Synopsis
René Guénon (1886–1951) was one of the great luminaries of the twentieth century, whose critique of the modern world has stood fast against the shifting sands of intellectual fashion. His extensive writings, now finally available in English, are a providential treasure-trove for the modern seeker: while 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, they direct the reader also 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.
This remarkable book grew out of a conference called by the chief editor of the prestigious journal Les Nouvelles Littèraires in 1924 to discuss Ferdinand Ossendowski’s then recently published book Beasts, Men and Gods. The spokesmen called upon to lead the discussion were the well-known sinologist René Grousset, the neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain, and René Guénon, who was invited as an expert in Hinduism. Beasts, Men and Gods is a thrilling account of an escape through Central Asia, in which the author faces great hardships, meets and foils various enemies, comes into contact with shamans, and then with Mongolian lamas, whose marvels he describes. The book caused a great sensation, especially the closing chapters, in which Ossendowski recounts legends allegedly passed on to him concerning the “King of the World” and his subterranean kingdom of Agarttha. The present book, one of Guénon’s most controversial, was written in response to this conference and develops the theme of the King of the World from the point of view of traditional metaphysics. Chapters include: Melki-Tsedeq; Luz: Abode of Immortality; The Supreme Center concealed during the Kali-Yuga; and Omphalos and Sacred Stones.
“Sacred geography and geometry as they were treated by Guénon in The King of the World and elsewhere remain entirely valid. The symbolism of the Center or of centers that represent it in the respective traditions—together with the associated practices of pilgrimage, sites of celestial influence, and, at the microcosmic level, the means of concentration—all this falls concordantly together at the same time as does the quest, through corresponding forms, for the lost Gateway and the lost Word.” —Marco Pallis, in Peaks and Lamas
“Guénon established the language of sacred metaphysics with a rigor, breadth, and intrinsic certainty that compel recognition as a standard of comparison for the twentieth century.” —Jean Borella
“Guénon gave proof of a universality of understanding that for centuries had had no parallel in the Western world.” —Frithjof Schuon
“It was Guénon who taught me to seek and love the truth above all else, and to be unsatisfied with anything else.” —Fr Seraphim Rose
“Encountering Guénon’s work is akin to being struck by lightning: a dazzling initiation into a hitherto unknown way of seeing reality that reclaims the original integrity of the human condition.” —Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
“Guénon was one of the greatest prophets of our time, whose voice is even more important today than when he was alive.” —Huston Smith
“No modern European writer was more significant than René Guénon, who expounded the universal metaphysical tradition that is the indispensable basis for any civilization deserving to be so called.” —A. K. Coomaraswamy
“Guénon’s works are such potent metaphysical attacks on the downward drift of Western civilization as to make all other contemporary critiques seem half-hearted by comparison.” —Jacob Needleman
About the Author
René Guénon (1886–1951) was one of the great luminaries of the twentieth century, whose critique of the modern world has stood fast against the shifting sands of intellectual fashion. His extensive writings, now finally available in English, are a providential treasure-trove for the modern seeker: while 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, they direct the reader also 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. René Guénon, of whom Jacob Needleman wrote in The Sword of Gnosis that ‘no other modern writer has so effectively communicated the absoluteness of truth,’ is gradually being recognized by deeper thinkers as one of the few who have truly penetrated the seductive veil of the modern age. As an expositor of pure metaphysics and its application to the science of symbols, Guénon is without peer; and his extraordinarily prescient critique of the modern world is attracting more and more attention among cultural commentators. Little known in the English-speaking world till the recent appearance of his Collected Works in translation, Guénon has nevertheless long been recognized as a veritable criterion of truth by a vanguard of remarkable writers who evince that rare combination: intellectuality and spirituality. 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. Regarded by leading scholars as the first truly authentic interpreter of many Eastern doctrines in the West, Guénon never tired, in face of the seemingly inexorable process of dissolution in the twentieth century, of pointing to the transcendent unity of all religious faiths and the abiding Truth that contains them all.
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