New light on the Maryamiyya, and especially on Nasr

A new book, Charles Upton’s Giving Myself Away (New York: Angelico Press, 2025), casts important new light on the Maryamiyya from the 1980s to the 2010s. Upton and his wife Jenny were for some years close to the Maryamiyya, and although Upton is critical of it, he does not hold the animus against it that some ex-Maryamis do. This makes him a  more reliable witness. He describes himself as a “'graduate' of the Traditionalist School rather than an active member,” and still maintains that “for some spiritual temperaments, the Traditionalist/Perennialists are the best possible introduction to comparative religion and traditional metaphysics.”

Giving Myself Away is a spiritual autobiography, and the Maryamiyya is only one of the American spiritual and religious groups dealt with. The book also, for example, describes the Nimatullahi Sufi Order and its gradual movement away from Islam.

What is most important for those interested in Traditionalism is what Giving Myself Away has to say about internal divisions within the Maryamiyya. The most important of these was one that developed between Frithjof Schuon and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Upton once asked Nasr what the difference was between Schuon’s practice of Native American Spirituality (“Indian Days”) and “the hippies, with their fringed buckskin jackets and headbands,” and Nasr responded “I really couldn’t say,” a response that (in my view) was as close as possible to an explicit repudiation. It was Nasr who had accepted Upton’s wife Jenny into the Maryamiyya, and it became clear on one occasion that he regarded her connection as being to him, and not to Schuon. A probable outline of Nasr’s response to events in Bloomington thus becomes visible: he seems to have decided to distance himself and his own followers from developments of which he could not approve, but without causing scandals or splits.

Another division was between Nasr and Martin Lings, as after Schuon abdicated his position to the two men, they operated independently to the extent that one visitor to Bloomington was identified as a representative of Lings, that is to say not of Nasr (or Schuon). 

Huston Smith (1919-2016) initially followed Nasr, but at one point experienced a strong attraction to the Russian Orthodox Church, and asked Nasr for permission to convert from Islam to Orthodoxy. Nasr refused permission, proposing instead that Smith remain a Sufi in his esoteric practice and, if he wished, take his original Methodism as his exoteric form, a solution that Smith rejected as promoting the very syncretism that the Maryamiyya had always condemned. This led to a breach between Smith and Nasr. One might argue, though Upton does not make this argument, that Nasr saw his proposal as preferable to apostasy from Islam.

And finally Giving Myself Away clarifies the positions of Schuon’s leading Christian followers, Rama Coomaraswamy (1929-2006) and James Cutsinger (1953-2020), the former a surgeon and a son of René Guénon’s collaborator Ananda Coomaraswamy and the latter a professor of religious studies. Coomaraswamy began as a Roman Catholic but after the Second Vatican Council seemed to have surrendered to modernity joined the rejectionist Society of Saint Pius X and later moved to the even more rejectionist Society of Saint Pius V, ending as a sedevaccantist priest, maintaining that the See of Rome has been vacant since the death of Pius XII. Cutsinger joined the Russian Orthodox Church, and ran an “Ordo Mariana,” the practice of which paralleled the main Maryamiyya in focusing on the invocation of the divine name, a form of dhikr, loosely based on the Orthodox Jesus Prayer. He at one point opened a sort of Traditionalist and Orthodox Liberal Arts College, but this closed after two years. The Ordo Mariana finally ceased operation, and Upton’s view is that this was because Cutsinger lost interest in it, finally moving away from Traditionalism, as he “began to teach a range of non-traditional doctrines derived from the ‘esoterism’ of the counterculture, drawing on sources like G. I. Gurdjieff and Alan Watts.”

Many other Traditionalists appear in the book, which is warmly recommended.

This post has been updated to correct an earlier statement that "Upton and his wife Jenny were for some years members of the Maryamiyya." As Charles Upton explains in a comment, he "was never an initiated member of the Maryamiyya as [his] wife was, just a close fellow-traveler, or perhaps a fly on the wall." Apologies.

More on Béla Hamvas

For more on the leading Hungarian Traditionalist Béla Hamvas (1897-1968), see the chapter on “Traditionalismus in Ungarn” (Traditionalism in Hungary) in Magdalena Marsovszky, Erfindung und Okkultisierung des Magyarentums, der heilige Gral und die heilige ungarische Krone: Völkische Esoterik in Ungarn als Gegenkultur und Modernisierungsabwehr (The invention and occultization of Magyarism, the Holy Grail, and the Holy Hungarian Crown: Ethnic esotericism in Hungary as counterculture and resistance to modernization), Springer 2025, €69.99 e-book.

Marsovszky has previously published a fine introduction to Traditionalism in Hungary in 2023, discussed here. This article also discussed Hamvas, though in less detail than in the new book chapter, which focuses on him. After an introduction, there are sections on his work between 1933 and 1943 (“Humanization as degeneration; desire for unification of the German-Italian spirit”), his conception of a leading elite (Führungselite), his “theories on the emergence of the ‘New Man,’” his Scientia Sacra (written 1943-44, published in 2000), and Scientia Sacra. Das Christentum (Scientia Sacra: Christianity, 1966).

Marsovszky writes of Scientia Sacra that “had it not been published in Hungarian, a language with limited circulation, it might long ago have found a central place as the ‘sacred text of Traditionalism.’” Its importance in Hungary, she suggests, was also that it was “the first manifestation of modern European Neoplatonic and Ariosophical thought in the Hungarian language.”

Marsovszky analyses Scientia Sacra under the following headings:

• Cultural pessimism 
• Hostility toward science 
• Hostility to evolution 
• Archaic-cosmic anthropology 
• Cyclical view of world history 
• Racist caste system 
• Those worthy of life versus those unworthy of life 
• The spiritual leader 
• Numerology 
• Gnostic dualism 
• Samsara, the swastika, and initiation 
• Gnostic elitist thinking 
• Intellectuals as alchemists of modernity 
• The image of women in Sophia mysticism 
• The unity of theory and practice 
• Hinduism, Buddhism, yoga, the Bhagavad-Gita 
• The Grail a s a symbol of spiritual
•  Aryan purity

If one knows other Traditionalist works, one can imagine relatively easily what many of these are. Less familiar is “archaic-cosmic anthropology.” By this Marsovszky means Hamvas’s view that (in his own words) “There has never been primordial architecture, a primordial religion...  just as there has never been a primordial people, a primordial race, or a primordial language.” Instead there was a “spirit” (Geist) on which peoples of all races and languages drew, and which might now be recovered through Hermetic science and made available to a new “Logos race” that was Hamvas' own version of Helena Blavatsky’s new “sixth race.” These are “those worthy of life.”

The much later Scientia Sacra: Christianity drew strongly on Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958), the German Traditionalist whose work still awaits a full treatment. After examining Ziegler’s debt to Guénon, Marsovszky observes that “What was new in Ziegler’s thinking was that he envisioned the religious future of the world in terms of a ‘new Catholicity’ (neuer Katholizität) that incorporated the integral tradition… he criticized… [the] ‘Christian arrogance’ with which Eastern philosophies and religions… were summarily dismissed as pagan. He therefore called on Christians to ‘raise themselves to a higher vision,’ by which he meant the integral tradition.” “What is important for Hungarian Traditionalism,” proposes Marsovszky, is “the theological justification that made it possible… to embed Catholicism within the integral tradition.”

Marsovszky also notes that Ziegler “denounced the devastating consequences of centuries of ecclesiastical masculinization of the Trinity” and proposed the replacement of the Holy Spirit with the (female) Heavenly Sophia. Hamvas does not seem to have followed Ziegler in this.

René Guénon and Henry Corbin

A recent publication, New Perspectives on Henry Corbin (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), edited by Hadi Fakhoury, available here, has prompted me to reflect on the relationship between Corbin (pictured left) and Guénon.

At first sight, Corbin and Guénon were very different types of people. Corbin was a scholar who spent his life within French academia, occupying several prestigious posts. Guénon was rejected by French academia, and spent his life outside it, often criticizing it. On the other hand, their paths did somehow cross, given the close relationship between Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and the Italian scholar Francesco Piraino has recently drawn our attention to their very similar contemporary impact: reading Corbin, like reading Guénon, is often important for the trajectories of French converts to Sufi Islam. The Traditionalist author Patrick Laude has written about Corbin together with Guénon and Schuon (see here).

Fakhoury’s volume helps make clear where Corbin and Guénon agreed and where they differed. Firstly, Corbin was not a self-distancing academic scholar. He was never just a historian of ideas, or even a philosopher in the normal sense. He engaged actively in the exploration of the human relationship with the transcendent, and was as interested in actual spiritual experience as in written attempts to explain it. Secondly, he was in many ways a perennialist, believing in an “Oriental” or “Iranian” “Hellenism” that included Zoroastrianism, Plato, Proclus, Suhrawardi, and Ibn Arabi—not as a succession of historical figures, but as ways of accessing truth. Thirdly, the distinction between esoteric and exoteric was central to his thought, as was—to a lesser extent—initiation. Fourthly, he had a low opinion of the modern West, preferring Oriental Hellenism to “Latinism,” and seeing modernity as lamentably desacralized. Finally, at least towards the end of his life, he sought for surviving transmissions of what Guénon would have called the primordial tradition in ancient orders (the Order of St Jean of Jerusalem) and Freemasonry. Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s chapter on “Henry Corbin as Knight of the Temple” in Fakhoury’s volume sheds much light on this quest.

And yet Corbin’s perennialism was not Guénon’s. Even if Corbin was never just a scholar, he worked on original texts in their original languages with considerable scholarly rigor. When it came to perennialism, Corbin was interested in Christianity and Iranian Hellenism, while Guénon was interested in Hinduism and Arab Islam. Corbin was a Protestant, and Guénon abhorred Protestantism. Corbin valued Plato, and Guénon did not. Guénon’s perennialism derived from Theosophy, while Corbin’s (perennial) Hellenism derived from the Russian Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky (1893-1979). The esoteric/exoteric pair is hard to avoid if one looks in certain areas of Islam, and while Corbin’s esoteric was located primarily in what he famously termed the mundus imaginalis, the “imaginary” between the realm of the forms and the experiential world, Guénon’s esoteric was mostly in the teachings of the primordial tradition. For Guénon, anti-modernism was primary, but for Corbin it was secondary.

In the end, the two men were also of different generations. Most of Corbin’s (1903-1978) work was published after Guénon’s death in 1951. Corbin's crucial Sohravardi d’Alep, fondateur de la doctrine illuminative was published in 1939, but—presumably because of the disruption caused by the Second World War—was not reviewed in Études traditionnelles until 1947. And even then it received only one (rather dismissive) paragraph, which can be read here.

More on André Scrima

The Romanian historian of religions Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban has recently contributed to the discussion of the status of Traditionalism for the Romanian monk and theologian André Scrima (1925-2000), discussed in previous posts here and here, with an excellent article, “The Inner Dimension of the Orthodox Tradition and Traditionalism According to André Scrima’s Hermeneutics,” Review of Ecumenical Studies 12:3 (2020): 485-496, available here. 

Tătaru-Cazaban takes us further into the original sources (1958, 1994, and 1996) and maintains the position taken by others that Scrima was not really a Traditionalist, given the various points on which he criticized Traditionalist positions. “His detachment from Traditionalism appears evident,” writes Tătaru-Cazaban.

The article is well argued, but I am not entirely convinced that the detachment is realty that evident. Scrima wrote a preface to a Romanian translation of Schuon’s De l’unité transcendante des religions in 1994, when he was 69 and approaching the end of his life, which suggests that he still valued Schuon’s work, even if he disagreed with it in certain ways. It all depends, perhaps, on what one means by “Traditionalist.” If one means “absolutely faithful to the positions taken by Guénon and Schuon,” there are very few real Traditionalists, especially since Guénon and Schuon themselves disagreed on various points. If one means “someone whose starting point was in Traditionalist thought and who then developed and modified that thought,” Scrima was perhaps a Traditionalist.

Tătaru-Cazaban finds “two invariable aspects” in Scrima’s hermeneutics. One is that “tradition is a transmission of living knowledge and of the access to an experience of the Living God through his Holy Spirit; it is not only a ‘repository’ of the experience of faith.” The other is that “Hesychasm is not an ‘universalizable’ spiritual tradition without Christ.” Hesychasm, the ritual pursuit of stillness (Greek hēsychia), is a collection of spiritual practices that developed in the Orthodox church in the fourteenth century, and was revived in Romania in the 1940s by a group of monks including Scrima who were inspired by Traditionalist understandings of the esoteric

To see tradition as a transmission of living knowledge rather than as a historical repository is not necessarily a detachment from the Traditionalist position. Although the way that some Traditionalists find the tradition in ancient texts might seem to turn it into a sort of repository, any Traditionalist who follows a Sufi shaykh also sees the tradition as a transmission of living knowledge. The one position does not exclude the other. One can read ancient texts and following a living master. Similarly, although some perennialists might universalize a practice such as Hesychasm stripped of its context, most would not: Guénon ended by stressing the importance of the exoteric context for any esoteric practice, following the Sufi approach that emphasizes the sharia as the contained of the haqiqa.

When it comes to the relationship between the esoteric and exoteric, Scrima did perhaps detach himself from the Traditionalist position, to judge from passages quoted by Tătaru-Cazaban, here translated by me from French to English:

Spiritual life has always been conceived in the Eastern Church as a living transmission, a parádosis, conveying the Spirit incarnate… There is no room here for any conflict of importance with the Tradition of the Church as such, nor for any distinction of nature from it… The distinction, itself external, between esoteric and exoteric, is meaningless here, for it is no longer a hidden continuation that denies time, a sacred passage, but a continuation of Presence.

Scrima, then, rejected the absolute distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric that is central to Traditionalism, especially in Guénon’s early work, though he later softened this position, and Schuon further eroded the distinction. Scrima, however, emphasized throughout his life the Hesychast practice that he and others saw as corresponding to Guénon’s understanding of the esoteric.His position here, then, is best seen as a modification, not a rejection.

On Philip Sherrard

Christopher W. Howell has just published an article on Philip Sherrard (1922-1995, photo here), the English, Traditionalist, Greek Orthodox writer and translator who helped the English poet and Neoplatonist Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) to found the Temenos Academy. It is Christopher W. Howell, “The Holiness of Creation: Philip Sherrard and the Climate Apocalypse,” in Orthodox Christianity and the Study of Nature: Histories of Interaction, ed. Kostas Tampakis and Ronald L. Numbers (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2025), pp. 213-240.

Howell knows Sherrard well, and had access to his unpublished as well as published writings when researching this article. It starts with a biography and an account of Sherrard’s postwar “search for tradition” and his 1956 conversion to Greek Orthodoxy, and then moves on to his Traditionalism, asking whether Sherrard was actually a Traditionalist. Sherrard mentioned René Guénon in a letter in 1953, before his conversion, and the answer would be yes, argues Howell, were it not for Sherrard’s rejection of Frithjof Schuon’s syncretism and his disagreement with René Guénon’s view of Christianity. He also disagreed with Guénon’s conviction that in the modern world the tradition was lost save, perhaps, for an elite: Sherrard had previously found the tradition in the peasants of Greece. Finally, he preferred the Orthodox understanding of creation to that of Guénon.

Rejection of Schuon’s syncretism means one is not a Schuonian, but one can still be a Traditionalist. The disagreements with Guénon that Howell identifies are important, but may be seen as a development of aspects of Guénon’s thought; they are certainly not a rejection of the whole of it.

Howell goes on to discuss Sherrard’s view on modernity, evolution, and finally “climate change,” perhaps not the best phrase. The title of Sherrard’s 1987 book, The Rape of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science, gives a better view of how he saw the problem, even though wildfires later became a special problem for Greece. Sherrard, then, sits with Seyyed Hossein Nasr as a Traditionalist environmentalist.

This is a well-informed and well-written article that fills one gap in our knowledge of later twentieth-century Traditionalism beyond the Maryamiyya.

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.

Traditionalism in Brazil today

Guest post by Felipe Souza

Recent trends indicate a continuation of the dissemination of Traditionalist ideology in Brazil. There is a growing interest in René Guénon among certain Catholic groups, especially those influenced by the late Brazilian Traditionalist and controversial public intellectual Olavo de Carvalho, as well as in some Islamic groups with connections to both Olavo and Western Sufism. There are other groups that have an interest in Guénon, but they are few.

In the right-wing political arena, the Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement) stands out, with one of its coordinators, Ricardo Almeida, publicly endorsing Guénon and Olavo, and maintaining ties with a local branch of a Sufi tariqa. The Nova Resistência (New Resistance) movement, a proponent of Duginism, flirts with Guénonism but primarily aligns itself with Julius Evola, possibly due to the author's and the movement's association with philofascism. Surprisingly, Nova Resistência has even infiltrated a traditional party, the PDT (Partido Democrático Trabalhista - Democratic Labor Party). A dissenting group from Nova Resistência, known as Sol da Pátria (Sun of the Homeland), also promotes ideas aligned with Guénonism, contributing to the recent spread of Traditionalism in Brazil and aiming to adopt historical symbols of national labor.

The leader of Nova Resistência, Raphael Machado, has delivered speeches at the Imam Hussein Cultural Center, a Shiite entity located in Rio de Janeiro. This Cultural Center not only hosted members of Nova Resistência, but also published a statement of solidarity regarding the recent assassination of Dugin’s daughter, Darya Dugina. Texts by Dugin and members of Nova Resistência have been published in Revista Minarete, issued by the Imam Hussein Center, although these publications are no longer available online.

Despite these scattered presences in the public space, it is the publishing houses that play the most significant role in disseminating Traditionalist works in Brazil. Noteworthy among these is the IRGET, the René Guénon Institute for Traditional Studies, which has existed for decades, holding a vast collection of translations of Guénon and authors such as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Julius Evola, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Works produced by IRGET find some diffusion even in academic circles, with academic papers citing publications from this institute. The late Luiz Pontual de Oliveira was in charge of IRGET. The quality of translations promoted by IRGET is a subject of controversy. Some critics argue that the fidelity and accuracy of these translations are points of contention. In addition to books, IRGET used to organize courses, which became increasingly infrequent until the cessation of its educational activities with the passing of Pontual.

Additionally, within the sphere of influence of IRGET, it is interesting to observe the presence of Freemasons and members of the Eubiose movement who consider the works of Guénon as influential references. For the Brazilian Society of Eubiose, Guénon’s The King of the World remains a referenced work, despite the controversies concerning it. A translation of this book was published by the Society of Eubiose, but has not been reissued.

A greater focus on Guénon's work emerged recently when a publisher started releasing his complete works. In 2022, Editora Bismillah (Bismillah Publishing) released the “Essential René Guénon Box” (with another box on the way, “René Guénon Metaphysical Explorations Box”) in collaboration with Editorial Estrela da Manhã (Morning Star Publishing), and published books by authors such as Titus Burckhardt, Sheikh Nazim al-Haqqani, Ibn Arabi, al-Ghazali, aligning them with Traditionalist rhetoric. With close relations with this publisher, the História Islâmica (Islamic History) portal recently dedicated a video to Guénon, while its sister portal, Iqara Islam, uses Guénon to conceptualize tradition.

In addition to Guénon's books, Estrela da Manhã has been organizing courses, available online, on Guénonian thought. Two representatives of this movement are frequently present in the classes, which are available on the YouTube video platform: Luiz Gonzaga de Carvalho, the son of Olavo, and Marcelo Cipolla, a professional translator and editor. Both had been working together for years at ICLS (Cultural Institute Lux et Sapientia), collaborating with another son of Olavo, Tales de Carvalho. The owner of História Islâmica, Mansur Peixoto, conducted an event with Marcelo Cipolla on Ibn Arabi, in collaboration with Bismillah Publisher, as well as participated in a live on YouTube about the Islamic presence in Brazil on Sol da Pátria’s channel

Bismillah Publisher / Editorial Estrela da Manhã meet the demand of readers eager for the works of Guénon, a demand that IRGET addressed for some time, not only by offering books but also courses. However, unlike IRGET, these courses are now available on online platforms.

In the realm of Schuonian Traditionalism, Mateus Soares de Azevedo stands out as a prolific author with an extensive body of work. Particularly noteworthy is Azevedo's collaboration with Schuon’s follower William Stoddart, with whom he published O Poder do Esquerdismo e o Politicamente Correto (The Power of Leftism and Political Correctness). Azevedo's writings delve into a spectrum of themes, including perennialism, Christianity, Sufism, and various related subjects explored across multiple articles. Beyond his noteworthy editorial contributions, Azevedo actively engages in Evolian Gatherings—dedicated study cycles focused on Julius Evola's work—and enjoys an international presence through publications with Traditionalist publishers such as World Wisdom and Sophia Perennis.

In contemporary times, César Ranquetat Jr. emerges as another author aligned with Traditionalism. Renowned for works like A Realeza de Cristo e a ideia de uma sociedade tradicional (The Kingdom of Christ and the Idea of a Traditional Society) and Da direita moderna à direita tradicional (From Modern Right to Traditional Right), Ranquetat champions the concept of the "traditional man" within the context of his Christian-oriented writings. In 2012, he wrote an article on Julius Evola's contributions in Brazil, expressing regret over the insufficient dissemination of the Traditionalist's oeuvre. This text was published on the Legio Victrix blog, dedicated to Dugin's Fourth Political Theory and with a neo-fascist outlook.

Publishing is one of the crucial foundations for the consolidation of a movement, especially one of an elitist nature resistant to becoming a mass ideology, as is the case with Traditionalism. Various Traditionalist groups, may, then have been expanding, more or less organized, their rhetorical and formative arsenal using the books of the aforementioned editorial groups.

In conclusion, Guénonism emerges as an intellectual force that permeates the knowledge systems and practices of a significant group of Brazilian Muslim and other Traditionalists. Olavo's main legacy seems to have been the creation of an environment that normalizes Guénon and his elitist ideas. Evola and Schuon end up being relegated to the background in this scene, despite having their own niches and followers. For advocates of spiritual elitism aspiring to propagate their convictions in Brazil, there is undoubtedly room for growth.

New article on Traditionalism in Hungary

A new article examines the past and present of Traditionalism in Hungary. It is Magdalena Marsovszky, “’Gegen die moderne Welt’. Julius Evola in Ungarn” [Against the Modern World: Julius Evola in Hungary], Zeitschrift für Rechtsextremismusforschung 3, no. 1 (2023), pp. 19-34, available here (try here if the download does not work).

The first half of the article introduces Julius Evola and his thought. It then traces his influence though the Hungarian writers and philosophers Béla Hamvas (1897-1968), András László (born 1941), and Tibor I. Baranyi (born 1967). This, argues Marsovszky, matters much more than Evola’s own visits to Hungary between 1936 and 1942. Although he was invited by Countess Eduardine Zichy (1877-1964), the president of the Hungarian Literary Society who was supported by the minister of culture and education, Evola’s last Hungarian lecture, on “The Mystery of the Grail and Reich Thought" in March 1942, attracted only a small audience of 25.

The Hungarian Traditionalism of Hamvas, in contrast, grew in popularity after the 1960s and especially after the fall of Communism in 1989. Hamvas drew on Evola, René Guénon, and Guénon’s main German collaborator, the philosopher Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958), author of Überlieferung (Tradition, 1936). It was then further spread by Hamvas's follower László, and László’s follower Baranyi, both of whom taught at the King Atilla Academy established by the political party Jobbik, which she says has continued operating underground since its official closure in 2016.

Marsovszky considers Scientia Sacra (Sacred Science, i.e. Tradition, 1942-43) as Hamvas’s main work, and sees it following Evola in its conviction that decline from the Golden Age could be arrested through cyclical reincarnations of ‘initiatic communities’ following an ancient traditional Boreal higher order. He also followed Evola’s understanding of race as metaphysical and spiritual rather than biological (thus rejecting Nazi racism). She considers his most important departure from Evola and Guénon to have been his inclusion of Christianity in the perennial philosophy, which she believes Hamvas took from Ziegler.

“Today,” writes Marsovszky, “Hamvas's theses are often regarded in Hungary as a democratic alternative to the biologistic descent-oriented direction of the ethnic nationalists and are also classified by anti-fascists as anti-fascist, while Hamvas's and Evola's neo-Right ideology is not reflected upon analytically.” She continues “The fact that democracy in Hungary has not been able to become stable since the fall of communism in 1989 and that society has been infiltrated by anti-modern, anti-democratic attitudes is partly due to the dissemination of Evola's theses.” Although Jobbik and the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are politically opposed, she believes, they in fact share much the same basic ideology.

As noted in an earlier blog post (here), the only book by Hamvas available in English remains his remarkable The Philosophy of Wine. Readers who want to get a feel for the dimensions of Hungarian Traditionalism can visit the Traditionalist publisher Kvintesszencia Kiadó at https://tradicio.org, and may consult Metaphysicum et politicum - A magyar tradicionális iskola bibliográfiája [Metaphysicum et politicum - Bibliography of the Hungarian Traditionalist School] by the Hungarian Traditionalist Ferenc Buji (Debrecen: A Metafizikai Hagyomány Centruma, 2008). In 334 pages, this lists and comments on Hungarian Traditionalists authors, publishers, and periodicals prior to its publication. It is available here.

Catholic and Guénonian Traditionalism, and the Angelico Press

As well as the Guénonian Traditionalism that this blog follows, there is also “Catholic Traditionalism,” the broad stream of Roman Catholic thought that is hostile to the ascendent liberalism that it identifies with the Second Vatican Council. In general, Guénonian and Catholic Traditionalism are quite separate phenomena, but Alistair McFadden (a pseudonym) has drawn my attention to an overlap between the two at US-based Angelico Press, one of the leading “traditional” Catholic publishers.

Angelico Press is important for Catholic Traditionalism. In McFadden’s words, “Traditional Catholics will likely have at least one Angelico title on their bookshelves.” Others agree about the press’s importance. 

McFadden, himself a traditional Catholic, finds the presence of Traditionalist and other esoteric voices at Angelico problematic, as he argues in a long blog post, “Observations on the Influence of the Occult in Traditional Catholic Discourse.” It is not the scope of this blog to address such judgments. But publishing Traditionalist works was one reason why Angelico was established in the first place, as explained in an interview (here) by its founder and current president, John Riess:

I wanted to run a Catholic press, yet reach beyond what most Catholic presses were publishing: to explore the catholicity past and present of the tradition; to give a mouthpiece to contemporary Catholic voices such as Stratford Caldecott, Jean Borella, and Jean Hani.

Caldecott (1953-2014) was and English convert to Catholicism who seems to have been what I term a “soft” (Guénonian) Traditionalist, while Borella (b. 1930) and Hani (1917-2012) were leading French Catholic (Guénonian) Traditionalists. Riess’s partner in starting Angelico was James Wetmore, the director of the leading US (Guénonian) Traditionalist publisher Sophia Perennis. Angelico, then, was as much a (Guénonian) Traditionalist publisher that became popular among traditional Catholics as it was a traditional Catholic publisher that published (Guénonian) Traditionalists.

Angelico’s success among traditional Catholics owes something to the fact that it republishes traditional Catholic classics. The model of republishing classics was pioneered by the US publisher Dover, starting in the 1940s, and Riess worked for 15 years at Dover before starting Angelico. Its current list includes not only Catholic and Traditionalist authors, but also Rainer Maria Rilke and Max Weber.

In 2020, Angelico’s imprints included a joint Angelico Press/Sophia Perennis imprint with sixteen books, and a purely Sophia Perennis imprint with three books. These imprints have now vanished from Angelico's website, perhaps partly as a reaction to McFadden’s criticisms, but the books involved remain. At time of writing, Angelico has, as intended, published Caldecott, Borella, and Hani (four books each). It has also published contemporary Catholic (Guénonian) Traditionalists—notably Wolfgang Smith (born 1930) and Bernard Kelly (see earlier post here—and non-Catholic (Guénonian) Traditionalists—notably Charles Upton and Brian Keeble (born 1941). And it has also republished classic (Guénonian) Traditionalists, including Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) and Lord Northbourne (1896-1982), and the “soft” Traditionalist (and typeface designer) Eric Gill (1882-1940).

Angelico, then, is known as a major “traditional” Catholic publisher, and is also a significant (Guénonian) Traditionalist publisher. As such, it represents an overlap or even a mixing of two formerly distinct streams within contemporary religious thought, an interesting development. My thanks to McFadden for bringing it to my attention.

Note

• Jean Borella (b. 1930) and Jean Hani (1917-2012) were leading French Catholic Traditionalists. Borella was a professor of philosophy, and for many years the leading Catholic Traditionalist in France. For some years in the 1990s he was the joint editor of the journal Connaissance des religions (1985-2005), which was in effect the Schuonian successor to the original Études traditionnelles of René Guénon. Jean Hani was also a French scholar (of classical antiquity), a Traditionalist, a Catholic, and a regular contributor to Connaissance des religions.
• Stratford Caldecott (1953-2014) was an English scholar and convert to Catholicism who accepted the Traditionalist understanding of the transcendent unity of religions but does not seem to have been a paid-up Traditionalist, though he is said to have often cited Borella. He acknowledged the influence of Guénon’s one-time sponsor, the great French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973).

Evola as one of five philosophers of the Radical Right

A new book looks again at Julius Evola and his significance for today’s radical right. This is Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).

Evola is one of five philosophers who Rose discusses. The first is Oswald Spengler as a representative of the Conservative Revolution, and Evola is the second. Alain de Benoist is the fourth. This selection and sequence is sensible, though one might perhaps argue for Carl Schmitt or Ernst Jünger as an alternative representative of the Conservative Revolution. The remaining two philosophers are both American, and slightly less obvious figures: Francis Parker Yockey, who comes between Evola and Benoist, and Samuel Francis, who comes after Benoist. The book then closes with a chapter on the relationship between the radical right and Christianity that is perhaps of more interest to those who are concerned with Christianity than to those who are concerned with the radical right.

The treatment of all five philosophers is comprehensive and fair, and the book is well written. Rose sees Evola as “without question the most interesting utopian thinker on the right” and as someone who “dreamed of a world of absolutely fixed and certain meanings, where human identities, in all their forms, bore the indelible chrism of sacred destiny.” This, thinks Rose, came from René Guénon, who imagined “a community in which human beings continued to live in the uninterrupted tranquility of sacred order, and in which uncertainty and disagreement find no place.” Evola “sought to revive the assumption of natural human inequality as essential to any political order. He did so through a form of mythic thinking that collapsed the distance between the archaic past and present. Through esoteric readings of ancient and modern texts, he claimed to reveal the permanent constitution of human society, which he envisioned as a form of sacred hierarchy led by an elite order of men.” This is a reasonable summary, though it emphasizes the contemporary reception of Evola (and Guénon) more than the internal logic of their own thought.

Rose makes an interesting connection between Yockey, Evola, and Benoist. Evola reviewed Yockey’s main early work, Imperium, approvingly, and many of Yockey’s ideas indeed echo Evola’s. Both emphasized empire and spirit, and both condemned narrow nationalism and racism. Given this, it is not quite clear why Rose characterizes Yockey as “the Anti-Semite,” since this was not his real point, and the characterization risks supporting the common and mistaken over-association of the radical right with historical Fascism and Nazism. Evola, incidentally, is characterized as “the Fantasist” because he imagined a new sort of utopia. I suppose this is OK as a chapter heading. In the other direction, Rose claims not only Evola but also Yockey as an influence on and inspiration for Benoist. This deserves fuller investigation, and Yockey should probably be read more carefully.

It is easy to see why Rose ends with Samuel Francis, who drew on James Burnham’s important 1941 book The Managerial Revolution and, in Rose’s words, “synthesized nationalist populism with brewing racial resentments over the shrinking demographic majority of white Americans.” This indeed provides the link to the Trump movement, as Rose says, and also perhaps to European phenomena such as Brexit. What is less clear is how Francis relates to Spengler, Evola, Yockey, and Benoist.

A World after Liberalism is a good book that seems to be being generally well received and that succeeds in showing that “The alt-right is not stupid; it is deep. Its ideas are not ridiculous; they are serious.” Those who already know Evola will not discover much that they did not know before, but the book puts his contemporary reception in a new context (rather as I did in my Key Thinkers of the Radical Right). The book is also recommended for those who know Evola but do not know all of the other philosophers discussed.

Brazil's most prominent post-Traditionalist dies

The Brazilian post-Traditionalist journalist and philosopher Olavo de Carvalho died suddenly on January 24, 2022. Ironically, it appears that he died of Covid, the seriousness of which he had often questioned, as had his most notable admirer, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Olavo de Carvalho, generally referred to simply as "Olavo," is little known outside Brazil, and the only work of his that is available in English is his half of a 2011 debate with Aleksander Dugin. Although his contribution to the debate was in some ways typical, it does not show him in the best light. Olavo was always provocative and sometimes extremely rude, but also often original. In Brazil, in contrast, he is well known, and credited by some with having revived the thought of the Brazilian right to the extent that Bolsonaro indirectly owed his electoral victory to him. He was sometimes described as Bolsonaro's "guru," but this was going too far. Bolsonaro was definitely an admirer, but no more.

Olavo was, during the 1980s, first a Traditionalist and then briefly a Maryami and the khalifa of Frithjof Schuon in Brazil. He then left Schuon, and reinvented himself as a Catholic philosopher. There is some disagreement about to what extent his later work is Traditionalist. It is certainly not perennialist, and the later Olavo condemned perennialism in strong terms. The rejection of modernity, however, may well still owe something to Traditionalism, and to this extent it may be fair to describe him as a "post-Traditionalist." At the least, his encounter with Traditionalism was an important part of his intellectual development.

For further reading, see earlier posts on this blog, my own article on "Traditionalism in Brazil: Sufism, Ta’i Chi, and Olavo de Carvalho," Benjamin Teitelbaum's book War for Eternity, and – not mentioned before on this blog – a new book by Georg Wink, Brazil, Land of the Past: The Ideological Roots of the New Right. Olavo appears frequently in this book (a pdf of which can be downloaded for free), and chapter 6 is devoted entirely to him, mostly covering the period after that covered in my article. Chapter 7 of Wink's book then looks at Olavo's impact. The book is well researched and well written, and thoroughly recommended.

A new book from Louis Charbonneau-Lassay

Louis Charbonneau-Lassay (1871-1946), a specialist in Christian symbolism, was a friend of René Guénon, whom he told about the Estoile Internelle, an Christian initiatic organisation that at one point interested the early Traditionalists.

In addition to the Charbonneau-Lassay archives (see earlier post here) we now have a reconstruction of his final great work, Le Vulnéraire du Christ: La mystérieuse emblématique des plaies du corps et du coeur de Jésus-Chris (Gutemberg, 2018), and in English translation, The Vulnerary of Christ: The Mysterious Emblems of the Wounds in the Body and Heart of Jesus Christ (New York: Angelico Press, 2020). A vulnerary is, of course, something used in the cure of wounds. 

The Vulnerary has been reconstituted by Gauthier Pierozak, the manager of the invaluable René Guénon archive at www.index-rene-guenon.org.

New book on Schuon's thought, including his views on Islam

Patrick Laude has just published a guide to Schuon's thought, Keys to the Beyond: Frithjof Schuon's Cross-Traditional Language of Transcendence (Albany: SUNY Press, 2020; $34.95). Laude, who is himself a Traditionalist, knows Schuon's thought well, and does a good job of explaining and synthesising it, though those without preparation may still find the book hard.

The book's first section has four chapters, starting with a chapter on "Ātman, Māyā and the Relatively Absolute," which explains Schuon's basic metaphysical framework. Then comes "The Avatāric Mystery," Schuon's understanding of "descent" in various contexts. "Upāya: Religion as Relatively Absolute" covers Schuon's understanding of religion as such, and "The Nature of Things and the Human Margin" covers esotericism. 

The following section consists of two chapters, "Trinitarian Metaphysics" and "Necessary Sufism and the Archetype of Islam." These deal with Schuon's understandings of Christianity and Islam. 

Then come three chapters on three special topics: "The Divine Feminine." "The Yin-Yang Perspective and Visual Metaphysics," and "The 'Tantric' Spiritualization of Sexuality."

Finally, a chapter on "Esoteric Ecumenism" indicates the place of Schuon within current academic approaches to religious pluralism. 

One of the most interesting chapters is that dealing with the difficult topic of Schuon's relationship with Islam. Laude's argument is that it is wrong to understand Schuon's thought in Sufi or Islamic terms, even if this is how Seyyed Hossein Nasr tends to see it. "The fact that Schuon himself led most of his adult life within the ritual forms of a particular tradition [Islam] does not in the least invalidate” the fact that on an esoteric and metaphysical level he was supra-confessional (p. 191). He emphasised that esotericism is independent of the various traditional forms (religions), and often critiqued "the intrinsic limitations of the perspectival and theological forms of Abrahamic religions" (193), including Islam.

New article on Traditionalism and the Far Right in Argentina

Just published (online first): Mark Sedgwick, "Traditionalism and the Far Right in Argentina," in Politics, Religion & Ideology, DOI 0.1080/21567689.2021.1904909. 

According to the abstract,

The Traditionalism of the French esoteric philosopher René Guénon and the Italian esoteric philosopher Julius Evola is important for the Far Right. Guénon’s Traditionalism is primarily religious, but has significant political implications, while Evola’s Traditionalism is primarily political, though retaining its religious grounding. It has been important for the Far Right in Europe, Russia, and North America. As this article shows, Traditionalism has also been important in Argentina, but in ways that differ from patterns observed elsewhere. This article distinguishes three phases in the Argentinian reception of Traditionalism, starting in the 1920s. Guénon was first received in the Argentinian ‘integralist’ Catholic milieu along with other anti-modernists like Jacques Maritain and Nikolai Berdyaev, and then at the Seminary of Paraná in the aftermath of the Tacuara movement. This is remarkable, as elsewhere it is Evola who has a political impact, not Guénon, and Guénon, who dismissed the Catholic Church, is generally ignored by Catholics. During a third phase, following global trends, Evola replaced Guénon, but in more marginal circles. These three phases show the importance of the interaction between transnational influences and national conditions, in this case the unusual position of the Catholic Church in Argentinian political life.

Print version due in volume 22, no. 2. 

Traditionalism in Brazil

Now available online (if your library has access): Mark Sedgwick, "Traditionalism in Brazil: Sufism, Ta’i Chi, and Olavo de Carvalho," in Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism. 

The abstract is:

The Traditionalist movement that derives from the French esoteric philosopher René Guénon is known to have been influential in Europe and North America, especially through the activities of religious groups, usually of Sufi origin, and also through the growing impact of the political version of Traditionalism first developed by the Italian esoteric philosopher Julius Evola. This article looks at Traditionalism beyond Europe and North America, taking the important case of Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s, where one of the main Traditionalist Sufi groups, the US-based Maryamiyya, became established, and where two local groups developed, one of which focused exclusively on doctrine, and one of which turned not to Sufism but to T’ai chi and Brazilian indigenous religion. The article also considers a new and important political philosopher, Olavo de Carvalho, who emerged from the Brazilian Traditionalist milieu. Carvalho applied Guénon to political issues rather as Evola had, but unlike Evola combined Traditionalism with Roman Catholicism, a development also found in Argentina during the early twentieth century. During the 2010s, Carvalho’s radical rightist philosophy became widely known in Brazil, where his admirers included the president, Jair Bolsonaro.

This is under Advance Articles; the article will be in the print version of Aries in 2021. It will also be published in Portuguese as an epilogue to the forthcoming Portuguese translation of Against the Modern World.

James Cutsinger (1953-2020)

James S. Cutsinger (1953-2020), an important follower of Frithjof Schuon and a notable Eastern Orthodox Traditionalist, died on February 19, 2020.

Cutsinger completed a PhD. in theology and comparative religious thought at Harvard in 1980, and then taught religious studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1980 until 2018. He was best known for his Advice to the Serious Seeker: Meditations on the Teaching of Frithjof Schuon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) and for his
Splendor of the true: A Frithjof Schuon reader (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013).

Among his other books were Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2004) and Not of This World: A Treasury of Christian Mysticism (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2003).

The on-line archives of Louis Charbonneau-Lassay

The archives of Louis Charbonneau-Lassay (discussed in an earlier post) are now available on-line at an excellent and user-friendly site (if you know French). There are special sections for the correspondence between Charbonneau-Lassay and René Guénon, and for the Estoile Internelle, the Christian initiatic organisation that at one point interested the early Traditionalists. A very useful resource for researchers.

British Roman Catholic Traditionalism in the 1940s and 1950s

As Scott Randall Paine, an American priest teaching at the University of Brasilia, notes, there are not many Roman Catholic Traditionalists. This, Paine thinks, may be because it is hard to transfer the central esoteric/exoteric paradigm from Traditionalism into Catholicism, as for Catholics “the ‘inner secret’ of God as Love is overtly on display in the crucified and risen Lord… [and] the ‘availability’ of this mystery to one and all… is at the very heart of the Gospel message” (Paine 2017, p. 9).

Be that as it may, there have been some Roman Catholic Traditionalists, including Jean Borella. Another, less known, is Bernard Kelly (1907-1958), whose writings Paine has collected in A Catholic Mind Awake: The Writings of Bernard Kelly (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2017).

Kelly, a London bank clerk, was a Dominican tertiary and an occasional contributor to Dominican publications, including Blackfriars. Some of these contributions are reprinted in A Catholic Mind Awake, dealing for example with Gerald Manley Hopkins and “Christians and the Class Struggle” (1937). Then, in 1940, Kelly discovered the work of Ananda Coomaraswamy, with whom he began a long correspondence, and thus also the work of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon, who he later visited in Switzerland. He remained, however, a committed Catholic.

A Catholic Mind Awake is divided into four sections. The most interesting is the first section, “Metaphysics East and West,” which makes up almost half the book and reflects Kelly’s Traditionalism. The other three sections contain mostly earlier work, on “Spirituality and Beauty,” “Poetry and the Arts,” and “Reflections on Society.” This is where the essay on “Christians and the Class Struggle” is to be found; it also contains two later essays from Kelly’s Traditionalist period, both reflecting on the work of Eric Gill (1882-1940), the English sculptor, typeface designer, and printmaker who had been a friend and admirer of Coomaraswamy.

The four main articles in the section on “Metaphysics East and West” attempt to reconcile Traditionalism with Catholic doctrine, notably Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), and to introduce the key Traditionalists to a Catholic, Dominican audience. The earliest is “How May we Approach the Spiritual Traditions of the East?” (1946), which objects to the “impudent philistinism” of “humanist philosophers” and instead advocates “metaphysical contemplation” to access “the truths diversely/expressed in the varying traditions of mankind,” and regrets in passing “the spiritual chaos of the modern world” (pp. 51-52). It then cites Coomaraswamy at length.

The second article, “Notes on the Lights of the Eastern Religions” (1954) attacks Western translators of Hindu texts who lack traditional training and “appear to have taken their philosophical language from the newspapers” (p. 31), and then introduces and praises the work of Coomaraswamy and Guénon. “A Thomist Approach to the Vedanta” (1956) likewise introduces and praises Coomaraswamy and Guénon, adding Schuon and Burckhardt. It also attempts a Christianization of Traditionalism, referring to a “primordial revelation to mankind of which we have a record guaranteed to us in the first chapters of Genesis” and noting that finding the truth in other traditions “requires of us an interior rather than an external approach” (p. 21). This is one way of solving the problem of the esoteric and exoteric. The last article, “The Metaphysical background of Analogy” (1958), addresses Aquinas and Thomas Cajetan (1469-1534).

Bernard Kelly’s attempt to promote Traditionalism within a Dominican context is indeed unusual and interesting. It seem to have met with some success. Two articles by Coomaraswamy were published in Blackfriars, perhaps through Kelly’s influence (“Why Exhibit Works of Art” in 1942 and “Gradation, Evolution and Reincarnation” in 1946). An editorial in 1948 praised Coomaraswamy, comparing him in importance to C. G. Jung and Nikolai Berdyaev (Editorial 1948). A Dominican priest, Victor White (1902-60), likewise praised Coomaraswamy (White 1951, 586; White 1953, 331). White, however, also took exception to Guénon’s “smugly superior… didactic and pompous” style (White 1959, 18) and his “strange illusions” regarding the Western tradition (White 1946, 441), though he still welcomed Guénon’s “rare flashes of insight” (White 1951, 586).

Bede Griffiths (1906-93), a Benedictine monk who later became a celebrated Christian yogi, found Schuon’s attempt to reconcile Christianity and Islam “not very convincing,” but even so felt it should be taken seriously, and concluded of Guénon that “though a Christian has to make continual reservations, there is revealed an astonishing insight and a vast erudition in the spiritual doctrine of east and west” (Griffiths 1954, 30).

There was, then, something of a Roman Catholic Traditionalist milieu in and around Kelly and Blackfriars in the 1940s and 1950s.

Works cited
Editorial 1948. “Over the Wall of Partition.” Blackfriars 29, pp. 257-263.
Griffiths, Bede, 1954. Review of The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times by René Guénon and The Transcendent Unity of Religions by Frithjof Schuon. Blackfriars 35, pp. 29-31.
Paine, Scott Randall, 2017. Introduction. In A Catholic Mind Awake: The Writings of Bernard Kelly, ed. Paine (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2017), pp. 1-15.
White, Victor, 1946. Review of Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines by René Guénon and of Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta by René Guénon. Blackfriars 27, pp. 440-441.
White, Victor, 1951. “Buddhism Comes West.” Blackfriars 32, pp. 585-591.
White, Victor, 1953. “The Impact of Eastern Wisdom on The West.” Blackfriars 34, pp. 329-333.
White, Victor, 1959. “Some Recent Studies in Archetypology.” Blackfriars 40, pp. 216-219.

Soft Traditionalism at the University of Kansas

A new biography reveals John Senior (1923-99) of the University of Kansas as a ”soft” Traditionalist. The biography is by Francis Bethel, O.S.B., John Senior and the Restoration of Realism (Merrimack NH: Thomas More College Press, 2016).

During the 1950s, Senior was a “hard” Traditionalist, following René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. He then moved away from this position towards Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, and converted to Catholicism. He subsequently wrote two important books, The Death of Christian Culture (1978) and The Restoration of Christian Culture (1983).

Senior worked practically for the restoration of traditional Christian culture at the University of Kansas from 1967 to 1984. He and two others ran the “Pearson Integrated Humanities Program,” which ran very much against the spirit of the times by focusing on the reading and discussion of classic texts (taking notes during these discussions was not allowed) and stressing the traditional, the Christian, and the European. As well as reading and discussing, students took part in formal dinners and ballroom dancing, went star gazing and traveled to Europe. Many became Catholics. The program became ever more controversial, and was finally closed.

My attention was drawn to the book by a fine review by Christopher H. Owen in the International Philosophical Quarterly.

Traditionalism and Orthodox Christianity

A new research project will look at the impact of Traditionalism on Orthodox Christianity through a comparative study of Philip Sherrard and André Scrima. The project is entitled "Westlicher Traditionalismus/Perennialismus und sein Einfluss auf das Orthodoxe Christentum: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung des Denkens von Philip Sherrard (1922–1995) und André Scrima (1925–2000)" (Western Traditionalism/Perennialism and its Impact on Orthodox Christianity: A Comparative Study of Philip Sherrard [1922-1995] and André Scrima [1925-2000]), and is to be conducted by Ionuţ Daniel Băncilă at the University of Erfurt under the direction of Vasilios N. Makrides, Professor of Religious Studies (Orthodox Christianity). It is funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and is scheduled to last for two years.

Philip Sherrard was English, connected to the Maryamiyya and Temenos, and a convert to Orthodoxy.  Scrima was a Romanian Orthodox monk and theologian. "In the case of A. Scrima, the appropriation of Western perennialism was linked to an ecumenical opening of the Orthodox tradition; for example, he saw similarities between perennial initiation rituals and the Christian sacraments. His goal was the articulation of a 'spiritual hermeneutics' as an explanation and instrument of the religious life of humanity. Later, Scrima distanced himself from Guénon's crisis rhetoric and cultural pessimism."