A miracle occurs when the supernatural order directly intervenes in the natural order. Through a modern abuse of language, the latter term has come to connote rationality, and the former irrationality. However, there is nothing irrational in the nature of a miracle. It is logical that the possibility of direct contact between the natural and supernatural orders must be realized, given that they are only separate in appearance. If the natural order was truly divorced from the supernatural, and therefore there was no possibility of a miracle, then it would have no existence whatsoever, because it would have no principle or root. If the inverse is true, then miracles are a necessity by the very fact that they are possible. The bolt of lightning, with its suddenness and blinding whiteness reflects the principle of the miracle in the natural order proper.
03/31/10
03/22/10
Destiny
Scientists have foretold that after five billion years, the Earth will be absorbed into the sun as the sun reaches the end of its lifespan. What they have described, by way of analogy, is in fact the absorption of the entire cosmos into the principial substance.
Titus Burckhardt describes this analogy whilst discussing Taoist painting…
“The world would appear to be made of snowflakes, quickly crystallised and just as quickly dissolved. Since he is ever conscious of the non-manifested, the less solidified physical conditions are, the nearer they would seem to be…to the Reality underlying all phenomena.”
-Taken from Sacred Art in East and West.
It is doubtful whether many scientists are aware of this, and indeed, if they were they would not be so preoccupied with the manipulation of physical phenomena, given that no knowledge of the mechanisms of nature can bestow permanence upon any manifestation. Permanence is eternity, and eternity is possessed by God alone. We cannot overcome physical death, whether it be individual or cosmic, with technology any more than we can reach infinity by counting. Our true purpose is described by Frithjof Schuon thus:
“What matters for a man is not the diversity of the events he may experience…but perseverance in the ‘remembrance’ (prayer), which takes us outside time and raises us above our hopes and our fears. This remembrance already dwells in eternity; in it the succession of actions is only illusory, prayer being one; prayer is thereby already a death, a meeting with God, an eternity of bliss.”
-Taken from Prayer Fashions Man
03/6/10
Life and Study
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.
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.
03/2/10
Truth in Traditionalism Pt.2
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 it derive authority?
The answer lies in that the upholding of tradition is, counter-intuitively, 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 very different from the picture usually painted of traditionalists as overly-mystical history buffs.
So while it may seem that here we focus 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 exist at any point in time, and it is precisely because that it is Golden that it transcends time in this way.
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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.