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).

In memoriam Peter Lamborn Wilson

Peter Lamborn Wilson (1945-2022), also known as Hakim Bey, died on May 23, 2022 at his home in Saugerties, NY, at the age of 76. His transition from the Maryamiyya to becoming one of the most important contemporary theorists of anarchism is discussed in an earlier blog post and subsequent comments, here. May God have mercy on him and on is all.

John Michell, Traditionalism, and UFOs

A new article looks at the neopagan Traditionalist John Michell (1933-2009) and the unusual connection he made between the primordial tradition and extra-terrestrial beings. The article is Marleen Thaler, “How Modern is Technology? The Link between Prehistoric UFOs and Modern Traditionalism,” Religio 30, no. 1 (2022): 7-24, available here.

Michell, an admirer of the work of Julius Evola, was the author of various “Radical Traditionalist Papers" in the 1970s and 1980s, and of Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist (London: Turnaround, 2005). In a 2011 article, Amy Hale argues that he played an important role in bringing Traditionalism to the attention of Neopagans in the US and the UK (see earlier blog post here).

Thaler argues that Michell combined Traditionalism with what she calls “alternative archeology,” which she traces back to Alfred Watkins (1855-1935) and his The Old Straight Track (London: Methuen, 1925), the book that introduced ley lines into the English (alternative) consciousness. Books such as George Adamski and Desmond Leslie’s Flying Saucers Have Landed (London: Laurie, 1953) and Carl G. Jung’s Ein moderner Mythus. Von Dingen, die am Himmel gesehen warden (1958; translated as Flying Saucers. A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, London, Routledge & Paul, 1958) then added UFOs to ley lines.

As Thaler says, alternative archeology and Traditionalism have very little in common, but one thing that they do have in common is a preference for the prehistoric past over modernity, which is seen as in decline relative to that past. So combining Traditionalism with UFOs is not as difficult as one might at first think. Michell's crucial works for this are The Flying Saucer Vision: The Holy Grail Restored (London: Sidgwick and Jackson 1967) and The View Over Atlantis (NP: Sago Press, 1969). Both precede Michell’s Radical Traditionalist Papers.

New Portuguese translation of Guénon with Luiz de Carvalho

A new translation of the essential works of René Guénon is being prepared in Brazilian Portuguese.

Subscribers to the series (link here) will receive the following titles:

1. General Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines 
2. Man and his Becoming according to the Vedanta 
3. East and West 
4. The Crisis of the Modern World 
5. The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times 
6. Perspectives on Initiation
7. Fundamental Symbols of Sacred Science
8. Oriental Metaphysics

A new publisher, Estrela da Manhã (Morning Star), has been set up for this purpose.

One of those behind the series is Luiz Gonzaga de Carvalho Neto (born 1971), a son of the late Olavo de Carvalho (1947-2022), once the leader of the Maryamiyya in Brazil and then an influential “Catholic” philosopher,   admired by President Bolsonaro, whose online lectures were extremely popular.

Luiz de Carvalho, who probably first learned about Traditionalism as a child, has for some time been giving on-line courses at the Instituto Cultural Lux et Sapientia (Light and Wisdom Cultural Center), which does not self-identify as a Traditionalist organization, but encourages visitors to “learn traditional cosmovision and have a life with meaning.” In 2015, its recommended introductory reading list listed six books, five of which were by Traditionalist authors, including one by Olavo de Carvalho from his Traditionalist period.

Purchasers of the series get three free lectures with Luiz de Carvalho, who seems to be following in his father’s footsteps, both as lecturer and as Traditionalist.

My thanks to DP for drawing my attention to the new translation.

Dugin and Ukraine

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there have been ever more mentions of the Russian Traditionalist (or possibly post-Traditionalist) Alexander Dugin in the Western press. The general view is, as the Washington Post recently put it, that President Putin’s “analysis came directly from the works of a fascist prophet of maximal Russian empire named Aleksandr Dugin,” and that “Russia has been running his [Dugin’s] playbook for the past 20 years.” “The recent invasion of Ukraine is a continuation of a Dugin-promoted strategy for weakening the international liberal order,” argues an article in Foreign Policy.  Dugin is “the most influential thinker in Russia,” according to Haaretz.

Is this true? Dugin certainly backs the invasion of Ukraine, which fits with his vision in many ways. But did he inspire that invasion? In a Facebook post on this question, Sindre Bangstad, a prominent Norwegian scholar of the radical right, argued that Dugin’s “influence in the Kremlin and on Putin is not known - precisely due to the fact that it is ultimately unknowable to outsiders.”  

Yes and no. Some things are unknowable to outsiders, or even insiders, but it is clear that Dugin is not one of Putin’s close advisors, and it is also clear that the general thrust of his geopolitical analysis is far from exclusive to him. Dugin did not invent Eurasianism, but rather refined it, in part by combining it with Traditionalism. Eurasianism was invented by earlier Russian thinkers, notably the linguist Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), and arose in the context of the debate between Westernizers and anti-Western Slavophils that is almost as old as the Russian state itself. Trubetzkoy’s Eurasianism was prefigured in the work of the Slavophil philosopher Konstantin Leontiev (1831-91), who saw the West as both a moral and military threat to Orthodox civilization and to Russia.

The Westernizing position recently had its day in Russia under President Yeltsin, and has been losing ground ever since. Putin is clearly in the anti-Western Slavophil camp, and is even said to have been reading Leontiev. The current prevalence of anti-Western and Slavophil positions in Moscow certainly helps explain the invasion of Ukraine, as Jane Burbank, a historian of Russia from New York University, recently argued in The New York Times. Burbank also proposed that “Eurasianism was injected directly into the bloodstream of Russian power in a variant developed by the self-styled philosopher Aleksandr Dugin.” This is more likely. Dugin has certainly made Eurasianism better known, and his variant is better adapted to today's world than variants from a century ago. But Dugin is a participant in a broad discussion, not the sole author of any playbook.

There is a tendency, in the West and elsewhere, to explain the actions of opponents in terms of unfamiliar and apparently bizarre ideologies. The anti-Westernism of revolutionaries in the Middle East, for example, is often blamed on Islamism or even Islam. Yes, Islamism matters, but Western policy and interventions in the Middle East since the end of the Second World War also matter, but it is harder to blame those interventions—which would mean the West blaming itself—than to blame Islamism. John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, argues that Western policy towards Russia is to blame for the current crisis. In his response to a recent article by Mearsheimer in The Economist. Sir Adam Roberts, an emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, called this argument “apparently perverse”—but then went on to demonstrate that there were also other reasons for the invasion of Ukraine, not that Mearsheimer was actually wrong.  Mearsheimer is at present something of a lone voice in blaming the errors of Western policy. It is a lot easier to blame “a fascist prophet.”