The Essential René Guénon: Metaphysics, Tradition, and the Crisis of Modernity, edited by John Herlihy

A prolific writer and author of over 24 books, Rene Guenon was the founder of the Perennialist/Traditionalist school of comparative religious thought. Known for his discourses on the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of the modern world, symbolism, tradition, and the inner or spiritual dimension of religion, this book is a compilation of his most important writings. A key component of his thought was the assertion that universal truths manifest themselves in various forms in the world’s religions and his writings on Hinduism, Taoism, and Sufism are particularly illuminating in this regard.

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Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition : Essays by Western Muslim Scholars, edited by Joseph Lumbard

This fully revised edition of the critically acclaimed book contains a series of essays that explain the misconceptions that lie at the heart of Western attitudes towards Islam. Including a new essay on the role of women in Islam, an updated chapter containing insights into the concept of Jihad, and three fully revised chapters that bring the discussion up-to-date with the current global situation, this book is a must read for anyone interested in Islam and its relation to the West.

Seven years after the horrific attacks of September 11th, misunderstanding and distrust between Islam and the West are still as rampant as ever. In this new and fully revised edition of his critically acclaimed book, Joseph Lumbard collects a series of essays that explain not only the veil of misconceptions which lie at the heart of Western attitudes towards Islam, but also the rise of “fundamentalism” within Islam itself, a phenomenon which most Muslims do not consider a true reflection of their religion. This new edition includes the addition of an essay on the role of women in Islam, an updated chapter containing insight into the concept of Jihad, and three fully revised chapters that bring the discussion up-to-date with the current global situation. A completely modified introduction is also featured. This book is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to see beyond the headlines of hatred and anger which are so common today.

In his foreword to the book, noted Islamic scholar and author Seyyed Hossein Nasr states that “the present work is one of the most significant, timely, and fresh Muslim responses to [the events of September 11], and marks an important step in bringing the deeper resources of the Islamic tradition to bear upon the task at hand, the task to present the authentic teachings of Islam to the West at this difficult moment of history as far as the relations between Islam and the West are concerned.” Nasr goes on to point out that “this groundbreaking volume…presents a new and timely voice of several well-trained and serious engaged scholars writing about major issues that have come to the forefront as a result of the events of the past couple of years, but which of course have their roots in older historical realities. Anyone, whether he or she be a Muslim, a follower of another religion, or more generally anyone who is seriously interested in the relation between Islam and the West and Islam in the West, cannot but be attracted to this volume, which is the fruit of the thought of some of the best minds of the younger generation of Muslim scholars, who are at the same time part of Western society, bearing upon some of the most momentous issues of the day.”

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The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley

According to Huxley, the perennial philosophy is: “the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions” (The Perennial Philosophy, p. vii).

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Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century by Mark Sedgwick

The first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States. In the nineteenth century, at a time when progressive intellectuals had lost faith in Christianity’s ability to deliver religious and spiritual truth, the West discovered non-Western religious writings. From these beginnings grew Traditionalism, emerging from the occultist milieu of late nineteenth-century France, and fed by the widespread loss of faith in progress that followed the First World War. Working first in Paris and then in Cairo, the French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age, and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy– the central religious truths behind all the major world religions –largely on the basis of his reading of Hindu religious texts. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to Guenon’s call with attempts to put theory into practice. Some attempted without success to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalism finally provided the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and at the end of the twentieth century began to enter the debate in the Islamic world about the desirable relationship between Islam and modernity.

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Apocalypse Culture by Adam Parfrey

Since his influential collection Apocalypse Culture was first released in 1987, the award-winning writer Adam Parfrey has been credited with discovering and revealing the inner workings of cults and unusual pop culture histories. With "Love, Sex, Fear, Death," Parfrey has captured the cooperation of primary players in the most secretive and talked about cult of our time.

"Apocalypse Culture is compulsory reading for all those concerned with the crisis of our times. An extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century."—J.G. Ballard

For years I've been a little leery of this book. First published in 1987, this anthology of doomster essays has become a fixture on the bookshelves of every Tom, Pierced Dick, and Harry. After finally reading it, I have to admit that my prejudice against those who think that being cool means reading lots of ReSearch magazines kept me away from what is actually a fascinating volume, wherein the most absurd, inexcusable positions are defended with calm intelligence and witty rationality. With essays ranging from the sexual liberation of necrophiliacs to strong cases against art and agriculture, editor Adam Parfrey's collection is one that Tristan Tzara would enjoy, if he were to rise from his mouldy grave in search of good bathroom reading.

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Perspectives on Initiation by Rene Guenon

Perspectives on Initiation presents initiation as essentially the transmission, by the appropriate rites of a given tradition, of a ‘spiritual influence’ which represents the ‘beginning’ (initium) of the spiritual journey. It is unique in giving a comprehensive account both of the conditions of initiation and of the characteristics of organizations qualified to transmit it. While most of its 48 chapters deal with specific aspects of initiation, others cover an astonishing range of related subjects, among them: Magic and Mysticism, Ceremonial Magic, Psychic ‘Powers’, The Symbolism of the Theater, The Gift of Tongues, Greater and Lesser Mysteries, Rose-Cross and Rosicrucians, Some Reflections on Hermeticism, and The Birth of the Avatara. Related articles are collected in Guénon’s Initiation and Spiritual Realization.

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The Phenomenon Of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Published in 1955, English translation of the original.

I quite like the theory of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955). He was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of both Piltdown Man and Peking Man. Teilhard views evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity. From the cell to the thinking animal, a process of psychical concentration leads to greater consciousness. Teilhard describes humankind as evolution becoming conscious of itself. This conscious principle is actually centered in some future time and it is sucking history into itself.

His ideas came into conflict with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, and his books were censured.

His works are very difficult to find anywhere so here is one of his rarest and best:

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The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times by Rene Guenon

The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the ‘ancient wisdom’, formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as ‘normal’. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the ‘rise of the masses’-Guénon predicts a reign of ‘inverted quality’ just before the end of the age: the triumph of the ‘counter-initiation’, the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon’s texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works.

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The Multiple States of the Being by Rene Guenon

This text, René Guénon’s most comprehensive work of ‘pure’ metaphysics, is written as if nothing at all is, but That which is in its own essence. And, in truth, what else is there? Being is multiple and comprises many states, both manifest and unmanifest; but the unmanifest has precedence, what is seen being effectively nothing in the face of what is not seen. To realize this is to realize the contingency of the human state and the set of its inherent possibilities; to realize the contingency of the human state is to be liberated from it; to be liberated from the human state is to assimilate the principle by which the being can be liberated from all states. This is the end of the spiritual life, and also of the human form: ‘end’ both as telos and as annihilation. And since all beings in manifestation exist equally and simultaneously in all the planes and states of the Unmanifest, to know Infinite Possibility is precisely to become what one is. Whatever else Guénon wrote, as mystagogue, hermeneut, critic of the modern world, emanated from and existed to support the realization of only This.

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The Crisis of the Modern World by René Guénon

It is no longer news that the Western world is in a crisis, a crisis that has spread far beyond its point of origin and become global in nature. In 1927, Reni Guinon responded to this crisis with the closest thing he ever wrote to a manifesto and ‘call-to-action’. The Crisis of the Modern World was his most direct and complete application of traditional metaphysical principles-particularly that of the ‘age of darkness’ preceding the end of the present world-to social criticism, surpassed only by The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, his magnum opus. In the present work Guinon ruthlessly exposes the ‘Western deviation’: its loss of tradition, its exaltation of action over knowledge, its rampant individualism and general social chaos. His response to these conditions was not ‘activist’, however, but purely intellectual, envisioning the coming together of Western intellectual leaders capable under favorable circumstances of returning the West to its traditional roots, most likely via the Catholic Church, or, under less favorable ones, of at least preserving the ‘seeds’ of Tradition for the time to come.

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Erotism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille

If I had to pick one book for the Bataille newbie, it would be this one. *Erotism* puts forth the crux of Georges Bataille's critical thought in what is its clearest and most forthright expression. Here the man once called "the theoretician of evil" lays out for the educated layman his controversial and challenging views of the interrelationship of sexuality, violence, taboo, suffering, mysticism, and death. Most of the major ideas found in Bataille's more complicated philosophical works such as *The Accursed Share* are distilled here, as well as the philosophical underpinning of the infamous novels *Madame Edwarda* and *The Dead Man.*

Bataille is always perversely entertaining, if sometimes frustrating, having a facility to cast even the most lurid subjects in a language that can render pornography intellectually impenetrable. The problem is partly due to the fact that Bataille's main concern is to elucidate what he calls "extreme states of being," those experiences at the very limit of human possibility such as orgasm, visions, and death--phenomenon that philosophy has traditionally left out of the equation when considering human life. Because these extreme experiences are often irrational--or transcend rationality, as Bataille would prefer it--they usually fall outside the natural scope of philosophy, as well as language itself. Bataille, who tries to write about these inner states on the outer edge, can only do so by ultimately failing, which he readily acknowledges is necessarily the fate of anyone who tries to express the inexpressible.

In *Erotism,* Bataille, for the most part, confines himself to saying what can be said before it becomes unspeakable and that's what makes this book so much more readable than most of his other texts. Taboo as that which sets us apart from the animal and yet is meant to be transgressed in order that we may know the sacred. Sacrifice as a communal "crime" by which we contemplate the deathless state of continuity that is death itself. Work as the dike that keeps humanity from being swept away in a flood of sex and violence. Bataille follows the red thread that zig-zaggedly stitches together man's age-old fascination with sexual transgression and violent death. From the cave paintings of prehistory to the novels of Sade, from Saint Theresa's pseudo-sexual ecstasy to the Kinsey Report, the result is a wide-ranging and fascinating re-interpretation of the religious instinct in man from the point of view of our mortal obsession with filth and degradation. What Bataille has wrought is a philosophy of "evil" that itself is a thing of transgression, overturning much of what we thought we knew about morality, love, civilization, god, and all the rest of it, but most of all ourselves.

A sort of primer to Bataille, *Erotism* can be used as a skeleton key to access the treasures locked away in his more inaccessible works. A must-read for any philosophically inclined renegade interested in sex and death, *Erotism* justifies your morbid penchant for the corrupt and obscene. You really shouldn't have another orgasm without being cognizant of the insights to be found in this life-warping and mind-bending book.

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Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection by Julia Kristeva

Excellent resource for the Lacanian scholar, if you are looking specifically at abjection.  Don't be abjected even further than you already are, read this book and allow Kristeva's language to take you on a hallucinatory journey to the limits of symbolization. The act of reading this book can be, at times, an exercise in facing/coping with abjection. If you're patient, go slow, and finally understand thirty percent of this book, you'll be leagues ahead of most intellectuals out there.

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The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich

In this classic study, Reich provides insight into the phenomenon of fascism, which continues to ravage the international community in ways great and small.

Drawing on his medical experiences with men and women of various classes, races, nations, and religious beliefs, Reich refutes the still generally held notion that fascism is a specific characteristic of certain nationalities or a political party ideology that is imposed on innocent people by means of force or political maneuvers. "Fascism on only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man's character. It is the basic emotional civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life."—Wilhelm Reich

Responsibility for the elimination of fascism thus results with the masses of average people who might otherwise support and champion it.

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