Synopsis
Since WW II, 'channeling' has largely replaced older styles of mediumship in the movement loosely known as the New Age. Yet the two are intimately related. As both historical chronicle and metaphysical critique, The Spiritist Fallacy, together with its companion volume, Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion, is a valuable study of New Age origins. Guénon takes the 'spirit manifestations' of the Fox sisters in Hydesville, New York (in 1847) as his starting-point, but while accepting the reality of many such 'manifestations', denies that they represent the spirits of the departed. He sees them, rather, as fostering belief in a kind of rarefied materialism, as though the 'spirit of the deceased' were no more than an invisible, quasi-material body, and death no more than a 'shedding' of the physical body while the 'spirit' remains otherwise unchanged-a belief widespread today in popular culture. The author demonstrates how various 'spirit philosophies' are little more than reflections of their own milieux-'English spirits' being conservative and denying reincarnation, 'French spirits' accepting reincarnation and espousing progressivist or revolutionary ideas, etc. And he addresses the strange fact that 'manifestations' associated from antiquity with haunted houses suddenly, in the 19th century-and within five years of their appearance-spawned an international pseudo-religious movement, speculating that certain magicians (possibly from the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor) may have intentionally produced the Hydesville phenomena by actively projecting hidden influences upon the passive psyches of their mediums. The mutual influence of Spiritism and Theosophy, and the adverse affects of 'spirit entities' upon many mediums, are also covered in considerable detail. The Spiritist Error is both an exposé of 'unconscious Satanism' and a highly useful critique of the false ideas of the afterlife which are so prevalent in our time.
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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