This is the only biographical introduction to Guénon currently available in English. Sophia Perennis will soon publish another biography, The Simple Life of René Guénon, written shortly after Guénon’s death by his close friend and publisher Paul Chacornac. After a lonely childhood, often interrupted by ill health, Guénon navigated the seductive half-truths of occultism toward a deeper, unified vision offering a way out from the confusion and fragmentation of our time. Against the seemingly inexorable process of dissolution the twentieth century experienced, Guénon pointed to the transcendent unity of all religious faiths and the abiding Truth that contains them all.

"René Guénon was the twentieth century’s chief ambassador for the Perennial Philosophy. His mixture of arcane learning, metaphysics, and scathing cultural commentary is a continent in itself, untouched by the polluted tides of modernity. One need not accept it all, but a voyage to it is indispensable for those who yearn to understand the deeper currents of religion and history. Guénon’s work will not save the world - it is much too late for that - but it leaves no reader unchanged."

-Jocelyn Godwin, author of Music, Mysticism and Magic, etc

Table of Contents

Part One

1) Early Days
2) Searching
3) Finding
4) Cutting the Ties
5) Breaking Loose
6) Turning to Mecca

Part Two
Introduction: The Wounded Amazon

1) Clearing the Ground: Reason and Beyond
2) Crossing the Mediterranean: The Encounter of East and West
3) The Voice Behind the Fan: Tradition and Society
4) The Spiral Staircase: Cosmic Cycles and the Reign of Quantity
5) The Primal Vision: Symbols and Truth
6) In Search of the Lost Word: Initiation and Spiritual Growth
7) A Priest Forever After the Order of Melchizedek: The Moment of Vision
8) Christ and Cosmos: The Rabbi of Nazareth and His Teaching

Select Bibliography

             

René Guénon (1886-1951) is undoubtedly one of the luminaries of the twentieth century, whose critique of the modern world has stood fast against the shifting sands of recent philosophies. His oeuvre of 26 volumes is providential for the modern seeker: pointing ceaselessly to the perennial wisdom found in past cultures ranging from the Shamanistic to the Indian and Chinese, the Hellenic and Judaic, the Christian and Islamic, and including also Alchemy, Hermeticism, and other esoteric currents, at the same time it directs the reader to the deepest level of religious praxis, emphasizing the need for affiliation with a revealed tradition even while acknowledging the final identity of all spiritual paths as they approach the summit of spiritual realization.

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