/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23090028]

I'm still confused about what this guy even believed and why he converted to Islam. Why did he do that if he thought Tradition was impossible in the modern world?

[Anonymous No.23090125]

>return to monke -Goonon

[Anonymous No.23090212]

>>23090028
1) He didn't think that Tradition was impossible in the modern world (that's Evola's cope and it is incorrect).

2) He thought that Islam was the option that is most accessible to westerners compared to other eastern traditions (Vajrayana/Mahayana did not have many authentic teachers in the west then, the same was true of Hinduism with the added caveat that some but not all parts of Hinduism are closed off for caste reasons) In addition to being geographically closer and more accessible as a European you won't stick out much in many parts of the Muslim world compared to India or China, Islamic thought is also closer to western thought generally and is like an east/west hybrid (i.e. legacy of Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Islam and common Abrahamic elements generally)

3) He may have ended up joining some Tantric Hindu school or something in India but the British denied him a visa when he applied for one which limited his ability to go to the source of Indian teachings.

4) He actually denied that he had been "converted" but said he just "moved into" Islam for his own personal reasons and he said that someone who knows the essential unity of tradition is never really "converted" to anything, but he recommended following the normal exterior practices and rules of whatever you join like sharia in Islam etc.

[Anonymous No.23090281]

>>23090212
Explain this meme to me please. It seems very dense.

[Anonymous No.23090467]

>>23090212
This was a good explanation, though I believe I read somewhere that he did sort of lean more towards telling people not to become Hindu in later life (I'm not sure exactly I've only read a small amount of his work).

[Anonymous No.23090491]

>>23090028
I keep confusing him with Pessoa and with Mainlander
For some reason these 3 are all tied together in my head

[Anonymous No.23090510]

>>23090281
It's not. If you read even just Crisis of the Modern World, you'd get that it is just a load of Guenon's buzzwords. There's not really a punch line.

>>23090212
Nowadays, Tradition is fake and gay (even in the east). Only in acceleration can the individual be dissolved.

[Anonymous No.23090531]

>>23090028
He's a frenchman who converted to islam.
I think I said enough.

[Anonymous No.23090533]

>>23090531
grow up

[Anonymous No.23090814]

>>23090212
why isn't Tradition possible in the western world tho

[Anonymous No.23090985]

>>23090814
because no one knows what it is, it's a hypothetical and everything that is claimed as tradition will be shot down by not having immediately enlightened the entire species
even if someone did something that did work, it would be new because if it were old people would still be using it ergo it would not fit into being a tradition
its a catch 22

[Anonymous No.23091039]

>>23090467
>though I believe I read somewhere that he did sort of lean more towards telling people not to become Hindu in later life
There is no source for this AFAIK but it's something that Schuon wrote, where Schuon took "Guenon recommended that people become Muslim" and twisted it into "Guenon thought westerners could ONLY become Muslim" despite Guenon never going that far because Schuon wanted all western Traditionalists to become Muslim (despite Schuon himself saying he only stands with Ibn Arabi to the extent that the ideas of Shankara can be found in some of Ibn Arabi's thought). In some of Guenon's letters with Evola or in talking about Evola with other people he acknowledged the possibility of westerners participating in Tantrism in India. The man who bought Guenon's house for him in Cairo was a westerner who had studied under Hindu teachers in India.

[Anonymous No.23091050]

>>23090028
Islam is just convincing. Most Hindus, even at Rene's time, didn't know what the hell a vedanta is, they just worshiped whatever god their parents worship. Islam is just a solid serious religion actual rules and tradition, not a larpy one like Buddhism or Confucianism.

[Anonymous No.23091058]

>>23090814
Because Western Tradition is synonymous with Catholicism and it has completely declined far more than any other tradition out there. Keep in mind that when Guenon criticised Catholicism it was long before Vatican 2, so the situation is even more dire now. Also, the Traditionalists were hell bent on a tradition having an initiatory element which Christianity does not have, or if it ever had it has been long gone.

Evola in The Fall of Spirituality says something stupid like
>Technically Catholicism is still a tradition even though it’s lost all of its tradition, so if you want to be Catholic you must remove all modern Catholic elements or beliefs and go back to the earlier church and remember its Roman pagan influence
I.e. become a heretic alongside the Protestants, which he (they) absolutely despised.

[Anonymous No.23091070]

>>23090985
So tradition is only seen in small groups of isolated/enclosed/close-knit communities where old men still practice it, and all the people in such groups are already enlightened by it being passed through unchanging generations

[Anonymous No.23091219]

>>23090814
>>23090028
Guenon thought you couldn't find a religious system (that includes living gurus) that teaches annihilation in Europe except for Freemasonry. The real reason why he became a Muslim was that he ended up in Egypt for research and around that time found all his connections in Europe falling apart. Catholics started to hate him in Europe because they realized he was just trying to psyop them into crypto-Buddhism. So he just decided to stay in Egypt and tell himself that rigorously following a religion is important despite not doing so for the past 20 years where he received all sorts of initiation and lived syncretically.

He was actually disappointed with a lot of the Sufism in Egypt. His personal library was filled with books on Hinduism which is what he really loved. I think the only Arabic book he owned was the Quran. He got all his info about Islam second-hand and made a bunch of serious mistakes like thinking Ibn Arabi was the author of a book that was similar to what Shankara believed, so he thought that Sufism was esoterically the same as Vedanta.

[Anonymous No.23091255]

>>23091070
Yes but imo tradition is purely supplementary. Tradition itself is not necessary to the truth, you get secret knowledge of higher truths from personal experience and/or not from humans, no matter if the content in question is true or not.
If this were not the case people wouldn't be chasing it here on /lit/. The Buddha didnt become the Buddha because he read about it, neither did Zarathustra Zarathustra or Chinese man Chinese man.
Shit even all the famous Greeks (and really all philosophers ever discussed) are famous because they came up with their own truth words.
That is to say, I think what they did and said back then we can assume was "good enough" to deal with the whatever existential problems are to be dealt with. We are here discussing it like lost lemmings even though we "know"(read) what they've said.
Idk, I find it interesting how we don't really celebrate a "Buddha: REmastered 4"

[Anonymous No.23091308]

What did Guenon think Islam had that Christianity didn't?

[Anonymous No.23091314]

>>23091308
A somewhat intact tradition, which it did at the time. Christianity was barely intact even back then.

[Anonymous No.23091345]

>>23091219
>His personal library was filled with books on Hinduism which is what he really loved.

Even at the end of his life he was still searching. He never found true peace (that is also a characteristic of Qutb as 'Pole' and certainty as a characteristic of highest spiritual realization. It is also the immovable center that is not searching as one has become a compass towards Visnech in 'Druidic/Hyperborean' symbolism)

Even towards his death his only advice Guénon gave to his son and mother was:
>Guénon’s library, his son informed us, was in virtually the same condition he had left it, with nothing having been moved — this being the consequence of a very specific request he had made of his wife shortly before his death. “I will be present, and here with you so long as my books are kept where they are.”
-At the Tomb of René Guénon in Old Cairo by Atif Khalil (University of Lethbridge)

He was still, like a lich or astral vampire trying to suck up all the knowledge even after his physical death, trying to keep his dying hands on the most precious thing he knew in life: knowledge. And what is Knowledge, but the very soul of Illusion?

Contrast this to the point Evola makes in his "Yoga of Power":
>The Tantras deny the value of knowledge. In order to obtain true knowledge, one must be transformed by action; hence kriya, action

Guénon failed. What a sad fate.

[Anonymous No.23091401]

>>23091255
>litfags are contrarian traditionalists
I agree
I still don't want to interact with others personally to gain knowledge and your self-searching introspective abilities is limited
Esotericism/ancient traditionalism (return to your root, live innawoods) always feels like a false dogma, and reading for the sake of "copying", or actually "revealing hidden truths" which are either your or some other people's interpretations of vague texts seems like a futile endeavor. What is the best way to enlighten oneself ? I think there is no absolute way to do so, since everyone copies on another. But what would you do if you really do want to search for absolute, personal worldly knowledge ?

[Anonymous No.23091450]

>>23091314
>A somewhat intact tradition
What does that mean though?

[Anonymous No.23091457]

>>23091450
A tradition that hasn't been watered down by modernity. Christianity is not even similar to how it was practiced hundreds of years ago. Islam isn't either, but Islam is slightly better in terms of decline than Christianity, although I should emphasise that I don't think Europeans should practice Islam or any foreign religion.

[Anonymous No.23091462]

>>23091401
>But what would you do if you really do want to search for absolute, personal worldly knowledge ?
you start speaking it and don't stop, no matter what anyone else has said or done, and as you say what it is you have to say you begin to make things understandable and peer into deeper topics, rinse and repeat.

[Anonymous No.23091475]

>>23091457
Thanks. I've been wondering what the hell he means by Tradition. So it's the practices of the religion. Did he ever give examples? Like which practices he thinks were watered down or upheld?

[Anonymous No.23091484]

>>23091475
I can't recall specifics as it's been some years since I last read Guenon (or any of the traditionalists) but I'd honestly recommend reading him above listening to anons on here.

[Anonymous No.23091493]

>>23091345
Evola then continues:
>After all, it is an Upanishadic theme that:
>"into blind darkness enter they that worship ignorance; into darkness greater than that, as it were, they that delight in knowledge," and that those who have studied, upon attaining true knowledge, "throw away books as if they were on fire."
-Isha-Upanishad 9.

Guénon failed.

[Anonymous No.23091505]

>>23090212
Nice summary. He was certainely not a Christ's divinity deniers like retard muslims (which are often the ones applausing him, and then saying he "unfortunely fell into sufism" prooving they know nothing of him but ionly use them for their unlegitimately prideful exoterism)

[Anonymous No.23091510]

>>23090510
>Only in acceleration can the individual be dissolved.
Yes, since dissolution and confusion is satanic, like your sabbateanist/frankist heresy, you jew

[Anonymous No.23091803]

>>23091475
"Tradition" in traditionalism refers to the idea of perennial truth and not religion per se. A religion is only "traditional" in so far as it embodies those ideals and, even then, can only embody them imperfectly and suited for a particular time and place.

The other important aspect of Tradition is the idea of cyclical history and decline. Traditionalists believe that in prehistory humanity lived in a Golden Age where Tradition was fully realised in the world. However, with the passing of time, Tradition became increasingly lost and obscure, with Modernity (which they call the Kali Yuga) being the terminal stage of this decline when humanity is pretty much entirely cut off from Tradition.

So all the phenomena of the modern world ,like democracy, materialism, hedonism etc. etc., are all symptomatic of the Kali Yuga and don't represent progress at all but rather dissolution.

[Anonymous No.23091920]

>>23091345
This is low-quality bait

>He never found true peace
Everyone who interacted with him described him as calm and peaceful

>He was still, like a lich or astral vampire trying to suck up all the knowledge even after his physical death
nothing in that quote has anything to do with "trying to suck up knowledge", he is basically just comforting his family

>Contrast this to the point Evola makes in his "Yoga of Power":
Evola is not any sort of reputable source on Tantra, he just read some Arthur Woodroffe translations (he couldnt read Sanksrit like Guenon) and then interpreted them in a Nietzschean manner. The Tantras don't "deny the value of knowledge", they actually ultimately affirm its superiority over action by making it the ends for which action is the means, Tantric methods are just means to the final enlightening gnosis or knowledge, which is itself more important than the actions that lead to it, and Abhinavagupta admits that if you can just intuit the final gnosis directly (the pathless path) then you don't need to practice any sort of action or method (i.e. they are helpful but ultimately unnecessary)

>>23091493
The part about book on fire isn't found in the Upanishad. Many people interpret verse 9 to referencing something other than gnosis when it says vidya in that verse since the Isha Upanishad concludes with a prayer asking for the removal of the blockage of the knowledge of God which is suggestive of removing ignorance through gnosis, and basically all the Upanishad that describe how liberation occurs are unanimous that liberation is reached through knowledge of the supernal Self.

[Anonymous No.23091939]

>>23090985
According to Guenon tradition etymologically means "that which is transmitted". I remember reading something about him saying that tradition has 3 parts : 1.the ethical 2.the social 3.the intellectual. can anybody remind me what he meant by these 3?

[Anonymous No.23091985]

>>23090531
he's not french, he's a jew-sandnigger.

[Anonymous No.23092003]

>>23091450
Per Guenon, an unbroken chain of spiritual influence originating from capital S Spirit itself intervening in the human realm. He goes on at length regarding potential degeneration or "latency" of a Tradition in Perspectives on Initiation. For instance, even if a group has entirely forgotten the proper, higher meaning of an initiatic rite, it can be that it is still a legitimate transference of spiritual influence so long as the chain of initiations leading back to the original intervention of Spirit was continued until the current day.

[Anonymous No.23092173]

>>23091920
You seem to think Evola as something lesser than Guénon.

Guénon was a shudra. People in these generals are totally ignorant of traditional societies, especially how they were formed in the West in ancient times.

The fact that Guénon did work for a living, and was not born into aristocracy (like Evola was), would have made him Humiliores in Roman Societal division for example in the West.

There was only one cardinal rule for honestiores (aristocracy) in Roman times: Do not work. Even Cicero says: "opifices omnes in sordita arte versantur = all workers are engaged in sordid professions". Labor was/is only performed by those who were not respectable.

Evola understood this intuitively:
>Evola studied engineering at the Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci in Rome, but did not complete his course, later claiming this was because he did not want to be associated with "bourgeois academic recognition" and titles such as "doctor and engineer"

Unlike Guénon, who took great pride in these titles.

While succesful capitalists/merchants/sudras could achieve success later in life and in terms of wealth and leisure (like Guénon) rise up to the ranks into the higher echelons of society, this sort of wealthy merchant or other succesful person's reputation would always remain tarnished and tainted by the stain of having once labored for a living.

In terms of hierarchy and ontological substruction of truly traditional societies: Evola is/was much more respectable than Guénon and should be regarded higher in rank when it comes to their books. This is not even up for debate.

Trads will never understand this though since they have no understanding of the Social World of ancient West. They have these weird orientalist, Vedic understanding of the castes that have little to none relevance in the Western tradition/world. Not only that, they are Guénon fanboys.

[Anonymous No.23092204]

>>23092173
>You seem to think Evola as something lesser than Guénon.
I think he was less insightful and had less valuable things to say, a lot of the worthwhile stuff in Evola's writings he picked up from Guenon after abandoning or moving away from his earlier focus on Nietzsche and German Idealism. I still appreciate some of Evola but he is clearly not on the same level as Guenon.

>Guénon was a shudra.
No he wasn't, he was outside the caste system but people outside the caste system are not automatically identified as shudras, that's not how it works. If anything, Guenon had the traits of a Brahmin with his sharp mind, penetrating intellect and his general predisposition to spiritual matters, i.e. he had a predominantly sattva guna disposition just like the Gita says that Brahmins have.

>would have made him Humiliores in Roman Societal division
Then you are talking about the Italian social model and not the Hindu one of caste, they aren't the same, it's not consistent at all to mix them together and suddenly go from talking about shudras to talking about another social conception altogether.

[Anonymous No.23092209]

>>23092204
kek, that retard deleted his own post