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The other founding figures of the Traditionalist School were the German philosopher Frithjof Schuon and the Ceylonese scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy . To these were added over time such imposing figures as Titus Burckhardt , Huston Smith , Martin Lings , Marco Pallis , Whitall N. Perry , Michel Vâlsân , William Stoddart , Charles Le Gai Eaton , Tage Lindbom and Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr . Other major figures of the twentieth century have been profoundly influenced by the school, including T.S. Eliot , the Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade and the Italian Fascist and Occultist Julius Evola . FUNDAMENTAL TENETS The fundamental tenets of this school or philosophy may be stated as follows: # All authentic religious traditions are true, deriving from the Primordial Tradition. Guénon's work draws extensively on Hindu , Taoist , Muslim , Judaic and Christian sources. At first, following certain Hindu schools, he rejected Buddhism as heretical, but Dr. Coomaraswamy , at the instigation of Marco Pallis (a Traditionalist convert to Tibetan Buddhism) demonstrated the essential orthodoxy of Buddhism and its consistency with Vedanta. Guenon, accordingly, authorised amendments to references to Buddhism in his earlier works. # Contrary to the modern idea of "progress", and in accordance with all traditions, the world is in a state of intellectual and spiritual decline, inevitable from the very start of an historical cycle. We are at present in what the Classical West called the Iron Age , and the Hindus Kali Yuga . In addition to this, the Western world, unlike other cultures, has lost its connection to the Primordial Tradition. This took place first in the Classical era, was rectified by Christianity, which re-introduced a modified form of the Primordial Tradition, but the severance began again at the time of the renaissance (this is a somewhat truncated account. The reader is referred to Guénon's ''Crisis of the Modern World'' for a fuller one). VALUES Traditionalists accord a high value to the intellectual activities of the pre-modern world and non-Western societies and a good deal of their work lies in the sciences of Metaphysics and Symbolism , as well as the discussion and elucidation of the various spiritual traditions. Where they venture into such realms as social criticism it is clearly from a Traditionalist perspective which turns the Progressivist / Evolutionist assumptions of Modernist theorists (both " Left " and " Right ") and of Post-modernist s alike on their heads. A good exposition of the views of this movement can be found in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's ''Knowledge and the Sacred'' and Harry Oldmeadow's ''Traditionalism''. OCCULT AND ELITIST TRADITIONALISM According to the writings of the Traditionalist Occultist Julis Evola, the key element to the manifestation of Tradition in society is an orientation upwards, away from the human and towards the supra-human or supernatural. According to Evola, in a properly Traditional society, all aspects of life are oriented towards the spiritual and towards Tradition. This, he believed, is reflected in the Hindu doctrine of the four ages, in which the Golden Age, or age of myth is almost entirely spiritual in nature, whereas the modern age, the Kali Yuga, is an age of crass materialism. The end of the Kali Yuga, accoding to Evola, is heralded by a complete turning away from the spiritual and Tradition, in a social context in which all aspects of life are focused on material things and the “merely human.” Another key aspect of Evola's Tradition is its elitism. In his ideal Traditional society, the ruler is an absolute monarch who is worshiped as a god, as were the Roman Caesars or the Egyptian Pharoahs. Every other level of society is defined strictly by Caste and further subdivided by vocation. In a place just below that of the monarch would be the aristocratic priest-warriors, while at the bottom would be the slaves doing manual labor. Tradition, according to Evola, is undemocratic and anti-egalitarian. In fact, democratic and egalitarian tendencies, particularly in their most materialistic and mass-oriented manifestations in Democratic Capitalism and, just below it, Communism , are the epitome of the materialistic mass-oriented Kali Yuga. Evola put his Traditional elitist and anti-democratic principles into action through his support for the totalitarian Fascist regime of the Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini , from the 1920s until Mussolini's death in 1943. REFERENCES
BOOKS AND RESOURCES A CRITIQUE OF MARK SEDGWICK'S BOOK ABOUT THIS SPIRITUAL CURRENT |