Forest Poetry

In a sense, to say that something is true is redundant. The words “is” and “true” essentially signify the same thing. Thus when we say that God is truth, we understand that we are predicating of God absolute being. We leave aside for the present the final, or, perhaps more properly, primary distinction between God as pure being and God as completely transcendent and not receptive of any predication. Our current subject of discussion is not the absolute transcendence of God but God’s relation with creation. That God is truth and that this truth is one, not many, follows logically; for as truth, God is the objective measure by which all other things are measured. There cannot be two separate objective measures of truth; for if these two measures agreed on every occasion, then they would be not two but one, and if they disagreed, then at most one of the measures could accurately be said to be such a measure. A statement that claims that an individual creature has a given quality is true only insofar as it reflects the existence (i.e., the being) of that quality in that creature. This existence (being) is derived from God. Thus the existence of all qualities are granted by God, and it is true that a creature has a quality only if God has granted existence to that quality in that particular. On a fundamental level, even a mundane assertion is true if and only if God has granted it existence.

Keeping this in mind, we move on to the perhaps controversial statement that all men believe in God. That is, all men believe in objective truth, even those who refuse to admit it to themselves. Men of course vary in the accuracy of their belief. We can give a graded list of these different types of belief. The list is in no way exhaustive and merely represents a few examples. We begin with those who have the most perfect belief possible for men, belief that God is one, good, and transcendent. This is the traditional view. Next we have what we may call the scientific view. Many of the proponents of this view vigorously deny God, but yet they do not explain what the one measure of objective truth is. Sensing this problem they claim that they are merely attempting to approximate reality, but this just pushes the problem back. There is still one objective thing (truth) at which they are aiming. If they are aiming at truth, then truth must have existence, or else they might as well be aiming at nothing. This brings us to the root of the problem: there can be no ontological distinctions without metaphysics. Try as they might to denounce metaphysics, it always lurks in their psyche whenever thy make an assertion in speech or thought. That is why we say that they believe in God, only in a very distorted and degenerate form. Even lower than the scientific view is the extreme pseudo-dialectical view of the Marxists.

We say pseudo-dialectical because what the Marxists regard as dialectic is in fact an inversion of the dialectic of the ancient philosophers. For the latter dialectic was a means of removing contingent truths from the psyche as a means of reaching the one unqualified principle of all things (God). For the Marxists dialectic is an insane process of constant and radical revision of theories, a removing of current beliefs but not to achieve transcendence, only further and constant removal of ideas. There is a desire for constant flux and movement, never resting on one theory. For example, there are Marxists today who reject modern science, despite the fact that the their world view was partly based on it. They do this because they claim that modern science developed in a chauvinist, feminist, oppressive culture, and is therefore suspect. By so doing they undermine the very basis of their philosophy, but this does not bother them, for they care not for foundation, only revolution. How can we say that such men believe in God? Because in their frenzy of theorizing and revision, even they wish to assert the truth of a particular theory. Their understanding of truth is so poor that they can claim that a theory is true for now, subsequently abandoning it. But nevertheless, in promoting a theory they are implicitly making a claim about its existence, about it having a relationship to what really is in the world, to the truth. Of course their claims must be taken for the nonsense that they are, for they have no solid ground to stand on.

Only a consciously and proudly metaphysical system can legitimately make claims about truth.

“Trinity! Higher than any being,
any divinity, any goodness!
Guide of Christians
in the wisdom of heaven!
Lead us up beyond unknowing and light,
up to the farthest, highest peak
of mystic scripture,
where the mysteries of God’s Word
lie simple, absolute and unchangeable
in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.
Amid the deepest shadow
they pour overwhelming light
on what is most manifest.
Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen
they completely fill our sightless minds
with treasures beyond all beauty.”

Pseudo-Dionysius
(translated by Colm Luibheid)

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.

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.

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.

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.