Traditionalist-inspired Bosnian art

A new article deals with a Sufi- and Traditionalist-inspired Bosnian artist, Meliha Teparić (born 1978). It is “Diving Deep into the Word of God: A Sufi Approach to Religious and Trans-Religious Images” by Haris Dervišević and Meliha Teparić, Religions 2024, 15(12), 1525, available open access here. 

Shown to the left is one of three versions of Teparić’s Gens Una Sumus [We are one people] (2017-2018), which shows the Virgin Mary in a mihrab, and is inspired by Frithjof Schuon’s conception of the transcendent unity of religions, and also by the Maryami understanding on the figure of Mary. It is especially relevant in Bosnia, where the sectarian divisions that emerged during the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 are still not fully resolved.

As well as the work shown, Teparić has also worked with re-imagined Arabic calligraphy, as can be seen on her website at http://melihateparic.com/paintings/.

Her work is inspired not only by Islam and Maryami Traditionalism, but also by “the abstract forms of artists like Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Ad Reinhardt.” This synthesis might be seen as not very traditional, but “Her deconstruction of Islamic calligraphy is not an act of rejection but rather a method of renewal—an attempt to bring the script into conversation with contemporary art while preserving its spiritual significance.”

Teparić graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Sarajevo in 2002. In 2003 she joined the Naqshbandi tariqa of Shaykh Mesud Hadžimejlić (1937-2009), who came of a long line of Bosnian Naqshbandi shaykhs, and whose son Ćazim Hadžimejlić (born 1964) was teaching calligraphy at the Academy of Fine Arts. Professor Hadžimejlić later succeeded his father as Shaykh Ćazim.

Dugin’s status in Russian philosophy

A recent article by the Russian philosopher Yulia Sineokaya, currently based in Paris, reviews the Russian philosophical landscape, identifying four generations and dividing them between opponents of Vladimir Putin’s regime (mostly in exile), supporters of the same, and neutrals in “internal exile” who keep their heads down and try to preserve the structures of philosophical scholarship in Russia. It is “Philosophical generations in contemporary Russia,” Ethics & Bioethics 14 (2024), no. 3, pp. 140–150, available here.

The two generations that matter most, Sineokaya considers, are the second and third, consisting of those who emerged under perestroika/glasnost and those who emerged in the 1990s during the period of market reforms. The second generation, she writes, can be seen as “a generation of translators into Russian,” the third as “a generation of interpreters,” and the current generation (which is not yet prominent) as “a generation that speaks the languages of the world.” Possibly a little cruel, but not without truth.

Those in these generations who support the regime “have actively engaged in the process of transforming the Russian education system of values from universal liberal (‘Eurocentric’) to conservative, isolationist ‘Russian traditional values.’” Sineokaya’s list of “the most influential” members of these generations is headed by Alexander Dugin, though she then goes on to divide the neo-Eurasians between two groups: “In the first group are ultra-nationalism and isolationism with elements of the fascism of Alexander Dugin, and in the second is the symphonic pan-Eurasian internationalism of Andrei Smirnov.” It would be interesting to know more about Smirnov. The third generation includes followers of Dugin such as Nikolay Arutyunov and the late Daria Dugina. All of these philosophers, Sineokaya reports, became prominent after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, certainly a turning point in relations between Russia and the West (though she does not say this).

Sineokaya also reports the appointment of Dugin to head the Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Political Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities in August 2023. Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954) was an émigré Orthodox philosopher, often cited by Putin, and also by Dugin. Student protests against this appointment were, in her view, an exception to the neutrality of those who neither support or oppose the regime. She sees the Institute as “stillborn,” having failed to achieve its objectives, but does not say why. More effective, though less noticed, she thinks, is the Institute for Heritage and Contemporary Society, also at the Russian State University of Humanities, led by Valery Fadeyev, a journalist with various government posts, not a philosopher.

The article is mostly written with normal academic neutrality, but Sineokaya is evidently not sympathetic towards Dugin or the Putin regime. That she places Dugin first among the currently ascendant faction of Russian philosophers, then, is a real testimony to his current importance.

Guénon for Algerian immigrants in Paris

A new article on the reception of René Guénon in France, or rather the contemporary presentation of his thought at the Paris Grand Mosque, has just been published in the Journal of Sufi Studies. It is “Guénonian Traditionalism at the Grand Mosque of Paris: A Profile of a Sufi Teacher” by Ricarda Stegmann (JSS 13, 2024, no. 22, pp. 211-229, available here).

Stegmann followed the classes of a well-established (and anonymized) teacher at the Grand Mosque of Paris who introduced some of Guénon’s ideas to first-generation immigrants from Algeria. She draws the thought-provoking conclusion that while at first sight Guénonian perspectives on the difference between the traditional Orient and the modern West might seem to reinforce an old-style Orientalist othering of Algerians and act against their integration and acceptance into French society, in fact it may do the opposite: “While Guénon’s worldview was originally meant to suggest an alternative lifestyle for Westerners, it might here offer migrants a positive evaluation of their Muslim identity as well as an explanation for experiences of foreignness and discrimination in France.” Thus, “it rejects integration while carrying it out.” Yes, it probably does. Worth reading.

More on the history of the esoteric-exoteric distinction

The Swiss scholar Urs App, in his The Birth of Orientalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), gives an early instance of the esoteric-exoteric distinction that I missed in my book Western Sufism. The esoteric-exoteric distinction is, of course, central to René Guénon's Traditionalism.

In Western Sufism, I identified the analysis of Chinese religion of the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) as an early example of universalism (WS, pp. 92-93), but failed to note that some of Ricci’s colleagues were adding an esoteric-exoteric framework to their understanding of Japanese religion. At abut the same time, another Jesuit, Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), interpreted the Buddhist doctrine of the “two truths” into something approaching the esoteric and the exoteric, starting a tradition of interpretation of Japanese religion that leads us to Leibniz and then perhaps to John Toland (1670-1722), whose definition of esoteric and exoteric in Clidophorus (1720) I emphasize in Western Sufism.

According to App, Valignano first made a distinction between the gonkyō (権教, Sanskrit saṁvṛti-satya, provisional or mundane, approximately exoteric) and the jikkyō (実況, Sanskrit paramārtha-satya, ultimate, approximately esoteric) in his Sumario de los errores del Japon (Summary of the Errors of Japan) of 1556.  He made the same distinction again in his Catechismus christianae fidei, in quo veritas nostrae religionis ostenditur, et sectae Iaponenses confutantur (Catechism of the Christian Faith, in which the truth of our religion is shown, and the Japanese sects are refuted) of 1586, which then became standard reading in a 1593 re-edition. 

Ricci did not make Valignano’s distinction, but João Rodrigues (1561-1633) did, and in this was followed by Niccolò Longobardi (1559-1654) in his Trattato su alcuni punti della religione dei cinesi (Treatise on Some Points of the Religion of the Chinese). Longobardi was cited by Leibniz in his Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chinois (Discourse on the natural theology of the Chinese, 1716) as writing that the Chinese 

have two kinds of doctrine: a secret one that they regard as true and that only the learned understand and teach encoded in figures [symbols]; and the vulgar one which is a figure of the first and is regarded by the learned as false in the natural meaning of the words (cited in App, p. 144). 

Longobardi, then, may have been a source for Leibniz’s one-time friend Toland.

One further update. In Western Sufism, I identify the French Protestant scholar Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) as the first person to identify Sufism, along with Buddhism, as a form of Spinozism in 1702 (WS, p. 103). App notes that an opponent of Bayle’s, the Swiss protestant theologian Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736 ), in fact made the same connection in the case of Buddhism, though not of Sufism, rather earlier, in 1688 (App 150-151).

Bloomington

Just published: an article by Mark Sedgwick (me) on "The Traditionalist micro-utopia of Bloomington, Indiana," in the Journal of Political Ideologies, available here, open access. It starts with general considerations regarding Traditionalism and politics and utopias in general, as the article was written for a special issue focusing on the political. It then looks at Frithjof Schuon's community in Bloomington during the 1980s. Conclusion: "In many ways the Bloomington community was indeed a spiritual micro-utopia free of modern vulgarity and bathed in beauty. To an extent, practice corresponded to principle... In the end, however, the objectives that proved easiest were the less central ones, the aesthetic and the aristocratic. Spiritual objectives were marred by distractions, passions, and ambitions."

More on Traditionalism in Hungary

There is a good discussion of Traditionalism in Hungary in a new book on Modern Hungarian Political Thought: Ideologies and Traditions by Zoltán Balázs and Csaba Molnár (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). It comes in a chapter on “National Radicalism, Radical Conservatism, National Socialism and Traditionalism,” available here. Traditionalism is discussed along with these other trends because they are all to the right of moderate or classical conservatism. 

Traditionalism is introduced first in general terms, and then in the Hungarian context. “Much as elsewhere in Europe,” write Balázs and Molnár, “traditionalism in Hungary was never a serious political movement. However, it can boast some fascinating intellectuals.” They then discuss these: the Dialogical School of Béla Tábor (1907–1992) and Lajos Szabó (1902–1967), who attacked modernity in their Vádirat a szellem ellen (Indictment Against the Spirit, 1936), and whose group Béla Hamvas (1897–1968), discussed in earlier posts here and here, joined. 

Then we have András László (born 1984) and Tibor Imre Baranyi (born 1967), also discussed in posts already linked, and their influence on recent politics. Balázs and Molnár conclude: “In its early phase, some important politicians of… Jobbik, including its previous chairman, Gábor Vona, were heavily influenced by these traditionalist tenets. However… it has been radical conservatism… that has been the most successful in absorbing certain traditionalist arguments, mostly the modernity-criticizing ones.” It would be interesting to see this second argument more fully developed.

Between Hamvas in the first generation and László and Baranyi today, Balázs and Molnár insert Thomas Molnar (1921-2010), an American philosopher of Hungarian origin who became popular in Hungary after 1989 and who they also class as a Traditionalist. Molnar is certainly close to Guénon’s Traditionalism as an anti-modernist who regrets desacralization, values esotericism, and condemns occultism as a modern confusion, and he cites Guénon as well as Mircea Eliade and Titus Burckhardt, but his focus is mostly that of the mainstream American Right, certainty in his earlier years, before he moved in the direction of Alain de Benoist. He seems not close enough to Guénon to be classed as a Traditionalist, but I may be wrong.

A new journal and a new generation

A new Traditionalist journal was published in 2023: Passages: Studies in Traditionalism and Traditions (cover to left). It represents a new generation of Traditionalists: Americans, Russians, and Europeans.

Passages describes itself as “a textual forum for studies on and in Traditionalism” in succession to earlier Traditionalist journals such as Études traditionelles, Studies in Comparative Religion, Sophia, and Sacred Web, and is published by PRAV Publishing, on whom more below. It is more of an annual than a journal, as the first volume is 393 pages long, and the next volume is due in 2024 or perhaps early 2025.

The lead editor of Passages and the Editor-in-chief of PRAV Publishing is Jafe Arnold, an American with an MA in Religious Studies and Western Esotericism from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in Philosophy and Education at the University of Warsaw, where he submitted a dissertation on “Heidegger’s Ins and Outs of Plato’s Cave: The Mythical Liberation of Education in Heidegger’s On The Essence of Truth” in 2024. Arnold is one of the most active Traditionalists of the new generation, and has worked on and with Alexander Dugin. One article of his was previously discussed on this blog (see here). 

The opening article in Passages 1 is a translation of Dugin’s “René Guénon: Traditionalism as Language,” originally a 1998 lecture, and certainly one of Dugin’s most important pieces on this topic. Of the following seventeen articles, two are by Russians, three by Hungarians, and six by Italians, including two authors from the Julius Evola Foundation (definitely not the new generation). There are also two Americans, one Belarusian, one Englishman, and one Frenchman—this last being Jean-Pierre Laurant, the venerable doyen of French scholars of Guénon, neither new generation nor usually associated with Dugin.

PRAV Publishing (website at pravpublishing.com) describes itself as “devoted to the publication of scholarly and popular works which build bridges of ideas between Continents and Civilizations.” The ideas in question are those of Traditionalists, especially Russian ones. So far it has published sixteen books. These include three volumes on the Foundations of Eurasianism, translated and edited by Arnold together with John Stachelski, an American who recently completed a PhD on “The geopoetics of an undiscovered continent: Eurasianism as a writing practice” at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale. The first volume of the Foundations is introduced by the contemporary Russian Traditionalist and Eurasianist Leonid Savin, and contains texts by the classic first-generation Eurasianists, especially Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), Petr Savitsky (1895-1968), and Georges Florovsky (1893-1979). These are the thinkers on whom Dugin’s Eurasianism, sometimes called neo-Eurasianism, builds, combined with Guénon and Evola.

Two of the other books are by Daria Dugina (1992-2022), the daughter of Alexander Dugin who was killed by a Ukrainian car bomb that was probably intended for her father. There are no books by Dugin himself, as the English translations of these are mostly published by Arktos, an older publisher focusing on Traditionalist works, established in 2009. Five of PRAV’s other books are by Askr Svarte (Evgeny Nechkasov), a Russian Pagan Traditionalist who was once a prominent member of Dugin's Eurasian Youth Union and in 2011 founded Svarte Aske (Norwegian: Dark Ash[tree]), an Odinist community in Siberia. Then there are two books by Boris Nad, a Serbian writer whose Vreme imperija (Time of Empires, 2002) was published with an introduction by Dragoš Kalajić, the leading Serbian Traditionalist of the first generation, discussed in a recent blog post here. In addition there four more books written by two Americans, a Russian, and an Italian. 

I am told that PRAV is working on an English translation of Andrea Scarabelli’s Vita avventurosa di Julius Evola (The Adventurous life of Julius Evola), a monumental biography of Evola, a blog post on which is overdue. 

PRAV, Passages, and Arnold and his collaborators are definitely worth watching. 

This post has been edited to correct a number of small errors.

More Guénon in Arabic

A good part of the work of René Guénon is finally available in Arabic. Nine books have been published by a Jordanian publisher, عالم الكتب الحديث (Modern Books’ World). This is major news, as previously the work of Guénon seemed to have been received with interest in the Muslim world in Iran, Turkey, Malaysia, and Bosnia—but not in the Arab world. 

The translations are all by Shaykh Abdul Baqi Miftah (born 1952), an Algerian scholar and shaykh. He was born in the small town of Guemar in the province of El Oued, an agricultural area. His father was an imam and a Tijani, and he started reading Ibn Arabi as a teenager.

He studied physics at the University of Algiers, where, at the age of about 20, he discovered the work of Guénon. He later told an interviewer: "I was quite amazed by the breadth of Guénon’s outward and inward knowledge... Just as I believe that the greatest unveiler of spiritual realities after the Prophets is Ibn ʿArabi, so too do I think that the greatest spiritual figure to have come from the west is René Guénon. Indeed, his explication of metaphysical doctrines perfectly accords with Ibn ʿArabi’s perspective, which is not surprising, since there is only one Reality."

At the age of about 21 he joined the Habriyya, a branch of the Darqawiyya. He taught science and mathematics in local high schools, and on the advice of his shaykh, Sayyid Muhammad Belkaid al-Tilimisani (1911-1998), opened a zawiya of his own in Guemar in 1988. He began to write about Ibn Arabi, on whom he published his first book in 1997, followed by several more. 

He started to translate Guénon at the suggestion of Guénon's son Abd al-Wahid, who was a follower of the son of his own shaykh, and the first translation was published in 2013 (see cover image above). On at least one occasion he edited his translation to remove some of Guénon’s universalist positions, which are of course problematic from most Islamic perspectives. 

PDFs of the translations are all available on the Internet Archive, at https://archive.org/details/RG-Arabic/RG%20-%20Tarbiyya-Tahaqquq/mode/2up.

It would be interesting to know more about the reception of these translations in Algeria, in Jordan, and beyond. 

My thanks to Bnar Jabar for bringing Shaykh Abdul Baqi’s translations to my attention, and my thanks to an the reader of this blog who left the first comment below, directing me to the interview from which I quoted above. This is Hany Ibrahim and Mohammed Rustom, "An Interview with Abdel Baki Meftah, Algerian Master of Akbarian Teachings," Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society 72, 2022, available at https://traditionalhikma.com/an-interview-with-abdel-baki-meftahalgerian-master-of-akbarian-teachings/. After reading this article, I made major revisions to this blog post.

A Traditionalist Initiatic Novel

In his new book on Serbian literature and esotericism 1957–2000 (Српска књижевност и езотеризам 1957–2000, vol. 2 in the series Подземни Ток, Belgrade: Službeni Glasnik, 2020), Professor Nemanja Radulovic of the University of Belgrade devotes a chapter entitled “Portrait of a Traditionalist” to the Serbian painter, essayist, novelist and political commentator Dragoš Kalajić (1943-2005), already discussed in a previous post here, based on a 2020 article by Branislav Jakovljević. 

Radulovic adds a lot of detail to Jakovljević’s article, covers the whole of Kalajić's career, and helps answer the question I asked at the end of my last post: what Kalajić’s distinctive contribution to Traditionalist thought was. 

Radulovic argues convincing that whenever René Guénon and Julius Evola differed, Kalajić followed Evola, and also that where de differed from both Guénon and Evola was in his emphasis on the Slavs as the bearers of tradition. Here and in his views on international relations he comes close to Alexander Dugin who, according to Radulovic, he knew, and whose politics he echoed during the 1990s and 2000s, though it is unclear to what extent he was influenced by Dugin and to what extent he came to similar conclusions independently. 

What appears as Kalajić’s distinctive contribution to Traditionalism, however, was his “initiatic” novel Kosmotvorac (Cosmocreator; Belgrade: Beletra, 1989), cover pictured above. This, as Radulovic shows, is very much built on an Evolian view of things. It is set in the future and deals with the trial of members of the defeated Ordo explorarum (Order of Explorers), which is based on the actual Order of Templars, and led by an Elder Yalomed, a reverse anagram of the name of the actual Templar Grand Master (Jacques) de Molay. One of the monks of the Order is even called Alovej, J. Evola in reverse. 

The Ordo explorarum teaches that there is a divine spark in man, and seeks to replace the diversity of manifestation with original unity. Its members “preserve the doctrine of the restoration of the primordial state, the seeds of which they are to carry into the next cycle.” They also represent the male principle of order against the gynecocratic government, which defeats them, and is then itself defeated in a terrorist attack aided by alchemy. Kosmotvorac is, in Radulovic’s view, an initiatic novel not just because it tells of an initiatic journey, but also because it seeks to alter the reader.

Evola now in Albanian

Julius Evola’s Metaphysics of Sex is now available in Albanian as Metafisika e seksit, published in 2024 by the Kosovo publisher Dukagjin, which has an imprint “Fryma” (Spirit). It was launched at the Prishtina book fair in June this year along with translations of Habermas and Randall Collins, the American sociologist. 

Why start with the Metaphysics of Sex? It has a great title, certainly, but it never seemed to be one of Evola’s best books. Or is that just me?

Michel Vâlsan and Anton Dumitriu

The Romanian antiquarian “Historic Paper Treasures & Collectibles” is selling seven letters and notes from Michel Vâlsan (Mustafa 'Abd al-'Aziz) to Anton Dumitriu (1905-1992).

Vâlsan, editor of Etudes Traditionnelles and a Shadhili shaykh in Paris, was originally Romanian but left Romania forever during the Second World War. Dumitriu was also a Romanian Traditionalist but remained in Romania. He taught philosophy at the University of Bucharest until 1948, when he was arrested by the new Communist government, but was able to return to academic work in 1964, and even to travel abroad. 

Dumitriu was known publicly as an expert in logic, but his real interests seem to have been esoteric, moving from Theosophy to Traditionalism. According to the contemporary Romanian Traditionalist Vasile Zecherum (see here) he was a member of a Christian Orthodox mystical group at the Antim Monastery called “Rugul aprins” (the Burning Bush) and also a Freemason. In one of the letters on sale, Vâlsan is responding to a letter from Dumitriu about Orthodox esotericism. Many of Dumitriu's books were on logic, but his Orient și Occident (East and West) of 1943 engages polemically with René Guénon, one of whose books gave Dumitriu his title, and his late work Homo universalis. Încercare asupra naturii realității umane (Homo universalis: An essay on the nature of human reality), 1990, is very much within the Traditionalist frame—and neatly summarized by Zecherum here.

Some of the correspondence is of no great interest—a Happy New Year card, for example. Three letters in French are of more interest. A letter of 1967 deals with sending books, and perhaps marks the re-establishment of contact between the two men after a long break A letter of 1968 deals with Orthodox esotericism, as already mentioned. Finally, in a letter of 1971 Vâlsan explains why he cannot immediately contribute to what seems to have been a proposed series on Ibn Arabi and other Arab esotericists. The 1971 letter uses the familiar “tu” form, so Dumitriu had probably visited Paris and met Vâlsan in person between 1968 and 1971. In general, there seem to have been more letters from Dumitriu to Vâlsan than the other way round.

Dumitriu, then, should be added to the list of active Traditionalists. It is surprising that the Romanian Communists did not object to his Traditionalism, which they must have been aware of. Their tolerance, however, had limits. His Homo universalis was not published until after the end of the Communist regime.

The letters are available here for 600 Lei ($130) and the front page of each can be read on the website for free if you open the image in a new tab.

My thanks to AC for directing me to this small trove.

Swedish Traditionalist Tage Lindbom available in English

Now available: an English translation of one of the last works by the leading Swedish Traditionalist Tage Lindbom (1909-2001), Möte med Koranen, as Encountering the Quran: A Guide to the Inner Meaning of the Sacred Book of Islam (Stockholm: TLR, 2024; order here). 

Lindbom has already been discussed on this blog: see here and here.

The book comes with a foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who says he knew Lindbom well, and is translated by Oliver Fotros, who has previously published work on Ivan Aguéli: see here and here.   It is published in cooperation with Lindbom’s son Tomas, who has written a biography of his father, I otakt med tidsandan – en personlig biografi om Tage Lindbom (Out of Step with the Times: A Personal Biography of Tage Lindbom) available here.  

The original (here, if you read Swedish), which was published posthumously in the Swedish journal Minaret, consisted of 15 essays of varying length, assembled in the translation into three sections: “The Quran attests,” “The Quran Narrates,” and “The Quran encounters the Unseen.” These essays are Lindbom’s mature reflections on various topics, from creation to the Virgin Mary. The position is Islamic and, at the same time, Traditionalist/Maryami—notably, of course, when it comes to the Virgin Mary.

Good to see Swedish Traditionalism, which has until recently been little known outside Sweden, becoming more widely available.

Book that covers Traditionalist influence on European Sufism now available in English

Francesco Piraino's book on Sufism in Europe: Islam, Esotericism and the New Age, first published in French in 2023 (see here), is now available in English from Edinburgh University Press. Only £22.50 as an e-book (here), which is a lot better than £90 for the hardback.

After introductory chapters on "Sufism as Mysticism" and "Sufi Pioneers in Europe," there are studies of the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya , the Shādhiliyya Darqāwiyya ʿAlāwiyya, the Naqshbandiyya-Ḥaqqāniyya, and the Aḥmadiyya-Idrīsiyya Shādhiliyya. This last was founded by Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini (1926-2017) (see here) as a quintessentially Guénonian order.

Guénon returns to Iran

An international conference on "René Guénon and the Revival of the Primordial Tradition" will be held February 17-18, 2025 by the department of Religious Studies at the Iranian Institute of Philosophy (IRIP). The Iranian Institute of Philosophy was founded by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in 1974 as the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy and was for many years the center of Traditionalist thought not only in Iran but on a global scale. When Nasr left Iran and the Academy, its character changed.

Nasr, however, is now the first name on the list of the International Scientific Committee for the forthcoming conference, along with other international scholars such as Philippe Faure, editor of the collective volume René Guénon, l'appel de la sagesse primordiale (René Guénon: the call of primordial wisdom, 2015). The main scientific committee is headed by former Iranian collaborators of Nasr such as Gholamreza Avani and Shahram Pazouki. The first-named scientific secretary is Babak Alikhani, author of “René Guénon and Ancient Iranian Culture,” published in Alikhani’s book Roshnaii nameh (Book of illumination, 2024).

That such a conference is to be held in Iran, at the former Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, and involving Nasr is a major event. For those who would like to participate, the conference website is at https://guenon.irip.ac.ir/ (scroll down for actual call). There is a wide list of conference themes, the conference will be held both in-person and virtually, and the submission deadline is 14 November 2024, at which point full papers of 8,000 words are required.

My thanks to MM for bringing this conference to my attention.

Ivan Aguéli and Il Convito

René Guénon’s first learned of Sufism from the Swedish Sufi Ivan Aguéli, who was also one of the most important contributors to Guénon’s first journal, La Gnose (1909-12). This was not the only journal for which Aguéli had written, however. He had previously been one of the main contributors to an Egyptian journal, Il Convito/Al-Nādi (1904-1907, with some later issues), published bilingually in Italian and Arabic. Il Convito/Al-Nādi is of importance to those who are interested in the origins of Traditionalism, as well as being of importance for the history of Italian colonial policy in the first decades of the twentieth century. 

Aguéli and the journal are covered in a new book by Paul-André Claudel, Un journal "italo-islamique" à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale : Il Convito / النادي [al-Nâdî] (Le Caire, 1904-1912) [An "Italian-Islamic" newspaper on the eve of World War I: Il Convito / النادي [al-Nâdî] (Cairo, 1904-1912)], published in Alexandria by Centre d'Etudes Alexandrines, 2023, €40, available in Europe from Peeters in Leuven (here) 

Claudel’s book is half study, half anthology of texts from Il Convito/Al-Nādi, published here in both their original language (Italian or Arabic) and in French translation. It is illustrated by facsimiles of the various forms taken by Il Convito/Al-Nādi over the years and also by photographs of key actors and a small number of Egyptian street scenes.

The study consists of an introduction, seven chapters, and an epilogue. The seven chapters start with the history of the journal, the main actors—Aguéli and Enrico Insabato, the Italian who ran it—and their networks: Italian, French, Egyptian, and (less importantly) Turkish. Then comes “One newspaper, three languages,” looking at other comparable newspapers of the time, the relationship between the Italian, Arabic, and finally also Ottoman Turkish sections, at translations, and the linguistic role of Aguéli himself. This is followed by chapters on the journal’s positions on Islam and its polemics with other journals, especially concerning the question of the caliphate, a mosque named after Italy’s King Umberto I, and Italian policy in Tripolitania. The study then closes with a chapter on “Reception, influence, legacy.”

The chapter on Islam is one of the most important, given the relationship between Traditionalism and Islam today. Its sub-sections are:

• To know and to make known: the first editorial
• Reconnecting with spiritual and initiatory Islam
• Philo-Islamism and pan-Islamism
• Unmasking the "enemies of Islam”
• Deconstructing colonization
• Promoting Italy
• Between orientalism and colonialism

The anthology translates twenty texts, mostly by Aguéli, some by Insabato, and some anonymous (and probably also by Aguéli). In addition, the book contains a full index of all articles published and short biographies of all the main persons mentioned. 

Claudel’s book provides us (if we read French) with almost everything we need to know about Il Convito/Al-Nādi and about Aguéli’s role in it. It supplements and deepens two discussions in English on the same topic in Anarchist, Artist, Sufi: The Politics, Painting, and Esotericism of Ivan Aguéli (ed. Mark Sedgwick, 2021, Bloomsbury, paperback now only £26.99), one by Claudel, “Ivan Aguéli's second period in Egypt, 1902–09: The intellectual spheres around Il Convito/Al-Nadi,” and one by Alessandra Marchi, ”Sufi Teachings for pro-Islamic Politics: Ivan Aguéli and Il Convito.” The book is also beautifully produced and printed, and reasonably priced.

Traditionalism and Early Music

A new article has just been published on Marco Pallis (1895–1989), the leading Buddhist Traditionalist, and his involvement with music, especially with the revival of “early music” by Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940) and Mabel Dolmetsch (1874–1963). It is David R. M. Irving, “Esoteric Elements in the Early Music Revival: Marco Pallis, Traditionalism, and the Dolmetsch Circle, from Haslemere to the Himalayas,” Acta Musicologica 96, no. 1 (2024): 38-58.

Irving, as the title of his article suggests, argues that the esoteric milieu in general, and Traditionalism in particular, was more important for the Early Music revival than is generally appreciated. Traditionalism was certainly important for Pallis and his understanding of music, as well (of course) as his understanding of Buddhism and Tibet, and Pallis was, as Irving shows, important for the Dolmetsches. The article also shows the importance of the Arts and Crafts Movement and William Morris (1834–1896), which connects with Traditionalism through the person and work of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877–1947).

A fascinating and beautifully written article that casts light on an aspect of Traditionalism that has so far been only little studied.

New book on Shi’i Traditionalists in Italy

A new book has just been published on Shi’i Traditionalists in Italy. It is Crises and Conversions: The Unlikely Avenues of “Italian Shiism”, by Minoo Mirshahvalad, available here.

The book has three sections, though they are not explicitly identified as such. The first section introduces Evolian Traditionalism, paying especial attention to Evola’s views on Islam. The second tells the almost unknown story of the rise and flourishing of Shi’i Traditionalism, and the third looks at various issues and contradictions arising from this.

The book is based on careful readings of relevant texts and on high-quality ethnographic fieldwork, and is beautifully written, with an excellent eye for revealing detail.

The rise of Shi’i Traditionalism in Italy starts with Pio Filippani-Ronconi (1920-2010), an Italian Orientalist who integrated Julius Evola and the very pro-Iranian views of the great French Orientalist Henry Corbin. Having first read Evola in 1934, Filippani-Ronconi remained true to his principals throughout his life, including a period serving in the Waffen-SS, where he reached the rank of Obersturmführer (second lieutenant). But it as a pro-Shi’i Orientalist, not as an SS officer, that he matters. Mirshahvalad also discusses the early roles of Adriano Romualdi (1940-1973), the son of Pino Romualdi (1913-1988), the leader of the MSI, Italy’s largest and most important Neo-Fascist movement, and of Claudio Mutti (born 1946), who is already known to students of Italian Traditionalism.

For the flourishing of Shi’i Traditionalism, Mirshahvalad introduces us to three Italian organizations, the Ahl al-Bayt Association in Naples, the Dimore della Sapienza (houses of wisdom, DDS) in Rome, and the lower-profile Tarsis in Trieste. The Ahl al-Bayt Association was founded by Luigi Ammar de Martino (1964-2019), who as a young man belonged to the Evolian activist (and terrorist) group Ordine Nuovo, converted to Sunni Islam in 1982, and then to Shi’i Islam in 1983, one of many in Italy to follow this pattern, which can be seen as representing a shift from the more standard Guénonian position to a less standard position based on a specifically Italian reading of Evola.

Beyond these three organizations there is also a more general sympathy with Iranian Shi’ism on the Italian Right represented, for example, by the production by members of CasaPound, perhaps Italy’s highest profile Far Right group, of posters commemorating the death of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, assassinated by an American drone in 2020.

The third part of the book, as has been said, looks at various issues and contradictions arising from the sometimes uncomfortable alliance of Evola, Shi’ism, and the Iranian state. Mirshahvalad starts with culture, which she describes as “the Achilles’ heel” of the Shi’i Traditionalists, and Traditionalists in general. This issue has been dealt with by other scholars before, but never quite as directly and as clearly as by Mirshahvalad. Esra Özyürek, for example, wrote in 2014 of the ambivalent relations between German converts to Islam and immigrant Muslims in Germany. The point that Mirshahvalad makes is that for both Guénon and Evola, what mattered was the tradition, and culture was a human creation, not part of the tradition. But of course whatever Guénon and Evola thought, scholars of religion know that religion and culture are interwoven. the Shi’i Traditionalists generally try to keep religion and culture separate: “Converts’ Shiism is not a family heritage but an attempt for crafting a shield against modernity. This shield is fabricated independently from Shi’ism in its original contexts.” But it is not always so easy. “My wife is Iranian … but we are not Iranians, we are Italians,” one informant told Mirshahvalad. One wonders.

A number of other issues are considered, including the way that Shi’i Traditionalists often ignore central features of Iranian Shi’ism, from gender segregation to the all-important institutions of the marjiʿ  and the hawza, the foundations of Iranian Islamic authority and among the most important things that make Shi’i Islam different from Sunni Islam in the first place. An equally important question that is discussed is the way in which the view that Shi’i Traditionalists have of Iran differs in many ways from the view that most Iranians now have, a view which binds them tightly to the ever more discredited conservative leadership. There is also a brief but convincing discussion of what the Iranian state and leadership gain from their relationship with Italy’s Shi’i Traditionalists

All in all, a fascinating book, strongly recommended.

Alexander Dugin interviewed by Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson, the American political talk-show host who in February 2024 interviewed President Putin for his own show on X, the Tucker Carlson Encounter, has now interviewed Alexander Dugin. 

In the 20-minute interview, available here, Dugin develops two arguments. The first is that the central problem today is individualism, which starts with the Protestant reformation, passes through a transition from a classic liberalism that is about the rule of the majority to a new liberalism that is about the rule of minorities and is in fact prescriptive and totalitarian. This new liberalism seeks liberation from all collective identities—most recently gender, which has now become a matter of choice, and finally from humanity itself, moving towards the post-humanism of The Matrix. The second argument is that the reason that Western progressives hate Putin is that he is a defender of “traditional values,” a phrase that Dugin uses several times. He understands these values as being the traditional sovereign state, the traditional family, and traditional belief. This, he says, is metaphysical. But he has not become purely statist; he also mentions Russian civilization as a “world region,” without going in to what he means by this. He is referring to his early understanding of sacred geography, in which the Russian world region becomes the traditional East in contrast to the modern West. This was, of course, one of René Guénon’s fundamental ideas, though Guénon’s East was a different East. For Guénon, individualism was an important aspect of modernity, and the classic pair of modern and traditional can be seen behind the interview’s pair of individualist progressivism and tradition. 

Dugin’s views in the interview are not a great surprise. If anything, the surprise is that Tucker Carlson likes them so much, which he evidently does. The Daily Beast has described the interview as “deranged” (here), and one comment on Twitter suggested that Carlson had been brainwashed. So far the interview has clocked 5.3 million views.

New article on Guénon in Cairo

A new article by Mattias Gori Olesen in Aries explains and contextualizes René Guénon’s impact on Egyptian intellectual life before and during his time in Cairo. It is “The Perennial Solidarity of the East: René Guénon, Sufism and Easternist Anti-Colonialism in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt,” Aries 2024, online first at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2680-7633.

The article is developed from Gori Olesen’s PhD thesis, for which see an earlier post here. Again, we see the reception of Guénon by ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri, and the subsequent engagement of Guénon with the “Easternists” and the Egyptian journal Al-Maʿrifa, in which Guénon at first wrote. This engagement ended with disagreements over modern education with Muḥammad Farīd Wajdī and over modern spirituality with Muḥammad Farīd Wajdī. 

Gori Oleson concludes that neither “Traditionalism nor any other expressions of Western esotericism came to play a role in Egypt similar to that played by the Theosophical Society in India.” Indeed. When it comes to the roles that India played for the Theosophical Society and that Egypt played for Guénon, and thus for Traditionalism and Western esotericism in general, it is less clear. The experiences that Gori Olesen has brought to light help explain how Guénon came to modify his earlier pairing of the East with tradition and the West with modernity, as they showed that modernity was also present in Egypt. Presumably there were other experiences, of which we do not yet know the details, that would help explain other modifications, notably the growing emphasis on the need for an orthodox exoteric frame for esoteric practice.

Traditionalism and Nikolai Berdyaev

The Polish philosopher Marek Jedliński has just published an article in Studia z Historii Filozofii (in English) entitled “Russian Yearning for Elite Power: Nikolai Berdyaev’s Reflections on the Metaphysics of Democratism” (available here). Berdyaev (1874-1948, pictured) was a Russian philosopher and exile whose critique of modernity was grounded in religion. 

Jedliński, who has previously published on Julius Evola, René Guénon, and Traditionalism, terms Berdyaev a “traditionalist” and compares him in several respects with Guénon, especially with regard to their understandings of modernity and democracy. Berdyaev even wrote of a “democratic ideology of quantity” (48). There are certainly interesting parallels, but in the end Berdyaev was not a perennialist, even if he was an anti-modernist. 

Jedliński’s article raises the question of what Guénon and Berdyaev thought of each other’s work. They both lived in Paris at the same time, and Berdyaev’s key Le Nouveau Moyen-Âge (The New Middle Ages) was published in French in 1924. Berdyaev was friends with Jacques Maritain, at one point Guénon’s sponsor. Yet Guénon never seems to have mentioned Berdyaev, nor Berdyaev Guénon.

Dugin's multiple contexts

An excellent article on the multiple contexts of Alexander Dugin and Eurasianism has just been published in the New York Review of Books. It is “Russian Exceptionalism” (available here) by Gary Saul Morson, a scholar of Russian literature who has read Dugin and other Eurasianists carefully. He places Dugin in three larger contexts: the “Russian Exceptionalism” of his title, early Eurasianism, and contemporary Russia. And he may well be right in all three ways. He concludes that “Far from distorting earlier Eurasianism, Dugin’s bloodthirstiness represents its predictable development.” I myself would prefer “apocalypticism” to “bloodthirstiness,” but I must admit that the current Dugin can certainly seem rather bloodthirsty. 

Two thirds of the article is about the early Eurasianism of Nikolai Trubetskoy, Pyotr Savitsky, and Lev Gumilev, to which too little attention is usually paid. In Morson’s view, Dugin synthesized this “with the work of practitioners of geopolitics from Halford Mackinder on, along with structuralists, postmodernists (Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze), French ‘traditionalists’ (René Guénon and Alain de Benoist), and various Nazis or ex-Nazis, including Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, and, of course, Martin Heidegger.” Yes, though Benoist would not identify himself as a Traditionalist like Guénon, even if there is indeed much Traditionalism in his through. And Evola, of course, should be listed as a Traditionalist, not a Nazi—he was never even a proper Fascist, let alone a Nazi. But this is not the point: the article is about contexts, not the classification of Dugin’s sources.

Removal of comments by Maude Murray

This blog previously included a number of comments posted by Maude Murray, formerly the third wife of Frithjof Schuon. These comments have been deleted following a request from Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, lawyers acting for Michael Fitzgerald, said to be a former member of the Maryamiyya once close to Schuon, and World Wisdom Inc., the publisher linked to the Maryamiyya that publishes many books by Schuon and other Maryami and Traditionalist authors.

In May 2023 Fitzgerald and World Wisdom obtained an injunction from the Indianapolis U.S. District Court prohibiting Murray from distributing or selling copies of Third Wife of the Muslim Shaykh Frithjof Schuon within the U. S. (though not outside the U. S.), and also requiring YouTube to delete certain videos made by Murray. For the book, see earlier post here.

Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath have pointed out to me that the injunction also prohibits Murray from “disseminating… information of any type concerning or in any way related to Frithjof Schuon, Catherine Schuon, or Michael Fitzgerald, including disseminating this information through any and all blogs and social media platforms” and that “interactive computer services that operate, host, or otherwise control websites which host this content are ordered… to remove such… postings.”

I am not a lawyer, and I am not sure on what basis anybody can be prohibited from disseminating such a wide class of information. But I accept that the Indianapolis U.S. District Court has made this prohibition, whatever its reasons, and I know that Blogger, which hosts this blog, is subject to the jurisdiction of the court. I accept that the comments made on this blog by Murray concerned Schuon, and so I have reluctantly removed them—reluctantly because, apart from anything else, I believe in freedom of speech as an important human right. But the injunction made by the Indianapolis U.S. District Court leaves me no choice.

A draft of this post was shown to Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, who “respectfully decline[d] to comment.”

Delayed comments on this blog

Apologies! I have just discovered a large number of comments that the system never sent to me for moderation, and which were therefore never published. I have now posted them all, and hope this will not happen again.

Understanding and Misunderstanding Dugin

Hal Brands, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has published a useful article in Foreign Policy, “The Promise and Peril of Geopolitics” (here), placing Alexander’s Dugin’s Geopolitics in its wider context, going back to the British geographer Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) and forward to Chinese and American geopolitical perspectives today. Brands starts by describing Dugin as “a bit of a madman,” but still helps our understanding of one aspect of his thought.

The same cannot be said of the Ayn Rand Institute (129,000 subscribers), which has listed among its eight best podcasts of 2023 “From Russia with Evil: The Philosophy of Alexander Dugin” (here)  a discussion by two Ayn Rand Institute fellows, Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Ziemowit Gowin. The podcast is interesting because, despite often seeming to know Dugin’s work well, Sotirakopoulos and Gowin still get it back to front. They start by describing Dugin as a “Russian ultra-nationalist,” which ignores his views on nationalism, and then identify the two key elements in his thought as condemnation of individualism and celebration of the ethnos. They then confuse cause and effect when they assert that Dugin condemns modernity because modernity “destroys tradition and tradition is one of the most important aspects of ethnos.” Thus “for Dugin tradition is good no matter what is your tradition—to do… I don’t know… human sacrifices? Good, it’s your tradition.” Dugin, as a postmodernist, does not believe that there is any one single truth. Ultimately, “Dugin welcomes any form of irrationality which for him can be used as a shield against reason.” This interpretation allows Sotirakopoulos and Gowin to condemn Dugin and his thought. 

It is, however, hardly accurate. It is not the case that Dugin, as a postmodernist, believes that all traditions and irrationalities are equal, but that, as a Traditionalist, he condemns modernity as the negation of a very specific tradition—which Sotirakopoulos and Gowin in fact come close to recognizing when they refer to Dugin’s belief in “a crazy eclecticism of mysticism, of religion or even religions.” Traditionalism is indeed in a sense eclectic, but not exactly crazy, and for Dugin long precedes any postmodernism. 

The Ayn Rand Institute is quite entitled to condemn Dugin, but would do well to get his thought right before they do so.

An update on Traditionalism in Poland

This blog published a brief history of Traditionalism in Poland here in 2010. An update has now been provided by Marcin Pisarski in a collection on Religion and Identity: Political Conditions, ed. Ryszard Michalak (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2023). 

Pisarski’s chapter, “The myth of the Pole-Catholic and the contemporary Polish far right,” argues in favor of an “ongoing contemporary process of the Polish far right distancing itself from Catholicism and the pre-war tradition of Christian nationalism” (257) and identifies three far-right groups as being especially influenced by Julius Evola, of which the most important is probably Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (NOP, National Rebirth of Poland), whose online portal https://www.nacjonalista.pl was one of the first to translate Evola, and still does so. Pisarski also mentions the autonomous nationalist group Szturmowcy (Stormtroopers) and the Falanga. In addition, https://tradycjonalizm.net is still operating, though somewhat irregularly.