Fons Vitae is honored to have been given the rights for the incomparable body of works by A.K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), “a cardinal figure in twentieth-century art history and in the cultural confrontation between East and West” 

(Princeton University Press Bollingen Series LXXXIX Vol. I Coomaraswamy: Traditional Art and Symbolism)

"Coomaraswamy’s works possess a timeliness which flows from their being rooted in the eternal present…It is with joy that we can welcome Fons Vitae’s publication of the final essays and drawings of this formidable metaphysician and peerless interpreter of art and symbolism which contain the saving truths embedded in the millennial traditions of mankind."

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

"There are many who consider Coomaraswamy as one of the great seminal minds of this century"

The London Times, Kathleen Raine 

" Coomaraswamy’s essays [give] us a view of his scholarship and brilliant insight."

Joseph Campbell

ANANDA KENTISH COOMARASWAMY (1887-1947), described by Heinrich Zimmer as “That noble scholar upon whose shoulder we are still standing”, was one of the world’s greatest art historians and scholars of traditional iconography. He knew thirty-six languages and admitted he did “actually think in both Eastern and Christian terms, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali and to some extent Persian and even Chinese.” While serving as a curator to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the latter part of his life, he devoted his work to the explication of traditional metaphysics and symbolism. His writings of this period are filled with references to Plato, Plotinus, Clement, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, Shankara, Eckhart and the Rhinish and oriental mystics

Born in Ceylon, educated in his mother’s homeland England, he became one of the world’s greatest art historians and scholars of traditional iconography. He served as curator in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts until his death, having been the first Oriental to make the meaning of oriental art understood in the West. He played an important role in the collection of Persian Art for the Freer in Washington, D.C. and the Boston Museum of Fine Art as well.

Guardians of the Sun-Door; The Late Iconographic Essays and Drawings of A.K. Coomaraswamy by A.K. Coomaraswamy: Coomaraswamy’s final un-published essays including: The Iconography of Sagittarius, Philo’s Doctrine of the Cherubim, Concerning Sphinxes, and The Concept of Ether in Greek and Indian Cosmology complimented by the author's own drawings and other illustrations from his personal archives. 

"Don’t make any mistake about Coomaraswamy. He is an eminently practical man. I love him." 

Wendell Berry

"Thomas Merton felt he owed a great deal to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. His writing influenced Merton from his student days at Columbia University where he said The Transformation of Nature in Art was decisive in his conversion, his road to the monastery and the contemplative life, up until his final years when he could write to Coomaraswamy’s widow that he emulated Coomaraswamy as a “model of one who has thoroughly and completely united himself in the spiritual tradition and attitudes of the Orient and of the Christian West, not excluding also something of Islam I believe. The kind of comprehension is, it seems to me, quite obligatory for the contemplative of our day, at least if he is in any sense also a scholar.” 

Director and Archivist Thomas Merton Center, Paul Pearson 

“I believe that the only really valid thing that can be accomplished in the direction of world peace and unity at the moment is the preparation of the way by the formation of men who…are able to unite in themselves and experience in their own lives all that is best and most true in the various great spiritual traditions. Such men can become as it were ‘sacraments’ or signs of peace, at least…I will meditate long and happily in silence upon these things, and enrich my life with the symbols, the ‘mysteries and sacraments’ in which he has shown us so many manifestations of God in His world. It is not that I want to write about AKC but rather that I want to enter contemplatively into the world of thought which…is for all of us…but which nevertheless had to be opened up to us by him.” from a letter to AKC’s wife, Dona Luisa Thomas Merton He [AKC] has written truth… with such wisdom and understanding…he illuminates the soul {baja} of the subject he treats and shares with the reader the treasure before him."

Eric Gill 

*  *  *

Excerpts from "Introduction to 'Guardians of the Sun-Door' Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's Posthumous Essays" 
Courtesy of Rama C. Coomaraswamy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The ideas and concepts discussed go back to pre-historical times, but show a consistency of meaning that those imbued with evolutionary ideation would find difficult to accept. Metaphysical ideas however are best expressed by analogy, and hence by symbolism. Indeed, as AKC has elsewhere explained, “symbolism is a language and a precise form of thought; a hieratic and metaphysical language and not a language determined by somatic or psychological categories…symbolism can be defined as the representation of reality on a certain level of reference by a corresponding reality on another…traditional symbols are the technical terms of a spiritual language that transcends all confusion of tongues and are not peculiar to any one time and place. Indeed, they are the technical language of the philosophia perennis.” As Professor Nasr has said, “the symbol is the revelation of a higher order of reality in a lower order through which man can be led back to the higher sphere. It is not accidental that Christ spoke in parables.

What could be more common than a doorway? To quote Gray Henry: “It is more than coincidental that many doorways throughout the world exhibit a corresponding set of symbolic motifs that point to the One manifesting itself as duality – a duality and a world that must return to that One.” One must pass through the duality of the door jambs to the unity which is only to be found in the centre. As Christ said, “I am the door,” and “No one comes to the Father but through Me.” The passage through the door is always a passage that at least symbolically involves a change of state, and what is required metaphysically is a casting off of the “old man” much as a snake casts of his skin. In our prosaic lives we easily forget that the door both allows us “in” and keeps us “out.” We forget that the husband carrying his wife over the threshold symbolizes a psychopomp carrying the soul to another world – hopefully a paradise where the couple will be “happy ever afterwards.” Should the husband stumble, it is a sign of bad luck or impending misfortune. On the other side of the door is the “One” or “centre” which is represented by the Tree of Life, the Axis Mundi, the Fountain of Immortality, a Throne, a Mountain, Royalty, a sun disc, and so on. Also, the centre can refer to the garden of Paradise where the tree and fountain are located.

The entrance is however not open to everyone – as mentioned above, the door functions both as entrance but also an excluding barrier...

Every sacred enclosure is representative of the Garden of Eden. The central point of a Church as traditionally conceived, is either the Cross, the upright stem of which is the Tree of Life or the Dome open to heaven, under which is the Tabernacle containing the Body of Christ who is Himself the Door. The very cruciform structure of the Church repeats this principle as does the Maze found in many mediaeval cathedrals. Again, every genuine Catholic altar has as its prototype, the altar in the Holy of Holies guarded by the cherubim. Between the cherubim is the Shakina or the Divine Presence now replaced by the Tabernacle. Similarly the well of Zam Zam situated in the sacred precincts of the Ka'aba in Mecca represents the Divine Centre, where is to be found the Fons Vitae, a pattern repeated in the fountains of mosques around the world. The water functions to wash the “old man,” and hence to purify the worshipper. And of course our bodies are also sacred enclosures, for the Kingdom of heaven is within the human heart."

Read all of the "Introduction to 'Guardians of the Sun-Door' Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's Posthumous Essays" 
Courtesy of Rama C. Coomaraswamy

*  *  *

Coomaraswamy’s final un-published essays including:  The Iconography of Sagittarius, Philo’s Doctrine of the Cherubim, Concerning Sphinxes,  and The Concept of Ether in Greek and Indian Cosmology.

 [Return to Catalog] - [Fons Vitae titles] - [Traditional Metaphysics, Art and Symbolism] - [World Religions / Interfaith dialogue] - [Order books]