What is Tradition?

Truth exists. In all things, and as an infinitude. It is therefore self evident that the goal of life should be to become aware of, understand, and then embody that truth. The methodologies associated with this spiritual path are diverse, as evidenced by the multiplicity of ancient religions. But like how all things in our world share a divine principle, so do these methods share a common feature. This is Tradition, or in other words, the transmission and therefore preservation of absolute knowledge through the transitory shifts in human history.

The past five-hundred years of Man’s existence have seen an unprecedented drop in this transmission. Whereas tradition used to run like a rushing river through all cultures of earth, it now exists only as a trickling stream in a shrinking number of places. Man has forgotten his eternal center. If western civilization is to continue its excellence, then a rediscovery and application of its tradition is necessary. Traditionalism is both the personal method and the cultural gateway through which this rededication to the Truth can be actualized.

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Sat 6 Mar 2010

Life and Study

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The following passage is quoted from the classic Buddhist text The Dhammapada (translated by Gil Fronsdal):

“One who recites many teachings
 But, being negligent, doesn’t act accordingly,
 Like a cowherd counting other’s cows,
 Doe not attain the benefits of the contemplative life.

One who recites but a few teachings
 Yet lives according to the Dharma,
 Abandoning passion, ill will, and delusion,
 Aware and with mind well freed,
 Not clinging in this life or the next,
 Attains the benefits of the contemplative life.”

This passage highlights an important issue for Traditionalists: the balance of contemplation and activity. We are excited by explorations of traditional wisdom, as we should be, given that this wisdom is the greatest human possession, a boon from the divine that can show us the best way to live; but we must not forget to simply live. In the worst circumstances we can become too attached to the academic search for wisdom and neglect the implementation of wisdom in our lives. If one feels regret or is distressed that one will never master the terminology and symbolism of every traditional doctrine, or that studying these doctrines in their original languages would take a lifetime of work, one must carefully examine one’s deepest motivations for study and see if they are pure. Buddhism stresses this point by stories of lowly figures such as washerwomen attaining enlightenment without ever studying the scriptures. The Christian tradition also features unlearned mystics who received the gift of grace. Academic learning is not essential to living a healthy spiritual life.

St. Thomas Aquinas

That is not to say, of course, that we are anti-intellectual. In traditional societies there are individuals whose sole duty is to engage in intellectual study of sacred doctrines, preserving the proper understanding of revelation for the entire community. But in the West, traditional civilization has long since disappeared, and those of us who wish to restore Tradition must understand that we cannot approach life as if we were members of a learned class whose sole occupation is to engage in intellectual activity. Proper intellectual activity is key, and without it no restoration can take place, but when traditional civilization collapsed, all of the traditional societal functions disappeared, not just the intellectual function. For the time being, we must be more versatile, and integrate the wisdom that we have into lives more or less within the mainstream of society as examples for change.

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Tue 2 Mar 2010

Truth in Traditionalism Pt.2

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Perrenialism is sometimes attacked or ignored because its teachings are viewed as an “appeal to tradition”, a type of logical fallacy. This is a dangerous misunderstanding.

Ideas are neither confirmed nor disproven through their inclusion in a historical account. Such a belief constitutes a “historicist” viewpoint, (one against which traditionalist authors have argued¹) that is in opposition to formal logic. If traditionalists were to participate in this historicist fallacy as it is claimed we do² , then we would be forced to accept a whole record of historically confirmed ideas and behaviors which we, in fact, actively condemn. Need we be reminded of the pornography common to ancient Roman, Greek, and Indian civilizations?

Traditionalism therefore does not claim authority on the basis of historical corroboration with its directives. So from whence does its derive authority?

The answer lies in that the upholding of tradition is, quite counter-intuitively to most, an a-historical task. We see this idea’s explication most succinctly in this passage by Hegel, quoted in Evola’s Men Among the Ruins:

“It is a matter of recognizing in the apparitions of temporal and transitory things, both the substance, which is immanent, and the eternal, which is actual.”³

Furthermore, that which is eternal is necessarily actual. Elsewise, it would be subject to change, and could not be called eternal. Following from this, we could correctly conclude that if the eternal is not conditioned by the passage of time, then it may indeed be possible to find examples of the eternal in our own era. This is quite different from the picture usually painted of traditionalists as overly-mystical history buffs.

So while it may seem that there is a focus here on ancient history, let us be reminded of the traditions associated with Native Americans, Monastic Orders, and other small communities that exist in the present. The Golden Age can indeed exist at any point in time, and it is precisely because that it is Golden that it transcends time in this way.

Rock

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¹Cutsinger, James S. “An Open Letter On Tradition.” Modern Age 36.3 (1994). Cutsinger.net. Web. <http://www.cutsinger.net/pdf/open_letter_on_tradition.pdf>.

²Dawkins, Richard. A Devil’s Chaplain: Selected Essays. London: Phoenix, 2004. Open Parachute. Web. <http://openparachute.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/prayer-for-my-daughter.pdf>.

³Evola, Julius. Men among the Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist. Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2002. Print. , p. 116

^Passage originally appeared in the author’s introduction to Philosophy of Right.

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Sat 20 Feb 2010

Truth in Traditionalism

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Some people reading traditionalist writers get finicky when they first see Truth with a capital T, because they doubt that any ultimate Truth can be attainable, or even worse, they fear a monopolization of opinion in the intention of establishing an “intolerant” version of Truth in society; both are typical misunderstandings of an individualistic modern era. We will explain what we refer to as Truth in Traditionalism.

From a metaphysical perspective, the whole of existence is present because of its participation in Reality, the Absolute. This is what Aristotle, Avicenna and St. Aquinas called in some way or other the First Cause, an uncaused cause, that which is by itself, but also causes the entire creation and its elements. Therefore, forms that emerge from that origin have specific characteristics that adjoin with the rest of the characteristics of other forms, under a series of natural laws. All forms partake of a single reality and irremediably act according to Nature.

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The quest of natural sciences is to understand the physical laws that govern matter and to elaborate theories to explain their functioning. However, it is outside of its capacities to determine that what would be outside action and reaction , the Uncaused Cause,  as well as a source of the laws of matter, even if laws themselves are made of matter. To understand Truth, it is essential to realize that “Truth” is not an empirical “truth” that may be contained within a scientifically experimental system.

Truth in the sense used by Traditionalists relates purely to the metaphysical nature of Reality, of God.  The revelations which found religions are crystallisations of this Truth within the contingent sphere of forms.  Once the metaphysical experience has occurred for the individual, to call it Truth is a logical consequence of a comprehension of a state preceding phenomena, from whence the multiplicity of forms is derived. “The Way produces one. One produces two. Two produces three. Three produces everything.” Tao Te Ching, 42.

In a strict sense, Truth is the saving manifestation of the Absolute, and according to Schuon, it differs from the concept of reality: “Truth and reality must not be confused: the latter relates to “being” and signifies the aseity of things, and the former relates to “knowing” – to the image of reality reflected in the mirror of the intellect “. Truth is the certainty of the Absolute. Also, as a term the word Truth provokes inquisitiveness, giving a variety of correlations in regards to specific aspects of spiritual pursuit.

An example is Truth serving as an opposition to what’s false or unreal in our perception: this is, in Sanskrit, maya. It is not that maya forms a reality apart from Truth, but only that it is an illusion that occurs within the Absolute, in which we see our ego and its material circumstances as the ultimate reality of consciousness. This ignorance of Truth, or avidya, makes us believe that the entire creation is separated and dispersed, through circumstantial dualities of attachment and aversion, and so the discovery of Truth requires man to pierce the veil of maya, surpassing ignorance. Again, this ignorance is not of an empirical nature, but it is a supposition that the thirst for our mundane ends (trsna) is the only possibility and therefore the highest motivation of man.

Truth has social implications as a social reality, even when both objects are different. Social reality is built around the pursuit of Truth, and finds its manifestation in the cultural sphere, bringing a mutually shared aim that pushes individuals towards a transcendent spirit. This, of course, does not escape from the organic life of societies. The rise of the greatest cultures in History has been conditioned by such sight, and their downfall has been marked by the pluralisation of smaller and individualistic convictions. The degeneration of civilizations shows a correspondent dysfunction in all strata of society, a neglect of Truth for the emergence of self-interests, causing class conflict. In this downfall, it is possible that an imposition of ideology may claim “Truth”, acting in an overly-coercive way foreign to aristocracy, and closer to tyranny. So, this “truth” is a social construction and an imposition very far from Truth.

Now, how can we know the constitution of this Truth, beyond its social functionality? Through Revelation.

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We will cite Schuon again: “Revelation is none other than the objective and symbolic manifestation of the Light which man carries in himself, in the depths of his being”. Symbolic, Revelation carries a set of signs, and behaviour codes for the communities which essentially are connivance rules that even humanists can appreciate, and of which violation constitutes the disgrace of every culture. This aspect serves an exoteric purpose. The symbols are dependent on the history of cultures, but if they emerge from the Absolute, they have an objective end. Being Absolute and objective, God can’t be reduced as a social phenomena, even when there exists a social organization around the idea of a God. The key here is to understand the symbols in order to achieve the knowing of the Truth, attainable through the methods of prayer, which constitute a quest for the individual in his last stance.

Satya, a Sanskrit term for Truth, is understood in Hinduism as the everlasting reality independent to time and events. This means that Truth is immanent in the discoveries of a growing and positive science that occurs in human history, and also the rise and eventual death of human societies. Truth brings conditions for human reorganization across history, over a human and relative conception, and the man that ventures in the methods of Religion, not only through empirical science, finds himself in certainty of such Truth, transcending his human circumstances.

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Mon 25 Jan 2010

Acts of God

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With the collapse of tradition, two different worldviews have taken its place: scientific materialism, and religious superstition. Both of these positions are equally modern, although it is the adherents of the former that explicitly claim to be so, while those of the latter claim to uphold traditional ideas, although their ideas lack proper metaphysical understanding.

A good example of these two worldviews can be found in the reaction to the earthquake in Haiti, particularly the controversy surrounding the claim made by some adherents of the superstitious worldview that the earthquake was divine retribution for sinful conduct (Pat Robertson has been the most prominent to make this claim). The adherents of scientific materialism naturally reject this idea, although their explanation of the phenomenon is also unsatisfactory.

The situation in Haiti is worth examining because throughout history natural disasters and other environmental factors have often played a significant role in human events. The materialists seize on this fact and claim that environmental determinism is the key factor in the rise and fall of civilizations (Jared Diamond is one of the more prominent proponents of this view). This is a standard anti-traditional approach, an approach that assumes that the greater comes from the lesser, in this case, that the material world is responsible for human civilization, rather than divine creation. Leaving aside the metaphysical difficulties of this materialist approach, we would like to offer a more sophisticated way of looking at natural disaster and its effect on civilizations.

rotten2

The important point is that the result of a natural disaster is dependent on two things: the direct effects of the disaster (in the case of an earthquake, these would be the actual shaking of the earth and the following destruction of buildings, etc), and the level of the health of the individuals and civilization. In other words, disasters of the same magnitude will have different results for civilizations that are at different levels of internal health, depending on how well the individuals in those civilizations can deal with the difficulties. The earthquake in Haiti resulted in much more chaos than in would have in another country (for example, in western Europe), because the people in Haiti were already more chaotic in their psychic existence. The people who turned to savage violence following the disaster did so because they lack spiritual and mental order. The poor infrastructure of the country is also a result of a poor inner state. When the disaster struck, some of the external factors that held back this inner chaos were removed, and the latent chaos manifested itself. Everything in the material world has its source in the Divine, and earthquakes sometimes strike Haiti, and sometimes strike elsewhere. They can be a factor in the success or failure of a civilization, but not the only factor, barring a disaster of extreme proportions that physically destroys every member of a civilization.

Turning now to the problem with the superstitious account, while its proponents are correct to claim that this destructive phenomenon has a divine origin, they do not properly illustrate that punishment for wrongdoing begins long before external manifestations of retribution, and even seem to think that sinful acts are disadvantageous only after the punishment itself. If the Haitians were indeed turning away from the Divine, their punishment was found in the very act of turning away, just as order and wisdom are more fundamentally their own reward than any material benefit that might result from them. When turning away, one loses the ability to instill the world with order and becomes an inevitable vehicle for destruction. When natural disasters occur, the outer and inner destructiveness work as allies.

Up to this point we have looked at the situation from a very narrow perspective. In examining the question of how different societies react to natural disasters, we have judged the health or sickness of a society by the level of technical infrastructure and cooperation among the societies members. But we want to make it clear that in so doing we are not holding up modern, western societies as paragons, for these societies, while technically proficient, are equally lacking in spiritual values. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the spiritual life of western man is as destructive and chaotic as the current external situation in Haiti. Even if our technical infrastructure is perpetuated and perhaps improves, our inner life verges ever closer to annihilation, towards being enveloped in formlessness. Some westerners deride the Haitians for their inability to bring order to their external environment, but only because they see only outer appearances and are unaware of how they themselves have neglected the eternal part within us, the part that truly matters.

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Tue 12 Jan 2010

Vanity and Pop Ecology

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Mixing modernism and ecology results in an environmental movement that does not wish to sacrifice its “progress” and modern comforts. Adding mass media to this combination produces a superficial ecology that has no intent of questioning our world-view as deep-ecology does, but instead entertains us within our consumerist mental frames exploiting a purely emotional approach. .

An example of this is celebrities getting naked for animals. “I’d rather go naked than wear fur”, they say, appearing to deliberately lessen their social status through humility, but ironically only to increase it. These stars and their endorsers seek only fame and naive consumers, selling a product that appears to be critical of modern society, but that only produces televised gossip. And on the other side of the screen, there exists a distracted and sentimentalist audience that cannot see the bigger picture of the ecological problem.

fur_lady 5Vanity and mawkishness in a mass media product. What results can we expect after the trend is gone?

“Fur has never been more popular,” says a spokesman for Origin Assured, an initiative developed by the International Fur Trade Federation that states that it sources “ethical” fur. “From 1998 to 2008 there has been year-on-year growth in global sales for fur. People now are more comfortable showing their love of fur.”

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We must question ourselves in order to face the truth. We must also have the sense of responsibility to take the necessary actions to correct this wrongdoing. We must be smarter and less sly, more compassionate and less naively sentimental. A deep understanding of spirituality can provoke these changes.

To be in contact with holy grace turns us into compassionate, satisfied beings, willing to choose long term well being in lieu of instantaneous comfort and entertainment. This radiance of grace goes deep into our sensitivity, turning compassion in all living beings into an absolutely honest sentiment, making us eager to do what is necessary to preserve biological diversity. A fundamental revaluation of our role on this planet and a critical vision of our empowering as a species demands a heroic amount of love that can’t be found in pop culture, but only in the higher forms of Culture. Once this higher love is settled in ourselves, we are ready to act and aware enough to do it sensibly; only then are we ready to embrace ecology as a science and to face the real problems: overpopulation and culture-less consumerism.

As we can see, pop ecology is a misdirection of real compassion, which manifests itself in a fashion of love that bypasses judgment, handicapping itself so that it cannot grow up to become a strong piety. Pop ecology has no roots in order to become permanent and no conviction to be effective and transcendental. There’s an intrinsic fascination with vanity in these “naking” campaigns that in no way is able to raise our noblest and heroic thinking in order to protect biodiversity.

Organizations like PETA have now abandoned the bandwagon of fur to ride on the bandwagon of climatic change. We are now seeing another fashion of pop ecology, and we can foretell another failure as well.

En Español

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Tue 24 Nov 2009

New Article: The Virtue of Prayer

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“This method of spiritual recognition has two inescapable and mutually inclusive sides: on one hand ethics as a guide for behavior for the external, material world, and on the other hand a contemplative exercise for inward, spiritual experience. In order to know the Divine, beyond all the acknowledged metaphysical theory, both these interdependent and indivisible aspects must be present within a given religion.¹

What exactly is this contemplative praxis? Very simple: Prayer.”

Read the full article here.

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Sun 18 Oct 2009

Truth Over Economy

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“The first thing that becomes apparent in times like this is how imaginary the economy is. Not imaginary in the sense of fake, necessarily, but in the sense of the way economic realities depend on how reality is imagined. So much of the panic selling of stocks, for example, is based on perception of reality, which then becomes the reality. When billions of dollars of wealth can vanish overnight, it becomes apparent how imaginary wealth is.

[…]

Ethics in the economy depends on character, not calculation. It depends on being a good person, not on “stakeholders” or other utilitarian considerations. The word “ethics” comes from the Greek word for “character,” and such an approach through what humans could aspire to be dominated Western — and for that matter Eastern — thinking for millennia.”

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Maybe the reason that best explains why we understand ethics in a relativist way is that our modern perception of reality is entirely defined in functions of production. Economic science makes whatever falls into its study field relative, because it is grounded in the valuations made by individuals in reference to their circumstantial needs. This is not harmful when applied to merchandise, but when every human act is capitalized, everything is determined as good or bad by consumers. The ideal becomes capital, and goodness becomes what is desirable for the most.

If someone wants to access the goods or services of his choice, he must act according to certain exchange rules of the economic system: ethics is reduced to a certain set of contrived rules that allows individuals to build wealth and to access other goods. Ethics is no longer a spiritual understanding of behavior, but only an implement of the economic system, and thus it subordinates its own authenticity to the dominion of the economy.

Economics studies how we produce and exchange our goods and services, but it invades realms beyond its capacities when it attempts to answer why we produce at all. It circles in a redundant logic where the result is “we produce to consume and we consume to produce”. We think that we can overcome this redundancy with the use of entertainment products and services, but unfortunately, making this material pleasure the teleological goal of the economy leaves man in the evident desperation of our times. Even worse, both socialism and capitalism should produce wealth, services, products and leisure time, but their “ethics” and purposes corrupt and fail because they lack the element that transcends and govern their materiality: Tradition.

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How does Tradition make a difference in our understanding of economics? By making economies just production systems rather than all-regulating utilitarian mechanisms, and by maintaining Culture as its goal and putting its ideal over the category of capital. Ethics coming from Tradition regulates our earthly activity, transcending the mundane and its momentary interests. In this ordination, only under the shelter of Tradition, ethics acquires sense when applied to every material aspect.

Truth over economy, in order to not subordinate ethics to the economy. Any ethical code without Truth becomes an exploitable device to those individuals that somehow find a way to violate it. Truth acts in the soul of individuals making them better people, who will find in the mystique of their labor enough satisfaction and strength to not become corrupted. Every persisting goodness in this world grounds in no different fact than this.

Traditionalists do not believe that Truth is that which is convenient, but that Truth is always convenient. We can transcend the redundant hedonism of our current socio-economic system through Tradition by adapting our acts and desires to Truth, not vice-versa.

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Sat 12 Sep 2009

New Article: Monotheism

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“A monotheistic religion is one which revolves around a single God. Usually monotheism refers specifically to religions of Semitic origin (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). The word itself, however, directly implies that which is essential to all religions and metaphysical doctrines, the Absolute

[...]

Monotheism makes two basic demands of all men, firstly faith in God, and secondly an actualization of this faith in every aspect of life. These two demands are outlined by Jesus Matthew 22:34-40, and form the fundamental principles of spiritual life within the sphere of all the major religions, monotheistic or not.”

Read the full article here: Monotheism

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Thu 20 Aug 2009

An Exhortation

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In countless myths from all traditional cultures of the world, strong, fair heroes do battle with vile and deformed beasts. Sometimes the heroes are remarkable mortals, sometimes the gods themselves, the villains also varying in power. These tales have endured in popularity, even to the modern day, although their true meaning is no longer widely understood. It is often assumed that these tales serve to show the triumph of good over evil and to serve as an inspiration to act in a similar manner. While this is an accurate interpretation, it is not the most profound level of understanding, and one must not neglect the metaphysical significance, the meaning of the tales that can be applied to internal spiritual realization.

The characters in these myths represent the eternal metaphysical principles that govern the world and the life of man. The “battle” that takes places represents the struggle in manifested things that exist suspended between the beauty and order of the divine and the shadow existence of matter. These things can either hold fast to the divine and thereby stabilize their existence (that is, the heroes can be triumphant), or they can veer towards matter and dissolution (that is, the villains can be triumphant). The Greek philosopher Proclus describes it thus, referencing the myth of Athena doing battle with the giants:

“The true warfare with the giants takes place in souls: whenever reason and intellect rule in them, the goods of the Olympians and Athena prevail, and the entire life is kingly and philosophical; but whenever the passions reign, or in general the worse and earth-born elements, then the constitution within them is tyranny.” ¹

Many of those who deplore modernity lament that the glorious struggles of past legends are absent from a world that has been reduced by technology and quantitative valuations, and they long for an age when a man can exert all of his energies in a struggle for the good. While such external conditions are indeed desirable, a yearning for such an external struggle must not obscure the true battle. If the true battle is in our souls, then good men must be more fervent in this battle; they must crave victory and sacrifice in this struggle just as assiduously as they would with swords in their hands. Unlike the physical battle, this inner battle does not end, at least not for any but the most advanced spiritual masters. Consider, then, how hard you would fight and strain when facing enemies on the field, and make that thought present in your mind when the worse elements within yourself begin to assert themselves.

¹Proclus. Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s “Parmenides” Trans. Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon. New York: Princeton UP, 1992. Print, 71.

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Tue 14 Jul 2009

New Article: Man’s Place in the Cosmos

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“Proponents of modernity often relate with glee how science has shown traditional concepts of man and the cosmos to be materially and demonstrably false. In some cases they even claim that the latest scientific theory represents an improvement not only in physical understanding, but also in moral understanding.

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Some seem to think that when Aristotle placed the earth in the center of his physical model he did so because his “primitive” conceptions could not allow him to imagine a universe where man was not of the utmost importance, and that the modern models, by making man’s abode just one of a countless multitude of peripheral specs driven about in various cycles, made him more humble. This idea is completely false, and is in fact an inversion of the truth.”

Read the full article here: Man’s Place in the Cosmos

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