026-8.

Sérant, Paul: Rene Guénon , Mail of the book, Paris. ISBN 2-7029-0050-X.

Ursin, Jean: Rene Guénon, Approche of a man complexes , Ivory-Clearly, Lumière on…, Groslay (France). ISBN 2-913882-31-5.

Vâlsan, Michel: the Islam and the function of Rene Guénon , Editions of Work, Paris. ISBN 2-904011-06-6.

Vivenza, Jean-Marc: The Dictionary of Rene Guénon, Mercury From the Dauphine, 2002. ISBN 2-913826-17-2.

Vivenza, Jean-Marc: The Metaphysics of Rene Guénon, Mercury From the Dauphine, 2004.ISBN 2-913826-42-3.

External bonds

Rene Guénon, an intuition of the Truth This site is conceived as a documentation base with index and reproduction of the matter tables of each book and presents the 72 years synopses of publication of the reviews the Veil of Isis and Traditional Études in which Guénon particularly collaborated.
Page on Guénon of the site '' Of the East and occident ''
File on Guénon of the review '' Soufisme of the East and Occident ''
Project Rene Guénon
Texts of Rene Guénon, extracted
a Web site on traditionalism/perennialism

Random links:

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