FOREWORD
'In Islam,' Guénon wrote, 'tradition is of a double essence: religious and metaphysical. The religious side of the doctrine, which is most outward and is within reach of everyone, can be qualified quite precisely as exoteric, and the metaphysical, which constitutes its deeper meaning and, furthermore, is regarded as the doctrine of the elite, as esoteric. This distinction indeed conserves its proper meaning, since these are two faces of one and the same doctrine.'
It is fitting to add that for Guénon, esoterism is always and everywhere the same, whatever name is given it according to the variety and diversity of countries and traditions. If true knowledge of ultimate Reality is the final object of esoteric inquiry, the methods utilized, although often analogous, are not necessarily identical; they may vary just as languages or individuals vary. 'The diversity of methods,' Guénon wrote to us on October 3, 1943, 'corresponds to the very diversity of individual natures for which they were made; there is a multiplicity of ways all leading to a unique goal.'
In this small volume we have brought together a number of early articles relating to Sufism (taşawwuf), that is, Islamic esoterism. These can be supplemented by passages which relate to this subject in Guénon's other writings, notably in The Symbolism of the Cross, as well as by two articles which are reprinted in Symbols of Sacred Science: 'The Mysteries of the Letter Nūn' and 'The Sword of Islam (Sayfal-Islām)'.
We have selected as opening chapter the article on Islamic esoterism which appeared in Cahiers du Sud, although it was published later than the others, for it is this article that best articulates the particularities of initiation in Islam by defining the fundamental elements of taşawwuf: sharīah, țarīqah, haqūqah. The first constitutes the necessary fundamental exoteric basis; the second, the Way and its means; the third, the goal or final result. In the other chapters, Guénon expresses with his usual synthetic clarity what tawhīd and
faqr are, and gives examples of traditional sciences, relating angelology to the Arabic alphabet, and chirology to the science of letters ('ilm al-hūrūf).
Guénon wrote at length about what he calls 'counter-initiation' and 'pseudo-initiation', especially in Perspectives on Initiation, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, and Initiation and Spiritual Realization. Arab writers have also treated this question in their discussions of awliyā ash-shaytān and 'false Sufis', who, as one of them said, are 'like wolves among men.'
Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Holwāni once asked al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr al-Hallāj what he thought of esoteric teaching (madhab al-bātin). Al-Hallāj responded:
Of which do you wish to speak, the true or the false [bātin albātil aw bātin al-Haqq]? If it is a question of true esoterism, the exoterism [sharī́ah] is its exterior aspect and whoever follows it truly discovers its interior aspect, which is none other than the knowledge of Allah [ma'rifah bi'llāh]; as for false esoterism, its exterior and interior aspects are both equally horrible and detestable. Therefore hold yourself aloof from it.
Guénon likewise said:
Whoever makes himself out to be a spiritual teacher without attaching himself to a specific traditional form, or without conforming to the rules established by the latter, cannot truly possess the qualifications he appropriates to himself; according to the case, he may be either a common imposter or a 'deluded' person ignorant of the real conditions of initiation, and in this last case even more than in the other it is greatly to be feared that he is only too often nothing more than an instrument in the service of something that he himself may not suspect.[1]
The last chapter is devoted to Taoism and Confucianism, and shows that the difference between esoterism and exoterism is found equally in the non-religious forms of Tradition. This is normal,
since it is a question of difference in nature-and even of profound nature-in rites as well as in perspective. This article was written a great deal earlier than The Great Triad, the last book Guénon published in his lifetime and the one in which he speaks most of Chinese civilization, but it contains some final thoughts that are not without interest. For example, Guénon states that whatever cyclic conditions might lead to the more or less complete disappearance of the outward aspect of Chinese tradition, its esoteric aspect (Taoism) could never die because in its essential nature it is eternal, that is, beyond temporal conditions.
As we have done previously for the posthumous compilations that we have presented to readers over the past few years (Studies in Freemasonry and the Compagnonnage, Studies in Hinduism, Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles) as well as for the new edition of Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion, we have added some book and article reviews in which Guénon gives interesting insights into traditional orthodoxy.
.