Philosophical humanitarianism underestimates the immortal soul just because it overestimates the human animal; it compels people even to denigrate saints that they may the better be able to whitewash criminals; the one seems unable to go without the other. From this results oppression of those of CONTEMPLATIVE bent from their most tender years: in the name of egalitarianism vocations are blurred and geniuses are worn down, by schools in particular and by official worldliness in general; every spiritual element is banished from professional and public life (NA: On the other hand, by a kind of compensation, professional life more and more assumes a “religious” air in the sense that it claims the whole of man, his soul as well as his time, as though the sufficient reason for the human condition were some economic enterprise and not immortality.) and this amounts to removing from life a great part of its content and condemning religion to a slow death. sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
The abuse of intelligence must not be confused with intelligence itself, as was done in classical Greece, the Renaissance, the Age of Philosophy, the Nineteenth Century and, with new and rather unpleasant modalities, in the Twentieth; the human spirit has the right to be creative only to the extent that it is CONTEMPLATIVE, and if it has this quality, it will acknowledge that which “is” before busying itself with that which “may be.” sophiaperennis: The abuse of intelligence
Howbeit, if finally the West had need of that messianic and dramatic religion which is Christianity, it is because the average European was an active type and an adventurer and not a CONTEMPLATIVE like the Hindu; but the “Aryan” atavism had to resurface sooner or later, whence the Renaissance and modern rationalism. No doubt, Christianity presents elements of esoterism that make it compatible with all ethnic temperaments, but its formal structure, or its moral bearing, had to be in keeping with the fundamental temperament of the West, whether Mediterranean or Nordic. sophiaperennis: Extenuating circumstances for rationalism
The answer to these sophistries is that the Absolute is not an artificial postulate, explainable by psychology, but a “PRE-mental” evidence as actual as the air we breathe or the beating of our hearts; that intelligence when not atrophied – the pure, intuitive, CONTEMPLATIVE intellect – allows no doubt on this subject, the “proofs” being in its very substance; that the Absolute of necessity takes on, in relation to man, aspects that are more or less human, without however being intrinsically limited by these aspects; that the possibility of human goodness is metaphysical proof of the divine Goodness, which is necessarily limitless in relation to its earthly traces; that the sentimental anthropomorphism of monotheists is what it has to be, given the character of the masses to which it is addressed; that in a general way the sacred Scriptures, far from being popular tales, are on the contrary highly “scientific” works through their polyvalent symbolism which contains a science at once cosmological, metaphysical and mystical, not forgetting other equally possible applications; that man, when he trusts to his reason alone, only ends by unleashing the dark and dissolving forces of the irrational. sophiaperennis: Nature of Modern man
No people, however CONTEMPLATIVE, can in the long run resist this psychological effect of modern science – the difference, in this respect, between men bearing the mark of the Renaissance and the traditional collectivities of Asia and elsewhere is only relative – and that clearly shows how “abnormal” this science is in relation to the basic facts of human nature. sophiaperennis: Scepticism
The cosmological proof of God, which is found in both Aristotle and Plato, and which consists in inferring from the existence of the world that of a transcendent, positive and infinite Cause, finds no greater favor in the eyes of those who deny the supernatural. According to these people the notion of God merely compensates, in this case, for our ignorance of causes, a gratuitous argument, if ever there was one, for the cosmological proof implies, not a purely logical and abstract supposition, hut a profound knowledge of causality. If we know what total causality is, namely the “vertical” and “descending” projection of a possibility through different degrees of existence, then we can conceive the First Cause; otherwise we cannot do so. Here again we observe that the objection arises from ignoring what is implicit: rationalists forget that “proof,” on the level in question, is a key or a symbol, a means of drawing back a veil rather than of providing actual illumination; it is not by itself a leap out of ignorance and into knowledge. The principial argument “indicates” rather than “proves”; it cannot be anything more than a guideline or an aide-mémoire, since it is impossible to prove the Absolute outside itself. If “to prove” means to know something by virtue of a particular mental stratagem – but for which one would perforce remain in ignorance – then there are no possible “proofs of God”; and this, moreover, explains why one can do without them in symbolist and CONTEMPLATIVE metaphysics. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle
The body invites to adoration by its very theomorphic form, and that is why it can be the vehicle of a celestial presence that in principle is salvific; but, as Plato suggests, this presence is accessible only to the CONTEMPLATIVE soul not dominated by passion, and independently of the question of whether the person is an ascetic or is married. Sexuality does not mean animality, except in perverted, hence sub-human, man; in the properly human man, sexuality is determined by that which constitutes man’s prerogative, as is attested, precisely, by the theomorphic form of his body. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle
If we have to choose between some encyclopedist or other and Jesus, it is Jesus whom we choose; we would also of course choose some infinitely lesser figure, but we cannot fail to choose the side where Jesus is to be found. In connection with the questions raised by the mystical proof and, at the other extreme, by the assurance displayed by negators of the supernatural – who deny others any right to a similar assurance without having access to their elements of certainty – we would say that the fact that the CONTEMPLATIVE may find it impossible to furnish proof of his knowledge in no wise proves the nonexistence of that knowledge, any more than the spiritual unawareness of the rationalist does away with the falseness of his denials. sophiaperennis: Kantianism
… the “intellectual worldliness” inaugurated by the Renaissance and by Descartes resulted in a weakening of CONTEMPLATIVE intelligence and religious instinct… sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito
It is not surprising that the aesthetics of the rationalists admits only the art of classical Antiquity, which in fact inspired the Renaissance, then the world of the Encyclopedists of the French Revolution and, to a great extent, the entire nineteenth century. Now this art – which, by the way, Plato did not appreciate – strikes one by its combination of rationality and sensual passion: its architecture has something cold and poor about it – spiritually speaking – while its sculpture is totally lacking in metaphysical transparency and thereby in CONTEMPLATIVE depth. (NA: In Greek art there are two errors or two limitations: the architecture expresses reasoning man inasmuch as he intends to victoriously oppose himself to virgin Nature; the sculpture replaces the miracle of profound beauty and life by a more or less superficial beauty and by marble.) It is all that the inveterately cerebral could desire. A rationalist can be right – man not being a closed system – as we have said above. In modern philosophy, valid insights can in fact be met with, notwithstanding that their general context compromises and weakens them. Thus the “categorical imperative” does not mean much on the part of a thinker who denies metaphysics and with it the transcendent causes of moral principles, and who is unaware that intrinsic morality is above all our conformity to the nature of Being. sophiaperennis: Rationalism
We do not think we are going too far in saying that the necessity for a dogmatic faith answers to a collective tendency to deny the supernatural in accordance with a mentality which is more passional than CONTEMPLATIVE and thereby riveted to “bare facts,” whence a philosophy which makes deductions from the sensory to the Universal, instead of starting from the latter in order to understand the former; it is not a question here of passion as such, which is a general human fact, but of its intrusion into the field of the intelligence. sophiaperennis: Rationalism
Independently of any question of naturalism, it frequently happens in modern art – as in literature – that the author wishes to say too much: exteriorization is pushed too far, as if nothing should remain within. This tendency appears in all modern arts, including poetry and music; here again, what is lacking is the instinct of sacrifice, sobriety, restraint; the creator completely empties himself, and in so doing, he invites others to empty themselves as well and thereby to lose all the essential, namely the taste for the secret and the sense of inwardness, whereas the work’s reason for being is CONTEMPLATIVE and unitive interiorization. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS
Within the framework of a traditional civilization, there is without doubt a distinction to be made between sacred art and profane art. The purpose of the first is to communicate, on the one hand, spiritual truths and, on the other hand, a celestial presence; sacerdotal art has in principle a truly sacramental function. The function of profane art is obviously more modest: it consists in providing what theologians call “sensible consolations”, with a view to an equilibrium conducive to the spiritual life, rather in the manner of the flowers and birds in a garden. The purpose of art of every kind – and this includes craftsmanship – is to create a climate and forge a mentality; it thus rejoins, directly or indirectly, the function of interiorizing contemplation, the Hindu darshan: contemplation of a holy man, of a sacred place, of a venerable object, of a Divine image. (NA: When one compares the blustering and heavily carnal paintings of a Rubens with noble, correct and profound works such as the profile of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Ghirlandaio or the screens with plum-trees by Korin, one may wonder whether the term ” profane art” can serve as a common denominator for productions that are so fundamentally different. In the case of noble works impregnated with CONTEMPLATIVE spirit one would prefer to speak of ” extra-liturgical art”, without having to specify whether it is profane or not, or to what extent it is. Moreover one must distinguish between normal profane art and a profane art which is deviated and which has thereby ceased to be a term of comparison.) sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
Be that as it may, we should like to point out here that the chronic imbalance that characterizes Western humanity has two principal causes, the antagonism between Aryan paganism and Semitic Christianity on the one hand, and the antagonism between Latin rationality and Germanic imaginativeness on the other. (NA: From the point of view of spiritual worth, it is contemplativity that is decisive, whether it is combined with reason or with imagination, or with any kind of sensibility.) The Latin Church, with its sentimental and unrealistic idealism, has created a completely unnecessary scission between clergy and laity, whence a perpetual uneasiness on the part of the latter towards the former; it has moreover, without taking account of their needs and tastes, imposed on the Germanic peoples too many specifically Latin solutions, forgetting that a religious and cultural framework, in order to be effective, must adapt itself to the mental requirements of those on whom it is imposed. And since, in the case of Europeans, their creative gifts far exceed their CONTEMPLATIVE gifts – the role of Christianity should have been to re-establish equilibrium by accentuating contemplation and canalizing creativity, – the West excels in “destroying what it has worshipped”; also the history of Western civilization is made up of cultural treacheries that are difficult to understand, – one is astonished at so much lack of understanding, ingratitude and blindness, – and these treacheries appear most visibly, it goes without saying, in their formal manifestations, in other words, in the human ambience which, in normal conditions, ought to suggest a sort of earthly Paradise or heavenly Jerusalem, with all their beatific symbolism and stability. The Renaissance, at its apogee, replaces happiness with pride; the baroque reacts against this pride or this crushing coldness with a false happiness, cut off from its divine roots and full of a bragadoccio that is both exaggerated and frenzied. The reaction to this reaction was a pagan classicism leading to the bourgeois ugliness, both crude and mediocre, of the 19th century; this has nothing to do with the real people or with a popular craftsmanship that is still authentic, and which remains more or less on the margin of history and bears witness to a wholesomeness very far from all civilizationist affectation. (NA: Popular art moreover is often the vehicle of primordial, especially solar, symbols, and one finds it in peoples very far removed from one another, sometimes in forms that are identical down to the last detail.) sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
It has been said that beauty and goodness are the two faces of one and the same reality, the one outward and the other inward; thus goodness is internal beauty, and beauty is external goodness. Within beauty it is necessary to distinguish between appearance and essence. A love of beauty, from the point of view adopted here, does not signify attachment to appearances, but an understanding of appearances with reference to their essence and consequently a communication with their quality of truth and love. Fully to understand beauty, and it is to this that beauty invites us, is to pass beyond the appearance and to follow the internal vibration back to its roots; the aesthetic experience, when it is directed aright, has its source in symbolism and not in idolatry. This experience must contribute to union and not to dispersion, it must bring about a CONTEMPLATIVE dilatation and not a passional compression; it must appease and relieve, not excite and burden. (NA: Everything that Saint Paul says in his magnificent passage on love (1 Corinthians 13) is equally applicable to beauty, in a transposed sense.) sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
To speak of “interior Beauty” is not a contradiction in terms. It means that the accent is placed on the existential and CONTEMPLATIVE aspect of the virtues and at the same time on their metaphysical transparency; it underlines their attachment to their Divine Source, which by reverberation invests them with the quality of being an “end in themselves,” or of majesty; and it is because the beautiful has this quality that it relaxes and liberates. Beauty is inferior to goodness as the outward is inferior to the inward, but it is superior to goodness as “being” is superior to “doing,” or as contemplation is superior to action; it is in this sense that the Beauty of God appears as a mystery even more profound than His Mercy. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
To come back to the symbolic and spiritual quality of the icon: one’s ability to perceive the spiritual quality of an icon or any other symbol is a question of CONTEMPLATIVE intelligence and also of ‘sacred science’. However, it is certainly false to claim, in justification of naturalism, that the people need an ‘accessible’, that is to say a platitudinous art, for it is riot the ‘people’ who gave birth to the Renaissance; the art of the latter, like all the ‘fine art’ which is derived from it, is on the contrary an offence to the piety of the simple person. The artistic ideals of the Renaissance and of all modern art are therefore very far removed from what the people need, and, in fact, nearly all the miraculous Virgins to which people are attracted are Byzantine or Romanesque; and who would presume to argue that the black colouring of some of them agrees with popular taste or is particularly accessible to it? On the other hand, the Virgins made by the hands of the people, when they have not been corrupted by the influence of academic art, are very much more ‘real’, even in a subjective way, than those of the latter; and even if one were prepared to admit that the majority demand empty or unintelligent images, can it be said that the needs of the elite are never to be taken into consideration? sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
In the preceding paragraphs, we have already implicitly answered the question as to whether sacred art is meant to cater for the intellectual elite alone, or whether it has something to offer to the man of average intelligence. This question solves itself when one takes into consideration the universality of all symbolism, for this universality enables sacred art to transmit – apart from metaphysical truths and facts derived from sacred history – not only spiritual states of the mind, but psychological attitudes which are accessible to all men; in modern parlance, one might say that such art is both profound and ‘naïve’ at the same time, and this combination of profundity and ‘naivety’ is precisely one of the dominant characteristics of sacred art. The ‘ingenuousness’ or ‘candour’ of such art, far from being due to a spontaneous or affected inferiority, reveals on the contrary the normal state of the human soul, whether it be that of the average or of the aboveaverage man; the apparent ‘intelligence’ of naturalism, on the .other hand, that is to say, its wellnigh satanic skill in copying Nature and thus transmitting nothing but the hollow shell of beings and things, can only correspond to a deformed mentality, we might say to one which has deviated from primordial simplicity or ‘innocence’. It goes without saying that such a deformation, resulting as it does from intellectual superficiality and mental virtuosity, is incompatible with the traditional spirit and consequently finds no place in a civilization that has remained faithful to that spirit. Therefore if sacred art appeals to CONTEMPLATIVE intelligence, it likewise appeals to normal human sensibility. This means that such art alone possesses a universal language, and that none is better fitted to appeal, not only to an elite, but also to the people at large. Let us remember, too, as far as the apparently ‘childish’ aspect of the traditional mentality is concerned, Christ’s injunction to be ‘as little children’ and ‘simple as doves’, words which, no matter what may be their spiritual meaning, also quite plainly refer to psychological realities. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART
From an ascetico-mystical or penitential point of view beauty may appear as something worldly, because such a point of view tends to look at everything with the eye of the will; beauty is then confounded with desire. But from the intellective point of view – which is that of the nature of things and not that of expediency – beauty is spiritual, since in its own way it externalizes Truth and Bliss. That is why the born CONTEMPLATIVE cannot see or hear beauty without perceiving in it something of God; and this Divine content allows him the more easily to detach himself from appearances. As for passional man, he sees in beauty the world, seduction, the ego; it distances him from the ‘one thing needful’, at least in the case of natural beauty, though not in the case of the beauty of sacred art, for then the ‘one thing needful’ harnesses the need for beauty in the cause of piety, of fervour and of heaven. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
Each of these two points of view should take account of the truth of the other. The perspective of merit cannot prevent truth from imposing itself in principle on every man, even on those who are weak, and it is just this which gives to sacred art its universal validity. The perspective of the intellect, for its part, will not preclude all men – even the strong – from being by nature corruptible. A distinction must be made, not only between CONTEMPLATIVEs and passional men, but also between man in so far as he is CONTEMPLATIVE and man in so far as he is passional. It may on occasion be useful to slander beauty; but to do so is always a kind of outrage. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
If a CONTEMPLATIVE ‘can’ turn aside from art as such in so far as he seeks God in the void, he ‘must’ on the other hand reject an art that is individualist and which inevitably offers, on one level or another, false suggestions and a false plenitude. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
The pseudo-Christian art inaugurated by the neo-paganism of the Renaissance seeks and realizes only man. The mysteries it should suggest are suffocated in a hubbub of superficiality and impotence, inevitable features of individualism; in any case it inflicts very great harm on society, above all by its ignorant hypocrisy. How should it be otherwise, seeing that this art is only disguised paganism and takes no account in its formal language of the CONTEMPLATIVE chastity and the immaterial beauty of the spirit of the Gospels? How can one unreservedly call ‘sacred’ an art which, forgetful of the quasi-sacramental character of holy images and forgetful, too, of the traditional rules of the craft, holds up to the veneration of the faithful carnal and showy copies of nature and even portraits of concubines painted by libertines? In the ancient Church, and in the Eastern Churches even down to our own times, icon painters prepared themselves for their work by fasting, by prayer and by sacraments; to the inspiration which had fixed the immutable type of the image they added their own humble and pious inspirations; and they scrupulously respected the symbolism – always susceptible of an endless series of precious nuances – of the forms and colours. They drew their creative joy, not from inventing pretentious novelties, but from a loving recreation of the revealed prototypes, and this resulted in a spiritual and artistic perfection such as no individual genius could ever attain. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
Blue and white cannot have a maleficent meaning properly so called; blue because its radiation is in a certain sense spherical or circular and so CONTEMPLATIVE, and white because it is absolutely neutral, transcendent and primordial. On the other hand, they may have a more or less negative meaning; white is then emptiness and outwardness which is opposed both to the qualitative plenitude of colours and also to the secrecy of black, to spiritual inwardness; in this last case it is the profane aspect of day which is in opposition to the sacred aspect of night. Blue is cold which is opposed to heat, or water (quantity) which is opposed to fire (quality), and so to blood which is also hot and qualitative. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
One may wonder why the Hindus, and still more so the Buddhists, did not fear to furnish their sacred art with occasions for a fall, given that beauty – sexual beauty above all – invites to “let go of the prey for its shadow,” that is, to forget the transcendent content through being attached to the earthly husk. Now it is not for nothing that Buddhist art, more than any other, has given voice to the terrible aspects of cosmic manifestation, which at the very least constitutes a “reestablishing of the balance”: the spectator is warned, he cannot lose sight of the everywhere present menace of the pitiless samsâra, nor that of the Guardians of the Sanctuary. Darshan – the contemplation of the Divine in nature or in art – quite clearly presupposes a CONTEMPLATIVE temperament; now it is this very temperament that comprises a sufficient guarantee against the spirit of compliance and profanation. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body
There have always and everywhere been CONTEMPLATIVE saints who – without thereby being lazy – have not worked, and all the traditional worlds afford – or did afford – the sight of beggars to whom alms are given without anything being asked of them, except perhaps prayers; no Hindu would dream of blaming a Ramakrishna or a Ramana Maharshi for the fact that he did not engage in any profession. It is generalized impiety, the suppression of the sacred in public life and the constraints of industrialism that have had the effect of making work a “categorical imperative” outside which – it is believed – there is only culpable laziness and corruption. sophiaperennis: THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OF WORK
Modem science, as it plunges dizzily downwards, its speed increasing in geometrical progression towards an abyss into which it hurtles like a vehicle without brakes, is another example of that loss of the “spatial” equilibrium characteristic of CONTEMPLATIVE and still stable civilizations. This criticism of modem science – and it is by no means the first ever to be made – is made not on the grounds that it studies some fragmentary field within the limits of its competence, but on the grounds that it claims to be in a position to attain to total knowledge, and that it ventures conclusions in fields accessible only to a supra-sensible and truly intellective wisdom, the existence of which it refuses on principle to admit. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations
Modem science, as it plunges dizzily downwards, its speed increasing in geometrical progression towards an abyss into which it hurtles like a vehicle without brakes, is another example of that loss of the “spatial” equilibrium characteristic of CONTEMPLATIVE and still stable civilizations. This criticism of modem science – and it is by no means the first ever to be made – is made not on the grounds that it studies some fragmentary field within the limits of its competence, but on the grounds that it claims to be in a position to attain to total knowledge, and that it ventures conclusions in fields accessible only to a supra-sensible and truly intellective wisdom, the existence of which it refuses on principle to admit. sophiaperennis: Science and Tradition
That spiritual function which can be described as “action of presence” found in the Maharshi its most rigorous expression. Shri Ramana was as it were the incarnation, in these latter days and in the face of the modern activist fever, of what is primordial and incorruptible in India. He manifested the nobility of CONTEMPLATIVE non-action in the face of an ethic of utilitarian agitation, and he showed the implacable beauty of pure truth in the face of passions, weaknesses and betrayals. sophiaperennis: Ramana Maharshi
The intellectual poverty of the neo-yogist movement provides an incontestable proof that there is no spirituality without orthodoxy. It is assuredly not by chance that all these movements are as if in league against the intelligence; intelligence is replaced by a thinking that is feeble and vague instead of being logical, and ‘dynamic’ instead of being CONTEMPLATIVE. All these movements are characterized by an affectation of detachment in regard to pure doctrine. They hate its corruptibility, for in their eyes this purity is ‘dogmatism’; they fail to understand that Truth does not deny forms from the outside, but transcends them from within. Orthodoxy includes and guarantees incalculable values which man could not possibly draw out of himself. (Spiritual Perspectives and Human facts, p. 117-118). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism
… why have Sufis declared that God can be present, not only in churches and synagogues, but also in the temples of idolaters? It is because in the ‘classical’ and ‘traditional’ cases of paganism the loss of the full truth and of efficacy for salvation essentially results from a profound modification in the mentality of the worshippers and not from an ultimate falsity of the symbols; in all the religions which surrounded each of the three Semitic forms of monotheism, as also in those form of ‘fetishism’ (NA: This word is here used only as a conventional sign to designate decadent traditions, and there is no intention of pronouncing on the value of any particular African or Melanesian tradition.) still alive today, a mentality once CONTEMPLATIVE and so in possession of a sense of the metaphysical transparency of forms had ended by becoming passional, worldly (NA: According to the Quran the kâfir is in effect characterized by his ‘worldliness’, that is, by his preference for the good things of this world and his inadvertence (ghaflah) as regards those lying beyond this world.) and, in the strict sense, superstitious. (NA: According to the Gospels the pagans imagine they will be answered ‘for their much speaking’. At root ‘superstition’ consists in the illusion of taking the means for the end or of worshipping forms for their own sake and not for their transcendent content.) The symbol through which the reality symbolized was originally clearly perceived — a reality of which it is moreover truly speaking an aspect — became in fact an opaque and uncomprehended image or an idol, and this falling away of the general level of mentality could not fail in its turn to react on the tradition itself, enfeebling it and falsifying it in various way; most of the ancient paganisms were indeed characterized by intoxication with power and sensuality. (Understanding Islam, p.55). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism