The Symbolism of the Cross is a major doctrinal study of the central symbol of Christianity from the standpoint of the universal metaphysical tradition, the ‘perennial philosophy’ as it is called in the West. As Guénon points out, the cross is one of the most universal of all symbols and is far from belonging to Christianity alone. Indeed, Christians have sometimes tended to lose sight of its symbolical significance and to regard it as no more than the sign of a historical event. By restoring to the cross its full spiritual value as a symbol, but without in any way detracting from its historical importance for Christianity, Guénon has performed a task of inestimable importance which perhaps only he, with his unrivalled knowledge of the symbolic languages of both East and West, was qualified to perform.

Although The Symbolism of the Cross is one of Guénon’s core texts on traditional metaphysics, written in precise, nearly ‘geometrical’ language, vivid symbols are necessarily pressed into service as reference points-how else could the mind ascend the ladder of analogy to pure intellection? Guénon applies these doctrines more concretely elsewhere in critiquing modernity in such works as The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, and invokes them also to help explain the nature of initiation and of initiatic organizations in such works as Perspectives on Initiation and Initiation and Spiritual Realization.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Multiplicity of States of the Being
Chapter 2 Universal Man
Chapter 3 Metaphysical Symbolism of the Cross
Chapter 4 The Directions of Space
Chapter 5 Hindu Theory of the Three Gunas
Chapter 6 The Union of Complements
Chapter 7 The Resolution of Opposites
Chapter 8 War and Peace
Chapter 9 The Tree in the Midst
Chapter 10 The Swastika
Chapter 11 Geometrical Representation of the Degrees of Existence
Chapter 12 Geometrical Representation of the States of the Being
Chapter 13 Relationship between the Two Foregoing Representations
Chapter 14 The Symbolism of Weaving
Chapter 15 Representation of the Continuity of the Modalities of One and the Same State of the Being
Chapter 16 Relationship between the Point and Space
Chapter 17 Ontology of the Burning Bush
Chapter 18 Passage from the Rectilinear to Polar Coordinates: Continuity by Rotation
Chapter 19 Representation of the Continuity between the different States of the Being
Chapter 20 The Universal Spherical Vortex
Chapter 21 Determination of Elements in the Representation of the Being
Chapter 22 The Far-Eastern Symbol of Yin-Yang: Metaphysical Equivalence of Birth and Death
Chapter 23 Significance of the Vertical Axis: Influence of the Will of Heaven
Chapter 24 The Celestial Ray and its Plane of Reflection
Chapter 25 The Tree and the Serpent
Chapter 26 Incommensurability between the Total Being and the Individuality
Chapter 27 Place of the Individual Human State in the Being as a Whole
Chapter 28 The Great Triad
Chapter 29 Center and Circumference
Chapter 30 Some Final Remarks on Spatial Symbolism

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