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.