René Guénon

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René Guénon, 1925

René Jean-Marie Joseph Guénon (later Abdel Wahid Yahia ; born November 15, 1886 in Blois , † January 7, 1951 in Cairo ) was a French metaphysician and esoteric writer. Guénon is considered to be the founder of the traditionalist school .

Life path

As a boy, Guénon was so weak that he was homeschooled for years. It was not until he was twelve that he attended a public school. After graduating in 1903, Guénon began to study mathematics in Paris, but eventually switched to philosophy.

René Guénon was initiated into the Tariqa Schadhiliyya , a traditional Sufi order , in 1912 by Ivan Aguéli alias Abdul Hâdi, a Swedish- born wandering Sufi and painter, and took the Sufi name Abdel Wahid Yahia. Guénon was 26 years old at the time and had moved in various occult and Masonic circles; he also received initiations in Indian and Taoist teachings, through a mysterious Hadji Sharif and his friend Matgioi (actually: Albert de Pouvourville). In the same year he married (Catholic) Berthe Loury. Shortly afterwards he began to publish in an anti-Masonic magazine and to conduct studies on Christian symbolism, iconography and Dante . His (rejected) dissertation on Hindu teachings and his first book (against theosophy ) were finished in 1921.

After Guénon had frequented Parisian occult circles at a young age, he sharply criticized all forms of occultism , in particular those of the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky , about which he wrote a very critical work, in which he also spoke with the OTO and the Golden Dawn grappled with. Guénon claimed that the Theosophical Society played an anti-traditional role and was used, among other things, by English secret services in India, for example; but in the service of counter-initiation.

Guénon's Sufism flourished in secret, and few are likely to have known about it before he traveled to Egypt in 1930, after the death of his French wife, to look for Sufi scriptures in Cairo . Soon Guénon had adopted the Arabic clothing and mastered the language perfectly. In 1934, Guénon, who converted to Islam and became Sheikh Abdel Wahid Yahia, married Fatma Hanem, who was much younger and who was ignorant of reading and writing, and who gave birth to two daughters and a son during his life (a second son was only born after his death). Guénon had moved frequently in Egypt, but lived mostly in the center of Cairo, then in Dokki , and from 1946 permanently in Cairo. In 1949 he was granted Egyptian citizenship.

On January 7, 1951, at 11 p.m. local time, Abdel Wahid Yahia died at the age of 64.

reception

Guénon left behind a diverse work and different groups have formed that represent one aspect of Guénon's legacy and fight one another. One of his students was the Romanian diplomat Michael Valsan , who consistently tried to continue his work. Frithjof Schuon , with whom Guénon would later become friends, was only briefly a student of Guénon's and soon divorced . Guenon distinguishes some of the often mentioned in connection with his Italian cultural philosopher Julius Evola , it turned Evola the Kshatriya - caste par with that of the Brahmins , what Guenon did not. Also influenced by Guénon were his compatriot Maximine Portaz, who called herself Savitri Devi , and the German philosopher Leopold Ziegler , who continued Guénon's teaching under Christian-Catholic auspices , especially in his works Tradition (1936) and Incarnation (1948).

Guénon is often portrayed as influential in Steve Bannon's political philosophy . Above all, Guénon's apocalyptic view of history, which sees the destruction of the Templar order and the Peace of Westphalia as the beginning of the spiritual decline of the West, is mentioned.

Works

  • Introduction générale à l'étude des doctrines Hindoues. 1921
  • Le Théosophisme: Histoire d'une pseudo-religion. 1921
  • L'erreur spirite. 1923
  • Orient et Occident. 1924
  • L'homme et son devenir selon le Vedânta. 1925
  • L'ésotérisme de Dante. 1925
  • Le Roi du Monde. 1927
    • German edition: The King of the World. OW Barth, Planegg 1956; Aurum-Verlag, Freiburg 1987, ISBN 3-591-08225-2
  • La crise du monde modern. 1927
    • German edition: The crisis of modern times. Hegner, Cologne 1950
  • Autorité Spirituelle et Pouvoir Temporel. 1929
  • Saint-Bernard. 1929
  • The symbolism of the croix. 1931
    • German edition: The symbolism of the cross. Aurum-Verlag, Freiburg 1987, ISBN 3-591-08192-2
  • Les états multiples de l'Être. 1932
    • German edition: Levels of being. The multitude of worlds. Aurum-Verlag, Freiburg 1987, ISBN 3-591-08193-0
  • La metaphysique orientale. 1939
  • Le règne de la quantité et les signes des temps. 1945
  • Aperçus sur l'initiation. 1946
  • Les principes du calcul infinitésimal. 1946
  • La Grande Triade. 1946

Works compiled from his essays after his death:

  • Initiation et réalisation spiritual. 1952
  • Aperçus sur l'ésotérisme chrétien. 1954
  • Symboles de la Science Sacrée. 1962
  • Études sur la Franc-Maçonnerie et le Compagnonnage. 1964
  • Etudes sur l'Hindouisme. 1966
  • Formes traditional et cycles cosmiques. 1970
  • Aperçus sur l'ésotérisme islamique et le Taoïsme. 1973
  • Comptes rendus. 1973
  • Mélanges. 1976
  • Écrits pour regnabit. 1999
  • Articles et comptes rendus. Vol. 1, 2002

literature

  • Mark J. Sedgwick: Against the Modern World. Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press 2004, ISBN 0195152972
  • Wolfgang Neumann: René Guénon: A French esoteric of the 20th century. In: Michael Klöcker / Udo Tworuschka (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Religionen. Churches and other religious communities in Germany , 1997ff., (I-14.9.5), 17th supplementary delivery 2008, pp. 1–9.
  • John Herlihy [Ed.]: The Essential René Guénon: Metaphysics, Tradition, and the Crisis of Modernity. World Wisdom, 2009. ISBN 978-1-933316-57-4
  • Milena Rampoldi: René Guénon e la critica della modernità. Gruppo Edicom, 2013. ISBN 978-8882363451

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marco Pasi: Aleister Crowley and the temptation of politics . Ares-Verlag, Graz 2006. p. 42.
  2. ↑ Joshua Green: Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon's Nationalist Fantasia . July 17, 2017 ( vanityfair.com [accessed July 19, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Guénon, René
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abdel Wahid Yahia; Guénon, René Jean-Marie Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French metaphysician and esoteric writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Blois
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1951
Place of death Cairo