EDITORIAL NOTE

THE past century has witnessed an erosion of earlier cultural values as well as a blurring of the distinctive characteristics of the world’s traditional civilizations, giving rise to philosophic and moral relativism, multiculturalism, and dangerous fundamentalist reactions. As early as the 1920s, the French metaphysician René Guénon (1886–1951) had diagnosed these tendencies and presented what he believed to be the only possible reconciliation of the legitimate, although apparently conflicting, demands of outward religious forms, ‘exoterisms’, with their essential core, ‘esoterism’. His works are characterized by a foundational critique of the modern world coupled with a call for intellectual reform; a renewed examination of metaphysics, the traditional sciences, and symbolism, with special reference to the ultimate unanimity of all spiritual traditions; and finally, a call to the work of spiritual realization. Despite their wide influence, translation of Guénon’s works into English has so far been piecemeal. The Sophia Perennis edition is intended to fill the urgent need to present them in a more authoritative and systematic form. A complete list of Guénon’s works, given in the order of their original publication in French, follows this note.

Guénon frequently uses words or expressions set off in ‘scare quotes’. To avoid clutter, single quotation marks have been used throughout. As for transliterations, Guénon was more concerned with phonetic fidelity than academic usage. The system adopted here reflects the views of scholars familiar both with the languages and Guénon’s writings. Brackets indicate editorial insertions, or, within citations, Guénon’s additions. Wherever possible, references have been updated, and English editions substituted.

The present translation is based on the work of Henry Fohr, Cecil Bethell, Hubert Schiff, and Patrick Moore. The entire text was