Books published by Sophia Perennis et Universalis

The first English-language biography of the well-known traditionalist metaphysican René Guénon, including a separate section assessing the impact of his work in the Western world, and an extensive annotated bibliography.

"For a long time now, religion in the West has been polarized between a democratic kind of faith meant for simple believers, and divine mysteries so high that hardly anyone can claim to know much about them. The vital connecting link between them, that of metaphysical religion, is all but lost..." (From the Introduction.) There are many books that seek to answer the fundamental questions of life: Who am I? Does life have a purpose? How should I live? Dr Bolton's book brings to these universal questions an extraordinary degree of metaphysical insight. It contains in highly condensed form a veritable library of traditional wisdom, offering a systematic reconstruction of our understanding of the soul and its relation to archetypal reality. Its starting-point is the fact that increasing numbers of people seem to lack spiritual and material power over their own lives. Modern man feels like a victim. But true power, real freedom, is closer than we think. Our mistake lies in accepting a false view of the self, and neglecting the metaphysical dimension that gives access to eternity. Dr Bolton's book offers a crash-course in liberation. It can liberate us, specifically, from a common sense idea of reality which is profoundly false, and which holds us in unconscious slavery to time and appearances. The book defends the capacity of the human mind to obtain objective insight, despite the obfuscations of postmodernism, and represents a bold development of the Platonist tradition associated with St Augustine, Plotinus, and Proclus. "This book is like a diamond: a diamond placed not in a necklace, but at the business end of a drill. It is up to us to use the drill to penetrate reality. Writing the book was a great achievement. Reading it invites us to make the achievement our own." - Stratford Caldecott (G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture)

How is the Supreme Identity of Hinduism related to the hypostatic union of Christianity?Does the "pure" spirituality of the East complement the "practical" spirituality of the West?What is the relationship between Oriental quietism and Christian deliverance?The anonymous author of this work, a Cistercian monk, wrote these short but profound reflections out of an earnest desire to bring aspects of the Hindu tradition to the attention of a Western readership. With a subtle care for detail, he clarifies the relationship between the hypostatic union embodied in the person of Christ and the Supreme Identity of Atma and Brahma, two distinct notions seemingly opposed in certain respects but curiously compatible in unexpected ways. With characteristic humility, the author writes: 'We will say unequivocally that after more than forty years of intellectual reflection on this doctrine, we have found nothing that has seemed incompatible with our full and complete faith in the Christian Revelation.'Given the attraction Indian thought exercises on contemporary Western spirituality, these pages offer the Christian a welcome deepening of access to the spirit of the Hindu perspective. The radical disparity that seemingly exists between the phrase 'I am Brahma' and the sacred formula of the Eucharistic consecration 'This is my Body' melts away, allowing these separate worlds to shed new meaning on each other. The author outlines conditions leading to a doctrinal accord between the Advaita Vedanta and orthodox Christian doctrine. He writes at one point that although these two traditional perspectives 'do not pertain to the same order of Reality, hypostatic union and Supreme Identity are not in themselves metaphysically incompatible. . . . What order links them together, because all that is real must be integrated in one way or another into the universal order?"For Western readers, this work offers a better understanding of Hinduism in light of the Christian experience and suggests a better application of Christian principles within our modern lives in light of the profound spirituality of the Eastern tradition. Concerned with a more accurate interpretation of non-duality in the light of Christian philosophy and experience, the author creates the right conditions in which East meets West through an interpretation and analysis of their respective spiritual philosophies, how they differ and how they can become an expression of the perennial philosophy that unites these two distinct traditions.

In Symbols of Sacred Science, Guénon, a master of precise, even 'mathematical' metaphysical exposition, reveals himself as a consummate exegete of myth and symbolism as well, superior in many ways to Mircea Eliade, and comparable perhaps only to his respected friend Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. This extraordinary text unveils the cosmological meanings of root symbols organized under such general headings as: The Center of the World, Cyclic Manifestation, Symboic Weapons, Axial Symbolism and the Symbolsim of Passage, The Symbolism of Building, and The Symbolism of the Heart. Far more than a simple catalogue of myths and symbols from many traditions, Symbols of the Sacred Science lays the foundation for a universal esoteric symbology. In this work, Guénon demonstrates the fundamental unity-across all cultures and ages-of the images with which the Absolute clothes itself in its cosmic self-revelation.

The classical Triad of the Chinese tradition is Heaven-Man-Earth. René Guénon places this ternary in the context of universal metaphysics by identifying Heaven with Essence and Earth with Substance, the mediator between them being Man, whose cosmic function is to embody spirit (Heaven) while simultaneously spiritualizing matter (Earth). Exploring Chinese cosmology further, Guénon sheds light on such archetypal polarities as Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang, Solve et Coagula, Celestial and Terrestrial Numbers, the Square and the Compass, the Double Spiral, and the Being and the Environment, while pointing to their synthetic unity in terms of ternaries, such as the Three Worlds, Triple Time, Spiritus, Anima, and Corpus, Sulfur, Mercury and Salt, and God, Man, and Nature. Perhaps more completely than in any other work, Guénon demonstrates in The Great Triad how any integral tradition is both a mirror reflecting universal themes found in all other intact traditions and an entire conceptual cosmos unto itself, unique and incomparable.

This small volume brings together a number of Guénon's early articles relating to Sufism (tasawwuf), or Islamic esoterism. A later article, 'Islamic Esoterism', has also been included, since it articulates so well the particularities of initiation in Islam by defining the fundamental elements of tasawwuf: shari'ah, tariqah, haqiqah. The first constitutes the necessary fundamental exoteric basis; the second, the Way and its means; the third, the goal or final result. In the other chapters, Guénon expresses with his usual synthetic clarity what tawhid and faqr are, and gives examples of traditional sciences, relating angelology to the Arabic alphabet, and chirology to the science of letters ('ilm al-huruf). A number of book and article reviews give further insights into Islamic cosmology. Some may feel that the essay 'Taoism and Confucianism' here included has little relevance to Sufism and Islam. However, such writers as Toshihiko Izutsu and Sachiko Murata have drawn many parallels between the two traditions. Confucianism, concentrating on social and interpersonal norms, functions as a kind of shari'ah in the context of Chinese religion, while Taoism, like Sufism, is precisely the esoteric Way.

René Guénon (1886-1951) was the founder of the Traditionalist School. Along with Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon, he reintroduced traditional metaphysics and esoterism into the Western world after a lapse of centuries, and was perhaps the first to present the doctrines of the Vedanta, Taoism, and Sufism not as Eurocentric orientalists or occult fantasts had done, but strictly in their own terms. To the 'mathematical' precision of Guénon's metaphysics, cosmology, and esoteric history, Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) added a poetic or 'musical' element, inspired by his close relationship to the Divine Feminine. He also presented the spiritual path as a concrete praxis, involving the spiritual virtues and 'stations of wisdom', that was not so prominent in Guénon's writings. On the other hand, Guénon's prophetic eschatology, especially in The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, as well as his analysis of the 'counter-tradition', gives him a unexpectedly contemporary 'edge' that is perhaps less prominent in Schuon's more aesthetic approach. René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon illuminate each other, both through their unanimity and the specific points where they differ. Each is almost the only means of taking the other's measure. Questions of who was greater, who more traditional, are finally less interesting than the tremendous vision of human reality and spiritual truth that emerges from their shared role as renewers of traditional metaphysics and religious understanding. Schuon, as the younger man, was in a position to compose an evaluation of his early intellectual master, and in view of his long and illustrious career as an author after Guénon's death, Schuon's central essay René Guénon: Some Observations is also his profoundly appreciative as well as pointedly critical declaration of independence (though simultaneously a declaration of collegiality) from the man who, more than anyone else in the modern world, opened to him a fundamental view of 'principial' reality.