The Tea Ceremony signifies that we ought to perform all the activities and manipulations of daily life according to primordial PERFECTions, which is pure symbolism, pure consciousness of the Essential, PERFECT beauty and self-mastery. The intention is basically the same in the craft initiations of the West — including Islam — but the formal foundation is then the production of useful objects and not the symbolism of gestures; this being so, the stone mason intends, parallel to his work, to fashion his soul in view of union with God. And thus there is to be found in all the crafts and all the arts a spiritual model that, in the Muslim world, often refers to one of the prophets mentioned in the Koran; any professional or homemaking activity is a kind of revelation. As for the adherents of Zen, they readily seek their inspiration in “ordinary life,” not because it is trivial, to be sure, but because — inasmuch as it is woven of symbolisms — it mysteriously implies the “Buddha nature.” Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
Creation – or “creations” – should then be represented not as a process of transformism taking place in “matter” in the naively empirical sense of the word, but rather as an elaboration by the life-principle, that is to say, something rather like the more or less discontinuous productions of the imagination: images arise in the soul from a non-formal substance with no apparent link between them; it is not the images which transform themselves, it is the animic substance which causes their arising and creates them. That man should appear to be the logical issue, not indeed of an evolution, but of a series of “sketches” more and more centered on the human form – sketches of which the apes seem to represent disparate vestiges – this fact, or this hypothesis, in no way signifies that there is any common measure, thus a kind of psychological continuity, between man and the anthropomorphic and in some sense “embryonic” bodies which may have preceded him. The coming of man is a sudden “descent” of the Spirit into a receptacle that is PERFECT and definitive because it conforms to the manifestation of the Absolute; the absoluteness of man is like that of the geometrical point, which, strictly speaking, is quantitatively unattainable starting from the circumference. (NA: The same thing is repeated in the womb: as soon as the body is formed the immortal soul is suddenly fixed in it like a flash of lightning, so that there is complete discontinuity between this new being and the embryonic phases which have prepared its coming. It has quite rightly been maintained, against transformism, not only that “the greater cannot come from the less” (Guénon), but also that even though something existent may gain more precision or become atrophied, there cannot on the other hand be a motive, in a species, for the adjunction of a new element, not to mention that nothing could guarantee the hereditary character of such an element (according to Schubert-Soldern).) (Stations of Wisdom, p.89). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
The ape, for example, is there to show what man is and what he is not, and certainly not to show what he has been; far from being able to be a virtual form of man, the ape incarnates an animal desire to be human, hence a desire of imitation and usurpation; but he finds itself as if before a closed door and falls back all the more heavily into its animality, the PERFECT innocence of which, it can no longer recapture, if one may make use of such a metaphor; it is as if the animal, prior to the creation of man and to protest against it, had wished to anticipate it, which evokes the refusal of Lucifer to prostrate before Adam. (From the Divine to the Human, p. 98) sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
To return to what was said above about the understanding of ideas, a theoretical notion may be compared to the view of an object. Just as this view does not reveal all possible aspects, or in other words the integral nature of the object, the PERFECT knowledge of which would be nothing less than identity with it, so a theoretical notion does not itself correspond to the integral truth, of which it necessarily suggests only one aspect, essential or otherwise. (NA: In a treatise directed against rationalist philosophy, El-Ghazzâli speaks of certain blind men who, not having even a theoretical knowledge of an elephant, came across this animal one day and started to feel the different parts of its body; as a result each man represented the animal to himsel f according to the limb which he touched: for the first, who touched a foot, the elephant resembled a column, whereas for the second, who touched one of the tusks, it resembled a stake, and so on. By this parable El-Ghazzâli seeks to show the error involved in trying to enclose the universal within a fragment ary notion of it, or within isolated and exclusive ‘aspects’ or ‘points of view’. Shri Ramakrishna also uses this parable to demonstrate the inadequacy of dogmatic exclusiveness in its negative aspect. The same idea could however be expressed by means of an even more adequate example: faced with any object, some might say that it ‘is’ a certain shape, while others might say that it ‘is’ such and such a material; others again might maintain that it ‘is’ such and such a number or such and such a weight and so forth. 2. The Angels are intelligences which are limited to a particular ‘aspect’ of Divinity; consequently an angelic state is a sort of transcendent ‘point of view’. On a lower plane, the ‘intellectuality’ of animals and of the more peripheral species of the terrestrial state, that of plants for example, corresponds cosmologically to the angelic intellectuality: what differentiates one vegetable species from another is in reality simply the mode of its ‘intelligence’; in other words, it is the form or rather the integral nature of a plant which reveals the state – eminently passive of course – of contemplation or knowledge of its species; we say ‘of its species’ advisedly, because, considered in isolation, a plant does not constitute an individual. We would recall here that the Intellect, being universal, must be discoverable in everything that exists, to whatever order it belongs; the same is not true of reason, which is only a specifi cally human faculty and is in no way identical with intelligence, either our own or that of other beings.) sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?
In the example just given error corresponds to an inadequate view of the object whereas a dogmatic conception is comparable to the exclusive view of one aspect of the object, a view which supposes the immobility of the seeing subject. As for a speculative and therefore intellectually unlimited conception, this may be compared to the sum of all possible views of the object in question, views which presuppose in the subject a power of displacement or an ability to alter his viewpoint, hence a certain mode of identity with the dimensions of space, which themselves effectually reveal the integral nature of the object, at least with respect to its form which is all that is in question in the example given. Movement in space is in fact an active participation in the possibilities of space, whereas static extension in space, the form of our bodies for example, is a passive participation in these same possibilities. This may be transposed without difficulty to a higher plane and one may then speak of an ‘intellectual space, namely the cognitive all-possibility which is fundamentally the same as the divine Omniscience, and consequently of ‘intellectual dimensions’ which are the ‘internal’ modalities of this Omniscience; Knowledge through the Intellect is none other than the PERFECT participation of the subject in these modalities, and in the physical world this participation is effectively represented by movement. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?
When speaking, therefore, of the understanding of ideas, we may distinguish between a ‘dogmatic’ understanding, comparable to the view of an object from a single viewpoint, and an integral or speculative understanding, comparable to the indefinite series of possible views of the object, views which are realized through indefinitely multiple changes of point of view. Just as, when the eye changes its position, the different views of an object are connected by a PERFECT continuity, which represents, so to speak, the determining reality of the object, so the different aspects of a truth, however contradictory they may appear and notwithstanding their indefinite multiplicity, describe the integral Truth which surpasses and determines them. We would again refer here to an illustration we have already used; a dogmatic affirmation corresponds to a point which, as such, contradicts by definition every other point, whereas a speculative formulation is always conceived as an element of a circle which by its very form indicates principially its own continuity, and hence the entire circle and the Truth in its entirety. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?
To sum up our exposition and at the risk of repeating ourselves, we say that all anti-intellectual philosophy falls into this trap: it claims, for example, that there is only the subjective and the relative, without taking account of the fact that this is an assertion which, as such, is valid only on condition that it is itself neither subjective nor relative, for otherwise there would no longer be any difference between correct perception and illusion, or between truth and error. If “everything is true that is subjective,” then Lapland is in France, provided we imagine it so; and if everything is relative – in a sense which excludes all reflection of absoluteness in the world – then the definition of relativity is equally relative, absolutely relative, and our definition has no meaning. Relativists of all kinds – the “existentialist” and “vitalist” defenders of the infra-rational – have then no excuse for their bad habits of thought. Those who would dig a grave for the intelligence22 do not escape this fatal contradiction: they reject intellectual dis crimination as being “rationalism” and in favor of “existence” or of “life,” without realizing that this rejection is not “existence” or “life” but a “rationalist” operation in its turn, hence something considered to be opposed to the idol “life” or “existence”; for if rationalism – or let us say intelligence – is opposed, as these philosophers believe, to fair and innocent “existence” – that of vipers and bombs among other things – then there is no means of either defending or accusing this existence, nor even of defining it in any way at all, since all thinking is supposed to “go outside” existence in order to place itself on the side of rationalism, as if one could cease to exist in order to think. In reality, man – insofar as he is distinct from other creatures on earth – is intelligence; and intelligence – in its principle and its plenitude – is knowledge of the Absolute; the Absolute is the fundamental content of the intelligence and determines its nature and functions. What distinguishes man from animals is not knowledge of a tree, but the concept – whether explicit or implicit – of the Absolute; it is from this that the whole hierarchy of values is derived, and hence all notion of a homogeneous world. God is the “motionless mover” of every operation of the mind, even when man – reason – makes himself out to be the measure of God. To say that man is the measure of all things is meaningless unless one starts from the idea that God is the measure of man, or that the Absolute is the measure of the relative, or again, that the universal Intellect is the measure of individual existence; nothing is fully human that is not determined by the Divine, and therefore centered on it. Once man makes of himself a measure, while refusing to be measured in turn, or once he makes definitions while refusing to be defined by what transcends him and gives him all his meaning, all human reference points disappear; cut off from the Divine, the human collapses. In our day, it is the machine which tends to become the measure of man, and thereby it becomes something like the measure of God, though of course in a diabolically illusory manner; for the most “advanced” minds it is in fact the machine, technics, experimental science, which will henceforth dictate to man his nature, and it is these which create the truth – as is shamelessly admitted – or rather what usurps its place in man’s consciousness. It is difficult for man to fall lower, to realize a greater mental perversion, a more complete abandonment of himself, a more PERFECT betrayal of his intelligent and free personality: in the name of “science” and of “human genius” man consents to become the creation of what he has created and to forget what he is, to the point of expecting the answer to this from machines and from the blind forces of nature; he has waited until he is no longer anything and now claims to be his own creator. Swept away by a torrent, he glories in his incapacity to resist it. sophiaperennis: Existentialism
There is a total truth which is such because it embraces, in principle, all possible truths: this is metaphysical doctrine, whether its enunciation be simple or complex, symbolical or dialectical; but there is also a truth which is total on the plane of spiritual realization, and in this case “truth” becomes synonymous with “reality.” Since on the plane of facts there is never anything absolute – or more precisely, nothing “absolutely absolute” – the “totality,” while being PERFECT and sufficient in practice, is always relative in theory; it is indefinitely extensible, but also indefinitely reducible; it can assume the form of an extended doctrine, but also that of a simple sentence, just as the totality of space can be expressed by a system of intertwining patterns too complex for the eye to unravel, but also by an elementary geometrical figure. sophiaperennis: What is the intellect and Intellection?
In former days it was the object that was sometimes questioned, including the object that can be found within ourselves – an “object” being anything of which the subject can be distinctively and separatively conscious, even if it be a moral defect in the subject – but in our days there is no fear of the contradiction inherent in questioning the subject, the knower, in its intrinsic and irreplaceable aspect; intelligence as such is called in question, it is even “examined”, without wondering “who” examines it – is there not talk about producing a more PERFECT man?- and without seeing that philosophic doubt is itself included in that same devaluation, that it falls if intelligence falls, and that at the same stroke all science and all philosophy collapse. sophiaperennis: Relativism
To return to what was said above about the understanding of ideas, a theoretical notion may be compared to the view of an object. Just as this view does not reveal all possible aspects, or in other words the integral nature of the object, the PERFECT knowledge of which would be nothing less than identity with it, so a theoretical notion does not itself correspond to the integral truth, of which it necessarily suggests only one aspect, essential or otherwise. (NA: In a treatise directed against rationalist philosophy, El-Ghazzâli speaks of certain blind men who, not having even a theoretical knowledge of an elephant, came across this animal one day and started to feel the different parts of its body; as a result each man represented the animal to himsel f according to the limb which he touched: for the first, who touched a foot, the elephant resembled a column, whereas for the second, who touched one of the tusks, it resembled a stake, and so on. By this parable El-Ghazzâli seeks to show the error involved in trying to enclose the universal within a fragment ary notion of it, or within isolated and exclusive ‘aspects’ or ‘points of view’. Shri Ramakrishna also uses this parable to demonstrate the inadequacy of dogmatic exclusiveness in its negative aspect. The same idea could however be expressed by means of an even more adequate example: faced with any object, some might say that it ‘is’ a certain shape, while others might say that it ‘is’ such and such a material; others again might maintain that it ‘is’ such and such a number or such and such a weight and so forth.) In the example just given error corresponds to an inadequate view of the object whereas a dogmatic conception is comparable to the exclusive view of one aspect of the object, a view which supposes the immobility of the seeing subject. sophiaperennis: What is the understanding of an idea?
This may be transposed without difficulty to a higher plane and one may then speak of an ‘intellectual space’, namely the cognitive all – possibility which is fundamentally the same as the divine Omniscience, and consequently of ‘intellectual dimensions’ which are the ‘internal’ modalities of this Omniscience; Knowledge through the Intellect is none other than the PERFECT participation of the subject in these modalities, and in the physical world this participation is effectively represented by movement. sophiaperennis: What is the understanding of an idea?
When speaking, therefore, of the understanding of ideas, we may distinguish between a ‘dogmatic’ understanding, comparable to the view of an object from a single viewpoint, and an integral or speculative understanding, comparable to the indefinite series of possible views of the object, views which are realized through indefinitely multiple changes of point of view. Just as, when the eye changes its position, the different views of an object are connected by a PERFECT continuity, which represents, so to speak, the determining reality of the object, so the different aspects of a truth, however contradictory they may appear and notwithstanding their indefinite multiplicity, describe the integral Truth which surpasses and determines them. sophiaperennis: What is the understanding of an idea?
A man such as Aristotle provides a classic example of a qualification that is exclusively intellectual and, by this very fact, unilateral and necessarily limited, even on the level of his genius, since PERFECT intellection ipso facto involves contemplation and interiorization. In the case of the Stagirite, the intelligence is penetrating but the tendency of the will is exteriorizing, in conformity moreover with the cosmolatry of the majority of the Greeks; it is this that enabled Saint Thomas to support the religious thesis regarding the “natural” character of the intelligence, so called because it is neither revealed nor sacramental, and the reduction of intelligence to reason illumined by faith, the latter alone being granted the right to be “supernatural.” Not that Saint Thomas thereby excluded direct intellection, which would indeed have been impossible for him, but he enclosed it to all intents and purposes within dogmatic and rational limits, whence the paradox of an interiorizing contemplativity armed with an exteriorizing logic. sophiaperennis: Aristotle
The Augustinian and Platonic doctrine of knowledge is still in PERFECT accord with gnosis, while Thomist and Aristotelian sensationalism, without being false on its own level and within its own limits, accords with the exigencies of the way of love, in the specifi c sense of the term bhakti. But this reservation is far from applying to the whole of Thomism, which identifies itself, in many respects, with truth unqualified – It is necessary to reject the opinion of those who believe that Thomism, or any other ancient wisdom, has an effective value only when we ‘recreate it in ourselves’ – we, ‘men of today!’ – and that if St. Thomas had read Descartes, Kant and the philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he would have expressed himsel f differently; in reality, he would then only have had to refute a thousand errors the more. If an ancient saying is right, there is nothing to do but accept it; if itis false, there is no reason to take notice of it; but to want to ‘rethink’ it through a veil of new errors or impressions quite clearly has no interest, and any such attempt merely shows the degree to which the sense of intrinsic and timeless truth has been lost. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity
It is difficult for man to fall lower, to realize a greater mental perversion, a more complete abandonment of himself, a more PERFECT betrayal of his intelligent and free personality: in the name of “science” and of “human genius” man consents to become the creation of what he has created and to forget what he is, to the point of expecting the answer to this from machines and from the blind forces of nature; he has waited until he is no longer anything and now claims to be his own creator. Swept away by a torrent, he glories in his incapacity to resist it. And just as matter and machines are quantitative, so man too becomes quantitative: the human is henceforth the social. It is forgotten that man, by isolating himself, can cease to be social, whereas society, whatever it may do – and it is in fact incapable of acting of itself – can never cease to be human. sophiaperennis: Philosophy and modern times
The Absolute and the Infinite are complementary, the first being exclusive and the second inclusive: the Absolute excludes everything that is contingent; the Infinite includes everything that is. Within contingency, the Absolute gives rise to PERFECTion and the Infinite to indefiniteness: the sphere is PERFECT, space is indefinite. Descartes reserved the term “infinite” for God alone, whereas Pascal speaks of several infinites; one must agree with Descartes yet without taking Pascal to task, for the absolute meaning of the word does not result from its literal meaning; images are physical before they are metaphysical, even though the causal relationship is the converse. Theology teaches that God is infinitely good and infinitely just since He is infinite; but, this would be a contradiction if one were too fastidious, for an infinite quality in the absolute sense would exclude any other quality. sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito
Absolute and the Infinite are complementary, the first being exclusive and the second inclusive: the Absolute excludes all that is contingent, and the Infinite includes all that is. Within contingency, the Absolute gives rise to PERFECTion, and the Infinite to indefiniteness: the sphere is PERFECT, space is indefinite. Descartes reserved the term infinite for God alone, whereas Pascal spoke of many infinites. One has to agree with Descartes, yet without blaming Pascal, for the absolute meaning of the word does not result from its literal meaning; the images are physical before being metaphysical, even though the causal relationship is inverse. Theology teaches that God is infinitely good and infinitely just since He is infinite, which is contradictory if one wished to be too particular, for an infinite quality in the absolute sense would exclude any other quality. sophiaperennis: Pascal
Sacred art is far from always being PERFECT, although it is necessarily so in its principles and in the best of its productions; nevertheless in the great majority of imPERFECT works, the principles compensate for the accidental weaknesses, rather as gold, from a certain point of view, can compensate for the but slight artistic value of a given object. Two pitfalls lie in wait for sacred art and for traditional art in general: a virtuosity tending towards the outward and the superficial, and a conventionalism without intelligence and without soul; but this, it must be stressed, rarely deprives sacred art of its overall efficacy, and in particular of its capacity to create a stabilizing and interiorizing atmosphere. As for imPERFECTion, one of its causes can be the inexperience, if not the incompetence of the artist; the most primitive works are rarely the most PERFECT, for in the history of art there are periods of apprenticeship just as later there are periods of decadence, the latter often being due to virtuosity. Another cause of imPERFECTion is unintelligence, either individual or collective: the image may be lacking in quality because the artist – the word here having an approximate meaning – is lacking in intelligence or spirituality, but it may likewise bear the imprint of a certain collective unintelligence that comes from the sentimental conventionalization of the common religion; in this case, the collective psychism clothes the spiritual element with a kind of “pious stupidity”, for if there is a naïveté that is charming, there is also a naiveté that is moralistic and irritating. This must be said lest anyone should think that artistic expressions of the sacred dispense us from discernment and oblige us to be prejudiced, and so that no one should forget that in the traditional domain in general, there is on all planes a constant struggle between a solidifying tendency and a tendency towards transparency which draws the psychic back to the spiritual. All of this may be summed up by saying that sacred art is sacred in itself, but that it is not necessarily so in all its expressions. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
The Hindu, or more particularly the Vishnuite miniature, is one of the most PERFECT extraliturgical arts there is, and we do not hesitate to say that some of its productions are at the summit of all painting. Descended from the sacred painting of which the Ajanta frescoes afford us a final trace, the Hindu miniature has undergone Persian influences, but it remains essentially Hindu and is in no wise syncretistic; (NA: Whether it be a case of art, doctrine or anything else, there is syncretism when there is an assemblage of disparate elements, but not when there is a unity which has assimilated elements of diverse provenance.) it has in any event achieved a nobility of draughtsmanship, of colouring, and of stylization in general, and over and above this, a climate of candour and holiness, which are unsurpassable and which, in the best of its examples, transport the viewer into an almost paradisiac atmosphere, a sort of earthly prolongation of heavenly childhood. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
A PERFECT equilibrium between a noble naturalness and an interiorizing and essentializing stylization is a precarious, but always possible phenomenon. It goes without saying that essentiality or the “idea” takes precedence over observation and the imitation of nature. To each thing its rights, according to its place. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
Art refers essentially to the mystery of the veil: it is a veil made of the world and ourselves and it is thus placed between us and God, but it is transparent in the measure in which it is PERFECT and communicates to us what at the same time it dissimulates. Art is true, that is to say a transmitter of Essence, to the extent that it is sacred, and it is sacred, and thus a means of recollection and interiorization, to the extent that it is true. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
Outward forms are criteria in this regard. It is either false or insufficient to allege that St Louis wore the costume of his period and that, mutatis mutandis, Louis XIV did the same; the truth is that St Louis wore the dress of a Western Christian king, whereas Louis XIV wore that of a monarch who was already more “civilized” than Christian, the first epithet referring, needless to say, to “civilizationism” and not to civilization in the general sense of the word. The appearance of St Louis is that of an idea which has reached the fullness of its ripening; it marks, not a phase, but a thing accomplished, a thing which is entirely what it ought to be. (NA: The appearance of Clovis or Charlemagne might be that of a PERFECT Germanic type or of a PERFECT monarch, but it could not epitomize Western Christendom in an age when its constituent elements were as yet uncombined and had not yet interpenetrated.) The appearance of a king of the Renaissance or of the age immediately following is the appearance, not of a thing, but of a phase – nor yet even a phase, but an extravagant episode; whereas we have no difficulty in taking seriously the appearance not only of a St Louis, but also of a Pharoah, an Emperor of China, or for that matter, a Red Indian chief, it is impossible to escape an impression of ridiculousness when confronted by the famous portraits of certain kings. These portraits, or rather these poses and these accoutrements, which the portraits so humourlessly and pitilessly fix, are supposed to combine all imaginable sublimities, some of which cannot in fact be fitted together into a single formula, for it is impossible to have everything at one and the same time; the hieratic and as it were incorporeal splendour of a Christian emperor cannot be piled up on top of the paradisal naked splendour of an ancient hero. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
The archetype of beauty, or its Divine model, is the superabundance and equilibrium of the Divine qualities, and at the same time the overflowing of the existential potentialities in pure Being. In a rather different sense, beauty stems from the Divine Love, this Love being the will to deploy itself and to give itself, to realize itself in “another”; thus it is that “God created the world by love.” The resultant of Love is a totality that realizes a PERFECT equilibrium and a PERFECT beatitude and is for that reason a manifestation of beauty, the first of such manifestations in which all others are contained, namely, the Creation, or the world which in its disequilibriums contains ugliness, but is beauty in its totality. This totality the human soul does not realize, save in holiness. (NA: It is said that the Buddhas save as well by their radiant beauty as by other upâyas; now the Buddha or the Avatâra synthesizes in his person the entire universe, consequently the beauty of the macrocosm is his.) sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
At the opposite pole to this utilitarian sophism is situated another error, which paradoxically resembles the former in its exaggeration and intolerance, and has even contributed to its development in conformity with the undulatory movement of so-called progress, and this is “classical” and “academic” aestheticism. (NA: It has also provoked the art called ” abstract,” which proves once again that the ” evolution” of the West consists in descending from one extreme to the other. It is ridiculous to despise ” academicism” in the name of the art that is at the moment accepted as “modern”; all such judgments depend on fashion and proceed from no objective criterion. Critics no longer work with anything but wholly extrinsic pseudocriteria, such as contemporaneity or novelty, as if a masterpiece were a masterpiece for a reason situated outside itself.) According to this way of looking at things, there exists a unique and exclusive canon of human and artistic beauty, an “ideal beauty” in which beauty of form and of content and of kind coincide. This third point is contestable, if not wholly false, for the “kind,” in direct proportion to the elevation of its rank, comprises a whole scale of PERFECT types, diversified so far as their mode is concerned, but aesthetically equivalent. There can be no question, therefore, of a combing out of individuals so as to obtain a single ideal type, either within humanity as a whole, where the point is self-evident since the races exist, or even within a single race, since the races are complex. The “canons of beauty” are either a matter of sculptural or pictorial style, or a matter of taste and habit, if not of prejudice. In this last case, they are connected more or less with the instinct of self-preservation of a racial group, so that the question is one of natural selection and not of intelligence nor of aesthetics; aesthetics is an exact science and not the mental expression of a biological fatality. These general remarks apply, mutatis mutandis, to the whole domain of the beautiful, and they have a bearing even beyond that domain, in the sense that there may be affinities, and a need for complementary compensations, on every plane of intelligence and of sensibility, and notably on the plane of spiritual life. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
It has often been noticed that Oriental peoples, including those reputed to be the most artistic, show themselves for the most part entirely lacking in aesthetical discernment with regard to whatever comes to them from the West. All the ugliness born of a world more and more devoid of spirituality spreads over the East with unbelievable facility, not only under the influence of politico-economic factors, which would not be so surprising, but also by the free consent of those who, by all appearances, had created a world of beauty, that is a civilization, in which every expression, including the most modest, bore the imprint of the same genius. Since the very beginning of Western infiltration, it has been astonishing to see the most PERFECT works of art set side by side with the worst trivialities of industrial production, and these disconcerting contradictions have taken place not only in the realm of ‘art products’, but in nearly every sphere, setting aside the fact that in a normal civilization, everything accomplished by man is related to the domain of art, in some respects at least. The answer to this paradox is very simple, however, and we have already outlined it in the preceding pages: it resides in the fact that forms, even the most unimportant, are the work of human hands in a secondary manner only; they originate first and foremost from the same supra-human source from which all tradition originates, which is another way of saying that the artist who lives in a traditional world devoid of ‘rifts’, works under the discipline or the inspiration of a genius which surpasses him; fundamentally he is but the instrument of this genius, if only from the fact of his craftsman’s qualification. (NA: ‘A thing is not only what it is for the senses, but also what it represents. Natural or artifi cial objects are not . . . arbitrary ” symbols” of such or such a different or superior reality; but they are.., the effective manifestation of that reality: the eagle or the lion, for example, is not so much the symbol or the image of the Sun as it is the Sun under one of its manifest ations (the essential form being more important than the nature in which it manifests itself); in the same way, every house is the world in effigy and every altar is situated at the centre of the earth . . . ‘ (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: ‘The Primitive Mentality’ in Etudes Traditionnelles, Paris, Chacornac, August-September-October, 1939). It is solely and exclusively traditional art – in the widest sense of the word, implying all that is of an externally formal order, and therefore a fortiori everything which belongs in some way or other to the ritual domain – it is only this art, transmitted with tradition and by tradition, which can guarantee the adequate analogical correspondence between the divine arid the cosmic orders on the one hand, and the human or ‘artistic’ order on the other. As a result, the traditional artist does not limit himself simply to imitating Nature, but to ‘imitating Nature in her manner of operation’ (St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I, qu. 117, a. I) and it goes without saying that the artist cannot, with his own individual means, improvise such a ‘cosmological’ operation. It is by the entirely adequate conformity of the artist to this ‘manner of operation’, a conformity which is subordinated to the rules of tradition, that the masterpiece is created; in other words, this conformity essentially presupposes a knowledge, which may be either personal, direct and active, or inherited, indirect and passive, the latter case being that of those artisans who, unconscious as individuals of the metaphysical content of the forms they have learned to create, know not how to resist the corrosive influence of the modern West.) Consequently, individual taste plays only a relatively subordinate part in the production of the forms of such an art, and this taste will be reduced to nothing as soon as the individual finds himself face to face with a form which is foreign to the spirit of his own Tradition; that is what happens in the case of a people unfamiliar with Western civilization when they encounter the forms imported from the West. However, for this to happen, it is necessary that the people accepting such confusion should no longer be fully Conscious of their own spiritual genius, or in other terms, that they should no longer be capable of understanding the forms with which they are still surrounded and in which they live; it is in fact a proof that the people in question are already suffering from a certain decadence. Because of this fact, they are led to accept modern ugliness all the more easily because it may answer to certain inferior possibilities that those people are already spontaneously seeking to realize, no matter how, and it may well be quite subconsciously; therefore, the unreasoning readiness with which only too many Orientals (possibly even the great majority) accept things which are utterly incompatible with the spirit of their Tradition is best explained by the fascination exercised over an ordinary person by something corresponding to an as yet unexhausted possibility, this possibility being, in the present case, simply that of arbitrariness or want of principle. However that may be, and without wishing to attach too much importance to this explanation of what appears to be the complete lack of taste shown by Orientals, there is one fact which is absolutely certain, namely that very many Orientals themselves no longer understand the sense of the forms they inherited from their ancestors, together with their whole Tradition. All that has just been said applies of course first and foremost and a fortiori to the nations of the West themselves who, after having created – we will not say ‘invented’- a PERFECT traditional art, proceeded to disown it in favour of the residues of the individualistic and empty art of the Graeco-Ro mans, which has finally led to the artistic chaos of the modern world. We know very well that there are some who will not at any price admit the unintelligibility or the ugliness of the modern world, and who readily employ the word ‘aesthetic’, with a derogatory nuance similar to that attaching to the words ‘picturesque’ and ‘romantic’, in order to discredit in advance the importance of forms, so that they may find themselves more at ease in the enclosed system of their own barbarism. Such an attitude has nothing surprising in it when it concerns avowed modernists, but it is worse than illogical, not to say rather despicable, coming from those who claim to belong to the Christian civilization; for to reduce the spontaneous and normal language of Christian art – a language the beauty of which can hardly be questioned – to a worldly matter of ‘taste’- as if medieval art could have been the product of mere caprice – amounts to admitting that the signs stamped by the genius of Christianity on all its direct and indirect expressions were only a contingency unrelated to that genius and devoid of serious importance, or even due to a mental inferiority; for ‘only the spirit matters’- so say certain ignorant people imbued with hypocritical, iconoclastic, blasphemous and impotent puritanism, who pronounce the word ‘spirit’ all the more readily because they are the last to know what it really stands for. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
The reflection of the supra-formal in the formal is not the formless but on the contrary strict form. The supra-formal is incarnated in forms that are both ‘logical’ and ‘generous’ and thus in beauty. (NA: This is why every ‘descent from Heaven’, every Avatara, has PERFECT beauty. It is said of the Buddhas that they save not only by doctrine but also in a more direct and plastic’ way by their superhuman beauty. The name Shunyamurti (Manifestation of the Void) applied to a Buddha is full of significance.) sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
Forms allow of a direct and ‘plastic’ assimilation of the truths – or the realities – of the spirit. The geometry of the symbol is steeped in beauty, which in its turn and in its own way is also a symbol. The PERFECT form is that in which truth is incarnate in the rigour of the symbolical formulation and in the purity and intelligence of the style. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
Beauty is always beyond compare; no PERFECT beauty is more beautiful than another PERFECT beauty. One may prefer this beauty to that, but this is a matter of personal affinity or of complementary relationship and not of pure aesthetics. Human beauty, for instance, can be found in each of the major races, yet normally a man prefers some type of beauty in his own race rather than in another; inversely, qualitative and universal affinities between human types sometimes show themselves to be stronger than racial affinities. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
To say that man, and consequently the human body, is made in the image of God,” means a priori that it manifests something absolute and for that very reason something unlimited and PERFECT. What above all distinguishes the human form from animal forms, is its direct reference to absoluteness, indicated by its vertical posture; as a result, if animal forms can be transcended – they are by man, precisely – such could not be the case for the human form; the human form marks not only the summit of earthly creatures, but also – and for that very reason – the exit from their condition, or from the Samsâra as the Buddhists would say. To see man, is to see not only the image of God, but also a door open towards Bodhi, liberating Illumination; or let us say towards a blessed fixing in the divine Proximity. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body
There is yet another reason for the antifeminine ostracism of certain traditional perspectives, apart from the question of qualification for a given yoga deemed unique, namely the idea that the male alone is the whole man. There are two ways in fact of situating the sexes, either in a horizontal or in a vertical sense: according to the first perspective, man would be to the right and woman to the left; according to the second, man would be above and woman below. On the one hand, man reflects Atmâ according to Absoluteness, and woman reflects it according to Infinitude; on the other hand, man alone is Atmâ and woman is Mâyâ; (NA: In the various Scriptures there are passages which would allow one to believe that this is so, but which have to be understood in the light of other passages which remove their exclusive quality. As is known, sacred Books proceed, not by nuanced formulations, but by antinomic affirmations; as it is impossible to accuse them of contradiction, it is necess ary to draw the consequences that their antinomianism imposes.) but the second conception is relatively true only on condition that one also accepts the first; now the first conception takes precedence over the second, for the fact that woman is human clearly takes precedence over the fact that she is not a male. (NA: The Shâstras teach that women who serve their husbands seeing in them their God, attain a masculine rebirth and then attain Deliverance, which evidently relates to the maximal mode of the minimal possibility for woman.) The observation that specifically virile spiritual methods are scarcely suited to the feminine psychism becomes dogmatic in virtue of the second perspective which we have just mentioned; and one could perhaps also make the point that social conventions, in the traditional surroundings in question here, tend to create – at least on the surface – the feminine type that fits them ideologically and practically; humanity is so made that a social anthropology is never a PERFECT good, that it is on the contrary always a “lesser evil,” or in any case an approximation. (NA: As for Hinduism, it is appropriate to take into account the fact that, in this ambience, the concern for purity and the protection of things sacred is extreme, sacerdotal pedantism accomplishing the rest and this in respect of woman as well as human categories deemed impure. However, and this proves the prodigious “pluralism” of the Hindu spirit: “A mother is more venerable than a thousand fathers” (Mânava Dharma Shâstra, II, 145); and similarly, in Tantrism: “Whosoever sees the sole of a woman’s foot, let him consider it as that of the spiritual master” (guru) (Kubjika-Tantra).) sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body
What we have just said results moreover from the bodily form: first of all, the feminine body is far too PERFECT and spiritually too eloquent to be no more than a kind of transitory accident; and then, due to the fact that it is human, it communicates in its own way the same message as the masculine body, namely, we repeat, the absolutely Real and thereby the victory over the “round of births and deaths;” thus the possibility of leaving the world of illusion and suffering. The animal, which can manifest PERFECTions but not the Absolute, is like a closed door, as it were enclosed in its own PERFECTion; whereas man is like an open door allowing him to escape his limits, which are those of the world rather than his own. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body
In an old book of legends, the chronicler who recounts an apparition of the Blessed Virgin with the Child-Jesus observes that the Virgin was sublimely beautiful, but that the Child was “far more beautiful,” which is absurd in more than one respect. First of all, there is no reason for the Child to be more beautiful than the Mother; (NA: Which would imply that Mary be ” less beautiful” than Jesus, something inconceivable, because meaningless.) the divine nature possessed by the Child indeed requires PERFECT physical beauty, but the supereminent nature of the Virgin requires it equally as much; what the Christ possesses in addition to what is possessed by the Virgin could not determine a superior degree of beauty, given precisely that the beauty of the Virgin must be PERFECT; physical beauty of the formal order, and form is by definition the manifestation of an archetype, the intention of which excludes an indefinite gradation. In other words, form coincides with an “idea” which cannot be something other than what it is; the human body has the form which characterizes it, and which it cannot transcend without ceasing to be itself; an indefinitely augmentable beauty is meaningless, and empties the very notion of beauty of all its content. It is true that the mode or degree of divine Presence can add to the body, and above all to the face, an expressive quality, but this is independent of beauty in itself, which is a PERFECT theophany on its own plane; this is to say that the theophanic quality of the human body resides uniquely in its form, and not in the sanctity of the soul inhabiting it nor, at the purely natural level, in the psychological beauty of an expression added to it, whether it be that of youth or of some noble sentiment. Hence it is necessary to distinguish between the theophanic quality possessed by the human body in itself – beauty coinciding then with the wholeness and the intelligibility of this message – and the theophanic quality possessed in addition by the body in the case of the Avatâras, such as the Christ and the Virgin. In these cases, as we have said, bodily beauty must be PERFECT, and it may also distinguish itself by an originality emphasizing its majesty; but beauty of spiritual expression is of an altogether different order and, if it presupposes physical PERFECTion and enhances it, it cannot, however, create it. The body of the Avatâra is therefore sacred in a particular sense, one that is supereminent and so to speak sacramental in virtue of its quasi-divine content; however the ordinary body is also sacred, but in an altogether different respect, simply because it is human; in addition, physical beauty is sacred because it manifests the divine Intention for that body, and thus is fully itself in proportion to its regularity and nobility. (NA: This – be it said in passing – is totally independent of ques tions of race: every race, excepting more or less degenerate groups – although even a collective degeneration does not necessarily exclude cas es of individual beauty – comprises modes of PERFECT beauty, each expressing a fundamental aspect of human theophany in itself.) sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body
We have alluded above to the evolutionist error which was inevitable in connection with our considerations on the deiformity of man, and which permits us here to insert a parenthesis. The animal, vegetable and mineral species not only manifest qualities or combinations of qualities, they also manifest defects or combinations of defects; this is required by All-Possibility, which on pain of being limited – of not being what it is – must also express “possible impossibilities,” or let us say negative and paradoxical possibilities; it implies in consequence excess as well as privation, thereby emphasizing norms by means of contrasts. In this respect, the ape, for example, is there to show what man is and what he is not, and certainly not to show what he has been; far from being able to be a virtual form of man, the ape incarnates an animal desire to be human, hence a desire of imitation and usurpation; but he finds itself as if before a closed door and falls back all the more heavily into its animality, the PERFECT innocence of which, it can no longer recapture, if one may make use of such a metaphor; it is as if the animal, prior to the creation of man and to protest against it, had wished to anticipate it, which evokes the refusal of Lucifer to prostrate before Adam. (NA: According to the Talmud and the Koran.) This does not prevent the ape from being sacred in India, perhaps on account of its anthropomorphism, or more likely in virtue of associations of ideas due to an extrinsic symbolism; (NA: As was the case for the boar, which represents sacerdotal authority for the Nordics; or as the rhinoceros symbolizes the sannyâsi.) this also would explain in part the role played by the apes in the Ramayana, unless in this case it is a question of subtle creatures – the jinn of Islam – of whom the ape is only a likeness. (NA: The story recounted in the Râmayana is situated at the end of the ” silver age” (Treta- Yuga) and consequently in a climate of possibilities quite different from that of the ” iron age” (Kali- Yuga); the partition between the material and animic states was not yet ” hardened” or ” congealed” as is above all the case in our epoch.) One may wonder whether the intrinsically noble animals, hence those directly allowing of a positive symbolism, are not themselves also theophanies; they are so necessarily, and the same holds true for given plants, minerals, cosmic or terrestrial phenomena, but in these cases the theomorphism is partial and not integral as in man. The splendor of the stag excludes that of the lion, the eagle cannot be the swan, nor the water lily the rose, nor the emerald the sapphire; from a somewhat different point of view , we would say that the sun doubtless manifests in a direct and simple manner the divine Majesty, but that it has neither life nor spirit; (NA: It can nevertheless have a sacrament al function with regard to men who are sensitive to cosmic barakah.) only man is the image-synthesis of the Creator, (NA: And this in spite of the loss of the earthly paradise. One of the effects of what monotheist symbolism calls the ” fall of Adam,” was the separation between the soul and the body, conjointly with the separation between heaven and earth and between the spirit and the soul. The ” resurrection of the flesh” is none other than the restoration of the primordial situation; as the body is an immanent virtuality of the soul, it can be remanifested as soon as the separative ” curse” has drawn to its close, which coincides with the end of a great cycle of humanity.) owing to the fact that he possesses the intellect – hence also reason and language – and that he manifests it by his very form. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body
Finally, the third condition implies the logical PERFECTion of the work, for it is evident that one cannot offer an imPERFECT thing to God, nor consecrate a base object to Him; moreover, the PERFECTion of the act is as self-evident as that of existence itself, in the sense that every act is supposed to retrace the Divine Act and at the same time a modality of it. This PERFECTion of action comprises three aspects, which refer respectively to the activity as such, then to the means and finally to the purpose; in other words, the activity as such ought to be objectively and subjectively PERFECT, which implies that it be conformable or proportionate to the end to be attained; the means should also be conformable and proportionate to the goal envisioned, which implies that the instrument of the work be well chosen, then wielded with skill, which is to say in PERFECT conformity with the nature of the work; finally, the result of the work has to be PERFECT, and must answer exactly to the need from which it has arisen. sophiaperennis: THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OF WORK
If these conditions, which constitute what could be called the internal and external “logic” of the activity, are properly fulfilled, the work not only will no longer be an obstacle to the inward path, it will – 4 – even be a help. Conversely, work poorly done will always be an impediment to the path, because it does not correspond to any Divine Possibility; God is Perfection, and man – in order to approach God – must be PERFECT in action as well as in non-active contemplation. (in The transfiguration of Man, World Wisdom) sophiaperennis: THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OF WORK
In our day, it is the machine which tends to become the measure of man, and thereby it becomes something like the measure of God, though of course in a diabolically illusory manner; for the most “advanced” minds it is in fact the machine, technics, experimental science, which will henceforth dictate to man his nature, and it is these which create the truth – as is shamelessly admitted – or rather what usurps its place in man’s consciousness. It is difficult for man to fall lower, to realize a greater mental perversion, a more complete abandonment of himself, a more PERFECT betrayal of his intelligent and free personality: in the name of “science” and of “human genius” man consents to become the creation of what he has created and to forget what he is, to the point of expecting the answer to this from machines and from the blind forces of nature; he has waited until he is no longer anything and now claims to be his own creator. Swept away by a torrent, he glories in his incapacity to resist it. sophiaperennis: Science and technique, industry, machines
To allege that the woman who is holy has become a man by the fact of her sanctity, amounts to presenting her as a denatured being: in reality, a holy woman can only be such on the basis of her PERFECT femininity, failing which God would have been mistaken in creating woman – quod absit — whereas according to Genesis she was, in the intention of God, “a helpmeet for man”; and so firstly a “help” and not an obstacle, and secondly “like unto him”, and not a sub-human; to be accepted by God, she does not have to stop being what she is. (NA: Ave gratia plena, said the angel to Mary. “Full of grace”: this settles the question given that Mary is a woman. The angel did not say Ave Maria, because to him gratia plena is the name that he gives to the Virgin, this amounts to saying that Maria is synonymous with gratia plena.) (Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.143). sophiaperennis: Femininity
… the feminine body is far too PERFECT and spiritually too eloquent to be no more than a kind of transitory accident. (From the Divine to the Human, p. 91) sophiaperennis: Femininity