The Claws of the Sphinx — René Guénon and the Islamization of the West

The profound historical and spiritual transformations that will determine the future of humanity are so far removed from our media, our university life and, in general, all the public debates in this country, that what I am going to say in this article will certainly seem stratospheric and oblivious to the immediate reality.

The incurable patient who moans in pain in a hospital bed will hardly be interested at this time in the medical, biochemical, and pharmacological controversies that unfold in far-off countries and in languages he does not know, but one day in the cure of his disease. What most closely concerns his destiny seems distant, abstract, and oblivious to his pain.

Those interested in Brazil’s future should pay attention to what I am going to tell you here, but it will be very difficult to make you see that one thing has something to do with another.

I will begin by reviewing an unknown author’s review in this country of another author’s book equally ignored here.

The book is False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism, and the Quest for One-World Religion, by Lee Penn (Sophia Perennis, 2005), which I have recommended many times but few read because it is a buzz of long and very annoying document. The reviewer is Charles Upton, author of The System of the Antichrist (id. 2001), which has been read even less, as I have recommended it with less emphasis and consistency. The review was published in Upton’s most recent book, Findings: In Metaphysic, Path, and Lore, A Response to the Traditionalist / Perennialist School (id., 2010) and reproduced in the publisher’s electronic magazine.

Lee Penn’s book describes and documents with abundance of primary sources the formation and development of a bionic world religion, with all the characteristics of a satanic parody, under the auspices of the UN, the US government, virtually all major western media and of a handful of multi-millionaires. Begun in 1995 by William Swing, bishop of the Episcopal Church, under the name of the United Religions Initiative, although unofficially existed long before (dating back to the Lucis Trust founded in 1922 by Alice Bailey), the venture, underpinned by incalculably vast financial resources and backed by a whole cast of show business and political stars, even won the informal support of Pope Francis.

With the beautiful goal of creating “a world of peace, sustained by engaged and interconnected communities, committed to respecting diversity, non-violent conflict resolution and social, political, economic and environmental justice,” the movement brings together, in festive celebrations called “ecumenical”, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Shinto, Animists, Spiritists, Theosophists, Ba’hais, Sikhs, New Age adherents, Wicca, Satanism, Reverend Moon, Hare Krishna and any indigenous or Ufological cult that presents itself, giving everything a sense of universal brotherhood that dissolves among smiles of mutual condescension the most obvious and insurmountable incompatibilities between these various beliefs.

All religions and pseudo-religions combined, fused and mutually neutralized are thus reduced to an auxiliary instrument of the globalist project aimed at the creation of a World Government

Roughly speaking, the ideology that sticks together these heterogeneous and irreconcilable elements is the “New Age” low brow universalism, which, copying the language of the Hindu tradition badly, proclaims that all religions are nothing but local and accidental aspects assumed by a unique Primordial Revelation, which concludes that by this or that path everyone will come more day, less day, to the highest stages of human or even superhuman spiritual realization.

This ideology had precursors in the nineteenth century, such as Allan Kardec, Helena Petrovna Blavatski, the famous Theosophist and — literally, pickpocket, Jules Doinel, founder of the French Gnostic Church (1890), Gerard Encausse, better known as “Papus”, Jean Bricaud and, in general, all the components of the movement that would later be called “occultist”.

This “universalism,” which at the beginning of the twentieth century sounded just like an exotic fantasy, eventually penetrated so deep into the common sense of the multitudes that today the equivalence of all religions in dignity and value is a dogma subscribed by all the world’s major media, by parliaments, by the laws of almost all countries, and by most of the religious authorities themselves.

Far from being a spontaneous phenomenon, this radical transformation of collective beliefs reflects the unremitting work of the ubiquitous URI agents, whose interference no socially relevant organization is immune to.

There is therefore no need to emphasize the importance of this project within globalist plans, nor is it, of course, possible to deny the value of Lee Penn’s work in gathering and ordering more than enough documentation to prove the unity of inspiration and strategy behind the phenomena that to the lay observer may seem scattered and unconnected.

The reviewer, Charles Upton, praises the merits of the book and adds to it a clarification which, he says, had already conveyed personally to the author, with his full agreement.

The clarification is this: The New Age and URI parodic “universalism” should not be confused with the high brow universalism of the so-called “traditionalist” or “perennialist” school inspired by René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and their continuers.

It is true. They are very different. Much in advance, the school’s founder, René Guénon, had already subjected to devastating critical analysis all the “occult” ideology that decades later would form the doctrinal basis — if any term — of the “New Age” and the URI.

A member and even bishop of the Gnostic Church in his youth, Guénon soon shot out and took no prisoners. Not at all more intact were Allan Kardec’s spiritualism, Madam Blavatski’s theosophy, and a thousand and one other movements in which Guenon saw the very incarnation of what he called “pseudo-initiation” and “counter-initiation” — the first constituting the simian imitation of spirituality, the second its satanic inversion.

Indeed, the contrast between the universalism of the URI and that of the Guinean-Schuonian current goes far beyond the mere difference between low brow and high brow, although this difference is apparent to the eyes of those who compare them.

On the one hand we see a pastiche of inconsequential syncretisms reinforced by some sentimental or futuristic humanitarian rhetoric (now “progressive”, now “conservative” to please everyone) and adorned here and there at best by the superficial adherence of some fashion writer, such as Aldous Huxley and Allan Watts.

On the other hand, we see sophisticated intellectual constructions, a deep and organized understanding of the religious and esoteric symbols of all traditions, a thorough mastery of revealed sources, and a comparative technique that comes close in precision to almost exact science. In addition, some of the most consistent analysis of the Western civilizational crisis in its various expressions: cultural, social, artistic, and so on.

The difference strikes the eyes of any educated reader. In contrast to the syncretistic mishmash of the “New Age,” we have here a universalism in the strong sense of the word, a comprehensive and orderly view that not only grasps the commonalities between the various spiritual worldviews but gives the reason and foundation for its diversity, so that this articulation of the one and the multiple is really subordinated to the whole universal history of ideas and beliefs, theories and practices, in a word: everything that human beings have done and thought in their journey over the earth. There is practically nothing, no phenomenon, no thought, no faust or unfaithful event that somehow finds no efficient and persuasive “perennialist” explanation, if not irrefutably certain.

From the point of view of the common seeker who, coming from revolutionary, modernist and atheistic means, is alerted to the importance of “spiritual” themes and, after a temporary illusion with the “New Age”, is disappointed by its superficiality and leaves in search of a more nutritious food, the passage to Guénon and Schuon’s traditionalism is a formidable intellectual upgrade, a deculturating impact, almost an interior transfiguration that will suddenly isolate him from the surrounding mental environment, marked at one time by the discredit of religions and by the vulgarity without end of the omnipresent occultism, and will leave him alone, face to face with his conscience. Thus, on the individual scale, the famous prophecy issued by an anonymous biographer of René Guénon soon after the death of the master is fulfilled:

There will come a time when each one, alone, deprived of all material contact that can help him in his inner resistance, will have to find in himself, and only in himself, the means to adhere firmly to the center of his existence, to the Lord of all Truth

Rare, very few come to this point — most are tumbling along the way — but for those who arrive, it is difficult to resist, then, the urge to make personal contact with the Guinean and Schuonian circles for relief, support and guidance. It is through this spontaneous selection process that the “intellectual elite” is formed which, as we shall see later, Guénon envisioned in the 1924 book East and West.

For it is evident that among the various worldviews in struggle, the most comprehensive, which absorbs and explains all the others, is at the top. It is the summit of consciousness of an age, the nec plus ultra of intelligence and the intelligible.

What gives even more authority to the perennialist teaching is the repeated assertion of its expositors that it is not their invention but the mere transfer, in current theoretical language, of immemorial revelations that go back to a single original Source, the Primordial Tradition. A statement on the surface identical with that of the “New Age” but now grounded in an overabundance of documentary evidence, rational arguments, an entire organized science of universal symbolism and comparatism, from which intellectually stunning tours de force are born. René Guénon’s own Symboles de la Science Sacrée and Whitall N. Perry’s A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, one of F. Schuon’s closest collaborators in the USA, are a monumental collection of sacred texts organized to illustrate beyond any reasonable doubt, the essential convergence of the doctrines and symbols of the great religious and spiritual traditions, the Transcendent Unity of Religions as Schuon called it in the title of a book that none other than T.S Eliot considered the greatest achievement of all time in the field of comparative religion.

All resemblance to URI’s “universalism” is misleading.

First, all perennialists, without exception, insist that the doctrines, symbols, and rites of the various traditions in particular, despite always pointing to a supreme Reality which is the same in every case, has an integrity of its own, cannot be object of fusion, blending or syncretism. In other words, they cannot suffer the kind of unifying operation that precisely characterizes the “New Age”.

Second, not everything that comes under the name of religion, spirituality, esotericism, or the like can fit into this synthesis. Quite the contrary, it is common for all perennialists to distinguish precisely, rigorously and even intolerantly between Tradition, Pseudo-Tradition, and Anti-Tradition. Much of the New Age compressed material falls into these last two categories and, far from integrating the unity of the primal source, represents the parody or negation of everything that comes from it.

Third and most importantly, the transcendent unity of religions is indeed transcendent, not immanent. Religions there are unified only at the top, in the summit, and in the living core of their doctrinal conceptions, and not by the irreducible variety of their liturgies, their moral codes, and their different “ways” of spiritual realization. And where, precisely, is this core and top? It is in their respective metaphysical conceptions, which are in fact convergent, as the simple collection organized by Whitall Perry suffices to demonstrate it above all possibility of controversy. In this sense, spiritual religions and traditions can be viewed without distortion as adaptations of the same Primordial Truth to the historical, cultural, linguistic, and psychological conditions of various times, places, and civilizations. The various exoterisms would reflect, in their differences, the unity of the same primordial esotericism. Men who have clearly grasped the unity of this esotericism have intellectually bridged the gap between religions, but since they are not made of pure intellect and still have a historical-temporal existence of flesh and blood people, they remain subordinate to their respective religious tradition, without being able to merge it or mix it with any other. The classic example is the great Sufi master Mohieddin Ibn ‘Arabi. By explicitly stating that his heart could take on all forms — that of the Hindu Brahmana, that of the Kabbalist rabbi, that of the Christian monk, or whatever — he continued in his life as a real and concrete individual wholly faithful to the strictest Islamic orthodoxy.

But that is where the problems begin.

First, this conception requires, along with the “horizontal” differentiation between the various traditions in time and space, a “vertical” or hierarchical distinction between the “lower” and “upper” parts of each. The “inferior,” or exoteric, are historically conditioned, and by them the traditions push them away from each other to the point of mutual hostility and total incompatibility. The esoteric “upper” parts reflect the unchanging eternity of Truth, where all traditions converge and meet.

There is, in short, a popular religion, made up of rites and norms of conduct, the same for all members of the community, and an elite religion, only for “qualified” people, who behind symbols and laws can grasp the ultimate “meaning” of revelation. By practicing the rites of aggregation that integrate them into the religious tradition and by obeying the norms, the men of the people obtain the post mortem “salvation” of their souls. Through initiation rites, the members of the elite obtain already in life, and far above mere “salvation,” the spiritual realization that snatches them from the simple “individual state” of existence to transfigure them into their own Ultimate Reality, or God.

It is good not to say much about these things to the general public, who may be scandalized at the deciphering of a mystery that must remain opaque for their own spiritual protection. The story of Sufi Mansur Al-Hallaj (858–922) is well known, who after reaching the last “spiritual realization” came shouting “Ana al-Haqq!” (“I am the Truth”) and was beheaded by the exoteric authorities. Al-Haqq does not just mean “the truth” in the generic and abstract sense. It is one of the ninety-nine “Names of God” printed in the Koran, so Al-Hallaj’s statement was literally “I am God.” From the point of view of esoteric orthodoxy, this resulted in denying the Qur’anic principle of God’s oneness, constituting a crime that should be punished with death. Islamic jurists later admitted that statements made by Sufis in a state of “mystical rapture” escaped common justice and should be accepted as indecipherable mysteries.

In the explicit, legal and official sense, the distinction between exotericism and esotericism exists only in one tradition: Islam. It corresponds to the distinction between shari’ah and tariqat. On the one hand, the religious law obligatory for all; on the other, the spiritual “way” of free choice, only for interested and gifted people. The application of this distinction to all other traditions is merely suggestive or analogical — a figure of speech and not an appropriate descriptive concept. With that the whole building of “perennialism” begins to sway a little.

Are there, for example, exotericism and esotericism in the Hindu tradition, precisely the one whose vocabulary René Guénon most often uses, because he thinks that Hinduism has achieved maximum clarity in the exposition of metaphysical doctrine? Of course not. The distinction of caste is something quite different. First, because entry into the higher caste is not free choice: the subject is born shudra, vaishia, kshatyia or brahmana and so remains forever. Second, because members of the lower caste can accidentally reach the highest levels of spiritual attainment without changing caste. Third, because the rites of the upper caste, or Brahmana, are nothing secret or discreet: any Joe can know them, but is not allowed to practice them.

Is there a “Christian esotericism”? The thing then becomes formidably complicated. There was and there are here and there esoteric organizations who profess themselves to be Christian and who, through special rites, different from the sacraments of the Church, impart initiations. The Companionship, the Fedeli d’Amore, Freemasonry and the Templar Order are examples. More modernly, countless occultists such as Madame Blavatski, Rudolf Steiner, and Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff have presented their teachings as modalities of Christian esotericism.

But there are just a few facts left to overturn these pretensions.

First of all, there are no traces of any esoteric Christian organization in the first ten centuries of the Church. Secondly, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself stated firmly, “I have taught nothing in secret.” Even His parables, whose meaning was not immediately evident to all, were spoken in public, not to a reserved circle. How then is it possible that the core of the Savior’s teaching was kept secret for ten — or twenty — centuries?

In contrast, in Islam the difference in exoterism and esotericism clearly appears from the first moment. Seeing a group of the Prophet’s companions practicing certain strange rites, different from the five daily prayers, the faithful asked him what it was about. He explained that they were voluntary devotions, meritorious but not obligatory. This was the first sign of the existence of tasawwuf or “Sufism”, Islamic esotericism.

Thirdly, and most decisively: the sacraments of the Church are not mere “rites of aggregation.” They are full initiators. They not only give access to the community of believers — or their “egregore” or collective conscience — but, Deo juvante, to the innermost knowledge of the Supreme Reality to which a human being can aspire. “it is no longer I that live,” says the Apostle, “Christ that lives in me.”

John Paul II in his Catechism explicitly states that the sacraments are the steps of “Christian initiation,” and it is not conceivable that in such a formally doctrinal text he would use the term as a mere figure of speech.

Father Juan González Arintero, in two memorable books that probably constitute the summit of mystical literature in the twentieth century, demonstrates with abundance of arguments and examples that the path of the sacraments was opened precisely to give everyone, without exception, access to the most High Levels of Spiritual Achievement. The distinction of exoteric and esoteric serves only as a metaphor for designating the different spiritual enjoyment attained by this or that individual according to his or her aptitudes, endeavors, and the movements of divine grace.

All Christians who have received the sacraments are therefore initiated in the strict sense that perennialism gives to this word. The difference between the various spiritual results obtained can be explained by a concept developed by René Guénon himself, that of virtual initiation. Not all initiation rites immediately produce the spiritual results that correspond to them. These effects may remain withheld for a long time until some external factor — or the evolution of the recipient itself — calls them to full manifestation.

To complicate matters a little further, F. Schuon himself acknowledged that the Christian sacraments had initiatic reach. For you to evaluate how thorny this issue is for the perennialist school, it is sufficient to remember that, when Schuon’s opinion on the matter was published, Guénon reacted with indignation and fury, even breaking relations with his disciple and continuator.

Guénon continued to insist that the Christian sacraments were only rites of aggregation and that authentic initiations existed only in certain secret or discrete organizations, such as Fellowship or Freemasonry. To back up this thesis, he invented one of the most artificial historical hypotheses anyone has ever seen: Christianity would have originally emerged as an esotericism, but in view of the general decay of the Greco-Roman religion, it would have been forced ex post facto to become popular, eventually reducing itself to exotericism. There is absolutely no sign that this has ever happened. Quite to the contrary, Jesus spoke openly to the multitudes from the beginning of his preaching, and the sacraments have not undergone any substantial change in form or content over time. Whatever his mistakes in other areas may have been, Schuon was right on that point.

It is also only as a figure of language that the distinction of exoterism and esotericism — or rites of aggregation and initiation — can apply to Judaism, since the cultists of kabbalistic mysteries there are none other than the priests of the official cult themselves.

So inappropriate is the application of this pair of concepts to extra-Islamic territory that members of the Perennian school itself eventually had to acknowledge the existence of “exosoteric” and even “exoteric” initiations alongside the “esoteric” itself, which is enough to show that these concepts are of little use.

Guenon’s lack of reasonable arguments and disproportionate reaction to what might have been confined to a discussion between friends suggests that in this episode he might be hiding something. Unable to speak clearly, he appealed to an absurd hypothesis and tried to reduce the speaker to silence by an authoritative display, which Schuon politely rejected.

Why would Guenon have chosen to force all traditions into a pair of concepts that did not properly apply to any of them except Islam in particular? Why was this man, so judicious in everything else, allowed himself such arbitrariness, thus placing himself in a vulnerable position that was endangered as soon as Schuon raised the question of sacramental initiations? He almost certainly had reasons to do so that, at least for the moment, could not be openly discussed.

But even before clarifying this point we need to raise another question.

That materially different traditions converge on the same set of metaphysical principles can no longer be seriously doubted. The thesis of the Transcendent Unity of Religions is victorious in every respect.

There is only one detail: What is properly a metaphysics? I do not use the term as a denomination of an academic discipline but in the very special and precise sense it has in the works of Guénon and Schuon. What is a metaphysics? It is the structure of universal reality, which descends from the infinite and eternal First Principle to its innumerable reflections on the manifested world through a series of levels or planes of existence.

The fact that it is essentially the same in all traditions indicates that there is a normal perception of the basic structure of reality common to all men of any age or culture.

This perception requires a clear awareness or at least a hunch of the scalarity of the real, that is, of the distinctions between different planes or levels of reality, from the sensible objects of immediate perception to the ultimate Reality, the absolute, eternal, unchanging, and infinite Principle, passing through a series of intermediate degrees: historical, terrestrial, cosmic, angelic, etc.

The perfect submission of human subjectivity to this structure is implied in all traditions as a conditio sine qua non of religious life and, even more so, of spiritual fulfillment. Its denial, mutilation or alteration is the root of all the errors and ravings of humanity.

This is why F. Schuon proposes a distinction between essential heresy and accidental heresy. The word “heresy” comes from a Greek root that has the meanings of “choosing” and “deciding.” A heresiarch is one who willingly chooses from the whole truth the parts that interest him and ignores the others.

Accidental heresy, according to Schuon, is the negation, mutilation, or alteration of the canons of a particular tradition, such as monophysitism in Christianity (the theory that Jesus had only the divine nature, not the human nature) or associationism in Islam (associate God with other beings).

Essential heresy is the negation, mutilation, or alteration of the very structure of reality — a mistake, therefore, that would be condemned not only by this particular tradition, but by all of them. Materialism or relativism, for example.

This is all very well, but there is a logical problem. If metaphysics is common to all traditions, how can the top and supreme perfection of each be? By definition, the perfection of a species cannot be in its genre: it must be in its specific difference. The perfection of the lion and the flea cannot lie in the simple fact that they are both animals.

It is permissible that in the initiatory climb of the individual, the arrival into the Supreme Reality, which elevates him above his individual state and absorbs him into the very Being of divinity, is the culmination of his efforts. It would also correspond, according to perennialism, to the moment when the differences between spiritual traditions are definitively transcended, but still valid for the empirical existence of the initiate on the earth plane. It is Mohieddin Ibn ‘Arabi being a Christian, Zoroastrian, or Jew “inside” while still being orthodox Muslim “outside”.

But, for this very reason, metaphysics can only be the culmination of traditions as such if we accept an indistinction between the order of Being and the order of knowledge, which, according to Aristotle, are inverse. The top of the initiatory climb cannot at the same time be the culmination of religions because, being common to all of them, it is only the genre to which they belong and not their supreme specific perfection.

It would be more reasonable to suppose that the primordial Tradition is the common ground not only to all spiritual traditions, but to all cultures and, ultimately, to the core of sound intelligence present in all human beings. From this basis, or origin, the various traditions develop in different directions, each seeking to more perfectly reflect the absolute Principle and to give men the means to return to Him. In this sense, the culmination of each tradition is not the Principle itself, but the success it gets in the return operation. And there is no reason to suppose that, of the various species, all express the perfection of the genre equally well: fleas and lions are equally animal, but nevertheless the flea expresses the perfection of animality as well as the lion, to say the least of the human being.

Schuon states that the claim of each religion to be “better” than the others is only justified by the fact that they are all “legitimate”, that is, reflect in their own way the Primordial Tradition, but that seen on the scale of eternity and absolute, this claim proves to be illusory. However, if the perfection of a species cannot lie solely in its genus but in its specific difference, there is no reason to prove that all species represent the perfection of the genus equally. All religions refer to a Primordial Tradition, OK, but do all represent it equally well? The question is entirely legitimate, and nowhere has the perennialist school offered — or tried to offer — an acceptable answer. In fact, neither asked the question. Even in these high spheres will we find the phenomenon of the “prohibition to ask,” which Eric Voegelin discerned in mass ideologies?

The generation of the Traditionalist School gathered around Frithjof Schuon presented and revealed religions in their heavenly essences, sub specie æternitatis

— Charles Upton

If the heavenly essences of the religions are substantially the same, the difference between them is purely earthly and contingent, the particular forms of each having nothing to do with sacred in themselves without the sap they receive from the Primordial Tradition: this alone, the Religio Perennis, is true in the strict sense. The others are imperfect symbols or appearances that she has in her various earthly incarnations.

But — the same Upton goes on — “these revelations are considered branches of the Primordial Tradition, but this Tradition is not presently in force as a religious system; it is not a religion that can be practiced. The only viable spiritual paths exist in the form — or within — of the present living revelations: Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”

But these paths lead only to “salvation” in a post mortem life. To climb a little higher already in the present life one must, without abandoning them, join an esoteric organization and practice, in addition to the rites and commandments of the popular religion, some special initiatic rites and commandments.

In other words, popular religion is a certificate of qualification required of the postulant at the entrance of the initiatory path. For the Muslim, this is not a big problem. Although tariqas (turuq in Arabic) are generally considered to exist apart, they are generally recognized as legitimate by the official religion, so that the believer may freely move between the two types of practices.

For the Hindu, this is no problem either: even though there is no Hindu esotericism properly, Hinduism accepts and absorbs all the practices of other religions, so that — apart from the political conflicts between Hinduists and Muslims — nothing prevents a Hindu from joining in a tariqa, Freemasonry, a Chinese Triad or any other esoteric organization without changing their status in their home society.

In the case of a Catholic, however, things get complicated. According to Guénon, all Christian initiatory organizations were disappearing after the Middle Ages, leaving the poor faithful limited to a spiritually crippled exoterism. Only some residues from extinct organizations remained and… Freemasonry.

It turns out that a sentence of Pope Clement XII in 1738 condemned to automatic excommunication any faithful Catholic who affiliated with Freemasonry (or any other secret society). The decision was reinforced by Pope Leo X in 1890 and formalized by the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Pope John Paul II’s new Code, in 1983, spoke only of “secret societies”, without mentioning Masonry by name, which briefly seemed for a moment that the excommunication had been suspended, until the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in November of the same year made it clear that it was none of this, that the prohibition against joining Freemasonry was still in force.

That is, the Catholic believer who read and believed René Guénon, seeing the loss of the initiatory dimension as the root of all the evils of the modern world, was squeezed against the wall by the option of giving up esotericism once and for all, increasingly settling for a reduced exotericism to an outward moralism, and thus accepting to be complicit in modern spiritual degradation, or to seek Masonic initiation and to be excommunicated, that is, to lose the exoteric affiliation which, according to the same Guénon, was the conditio sine qua non for admission to esotericism.

The conflict was not only legal in nature. Although remotely rooted in professedly Christian esoteric organizations, Freemasonry had become, in various parts of the world, a ostensibly and violently anti-Catholic force, encouraging persecution and killing of Catholics, especially in France (during the Revolution and again in the early twentieth century), in Mexico (where this sparked the War of the Cristeros) and Spain, where, with the barely concealed collusion of the Masonic Republican government, priests and worshipers were killed in bulk and many churches destroyed even before the outbreak of the Civil War.

That is to say: the Catholic who affiliated with Freemasonry not only incurred automatic excommunication, but became a traitor to his murdered co-religionists.

Catholic Guenonians such as Jean Tourniac did the devil to prove that Masonic doctrines were compatible with Catholicism, but of course that was in theory. Conversations between Catholic leaders and Masons in search of compromise came to nothing. The excommunication was still in force, and the moral hazard was still very high.

From the 1960s onwards, when these problems began to become more openly discussed in circles interested in traditionalism, the perennialist group began to suggest to the cornered Catholic the following possible solutions:

1. Drop everything and convert to Islam.

2. Seek shelter in the Russian Orthodox Church, where there is still a residue of esotericism and whose sacraments are ultimately accepted as valid by the Catholic Church.

3. Join F. Schuon’s multi-faith tariqa, where you can practice Islamic initiatory rites without formal conversion and staying at a prudent distance from exoteric Muslims.

The first option was certainly the most traumatic. After all, Schuon himself had written that “changing religion is not like changing country: it’s like changing planet.”

The second was more comfortable, but it ran into an obstacle that I never saw a perennialist author even mention: the Russian Orthodox Church was infested with KGB agents, making it almost impossible for the newcomer to find his way through this savage jungle of conspiracy and pretense. Not coincidentally, the KGB was at that time organizing and training Islamic terrorist organizations for the war against the Christian West.

That left the third, the easiest and most natural option. Schuon’s tariqa was indeed full of members of Catholic origin — starting with Schuon himself and some of his closest collaborators, such as Martin Lings, Titus Burckhardt, and Rama P. Coomaraswamy, from whom the first two were converted to Islam, the third remained Catholic at least in public, while still giving the sheikh the regulatory vow of total obedience required in the tariqas.

In the souls of those who remained Catholics — ex professed or of the heart alone — the plan that, since 1924, René Guénon had drawn up for the whole West was thus realized on a microscopic scale.

After describing with the dark colors of a genuine Apocalypse the spiritual degradation of civilization in the West, attributing it to the loss of “true metaphysics” and the links between the Catholic Church and the Primordial Tradition (links that could only have been maintained through organizations), René Guénon predicts three possible developments of the state of affairs in the West:

1. The definitive fall in barbarism.

2. The restoration of the Catholic tradition, under the discreet guidance of Islamic spiritual teachers.

3. Total Islamization, either through infiltration and propaganda, or through military occupation.

These three options were, in essence, reduced to two: either barbarism or subjection to Islam, whether discreet or overt.

The outbreak of World War II seemed to show that the West had preferred the first option, being an ironic detail the fact that important Islamic religious authorities fully supported the Führer, especially in the matter of the extermination of the Jews. Macabre coincidence or self-fulfilling prophecy? I don’t know.

After the war, the close collaboration between Islamic governments and communist regimes in the joint anti-Western effort became so noticeable that there is no need to insist on this point. It is worth remembering that today the left-wing world who committed to corrupting the West “until it stinks”, as André Breton advocated, is ostensibly supporting the Muslim occupation of the West by mass immigration as well as boycott by all means any serious effort to combat Islamic terrorism, so that there is between the two blocs a kind of Leninist agreement to ‘foment corruption and denounce it’. Again it is the same question as the previous paragraph, with the same answer.

For the aspirant of Catholic origin, all tariqa offered the choice between becoming a Muslim or being Catholic under Muslim guidance. The same choice Guénon offered to the entire Western world.

I believe that this makes Guénon’s intention clearer by squeezing all religions, especially the Christian, into the forced mold of a descriptive Islamic concept, the exotericism-esoteric distinction. Indeed, how can you master an entire civilization without first fitting it into the intellectual coordinate system of the dominating civilization, where it will cease to be an autonomous totality to become part of a comprehensive map? It is also obvious that it was not enough to do this in theory: it was necessary to gain for this new view of things the most valuable, most intellectually active elements of the target civilization’s elite. Only when it began to understand itself in terms of the dominator rather than its own would it be ripe to accept, without further reaction, a wider operation of cultural occupation. Especially since the reduction of Christianity to the binomial exotericism-esotericism, accompanied by the grim diagnosis of the loss of the esoteric dimension, culminated inexorably in the conclusion that the “restoration of Christendom”, its connections with the Primordial Tradition, and therefore of the higher dimensions of Christianity, its spirituality could only be realized under the direction of a “living esotericism”, that is, of Sufism. To use Guenon’s own terms, it was necessary to subject the West to the “spiritual authority” of Islam before submitting it to its “temporal power.”

Schuon’s theory that the Christian sacraments retained their initiatory power seemed to somewhat lessen the force of the Islamist argument, but it did not do so at all. Without the proper spiritual instruction that only a “living esotericism” could offer him, the bearer of a “virtual initiation” remained unaware of having received it and was not only paralyzed in the midst of the initiatory climb, but risked with it to suffer all sorts of spiritual and psychic disturbances. Only Sufi spirituality — embodied, in this case, in the person of F. Schuon — could save Catholics from themselves.

The Islamization of the West — discreet or overt, peaceful or violent — is the central and, indeed, unique goal of René Guénon’s entire work. It all converges toward this goal, not as a mere logical conclusion, but as a kind of one way out to which the reader — and, ideally, the whole West — is being led, within the walls of a labyrinthine construction, by a sense of inexorable fatality. Excluding that goal, it would be nothing more than a set of purposeless theoretical speculations, a building of beautiful unrealizable spiritual possibilities, which he always denied it could be.

If an explicit confession was needed to confirm this, it would suffice to remember that just as F. Schuon returned from Algeria with the title of sheikh, touting his intention to “Islamize Europe”, Guénon declared that the founding of the tariqa of Schuon in Lausanne, Switzerland, was the first and only fruit produced by its decades-long effort.

What can make this goal hazy or even invisible to the public eye are two factors:

First, Guénon repeatedly affirms his total disregard for any political activity, current or ideology, ensuring that his interests have nothing to do with the struggle for power and are exclusively concerned with the spiritual and the eternal. This seems to place him, in the eyes of many, incomparably above the current dispute between Islamic countries and the West.

This view is not exactly false, it is just empty. It is obvious that Guenon is not vying for political power. He is disputing something that is infinitely above it, and of which, he explains, political power is but a secondary, almost negligible reflection: it is disputing spiritual authority. It is disputing it with the Catholic Church, rising far above it and intending to guide it from the sublime heights of Sufi spirituality (not necessarily in person, of course).

He is very explicit on this point. The Catholic Church, at some point in its history, he says, has lost touch with the Primordial Tradition and no longer has even an understanding of the “upper parts” of metaphysics: it has stuck to pure ontology, or theory of Being, without penetrating the supreme mysteries of Non-Being (Schuon prefers to say “Supra-Being”).

I have explained myself on other occasions as to what seems to me to be the intrinsic absurdity of the doctrine of Non-Being, and I will not return to this subject here. What matters at the moment is to point out that, according to Guénon, Catholicism, from this initial mutilation, has declined sharply until it was reduced to mere sentimental devotion to the masses.

As it is only those who can lift it from this abyss is who still have the original connection with the Primordial Tradition, it is evident that the salvation of the Church, and through it, of the whole of the West, can only come from outside. Where, precisely?

Buddhism cannot be, since Guénon does not even consider it an entirely valid tradition.

Nor does Hinduism, because it cannot be practiced outside India or by anyone that isn’t of Indian nationality. All that Hinduism can provide is a deeper understanding of metaphysical doctrine — and indeed Guenon relies heavily on Hindu texts for it — but mere theoretical understanding, being indispensable, cannot even by itself provide authentic “metaphysics realization”.

Even less of Judaism, for it would be inconceivable for the Church, having been born of it, to return to its womb without annuling itself ipso facto and ceasing to exist.

From Freemasonry? Impossible, not only because of the incompatibilities pointed out above and never overcomed, but because, according to Guénon, Masonic initiations are only “Little Mysteries”, secrets of the cosmos and society that do not even touch the heights of supreme metaphysical realization, “Great Mysteries”.

From obstacle to obstacle — it is not necessary to examine all alternatives — the inexorable conclusion is that the labyrinth of impossibilities has only one way out: Catholicism can only be returned to its original integrity if it agrees to submit to the guidance of Islamic masters. Either that or the occupation of the West by Muslims. Tertium non datur.

That, en passant, Guénon and his followers have made several valuable contributions even to the understanding of Catholicism by Catholic intellectuals themselves, especially with regard to symbolism and sacred art, is something that no one in their right mind could deny.

But also there, nothing to be surprised. What authority could a Sufi master intend to exercise over Catholics if, at least in some select points, he did not prove to understand their religion better than themselves?

Guenon’s “Catholic” articles published in Regnabit magazine between 1925 and 1927 do not prove, or even suggest, that he accepted the independence, much less the superiority of Catholicism over Islam. It only proves that during this period he still believed in the possibility of directing the course of things in the Catholic Church through gentle persuasion and infiltration. His departure for Egypt in 1930, with the firm decision not to return and only to communicate with his audience thereafter through the magazine Études Traditionelles, marks the moment when he loses that hope and, by integrating each increasingly in Egyptian esoteric circles (even marrying the daughter of the prestigious sheikh Elish El-Kebir), he passes the ball back to the Islamic authorities who had by far directed his actions within the European framework. Since things have evolved from this point to the adoption of the policy of terrorism and “occupation by immigration” (which, of course, would never happen without the consent of the Islamic spiritual authorities), it is a story we ignore and can only be told, maybe several decades from now. What is absolutely certain is that Guénon, from the beginning of his public activity, has stated that he does not speak in his own name but strictly follows the guidance of “qualified representatives of the Eastern traditions”, among which, today is known, to be mainly Sheikh El-Kebir. It is foolish to say that Guénon “converted to Islam” in 1930. He had been a regular member of a tariqa for at least twenty-one years, which is enough to show that he was long prepared for the difficult mission he was about to perform.

The second factor that hinders the perception of Guenon’s identity as an Islamic agent is the very impact of his work on his disciples. Qualified as “the most dazzling intellectual miracle of our age,” this work sheds so many unforeseen lights on the religious phenomenon and spiritual decay of the West, and its contrast to all modern atheist or Christian thought is so great that the temptation to regard it as a miracle, a divine intervention in the course of history, is almost irresistible. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in “Knowledge and the Sacred”, does not hesitate to present the whole intellectual history of the West as if it were a long, groping and half-blind preparation for the advent of the Guinean lights. Seen in this way, Guénon’s work seems to be a supra-historical message coming from the dawn of time, from the Primordial Tradition itself and not from a contemporary Egyptian Sheikh.

The desire to erase its contemporary roots and to hover above historical contingencies is manifest in several parts of this work, and further reinforced by various expressions of contempt for the “mere” historical perspective, according to Guénon an illusory veil of fleeting appearances covering the reality of eternal things. He even criticizes the Western mentality’s attachment to “facts” as if it were a vice of thought.

Jean Robin characteristically proclaims guenonism as a providential intervention and “the last chance of the West.” It is the inalienable right of the enthusiastic disciple to celebrate the master’s work with the most emphatic qualifications. But a qualifier means nothing when separated from the substance it qualifies. It is one thing to talk generally about the ‘last chance of the West’ — and we all know that the West needs one. But quite another thing is to make clear that this is not just any chance, an abstract and generic “restoration of spirituality” but a salvation by Islamization. Jean Robin simply omits this point.

It is also very fair to privilege the eternal and unchanging over the temporal and transitory. But any Catholic believer accustomed to the sacrament of confession understands that the leap into the eternal, without being aware of the factual details of earthly life, so often humiliating and depressing, is not spirituality, it is angelism. The apostle who says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” is the same who confesses to bring “a thorn in the flesh” until the end of his days.

The desire to fly into the world of eternal archetypes leaping above concrete historical reality not only appears in the hagiographic profiles of the “mission of René Guénon”, but in at least three books by leading perennialist authors on Islam.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s “Ideals and Realities of Islam”, Frithjof Schuon’s “Comprendre l’Islam”, and Titus Burckhardt’s “Moorish Culture in Spain” barely conceal their rhetorical strategy of showing Muslim life only by the eternal archetypes it symbolizes, contrasting them explicitly or implicitly, with the gross factual miseries of the materialist West. It is even a little naive. Even a child realizes that it is not fair to compare the virtues of one with the defects of the other, rather than virtues with virtues and defects with defects.

All of this makes it difficult for both the newcomer and sometimes the perennialism’s own spokesmen to admit the obvious: René Guénon’s work can have all the providential and saving character it desires, on the condition that it is admitted clearly the obvious: that, after all, it never offered any way of salvation for the West except Islamization.

It is also true that any intelligent Christian, Catholic or not, can take advantage of René Guénon’s teachings without adhering to the Guinean project, but how can we refuse membership without knowing or wanting to know that the project exists? Every useful idiot is stupid and useful insofar as he denies the existence of the one who uses it.

Many Christians, Catholics or not, were so outraged by the teachings of René Guénon that they made several attempts to refute and even scold him. These attempts only proved the opponent’s intellectual superiority and fell into ridicule or oblivion.

In this respect, Guenon’s disciples were not entirely wrong to regard it as unsurpassed (the “infallible compass,” said Michel Valsân). But Guenon do not need to be fought or beaten. By adopting the pseudonym “Sphinx” in his early writings, he knew that those who did not decipher his message would be swallowed and reduced to obedience. Those who cry among shouts of revolt will not be obeyed, unwillingly or even unconsciously. Once deciphered, however, the Sphinx has no remedy but to gently release its prey, which will come out of its grip not only free but strengthened.

Addendum to “The Claws of the Sphinx”

René Guénon’s affected contempt for the “sentimental point of view” which, according to him, characterizes “mystique” as opposed to “initiations” is the root of his misunderstanding of Christian spiritual alchemy and the cause of the confusion he incurs when speaking of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who, denying himself in the most blatant way, he describes at the same time as “mystic” and as head of an organization as manifestly initiatory as the Templar Order.

The human soul, with all its desires, fears and passions, is nothing but the “raw material” of the alchemical transformation in which it will pass, in life, through the “intermediate world”, the fire of Purgatory, freeing itself from its impurities and becoming, through love and voluntary participation in the sacrifice of Calvary, “worthy of the promises of Christ”. Amputated from the “sentimental point of view”, the soul is just an entirely hypothetical cognitive scheme, which cannot be the object of real alchemical transmutation, but only of alchemical theorization without any transmutative effect.

[Translated from here]