Rene Guénon/common Version

Biography

From Blois to Paris

Rene Guénon was born on November 15th, 1886 in Blois, in a catholic family in which the ascending ones are originating in the provinces angevine, poitevine and tourangelle. His/her father was architect. 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.

It is at that time that young Guénon makes two meetings of which the importance for its later intellectual course will be discussed by its biographers and commentators: Albert Leclères, before being named at the university of Freiburg, was during two years the professor of the young person Rene Guénon to the Augustin-Thierry college in Blois. Leclères, called " the excellent" by its students, published a rather abundant philosophical work, of which J. - P. Laurant brings closer certain ideas to some topics guénoniens. This thesis is disputed by other authors, who write that it is " very probable that young Guénon was interressé by the teaching of Leclère, but as it is in " philosophe" that the latter tackled the subjects of which it treated, it is rather in the dialectical argumentation used that the interest of Guénon for Leclère '' " resided; , in particular in the use of this argumentation devoted to the critic of the modern world, which represents only part of the work of Rene Guénon; for the remainder… I.e. the essence of work, the source is undoubtedly more mysterious than one would believe it by reading J. - P. Laurant . P. Chacornac is satisfied, on this subject, to leave the interrogation opened by Jean Mornet: " Which share had in the formation of young Guénon? ".

The Gombault canon was cleaned of Montlivault, close to Chambord, to which Guénon spent a few days when it went in the family of his wife. NR. Maurice-Denis Boulet supports that it is Gombault which is at the origin of the opinion that Guénon held of the Thomisme. R. Guénon and NR. Maurice-Denis Boulet will maintain a correspondence in which the first will be explained lengthily on what will seem to him the ontological limits of the philosophy scholastic, and on the distinction to be maintained according to him enters traditional thomism and the Neo-Thomism the wake of Jacques Maritain. Moreover, according to J. - P. Laurant, if criticisms of Gombault were very sharp against the German indianists, it is because Gombault judged them too " impassioned theologies hindoues" , and not to have betrayed these doctrines, like theirs Guénon reproachwill reproach.

Parisian the occultist medium

The health of Rene Guénon, 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.

The movement occultist in France, which went back to 1888, was directed by Doctor Gerard Encausse (1865 - 1916), alias Papus, doctor of formation, author of two hundred and sixty works. This one had creates the Hermetic School located at 13 rue Séguier in Paris, which gave courses four times per week and whose teachers were Papus itself, Phaneg, F. - CH. Barlet etc Papus was in particular: Large Master about Memphis-Misraïm, president of the order kabbalistic of the Rosicrucian brotherhood, founder of the Group independent of esoteric studies, founder of the reviews Initiation, the Veil of Isis , the Almanac of the magist , etc He was also founder of the order martinist which asserted, wrongly according to Rene Guénon, a filiation with the Ordre of the Elected officials Coens of Martinès de Pasqually, and which will be directed later by Joanny Bricaud, character whose Rene Guénon will say some words in his work the theosophism, history of a pseudo-religion . Joanny Bricaud had founded a " Gnostic church universelle" to counter l'" Gnostic church of France" of Synésius, qualified " valentino-albigeoise" , to which Rene Guénon had belonged (see below). An anonymous correspondent of the review " Gnose" , re-examined in which Rene Guénon wrote, will show Bricaud to be the successor of the abbot apostate Joseph-Antoine Boullan and to be in the line of the vintrasianism.

Rene Guénon was brought to the Hermetic School by a friend, and accepted the three degrees of this kind, and thus became S.I (Higher Unknown) by Phaneg. He was equipped with a charter of acting general for the Loir-et-Cher. He entered then two workshops of maconnic inspiration which were in friendly relation with the Martiniste Order: the Cabin symbolic system Humanidad n° 240, of the Spanish National Rite, whose Charles Détré (alias Téder) was the Worthy one, and the Chapter and Temple INRI of the Primitive Rite and Original Swédenborgien. 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.

Rene Guénon will make later an assessment of most severe on these occultists of the beginning of the 20th century: he will reproach in particular the character in his eyes " syncrétique" their doctrines and the construction of a " supposedly Western tradition of which many elements, in particular those which they drew from the Kabbale, can be with difficulty known as Westerners as for their origin ". He will write also " that there was nothing " behind this movement, and that the work of the occultists " was truly only that of some individualities reduced to their own means ". One day, it accepted the order to bring to it Rene Guénon and they were enjoints to found a " Order of the Rénové" Temple; (O.T.R.) whose Rene Guénon was to be the chief. This O.T.R. would include/understand seven ranks whose ritual ones were never revealed. This " Order of Temple" had a transitory existence, and a " communication" in 1911 required its closing. Meanwhile, the O.T.R. caused very a strong reaction of hostility on behalf of Téder which wrote itself of false letters of Rene Guénon, leading other than this one of the Humanidad cabin, like, by Papus, of the Primitif.
Rite

These events caused several interpretations. J. - P. Laurant speaks about communications by automatic writing in spiritistic matter or occultist. These qualifiers are rejected by the Traditional Etudes , being based on the fact that Rene Guénon, who on his side will not express himself publicly on these questions, will condemn in 1923, in its work the spiritistic Error , the practices and the theories spiritistic. Mr. Vâlsan will qualify these communications of interventions of the old withdrawn center of the tradition Occidentale , P. Chacornac speaks about " communications" and d'" writing directe". CH. -. Gilis has, following Mr. Vâlsan, also uses the word " of interventions" and speaks about the possibility that a properly Western initiation reactualizes with suitable means . In addition, CH. -. Gilis has will also write that " the list of the titles of all the conferences shows, obviously, that a first total development of the teaching of Rene Guénon takes place as of this moment '' " and that the closing of the O.T.R. must be put in connection with the fastening of Rene Guénon with the Islamic esotericism in 1911.

The gnostic Church was consisted Jules Doinel at the end of the 19th century, then directed by Fabre of Essarts (under the name of Synésius) that Rene Guénon met in 1908 at the time of the spiritualistic and maconnic congress organized by Papus. He asked to be introduced into this church, was devoted " Evêque" in 1909 and took the name of Palingénius. In the gnostic Church as in the O.T.R., it there with the " élection" of a founder called to revivify a older spiritual tradition, of origin Cathare in fact, as well as the assertion of a function to be assumed with regard to the western world as a whole. For J. - P. Laurant, it acts of a demonstration of the occultist type similar to that of the O.T.R. For CH. -. Gilis " has; All that sliced undoubtedly with the doctrinal indigence of the occultists mediums, and shows that one is confronted here with a phenomenon complexes . ". For this last author however, the question of the gnostic Church cannot be put in comparison with that of the O.T.R. Rene Guénon as for him, will write later on that " these " néo-gnostiques" never received anything by an unspecified transmission '' ".

It is nevertheless within the Gnostic Church or in one of the organizations concerned with the movement occultist that Rene Guénon made the meeting of Leon Champrenaud (alias Théophane in the Gnostic Church) and of Albert Puyou, count de Pouvourville (1862 - 1939) (alias Simon, bishop of Tyr and Sidon).

Leon Champrenaud (1870 - 1925) was " Master of conférences" at the Hermetic School, writer with the Initiation and secretary-assistant of the order martinist. He entered to the Supreme Council of the Order under the name of No5el Sisera. He moved away then from the occultism of Papus to move towards the Eastern doctrines. He entered in Islam under the name of Abdul-Haqq (the " Servant of Vérité"). Albert Puyou, count de Pouvourville had filled with the Tonkin of the functions military and administrative during an animated career, was a friend of Victor Segalen, will be initiated with the Taoïsme and will be known under the name of Matgioi. Pouvourville and Champrenaud founded in 1904 the review the Way , which stopped in 1907 and in which were published, for the first time, major works of Matgioi, the metaphysical Way and the rational Way as well as a work in collaboration the secret lesson of the Gnosis , under the signature " gnostique" Simon-Théophane . The two works of Matgioi will be quoted by Rene Guénon at several places in its oeuvre.

In November 1909, Rene Guénon, under name " gnostique" of Palingénius, and in collaboration with other members of the O.T.R., the review the Gnosis founded. It is in this review that it will publish a certain number of articles which contain already the matter of its future works the most centered on the field of metaphysics: the Man and his to become according to Vêdânta , the symbolism of the cross , principles of the infinitesimal calculus , as well as the unfinished article on conditions of the body existence .

Over this period of his life, Rene Guénon will write:

“If we had, at a certain time, to penetrate in such or such mediums, it is for reasons which look at only us. ”

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