Editor's Foreword
The chapters of Fundamental Symbols were originally articles published in French journals, often consecutively, but not yet incorporated into books during the author's lifetime. The journals in question, now almost unobtainable, are indicated in the list of original sources towards the end of the book.
Our gratitude is due above all to Michel Välsan for having put together this precious volume, and to Alvin Moore Jnr for having translated it from the original French edition of 1962. Thanks also to the translator, this English edition of what is one of Guénon's greatest works has been enriched by the addition of two more of his articles (chapters 2 and 3). On the other hand we have omitted one of the later chapters (71 of the French edition) which in our opinion should not have been included. The same applies to the also omitted closing paragraphs of chapter 6, which have nothing to do with symbolism and which raise certain problems that call for more annotations than we would venture to give. We are grateful to Richard Nicholson and Liadain Sherrard for their help in revising parts of the translation.
As to the notes which have been added throughout, they are placed between square brackets to distinguish them from Guénon's own notes. Of the bracketed notes, those without any specific attribution are by Michel Välsan, whereas those that have been added to this English edition, except for mere references, are attributed to the translator or to the editor as the case may be.
The outstanding greatness of this book has two aspects, one that it shares with all that is best in Guénon's writing, and one that is unique. This latter aspect is the vision that it opens up to us of a remote past going beyond historic times. In some chapters we are conscious of breathing the fresh air of an almost primordial antiquity. The universal language of symbolism is as old as humanity; and the light which Guénon throws on the intelligence and the intellectual unanimity of the ancient world is enough to dispel forever any lingering illusions about primitive man that we have subconsciously retained from our education.
Against this background, we are not allowed to forget the messages which are at the root of Guénon's writing as a whole. It was his function, in a world increasingly rife with heresy and pseudo-religion, to remind twentieth-century man of the need for orthodoxy, which itself presupposes, firstly a Divine Revelation, and secondly a tradition that hands down with fidelity, from generation to generation, what heaven has revealed. In this connection we are deeply indebted to him for having restored to 'orthodoxy' the full rigour of its original meaning, rectitude of opinion, rectitude which compels the intelligent man not merely to reject heresy but also to recognise the validity of all those faiths that conform to the above mentioned criteria on which his own faith depends for its orthodoxy.
On the basis of this universality, often known as _religio perennis_, it was also Guénon's function to remind us that the great religions of the world are not only the means of man's salvation but that they offer him beyond that, even in this life, two esoteric possibilities which correspond to what were known in Greco-Roman antiquity as the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries. The first of these is the way of return to the primordial perfection which was lost at the Fall; the second, which presupposes the first, is the way to Gnosis, the fulfilment of the precept _Gnōthi Seauton_, Know Thyself. This One Ultimate End is termed in Christianity _Deificatio_, in Hinduism _Yoga_ (Union) and _Moksha_ (Deliverance), in Buddhism _Nirvana_ (Extinction—of all that is illusory), and in Islamic mysticism or Sufism _Tahaqquq_ (Realisation—glossed by a Sufi Saint as 'self-realisation in God').
The Mysteries are, explicitly, or implicitly,[1] the main theme of Guénon's writing, and the reader will see that _Fundamental Symbols_ is very far from being an exception in this respect. Let it be simply added that in the domain of the sacred the science of sciences is metaphysics which, in its highest reaches, is theology in the literal sense of a study of the nature of God. Parallel to this are the higher reaches of philosophy, likewise in the literal sense, love of wisdom. But science, needless to say, is objective and, to be fully effective, it needs a response from the subject. The science of sciences demands to be fulfilled by its subjective counterpart which is, precisely, the passage through the Greater Mysteries, and symbols are fundamental according to the measure of their eloquence in expressing aspects of the Truth and of the Way.
Martin Lings