ALCHEMY: The science by aid of which the chemical philosophers of medieval times attempted to transmute the baser metals into gold or silver. There is considerable divergence of opinion as to the etymology of the word, but it would seem to be derived from the Arabic al=the, and kimya=chemistry, which in turn derives from the [...]
Posts from ‘August, 2002’
Sufism and Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism strongly influenced the development of Sufism. Neoplatonism, as developed by Plotinus conceives God to be the source and goal of everything. It is probable that the translations of Plotinus have provided the necessary philosophical ground for Sufism. An examination of both Sufism and Neoplatonism reveals close similarities with regard to the nature of God, [...]
Shivaism and Vishnuism (Rene Guenon)
Excerpted from Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines by Rene Guenon. SHOULD the Supreme Principle, total and universal, which the religious doctrines of the West call ” God,” be conceived of as impersonal or as personal? This question has given rise to interminable and moreover quite pointless discussions, because it originates from partial [...]
The Relation of Hindu and Celtic Culture (Druuis Belenios Ategnatos)
The Celtic peoples are defined for the purpose of this article as referring to those people who in the past spoke a language of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family and also lived according to the ancient culture considered to be that of the speakers of Celtic as based upon Celtic traditions and [...]
Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy (Frithjof Schuon)
Metaphysical thought essentially presupposes intellection, or let us say intellectual intuition; the latter is not a matter of sentiment, of course, but of pure intelligence. Without this intuition, metaphysical speculation is reduced either to an opaque dogmatism or to an imprecise ratiocination; and quite evidently, speculative thought deprived of its intuitive foundation would be unable [...]
Frithjof Schuon and René Guénon (Martin Lings)
The following is the text of a talk given at the Temenos Academy on July 14, 1999 to an audience by no means altogether familiar with the writings of these two men. In the title of this talk the name Schuon is put before that of Guénon because it will be mainly about Schuon, as [...]
A Note on René Guénon (Frithjof Schuon)
The question has been asked why Guénon “chose the Islamic path” and not another; the “material” reply is that he really had no choice, given that he did not admit the initiatic nature of the Christian sacraments and that Hindu initiation was closed to him because of the caste system; given also that at that [...]
Rene Guenon (Mircea A. Tamas)
Our modern world, and mainly the Western world, is now the abode of emotional and rational human beings, more emotional than rational, with no place for intellectual people. The same way the true Rosy-Cross disappeared and found retreat in Asia, in the Seventeenth-Century, so the intellectual individuals disappeared from our Western public life. One of [...]
Rene Guenon (Martin Lings)
The following is a transcript of a lecture given in the autumn of 1994 at the Prince of Wales Institute in London and sponsored by the Temenos Academy. As regards the early part of the life of René Guénon our knowledge is very limited because of his extreme reticence. His objectivity, which is one aspect [...]
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