Major new French collection on Guénon

Just out: a new French collection edited by Philippe Faure, René Guénon. L'appel de la sagesse primordiale (Paris: Le Cerf, 34 €, ISBN 9782204098892). That is, René Guénon: The Call of Primordial Wisdom.

This collection brings together all the leading French specialists on Guénon, generally academics, some engaged and some less engaged. It promises to be a major work.

The table of contents, in translation, is:

• Xavier Accart, "The reception of the work of René Guénon by the literary and intellectual circles of his time."
•  Patrick Laude, "Traditional Sources and contemporary contexts."
•  Jean-Pierre Laurant, "The Guénon/Coomaraswamy correspondence or reciprocal exchange." 
  
• Matthias Korger, "The picture of René Guénon in the writings of Leopold Ziegler and André Préau."
• Jean Moncelon, "René Guénon and Louis Massignon: The calls of the Orient." 
  
• Jean-Louis Gabin, "René Guénon and Alain Daniélou: A witness and his parody."
• Jean-Marc Vivenza, "René Guénon and metaphysical knowledge."
• Jean Borella, "René Guénon and philosophical 'error.'"
• Philippe Faure, "René Guénon and the Bible: The way of symbols."
• Paul B. Fenton, "René Guénon and Judaism."
• Jean-Pierre Brach, "Christianity and 'primordial tradition' in the articles of René Guénon for the Catholic magazine Regnabit."
• Paolo Urizzi, "The presence of Sufism in the work of René Guénon."
• Patrick Ringgenberg, "Primordial tradition and universalism according to Frithjof Schuon and perennialism."
• Jérôme Rousse-Lacordaire, "Traditional thought and Christian theology of religions." 
• Luc Nefontaine, "Hate and/or veneration? Ambivalence of the image of René Guénon in Freemasonry today." 
  
• Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "The influence of René Guénon in the Islamic world."
• Bruno Pinchard, "The spatial symbolism of René Guénon and its mathematics." 
  
• Éric Phalippou, "Ethnology from within: A 'semi-secular' discipline?"
• JacquesViret, "Music and Tradition: The traditional perspective in musicology and ethnomusicology."

Traditionalists blog passes 250,000 page views

After almost nine years of existence, this blog has  passed 250,000 page views. It was started in June 2006 to make available additions to my book Against the Modern World, and has since become a general source of information on the topic of Tradiitonalism and the Traditionalists. This topic, as the number of page views shows, is one that many people find of interest.

The stats report that 45% of these 250,000 page views were by users in the US, UK and Canada, mostly in the US, as the map indicates. This is not surprising for an English-language blog.

The next seven countries, in order, have been France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Brazil, Ukraine, and Italy. It is hardly surprising to find France and Italy on the list, given the national origins of René Guénon and Julius Evola, or to find Russia and Ukraine on it, given the prominence there of Traditionalism and of Alexander Dugin. The prominence of Germany and Sweden is unexpected, however, as is the prominence of Brazil. The current state of Traditionalism in those countries evidently deserves investigation.

Dugin and CEDADE

A Yale student, Emily Efland, is researching the relationship between Aleksandr Dugin and the Spanish group CEDADE (Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa) in the 1990s. Efland writes:

In the mid-1980s a group formed within CEDADE that devoted itself to esoteric Hitlerism and the study of the works of Miguel Serrano, whose works (and other esoteric Hitlerist texts) were published in the CEDADE-affiliated journal Excalibur. Amid internal factionalism in the late 1980s, members of this group left CEDADE to form their own more esoteric organization, which they called the Thule Group. In the beginning of the 1990s the Thule Group began publishing a journal entitled Hiperbórea. Dugin, presumably through his travels to Spain in the early 1990s, met members of the Thule Group and in 1991 published the Russian version of volume 1 of Hiperbórea, which he entitled Giperborea. I am wondering which members of the Thule Group Dugin was in contact with. I am also interested in receiving any information anyone might have on who was involved in the Thule Group, when it started, what its publications were and where I could find them, and any other information that exists on this faction. I can be reached at emily.efland@yale.edu.

Washington got the wrong man?

In an article just published in Foreign Affairs, "Scared of Putin's Shadow," Marlene Laruelle argues that "in sanctioning Dugin, Washington got the wrong man."

Dugin, she argues, is not that important, and neither is ideology. "By putting Dugin ... on the sanctions list, the United States is essentially conveying that it ... truly believes that nationalistic ideology is the dominant motivation for Russia’s position on Ukraine. If that is correct, then the United States dangerously misunderstands Putin’s strategy ... Moscow’s involvement in Ukraine is primarily strategic."

Dugin sanctioned

By RFE/RL March 11, 2015

"The United States has issued a new list of individuals and entities to be sanctioned over Russia's interference in Ukraine, including Kremlin-connected nationalist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

"The Treasury Department on March 11 also sanctioned a bank in Crimea -- the Russian National Commercial Bank -- two other former officials from the government of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, eight Ukrainian separatists, and two other leaders of Dugin's Eurasian Youth Union.

"Any U.S. property held by those individuals is frozen, and U.S. citizens are prohibited from doing business with them. The United States took the action to "hold accountable those responsible for violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity." Russian FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, who has been targeted by sanctions in the EU and Canada, was not on the list of individuals targeted by the Treasury Department in this latest round of sanctions."