By Omar K Neusser

”In any case, what Westerners call civilization, the others would call barbarity, because it is precisely lacking in the essential, that is to say a principle of a higher order.”

René Guénon, East And West, p.90

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DISCLAIMER It seems quite unnecessary but it has to be clearly stated: The analysis of the West and the exposition of ’tradition’ and ’traditional’ by Shaykh Abd Al Wahid Yahya - René Guénon, cannot and must not be falsified and so degraded by Right Wing - Neo Nazis or Supremacists of any kind. Already Evola misconstrued much from what he gained from Guénon’s teachings, not to mention some more recent ideologues who like to use the word tradition and traditional(-ist) not at all in the meaning as described by Shaykh Abd Al Wahid Yahya - René Guénon, so as to confuse people.

2019-04-08

Tradition Tradition means truths or principles of a divine origin revealed or unveiled to mankind. In the case of Islam, tradition describes furthermore the words, sayings and actions reported from Prophet Muhammad may Allah bless him and grant him peace, which have been recorded in the hadith collections together with the entire Islamic religion, such as the Islamic schools of law, spirituality, saintity, etc. Tradition means truths or principles of a divine origin revealed or unveiled to mankind. In the case of Islam, tradition describes furthermore the words, sayings and actions reported from Prophet Muhammad may Allah bless him and grant him peace, which have been recorded in the hadith collections together with the entire Islamic religion, such as the Islamic schools of law, spirituality, saintity, etc.





Bismillâhi - Rahmâni - Rahîm

{ Is not the time ripe for the hearts of those who believe to submit to Allah's reminder (that their hearts in all humility should engage in the remembrance of Allah) and to the truth which is revealed… But many of them are rebellious transgressors.}

Sura The Iron (57) 16 (that their hearts in all humility should engage in the remembrance of Allah)

”When man is imprisoned like this in life and in the conceptions directly connected with it, he can know nothing about what escapes from change, about the transcendent and immutable order, which is that of the universal principles.”

René Guénon, East And West, 1924 He said:

Section 1 - What Others Said About René Guénon

“René Guénon's role (was to be the) reviver of Tradition for the Western world.”

Charles Upton

[ sacredweb.com ]

“For Guénon, the malaise of the modern world is its relentless denial of the metaphysical realm, the metaphysical world being comprised of both philosophy and spirituality. Guénon sees everything in the world of creation as an application and manifestation of metaphysical principles that are contained in the perennial teachings of religions, and applies them to every single subject that he addresses in his works. Both the value of traditional sciences of nature and the misguided claims of modern secular science are judged in proportion to their proximity or distance from these principles. In this sense, Guénon is a metaphysician par excellence who has devoted his life to the diagnosis and correction of the metaphysical mistakes of the modern world.” Ibrahim Kalin

[ www.cis-ca.org ]

“His function (was), 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 intervention, and secondly a tradition which hands down with fidelity from generation to generation what Heaven has revealed...” Dr. Martin Lings, (quote from Vol1Num1),

[ sophiajournal.com - Martin Lings commemorative issue ]

“Guénon undermined and then; with uncompromising intellectual rigor, demolished all the assumptions taken for granted by modern man, that is to say Western or westernized man. Many others had been critical of the direction taken by European civilization since the so-called 'Renaissance', but none had dared to be as radical as he was or to re-assert with such force the principles and values which Western culture had consigned to the rubbish tip of history. ...”

“The language of this Tradition [is] the language of symbolism, and he had no equal in his interpretation of this symbolism.

Moreover he turned the idea of human progress upside down, replacing it with the belief almost universal before the modern age, that humanity declines in spiritual excellence with the passage of time and that we are now in the Dark Age which precedes the End, an age in which all the possibilities rejected by earlier cultures have been spewed out into the world, quantity replaces quality and decadence approaches its final limit. No one who read him and understood him could ever be quite the same again.”

[ Sh. Hassan Abdul Hakeem Gai Eaton ]

“The writings of the great French thinker René Guénon - Shaykh `Abd Al Wahid Yahya (1886-1951) have by now achieved luminary status. His castigation of the modern world, grounded upon a pioneering reinstatement of the universal, first principles of the one true metaphysic abiding at the heart of the sacred traditions, has stood fast against the shifting sands of recent philosophies and can refurbish our powers of discrimination in face of the new millennium and the postmodern age.” - expired link (before 2017) - seriousseekers.com









Video with some of his quotes from Crisis of The Modern World [1]

Section 2 - His Function

His function was (and is still today) to warn everyone, also people of religion, also Muslims, of the entanglements (fitna) of (post-) modernity, how it threatens to destroy the mentality even of some religious people as it did when modernity first emerged in the West, how it casts into doubt any absolute, metaphysical truth and how it influences the public at large.

His works are primarily in French and in English. In Swedish there is an excellent book about Shaykh Abd Al Wahid Yahya: "I tjänst hos det Enda" ( In the service of The One), edited by Kurt Almqvist, a Swedish author writing on metaphysical questions. This is still the only disposition of RG's life and work in a Scandinavian language and it includes excerpts from some of his books, such as "Crisis of the Modern World"[1] and "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times."

A European intellectual from the first half of the 20th century, he had witnessed the tragic and seemingly unavoidable events of his times, not the least both World Wars. He confronted the ruling myths of this civilization, such as 'human progress', 'technical development towards a brighter future' and he penetrated some of the most important philosophical and religious traditions - when towards the middle of his life - he embraced Islam and travelled to Egypt where he lived until the end of his life as a well-respected Muslim author.

Martin Lings (far left) and Réne Guénon (elder man in center) in Egypt

One of his main concerns was to produce an unsentimental analysis of Western ideological and religious development since the Renaissance, focusing on the degradation - as he saw it - of metaphysics, religion and philosophy and consequently of the mentality of the general populace.

He explained why the civilization of the West was built on false foundations, like a house built on sand: its positivism, its denial of true tradition and in consequence its metaphysical blindness. He also showed the way to reform this situation by gaining access - through initiation - to the sacred and eternal treasure of timeless wisdom hidden in the religious traditions. His writings have inspired many engaged readers to search for truth and meaning in an otherwise meaningless world.

Another of his main concerns was to clear from the pure concept of Ultimate Reality (or Divine Centre) everything that It is not and to teach its pure doctrine, because It can only be described in negative terms ( of what It is not )fn1. His work is also a reminder of the impossibility of having any rational concept of the Ultimate Reality (or Supreme Centre), except for the insight gained from intellectual intuition ( ma`rifa - intuitive knowledge of God) and the knowledge of revelation and prophetic tradition gained by practicing its teachings.

This introduction is not an adequate overview over this outstanding writer's work, who wrote no less than 26 books and conducted a numerous correspondence with many intellectuals of his time. Some of his main areas of focus are:

 A definition of tradition versus anti-tradition and sentimentalized religion

 a distinction of metaphysics regarding philosophy and religion

 an exposition of metaphysics and the hierarchy (of stages) of being

 a clear doctrine (teaching) of the Ultimate Reality, Allah, Almighty God

 a thorough examination of Western thought and mentality:

- individualism, modernism, rationalism, quantification; slackening of doctrine, nihilism, indifference

 a rigorous distinction between Intellect and reason

 an explanation of esoterism and its function in religion, of initiation

 an explanation of the sacred science of symbolism

 an analysis of anti-tradition and of counter-tradition, phenomena all the more acute in our times ( past 2014).





