Foreword

This previously untranslated work by René Guénon is being published in a limited study-edition for the use of serious students of Guénon who cannot read the original French. The translation is based on a first version by Mr. C.B. Bethell of Australia, to whom we express our appreciation, both for his pioneering labor of love, and his willingness to have it tampered with. Mrs. F.J. Casewit, of Morocco, a friend of the Guénon family and a language specialist long engaged in the study of traditionalist works, was kind enough to read through the manuscript and to offer a number of valuable suggestions. Final responsibility for any imprecisions or infelicities must however fall to the general editor, who has made extensive revisions. Though done with care, the translation is provisional; should a larger edition be called for as a consequence of this first printing, every effort will be made to further improve it and to add supplementary notes.

The publisher assumes that most readers into whose hands this volume falls will already be familiar with Guénon’s work, and with the ‘traditionalist’ perspective it represents, as well as with the works of such related writers as Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, A.K. Coomaraswamy, Martin Lings, Marco Pallis, S.H. Nasr, and Huston Smith. Those encountering Guénon here for the first time may wish to contact the publisher for a complete list of titles available by these authors.

As a general point of orientation it may be remarked that Guénon was the first chef d’école^[1] of the circle of traditionalist

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writers, and his works naturally have the ground-breaking character that any confrontation with widely-diffused error must bear. His greatest contributions are a blindingly lucid exposition of the principles of orthodoxy and traditional metaphysics, an uncompromising critique of the deviation of modernism, and a breath-taking view of the polyvalence of traditional symbols. Implicit in these three genres, as in all Guénon's writing, is the need for personal affiliation with an orthodox tradition as a precondition for a bona fide spiritual practice that might lead, at least in principle, to the intellectual intuition of which he speaks.

It is a sad commentary on our times that so vital a corrective to its ills as Guénon's oeuvre represents should prove so difficult to publish. Let us hope that this very limited first edition, intended as study-material, may awaken sufficient interest to attract the support that will be necessary to publish a larger edition, and translations of others of Guénon's works as well. Dear reader, if you wish to support this effort please do not let your desire languish unvoiced.

We take this opportunity to thank the French publisher, and the Guénon family's agent, Mr. F. Gouverneur, for their cooperation in making this edition possible. Our heartfelt thanks go also to a small circle of friends (they know who they are) without whom this book—and, indeed, the very existence of Sophia Perennis et Universalis over the past five years—would not have been possible.

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