It is a fact that too many authors - we would almost say: general opinion - attribute to gnosis what is proper to Gnosticism and to other counterfeits of the sophia perennis, and moreover make no distinction between the latter and the most freakish movements, such as spiritualism, theosophism and the pseudo-esoterisms that saw the light of day in the twentieth century. It is particularly regrettable that these confusions are taken seriously by most theologians, who obviously have an interest in entertaining the worst opinion possible concerning gnosis; now the fact that an imposture necessarily imitates a good, since otherwise it could not even exist, does not authorize charging this good with all the sins of the imitation. sophiaperennis: Gnosis

Skeptical rationalism and titanesque naturalism are the two great abuses of intelligence, which violate pure intellectuality as well as the sense of the sacred; [NA: By a curious and inevitable backlash, the abuse of intelligence is always accompani ed by some inconsequentiality and some blindness: on the plane of art for example, it is inconsequential to copy nature when one is condemned in advance to stop halfway, for in painting, one can realize neither total perspective nor movement, any more than one can realize the latter in sculpture, without mentioning the impossibility of imitating the living appearance of surfaces.] it is through this propensity that thinkers "are wise in their own eyes" and end by "calling evil good, and good evil" and by "putting darkness for light, and light for darkness" (Isaiah, 5:20 and 21); they are also the ones who, on the plane of life or experience, "make bitter what is sweet," namely the love of the eternal God, and "sweet what is bitter," namely the illusion of the evanescent world. sophiaperennis: Skeptical rationalism and titanesque naturalism

A religious dogma ceases, however, to be limited in this way once it is understood in the light of its inherent truth, which is of a universal order, and this is the case in all esotericism. On the other hand, the ideas formulated in esotericism and in metaphysical doctrines generally may in their turn be understood according to the dogmatic or ’theoristic’ tendency, and the case is then analogous to that of the religious dogmatism of which we have just spoken. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

Avant-garde philosophy is properly an acephalous logic: it labels what is intellectually evident as "prejudice"; seeking to free itself from the servitudes of the mind, it falls into infra-logic; closing itself, above, to the light of the intellect, it opens itself, below, to the darkness of the subconscious. sophiaperennis: Use and limit of Logic

Thus metaphysical certitude is absolute because of the identity between the knower and the known in the Intellect. If an example may be drawn from the sensory sphere to illustrate the difference between metaphysical and religious knowledge, it may be said that the former, which can be called ’esoteric’ when it is manifested through a religious symbolism, is conscious of the colourless essence of light and of its character of pure luminosity; a given religious belief, on the other hand, will assert that light is red and not green, whereas another belief will assert the opposite; both will be right in so far as they distinguish light from darkness but not in so far as they identify it with a particular colour. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy

Not only is scientistic philosophy ignorant of the Divine Presences, it ignores their rhythms and their "life": it ignores, not only the degrees of reality and the fact of our imprisonment in the sensory world, but also cycles, the universal solve et coagula; this means that it ignores the gushing forth of our world from an invisible and fulgurant Reality, and its reabsorption into the dark light of this same Reality. All of the Real lies in the Invisible; it is this above all that must be felt or understood before one can speak of knowledge and effectiveness. But this will not be understood, and the human world will continue inexorably on its course. sophiaperennis: Scientistic philosophy

In Plotinus   the essence of Platonism   reveals itself without any reserves. Here one passes from the passion-centered body to the virtuous soul and from the soul to the cognizant Spirit, then from and through the Spirit to the suprarational and unitive vision of the ineffable One, which is the source of all that exists; in the One the thinking subject and the object of thought coincide. The One projects the Spirit as the sun projects light and heat: that is to say, the Spirit, Nous, emanates eternally from the One and contemplates It. By this contemplation the Spirit actualizes in itself the world of the archetypes or ideas - the sum of essential or fundamental possibilities - and thereafter produces the animic world; the latter in its turn engenders the material world - this dead end where the reflections of the possibilities coagulate and combine. The human soul, brought forth by the One from the world of the archetypes, recognizes these in their earthly reflections, and it tends by its own nature toward its celestial origin. With Aristotle  , we are much closer to the earth, though not yet so close as to find ourselves cut off from heaven. If by rationalism is meant the reduction of the intelligence to logic alone and hence the negation of intellectual intuition (which in reality has no need of mental supports even though they may have to be used for communicating perceptions of a supramental order), then it will be seen that Aristotelianism is a rationalism in principle but not absolutely so in fact, since its theism and hylomorphism depend on Intellection and not on reasoning alone. [NA: Hylomorphism is a plausible thesis, but what is much less plausible is the philosopher’s opposition of this thesis to the Platonic Ideas, of which it is really only a prolongation, one that tends to exteriorize things to a dangerous degree just because of the absence of those Ideas.] And this is true of every philosophy that conveys metaphysical truths since an unmitigated rationalism is possible only where these truths or intellections are absent. [NA: Kantian theism does not benefit from this positive reservation; for Kant  , God is only a "postulate of practical reason," which takes us infinitely far away from the real and transcendent God of Aristotle.] sophiaperennis: Plato

The cosmic, or more particularly the earthly function of beauty is to actualize in the intelligent creature the Platonic recollection of the archetypes, right up to the luminous Night of the Infinite. [NA: According to Pythagoras   and Plato, the soul has heard the heavenly harmonies before being exiled on earth, and music awakens in the soul the remembrance of these melodies.] This leads us to the conclusion that the full understanding of beauty demands virtue and is identifiable with it: that is to say, just as it is necessary to distinguish, in objective beauty, between the outward structure and the message in depth, so there is a distinguo to make, in the sensing of the beautiful, between the aesthetic sensation and the corresponding beauty of soul, namely such and such a virtue. Beyond every question of "sensible consolation" the message of beauty is both intellectual and moral: intellectual because it communicates to us, in the world of accidentality, aspects of Substance, without for all that having to address itself to abstract thought; and moral, because it reminds us of what we must love, and consequently be. In conformity with the Platonic principle that like attracts like, Plotinus states that "it is always easy to attract the Universal Soul . . . by constructing an object capable of undergoing its influence and receiving its participation. The faithful representation of a thing is always capable of undergoing the influence of its model; it is like a mirror which is capable of grasping the thing’s appearance." [NA: This principle does not prevent a heavenly influence mani festing itself incident ally or accidentally even in an image which is extremely imperfect - works of perversion and subversion being excluded - through pure mercy and by virtue of the ’exception that proves the rule".] This passage states the crucial principle of the almost magical relationship between the conforming recipient and the predestined content or between the adequate symbol and the sacramental presence of the prototype. The ideas of Plotinus must be understood in the light of those of the "divine Plato": the latter approved the fixed types of the sacred sculptures of Egypt, but he rejected the works of the Greek artists who imitated nature in its outward and insignificant accidentality, while following their individual imagination. This verdict immediately excludes from sacred art the productions of an exteriorizing, accidentalizing, sentimentalist and virtuoso naturalism, which sins through abuse of intelligence as much as by neglect of the inward and the essential. sophiaperennis: Plato

In reality, the philosophia perennis, actualized in the West, though on different levels, by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Fathers and the Scholastics, constitutes a definitive intellectual heritage, and the great problem of our times is not to replace them with something better - for this something could not exist according to the point of view in question here - but to return to the sources, both around us and within us, and to examine all the data of contemporary life in the light of the one, timeless truth. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle

From the point of view of the Platonists - in the widest sense - the return to God is inherent in the fact of existence: our being itself offers the way of return, for that being is divine in its nature, otherwise it would be nothing; that is why we must return, passing through the strata of our ontological reality, all the way to pure Substance, which is one; it is thus that we become perfectly "ourselves". Man realizes what he knows: a full comprehension - in the light of the Absolute - of relativity dissolves it and leads back to the Absolute. Here again there is no irreducible antagonism between Greeks and Christians: if the intervention of Christ can become necessary, it is not because deliverance is something other than a return, through the strata of our own being, to our true Self, but because the function of Christ is to render such a return possible. It is made possible on two planes, the one existential and exoteric and the other intellectual and esoteric; the second plane is hidden in the first, which alone appears in the full light of day, and that is the reason why for the common run of mortals the Christian perspective is only existential and separative, not intellectual and unitive. This gives rise to another misunderstanding between Christians and Platonists: while the Platonists propound liberation by Knowledge because man is an intelligence [NA: Islam, in conformity with its " paracletic" charact er, reflects this point of view - which is also that of the Vedanta and of all other forms of gnosis - in a Semitic and religious mode, and realizes it all the more readily in its esoterism; like the Hellenist, the Moslem asks first of all: "What must I know or admit, seeing that I have an intelligence capable of objectivity and of totality?" and not a priori "What must I want, since I have a will that is free, but fallen?"] the Christians envisage in their over-all doctrine a salvation by Grace because man is an existence - as such separated from God - and a fallen and impotent will. Once again, the Greeks can be reproached for having at their command but a single way, inaccessible in fact to the majority, and for giving the impression that it is philosophy that saves, just as one can reproach the Christians for ignoring liberation by Knowledge and for assigning an absolute character to our existential and volitive reality alone and to means appropriate to that aspect of our being, or for taking into consideration our existential relativity and not our "intellectual absoluteness"; nevertheless the reproach to the Greeks cannot concern their sages, any more than the reproach to the Christians can attack their gnosis, nor in a general way their sanctity. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity

Avant-garde philosophy is properly an acephalous logic: it labels what is intellectually evident as "prejudice"; seeking to free itself from the servitudes of the mind, it falls into infra-logic; closing itself, above, to the light of the intellect, it opens itself, below, to the darkness of the subconscious. [NA: This is what Kant with his rationalistic ingenuousness did not foresee. According to him, every cognition which is not rational in the narrowest sense, is mere pretentiousness and fanciful enthusiasm (Schwärmerei); now, if there is anything pretentious it is this very opinion. Fantasy, arbitrariness and irrationality are not features of the Scholastics, but they certainly are of the rationalists who persist in violently contesting, with ridiculous and often pathetic arguments, everything which eludes their grasp. With Voltaire, Rousseau   and Kant, bourgeois (or vaishya as the Hindus would say) unintelligence is put forward as a "doctrine" and definitively installed in European "thought," giving birth, by way of the French Revolution, to scientism, industry and to quantitative "culture." Mental hypertrophy in the "cultured" man henceforth compensates the absence of intellectual penetration; the sense of the absolute and the principial is drowned in a mediocre empiricism, coupled with a pseudo-mysticism   posing as "positive" or "human." Some people may reproach us with a lack of due consideration, but we would ask what due consideration is shown by philosophers who shamelessly slash down the wisdom of countless centuries.] sophiaperennis: Kantianism

Avant-garde philosophy is properly an acephalous logic: it labels what is intellectually evident as "prejudice"; seeking to free itself from the servitudes of the mind, it falls into infra-logic; closing itself, above, to the light of the intellect, it opens itself, below, to the darkness of the subconscious. sophiaperennis: Logic

In connection with this question of intellectual intuition, it would be useful to reply here to a difficulty raised by Pascal  : "One cannot undertake to define being without falling into absurdity: for a word cannot be defined without beginning with the words it is, whether they are expressed or implied. Therefore in order to define being it would be necessary to say it is, and so to use the word to be defined in formulating its own definition" (Pensées et Opuscules).9 It is in fact impossible, in European languages, to give a definition without using the word "is"; if in other languages, in Arabic for example, a definition can be made without the help of this word or of some other copulative, that is exactly for the same reason, namely that all is immersed in Being and that Being therefore has an a priori evidentness; if Being cannot be defined outside itself, any more than can Knowledge, it is because this "outside" does not exist; the separation necessary for every definition thus actually lies within the thing to be defined, and in fact although we are "within Being" we are not Being. The copulative "it is" indicates a determination or an attribute according to the circumstances, and this shows the meaning of the word: we will define Being in itself as the universal determination, that is to say as the supreme Principle "insofar as It determines itself," to use Guénon’s expression; if we start from the ternary Beyond-Being, Being and Manifestation, we see that Being is "Principle" in relation to the world but "determination" in relation to Beyond-Being. Now, given that Being is determination in relation to Beyond-Being and the source of every attribute in relation to the world, every determination and every attribute can be expressed by means of the verb "to be," hence by "it is," so that Pascal’s difficulty can be resolved thus: "being" manifests (or "is" the manifestation of) an aspect of its own inner limitlessness, thus a possibility, an attribute. When we say: "The tree is green," this is, by analogy, like saying: "Being comprises such and such an aspect," or again in the deepest sense: "Beyond-Being determines itself as Being"; the thing to be defined - or determined - serves analogically as "Being," and the definition - the determination - serves as "divine attribute." Instead of speaking of "Being" and of "attribute of Being," we could refer to the first distinction: Beyond-Being and Being. When the verb "to be" designates an existence, it has no complement; on the other hand, when it has a complement it does not designate an existence as such, but an attribute; to say that a certain thing "is," signifies that it is not non-existent; to say that the tree "is green" signifies that it has this attribute and not some other. In consequence, the verb "to be" always expresses either an "existence" or a "character of existence," in the same way as God on the one hand "is" and on the other "is thus," that is to say Light, Love, Power and so forth. Saint Thomas expresses this well by saying that if Being and the first principles which flow from it are incapable of proof, it is because they have no need of proof; to prove them is at once useless and impossible, "not through a lack, but through a superabundance of light." sophiaperennis: Pascal

... Rationalism admits as true only what can be proven, without taking into account on the one hand that truth is independent of our willingness to admit it or not, and on the other hand that a proof is always in proportion to a need for causality, so that there are truths that cannot be proven to everybody; strictly speaking, rationalist thought admits something not because it is true, but because it can be proven—or appear to be proven—which amounts to saying that for rationalism dialectic outweighs truth, in fact, if not in theory. Specifically rationalist thought, moreover, readily overlooks the fact that there are mental needs due only to a deviation or a hypertrophy and which are consequently unable to provide legitimate points of departure for axiomatic formulations: if blind men could see light they would not dream of asking for proofs of its existence. sophiaperennis: Rationalism

This passage states the crucial principle of the almost magical relationship between the conforming recipient and the predestined content or between the adequate symbol and the sacramental presence of the prototype. The ideas of Plotinus must be understood in the light of those of the "divine Plato": the latter approved the fixed types of the sacred sculptures of Egypt, but he rejected the works of the Greek artists who imitated nature in its outward and insignificant accidentality, while following their individual imagination. This verdict immediately excludes from sacred art the productions of an exteriorizing, accidentalizing, sentimentalist and virtuoso naturalism, which sins through abuse of intelligence as much as by neglect of the inward and the essential. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS

Beauty, being essentially a deployment, is an "exteriorization," even in divinis, where the unfathomable mystery of the Self is "deployed" in Being, which in its turn is deployed in Existence; Being and Existence, Ishvara and Samsâra, are both Mâyâ, but Being is still God, whereas Existence is already the world. All terrestrial beauty is thus by reflection a mystery of love. It is, "whether it likes it or not," coagulated love or music turned to crystal, but it retains on its face the imprint of its internal fluidity, of its beatitude and of its liberality; it is measure in overflowing, in it is neither dissipation nor constriction. Human beings are rarely identified with their beauty, which is lent to them and moves across them like a ray of light. Only the Avatara is a priori himself that ray, he "is" the beauty that he manifests corporeally, and that beauty is Beauty as such, the only Beauty there is. [NA: When the psalmist sings: "Thou art fairer than the children of men" (Psalms, XLV, 2), these words cannot but be applicable to the body of Christ. So also in regard to the Blessed Virgin: "Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair." "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." (The Song of Solomon, 1, 15 and IV, 7).] sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

Under normal conditions spiritual life is plunged in beauty for the simple reason that the environment is unbrokenly traditional; in such a framework, harmony of forms is omnipresent like air and light. In worlds like those of the Middle Ages and the Orient man cannot escape from beauty, [NA: Nor from ugliness, in so far as it is a part of life and of truth; but then it is a natural ugliness carrying no suggestion of a diabolical confes sion of faith. One might say that natural ugliness is framed in beauty.] and the material forms themselves of every traditional civilization - buildings, clothes, tools, sacred art - prove that beauty is wholly unsought, that is to say that in such a civilization the question of seeking it does not arise; an analogous observation could be made concerning virgin nature, direct work of the Creator. The aesthetic environment of traditional man plays an indirectly didactic part. It "thinks" on his behalf and furnishes him with criteria of truth, if he is capable of understanding them, for "beauty is the splendor of the true." In a word, for traditional man a certain beauty that can be thought of as a mean is part of his existence, it is a natural aspect of truth and of the good. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

Purple is too ’heavy’, since it is composed of two heavy colours, one hot and the other cold. Orange on the other hand is too ’hot’, because it is composed of two hot colours, one heavy and the other light. Green is neither too heavy nor too hot, being composed of a heavy colour and a light colour, one cold and the other hot; it is the only happy mixture. In purple the mingled elements are too different; in orange the two elements are too much alike; green, on the contrary, unites opposites which are situated on different planes and cannot be in conflict; it therefore manifests equilibrium. Purple on the other hand expresses overloading, fatigue and languor, and orange ’overheating’, the joyous excitement of desire and not a transparent joy like yellow. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

The opposition between red and green marks a direct antinomy. The opposition between blue and yellow, on the other hand, is harmonious, their relationship being complementary. In the same way blue and red on the one hand, and red and yellow on the other, are harmoniously opposed; in the first case because one is cold and the other hot, and in the second case because one is heavy and the other light. The opposition between blue and red expresses royal dignity, compounded of rigour and generosity; the opposition between red and yellow expresses joyous intensity compounded of voluptuous pleasure and happiness. The pair red and green expresses divergent opposition; but on the spiritual level these colours also symbolize love and knowledge, which are in fact divergent as attitudes, their transcendent synthesis being symbolized by white. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

In the same order of ideas blue and yellow respectively symbolize contemplation and grace, which are the two necessary poles of knowledge. But whereas white can be said to represent the transcendent synthesis of the opposition between red and green, the synthesis of blue and yellow is a direct one, namely green, which is a mixture, not an integration. As for white and black, these represent respectively what is ’above colour’ and what has ’no colour’; they are in opposition like light and darkness or like Being and nothingness. On the other hand, red is opposed to white as passion is opposed to purity, and it is opposed to black as life is opposed to death. Red and green are also earthly life and resurrection. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

There is yet another reason for the antifeminine ostracism of certain traditional perspectives, apart from the question of qualification for a given yoga deemed unique, namely the idea that the male alone is the whole man. There are two ways in fact of situating the sexes, either in a horizontal or in a vertical sense: according to the first perspective, man would be to the right and woman to the left; according to the second, man would be above and woman below. On the one hand, man reflects Atmâ according to Absoluteness, and woman reflects it according to Infinitude; on the other hand, man alone is Atmâ and woman is Mâyâ; [NA: In the various Scriptures there are passages which would allow one to believe that this is so, but which have to be understood in the light of other passages which remove their exclusive quality. As is known, sacred Books proceed, not by nuanced formulations, but by antinomic affirmations; as it is impossible to accuse them of contradiction, it is necess ary to draw the consequences that their antinomianism imposes.] but the second conception is relatively true only on condition that one also accepts the first; now the first conception takes precedence over the second, for the fact that woman is human clearly takes precedence over the fact that she is not a male. [NA: The Shâstras teach that women who serve their husbands seeing in them their God, attain a masculine rebirth and then attain Deliverance, which evidently relates to the maximal mode of the minimal possibility for woman.] The observation that specifically virile spiritual methods are scarcely suited to the feminine psychism becomes dogmatic in virtue of the second perspective which we have just mentioned; and one could perhaps also make the point that social conventions, in the traditional surroundings in question here, tend to create - at least on the surface - the feminine type that fits them ideologically and practically; humanity is so made that a social anthropology is never a perfect good, that it is on the contrary always a "lesser evil," or in any case an approximation. [NA: As for Hinduism, it is appropriate to take into account the fact that, in this ambience, the concern for purity and the protection of things sacred is extreme, sacerdotal pedantism accomplishing the rest and this in respect of woman as well as human categories deemed impure. However, and this proves the prodigious "pluralism" of the Hindu spirit: "A mother is more venerable than a thousand fathers" (Mânava Dharma Shâstra, II, 145); and similarly, in Tantrism: "Whosoever sees the sole of a woman’s foot, let him consider it as that of the spiritual master" (guru) (Kubjika-Tantra).] sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

If the Bible   does not specify that the earth is round, it is simply and solely because it is normal to man to see it as flat, and because collective man cannot even tolerate the notion of a spherical earth, as history has proved to satiety. [NA: If Galileo had been sensitive to the fundamental intention of the Christly message, there is no reason why he should not have taken cognizance of the fact that the earth turns, assuming that he would still have discovered this in such a case; but he would never have had the idea of demanding that the Church should forthwith insert this fact into theology, before it had had a chance of imposing itself upon the learned world of his time, or a fortiori upon the people. However that may be, one must neither seek to inflict on theology the movement of the molecules nor pretend to "leave God outside the laboratory"; what one must do is to prevent the molecules from becoming a religion, and science from being left outside God.] Science is natural to man but it is important above all else to choose between the different levels, in the light of the axiom: "My kingdom is not of this world  "; all useful observation of the here below expands science, but the wisdom of the next world limits it, which amounts to saying that every science of the Relative which does not have a limit which is determined by the Absolute, and thus by the spiritual hierarchy of values, ends in supersaturation and explosion. [Logic and Transcendence, p. 135]. sophiaperennis: Science and Metaphysics

There are truths which intuitive intellection alone allows one to attain, but it is not a fact that such intellection lies within the capacity of every man of ordinarily sound mind. Moreover the Intellect, for its part, requires Revelation, both as its occasional cause and as vehicle of the ’Perennial Philosophy,’ if it is to actualize its own light in more than a fragmentary manner. sophiaperennis: Science and mythologies

A science of the finite has need of a wisdom which goes beyond it and controls it, just as the body needs a soul to animate it, and the reason an intellect to illumine it. The "Greek miracle" with its so-called "liberation of the human spirit" is in reality nothing but the beginning of a purely external knowledge, cut off from genuine Sophia. [NA: It is said that Einstein, for example, revolutionized the vision of the world as Galileo or Newton had done before him, and that the usual conceptions which he overturned - those of space, time, light and matter - are "as naive as those of the Middle Ages"; but then there is nothing to guarantee that his theory of relativity will not bejudged naive in its turn, so that, in profane science, it is never possible to escape the vicious circle of "naivety." — Moreover, what could be more naive than to seek to enclose the Universe in a few mathematical formulae, and then to be surprised to find that there always remains an elusive and apparently "irrational" element which evades all attempts to "bring it to heel"? — We shall no doubt be told that not all scientists are atheists, but this is not the question, since atheism is inherent in science itself, in its postulates and its methods. The Einsteinian theories on mass, space and time are of a nature to demonstrate the fissures in the physical universe, but only a metaphysician can profit from them; science unconsciously provides keys, but is incapable of making use of them, because intellectuality cannot be replaced by something outside itself. The theory of relativity illustrates of necessity certain aspects of metaphysics, but does not of itself open up any higher perspective; the way in which Euclidean geometry is improperly relativized goes to prove this. On the one hand the philosophical point of view trespasses on science, and on the other the scientific point of view trespasses on metaphysics. — As for the Einsteinian postulate of a transmathematical absolute, this absolute is not supra-conscious: it is not therefore more than ourselves and could not be the Cause of our intelligence; Einstein’s "God" remains blind just as his relativized universe remains physical: one might as well say that it is nothing. Modern science has nothing it can tell us - and this not by accident but by principle - about the miracle of consciousness and all that is connected with it, from the most minute particles of consciousness to be found in creation up to the pure and trans-personal Intellect.] [Stations of Wisdom, p. 26-27]. sophiaperennis: Science and rationalism

According to the observations of experimental science, the blue sky which stretches above us is not a world of bliss, but an optical illusion due to the refraction of light by the atmosphere, and from this point of view, it is obviously right to maintain that the home of the blessed does not lie up there. Nevertheless it would be a great mistake to assert that the association of ideas between the visible heaven and celestial Paradise does not arise from the nature of things, but rather from ignorance and ingenuousness mixed with imagination and sentimentality; for the blue sky is a direct and therefore adequate symbol of the higher and supra-sensory degrees of Existence; it is indeed a distant reverberation of those degrees, and it is necessarily so since it is truly a symbol, consecrated by the sacred Scriptures and by the unanimous intuition of peoples. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

For the same reasons it also denies Revelation, which alone rebuilds the bridge broken by the fall. According to the observations of experimental science, the blue sky which stretches above us is not a world of bliss, but an optical illusion due to the refraction of light by the atmosphere, and from this point of view, it is obviously right to maintain that the home of the blessed does not lie up there. Nevertheless it would be a great mistake to assert that the association of ideas between the visible heaven and celestial Paradise does not arise from the nature of things, but rather from ignorance and ingenuousness, mixed with imagination and sentimentality; for the blue sky is a direct and therefore adequate symbol of the higher and supra-sensory degrees of Existence; it is indeed a distant reverberation of those degrees, and it is necessarily so since it is truly a symbol, consecrated by the sacred Scriptures and by the unanimous intuition of peoples. [NA: The word "symbol" implies "participation" or "aspect", whatever the difference of level may be involved.] sophiaperennis: Science and negation of Transcendence

It is said that Einstein, for example, revolutionized the vision of the world as Galileo or Newton had done before him, and that the usual conceptions which he overturned — those of space, time, light and matter — are as "naive as those of the Middle Ages"; but then there is nothing to guarantee that his theory of relativity will not be judged naive in its turn, so that, in profane science, it is never possible to escape the vicious circle of "naivety". sophiaperennis: Einstein

"The truths ... expressed [by the Sophia Perennis] are not the exclusive possession of any school or individual; were it otherwise they would not be truths, for these cannot be invented, but must necessarily be known in every integral traditional civilization. It might, however, reasonably be asked for what human and cosmic reasons truths that may in a very general sense be called "esoteric" should be brought to light and made explicit at the present time, in an age that is so little inclined to speculation. There is indeed something abnormal in this, but it lies, not in the fact of the exposition of these truths, but in the general condition of our age, which marks the end of a great cyclic period of terrestrial humanity — the end of a maha-yuga according to Hindu cosmology — and so must recapitulate or manifest again in one way or another everything that is included in the cycle, in conformity with the adage : "extremes meet"; thus things that are in themselves abnormal may become necessary by reason of the conditions just referred to. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

It is a fact that too many authors — we would almost say: general opinion — attribute to gnosis what is proper to Gnosticism and to other counterfeits of the sophia perennis, and moreover make no distinction between the latter and the most freakish movements, such as spiritualism, theosophism and the pseudo-esoterisms that saw the light of day in the twentieth century. It is particularly regrettable that these confusions are taken seriously by most theologians, who obviously have an interest in entertaining the worst opinion possible concerning gnosis; now the fact that an imposture necessarily imitates a good, since otherwise it could not even exist, does not authorize charging this good with all the sins of the imitation. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

Man, in his lunar and receptive aspect, "withers away" without the woman-sun that infuses into the virile genius what it needs in order to blossom; inversely, man-sun confers on woman the light that permits her to realize her identity by prolonging the function of the sun. [Esoterism as Principle and as Way, page 139]. sophiaperennis: Femininity