The ancient Romans and Greeks, for example, kept a hearth fire burning for their ancestors and they expected future generations to do the same for them. They are a dim image, as though through a glass darkly, of postmortem states. Continue reading
Category Archives: Tradition
Ashura
In a personal communication, my friend Seyyed Hossein Nasr told me: “You are completely right in emphasizing the unique rapport between Shi‘ism and Sufism on the one hand and certain elements of Spanish Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy on the other.” Continue reading
The Life of Reason
Rhetoric is the arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions [which] has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case. Continue reading
Primer on Tradition and its Future
The ignorant are humble since they know that they do not know. The intelligent are humble because they understand how difficult it is to know something. But the half-smart are so absolutely certain about everything. ~ cjs Executive Summary In the Reign of Quantity, Rene Guenon describes two opponents of … Continue reading
Christian Gnosis II
In which we review Christian Gnosis: From St. Paul to Meister Eckhart by Wolfgang Smith. None of the things which are comprehended by the senses or contemplated by the mind really subsist; nothing except the transcendent essence and cause of all. ~ St. Gregory of Nyssa As fire is concealed … Continue reading
Idea Density
It is not the man who chooses the way. It is the way that chooses the man. In other words. the question of a choice does not arise, since the finite cannot choose the Infinite: rather the question is one of vocation, and those who are “called” to use the Gospel expression, cannot ignore the call without committing a “sin against the Holy Ghost” any more than a man can legitimately ignore the obligations of his religion. ~ Frithjof Schuon Continue reading
McClain in his own Words
What follows are selections from “Persian Traditions in Spain” by Michael McClain People who know me very well say that I have a mentality which is medieval and not modern, rural and not urban, that I am an “incurable romantic and idealist”, and that I have a “peasant mindset”. To … Continue reading
Christian Gnosis
Review of Christian Gnosis: From St. Paul to Meister Eckhart by Wolfgang Smith. Unlike other men of Tradition who accept a more or less universal gnosis, Smith will show that a specifically Christian gnosis goes beyond what other sapiential traditions can offer. He bases this on the doctrine of the Trinity, especially as it appears in Meister Eckhart. Continue reading
Salvation and Evolution
At the conclusion to the Meditation on the Arcanum of the Star, Valentin Tomberg makes the following appeal: In our time, therefore, it is a matter of the task of effecting the third step of the evolutionary spiral of the Hermetic tradition — the third “recovery” of the subject of … Continue reading