{"id":35,"date":"2008-01-10T09:06:54","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T04:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=35"},"modified":"2022-06-12T17:32:22","modified_gmt":"2022-06-12T21:32:22","slug":"the-prophecies-of-rene-guenon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"The “Prophecies” of Rene Guenon"},"content":{"rendered":"

See Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n

In the conclusion of Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines<\/em>, originally published in 1921, Rene Guenon<\/strong> offers some predictions, which he emphasises are not to be considered \u201cprophecies\u201d, for the spiritual direction of the West. He points out that the obstacle preventing a re-orientation toward Tradition is that most Westerners regard the decadence that so disgusts Guenon as \u201cprogress\u201d, so that there exists little desire for such a change.<\/p>\n

He holds out the chance that \u201cpeople will one day begin to notice that things which now appear all-important are unable to yield the results expected of them\u201d. Unfortunately, he says that this \u201cdisillusion\u201d will be of a merely a sentimental character, hence the intellectual source for genuine change will have to come from the outside. What the West regards as progress \u2013 material and scientific advancement\u2014is accompanied by \u201cretrogression in the purely speculative and intellectual order\u201d. (This theme is taken up by Evola in Pagan Imperialism<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Guenon then describes three possible scenarios, though he hedges on the timeframe: from \u201csoon\u201d to \u201cseveral centuries\u201d from now.<\/p>\n

Degeneration<\/h2>\n

The worst scenario would occur if nothing were introduced to change course. Then the West, \u201cabandoned to its own fate, would sink into the lowest forms of barbarism\u201d. This can only sound implausible to those who believe in continual progress, but Guenon points out many other civilisations have declined and even disappeared.<\/p>\n

Assimilation<\/h2>\n

The second possibility is that outsiders from the East would rescue the West through assimilation. And this scenario has two options: assimilation by consent or by force. Guenon adds: \u201cassuming that the thing were possible and that the East were willing to do this.\u201d Of course, in 1945, Guenon could not have anticipated the sudden and massive influx of Muslims into Europe within two generations later, so it is certainly possible to consider that as fulfilling the conditions for assimilation.<\/p>\n

Guenon regards this scenario as preferable to the first and warns that Western \u201cprejudice\u201d (read: \u201cracism\u201d) would blind them to prevent recognition of this. The next passage is worth quoting in full:<\/p>\n

under such circumstances there would doubtless be a transition period of extremely painful ethnical revolutions, which are difficult to picture but which in their final result would be of a nature to compensate for the damage certain to be sustained during a catastrophe of this kind; but in that case the West would have had to forego its own character and would find itself absorbed purely and simply.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This judgment may be premature, but this has the ring of \u201cprophecy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Transformation<\/h2>\n

The Transformation scenario is regarded by Guenon as more favourable from the Western point of view, though it still would involve the disappearance of the West as currently constituted. This is the \u201creturn to true and normal intellectuality\u201d. However, unlike the assimilation scenario, which involves the imposition of the transformation under duress from outsiders, this scenario supposes the West brings it about voluntarily and spontaneously.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing how many currently burning issues were anticipated by Guenon. For example, the project of the West is to export enlightenment values — i.e., science, democracy, liberalism — to the East in the hope to alter the mentality of Easterners. Of this, Guenon writes: \u201cOnly a delusion and a blindness begotten of the most ridiculous prejudice could allow a man to believe that the Western mentality can win over the East.\u201d Western \u201cintellectuals\u201d only come into contact with Easterners who are Westernized by the education system, so they get a skewed view of things. Yet, as events of the past few years show, this Westernization is often superficial even among the most educated Easterners. This seems to cause nothing but puzzlement in Western minds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the conclusion of Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines<\/em>, originally published in 1921, Rene Guenon<\/strong> offers some predictions, which he emphasises are not to be considered \u201cprophecies\u201d, for the spiritual direction of the West. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guenon","category-tradition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16269,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/16269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}