Guénon, Coomaraswamy, and Eliade: who inspired whom?

There is a chapter on “Philosophia Perennis: Critical Syncretism in Coomaraswamy’s Native Hermeneutics of Asiatic Art” in Orientophilia and the Birth of Asian Hermeneutics (Brill, 2026) by Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay. Other chapters deal with “Orientophiles” of purely European origin: Goethe, Hegel, Herder, and Schopenhauer, before turning to Vivekananda and then Ananda Coomaraswamy. Or rather to Coomaraswamy, Mircea Eliade, and René Guénon—in that order. He introduces Guénon and Eliade as among “those who followed” Coomaraswamy.

The chapter’s decentering of Guénon raises interesting questions. Mukhopadhyay focuses instead on the Coomaraswamy-Eliade relationship, drawing extensively on Eliade’s long 1979 review of Roger Lipsey’s three-volume Coomaraswamy (Princeton: Bollingen Series, 1977). This review, naturally enough, focuses on Coomaraswamy rather than Guénon. It also makes a comparison between the two to Guénon’s disadvantage: “contrary to René Guénon… Coomaraswamy developed his exegesis without surrendering the tools and methods of philology, archaeology, art history, ethnology, folklore, and history of religions.” One has to admit that Eliade’s judgment is justified, but one still wonders what Eliade would have said had he written at equal length on Guénon, which he did not.

So, who mattered most for Eliade, Coomaraswamy or Guénon? Perhaps it was indeed Coomaraswamy, as Mukhopadhyay’s treatment suggests. Alternatively, Coomaraswamy might have replaced Guénon. Eliade might have learned his perennialism from Guénon and then found Coomaraswamy’s more scholarly version more satisfying. The order may still have been Guénon to Coomaraswamy and Eliade, then, not Coomaraswamy to Guénon and Eliade. One can in fact see both Eliade and Coomaraswamy as adding a rigorous use of the tools and methods of philology, archaeology, etc. to Guénon’s basic schema.

Mukhopadhyay has an unusual view of the origins of Guénon’s thought:

Both Guénon and Coomaras¬wamy’s orientalist aesthetics are rooted in a select mix of orthodox Catholic doctrine and Protestantism, Oxford Idealism and Cambridge Neoplatonism, Bradleian Idealism and German Transcendentalism (whose dialectical philosophy of art follows from the same orthodox sources of Thomism, Spiritualism and the preceding Geistwissenschaft).

To some extent for Eliade, perhaps, but certainty not for Guénon.

Guénon in Russian

Readers of Russian are probably well aware of this, but I have only just come across the Minsk Corpus of René Guénon, at https://guenon.ru. This is the work of Maxim Makovchik, a Belorussian translator and Traditionalist who has been working on Guénon’s works since 2013. He has taken all existing Russian translations and improved them, having now covered (according to the website) all books published in Guénon’s lifetime, 55% of posthumous editions, 69% of joirnal articles, and 25% of letters. A valuable resource, comparable to the Index de l’œuvre et de la correspondance de René Guénon at https://www.index-rene-guenon.org.

Wendell Berry (1934–2026)

 

Wendell Berry, farmer, novelist, poet, and (perhaps) soft Traditionalist, died on August 31, 2026, at the age of 92. See earlier post and subsequent discussion here.

New Study on John Michell, the "Radical Traditionalist"

Marleen Thaler has just published Albion’s Sage for the New Age: John Michell, Radical Traditionalism, and the Myth of Sacred England (Sheffield: Equinox 2026). It is beautifully written and highly readable, and covers Michell and his world very well—but leaves unanswered some questions regarding his “Radical Traditionalism.” Thaler previously published an article on Michell, for which see this post.

Thaler divides Michell’s life into two periods: an “early period… with the English counterculture… psychedelia, New Age, alternative archaeology, and Earth Mysteries,” and a “late period… as an antiquarian, devoted Traditionalist, and Neoplatonist.” In her view, Michell’s most important books were The Flying Saucer Vision: The Holy Grail Restored (1967), The View over Atlantis (1969), and City of Revelation: On the Proportions and Symbolic Numbers of the Cosmic Temple (1972). These all belong to his early period, as does his role in starting what became the Glastonbury Festival in 1971. Glastonbury’s status as the pagan capital of England, perhaps Europe, is lasting monument to him, and also belongs to the early period. The late period includes his stated admiration for Julius Evola and articles in The Oldie, a publication that lay somewhere to the right of the mainstream Conservative Party. This might seem a conversion, but Thaler argues it was not: being part of the counterculture, as Michell very much was, does not have to mean that one is left wing.

The book starts with two introductory chapters, one of which introduces Traditionalism for readers who do not know it, while the other introduces “alternative theories on sacred place and nature,” an understanding of which is crucial for understanding Michell’s work. Then comes a biographical chapter. This is followed by a chapter on Glastonbury, another on Michell’s “sacred place theory,” and then “Glastonbury as spiritual hub,” which brings the two preceding chapters together.

The book covers Michell, sacred place theory, and Glastonbury convincingly and in depth. Radical Traditionalism is less well covered. Thaler notes in her conclusion that the scope of her study “precluded examining… Michell’s involvement with political Traditionalism, particularly within the frameworks of the European and North American New Right.” This is true. The book also leaves unanswered certain questions about Michell’s religious Traditionalism. Certainly, he identified as a “radical Traditionalist” and admired Evola, but who was more important for him, Evola or William Blake? How much of Evola and of Guénon can be found in his work? In quite what way was he a perennialist? Thaler has advanced our understanding of Michell considerably, but more work still remains to be done.

Simone Weil and René Guénon

Nicolas Bommarito has just published some of notes on Hinduism of the French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943, pictured) as Dharma and Detachment: Writings on Indian and Tibetan Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2026). In a review of this book, Sunny Kumar notes “During her exile in Marseille in 1940, she [Weil] was introduced to the Gita by René Daumal, an Indologist. On Daumal’s suggestion, she also read René Guénon. Daumal’s and Guénon’s influence can be discerned in Weil’s reading of the Gita and other Hindu texts.” This seems to be Kumar’s own view, as Guénon is not mentioned by Bommarito. Daumal certainly knew and valued Guénon’s works, so Kumar is probably right. The review can be read in the Journal of Hindu Studies (2026) here.