Paperback

173 pages

Quest Books

The Transcendent Unity of Religions

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

A study of exoteric and esoteric aspects of religions.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

224 pages

World Wisdom Books

Language of the Self

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

First published in India, this is a revised translation of essays that elucidate the universal principles for which the Advaita-Vedanta is so revered, encompassing in its amplitude every legitimate spiritual modality. In the chapter, "The Meaning of Caste," the reader is afforded an intelligent and spiritually vibrant way of understanding the archetypal roots that differentiate humankind. "The Meaning of Race" demolishes current errors and prejudices while depicting that genius which is unique to each race. "Principles and Criteria of Art" insists on the necessity of objective criteria for beauty. The shock to the Western readers upon encountering this idea gives way to joy, arising from the restoration of art's mission of transmitting the qualities of intelligence, beauty and nobility that are at once the natural and necessary dimensions of the human condition, as well as the projection of Truth and Beauty into the world of forms.

The modern outlook--despite its professed "objectivity"--recoils from the notion at the foundation of all traditional wisdom that there is an absolute, transcendent Reality. Whereas consciousness of the Absolute and its infinitude constitutes man's very reason for being, therefore his salvation and his happiness. Schuon's perspective is that of Sanatana Dharma, the "eternal religion," which is based on the intrinsic nature of things. For Western minds, which have a tendency toward irreducible alternatives, Schuon's crystalline yet musical delineations of the levels of reality come as a refreshing relief. At the root of this discernment is neither mere reasoning nor a willing of "what should be," but a disinterested contemplation of the metaphysical transparency of phenomena.

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Page : Schuon (Frithjof)

Paperback

210 pages

World Wisdom Books

Treasures of Buddhism

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

The current interest in Zen and the popularity of Buddhism in the Westare an understandable reaction to the artificiality and ugliness prevalentin the world today, and also to various concepts nowadays judgedrightly or wrongly as inoperative. Those seeking an antidote to newage materialism and the empty claims of pseudo-spirituality will find itin Schuon's incisive discernment of the intrinsic orthodoxy of Buddhism.Far from discounting the providential "mythology" of the person of theBuddha, the author relates its historical--and sometimes contradictory--phenomena to their celestial roots in the Divine Qualities and tothe human virtues that form the necessary framework for a spiritual life.Notions crucial to Buddhism such as suffering and its cessation, void-form, nirvana-samsara are elucidated in the light of the Vedantic distinction Atma-Maya, providing an important key to understanding thedifferences between Western philosophical "individualism" and theserenity of Eastern metaphysics. Here is a perspective that stands abovesectarian factionalism while at the same opening unique insights intothe multi-faceted spiritual universe that is Buddhism.

"Like a magnet, the beauty of the Buddha draws all the contradictions ofthe world and transmutes them into radiant silence; the image derivingtherefrom appears as a drop of the nectar of immortality fallen into thechilly world of forms and crystallized into a human form, a form accessibleto men."

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

230 pages

World Wisdom Books

In the Face of the Absolute

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

"The content of religions and their reason for being is the relationship between God and man... The diversity of religions results from the diversity of the possibilities comprised in the relationship between God and man; and this relationship is both unique and innumerable." The leit-motif of Schuon’s corpus has been described as the religio perennis — the permanent link (religio) that is both natural and supernatural between God and man, the Necessary and the possible. This book presents and illustrates many concepts and distinctions essential to metaphysics, anthropology and religious phenomenology, such as intellect-reason, metaphysics-theology, esoterism-exoterism and the concept of religious archetypes. The chapter entitled Âtmâ-Mâyâ is a succinct masterpiece on the degrees of Being as well as the relationship of metaphysics to cosmology.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Hardcover

166 pages

World Wisdom Books

The Feathered Sun: Plains Indians in Art and Philosophy

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Plains Indian spirituality has been a subject of enduring fascination the world over and never more than today. Schuon gives us a truly insightful vision of Native American spirituality with the stunning combination of his writings and paintings. The essentially spiritual and symbolist outlook of Indian civilization is brought to light as Schuon focuses on the fundamental elements of Plains religion and the culture to which it gave rise. Here is a message of Truth, Holiness and human grandeur, harboring within itself something mysterious and sacred which it expresses with profound originality.

  Publisher comments

In many ways a culmination of Schuon's lifework. Affords surprising insights that pepper this book and that can startle the reader into new understandings.

  About the author

Frithjof Schuon is best known as the foremost spokesman of the religio perennis and as a philosopher in the metaphysical current of Shankara and Plato. Over the past 50 years, he has written more than 20 books on metaphysical, spiritual and ethnic themes as well as having been a regular contributor to journals on comparative religion in both Europe and America. Schuon's writings have been consistently featured and reviewed in a wide range of scholarly and philosophical publications around the world, respected by both scholars and spiritual authorities.

 Schuon was born in 1907 in Basle, Switzerland, of German parents. As a youth, he went to Paris, where he studied for a few years before undertaking a number of trips to North Africa, the Near East and India in order to contact spiritual authorities and witness traditional cultures. Following World War II, he accepted an invitation to travel to the American West, where he lived for several months among the Plains Indians, in whom he has always had a deep interest. Having received his education in France, Schuon has written all his major works in French, which began to appear in English translation in 1953. Of his first book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (London, Faber & Faber) T.S. Eliot wrote: "I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion."

In addition to his writings, Schuon has painted for most of his life, though it was not until recently, with the publication of The Feathered Sun (World Wisdom Books)--which includes nineteen color reproductions of his paintings on American Indian themes--that a collection of his artwork has come into the public light.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

264 pages

World Wisdom Books

Form and Substance in the Religions

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

The modern world is characterized by its fascination with relativity and individualism. Into this morass, the writings of Frithjof Schuon enter like a bolt of lightning that both clears the air and brings serenity in its wake. As the pre-eminent exponent of the Perennial Philosophy, Schuon restores a true sense of proportion in affirming the transcendent Real, and then draws all the consequences, spiritually and humanly, as well as aesthetically on the plane of forms.

At the level of ideas, Schuon is an unsurpassable expositor of first principles. One of the reasons he is so widely acclaimed is his fluency in so many "languages of the Spirit." Seminal chapters such as "Atma-Maya," plus gems from the traditional worlds of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, lay to rest any doubt that the Sacred has not only the first but the final word.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

216 pages

World Wisdom Books

Roots of the Human Condition

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Roots of the Human Condition deals with the fundamental principles of universal and perennial metaphysics and their application on the level of spiritual and moral life. This book reveals many answers to those seekers questing for knowledge of what lies behind the reality of our world and, more particularly, our own human souls.

The book is divided into three sections. The first deals with metaphysics and epistemology, the second concerns esoterism and its interpretation of religions, and the third focuses on spiritual and moral life. Thus, the reader is provided with an intellectual method-in the truest sense-with which to view the profound questions of existence, then is shown how authentic esoterism approaches the spiritual realization of these truths, and finally is immersed in compelling considerations of human virtue, the almost alchemical result of realizing those truths.

Schuon writes that people often seek certitude through phenomena of the external world, while we should be seeking it in our very being. This is where his books have been leading readers for generations, to a strong certitude of the realities and purpose of the world and of our own existence. In this book, Schuon leads readers to insights on the roots of the human condition, precisely.

Schuon's writings appeal to philosophers, students of comparative religion, and to spiritual seekers, among others. Roots of the Human Condition offers each of these an opportunity to be guided through some of the profoundest human questions by one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

184 pages

World Wisdom Books

To Have a Center

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

This collection of essays includes a remarkable variety of subjects, from the order of first principles to a wide range of their applications. Of particular interest are several chapters on what the author terms "integral anthropology." Schuon views human nature in the light of man's destiny to transcend himself in a way that is "supernaturally natural"; in other words, by realizing his vocation as "image of God." Included are essays on the relation between intelligence and character; on the phenomenon of genius; the spiritual messages of David, Shankara and Honen; a comparison between Ptolemic and Copernican astronomy; a comparison of historical Gnosticism with pure gnosis.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

230 pages

World Wisdom Books

Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

"Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism serves as a near complete expression of Schuon’s thought. This book is distinctive in presenting, in one volume, what might be called the three hallmarks of Schuon’s writings. In clear and distinct order, he writes on cosmology and metaphysical principles, on the esoteric and exoteric expression of these principles in the various religious traditions, and on the trials and ultimate transformation of human nature" (from the Foreward by Bruce K. Hanson). Those familiar with Schuon’s writings will know that this transformation involves not only certitude of thought and serenity of mind, but also certitude and serenity of heart. Whether the subject is intellectual, religious, moral or aesthetic, the aim is ultimately a quasi-existential assimilation of certitude that is reflected in man’s centrality, his total and integral nature.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

156 pages

World Wisdom Books

From the Divine to the Human

Survey of Metaphysis and Epistemology

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Schuon is known as a philosopher in the literal sense of the word, a "lover of wisdom." It is a wisdom that is inseparable from a sense of the sacred, which is the unique prerogative of humankind. The diverse subjects covered by these essays include a discussion on the symbolism of the human body, an outline of spiritual anthropology as well as a chapter on the structure and universality of the conditions of existence. Underlying this diversity of topics, is a perspective that combines mathematical rigor with a kind of musical profundity. The entry of the Absolute into the world of time and space gives birth to the traditional worlds, the great Revelations that manifest in so many ways both Divine Unity and human immortality. As Schuon writes, "the man for whom each Message is providentially destined must recognize in it what is best in himself; he cannot escape the truth of his call any more than he can escape existentially the reality of his heart."

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

90 pages

World Wisdom Books

Echoes of Perennial Wisdom

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Comparable to a meditative stroll in a garden, this anthology of excerpts brings together relatively short, jewel-like passages from Schuon's works both published and previously unpublished. In choosing the excerpts, care has been taken to include texts concerning the spiritual life in its simpler and more concrete aspects, so that no one is excluded from the insights offered here. An important complement to the author's metaphysical perspective, this is a work that speaks directly to our thirst for meaning and profundity.

"The beauty of the sacred is a symbol or a foretaste of, and sometimes a means to, the joy that God alone procures." — Sometimes a brief and concise thought can have a deep and long-lasting effect on our soul. This collection evokes the essence of spiritual truths. Browsing through this book is like taking a meditative stroll through a garden — whether one can spend an afternoon or only a few moments, there is nourishment and refreshment for mind and soul. Schuon is known for his ability of going to the heart of a subject, and these epigrammatic passages are akin to Platonic recollections in their power to rekindle our awareness of the quintessential values that constitute the soul’s certitude, serenity and happiness.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

96 pages

World Wisdom Books

The Play of Masks

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Schuon's point of departure--far from being his own personal message--is the Vedantic discernment between the Real and the illusory, then concentration upon the Real. This collection of essays provides an unusually rich description of what constitutes the prerogatives and fulfillment of the human state. Schuon is indispensable in providing the conceptual framework for the reader who is seeking a perspective that is rooted in Tradition, integrally human and above the impasses of confessional theologies.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

108 pages

World Wisdom Books

Road to the Heart

Poems

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Poetry has been called "the language of the gods," and in this collection of over 80 short poems, the principles and insights expressed in Schuon's other writings find a lyric voice in the most simple and concise form. The poetic imagery is both metaphysical and mystical--whether Hindu, Christian, Moslem or Red Indian--as well as drawing on the rich and universal symbolism of Virgin Nature. The message, much needed in our times, in an affirmation of the essential goodness of creation and the preciousness of the human state, not through self-deceiving optimism, but because the Good and the Real coincide, because God's essential nature is merciful, because man's deepest being is joy, peace and immortality.

A finite image of Infinity:

This is the purpose of all poetry.

All human work to its last limits tends;

Its Archetype in Heaven never ends.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

238 pages

State University of New York

Advice to the Serious Seeker

Mediations on the Teaching of Frithjof Schuon

(James S. CUTSINGER)

  Book description

Two books in one, Advice to the Serious Seeker is an introduction for scholars to the perennialist school of comparative religious philosophy and at the same time a guidebook for the general reader who is looking for intellectually serious but accessible answers to questions about the spiritual life.

Scholars will find a comprehensive introduction to the work of Frithjof Schuon, the leading contemporary figure in the perennialist or traditionalist school of comparative religion. Written by James S. Cutsinger, one of the world's foremost academic authorities on the perennial philosophy, the book provides a detailed commentary on the full range of Schuon's spiritual writings.

But the book is also intended for inquisitive and searching readers in general. Composed in a style that is simple and conversational, it reads as an open letter to the author's students. The aim is to cut through the banality of much that passes for spiritual instruction today and to provide intellectually serious but accessible answers to questions typically posed by cynics and skeptics, conservative believers, and persons attracted to the so-called "new age" religions.

The author's Advice takes the form of a series of meditations on Truth, Virtue, Beauty, and Prayer, which Schuon regards as the fundamental elements in every authentic spiritual path. Covering a range of issues both theoretical and practical, topics include proofs of God, the problem of evil, classical virtues, predestination and freedom, symbolism and cosmic hierarchy, sacred art, the relationship between spiritual method and grace, techniques of concentration and meditation, the role of the spiritual master, and human destiny. The book concludes with an epilogue on Schuon's well-known thesis concerning the "transcendent unity of religions."

  About the author

James S. Cutsinger is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Thought at the University of South Carolina. His previous work includes The Form of Transformed Vision: Coleridge and the Knowledge of God.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

Sophia Perennis et Universalis

Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Man's most fundamental needs may be summed up as the need for Knowledge, for Love, and for a Way to salvation. At the present time many people feel cut off from any true meaning of existence, and the rush and personal worry of modern life as well as inner states appear to make it more and more difficult to satisfy these needs, to find a fundamental basis of living.

The habitual limitations of current modern thought are quickly dispersed and the spiritual perspectives normal for mankind are clearly set forth in this new translation of Schuon's second book. An extraordinary breadth of subjects rendered in an aphoristic style makes the wisdom of these reflections accessible to a wide range of readers. The "spiritual contours" of various traditions are seen in the light of their necessary divergences, Schuon's emphasis always being on the one hand the essential nature of things and on the other the great question of knowing what aspect of Truth or Reality it is that motivates the entire being of a given individual. For, as the author says, "metaphysical knowledge is one thing; its actualization ... quite another." Of particular interest here are the passages on the spiritual phenomenon of Ramakrishna and the interplay between knowledge, love and virtue in spiritual life.

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Paperback

168 pages

World Wisdom Books

Songs for a Spiritual Traveler

Selected Poems - German-English Edition

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

The poetry of Frithjof Schuon has been called metaphysical music. Every poem in this German/English bilingual collection--drawn from more than three thousand poems written during the closing years of his life--is a true compass pointing the reader time and again to Schuon's fundamental theme: the remembrance of God. These small gems are as profound as the sea and as simple as water itself. Schuon repeatedly traces the journey of a soul which has found its celestial homeland and views the play of this world from the perspective of Eternity. Like the stars, these poems strike the reader as both old and new. They echo the primordial melodies of Being and communicate a message of certitude and serenity for every person who longs for spiritual light.

Schuon's poetry, which possesses both formal integrity and mystical abandon, is the flowering of a soul deeply in love with the reality of God. His poems are born not from mental effort but from a deep interior vision, and he sings of seeing God everywhere in the simple radiant language of one who stands alone before the Creator. The spiritual traveler may carry this book for a lifetime and not exhaust its content because its content is the inexhaustibly beautiful life of the spirit.

"There is no time in the nature of God; / Nor in the encounter with the Lord. / The moment of prayer is eternity-- / It stands in the sky like the morning star; / In the now of the heart lies thy whole life."

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

164 pages

World Wisdom Books

Stations of Wisdom

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Schuon goes to the root of the impasse reached by the modern mind, resulting from the difficulty so many people have in accepting the symbolic expressions of religion in the face of academic rationalism, relativism and the discoveries of science. These essays clear the ground, beginning with the crucial reintegration of intelligence and our need for causal explanations, long left neglected and outside faith. The transcendent and primordial nature of Revelation, intellect, faith, prayer and the human condition are set forth in a framework that reconciles the apparent incompatibility between metaphysics--commonly confused with rational thought--and the love of God, often seen only from the standpoint of sentimentality.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

264 pages

World Wisdom Books

Adastra & Stella Maris

Poems

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

During the last three years of his life, Frithjof Schuon wrote approximately 3,500 short poems in his mother tongue, German. These poems, which have been called "metaphysical music," cover every possible aspect of spiritual doctrine, practice and virtue, as well as the role and function of beauty. They express every conceivable subtlety of spiritual and moral counsel--and this is not merely in general terms, but with uncanny intimacy, detail, and precision. They express the same unerring sharpness of intellect, profundity, comprehensiveness, and compassion which one finds in the range of Schuon's better-known dialectical writings.

Some of the poems are autobiographical, with reminiscences of places experienced: Basle and Paris, the fairy-tale streets of old German towns, Morocco and Andalusia, Turkey and Greece, the American West. Others evoke the genius of certain peoples, such as the Hindus, the Japanese, the Arabs, the American Indians, and also the Cossacks and the Gypsies. Yet other poems elucidate the role of music, dance, and poetry itself. Occasionally, the superficiality of the modern world comes in for biting, and sometimes fiercely humorous, comment: "A worldly banquet: chandeliers glitter / In the large hall-- / And brilliant society, ladies and gentlement, / Sit down for the meal. / They talk of everything and they talk of nothing-- /The wine is red, / And so are the flowers. But no one, no one / Thinks of death."

Adastra and Stella Maris represent the heart of Schuon's German poems. These two books, combined in one volume, express, in the words of Annemarie Schimmel, "a mystery that lies beyond the normal human expression....Here we listen to the thinker who, far from the complicated scholarly sentences of his learned prose work, sings the simple prayers of the longing soul." The German, which perfectly reflects the most ancient canons of the prosodic norm, carries the echo of a nightingale in the gardens of Paradise. Each poem is a diamond--sparkling and clear, an architectural masterpiece full of light. The beauty of this poetry, which irresistibly combines profundity and simplicity, touches upon that luminous center where the way of knowledge and the path of love converge. Readers familiar with Schuon's many books and articles will find here the same elements that characterize the rest of his vast corpus: universality, essentiality, primordiality; yet in a form that makes his message more accessible. These lyrics speak to the heart, the mind, and the soul with compelling immediacy. The spiritual traveler may carry this book for a lifetime and not exhaust its content, because its content is the inexhaustibly beautiful life of the spirit.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

163 pages

World Wisdom Books

Sufism: Veil and Quintessence

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Schuon makes a critical distinction between an absolute Islam and a contingent Islam. Surveying the fundamental and thus indispensable elements of the Islamic revelation allows one to gain a perspective on its more relative aspects. The Arab style, with its pious exaggerations, ellipses, hyperbolism and love of sublimity, is seen here not only in its tendency to obscure pure sapeintial knowledge, but also in light of its profound spiritual intention. Also included is a chapter which situates philosophy with regard to the concerns of faith and theology, restoring to it its normal and legitimate meaning of love of divine and eternal Wisdom.

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Paperback

182 pages

World Wisdom Books

The Eye of the Heart

Metaphysics, Cosmology, Spiritual Life

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

Many people today are looking to traditional wisdom for a holistic viewpoint that can refute the systematic ugliness of the modern world. Known for his intellectual universality Frithjof Schuon is unequaled among living writers in elucidating the spiritual intention of traditional doctrines and initiatory practices. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of subjects including the fundamental principles of spiritual symbolism questions on the afterlife sexuality within the framework of spirituality and a host of indispensable insights concerning the integration of everyday activities into spiritual life. Schuon is relentlessly discerning in his critique of modern errors such as existentialism rationalism and the so-called realism that labels as abstractions all principal realities.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

124 pages

World Wisdom Books

The Transfiguration of Man

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

People today are searching for a worldview that is holistic and reintegrating. Schuon offers it with a wide range of topics from the deviations of modern philosophical thought to making one's daily work a support for spiritual life. He argues convincingly that to be human means to be suspended between animality and divinity whereas mosern thought-whe ther philosophical or scientific-admits only of animality. Schuon has included a collection of very brief and simple writings on the life of prayer useful to anyone seeking to center daily life in the spiritual.

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Hardcover

292 pages

World Wisdom Books

Images of Primordial and Mystic Beauty

Paintings

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

"What I seek to express…is the Sacred combined with Beauty, thus spiritual attitudes and virtues of soul. And the vibration that emanates from the paintings must lead inward."

Man lives by Truth and Beauty; it is only relatively recently that Schuon — widely recognized for his metaphysical writings — has become known as a painter of great skill and unique insight. This new volume presents for the first time 125 full color plates of Schuon’s work plus many more in black and white. The subjects here are predominantly taken from the fascinating world of the American Indians. Also included, however, are many canvases concerning the mystery of celestial and human femininity. The main features of Schuon’s art are the nobility of the subject, the precision of the drawing and the "impressionistic" reverberation of the surface or colors. "What I seek to express…is the Sacred combined with Beauty, thus spiritual attitudes and virtues of soul. And the vibration that emanates from the paintings must lead inward."

Frithjof Schuon is not a painter who is interested in metaphysics; he is a metaphysician who from time to time produces a painting. This distinction is essential because his fundamental vocation is the perennial wisdom as it is expressed in his written works, whereas his art appears rather as an expression of the aesthetic, psychological or moral dimension of the Philosophia Perennis. In other words, Schuon is interested not only in metaphysical principles, but also—by way of consequence—in their cosmic and human radiation; which means, not that he intentionally puts this or that archetype or symbolism into a painting—which in fact he does not— but simply that his spiritual insight, or let us say his contemplative mind, manifests itself in his artistic productions.

The subject of Schuon’s art is on the one hand the Plains Indian world, and on the other hand the mystery of cosmic and human femininity; Goethe’s "Eternal Feminine" (das Ewig-Weibliche) or the Hindu Shakti. The first subject has its roots in his affinity with the fascinating world of Red Indian heroism and mysticism; the second subject of his art—sacred femininity—has its roots in metaphysics and cosmology; one could also say, in a more relative sense, in Schuon’s affinity with Hinduism. In fact, his representations of the Virgin Mary are not intended to be Christian icons; they universalize the celestial Virgin in a manner which makes one think of Hindu and possibly Mahayanic art.

Towards the end of this collection, the reader will find a number of images which are not Red Indian; some of them represent the Virgin Mary seen in an esoteric light, some others represent the Hindu mystics Akka Mahadevi and Lalla Yogishwari, or other women saints of the same type, both subjects being connected with the tantric mystery of sacred nudity. This last remark also applies to the images of the White-Buffalo-Cow-Woman who brought the Sacred Pipe to the Lakota Indians; we may add that the headdresses she wears in some of Schuon’s paintings, or other details, have a symbolic import and do not mean that the heavenly person actually appeared in that way. In this context, let us repeat here an opinion of a French author: the feathered crown of the Red Indians is the most majestic headdress the human genius ever conceived. In fact, the Plains Indian genius is like a combination of the buffalo, the eagle and the sun, symbolically speaking; earth and heaven, and between them the messenger of the gods.

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Paperback

204 pages

World Wisdom Books

Understanding Islam

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Publisher comments

A valuable book for both Westerners and Muslims. New avenues of approach and surprising insights into the "five pillars" of faith are afforded by the universality of Schuon's perspective--valuable both to Westerners and to Muslims seeking a deeper understanding of the basis of faith

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

144 pages

World Wisdom Books

Light on the Ancient Worlds

(Frithjof SCHUON)

  Book description

The triumph of materialism that characterizes Western civilization has exacted as its price a corresponding downfall of spiritual and intellectual truth: technology casts its manufactured light on the ruins of mankind's ancient heritages and transmitted wisdom. We inhabit a wasteland of ignorance when it comes to essential human values.

But precisely it is the very darkness of this spiritual void which draws down an adequate response to the situation, for "nature abhors a vacuum." The world may pass by blindly, but the Truth has nevertheless struck home for those who have eyes to see, in the vast witness over the past some fifty years given in the works of Frithjof Schuon. Schuon casts a light on mankind's ancient heritages and transmitted wisdom through his impressive and precise handling of complextheological and metaphysical problems. His genius lies in the way he applies universal principles to the relevant domains of metphysics, theology, cosmology, anthropology, and the arts and cultures of our world in general. To read and understand this book is to gain an ordered world view for our times, and for all times, for the message is integral, universal, and pertinent to both our present lifeand final ends.

Now required reading at The College of New Jersey.

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Page : Frithjof Schuon

Paperback

128 pages

Sophia Perennis et Universalis

Rene Guenon - Some Observations

(Frithjof SCHUON)

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Page : Schuon (Frithjof)

See also : Guénon (René)