Traditionalists

Blog redesign

2012-01-28T14:15:00.000+02:00

Regular visitors to this blog will notice that it has been redesigned. After almost six years, even a blog on Traditionalism and the Traditionalists needs a redesign.

Anarchist Traditionalism: Hakim Bey

2012-01-02T19:37:00.000+02:00

Arthur Versluis's recent interview (see below) with the American anarchist Peter Lamborn Wilson, who also writes as Hakim Bey, suggests that Lamborn Wilson’s anarchism is a leftist form of Political “Soft” Traditionalism.

Lamborn Wilson was born in 1945, and after developing an interest in Sufism in New York, dropped out of Columbia University and left the US in 1968. He settled in Tehran in 1970, and stayed there until 1978, editing the journal of Nasr’s Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, Sophia Perennis. It is unlikely that someone in this position would not have been a Maryami, and although Lamborn Wilson has never described himself as a former Maryami, everything about his biography suggests this. Lamborn Wilson certainly became Muslim, and still describes himself as a Shi’i Muslim, if only on the basis that he sees himself as still being everything that he has ever been. It seems, however, that he does not now follow mainstream Muslim practice.

Lamborn Wilson left Iran at the revolution, as did Nasr, and over the next seven years moved from the Maryamiyya to anarchism, publishing CHAOS: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism in 1985 under the pseudonym Hakim Bey, which he still uses. Quite what happened between 1978 and 1985 is unclear. Part of the explanation is evidently intellectual, and Lamborn Wilson’s later views on Traditionalism are considered below. Another part of the explanation is evidently personal, as Lamborn Wilson participated in the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBA), and his first use of the pseudonym Hakim (though not yet Hakim Bey) was in 1983, when he published Crowstone: The Chronicles of Qamar, a Sword and Sorcery Boy-love Tale (Amsterdam: Spartacus). Although the Maryamiyya is reported to have tolerated some sexual behavior that mainstream Islam forbids, there are no reports of the Maryamiyya considering “man-boy love” acceptable.

Although some critics of Lamborn Wilson dismiss his work as no more than an attempt to justify his own practice of “man-boy love,” in my view that work is too substantial and influential to be so dismissed.

In the Versluis interview, Lamborn Wilson makes clear that what he now values in Traditionalism is its critique of modernity, not its “proposal” for responding to modernity. As an anarchist, Lamborn Wilson gives the state–and especially the all-powerful contemporary state–a prime position in his own critique of modernity. His own proposals lead in a number of directions, none of them revolutionary in the normal sense, given his perception that the state always manages to co-opt revolutions. He stresses that his proposals should be taken in a poetic as much as a literal sense. The most famous of them is the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ),“an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it” (TAZ, quoted in Sellars 2011). A less famous proposal, more emphasized in his interview with Versluis, is a form of “even more traditional Traditionalism” reminiscent of that of Khozh-Akhmed Noukhaev: to go back even further into the past, to before the state, to the tribe, and to the form of religiosity associated with it: individual spirituality. The tribe, Lamborn Wilson, admits, is not perfect: “Violence is real, and it will always be real, and disappointment and death are always there.” But at least the tribe is not the state.

Lamborn Wilson distinguishes between religion and spirituality, between the organized and the individual. He associates organized religion with the state, as “part of the Babylonian scam.” Individual spirituality, in contrast, is associated with the tribe, and with the ever-present rebellion of the individual against the state, which produces “countertraditions or alternate traditions,” some of them spiritual, often Hermetic. Among these alternate traditions he counts Sufism, which is anarchist in that it understands that “this social world is illusory.” Lamborn Wilson thus prefers Henry Corbin’s vision of “the medieval manyness of Islam” to “the rigid systems of Neotraditionalism that stem from Guénon.” Guénon, then, stands with organized religion, and so does not stand against the state, and thus Lamborn Wilson stands against Guénon and, by extension, the Maryamiyya.

Although I have described the more traditional of Lamborn Wilson’s responses as separate from the more famous TAZ, the two can in fact be reconciled: the archetype of his TAZ is the “Republic of Salé,” an autonomous Moroccan city that flourished in the seventeenth century. Salé may be seen as a small-scale human society that resembled the tribe more than the state, and the TAZ may be seen as a transitory tribe.

Lamborn Wilson, then, is Traditionalist in his probable Maryami origins, and partly Traditionalist in the terms in which he sees the modern world–including, though this is not much emphasized, a general pessimism about the direction of history, and an apocalyptic vision of a possible future of “centuries of hideous darkness.” Rather as Evola sees the spiritual as the proper root of political action, Lamborn Wilson says that his proposals ultimately have their origin in “mystical inspiration” and “direct experiential perception.” If not the proper root of political action, the spiritual is the accompaniment of anti-state resitance.

Lamborn Wilson is furthest from Guénonian Traditionalism in the anarchism in his proposals, which derive also from thinkers in whom the Guénonians have no interest, notably Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He criticizes Guénon’s own proposals to the point of dismissing them. But even so, Lamborn Wilson can probably be seen as a Soft Traditionalist.

Leftist Traditionalism is rare, if only because the left generally stresses the practical sovereignty of the whole people, while Traditionalism stresses that the people as a whole are mostly wrong. Though a leftist more than a rightist, Lamborn Wilson does not see the whole people as mostly right, however. Membership of the TAZ is self-selecting, not universal.

Lamborn Wilson links up to two further aspects of the phenomena in which this blog is interested. One is the music scene, or rather the rave scene: for some, a rave is a TAZ. Another is contemporary Western Sufism: Lamborn Wilson is enthusiastic about the possibilities of the “Green Hermeticism” project, in which connection he has good relations with Zia Inayat Khan, who helped produce Green Hermeticism: Alchemy and Ecology (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne, 2007, ed. Lamborn Wilson, Christopher Bamford, and Kevin Townley), for which he also wrote the introduction.

The main sources for this post are Arthur Versluis, “A Conversation with Peter Lamborn Wilson,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 4, no. 2 (Fall 2010) pp. 139-165, from which all quotations are taken unless otherwise indicated, and Simon Sellars “Hakim Bey: Repopulating the Temporary Autonomous Zone,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 4, no. 2 (Fall 2010), pp. 83-108. Most of Lamborn Wilson’s writings are available at http://hermetic.com/bey. My thanks to Jean-François Mayer for bringing the Versluis interview to my attention.

Gianluca Casseri a Traditionalist, but the explanation lies elsewhere

2011-12-14T20:03:00.000+02:00

Gianluca Casseri, who shot three Senegalese street-vendors in Florence on December 13, killing two of them, and then killed himself to avoid capture, is being described by some press reports as “the Italian Breivik.” Both were from the radical right, both were enthusiasts of fantasy literature, and both seem to have thought themselves fighting in an apocalyptic clash of civilizations.

There are important differences between Casseri and Breivik, however. Breivik dismissed Traditionalism, while Casseri was a Traditionalist. And while Breivik’s writings make his acceptance of the clash of civilizations narrative very clear, Casseri’s writings barely refer to Islam. For Casseri, the important clash seems to have been that between Tradition and Modernity. And the important narrative may have been that of the warrior, Casseri’s interest in whom may owe something to Evola. This may help to explain his actions, but it does not explain his targets.

Something of Casseri’s ideology may be reconstructed from the four publications that can be found relatively easily: one novel, one short essay, one extended essay, and one long non-fiction book. The short essay, from 2010, argues for finding the “roots of Europe” not in Christianity or the Enlightenment but in paganism, Indo-European religion and ultimately the Vedas. It bases itself largely on Sul problema d’una Tradizione Europea (On the problem of a European Tradition, 1973) of the Evolian Traditionalist Adriano Romualdi (1940-73), and thus ultimately on Evola.

The extended essay, from 2000, “Dracula, il guerriero di Wotan” (Dracula, the warrior of Wotan), deals at length with what Casseri sees as a central figure in this tradition: the berserker, the bearskin-clad super-warrior of Norse myth. Casseri seeks to demonstrate the relationship between the Dracula myth and the berserker, with careful footnoting and references to Eliade, C. G. Jung, and Georges Dumézil, among others. Eliade and Dumézil, of course, have their own relationship to Traditionalism. The basic idea of Casseri’s “Dracula,” however, seems to come from a book by a scholar at the University of Cagliari, Marinella Lorinczi, author of Dracula & Co. Il richiamo del Nord nei romanzi di Bram Stoker (Dracula & Co.: The call of the North in the novels of Bram Stoker, 1998).

Casseri's novel, La chiave del caos (The key of chaos, 2010, pictured) was co-written with Enrico Rulli (unidentified), and starts in Vienna at the end of the Second World War (a crucial point in Evola’s life). It then becomes a historical novel, taking the reader back to sixteenth-century Prague and the secrets of John Dee. In an introduction to this novel, Gianfranco de Turris, perhaps the most eminent follower of Evola in Italy today, wrote that the book “challenged the foundations of the society we live in” with “the mentality of the men of the sixteenth century, representatives of the perennial philosophy.”

The non-fiction book, I protocolli del savio di Alessandria (The protocols of the Learned Elder of Alessandia, 2011) refers to Umberto Eco, who was born in Alessandria (Piedmont, Italy), and challenges the version of the origins of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion given by Eco in his Il Cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery, 2010). Part of Eco’s novel places the origins of the Protocols in Eco's own picaresque occult-tinged story. Current resources do not allow me to see what Casseri’s alternative version is.

Casseri, then, appears as an Evolian Traditionalist with a taste for fiction, and also as a member of Italy’s Evolian milieu. De Turris writes introductions to his books. “Dracula” was published on the website of the Centro Studi La Runa, a mainstream Evolian group dating from 1994. The essay on the pagan roots of Europe was first published on the website of a mainstream non-Traditionalist neo-Fascist group, the CasaPound, but the Centro Studi La Runa then republished it. Although a member of the Evolian milieu, Casseri was also read outside it: La chiave del caos was published by a small but mainstream publisher specializing in books on personal growth and related topics, and I protocolli del savio di Alessandria was also published by a non-Traditionalist publisher, though a rather smaller one.

If Casseri’s ideological profile is reasonably clear, the relationship between this and his actions is not clear. To judge from his writings, he had little interest in Islam, and neither does the Centro Studi La Runa, or even the neo-Fascist CasaPound. Casseri wrote against the Christian myth of Europe to which Breivik subscribed. Perhaps the extended essay on the berserker, the hunter and the beast-warrior explains something?

Even though some websites and Facebook groups are now hailing Casseri as a “patriot” and casting Dracula as a hero of European resistance against Islam (on the grounds that he fought Turks), Casseri seems very different from Breivik. In Breivik’s case, the connection between ideology and action was clear. In Casseri’s case, the connection is far from clear. Casseri was clearly a committed Traditionalist, but this seems to have nothing to do with the deaths in Florence. Normally, ideology is a key to understanding terrorism, but ion this case, the explanation evidently lies somewhere else.

After the Traditionalist Conference in Moscow

2011-11-01T13:36:00.000+02:00

As previously announced, a major Traditionalist conference was arranged in Moscow by Natella Speranskaya, 15-16 October 2011. This featured the leading Russian Traditionalists, Alexander Dugin and Gaydar Jamal.

As can be seen in the photograph, among the guests were Abd al Wahid Pallavicini and his son Yahya, of the of the CO.RE.IS (Comunità Religiosa Islamica, Islamic Religious Community). Although Italian "political" Traditionalists such as Claudio Mutti (who was also in Moscow) have been interested in Dugin for some time, interest in Dugin on the part of "spiritual" Traditionalists with their origin in Schuon's Maryamiyya is new. Perhaps a sign that Dugin's influence is now so great that the spiritual and political branches may not always remain as separate as they have been in recent decades?

As well as something new, something old: the verse of Yevgeny Golovin, one of the leading figures in the Soviet-era dissident circle from which Russian Traditionalism emerged. Among the cultural events arranged in connection with the conference was a "rock ballad" using the Golovin's verse, performed by Alexander Sklyar.

Topics discussed are reported to have included eschatology, the postmodern situation, neo-Platonism, chaos, Kabbalah, and "the sacredness of authority and metaphysical horizons of the revolution."

Round-table on "Traditions and Traditionalism," Donetsk National Technical University

2011-10-14T19:53:00.001+02:00

Another conference, or rather a round table, on "Traditions and Traditionalism," scheduled for November 11, 2011, at the Donetsk National Technical University, Ukraine. The Call follows normal academic protocol, and the round table is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Religious Studies, but is actually organized by a group called Aghlaqin that describes itself as "Thelemic"--i.e. inspired by Aleister Crowley. Conference languages are announced as Ukrainian, Russian and English, but the Call is only in Ukrainian.

There seems to be quite an interest in Tradititionalism in Ukraine. One of the websites carrying the Call is that of the Ukrainian Traditionalist Club, based in Kiev.

Dugin and the Eurasian Union

2011-10-05T09:33:00.000+02:00

Charles Clover of London's Financial Times makes a link (FT, October 5) between Alexander Dugin and Vladimir Putin's new Eurasian Union, announced by Putin in an article in Izvestia on October 3. “We have waited for 25 years for these words to be uttered in public by our leadership,” Clover quotes Dugin as saying. “We did help in the preparation [of Putin's article], but, unfortunately, they softened our formulas.”

Actually, any contributions by Dugin to Putin's article seem to have been softened to invisibility. As described in the article, Putin's Eurasian Union sounds very much like a copy of the European Union, without the problems. However, the wind in Moscow is clearly continuing to blow Dugin's way.

Rebellion, Tradition, and Complex Cultural Systems

2011-10-04T09:50:00.005+02:00

A new article by Kennet Granholm on "Heathen Influences in Black Metal and Neofolk Music" (its subtitle), with the title "Sons of Northern Darkness," has just been published in Numen 58, no 4 (2011), pp. 514-544. The article is about Black Metal and Neofolk rather than Traditionalism, but does cover Traditionalism, and provides an interesting answer to the question of the relationship between Traditionalism and these two music scenes.

The argument is that we should think of Black Metal and Neofolk not just as music scenes, but as "complex cultural systems." Otherwise, it is hard to explain why two scenes that are so different in musical terms should partly overlap. The article traces in detail the development of the "esoteric" content of these scenes (or systems). Rock music is inherently rebellious, it argues. This is why Black Sabbath toyed with Satanism in the 1970s. When Satanism lost its power to shock, musicians moved on and went deeper, ending in some cases in what might be called classic heathenism, and in other cases in "Radical Traditionalist" heathenism. The article also charts a parallel process for Neofolk.

So, some might say: it's just posing, using Traditionalism (and/or heathenism) to very un-Traditional ends. Not so, in effect replies Granholm. Firstly, something either is or is not part of a cultural system, and if it is, it doesn't matter how and why it got there. Secondly, even if the root of the interest in Traditionalism (and/or heathenism) is rebellion, something similar is also true for esotericism as a whole. Rebellion against, or rejection of, the modern world is actually an integral aspect of all esotericism. And:

The key characteristic of Traditionalism, as well as the later Radical Traditionalist movement, is the rejection of dominant Western cultural and societal values and norms. Instead, the attention is shifted away from the modern West, and to what is considered to be more authentic culture and uncorrupted expressions of eternal wisdom. While the common “tradition” of choice for the original Traditionalist school was mystical expressions of Islam, mainly Sufism, later developments of Traditionalism — in particular Radical Traditionalism — have often turned to European pre-Christian traditions. (537-38).

I am not 100% certain that this is the last word on the subject, but I think we are getting there. And I suspect this argument helps explain more than the music scenes that are its topic. It could also perhaps be developed to cover the political: the young Evola of the 1930s, the Evolians of the 1970s, and even parts of today's New Right.

New book on Martinism

2011-09-19T12:37:00.001+02:00

For those interested in the history of Martinism in France, especially when it comes to social and political views: David Allen Harvey, Beyond Enlightenment: Occultism and Politics in Modern France (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005).

The book "traces the birth of Martinism during the Enlightenment, its revival in the fin de siècle, and the late nineteenth-century formation of a distinctly Martinist project-the synarchy-aimed at the social and political renewal of France and the greater world." It maintains that "The Martinist doctrines formed a unique synthesis of Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment thought."

Thanks to Marcel Roggemans for bringing this book to my attention.

Modernism, Anti-modernism, and Traditionalism

2011-07-29T20:32:00.000+02:00

For anyone in Munich on Tuesday August 2, I will be giving a lecture on "Modernism, Anti-modernism, and Traditionalism" at 20:00, at the invitation of Slavs & Tatars, as part of the "Group Affinity" summer school and exhibition organized by Kunstverein München. See http://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de/2008/group-affinity-en.php.

Ivan Aguéli archive

2011-07-29T20:22:00.001+02:00

Just found: an Ivan Aguéli archive at http://agueliportal.forst.nu. Contains letters and articles. Unfortunately for many, the site is in Swedish, as are the letters, BUT the articles are generally available in original pdf form, in the original languages (Italian and French). Click on "Tidskrifter."

Sources for the Alawiyya of Mostaghanem

2011-07-29T12:29:00.001+02:00

Two unusual sources for the Alawiyya of Mostaghanem in the 1960s, and--especially--for what sent two different Westerners there: one is Robert Irwin, Memoirs of a Dervish (London, Profile Books, 2011, previously mentioned here), and the other is Esther Freud, Hideous Kinky (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992, and later editions). I had not realized that Freud's Sufis were from the Alawiyya until I read Irwin, who says they were, and is not contradicted by Freud.

Both books are memoirs, Irwin's based on diaries kept at the time, Freud's based on childood memories--it was Freud's mother who decided to go to Motaghanem, not the two young daughters she took with her. Freud's book probably has more literary merit, while Irwin's has more Sufism, and has literary merit too.

Irwin and his friends discovered Sufism through the Traditionalists. A friend of Irwin's, in fact, read Schuon at twelve and converted to Islam at fifteen. But none of them became Traditionalists, and the Traditionalists merely cross the pages of Irwin's book from time to time, sometimes to be condemned (as "pernicious rubbish," for example). For those interested in Traditionalism, the value of Irwin's book is that it gives an independent picture of what the Mostaghanem zawiya was like for a young Westerner on a spiritual quest, though Irwin of course arrived there some thirty years after Schuon, and was evidently a very different sort of young man, as well as belonging to a different age.

Both books are, from a Traditionalist perspective, highly irreverent, and psychological rather than doctrinal.

Erratum: Pouvourville

2011-07-27T17:19:00.001+02:00

In Against the Modern World I give the dates of Albert de Pouvourville ("Matgioï") as 1861-1940. In fact, he died in 1939. Thanks to Andriy Voloshyn for pointing this out.

Breivik's "European Declaration of Independence"

2011-07-27T17:14:00.000+02:00

Although some connection between the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik and either Evola or Dugin has been suggested, a quick reading of his 2083--A European Declaration of Independence indicates that he did not draw on Traditionalist sources. Evola is not mentioned, Dugin is referred to only in passing (in connection with Ergenekon), and the mainstream Traditionalism of Guénon and Schuon is placed on the other side. This Traditionalism is given as one of several causes of what Breivik calls "Islam negationism," the alleged rewriting of the truth to portray Islam as not being the threat that he sees it as. "Rightist traditionalism" comes after "Leftism" and before economic liberalism in a list of nine causes of this.

Traditionalist conference in Moscow

2011-06-12T11:15:00.000+02:00

Natella Speranskaya is organizing a major Traditionalist conference in Moscow on 15-16 October 2011, under the title "Actual Problems of Traditionalism." Promised speakers include Claudio Mutti, there will be an art exhibition including the Russian painter Alexey Belyaev-Gintovt, and a conference volume will be published. Planned sessions are:

"Tradition vs. Postmodernity"
"Horizons of the new metaphysics and the figure of Radical Self"
"The mission of Julius Evola"
"Traditionalism and esoterism in Islam"
"Traditionalism and the problem of monotheism"
"Primordiality as a problem"

Other topics or interest are desecularization, eschatology (orthodoxy and heterodoxy), neo-spiritualism, the problem of initiation, and "the Reign of post-Quantity."

Proposals in Russian, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, or Italian to solomon2770@yandex.ru.

Traditionalism in Indonesia

2011-06-08T10:38:00.000+02:00

By Dinar Kania, Ph.D. student, Ibn Khaldun University, Indonesia (najmasyira@gmail.com)

Schuonian perennialism has been present in Islamic thought and education in Indonesia since the publication of a translation of Schuon’s Transcendent Unity of Religions in the 1990s, and has since grown through the impact of the works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Perennialist perspectives have been adopted by some Islamic scholars as a philosophical foundation for the legitimization of religious pluralism and of multiculturalism-based education. They have also been criticized as incompatible with Islamic teachings, and as potentially disrupting the unity of Muslims in Indonesia, despite offering a cursory solution to the issue of violence in the name of religion.

"Inclusive Theology"
Schuon's "transcendent unity" is behind the emergence of the so-called "Inclusive Theology" that was proposed by "Cak Nur," Nurcholis Majid (1939-2005), and that has been encouraging the spread of religious pluralism in Indonesia. Cak Nur, who did his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1984, has had enormous influence on the development of liberal Islamic thought in Indonesia, and his name was even proposed as a presidential candidate in 2004. His Inclusive Theology asserts that Islam is but one way to approach God, because the way to God is very wide and diverse.(1) Religious discourse can thus be expressed through various forms, for example, in Hinduism as Sanatana Dharma, in Taoism as the Tao, and in Buddhism as Dharma, all of which represent the primordial tradition, or al-din al-hanif in Islam. Al-din al-hanif, in Allah’s sight, is actually the attitude of resignation (islam) which is common to all religious believers, particularly followers of the scriptures, both Jewish and Christian.(2) All religions teach monotheism (tawhid) and the attitude of surrender (islam), and differ in their exoteric aspects (sharia), and not their esoteric aspect or batin.(3)

Sukidi, in his Teologi Inklusif Cak Nur (The Inclusive Theology of Cak Nur, 2001) argued that the perspectives of the perennial philosophy are needed to apply Inclusive Theology universally to all religions and authentic religious traditions. The search for the roots of the epistemological construct of the Inclusive Theology will thus not stop at finding ultimate reality, but can go deeper through the mystical experience of unification with God. Only through this trans-historical perspective, Sukidi maintains, can the adherents of an Inclusive Theology achieve an authentic ecumenism, timeless and perenenial, although this can only be in the esoteric (batin): religious harmony can only be achieved in the "Sky divine," not in "Earth's atmosphere."(4)

The Study of Religion
Religious Studies in Indonesia were changed by the opening of the Comparative Religion Department at Institut Agama Islam Negeri (State Institute of Islamic Studies) in Yogyakarta in 1961 under Professor Abdul Mukti Ali, Minister of Religious Affairs 1973-1978. Mukti Ali approached the development of comparative religion from the perspective of the Western study of religions, particularly those developed by Snouck Hurgronje, his followers, and the Leiden tradition. Since then, the study of religion in Indonesia has used the secular-liberal approaches of the historical sciences, psychology and philosophy.

More recently, the perspective of the perennial philosophy has begun to be employed as an "original approach" to comparative religion that does not parse religions vertically into historical entities such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Schuon's approach is claimed as a spiritual trans-historical perspective which is grounded in historical fact, then raised to the level of mystical theological transcendence so that historical fact becomes relative to the spiritual truth which is seen as the core of religion. Such perspectives became increasingly widespread once Seyyed Hossein Nasr's work was introduced into Indonesia, and eventually became quite popular in religious studies.(5)

Multiculturalism-based Education
On the basis that many horizontal conflicts in Indonesia have had religious nuances, multiculturalism-based education has been massively promoted by liberals since the regional autonomy and decentralization of 1999/2000.(6) Schuon's thought has been used to assert, theologically and philosophically, the importance of developing religious studies based on multiculturalism, according to Syamsul Arifin in his inaugural address as professor of sociology of religion in one of the Islamic private universities. Syamsul Arifin argues that the concept of multiculturalism can be used as a framework or epistemology to understand and disseminate the notion of transcendent unity among the various religions. The study of religion based on multiculturalism can, he further argues, erode conflict and violence, and foster a non-violent culture with the values, knowledge, feelings, and willingness to cooperate on the basis of transcendent unity.(7)

Critiques
As well as influencing Islamic thought and education in Indonesia, perennialism has also been heavily criticised by some Islamic scholars. Adian Husaini, former Chairman of the Islamic Da'wah Council of Indonesia (DDII), has argued that perennialism is against Islamic teaching, as the sharia is not just "exoteric" but rather one of the most fundamental aspects of Islam. One of the primary missions of the prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH) was to give guidance on how to worship Allah. To achieve true esotericism, one must perform proper religious procedures in accordance with the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). It is Allah that is worshipped and nothing else, neither gods nor otherwise.

Anis Malik Thoha of the Institute for Study of Islamic Thought and Civilization (INSISTS) in Jakarta, who currently teaches at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), has argued that the perennialist conception of esoteric truth is over-simplistic. Perennialism is an interpretation, not a revelation, and is contrary to religious principles in general, and to Islam in particular. Religious concepts such as Sanatana Dharma and al-din al-hanif have been terribly distorted to fit the ideas of the Traditionalists. Perennialism is therefore more of a problem than a solution to the issue of religious diversity.(8)

References

Nurcholis Majid in George B. Grose and Benjamin J. Hubbard, Tiga Agama Satu Tuhan (Jakarta: Mizan, 1998), p. xix.
Sukidi, Teologi Inklusif Cak Nur (Jakarta: Kompas, 2001), p. 22-23.
Azhari Akmal Tarigan, Islam Mazhab HMI; Tafsir Tema Besar Nilai Dasar Perjuangan (NDP) (Jakarta: Kultura, 2007), p. 48.
Sukidi, Teologi Inklusif, p. 19-20.
Ahmad Norma Permata, Metodologi Studi Agama (Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2000), p. 32-33.
Choirul Mahfud, Pendidikan Multikultural (Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2008), p. 7.
Syamsul Arifin, Silang Sengkarut Agama di Ranah Sosial (Malang: UMM Press, ND), p. 47.
Journal of Islamic Thought Islamia-Republika, 23 April 2011.

Memoirs of a Dervish

2011-06-03T16:23:00.002+02:00

Just published: Robert Irwin, Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and the Sixties ($17.59 from Amazon US and £8.49 from Amazon UK). This is an autobiographical account by a talented writer and novelist of his own journey from 1960s Oxford through the Maryamiyya to Mostaghanem and onwards. Irwin, who is Middle East editor of The Times Literary Supplement, is perhaps best known for his criticisms of Edward Said's Orientalism. Well worth reading, and endorsed by Esther Freud (of Hideous Kinky).

Nasr and Hisham Kabbani (and Prince Charles)

2011-06-02T09:00:00.000+02:00

A link between Traditionalism and another form of non-Guénonian "traditional" Islam: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who admittedly writes quite a lot of prefaces, has written prefaces for two books by US-based Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani (pictured right), the deputy of Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil Al-Haqqani of the Naqshbandiyya Haqqaniyya, one of the best known (and quite possibly the largest) of Sufi tariqas in the contemporary West.

Nasr welcomed Kabbani's Classical Islam and the Naqshbandi Sufi Tradition (1994) as "a precious reminder of the traditional and orthodox understanding of Sufism as represented by one of its major orders," and Kababni's multi-volume Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine (1998) as "re-stating traditional and orthodox Islamic teachings without any compromise" and restoring the "universal orthodoxy" that had been "attacked not only from without by the forces of modernism ... but also from within." So Nasr approves of Kabbani, and Kabbani approves of Nasr, and has no major problem with his view of "universal orthodoxy."

Nasr might have had something to do with the introduction of Kabbani to Prince Charles (pictured left, in 2006), but this might simply have been a fruit of the British government's counter-radicalization strategy.

Thanks to Simon Stjernholm, whose PhD dissertation "Lovers of Muhammad: A Study of Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufis in the Twenty-First Century" was successfully defended at Lund University on June 1, 2011, for noting these connections.

Important new book on Evola

2011-05-31T08:22:00.001+02:00

What looks like a very important new book on Evola has just been published: Paul Furlong, Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011). Unfortunately, given the publsiher, the book is not cheap: £80 ($130) in Europe, and an astonishing $260 if ordered from Routledge in the US. [With a less awful price on Amazon, according to a comment to this post].

Professor Furlong is head of the School of European Studies at the University of Cardiff, and has previously published mostly on Italian politics and on the European Union.

In the preface to his book, he declares that the book's focus is Evola's texts and ideas. Furlong includes the historical, cultural and political context to the extent needed to make sense of those ideas, but does not look especially at what people have done with them (though from its title, it looks as if the conclusion does go some way in that direction).

I haven't read beyond the preface, but the rest of the book looks serious and important.

The contents are:

Introduction: Evola in context
Magic idealism and the need for the absolute
Tradition and history
A rigorous political doctrine
Nations, nationalism, empire and Europe
The strategy for the Right: Men and ruins
Race, sex and anti-Semitism
Conclusion: Evola and modern conservatism

Essay on Dugin

2011-05-14T10:27:00.000+02:00

A good extended essay on Dugin, covering more or less everything, and available on-line: Yigal Liverant, “The Prophet of the New Russian Empire,” Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation 35 (Winter 5769 / 2009), pp. 50-83. At http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=483.

The United States and Eurasia

2011-04-28T17:46:00.001+02:00

An interesting on-line debate between Alexander Dugin and Olavo de Carvalho (both pictured below) has been going on since March elsewhere on blogspot.

Dugin requires no introduction to readers of this blog; de Carvalho does require some introduction. He is a Brazilian journalist, columnist and philosopher now living in the United States, where since 2009 he has been heading an Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought. According to this institute's website, "the keynote of his work is the defense of man's innermost consciousness against the tyranny of collective authority," and he believes that "the most solid shelter for individual consciousness against alienation and reification can be found in widely varying degrees in the ancient spiritual traditions."

And Dugin, of course, represents another form of Traditionalism, similar and yet different--as the two photographs above, chosen by de Carvalho, indicate. And as the development of the on-line debate, entitled "The United States and the New World Order" and focusing on Eurasian-Atlantic relations, has also indicated.

Worth looking at.

Heidegger and Traditionalism

2011-04-13T11:52:00.001+02:00

Reposting from John J. Reilly's article on Martin Heidegger's Being and Time

Parallels can be found in the similarities between elements of Heidegger's system and that of esoteric Tradition, principally though not exclusively as represented in the philosophy of Heidegger's contemporary, Rene Guenon. Both were convinced that Plato roughly marks the point where Western philosophy departed from the contemplation of Being in order to gossip about the eternally expanding vacuum of mere ideas. Both had a horror of mechanism and quantification, and of what the modern world's embrace of these principles meant for the future. (Guenon's apocalyptic masterwork, remember, is called The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times.) Parallels show up even in the details of their work, such as their insistence that time and space are meaningful in a way that geometry and clock-time simply caricature. Both were oddly fond of the adjective "primordial," at least if their translators are to be believed.

And then, of course, there is Julius Evola, sometime ideologist for Fascist Italy, and by most accounts the black sheep of the Traditional family. His system almost seems like Heidegger re-expressed in alchemical terms. Evola's formula for immortality involved not just resolution towards death, but the resolution to actually die. His late work, Ride the Tiger, is about the cultivation of the authentic self in a world where history is breaking down. By any reasonable reading, it is a form of existentialism, with only residual esoteric content.

Mohamed Omar and the Swedish radical right

2011-03-31T21:52:00.004+02:00

Guest post

In addition to the recent post about Mohammed Omar and the 'Ivan Aguéli Study Group,' it is worth noting that there exist several interesting connections between Omar and the people around him, and groups connected to the Swedish right. These connections have caused a lot of internal discussion among Traditionalists and Swedish nationalists about Islam and its potential as a threat or ally--a debate that originates in an international discussion on the Right spurred by the publication of Guillaume Faye's controversial La Nouvelle question juive (The New Jewish question), which proposes an alliance with Israel against Islam.

The Swedish right has in several steps approached and adopted Traditionalist and New Right ideas, with the blogging collective www.motpol.nu being the prime example, with several self-proclaimed 'Traditionalist' bloggers.In 2009 Mohamed Omar interviewed the Swedish Right Wing, Traditionalist and New Right blogger 'Oskorei' (see here).1½ years later, in December 2010, Oskorei in turn interviewed Omar on Motpol (here). Recently, in January 2011, an extremist and anti-traditionalist but radical nationalist blog/newspaper, Nationell.nu accused the people behind Motpol of being 'Traditionalist' and 'pro-Muslim', and a 'danger to Swedish nationalism' (here).

In late February 2011 Omar planned to attend a New Right/Identitarian gathering in Sweden (www.identitet.org), although he did not show up. He notified his friends on facebook of the meeting (due to it having traditionalist/'anti-zionist' speakers), which in turn spawned a lengthy (87 posts and counting) debate on a nationalist forum (here) where the relationship between Traditionalism, Islam and Swedish nationalism is discussed and put into question.

Finally it is worth noting that Lars Adelskogh, a former speaker in the Agueli Study Group, is also a collaborator with Omar on an Islamic Publishing house, islamiskaforlaget.se. Adelskog has several ties to the Swedish Right Wing scene. Besides having translated Guénon's The Reign of Quantity, Adelskogh has also written the book En tom säck kan inte stå: myten om "förintelsen i gaskamrarna" i Auschwitz (An empty sack can not stand: The myth of the "gas chamber Holocaust" at Auschwitz), a revisionist book that questions the scope of the Holocaust. This book was published in 2002 by Nordiska Förlaget. He has also translated Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of Critique (as Kritikkulturen: en evolutionär analys av judiskt engagemang i 1900-talets intellektuella och politiska rörelser), which is considered a key text in the contemporary Right Wing scene, and likewise published on Nordiska Förlaget.

Swedish nationalists have in previous year been observed at pro-Palestinian Al Quds demonstrations, but it is probably still too early to evaluate the exact extent and potential future developments of Islamic and New Right relations in Sweden.

Jacob Christiansen Senholt, Aarhus University

Simone Weil?

2011-03-21T20:48:00.000+02:00

An anymous comment (which I spost undedited) runs as wollows:

Simone Weil was progressive and she too spoke of a need for roots. Dont know whether she fits into Traditionalism or not. But some elements of her work would be highly compatible with traditionalism.

"What makes an impression first is the distinction drawn by Weil between rights and obligations. Weil did not dispute the significance of rights, but she put them, it might be said, in their place. She viewed rights as 'subordinate and relative' to obligations: the exercise of a right did not depend on the demands of the individual possessing them, but on the recognition by others of their obligations....

...Weil insists that a progressive concerned with the promotion of just order must be able to speak about more than economic advancement, the expansion of rights, or the pursuit of individual happiness through restless scientific advance. Weil believed that progressives need to speak, too, to the need for 'roots,' understood as a basic—even spiritual—need. They should be able to speak of love of country, not only of submission to the State. Their language should be that of obligation, not only of rights, informed by morality even before it appeals to law...." (from book review by Bob Bauer on More Soft Money Hard Law website)

Book review: "This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their lesiure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation." T. S. Elliot

More here

http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/bookweil.htm

Hellenic Eurasian movement opens website

2011-03-21T20:46:00.000+02:00

The Hellenic Eurasian movement now has a blog (at http://eurasiagr.blogspot.com/) with translations of Dugin.

Traditionalism and Dugin, in Russian

2011-03-11T10:38:00.001+02:00

There is a new article in Russian on Dugin by Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovtsov, "Philosophia Perennis и «неоевразийство»: роль интегрального традиционализма в утопических построениях Александра Дугина" (Philosophia Perennis and 'Neo-Eurasianism:' The Role of Integral Traditionalism in the Utopian Constructions of Aleksandr Dugin), in Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры - Русское издание 2 (2010), available at http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/inhaltruss14.html. This is a translation of Anton Shekhovtsov and Andreas Umland, "Is Aleksandr Dugin a Traditionalist? 'Neo-Eurasianism' and Perennial Philosophy" The Russian Review 68 (October 2009), pp. 662–78, discussed in a previous post.

Ivan Aguéli Study Group established in Sweden

2011-02-19T21:12:00.002+02:00

An Ivan Aguéli Study Group has been established in Uppsala, Sweden by Mohamed Omar (b. 1976, to the left in picture), a Swedish poet and journalist with an Iranian "biological father" who converted to Islam at the age of 16.

Mohamed Omar was previously popular in Sweden as a "moderate" Muslim, but in an article in the Swedish Kultur in 2009 declared that he had become a radical Muslim in response to events in Gaza. He describes his Ivan Aguéli Study Group as "radical and Islamist, "radical in the sense that we are looking inwards and backwards in the Islamic tradition, the roots, radices, to draw strength and inspiration. Everything new must build on the old and traditional" and Islamist in the normal, political sense. Mohamed Omar's "radicalism," then, has much in common with Traditionalism. The three stated requirements for membership of the study group are to speak good Swedish (which presumably excludes certain Muslim immigrants), to respect Islam, and to "have an anti-Zionist stance."

The study group seems to be becoming a center for one variety of Swedish Traditionalism. Guest speakers have included Ahmed Valsan (to the right in the picture), the Swedish-domiciled eldest son of the important Parisian Traditionalist Sufi shaykh of Romanian origin, and Lars Adelskog, not a Sufi but a former Swedish educator who lost his job after publishing a pamphlet entitled ”Är EU en judegrej?” ("Is the European Union a Jew thing?"). Adelskog is the translator into Swedish of Guénon's The Reign of Quantity, available on his website www.veidos.se,whioch also has an English-language section, in which he explains his version of P. D. Ouspensky's Fourth Way.

For those who read Swedish, the Study group website is to be found at www.mohamedomar.org and the blog of Mohamed Omar is to be found at alazerius.wordpress.com.

My thanks to Gustaf Görfelt for help with this posting.

New article on the work of Andrei Scrima

2011-02-19T20:32:00.001+02:00

Marco Toti, author of the paper that first drew attention to the Romanian Traditionalist Andrei Scrima (1925-2000, see earlier post here), has now published an article on Scrima's thought and writing, "Religious Morphology, Hermeneutics and Initiation in Andrei Scrima’s Il padre spirituale (The Spiritual Father)," Aries 11.1 (2011), pp. 77-97.

After a complex and nuanced discussion, Toti concludes that Scrima was not so much a hard Traditionalist (in the sense in which I use the adjective) as someone who "recovers, develops, deepens and recontextualizes some typical ‘traditionalist’ themes—softening, for example, the ‘mathematical’ orientation given by Guénon to them, and placing in his treatment poetic and philosophical motives which are completely irrelevant to the French metaphysician" (p. 94). This is much what Patrick Ringgenberg concluded in the case of Schuon (see earlier post here).

Scrima's life is not Toti's main subject, but he notes, interestingly, that Scrima was "one of the ‘inspirers’ for the establishment in Bucharest of the ‘New Europe College’, an institute for advanced studies in humanities founded in 1994 by Andrei Pleşu, former Foreign Minister and Minister of Culture of the Republic of Romania" (p. 78). The name of Pleşu has featured before in the history of Traditionalism in Romania.

2007 French article now available online

2011-02-19T20:04:00.001+02:00

A French article from 2007 is now available online: David Bisson, "Soufisme et Tradition," Archives de sciences sociales des religions 140 (October 2007), pp. 29-47.

The article is a good introduction to "Guenonian Sufism" as "the last initiatory possibility in the West." It covers Abd-al-Wâhid Pallavicini especially well, focusing on his development of a Western Sufism which is Christian in its culture, European in its geographical location, and Guenonian in its "metapolitical projections."

One interesting detail for those who see Guénon as Muslim before his arrival in Cairo (which I, for one, do not): Guénon wrote in Orient et Occident (1924) « il ne nous paraît pas opportun de s’appuyer principalement sur l’ésotérisme islamique ; mais, naturellement, cela n’empêche pas que cet ésotérisme, étant d’essence proprement métaphysique, offre l’équivalent de ce qui se trouve dans les autres doctrines » -- that is, "it does not seem to us appropriate to rely principally on Islamic esotericism, but, naturally, this does not prevent this esotericim, being properly metaphysical in essence, from offering the equivalent of what is found in other doctrines." Hardly the words of a Muslim.

Thanks to HF for drawing this article to my attention.

Massignon, Corbin, Guénon, and Schuon

2011-02-07T10:48:00.000+02:00

New book by Patrick Laude: Pathways to an Inner Islam: Massignon, Corbin, Guénon, and Schuon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).

I have just published a review of this book in Aries, and the review is available here.

Marie Huot as drawn by Ivan Aguéli

2011-01-20T17:59:00.001+02:00

Jean-Yves has been kind enough to supply the following two drawings of Marie Huot, by Ivan Aguéli.

New book by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

2011-01-18T18:23:00.000+02:00

To be realeased on January 25, 2011, a new book by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam in the Modern World: Challenged by the West, Threatened by Fundamentalism, Keeping Faith with Tradition (HarperOne, $18.83 from Amazon).

Topics covered are, according to the blurb,

holy wars
women's roles in Islam
the rise of fundamentalism
the future of Shi‘ism in Iran
the challenge of modern science to religious belief
controversial art and architecture in Islamic cities
the role of the madrassas in education
urban conditions and challenges in the Islamic world

Faouzi Skali lecturing in Paris

2011-01-14T20:50:00.002+02:00

Faouzi Skali of the Boutchichiyya is delivering three lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, one of which has already happened (apologies for late announcement). They are (were):

11 January 2011, 11-13, Vers un renouveau du soufisme au Maghreb ?
19 January 2011,15-17, Soufisme et Société : émergence d’une nouvelle conception du développement humain
21 January 2011, 13:30-15:30, La politique confrérique du Maroc en Afrique

At the EHESS, 96 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris.

Discussion on Aguéli

2011-01-07T09:00:00.000+02:00

My post on the death of Marie Huot led to some unrelated but interesting discussion of Aguéli, now attached to this post. The original post has been moved elsewhere.

Date of death of Marie Huot

2010-12-15T18:39:00.002+02:00

Marie Huot, the anarchist, vegetarian, and animal rights activist who was indirectly responsible for introducing Ivan Aguéli to Sufism, died in 1930, and was cremated at the Père-Lachaise cemetry.

In Against the Modern World I was able to give only her date of birth, 1846.

My thanks to Jean-Yves for supplying this information.

T. J. Winter on Valentine de St.-Point

2010-12-01T11:19:00.002+02:00

Thanks to Mohsin R of Lahore for drawing attention in a comment to this blog to a 2009 lecture by T. J. Winter on “The Prophet (PBUH) and his wives.” This 57-minute lecture is of interest partly because almost half of it deals with Valentine de St.-Point (see also later post), Guénon's friend and associate in Cairo, providing three answers to the question asked by a comment on this blog: why would a woman like her convert to Islam? It is also of interest because Winter is a leading non-Guénonian (small-t) traditionalist, and shows here what an excellent lecturer he is.

So, why did St.-Point become Muslim? Winter suggests three answers. One is that she saw Islam as an “authenticity that industrial man has finally lost.” Another is that Islam provides an alternative to the “fragmentation of the human persona imposed by Christianity.” And the third answer is that St.-Point was far from being the only European artist who looked to the Muslim world and Islam for answers to questions raised by the problems of European civilization.

I think Winter is probably right, though I am not sure that “the take on gender” follows as directly from views of sexuality as he seems to think.

The lecture is in six parts.

New book on Toshihiko Izutsu

2010-11-09T11:59:00.000+02:00

Just published: Japanese Contribution to Islamic Studies: The Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu Interpreted, ed. Anis Malik Thoha (Kuala Lumpur: IIUM Press, 2010). ISBN: 978-967-5272-63-9.

I have never quite understood the relationship between Toshihiko Izutsu and Traditionalism, and this new collection may hold some of the answers to that question. It is the proceedings of a 2008 conference held in Kuala Lumpur, with 19 articles, including:

"The Place of Mulla Sadra's Kitāb Al-Mashāʻir in Izutsu's Philosophy" (Shigeru Kamada)
"Reconsidering Izutsu in a Post-Postmodern Framework" (Janan Izadi and Ahad Faramarz Gharamaleki)
"God and Man in the Works of Toshihiko Izutsu" (Ibrahim Abu Bakar)
"Communicating Pure Consciousness Events: Using Izutsu to Address a Problem in the Philosophy of Mysticism" (Sajjad H. Rizvi)
"The Significance of Izutsu’s Legacy for Comparative Religion" (Kojiro Nakamura)
"The Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu in Turkey: Application of Semantics in Contemporary Qur’anic Studies" (Necmettin Gökkir)

The remoter origins of the perennial philosophy

2010-11-06T19:36:00.000+02:00

For those interested in the remoter origins of the perennial philosophy, I will be presenting a paper on "Orientalists and Sufis: The European Reception of Sufism and Its Consequences" at the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in San Diego, California, November 18-21, 2010. The earliest date mentioned is 1577, but we don't really get down to business until 1671. Isaac Newton makes a guest appearance. The most recent name to be mentioned is Inayat Khan. Traditionalism will not be mentioned explicitly, but those who know it will spot something familiar.

Panel #2330, "Middle Eastern-European Intellectual Encounters," Saturday November 20, 8:30-10:30 am.

Producing Islamic Knowledge in Western Europe

2010-11-05T11:17:00.000+02:00

Just published: Producing Islamic Knowledge: Transmission and Dissemination in Western Europe, ed. Martin van Bruinessen and Stefano Allievi (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010).

This book covers a variety of ways in which "Islamic knowledge" is being produced and spread in Europe, and has one article (by me) on the role of Traditionalism, "Guénonian Traditionalism and European Islam" (pp. 169-87). This article is remarkable mostly for the length of time it took to get into print: it was originally a paper given in 2003, before the publication of Against the Modern World, much of which it summarizes. It does, however, give some new details, and it places Traditionalism in a wider European Islamic context.

Diary note

2010-10-27T19:46:00.000+02:00

For those who have not noticed: Friday, January 7, 2011 will be the 60th anniversary of the death of René Guénon.

Eliade and William W. Quinn

2010-10-26T17:32:00.000+02:00

Thanks to LP for drawing my attention to William W. Quinn, Jr., "Mircea Eliade and the Sacred Tradition (A Personal Account)," Nova Religio 3, no. 1 (1999), pp. 147-153.

As mentioned in Against the Modern World, Quinn (who was Eliade's PhD student) remembers Eliade as a Traditionalist. This article gives more details of the relationship, generally confirming what is already written.

One interesting detail: Quinn reports that Eliade "instructed [him] to minimize [his] use of the principal figures and literature of modern theosophy during my tenure as a student." Rather as Eliade himself minimized his public use of Traditionalist litterature? For Quinn, this cautious approach was "more like a sublimation than a repudiation ... and [his] ultimate success at the university ... was the proof of its wisdom."

A short history of traditionalism in Poland

2010-10-26T11:41:00.000+02:00

Marek Rostkowski, editor of the Polish magazine Reakcjonista, has kindly provided the following “short history of traditionalism in Poland.”

Integral Traditionalism is not, and has never been, a strong movement in Poland. One could even say that it has not been a movement at all, since there are or used to be very few people involved in its promulgation.

Although it was as early as in 1933 that the first Polish translation of a Traditional author appeared (of one chapter from René Guénon’s La crise du monde moderne), the origins of today's Traditionalism in Poland go back to the early 1990s when the Euroaryan Cultural Circle “Airyanem Vaeyo” was established. This was a study group which researched various aspects of Tradition, mainly those concerning European culture and history. A publishing house, Parzival, was founded, which published a magazine called Szary Wilk (only one issue in 1993 appeared), two small books by Evola (Etyka Aryjska/Aryan Ethic, Chorzów 1993 and Orientacje/Orientations, Chorzów 1993), and Kolebka Ariów (The Cradle of the Aryans) by Bogdan Herbut Kozieł who, among other things, translated the above-mentioned books as well as many other of Evola’s writings into Polish. He was the main person responsible for all those achievements of traditional thinking in Poland at that period. Unfortunately, after some time he withdraw from activity. One can also mention that some other magazines like Fronda and Szczerbie that published Evola’s articles. This was the first wave of Traditionalism, if one may so call it.

The second wave came in the late 1990s. An interest in Evolian writings arose among people who identified themselves with the heathen or pagan movement and the New Right as well. It was in Odala magazine that most Polish translations of Evola’s texts were then published. However, occasionally other magazines like Odmrocze or Pro Fide, Rege et Lege also published articles by or about Evola. At that time one could observe an increasing interest in Traditionalism among scholars at various universities. One of the most important turning points in acquainting Polish readers with Evola’s heritage was a monograph dealing with the life and thought of Evola, Mity tradycjonalizmu integralnego (The Myths of Integral Traditionalism, Warsaw 1998) by Zbigniew Mikołejko. One can also mention Adam Wielomski, a scholar who not only contributed to a better knowledge of Evolian thought in Poland but also aroused an interest in Evolian Traditionalism among members of the Polish conservative movement.

In 2004 another wave, stronger than all previous ones, appeared. This time two undertakings of a strictly traditional scope sprang up. Those were the juliusevola.tk website – created by KS – and my own Reakcjonista magazine. At first they were almost completely Evolian in orientation – and the website has not been changed in this respect – but later other traditional authors were also included. For example in Reakcjonista’s pages there have been published writings by R. Guénon, A. and R. Coomaraswamy, F. Schuon, T. Burckhardt, M. Lings, A. Dugin, A. László, M. A. Schwarz and others. Some articles by and about Evola also appeared from time to time in a few other magazines as well--for example Templum Novum, Ulvhel, and Młodzież Imperium. There are also being published strictly scientific studies discussing the Evolian and Guénonian worldview.

At present, Reakcjonista continues (no. XI has been published recently) and juliusevola.tk has been incorporated in a bigger website, tradycjonalizm.net, where there are not only Evola’s writings but also R. Guénon’s and A. K. Coomaraswamy’s, and where in the future there will be texts of many other traditional authors.

So far, there have not been published any major books by J. Evola, not to mention works of other traditionalists.

Forthcoming book on Russia and neo-Eurasianism

2010-10-03T13:24:00.001+02:00

A forthcoming book of interest: Edith W. Clowes, Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity (Cornell University Press, March 2011). For more information or to order copies, please contact Robin Coleman in Cornell University Press’s sales department.

In this study of post-Soviet writing culture Clowes demonstrates a major shift in the dominant metaphors of Russian identity, from the temporal to the spatial. She argues moreover that newly refurbished geographical metaphors, or imagined geographies, give a useful standpoint for examining the debate between aggressive ultranationalists and committed universalists about being Russian. Is any citizen of the Russian Federation a Russian, with the full complement of rights accruing to that status? Or are only ethnic Russians really “Russian”? Where is the “real” Russia? Clowes lays out several sides of the debate. She takes as a backdrop to the debate the strong criticism of Soviet Moscow and its self-image as uncontested global hub by major late-20th-century writers, among them, Tatyana Tolstaya and Viktor Pelevin.

The most vocal, visible, and colorful rightist ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of neo-Eurasianism, has articulated positions debated by such writers and thinkers as Mikhail Ryklin, Liudmila Ulitskaia and Anna Politkovskaia, who wish to see the birth of a new civility in Russia. Dugin’s views and their many responses—in fiction, film, philosophy, documentary journalism—form the body of this book.

Traditionalist Representations of Buddhism

2010-08-28T11:40:00.003+02:00

A 2008 article I have just found: Richard K. Payne, "Traditionalist Representations of Buddhism," Pacific World, Third Series, no. 10 (Fall 2008), pp. 177-223.

In this article, Payne introduces Tradiitonalism for those who do now know it, and then looks at representations of Buddhism by Frithjof Schuon, Julius Evola, Marco Pallis, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Mircea Eliade, and Huston Smith. He argues that their representations are inevitably dated--given that scholarship has moved on since they wrote--but that that their work should not be dismissed, because of "the depth of influence of the Traditionalist understandings of religion and of Buddhism" (p. 208). He understands Traditionalism as "a dogmatic core belief that provides a systematic hermeneutic" (p. 203), and concludes:

There are two important aspects of Buddhist doctrine that the Traditionalist interpretations overcode, recreating Buddhism in the model of Traditionalist presumptions regarding the nature of human existence, the world, and the path/goal. One is the interpretation of Buddhist ontology within a Neoplatonic framework as simply another instance of a hierarchy of truths. The other is the interpretation of awakening within a Perennialist framework as simply another instance of a single and universal category of mystical experience. Because both Neoplatonism and Perennialism function almost pre-reflectively in American popular religious culture these two acts of overcoding Buddhist doctrines are usually invisible (pp. 208-09).

Schuon and Anthroposophy

2010-08-19T10:55:00.000+02:00

Schuon's father was an Anthroposophist, that is a follower of the Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, and as a young man Schuon participated in spritist séances.

Interesting background, told by Schuon to Hugo Bergmann (who was himself interested in Steiner) in 1957, according to a letter of Bergman's reprinted in an article by Paul Fenton.

Hugo Bergmann and Frithjof Schuon

2010-08-19T10:44:00.004+02:00

In a recent article, Paul Fenton tells the story of the relations between Samuel Hugo Bergmann and Frithjof Schuon.

Bergmann was a Jewish philosopher who was born in Prague, a friend of Kafka and Max Brod. He moved to Israel in 1920 and taught philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, of which he was rector from 1935 to 1938. He became friends with Gershom Scholem and, especially, Martin Buber, with whom he founded Brit Shalom (covenant of peace), a small but important Zionist organization that pursued the forlorn hope of a bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs would live together in peace.

Bergmann worked on symbolic logic, which he attempted to reconcile with transcendental logic (Kant etc). He was also interested in the work of Rudolf Steiner, and by 1954 was interested in the work of Schuon, to which he had been introduced by Agi Lamm, a Jewish follower of Schuon from Argentina.

In 1957, on a trip to Europe, Bergmann met Schuon twice, meetings which he described as the high point of his trip. These meetings were a success on an intellectual level, but not on a personal level: Bergmann described the first encounter as “painful,” as Schuon seemed to him “stilted” and “affected,” dressed “as a prophet.” Despite this, the two men continued corresponding until 1970.

On his return to Israel, Bergmann wrote an article on Guénon for the Festschrift for Scholem which may be the most important piece on Traditionalism to have appeared in Hebrew.

Jews in the Maryamiyya

2010-08-19T07:44:00.000+02:00

On August 15 I described Rabbi Yéhouda Léon Askénazi as "almost the only significant Jewish figure to have taken a deep interest in Traditionalism." And then on August 18, I read a new(-ish) article by Paul B. Fenton, "Les judéos-soufis de Lausanne: Un point de rencontre dans la mouvance guénonienne" (in Réceptions de la cabale, ed. Pierre Gisel and Lucie Kaennel; Tel Aviv: L'éclat, 2007, pp. 283-313) in which one argument (made in a book published in Israel, by the way) is that there were a disproportionate number of Jews among the followers of Frithjof Schuon in Lausanne.

Fenton does not pursue this argument, which is made in passing. And I am not sure that he is right. He certainly draws attention to another very significant Jewish figure with a real interest in Traditionalism (see separate post), and he is right that there were a number of Jews among Schuon's followers in Lausanne, some of whom became Maryami Muslims and some of whom did not. He points to a continuing interest in the kabbalah among these, which Schuon did not share--strangely, he held that there was no inititation in Judaism.

But a disproportionate number? Disproportionate to what? To the overall Jewish element in the population of Switzerland, perhaps--but I am not sure that is a relevant measure. In general, what was the rate of Jewish participation in the intellectual avant-garde of the time?

Two new Marymai biographies of Schuon

2010-08-17T14:19:00.001+02:00

World Wisdom Books, the Maryami publisher, has just published two new biographies of Frithjof Schuon: Michael Oren Fitzgerald's Frithjof Schuon: Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy and Harry Oldmeadow's Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy. Both books have forewords by William Stoddart.

A review by M. Ali Lakhani from Sacred Web is available online, and goes into some detail regarding Schuon's alleged syncretism.

A Soft Traditionalist Rabbi on Christianity and Islam

2010-08-15T20:11:00.000+02:00

A new article on Rabbi Yéhouda Léon Askénazi (“Manitou,” 1922-96), almost the only significant Jewish figure to have taken a deep interest in Traditionalism (this is my first even blog post to use the index "Judaism").

Born in Algeria, Manitou was deeply read in French thought, as well as in Orthodox Judaism and the kabbalah. He agreed with Guénon that what mattered was the original philosophia perennis, in esoteric as well as exoteric form, but disagreed with Guénon about what this was. For Manitou, the original revelation was, simply, Judaism–and the esoterism that mattered was the kabbalah.

In “From Monologues to Possible Dialogue: Judaism’s Attitude towards Christianity According to the Philosophy of R. Yéhouda Léon Askénazi (Manitou)” (In Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature, Marcel Poorthuis, Joshua Schwartz, and Joseph Turner, eds., Leiden: Brill, 2009, pp. 319-336), Yossef Charvit examines Manitou’s views on Christianity and Islam, the background to a participation in inter-faith dialogue which included writing a special prayer for the opening of what Charvit calls the “Temple de l’Universel,” presumably the Sanctuaire de l’Universel, a Parisian multi-faith venture of the very un-Traditionalist Sufi Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan.

Christianity, Manitou thought, “purported to be the New Israel,” (p. 332) and in beginning to abandon this claim by recognizing that Israel was actually Israel, was approaching the day when all humanity might realize its “Abrahamic features.” Islam, in contrast, had never claimed to be the New Israel. When it came to Christianity, “Our theologies are highly polarized, but there are points of interface regarding ethics.” However, “The opposite is true of Islam, with which we possess theological interfaces but stand in diametric opposition regarding ethics” (p. 325). Unfortunately, Yossef Charvit does not examine Manitou’s views on Islam in much detail in this article; perhaps he will do so in another.

WE 175, "Introduction to Traditionalism"

2010-08-06T13:41:00.000+02:00

January 2011 will be the first time that an academic course on Traditionalism is offered: WE 175, "Introduction to Traditionalism." It is recommended that this course be taken with WE 101, "Introduction to Western Esotericism." WE 101 is available in Athens in Greek or online in English; WE 175 is available only online (in English).

These courses are being offered by the Phoenix Rising Academy, a recently founded private organization that specializes in esoteric studies and create arts, run by Sasha Chaitow, an assistant professor in Religious Studies at the Athens campus of the University of Indianapolis. Chaitow graduated from the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism at the University of Exeter in England, as did George Sieg, who will be teaching "Introduction to Traditionalism" and whose PhD thesis was on "Occult War: The Legacy of Iranian Dualism and Its Continuing Influence upon the Modern Occult Revival."

So far as I can see, this should be a serious and interesting course. Not accredited, though the Phoenix Rising Academy says it is planning to apply for various accreditations once it is better established. And Sieg is assigning my Against the Modern World, which must be a good sign (?).

Guénon, Schuon, Massignon and Corbin

2010-07-28T20:53:00.002+02:00

Already mentioned as a new book, and now read and recommended: Patrick Laude's Pathways to an Inner Islam: Massignon, Corbin, Guénon, and Schuon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).

This book is a comparative study of the thought of the two great Traditionalists and of two non-Traditionalists, the great French scholars Louis Massignon (1883-1962) and Henry Corbin (1903-1978). Neither Massignon nor Corbin were Traditionalists (Massignon described Traditionalism as "very seductive," if fundamentally wrong) but their thought and topics had enough in common with Guénon's and Schuon's for the comparison to be illuminating. And the book shows how Traditionalism was in some sense part of a broader French trend towards the discovery of esoteric Islam in Sufism (and, in Corbin's case, Shiism).

The book is not easy reading given its topics, and it helps if you know something about Islam. But it is well written, and recasts the familiar in new from, as well as introducing the not-so-familiar. Laude is an insider, but can still be critical, even occasionally of Schuon.

The book is also interesting on the relationship between Traditionalism and Islam. Laude concedes that Guénon’s understanding of Sufism was “virtually independent from a consideration of the essentials of the Islamic faith” (p. 58) and that Schuon’s understanding might be seen as a “reconstruction of the tradition itself” (p. 59). Laude quotes Schuon, who in effect distinguishes an esoteric and exoteric level in the sunna: “What the faqir will retain of this Sunna will be, not so much the ways of acting as the intentions that are inherent in them” (98).

One last quote: “The perennialist perspective may be a precious instrument of interfaith efforts when understood as an intellectual and spiritual framework allowing one to situate differences within an integral context that makes sense of their raison d’être” (p. 132).

$64 from Amazon.com and £57.25 from Amazon.co.uk.

The intellectual history of Traditionalism in America

2010-07-23T19:09:00.002+02:00

A new and massive (622 pages) book addresses the intellectual history of Traditionalism in America: Setareh Houman, De la philosophia perennis au pérennialisme américain (Milan: Archè, 2010).

The book in some ways retraces my own Against the Modern World but does so with a different focus, on intellectual history. More on the intellectual origins of Traditionalism and perennialism; more on their development, especially in US academia, and especially by Coomaraswamy, Nasr, Huston Smith and James Cutsinger, with reference also to the next generation and to others who were relevant to that development.

Among the books major objectives are to establish

how certain characteristics of Guénonian traditionalism give way to a more inclusive and holistic philosophy [and] ... how, in a doctrine with a methodical aspect in which the ascent to the divine takes the path of art and nature, the danger of counter-initiation and Antitradition disappears in favor of the simultaneously ontological and epistemological reality of the "supernaturally natural" function of the intellect or human powers of discernment that thus serve as pontifex.

The book has four main sections:

Aux sources du pérennialisme américain
Apparition et développement du courant pérennialiste aux États-Unis (seconde moitié du XXe et début du XXIe siècles)
L’implantation du pérennialisme dans le milieu académique aux États-Unis
Les débats et controverses suscitées autour du courant pérennialiste au sein de l’American Academy of Religion (AAR)

Nasr ranked among world's top 50 Muslims

2010-07-16T11:35:00.002+02:00

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is among the world's top 50 Muslims, according to The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Jordan, which has published a report on The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World in conjunction with the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.

In a list headed by Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, Nasr comes as #47, just after Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb (and of a certain amount of nuclear proliferation). Of course such lists are ridiculous, and probably say more about the perspectives of those who compile them than about reality, but they still mean something. It is interesting that Nasr makes the list, and also interesting that his two main achievements are given as "Reviver of Tradition" and "Islamic Environmentalism." The list's authors consider the environment number 2 of the 12 "issues of the day," and put Nasr as the leading figure under that issue.

Among the full 500, I recogize two other Maryamis, two non-Maryami Traditionalists, and two others for whom Traditionalism was at some point important.

Thanks to I. P. for drawing my attention to the list.

The "validity" of the Maryamiyya

2010-07-14T12:15:00.001+02:00

From time to time, the question comes up of how to understand the position of the Maryamiyya in terms of the classifications generally used by Sufis, and of whether the Maryamiyya is a “valid” tariqa in mainstream Sufi terms. Like most tariqas, the Maryamiyya can be placed in three ways:

In organizational terms, it is an independent branch of the Alawiyya, which is itself an independent branch of the Darqawiyya, which is itself an independent branch of the Shadhiliyya. It is independent in the sense that it operates independently of the tariqa from which it derives, and in the sense that its practice, prayers, and teachings differ in certain respects from those of the tariqa from which it derives. The same is true of the Darqawiyya and of most other tariqas in existence today.
In personal terms, Frithjof Schuon is a link in a chain (silsila) passing through Ahmad al-Alawi, Muhammad al-Arabi al-Darqawi, Abu’l-Hasan al-Shadhili, and then through both Ali ibn Abi Talib and Abu Bakr to the Prophet Muhammad, and thence to God. The question of whether or not (or how) Schuon was authorized as a muqaddam by al-Alawi has no bearing or impact on this.
In personal and organizational terms, the foundation of the Maryamiyya as a distinct tariqa seems to result from the authorization said to have been given to Schuon in a vision by the Virgin Mary, just as the foundation of the Alawiyya as a distinct tariqa results from the authorization said to have been given to al-Alawi in a vision by Ali ibn Abi Talib. While such forms of authorization are not universal, they are very common.

In Sufi terms, then, the Maryamiyya is probably “valid” to the extent that Schuon’s vision of the Virgin Mary in 1965 was “valid.”

Traditionalism and art in Jordan

2010-07-13T16:13:00.000+02:00

An interesting comment on my post on "Traditionalism and art--and perhaps more than art" draws attention to the Institute of Traditional Islamic Art and Architecture in Amman, Jordan, which is evidently the Jordanian equivalent of London's VITA (Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts), now The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts. The Chairman of the Board of the Amman institute is Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad (born 1966), who is very involved in the Common Word initiative, as are a number of notable Traditionalists. Jordan definitely seems to be the Arab country where Traditionalism is currently faring best.

Traditionalists achieve Italian government support for halal food and products

2010-07-13T14:48:00.001+02:00

An unusual initiative in Italy indicates the growing importance there of the CO.RE.IS (Comunità Religiosa Islamica, Islamic Religious Community) founded by the Traditionalist shaykh Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini and now increasingly run by his son, Imam Yahya Pallavicini.

The CO.RE.IS has put together a certification scheme, HalalItalia, in cooperation with the Milan Chamber of Commerce, that was launched on 30 June 2010 by the Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini–see photos here. The scheme is remarkable, in the current European climate of burka and minaret bans, for bringing about what is in effect the support of a European government for an aspect of sharia, backed by a commitment from leaders of industry.

How was this done? Fruit, presumably, of the Pallavicinis’ efforts over the years to present themselves and the CO.RE.IS as responsible and constructive partners for Italian institutions, as traditional rather than radical Muslims, as Italians rather than transnational. Fruit also of the brilliant idea of presenting the scheme as a way of improving Italian exports to the Muslim world, which no-one can object to, whatever one thinks on the heated issue of “integration” of Muslims in Europe.

Images from Fes Festival

2010-06-26T12:58:00.000+02:00

Hussein Rashid, who attended this year's Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, has uploaded photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/islamoyankee/ and videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/islamoyankee.

He wrote: "YouTube does not yet make it easy to embed a Creative Commons license, but I am releasing the videos under the same license as the photos found on the Flickr page. I am an amateur, who got a new camera just before the trip, so please forgive some of the quality. I am still going through my material and will continue to upload as I go through it. I will also, hopefully, edit some of the video over the course of the summer."

Traditionalism and art--and perhaps more than art

2010-06-18T19:45:00.000+02:00

An important new dissertation has just been defended at the University of Geneva: Patrick Ringgenberg, “Les théories de l'art dans la pensée traditionnelle. René Guénon - Ananda K. Coomaraswamy - Frithjof Schuon - Titus Burckhardt.” It is to be hoped that this dissertation, which is a major contribution to the study of Traditionalism in recent years, will soon be published as a book.

The dissertation deals, as its title promises, with the theories on art of the three major figures in the Traditionalist movement, as well as with those of Titus Burckhardt–important for theories on art, if not so much for Traditionalism as a whole–and of Luc Benoist, also important for theories on art, whose views are dealt with more briefly (and so not mentioned in the dissertation’s title).

The dissertation is an impressively detailed and comprehensive study of Traditionalist views on art. Guénon himself was not much interested in art as such, but he was interested in the initiatic function of the métier, and in symbolism, and these interests formed the basis of the Traditionalist theories of art developed by Benoist, Coomaraswamy, and others. Art was important to Coomaraswamy and Benoist because it was their professions–both were art historians.

It is with Schuon that art became really important to Traditionalism as a whole. This was partly because Schuon came from an artistic milieu and had an artistic "temperament," and partly because one major difference between him and Guénon, as Ringgenberg convincingly argues, was that he was interested in areas that Guénon had ignored– the “human content of spiritual phenomena,” areas of life such as emotion and love, and the living phenomenology of religion. This was one reason he was able to transform Traditionalism from a theory into a reality in the form of the Maryamiyya. And it was also one reason why art became so important.

Art was, in Schuon’s view, important for creating a milieu in which other things became possible. Spiritual influences, he wrote, "need a formal ambience which corresponds to them analogically, without which they do not spread, even if they still remain present." For Schuon, following Plato, earthly beauty was a (poor) reflection of a non-earthly reality, and thus a divine emanation. It was central to his spirituality, and so to that of the Maryamiyya. Ringgenberg does not go so far as to suggest that the Maryamiyya was, in a sense, a work of art, but the argument might be made.

Ringgenberg convincingly argues that Schuon's own painting owes rather more to Gauguin than to Traditionalist theory. The problem was that, though claiming to despise and ignore the modern, Schuon’s painting could not overcome the modern, and was itself therefore modern, without acknowledging this and without, as a result, being able to address it.

This may be a problem for Traditionalism as a whole. As Ringgenberg writes, “these authors forget that universalism cannot be expressed as such, that it is always individualized by its expression, and that it is an abstract ideal filtered by human consciousness and by a cultural and historical moment."

One of the central questions that Ringgenberg asks is why all this theorizing on art led, in the end, to nothing. Despite much interest, no artistic movement resulted. The only painters to attempt to implement Traditionalist conceptions of art in painting (as opposed to in art history) were Albert Gleizes, who soon abandoned the attempt, and Schuon, whose paintings were hardly "traditional." Ringgenberg suggests a number of answers to this question, which may (again) be relevant to assessing the record of Traditionalism as a whole, not just in relation to theories on art. One of his answers is that Traditionalist theories were over-theoretical, taking too little account of variety and reality, emphasizing what a symbol should mean so much that there was no space for consideration of what it actually did mean to those who created it. Another answer is that great art has to have some sort of dialectical relationship with the society in which it is produced, which Traditionalist art could not, since Traditionalism condemned and then tried to ignore contemporary society. Traditionalism also did not provide enough room for development, he believes: “founded on the axiom of a universalist metaphysics, by definition unchangeable and beyond time, this intellectual perspective did not permit fundamental questioning, and contented itself with repeating, in different terms, ... the opinions and options articulated by its founders.”

Ringgenberg’s conclusion on Coomaraswamy is crushing, and not without basis, and deserves to be quoted in full:

Lui qui insistait sur l’impersonnalité des artisans, des sages et des philosophes « traditionnels », qui se refusait à toute donnée autobiographique au nom d’une vérité qui dépasse les individus ; lui qui entendait faire parler les textes pour dissimuler sa subjectivité et déployer des trésors d’érudition pour cacher sa démarche herméneutique, qui défendait un universalisme pour échapper à tout particularisme religieux et toute subjectivité confessionnelle, il n’a pas eu conscience que cette volonté d’effacement et cette aspiration au « supra-individuel » révélait, en creux, comme chez Guénon, une personnalité qui a élaboré son image de l’universalisme et dressé son propre miroir (p. 370).

With regard to sources for other researchers, Ringgenberg draws attention to the usefulness of Schuon’s poems as autobiographical sources, especially for the period not covered by Erinnerungen und Betrachtungen. He also recommends two books above all for Traditionalist theories of art: Luc Benoist, Art du monde. La spiritualité du métier (Paris: Gallimard, 1941) and Titus Burckhardt, Principes et méthodes de l’art sacré (1958; Paris, Dervy-Livres, 1976).

Faouzi Skali and Tariq Ramadan

2010-06-09T19:13:00.000+02:00

For Francophoines who happen to be in Paris on June 17,2010:

Faouzi Skali et Tariq Ramadan débattront sur le thème

"Regards sur l’islam et la société"

le 17 juin à 18H30

à L’institut du Monde Arabe

1, rue des Fossés-Saint-Bernard

Place Mohammed-V

75005 Paris

Plus que jamais, l’islam est l’objet d’une interpellation et d’une interprétation globalisée.
Entre ceux qui le considèrent à travers le prisme réducteur des signes extérieurs de religiosité (minarets, mosquées, voile et burqa), et ceux qui tentent de le renouveler sur la base d’une réforme radicale ou d’un ressourcement spirituel, il y a un khulf, un différend qui n’est pas prêt d’être dépassé. En tout cas si les tenants des thèses éradicatrices et orientalisantes s’attachent à bricoler un islam à la taille et à la mesure de l’Occident, ceux qui prônent le renouveau et le ressourcement spirituel réactivent les méthodes de l’ijtihâd (lecture critique) qui autorise l’imbrication dans un même geste éthique et liberté, croyance et citoyenneté. Cette rencontre est l’occasion d’engager un échange entre deux penseurs musulmans qui oeuvrent activement, chacun à sa manière, pour l’avènement d’un islam du vivre ensemble, en phase avec sa société et son époque.

Traditionalists in the AK

2010-06-07T10:40:00.000+02:00

Omar commented: "Just wanted to remind you that Erdogans chief advisor is Ibrahim Kalin who is also a disciple of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. That means traditionalism is now at the core of a modern political movement, the AK Party."

Dr Ibrahim Kalin is Chief Foreign Policy Adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and so certainly close to the AK leadership.

Dr Kalin of Turkish origin and is an assistant professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he works on post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy, notably Mullah Sadra; he has just published a book on Mullah Sadra's concept of "transcendent wisdom," Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect and Intuition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Dr Kalin is also active in the Common Word initiative, which has been pursuing real dialog with Western churches since 2006.

I have often been told of interest in Traditionalism among the AK leadership, which would not be a great surprise, given the popularity in Turkey of the work of Dr Nasr. Dr Kalin seems very much to follow the model of Dr Nasr. Both men are of Muslim origin, both teach in DC and are authorities on "traditional" Islamic mystical philosophy, and both are active in the Common Word initiative.

My thanks to Omar for this information.

Call: Concepts of Tradition in Phenomenology

2010-06-07T08:54:00.000+02:00

The 2011 issue of Studia Phaenomenologica is dedicated to the topic: Concepts of Tradition in Phenomenology.

As it is commonly known, Husserl’s phenomenology demanded at its first breakthrough a total refutation of all uncertified knowledge, theory or meaning inherited from the past. However, the development of phenomenological inquiry gradually resulted in a more ambiguous attitude towards history and tradition. On the one hand, history and tradition are necessary but still unfortunate distortions, which hinder phenomenological research in its strive for original self-givenness; on the other hand, they become themselves universal phenomena that must be explored as such.

As recent publications of late Husserlian manuscripts have revealed, Husserl himself became more and more aware of these topics in his last decade, as he was finally inclined to interpret the Life-world itself in its full concreteness as a “generative tradition”. Tradition in this sense pertains to all meaning sprung from earlier acquisition. Therefore, the concept obviously exceeds its ordinary meaning, exclusively related to inter-subjective historical inheritance, by gaining a fundamental importance for all areas of phenomenological analysis, as they all have the characteristic of “traditionalizing”. Thus, there is “tradition” at work in all action or bodily movement, in every instance of a given situation and in any relation to another thing or being.

Understood in this broad sense, the term does not address only the genetic fact of sedimentation, but also a specific, “habitual” quality that things allow to see through themselves, as bearers of a past. Hence, the theme marks an intersection of various problematic strata in Husserlian phenomenology, starting from the correlation of genetic and static phenomenology, following through different aspects of phenomenological methodology, and up to several ground-themes of phenomenological research, such as historicity, memory, language, bodily existence, inter-subjectivity, life-world and others.

The same twofold relation to tradition – of growing thematic interest, on the one hand, and utter criticism, on the other – shows in the post-Husserlian phenomenology as well. Heidegger, for instance, is from his early beginnings convinced that history should be the true guideline for phenomenological research, while at the same time pleading for a systematic destruction of the philosophical tradition. A similarly ambiguous position defines his later project of transcending metaphysics, and certainly other examples can be found as well.

The aim of our 2011 issue is therefore to explore the two fundamental poles that define the phenomenological approach of tradition: the task of understanding the problem of tradition thematically, on one hand, and the necessity of confronting it methodically as a residual distortion, on the other hand.

For further information, see the full Call for Papers at http://studia-phaenomenologica.com/?page=advertise.

Rousselot de Surgy

2010-05-17T19:29:00.000+02:00

Only distantly related to Traditionalism, but here is an appeal for help: does anyone know anything about Jacques Philibert Rousselot de Surgy (b. 1737), author of Mélanges intéressans et curieux, ou abrégé d’histoire naturelle, morale, civile, et politique de l’Asie, l’Afrique, l’Amérique, et des Terres polaires, “dont la date de décès est inconnue des usuels et qui aurait été censeur royal” (BNF)? He wrote an entry on Sufism in his mélanges that is so unusual that I would love to know more about him.

Mark Sedgwick

New book on Massignon, Corbin, Guenon, and Schuon

2010-04-10T15:17:00.000+02:00

An interesting new book by Patrick Laude: Pathways to an Inner Islam: Massignon, Corbin, Guenon, and Schuon (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010; $80; 219 pp; ISBN13: 978-1-4384-2955-7).

Laude, who writes as both a scholar (GWU) and as an insider, deals with the views of the two great scholars and the two great Traditionalists (who in some ways resembled the scholars and in other ways very much differed from them) on "Sufism, Shi‘ism, and the Definition of Inner Islam," "The Qur’an," "The Prophet," "The Feminine," "The Universal Horizon of Islam," and "The Question of War" (these being the titles of his main chapters).

One of Laude's initital premises is that "outsiders" such as the four he bases his book on are actually better situated to understand Islam than are most Muslims, because of what he calls the "ideologization" of Islam in the modern world. Be this as it may, the book promsies a careful and well-researched study of the theology of Massignon, Corbin, Guenon, and Schuon, if not necessarily of Islam.

Article on Martin Lings (and photos)

2010-03-12T12:03:00.000+02:00

A new survey article on Martin Lings by Amira Kotb, in French, but with some rare photographs even if you don't read French. Closer to hagiography than academic norms, but informative.

New article on Dugin

2010-03-06T13:59:00.001+02:00

Anton Shekhovtsov, "Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism: The New Right à la Russe," Religion Compass 3/4 (2009): 697–716

Abstract:

Russian political thinker and, by his own words, geopolitician, Aleksandr Dugin, represents a comparatively new trend in the radical Russian nationalist thought. In the course of the 1990s, he introduced his own doctrine that was called Neo-Eurasianism. Despite the supposed reference to the interwar political movement of Eurasianists, Dugin’s Neo-Eurasian nationalism was rooted in the political and cultural philosophy of the European New Right. Neo-Eurasianism is based on a quasi-geopolitical theory that juxtaposes the ‘Atlanticist New World Order’ (principally the US and the UK) against the Russia-oriented ‘New Eurasian Order’. According to Dugin, the ‘Atlanticist Order’ is a homogenizing force that dilutes national and cultural diversity that is a core value for Eurasia. Taken for granted, Eurasia is perceived to suffer from a ‘severe ethnic, biological and spiritual’ crisis and is to undergo an ‘organic cultural-ethnic process’ under the leadership of Russia that will secure the preservation of Eurasian nations and their cultural traditions. Neo-Eurasianism, sacralized by Dugin and his followers in the form of a political religion, provides a clear break from narrow nationalism toward the New Right ethopluralist model. Many Neo-Eurasian themes find a broad response among Russian high-ranking politicians, philosophers, scores of university students, as well as numerous avant-garde artists and musicians. Already by the end of the 1990s, Neo-Eurasianism took on a respectable, academic guise and was drawn in to ‘scientifically’ support some anti-American and anti-British rhetoric of the Russian government.

Schuon's "connection with Islam" not "absolutely essential"?

2010-02-28T14:26:00.002+02:00

A correspondent has drawn my attention to an interesting article, and asked an interesting question.

The article is Renaud Fabbri, "The Milk of the Virgin: The Prophet, the Saint and the Sage," which appeared in Sacred Web 20 (Winter 2007). It is available directly from the Bloomington "World Wisdom" website. Given this, it certainly does not contradict the current consensus of the Bloomington community.

The central argument of the article is that Schuon should be "understood neither as the founder of a new religion (a prophet in the classical sense of the word) nor as a Muslim saint, but as a universal sage." The article disagrees with my analysis (in Against the Modern World) that Schuon progressively moved away from a starting point in Sufi Islam as "typically modernist and psychological" in its assumption that Schuon's positions evolved. In fact, argues Fabbri, there was "a progressive unveiling" of what had always been there. "The growing emphasis of the late Schuon on primordiality and universality did not represent a deviation but corresponded to a final, yet perfectly natural crystallization revealing that, to some degree, Schuon's connection with Islam was not absolutely essential." In fact, the "undeniable connection of Schuon with Islam did not mean however that his message was intrinsically Islamic."

The difference between Fabbri and myself is partly about timing and partly about method. Fabbri and I seem to agree on how Schuon was seen and saw himself at the end. The question is whether this position evolved, or was always there. The method of the historian assumes that nothing is pre-ordained, and everything develops, to some extent by chance. Fabbri's method assumes the contrary.

Now to the question:

As a Muslim (but by no means an 'aalim/scholar), I am surprised that, in spite of works like yours and other recent ones which shed more light on Schuon's beliefs and practices, there has than been so little response from traditional Islamic spiritual authorities as to the standing of Schuon as a Shadhili "Shaykh" and the Maryamiyyah as a Shadhili "tariqah". It now seems there is little doubt as to how Schuon viewed his function and message; articles such as Rennaud Fabbri's "The Milk of the Virgin: the Prophet, the Sage, and the Sage" emphasise that, due to Schuon's "supra-confessional" starting point and standing, it would be a mistake to confine the Schuonian message and function within Islam and subject to the Islamic criteria for judging orthodox Shaikhs and Tariqahs. To me the Perennialists' writings that have appeared after Schuon's death effectively place Schuon's "religio perennis/pure esoterism" beyond the criteria and authority of Islam/traditional sufism and basically ask us to accept whatever Schuon said ultimately on the basis of his own authority (or, for the Perennialists, the authority of the "Intellect"). Such being the case, where is the response of traditional Islam/Sufism? Is it because Schuon's/Pernnialist writings have not been translated into Islamic languages and therefore generally not known? Or is it that Pernnialism is/was not taken that seriously in such circles and thought not worth responding to?

I think the answer to this may come in two parts. One part is that "traditional" Muslims, in contrast to Salafi Muslims, are very cautious indeed when it comes to takfir, to charges of heresy that potentially have the effect of excommunication. This is partly because of numerous hadith warning against this, partly because of adab, partly because of reluctance to cause fitna--and partly precisely because of Salafi enthusiasm for takfir.

The second part of the answer is that one has to make a distinction between the Bloomington community and the Maryamiyya as a whole. In Schuon's lifetime, Bloomington was more universalist than the worldwide Maryamiyya, which was more Sufi and Islamic, but the authority of the figure of Schuon kept these two trends from producing a split, rather as the authority of the figure of Tito kept Yugoslavia together. Since Schuon's death there seems to have been a clear split--I say "seems" because I have not researched this properly. What are best known today are not the universalist Bloomington positions but the Islamic positions. The universalist Bloomington positions are so universalist that they need not concern Muslims, any more than the positions of--say--the Mormons need concern Muslims. And, given the split, the Islamic positions can be--and are--taken separately.

Whether this is as it should be is another question, and one that is not really the business of this blog.

Dugin's influence in France

2010-02-18T17:07:00.000+02:00

A good survey of Dugin's influence in France: Stéphane François, "Alexandre Douguine et la droite radicale française," Fragments sur les Temps Présents, 9 avril 2009.

Is Hanifi Traditionalism Traditionalist?

2010-02-16T20:38:00.002+02:00

Now we have the results of some research announced in 2007, a new thesis on someone who may be one of the most colorful Traditionalists ever, Khozh-Akhmed Noukhaev, the founder of so-called "Hanifi Traditionalism." For those who know their Islam, "Hanifi" refers here not to the Hanifi madhhab but to the conception of the hanif, those such as Abraham who came before Islam but practiced a perfect monotheism.

Noukhaev is a Chechen, famous in Russia as a former mafia boss who played a leading role in the Chechen wars and in all manner of other murky events. He is of interest to this blog because his Hanifi Traditionalism was promoted in Russia by Alexander Dugin, and at first sight looked pretty Traditionalist.

Eduard ten Houten, the author of the new thesis, started off seeing Noukhaev as a Traditionalist, but his research led him to a different conclusion. Ten Houten’s thesis, “Blood, Power, Islam: The Life and Opinions of the Exemplary Chechen Khozh-Akhmed Noukhaev,” (University of Amsterdam, 2009) is a beautifully written and exhaustively researched biography of Noukhaev that shows the origins, uses, and fate of his doctrine of Hanifi Traditionalism, developed in cooperation with Mansur-Machiej Jachimczyk, a Polish convert to Islam.

Wondering whether Noukhaev might be what I call a “soft” Traditionalist, ten Houten asks whether Hanifi Traditionalism could have come into being without Guénonian Traditionalism. This is a good question, and a good additional test of what is and is not Traditionalist.

And in ten Houten’s view, Hanifi Traditionalism fails the test. Noukhaev hardly needed metaphysics to tell him that something was wrong with the modern world: the appalling bloodshed and destruction in Chechnya certainly indicated a problem. Engels is a possible source for Noukhaev’s replacement of the standard two-part division into tradition and modernity with a three-part division into barbarism, tradition and modernity. Note that for both Engels and Noukhaev, barbarism is a positive, not a negative, concept. While Traditionalists commonly find their tradition in books and apply it in fairly abstract ways, Noukhaev found his barbarism in his own experience and applied it to a very concrete end: finding a basis for a possible settlement between the Russian state and the Chechen people that could be equally acceptable to both sides.

I am not so sure. Kazakh Eurasianism, in contrast to Hanifi Traditionalism, fits well enough with Dugin's ideas for an alliance, but without any Traditionalist elements. So there is no need to add the Traditionalist themes of decline, anti-modernism and religion to Eurasianism to get Dugin's support.

First finding something wrong with the modern world on a basis other than metaphysics does not stop someone being a Traditionalist. For nearly all Traditionalists, it is not Traditionalism that draws attention to the fact that there is a problem with the modern world, but Traditionalism that makes sense of that problem. Using other sources in a synthesis is also quite common: consider Dugin's use of Eurasianism, Schuon's use of Native American religion, and Evola's use of Nietzsche. And as for concrete ends, consider Evola, and Dugin himself.

If ten Houten is right and Noukhaev developed independently a doctrine which just happened to fit extremely neatly into Dugin’s Traditionalist conceptions, then we would need to rethink Traditionalism. Instead of a more or less unique philosophy developed by Guénon, Traditionalism would be one instance of something pretty widespread.

Even though I have just been challenging ten Houten's conclusions, I am still a fan of the thesis. Almost every available piece of the jigsaw seems to be there. It will, I hope, soon be published.

Kazakh Eurasianism not Traditionalist

2010-02-16T19:54:00.001+02:00

A new thesis on Eurasianism in Kazakhstan: Nataliya Ludanova, "Kasachische Mission: Das eurasische Konzept in der Konstruktion der nationalen Idee in Nursultan Nazarbaevs Kasachstan" (University of Mainz, 2009/10).

Ludanova argues that under Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured, president of Kazakhstan since independence and First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party before independence) Eurasianism has in effect become the official Kazakh state ideology. She shows the close links between Kazakh Eurasianism and Dugin, and explains why Eurasianism is attractive for the Kazakh regime.

What is most interesting is that what Kazach Eurasianism takes from Dugin's Eurasianism is really just the geopolitics. Though Ludanova does not say this explicitly, it seems that the esoteric and properly Traditionalist elements in Dugin's Eurasianism find no real echo in Kazakhstan. Neo-Eurasianism, it seems, has Traditionalist origins and underpinnings, but can function without them.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr and...

2010-02-16T17:22:00.001+02:00

Question: Who, apart from Seyyed Hossein Nasr, has really used the intellectual tools of Western modernity to attempt to defend classic conceptions of Islam against Western modernity?

Many people have, of course, used the intellectual tools of Western modernity to try to bridge the gap between it and Islam, from Sayed Ahmed Khan and Muhammad Abduh to Mohammed Arkoun and Abdullahi An-Na'im. This is the so-called “modernist” stream of Islam, and what emerges from it is rather different from classic conceptions of Islam. Many people have simply refused or attacked Western modernity and then moved on to (or back to) something else, but who apart from Nasr has produced an intellectually sophisticated justification for this?

Answer: All sugegstions welcome.

My thanks to TK for the conversation during which this point emerged.

New articles on Dugin

2010-02-16T17:01:00.000+02:00

Several new articles (if you read Russian) in Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры vol. 6, no. 2 (2009), published by the Eichstaett Institute for Central and East European Studies in Upper Bavaria, Germany. These include:

Marlene Laruelle (Institute for Development and Security Policy, Stockholm), "Aleksandr Dugin, ideologicheskii posrednik: sliianie razlichnykh doktrin pravoradikal'nogo politicheskogo spektra," p. 63
Leonid Luks, "'Tretii put'' ili nazad v 'Tretii reikh'? O 'neoevraziiskoi' gruppe 'Elementy'," p. 88
Anton Shekhovtsov (National Technical University of Sevastopol), "Palingeneticheskii proekt neoevraziistva: idei vozrozhdeniia v mirovozzrenii Aleksandra Dugina," p. 105
Andreas Umland (The Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt), "Patologicheskie tendentsii v russkom 'neoevraziistve': o znachenii vzleta Aleksandra Dugina dlia interpretatsii obshchestvennoi zhizni sovremennoi Rossii," p. 127

The Islamist Right in France and Russia

2010-01-24T11:46:00.001+02:00

The Islamist Right is an unfamiliar concept in Western Europe, but one we may hear more of. How else to describe "LLP," a French video-blogger who rails against Freemasonry--which he seems to associate with the Jews--and republican laïcité (secularism) while mentioning that everyone now knows that 9/11 was a "false flag attack" and that no Muslim may ever, ever become a Freemason? And quotes Guénon explicitly on laïcité and implictly on Freemasonry?

I am told that LLP "is having quite a terrific success on internet." His "Maçonnerie et Laïcisation de l'Islam" had only attracted 1,460 views over six months when I viewed it, so I'm not sure, but it is certainly an interesting example of a particular genre.

And then there's voxnr.com, "le site des résistants au nouvel ordre mondial" (the site for those resisting the new world order), still going strong after seven years (it started in 2002), with its companion journal, Résistance. This site is New Right rather than Islamist, but reports news of Dugin and friends, and is certainly positive towards some varieities of Islam and Islamism. Interviews posted towards the end of 2009 dealt with Mircea Eliade and Guénon as well as the good relations between the Arabs and Fascism. And then there was also an interview with Edward Limonov of Russia's National Bolshevik Party, entitled "Every Day I feel closer to Islam."

Limonov reports that he first learned about Islam from Gaydar Jamal, and admired it more after what he saw in jail in 2002-03 (where he had a Chechen cellmate, the rebel Aslanbek Alkhazurov). Asked why some Russian rightists were converting to Islam, he replied:

I think that National Bolsheviks who convert to Islam are looking for both protest and discipline in Islam. Islam clearly states how to behave in everyday life, something which is not taught in other religions . . . In Islam, an individual finds precise rules.

Guénon and Agarttha

2010-01-12T19:55:00.001+02:00

Just published: Marco Baistrocchi, "Agarttha: A Guénonian Manipulation?" Theosophical History, Occasional Papers, vol. 12. This is a translation by Joscelyn Godwin of three articles originally published in Italian in Politica Romana in the 1990s, by an Italian diplomat. An "engaged" author rather than a scholarly one, but still worth reading.

The whole question of Agarttha and Guénon's Le roi du monde (The King of the World, 1927) is puzzling. In Le roi du monde, Guénon endorsed views about the existence of "Agarttha," a hidden subterranean initiatic kingdom, that were highly imaginative. Guénon did not always check his sources as painstakingly as is required in academia, but on no other occasion did he devote so much energy to something quite so unlikely. Why?

Baistrocchi provides a useful introduction to, and summary of, the problem. He also more or less excludes one possible answer to the question. Guénon can hardly have actually believed the imaginative accounts he endorsed in Le roi du monde. He knew, as Baistrocchi shows (p. 22 and passim), one of the main sources for the imaginative account of Agarttha, Louis Jacolliot's Les Fils de Dieu (1873). But... Jacolliot was writing not about Agarttha, but about Asgard, the abode of the Norse gods!

So what was Guénon up to? Baistrocchi's suggestion, that Guénon was joining in a conspiracy to combat the interest in Asiatic religion awakened by the Theosophical Society for the sake of maintaining public interest in Catholicism and Islam, seems to me unlikely.

The puzzle, then, still awaits solution. But at least one possibility now seems to have been excluded.

Apoliteic music

2009-12-03T19:50:00.000+02:00

In his new article, "Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and 'metapolitical fascism'" (Patterns of Prejudice 43, no. 5, December 2009, pp. 431-457), Anton Shekhovtsov suggests that there are two types of radical right-wing music that are cultural reflections of the two different political strategies that fascism was forced to adopt in the ‘hostile’ conditions of the post-war period.

While White Noise music is explicitly designed to inspire racially or politically motivated violence and is seen as part and parcel of the revolutionary ultra-nationalist subculture, he suggests that ‘metapolitical fascism’ has its own cultural reflection in the domain of sound, namely, apoliteic music. This is a type of music whose ideological message contains obvious or veiled references to the core elements of fascism but is simultaneously detached from any practical attempts to realize these elements through political activity. Apoliteic music neither promotes outright violence nor is publicly related to the activities of radical right-wing political organizations or parties. Nor can it be seen as a means of direct recruitment to any political tendency.

Shekhovtsov’s article focuses on this type of music, and the thesis is tested by examining bands and artists that work in such musical genres as Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial, whose roots lie in cultural revolutionary and national folk traditions.

An anti-Traditionalist???

2009-11-21T14:17:00.002+02:00

Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905), Mufti of the Egyptian Realm, was hardly a Traditionalist. In fact, he was perhaps an anti-Traditionalist. A jurist, religious scholar, political activist, and freemason, he wanted to span the divide between Islam and the West, and advocated a more modern conception of Islam, grounded in rationalism.

I have just published a biography of Muhammad Abduh: Muhammad Abduh (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009). A Middle East edition (as Muhammad Abduh: A Biography) is soon to be published by the American University in Cairo Press.

"Asserting that he was as much a patriotic Egyptian as Islamic reformer, Mark Sedgwick examines the life and thought of the great Mufti and explores his lasting influence on Islamic culture. Drawing on a wealth of new sources and the latest research, this is the only modern biography of this controversial and enigmatic figure."

Fez Festival of Sufi Culture 2010

2009-11-14T18:54:00.000+02:00

The dates of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture 2010 have now been announced: 17-25 April 2010.

As before, the part-Traditionalist-inspired cultural festival will be accompanied by a Fez Forum, on “Giving a Soul to Globalisation."

Further information at the festival website.

Traditionalism and Sufism in Italy

2009-11-10T15:07:00.001+02:00

Alessandra Marchi has completed a doctoral thesis at the EHESS in Paris entitled "Les formes du soufisme en Italie. Le devenir des confréries islamiques en Occident" (450 pp).

The first part of the thesis deals with the history and sociology of Sufism in Italy, introducing Traditionalism in chapter two. Chapter three looks at the Sufi orders currently found in Italy, dividing them on the basis of their membership into the "ethnic" (Mûridiyya, Khalwatiyya and Tijaniyya), the "mixed" (Burhâniyya-Dusûqiyya-Shâdhiliyya and Naqshbandiyya), and the "Italian" (Ahmadiyya-Idrisiyya-Shâdhiliyya and Halvetiyya Jerrahiyya).

The second part deals with the history and anthropology of conversion to Islam (again touching on Traditionalism) and the third part, which concerns the possible future of Sufism in Italy, also considers Traditionalism, as well as hybridization.

It looks very interesting! For Traditionalist Sufism, and for the wider context.

On the early history of the perennial philosophy

2009-10-23T11:17:00.002+02:00

An old but excellent article on the early history of the perennial philosophy of which I have just become aware is Charles B. Schmitt, "Perrenial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz," Journal of the History of Ideas 27 (1966), pp. 505-532.

Schmitt traces uses and development of the term from Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) to Agostino Steuco (1497-1548), and finally to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), passing along the way Symphorien Champier (c. 1472-c. 1539), Francesco Giorgio (1460-1540), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64), and Guillaume Postel (1510-81). Among the moderns, he mentions briefly Jacques Maritain, Erwin J. Auweiler, Paolo Rotta, Aldous Huxley, Roberto Ardigo, Cornelius Kruse, Otto Willmann, Maurice de Wulf, and S. Radhakrishnan.

On Leibniz, he concludes:

Although it is more fashionable today to see Leibniz as a "precursor of modern logic and mathematics" or as a brilliant metaphysician, his affinity to the tradition of perennial philosophy as envisioned by Steuco is most clear. Leibniz's whole philosophy of harmony is very similar to that expressed by Steuco and the others we have discussed, although in Leibniz the metaphysical foundations of such a Harmonistik are much more carefully worked out, recalling in some ways Cusanus' attempt to give a metaphysical basis to a "philosophy of concord" . . . In a sense, Leibniz is the most eminent defender of the tradition called by Steuco philosophia perennis. Moreover, Leibniz's attempts to bring about religious unity-in a century not reputed for its ecumenical spirit-hark back to Cusanus, as well as to Ficino and Pico.

For more on Leibniz and the perennial philosophy, see

H. J. De Vleeschauwer, “Perennis quaedam Philosophia,” Studia Leibnitiana supplementa I (1968), pp. 102-22.
R Meyer, “Leibniz und die Philosophia perennis,“ in Tradition und Kritik, Festschrift für Rudolf Zocher zum 80. Geburtstag (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1967) pp. 223-54.

These suggestions are from Renato Cristin, Heidegger and Leibniz: Reason and the Path (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 1998, p. 83.

My thanks to Anders Klostergaard Petersen for bringing the Leibniz connection to my attention in the first place.

Eliade esoterico

2009-10-06T09:14:00.001+02:00

A recent book on Eliade I have just noticed: Marcello De Martino, Mircea Eliade esoterico. Ion Petr Culianu e i “non detti.” Rome: Edizioni Settimo Sigillo, 2008. 524 pp. €29.50.

To judge from reviews and an interview with the author, De Martino looks into Eliade's early thought. He argues that Eliade first encountered the philosophia perennis through nineteenth-century sources such as Papus before encountering the work of Guénon. He also looks at Eliade's early views on magic, which seem very much influenced by Evola.

Traditionalism and the French "New Right"

2009-09-27T12:03:00.007+02:00

For those who read French... A new paper on Traditionalism and the French "New Right:" Stéphane François, "Contre le monde moderne: la Nouvelle Droite et la 'Tradition'" (Religioscope, études et analyses n° 21, July 2009).

François traces the Traditionalist current within the French New Right (notably, the GRECE of Alain de Benoist) from its origins in the 1970s through its growing importance during the 1980s to the current day. He argues that Traditionalism has been important to the New Right in providing a basis for the reconstruction of Indo-European paganism as well as for its contribution to the New Right's anti-modern discourse, but that difficulties have arisen over Islam.

Traditionalists in the French New Right have differed over whether to welcome Islam, following Guénon, or to reject monotheism, following Evola. Those who have welcomed Islam and monotheism have, according to François, often ended up leaving the New Right proper, ending up in more regular conservatism, if of a somewhat extreme variety.

Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism

2009-09-26T14:41:00.001+02:00

For those who read Russian, eight articles on Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism are to be found in the web-journal Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul'tury vol. 6, no. 1, 2009.

Guénon on Egyptian television

2009-09-26T14:16:00.005+02:00

Guénon has finally appeared in an Egyptian soap opera!

Hatsuki Aishima, a scholar working on Abd al-Halim Mahmud (1910-78), a celebrated rector of the Azhar in the 1970s, found Guénon in a multipart Ramadan soap opera devoted to the life of Abd al-Halim Mahmud.

Of course, one has to simplify a bit for television. Guénon was not the only Frenchman who Abd al-Halim Mahmud knew. The other was Louis Massignon, the celebrated scholar of Islam who taught him at the Sorbonne. So Guénon and Massignon, who did not think highly of each other, are combined uncomfortably into one person, Frédéric.

In the soap, Guénon-Massignon converts to Islam in Paris after reading the Quran with Abd al-Halim Mahmud, and then moves to Cairo, where he lives as a pious recluse in a villa in Dokki, working on ancient Islamic manuscripts. Well, sort of.

The soap not only manages to introduce Guénon to Egyptian television viewers without referring to Traditionalism, but even manages to deal with Sufism without referring to Sufism--reducing it simply to generic piety, ignoring altogether anything that might seem controversial today. That's modernity for you!

Source: Hatsuki Aishima, "Producing a National Icon through the Mass Mediated Hagiography: al-`Arif billah al-Imam `Abd al-Halim Mahmud and Sufism in the Egyptian TV Serials," paper given at a conference on "Islamic Resurgence in the Age of Globalization: Myth, Memory, Emotion," held at the NTNU, Trondheim, September 4-6, 2009.

Is Dugin a Traditionalist?

2009-09-26T13:01:00.008+02:00

In a new article, Anton Shekhovtsov and Andreas Umland ask whether Alexander Dugin is a Traditionalist, and conclude that he is not--or rather, that he is not an "Integral Traditionalist," a term that they use and he does not. The article, "Is Aleksandr Dugin a Traditionalist? 'Neo-Eurasianism' and Perennial Philosophy" was published in The Russian Review 68 (October 2009), pp. 662–78.

The basic argument is that "Integral Traditionalism" can be defined as Guénon's own Traditionalism, that Evola differs so much from Guénon that he is not really an "Integral Traditionalist," and that Dugin differs from Evola, let alone Guénon, and so cannot possibly be a Traditionalist, even if he says he is.

Whether one accepts this argument or not depends on one's terminology. If by "Integral Traditionalism" one means "Guénonian Traditionalism," then Dugin is clearly not a Traditionalist, and neither are many other people who consider or considered themselves Traditionalists, probably including Schuon. If by "Traditionalism" one means a whole school of thought, in which are found disagreements and developments, then Dugin clearly has an important relationship to Traditionalism, as well as to other schools of thought.

Although they do not put it in quite these terms, Shekhovtsov and Umland question whether Traditionalism so defined (that is, as defined by me and some others, and not as defined by them and some others) is sufficiently coherent to be characterized as a school of thought in the first place. Their view is evidently that, taken together, the difference between Guénon's lack of interest in politics and Evola's interest in politics, the differences concerning initiation, and the difference between Guénon's rejection of modernity and Dugin's approval of some varieties of modernization, produce contradictions too great for one label to have much meaning.

This view certainly has merit, especially with regard to attitudes to politics. With regard to modernity, one might argue that Dugin is simply being more honest than Guénon in recognizing publicly that Traditionalism is not actually traditional--that it is a product of modernity, and in a sense a form of post-modernism. With regard to initiation, one might note that emphasis on initiation was a late addition to Guénon's own work. But surely a movement cannot be apolitical and political at the same time? Or perhaps it can... one can think of other examples of the apolitical being also political. What about Christianity, for example? "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." And yet Christianity has not always been apolitical. Should we argue that many popes and bishops were not really Christian?

I am not totally convinced by Shekhovtsov and Umland's argument, then, even though the article does raise important questions, and their examination of the relationship between the thought of Guénon, Evola, and Dugin is most interesting. Whether or not one allows Dugin the right to call himself a Traditionalist, it is useful to see how he fits in with others who call themselves Traditionalists.

One last word in what is becoming rather a long post. Shekhovtsov and Umland do me the honor of devoting a section of their article to my work on Traditionalism, and even giving me my own sub-heading. Mostly, they refer to views of mine that support their argument that Dugin differs from Guénon in important ways--which, of course, he does. Sometimes they are complimentary about my Against the Modern World, for which I thank them. They also, however, repeat charges made against me and my work in reviews that, as they recognize, "sometimes seem to be driven by nonacademic motives." Indeed! Which is why I have never responded to them--as a scholar, I welcome scholarly debate, but not mud-slinging.

Rue René Guénon

2009-08-04T12:08:00.004+02:00

Just discovered: rue René Guénon in his native Blois! On the south side of the Loire....

Another origin of Traditionalism

2009-08-04T10:09:00.017+02:00

"Traditionalism" was being discussed in the Universal Gnostic Church as early as 1905, before Guénon joined that church in 1908.

A young French lawyer, Déodat Roché (1877-1978), shown here in 1911, had left the Gnostic Church after disagreeing with its then chief theologian, Dr Louis-Sophrane Fugairon. In "Gnose antique et Pensée moderne," Roché reproached Fugairon for his dogmatism, and argued against a concept of tradition that placed traditionalism in opposition to modern science and thought. Modern science and thought, argued Roché, could and should be used to evaluate tradition.

Before this disagreement, Roché and Fugairon had together edited a journal that was at first called Le Réveil des Albigeois and then called La Gnose moderne. Guénon's own first journal, La Gnose, was a revival of Roché's and Fugairon's. Guénon's first recognizably Traditionalist article, "La religion et les religions," published in La Gnose, not only reflected the views of de Pouvourville, but also--to some extent--a pre-existing discussion within the Gnostic Church.

The original title of La Gnose moderne, Le Réveil des Albigeois, reflected Roché's conviction that the true ancient esoteric religion was the so-called Albigensian heresy, better known as Catharism. This was a thesis that Roché promoted for the rest of his life, and to which Guénon objected in Études Traditionnelles in 1949, referring to Roché's 1947 book Les Cathares. Roché responded to Guénon in his own journal, Cahiers d'Études Cathares.

Roché's career is an interesting parallel to Guénon's. His early trajectory was much the same, from provincial France through Martinism and the Gnostic Church to promoting his own understanding of perennial religion while remaining an active and influential Mason. Unlike Guénon, Roché led a small formal group of disciples, but like Guénon he was most influential through his writings, which were--especially in the 1960s and 1970s--a major source for the renewal of interest in Catharism that fed on the one hand into The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) and thence into The Da Vinci Code (2003) and on the other hand into the official "branding" of the French département of the Aude (where much of Cathar history had taken place) as "Cathar Country." Roché's house (shown here) is now a museum, a street in his native village is named after him, and a recent biography (Audouy's, see below) carries a preface by the president of the General Council of the Aude.

Although Roché was in a sense the first critic of Traditionalism for its ahistorical methodology, his own work has been subject to criticism by mainstream scholarship for precisely this reason, and is now little read. It is not even available in his own museum.

For Roché, see Jean-Philippe Audouy, Déodat Roché « Le Tisserand des Catharismes » (Carcassonne: Impressions du Pays Cathares, 1997) and José Dupré, Un Cathare au xxè siècle: Déodat Roché (1877-1978), sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée (Chancelade: La Clavellerie, 2001). Available online: Jean-Pierre Bonnerot, "Déodat Roché et l'Église Gnostique," Cahiers d'Études Cathares 2nd series 4-5 (1982).

Against the Modern World in paperback

2009-08-04T08:50:00.004+02:00

My history of Traditionalism, Against the Modern World, is now available in paperback, at $22.45 from Amazon.com (US) or £13.99 from Amazonm.co.uk (Europe). The paperback edition is basically the same as the hardback (though a few minor errors have been fixed), but is rather cheaper than the hardback (now $40-$50 or £39).

Has American academia begun to accept Traditionalism?

2009-05-21T15:09:00.004+02:00

Once again, Traditionalism has come to mainstream academic attention. Generally, when this happens, the result is clear rejection--but this time time the rejection was rather more cautious than usual.

Professor James Cutsinger reports that an outside review team noted the presence of two perennialists at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina, and stated "as a committee we have no intellectual issue with perennialism per se," before making rather clear their reservations in practice about what they called a "somewhat esoteric approach to religion that is of interest primarily to a small and committed group of followers."

In comparison with previous rejections, this might even be seen as a sort of grudging acceptance.

Orthodox Traditionalism and more

2009-05-21T15:04:00.004+02:00

Well worth a visit: the website of Professor James Cutsinger of the University of South Carolina, an Orthodox Traditionalist. There is an excellent links section and an interesting blog.

Mellon, Bollingen and Eranos

2009-05-19T14:35:00.004+02:00

Two new books on Eranos--new to me, at least:

Hans Thomas Hakl, Der verborgene Geist von Eranos – Unbekannte Begegnungen von Wissenschaft und Esoterik – Eine alternative Geistesgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Verlag Neue Wissenschaft, 2001).
William McGuire's Bollingen: an adventure in collecting the past (Princeton University Press, 1989).

McGuire clarifies a connection between Traditionalism and Eranos that I was sure would be there somewhere, but had not myself found.

Coomaraswamy was in correspondence with Eliade from at least 1936, and also knew Heinrich Zimmer, the Indologist of German origin who was close to Mary Mellon, patroness of Bollingen. Zimmer introduced Coomaraswamy to Mellon in about 1942; Coomaraswamy arranged Eliade's first job in the US (at a preparatory school in Arizona!!) in 1947, but it was Henry Corbin who first introduced Eliade to Eranos, where he became a hit from 1950 onwards.

Evola's autobiography now in English

2009-05-15T13:57:00.002+02:00

For thsoe who don't read Italian or French, Evola's Il Camino del Cinabro (1963) is now available in English translation as The Path of Cinnabar. € 27.95 from Integral Tradition Publishing.

I can't vouch for the quality of the translation--I've only seen the cover--but I can vouch for the importance of the book.

Courting the Cossacks

2009-05-04T11:27:00.002+02:00

Contributed by Max Smith

Along with several other figures in Russian politics, Alexander Dugin seems to be courting the Cossacks. One can notice Cossacks in Eurasian demonstrations in the Crimea, and there is a recent Dugin paper about them from his centre at Moscow State University (MGU). There are also news items illustrating closer political cooperation between Dugin and the Cossacks.

It is not only Dugin who is currently striving for more ties with the Cossacks, but also Dmitry Demushkin (also spelled Dyomushkin) of Slavic Unity (Slavyanski Soyuz, abbreviated as SS). See background below.

Clues to why this is happening are to be found both in the size of the Cossack movement – only Putin's United Russia can match it – and also in the latest composition of the State Duma. Since 2008 the most powerful Cossack chieftain, Viktor Vodolatsky, has a seat in the Duma thanks to a deal between the Cossacks and United Russia. A further 56 duma members have declared themselves to be Cossacks. Additionally, both army and FSB-border guard units are now granting privileges to Cossacks all over the country, not just in the south. Even in the Arctic Murmansk region Cossacks are being integrated into border units.

Unlike the older Russian National Unity (RNE--see background below), the SS claims to be primarily a Slavic movement. This difference is mostly a theoretical one, but the SS undeniably likes to highlight its friends in Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia. This means it is closer to Eurasianism than the RNE, although Dugin hardly wants to be associated with any of them. It may seem politically insane, but this does not hold true for the Cossacks. SS leader Dmitry Demushkin has even been made a colonel of the Cossacks and received a Cossack decoration, and SS delegates attended a major Cossack conference.

Background

The first major post-Soviet Russian fascist movement was arguably the black-clad Pamyat (Memory). A cultural movement in the 1970s, a political movement from 1987, it reached its peak strength around 1990. It never became a nation-wide phenomenon. Pamyat cornerstones were the Russian Orthodox Church, crude antisemitism and admiration for the prerevolutionary extreme nationalist "Black Hundreds". Alexander Dugin was briefly a part of Pamyat before he moved on to the National Bolshevik Party.

Then along came Russian National Unity (in Russian abbreviated RNE) under Alexander Barkashov – which went further, even using a Russian variant of the swastika as its main symbol. Incidentally, Barkashov too had started off in Pamyat. RNE was founded in 1990 and within a few years managed to expand to most Russian regions, and in some areas had an amazing presence on the streets – given its black uniforms and swastikas and the number of Russians citizens with a first-hand experience of National Socialism. RNE was without doubt the largest Russian radical nationalist organization with perhaps as many as a 100,000 members at its organizational peak in 1999.

RNE, like Pamyat, is still around. But ever since the year 2000--the year that party leader Alexander Barkashov was expelled from his own party for alcoholism, among other things--it has been in decline. Some months prior to that, RNE-member Dmitry Demushkin founded Slavic Unity, which in 2006 was transformed into what is officially the National Socialist Movement Slavic Unity, though it is still mostly called just Slavic Unity, SS.

Since its founding in September 1999 the SS has not reached the kind of mass that RNE once had. A recent estimate is a total of 1,500 members, mainly in Moscow and Saint Petersburg but with activist cells as far away as Vladivostok.

It may seem the SS is still a far call from RNE but there are three reasons that the SS warrant the attention of Russia analysts.

For special events, the SS can draw on a pool of several thousand skinheads and other young radical nationalists. See this slide show on Youtube, illustrating the development from RNE to SS.
In 2007 a Russian State Duma Deputy, Nikolai Kuryanovich of the LDPR faction (Vladimir Zhirinovsky´s party), decided to not only join the SS but also openly promote them, even using their Nazi salute. See this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ONDVulODxk. Kuryanovich was subsequently expelled from the LDPR but remained a Duma Deputy until December 2007 and remains a public figure and a captain in the Russian Naval Infantry (Russian Marine Corps).
The SS not only brags that it has its own fire arms (some automatic) but also that it has friends in military units that even lend them machine guns and a BTR-80 heavy armoured car with a heavy machine gun. In the following video the SS leader himself is firing away with these weapons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIdqONBPRuw&feature=related.

More on Valentine de St.-Point

2009-05-03T12:42:00.009+02:00

In my last post on Valentine de St.-Point, I said that it seemed she was more important as an artist than I had thought. Well, it now seems that I have to add to this that she was also more important as a thinker than I had thought.

An anonymous comment on my earlier post has drawn my attention to her Manifeste de la femme futuriste (Manifesto of the futurist woman) of 1912. This is available in French in a new edition of 2005 (Paris, Mille et une Nuits) and in English translation in Mary Ann Caws, Manifesto: a century of isms (University of Nebraska Press, 2001), and makes fascinating reading in whatever language.

Like Evola, St.-Point is interested in virility, and like Evola, St.-Point distinguishes the spiritual from the biological. “It is absurd to divide humanity into men and women. It is composed only of masculinity and femininity.” Unlike Evola, she sees a need for a balance in these two essential principles: “The fecund periods, when the most heroes and geniuses come forth from the terrain of culture in all its ebullience, are rich in masculinity and femininity.” Like Guénon (and of course like many others at the time), she sees an age ending–an age dominated by femininity. A strong dose of virility, of the brute, was needed to restore balance and move on to the next age. Unlike Guénon, she placed the new age firmly in the future (she was a futurist, after all), associating “turning toward the past” with femininity.

Nancy Locke sees St.-Point’s Manifesto as Fascist (“Valentine de Saint-Point and the Fascist Construction of Women” in Matthew Affron and Mark Antliff, eds, Fascist visions: art and ideology in France and Italy, Princeton University Press, 1997) while Barbara Spackman sees it as pre-Fascist (“Fascist Women and the Rhetoric of Virility” in Robin Pickering-Iazzi, ed., Mothers of invention: women, Italian fascism, and culture, University of Minnesota Press, 1995). In certain ways, both are right–depending very much on what one means by fascism, of course. Perhaps more accurately, Steven Aschheim sees it as "almost a parady of eclectic, erotic-liberationist Nietzscheanism" (The Nietzsche legacy in Germany, 1890-1990, University of California Press, 1994).

St.-Point provides yet another glimpse of the period and intellectual milieu out of which Traditionalism arose, even if she had no direct influence on its origins. Nietzsche, avant-garde art... and of course Theosophy too. St.-Point converted to Islam in Morocco in 1918, then spent several years with Blavatsky's works.

She moved to Cairo in 1924, and was initially involved in something like a Cairene version of her earlier life--a "Centre idéiste" and political activity in favor of the Egyptian and Syrian nationalists, rather like Aguéli some years before. She published a French-language journal, Phœnix, revue de la renaissance orientale (despite the widespread view in Egypt at the time that the Oriental Renaissance involved a renaissance of Arabic literature). Political activities ceased in 1928: she was expelled from Egypt, and the order was only rescinded after the intervention of the French embassy, and on condition that she abandon politics. Two years later, Guénon arrived and she became his closest French friend in Cairo.

There are a number of books on her in French, of which the most recent and most complete seems to be Véronique Richard de la Fuente, Valentine de Saint Point, une poétesse dans l'avant-garde Futuriste et méditerranéiste (Édition des Albères 2003).

Watch a lecture on Guénon direct from Moscow

2009-04-29T10:41:00.005+02:00

The miracle of the modern internet allows us to watch a lecture on "A Very Short Life of René Guénon" given by Oleg Fomin at the School for Young Traditionalists in Moscow. Even if you don't understand Russian, you can at least see what Dugin's (neo-?)Traditionalists look like:

This is, of course, under the auspices of Alexander Dugin. There are several new-ish websites to look at, too--all in Russian so far.

konservatizm.org, for the new Center for Conservative Studies at Moscow State University
geopolitica.ru, an online newspaper

New Center at Moscow State University

2009-04-16T08:53:00.010+02:00

Alexander Dugin has a new job, as a professor of sociology and head of a new Center for the Study of Conservatism at Moscow State University.

Andreas Umland quoted Dugin in his inaugural lecture as comparing his potential role to that of the Neo-Conservatives in the US--providing an intellectual analysis that had a real impact on policy, and so on the world. "Conservatism," commented Umland, is a "smokescreen" for ideas that are in fact revolutionary. The same might be said of the American Neo-Cons. At Moscow State University, "conservatism" will presumably prove to be Dugin's own form of Traditionalism.

Dugin's new position and Center will not just provide a new and improved platform for advancing his views on geopolitics and Russia's international relations, which are now well known. It will also--and perhaps more importantly--provide an improved and more mainstream forum for transmitting their intellectual and Traditionalist basis.

Evola becoming mainstream in Italy?

2009-03-20T12:35:00.006+02:00

A recent article in La Repubblica wonders whether Evola is becoming mainstream (Alessandra Longo, "Per il trashcan An aggiorna la libreria accanto a Evola anche Whitman e Vasco," 19 March 2009).

The main reason for wondering this is the references to Evola in Ffwebmagazine, published by the Fondazione Farefuturo, which is run by Gianfranco Fini, president of Italy's Chamber of Deputies and a former minister of foreign affairs under Silvio Berlusconi, pictured here with his then American counterpart. Fini leads the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), a major political party generally described as "post-fascist" (it has its roots in the MSI of Giorgio Almirante).

Perhaps Evola is becoming mainstream. Or perhaps the mainstream is shifting? This is what happened in Russia.

Fez festivals

2009-03-15T17:15:00.005+02:00

Faozi Skali, the Boutchichi Traditionalist Sufi who started the now well-established Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, no longer directs it--but has started a new annual festival, the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture.

The aims of the festival are "to allow Moroccan people to discover or re-discover how the Sufi brotherhoods have mainly succeeded in preserving a message of universal spirituality that irrigated the whole of the Muslim culture and nourished its artistic, literary, and even social and economic forms of expression" and "to allow people from other cultures to discover another face of Islam" and "show how Sufism, as a school of spiritual and civic education, can be a means of human development and a peace mediator."

The 2009 festival is the third, runs from April 18 to April 25, and mixes concerts with round-table discussions involving Sufis, academics, a French senator and the president of the Hermes foundation.

Strongly recommended.

Job vacancy in Amsterdam

2009-03-03T13:30:00.001+02:00

The Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam has a job vacancy for an Assistant Professor "History of Western Esotericism in the Early Modern Period." For all information: seehttp://www.amsterdamhermetica.nl/UD_Vacancy_2009.php?id=21.
The deadline for applications is Monday, 23 March 2009.

Boutchichiyya and Maryamiyya at UCLA

2009-01-22T13:23:00.006+02:00

The Maryamiyya and the Boutchichiyya will be two of the four Sufi orders discussed during a colloquium organized by the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA on February 12, 2009.

The colloquim is entitled "North African Sufism in Global Context." Four Sufi orders will be considered: the Jazuliyya, the Tijaniyya, the Boutchichiyya, and the Maryamiyya. The Maryamiyya is described as "a modern international Sufi order based on the Darqawi-Shadhili tradition of Morocco and the philosophy of the Transcendent Unity of Religions;" some sections of the Boutchichiyya are also influenced by Traditionalism, of course.

Participants include Vincent Cornell (Emory), Cheikh Anta Babou (University of Pennsylvania), Abdelilah Bouasria (American University), and H. Talat Halman (Central Michigan University).

The colloquium should be well worth attending.

Khoj-Ahmed Noukhaev

2008-11-10T19:21:00.004+02:00

Announcing a 73-page paper by Philippe Botto, Khoj-Ahmed Noukhaev et le nationalisme tchétchène, just published by a French think tank, R2R.

Noukhaev's "Barbarism" is, in my view, one of the most remarkable recent manifestations of Traditionalism. What Guénon would have thought of it, I cannot imagine!

The paper is in French, but has an abstract in English:

With regards to the fullness and complexity of his biography, Noukhaev is an emblematic figure of this chaotic sequence of history that saw players from organized criminality enter the Russian political and entrepreneurial scenes. Prosperous businessman, Noukhaev is also the author of numerous papers and essays on the “Chechnya matter”. The ideology that he promotes outlines a nationalist, tribal fundamentalist and “barbarian” utopia. Although his ideology reaches only a marginal range – that close to intelligentsia – it clearly gives us an opportunity to gain knowledge of certain aspects of the Chechnya nationalist discourse. Noukhaev’s work is all the more worthy of interest as he has tried, in his own way, to throw his weight around the evolution of the Russo-Chechnya conflict by promoting a complex and original roadmap to peace.

Contre le monde moderne

2008-10-25T15:44:00.003+02:00

For those who prefer to read in French: Against the Modern World is now available in translation as Contre le monde moderne : Le traditionalisme et l'histoire intellectuelle secrète du XXe siècle, from Dervy.

There is an introduction by Jean-Pierre Brach of the École pratique des Hautes Études, and a postface by Thierry Giaccardi, the translator. A few corrections have been made to the text of the original English edition.

ISBN 978-2-84454-563-3, only €22.00.

Dugin in plot to topple government of Turkey?!

2008-10-24T14:09:00.005+02:00

Sometimes I think I need a separate blog just to report highlights of the activities (or alleged activities) of Alexander Dugin...

Now it is plots and Turkey. For anyone who hasn't noticed, 86 prominent Turks were charged in July 2008 with plotting to foment unrest with the ultimate aim of toppling the (mildly Islamist) AKP government of Turkey, as part of an ultra-nationalist network called Ergenekon. Opinion seems divided--some see Ergenekon as an attempt by a secularist group or even a "deep state" to finish off the AKP, while others see the charges as an attempt by the AKP to finish off some leading secularists and frighten off some others.

The latest twist in the story is the allegation that key Ergenekon members were closely associated with Russia, and that the link was Alexander Dugin. Those who see the charges as being mounted by the AKP against patriotic secularists naturally see these allegations as a further and baseless attempt to discredit those charged. Those who see contemporary Russia as having returned to the most aggressive practices of the old Soviet Union naturally see these allegations as yet another element in a worrying pattern.

Dugin has certainly met some of the Ergenekon figures, and there may even be some overlap of ideas. Whether there is any more truth to the allegations than this may become clear with time, since Turkish prosecutors are reported to be preparing to introduce evidence of Dugin's role in court at some stage.