THE opening chapter of Guénon’s work alludes to the final period of a rotational time-cycle as it is perceived both by the wise sages of antiquity and the millions of people who continue to reside in the rapidly dwindling number of Traditional societies today.

Setting-out the passage of decline, the author reminds us that the roots of Europe’s own Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron ages can be found in the four cycles of the Hindu system. Indeed, ancient civilisations passed through a quartet of distinct phases and what most Traditional societies have in common is the fact that each of them, at one time or another, have experienced some kind of Golden Age or Satya-Yuga. This, predictably, is followed by an all-too-familiar and recognisable pattern of spiritual decay which results in the collapse of the social hierarchy and leads to the onset of widespread disorder.

For the ancient Aryans, the beginning of the end was represented by the fierce conflict between the luminous deities (deva) in the north-east of India and their demonic adversaries (asura) to the south; for the Egyptians it was a crucial shift of power that finally resulted in the gradual triumph of the priestly caste over its regal opponents; for the Sumerians it was the reinterpretation of the myth of Gilgamesh by the Hebrews, who later cast him as Adam the primordial sinner; and for the ancient Greeks, meanwhile, it was the victory of the Dionysian spirit over that of an increasingly sterile Apollonian society. And so the list goes on, but despite the intermittent revival or reintroduction of the solar principle by way of notable exceptions such as Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda, Mithras and even the Safavid dynasty of Iran, the rot always sets in eventually and the long and protracted war against Tradition is now well under way and has become the very hallmark of the modern world.

The move away from Tradition, however, must go through two further stages before it enters the Age of Iron, or Kali-Yuga. These are the Age of Silver, or Treta-Yuga, and the Age of Bronze, or Dvapara-Yuga. This metallic terminology is mostly used in relation to the West but, nevertheless, the three stages which follow the Satya-Yuga result in a gradual loss and decline of primordial and spiritual truth. The four maha yugas, or age-cycles, are said to accord with 1,728,000 (Satya), 1,296,000 (Treta), 864,000 (Dvapara) and 432,000 (Kali) years respectively. Taken collectively, the four human cycles are known as Manvantara, or Breath of Life. As Guénon himself explains, we are now living

in the fourth age, the Kali-Yuga or ‘dark age’, and have been so already, it is said, for more than six thousand years, that is to say since a time far earlier than any known to ‘classical’ history. Since that time, the truths which were formerly within reach of all have become more and more hidden and inaccessible; those who possess them grow fewer and fewer, and although the treasure of ‘non-human’ (that is, supra-human) wisdom that was prior to all the ages can never be lost, it nevertheless becomes enveloped in more and more impenetrable veils, which hide it from men’s sight and make it extremely difficult to discover. (p.7)

Time may be a great healer, but it is also a great concealer and the role of the Traditionalist is to peel back the surface of modernity and rediscover that which lies beneath. Although the perennial wisdom of the past may be ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ Guénon is adamant that it can still be found among the signs and symbols that surround us today. The key, of course, is to use knowledge as a means by which to see and comprehend them through new eyes.

The Frenchman was perfectly aware that the four-fold Manvantara system can appear irrational or abstract to the contemporary mindset and that the gradual descent from Satya to Kali is completely at odds with notions of modern progress, but we must remember that the decline leads to an eventual renewal of the cycle. In short, the

development of any manifestation necessarily implies a gradually increasing distance from the principle from which it proceeds; starting from the highest point, it tends necessarily downward, and, as with heavy bodies, the speed of its motion increases continuously until finally it reaches a point at which it is stopped. This fall could be described as a progressive materialization, for the expression of the principle is pure spirituality; we say the expression and not the principle itself, for the latter, being beyond all oppositions, cannot be described by any term appearing to suggest an opposite. (pp.6-7)

Guénon’s use of the term ‘progressive materialization’ relates to the seemingly ironic notion that whilst everything appears to be heading in a downward trajectory there is nonetheless a simultaneous coming-together that, ultimately, transforms that which is most base and inferior into something that is supremely pure. This is not a socio-economic reference, concerning the earthly or material character of the ‘golden’ civilisation itself, but a metaphysical concept that alludes to the triumph of spirit over matter. Imagine an avalanche causing a massive snowball to career down the side of a mountain, gathering more and more dirt in the process until its pure-white appearance is turned into a muddy-brown. When it finally arrives at the bottom, it is suddenly transformed back into a huge snowball. The silt and sludge have disappeared and the mass of ice crystals is raised aloft until it is once again sitting at the very peak. The filth and detritus of the Kali-Yuga has now become the spotless symbol of a new Golden Age.

As Guénon indicates, although a transformation of this kind serves as an expression of ‘pure spirituality,’ to suggest that it represents something altogether separate from any other cycle would imply that Satya is opposed to Treta, or Dvapara to Kali. The wonderful unity of the Manvantara system, therefore, completely discounts the possibility of there ever being two separate worlds that can be divided into ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’. There may be a number of different expressions, but only a single universal principle. Furthermore, even

words such as ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’, which we borrow here from Western terminology for the sake of convenience, have for us little more than a symbolical value; in any case, they can be made to fit the question in hand only on condition that we exclude the special interpretations given them by modern philosophy, whose ‘spiritualism’ and ‘materialism’ are, in our eyes, only two complementary forms that imply each other and are both negligible for anyone who wishes to go beyond these contingent points of view.

Needless to say, The Crisis of the Modern World was never intended to serve as a dense philosophical treatise in the way that Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) or G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) sought to approach similar oppositional matters, so in this particular case we must accept the limitations of language.

One important factor to remember about the four yugic stages that ‘begin’ with Satya and ‘end’ with Kali, is that they do not really develop or unfold along a straight line. This, at least in reverse, would be similar to the kind of linearity that one finds in Christianity, Marxism and modern notions of ‘progress’. The fact that certain religions and ideologies pursue an upward trajectory, heading towards a particular goal, should not lead us to assume that the Manvantara system does the same thing in the opposite direction. Guénon, keen to emphasise that movement through the cycles is not to be interpreted as a literal descent, tells us that

two contrary tendencies are to be traced in everything, the one descending and the other ascending, or, in other words, one centrifugal and the other centripetal; and, from the predominance of one or the other tendency result two complementary phases of manifestation, the one a departure from the principle and the other a return to it, two phases often symbolically compared to the beating of the heart or the process of breathing. Although these two phases are usually described as successive, the two tendencies to which they correspond must in reality be conceived as always acting simultaneously — although in different proportions — and it sometimes happens, at moments when the downward tendency seems on the point of prevailing definitively in the course of the world’s development, that some special action intervenes to strengthen the contrary tendency, and to restore a certain equilibrium, at least relative, such as the conditions of the moment allow; and this causes a partial readjustment through which the fall may seem to be checked or temporarily neutralized. (pp.8-9)

It is rather tempting to view this safeguard as something that is built into nature, like gravity, but from a metaphysical perspective it represents nothing less than an example of divine intervention. Spiritual forces actively operate within the material realm to preserve the redeeming principles of salvation and regeneration. Although modern historians are always keen to offer their own reasons for the rise and fall of empires, civilisations and religions, they inevitably fail to take into consideration the more crucial role of the supernatural.

This particular work is not designed to address the cycles of the Manvantara in their entirety, of course, but simply to focus on the particular epoch in which we find ourselves at the present time. However, Guenon’s work is even more specialised in the sense that he seeks to deal with the very last stages of the Kali-Yuga itself:

Actually, within each of the great periods of which we have spoken it is possible to go further, and distinguish secondary phases constituting so many sub-divisions of it, and since each part is analogous after its own fashion to the whole, these subdivisions reproduce, so to speak, on a much smaller scale, the general course of the greater cycle in which they are contained; but here also a complete investigation of the ways in which this law applies to particular cases would carry us beyond the limits of the present study. (p.9)

At the same time, the author is cognizant that no truly effective study of modernity would be complete without examining some of the more ‘profane’ aspects of history. Whilst the chronicle of humanity only really begins from the sixth century BCE onwards, Guénon detects a real sense of irony in the fact that anything prior to this period is perhaps the least known and least explored by historians themselves. We certainly know far more about the Ancient Egyptians than the Frenchman did at the time his work was first published, but this does not change the fact that history only begins to assume a more concise and detailed form long after the pyramids were constructed and

what is perhaps even more astonishing is that in an exceptional and privileged case like that of China, which possesses annals relating to far more distant periods and dated by means of astro-nomical observations that leave no room for doubt, modern writers nonetheless class these periods as ‘legendary’, as if they saw in them a domain in which they have no right to any certainty, and in which they do not allow themselves to obtain any. (p.10)

Herein lies the great disparity between the ‘profane’ historians of today and the mystical peoples of antiquity who were constantly in touch with the supernatural to the extent that it permeated every minute aspect of their lives.

As far as Guénon is concerned, the ‘Classical’ period does not even extend back to the central portion of the Kali-Yuga and that, in itself, amounts to a mere tenth of the Manvantara system. This is why modern historians relegate the information from those periods of which they know so little to the status of ‘myth’ and ‘legend’. The author is quick to identify this attitude as a hallmark of anti-Tradition.

This attitude is not merely the result of arrogance or ignorance, but is a convenient way to downplay the very era in which the disease that evolved into modernity first began to exert a truly corrosive and damaging effect:

This is what occurred for example in China, where the doctrine, primitively established as a single whole, was then divided into two clearly distinct parts: Taoism, reserved for an elite and comprising pure metaphysics and the traditional sciences of a properly speculative nature, and Confucianism, which was common to all without distinction, and whose domain was that of practical and mainly social applications. Among the Persians there seems also to have been a re-adaptation of Mazdaism, for this was the time of the last Zoroaster. In India on the other hand this period saw the rise of Buddhism , that is to say of a revolt against the traditional spirit, amounting to a denial of all authority and resulting in a veritable anarchy, in the etymological sense, of ‘absence of principle’, both in the intellectual and social realms. (pp.10-11)

Whilst Guénon is being rather unfair in the case of Buddhism which, to a large extent, was designed to restore the Traditional values that certain strands of Hinduism had undermined – even more so, once Zen arrived to correct the failings of Buddhism itself – it is certainly true that the decline of all Traditional civilisations happens for a reason.

The sixth century BCE was undoubtedly a time of great change and upheaval. Not only did the Babylonian armies under Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562) capture Jerusalem and alter the course of Jewish history forever, leading to a dramatic loss of authentic Tradition and sowing the seeds for the later development of Judaic zealotry, messianism and Christianity, but it also marks the onset of the ‘Classical’ era under the Greeks and Romans. It is not for nothing, of course, that Athens is widely regarded as the birthplace of civilisation and Guénon suggests that whilst the development of Hellenic philosophy

denotes therefore a preliminary and preparatory stage, a step as it were in the direction of wisdom or a degree corresponding to a lower level of wisdom; the perversion that ensued consisted in taking this transitional stage for an end in itself and in seeking to substitute ‘philosophy’ for wisdom, a process which implied forgetting or ignoring the true nature of the latter. It was in this way that there arose what may be described as ‘profane’ philosophy, in other words, a pretended wisdom that was purely human and therefore entirely of the rational order, and that took the place of the true, traditional, supra-rational, and ‘non-human’ wisdom. (p.13)

The author concedes that much of Greek philosophy retained its authentic value by dividing itself into two separate halves, ‘esoteric’ and ‘exoteric,’ but over time the latter dimension was accentuated at the expense of the former and thus the gradual displacement of philosophy’s spiritual core led to the growth of a distinctly modern mentality. Rationalism, therefore, eventually came to supplant the ancient philosophical mysteries that were firmly rooted in the supernatural.

Whilst the role of the ‘Classical’ period in the evolution of the modern world is extremely important, there are other factors to consider and these are consistent with the subsequent rise of Christianity during the first century CE. As the Greco-Latin civilisation approached its ultimate dissolution and Hellenic spirituality quickly degenerated into a token ‘paganism,’ Christianity was able to take advantage of this loss of direction by presenting itself as a spiritually dynamic alternative to the more primitive ‘superstitions’ of the past.

Once the ‘dark’ ages of the migrating barbarian had been successfully overshadowed by the arrival of the Medieval period, the rising waters of European modernity took another important turn. Although Christendom had consolidated its supremacy under the rule of Charlemagne (748-814), by the fourteenth century

a new decadence set in that has continued, through various phases and with gathering impetus, up to the present time. This date is the real starting-point of the modern crisis; it is the beginning of the disruption of Christendom, with which the Western civilization of the Middle Ages was essentially identified: at the same time, it marks the origin of the formation of ‘nations’ and the end of the feudal system, which was very closely linked with the existence of Christendom. (p.15)

By Guénon’s calculations, therefore, the rot had already set in prior to the more dramatic Renaissance and Reformation periods that historians frequently cite as immediate precursors to the modern world. It was this combination of early scientism and religious liberalism that paved the way for what was to come.

The Renaissance, the Frenchman tells us, was far from being an explosion of cultural and scientific creativity and neither did it serve as a vehicle for the replenishment of those values which had been suppressed by the Church. In fact it was always

bound to have a very artificial character, as it meant a re-establishment of forms whose real life had gone out of them centuries before. As for the traditional sciences of the Middle Ages, after a few final manifestations around this time, they disappeared as completely as those of distant civilizations long since destroyed by some cataclysm; and this time nothing was to arise in their place. Henceforth there was only ‘profane’ philosophy and ‘profane’ science, in other words, the negation of true intellectuality, the limitation of knowledge to its lowest order, namely, the empirical and analytical study of facts divorced from principles, a dispersion in an indefinite multitude of insignificant details, and the accumulation of unfounded and mutually destructive hypotheses and of fragmentary views leading to nothing other than those practical applications that constitute the sole real superiority of modern civilization — a scarcely enviable superiority, moreover, which, by stifling every other preoccupation, has given the present civilization the purely material character that makes of it a veritable monstrosity. (pp.15-16)

One only has to look at the 1533 painting, The Ambassadors, to realise that Hans the Younger (1497-1543) had deliberately set out to portray the shortcomings of the time and that its impressive scientific paraphernalia is flanked by symbols of discord such as a lute with a broken string and an anamorphic skull that is designed to be viewed from the side of the painting itself. Human advancement, it could be argued, is presented as a form of death and Guénon would no doubt have agreed with this conclusion.​

The author believes that the changes brought about by the Renaissance and Reformation were so extraordinary that they cannot possibly have been spontaneous and that some kind of systematic orchestration was taking place behind the scenes. It is certainly a fact that the Middle Ages – aspects of which are genuinely meritorious – were quickly pushed aside in the general clamour for ‘progress’. Man had come to replace God at the centre of the human universe, a radical change of perspective that was reinforced by the manufactured ‘age of discoveries’ that Guénon believes was designed to conceal the fact that China and the Americas were already known to the peoples of the Medieval world. Furthermore, it is unlikely

that the legend alleging that the Middle Ages were a time of gloom, ignorance, and barbarism could have arisen and become accepted, or that the veritable falsification of history in which the moderns have indulged, could have been accomplished in the absence of some preconceived idea; but we shall pursue this question no further, for, in whatever manner these processes may have taken place, our main concern for the moment is to make clear their results. (pp.16-17)

The humanistic current that had swept away the power of the Catholic Church was said to have been inspired by the Ancient Greeks, particularly when the alleged ‘supremacy’ of mankind was celebrated on the basis of its imperial conquests, but no civilisation had ever turned against the supernatural realm to such an incredible extent. Humanism would lead to an entire series of dangerous consequences and become

the first form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage until it has reached the level of the lowest elements in man and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim that is in any case quite illusory since it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy. (p.17)

Guénon questions whether the modern world will be able to reorientate itself in the way that the Middle Ages rose out of the ashes of the Greco-Latin period, concluding that the Traditional sources indicate that we are already in the final stage of the Kali-Yuga and that there is very little chance that our own plunging civilisation will manage to pull out of its frantic nosedive towards ultimate collapse. Nothing but an unexpected cataclysm, in fact, will postpone that which now seems inevitable. Just as a corrupt political system often needs to be swept away, impervious to reform, so too will the modern world require a fundamental overhaul:

Disorder and confusion prevail in every domain and have been carried to a point far surpassing all that has been known previously, so that, issuing from the West, they now threaten to invade the whole world; we know full well that their triumph can never be other than apparent and transitory, but such are the proportions which it has reached, that it would appear to be the sign of the gravest of all the crises through which mankind has passed in the course of its present cycle. (pp.17-18)

There are no shortage of doom-sayers in human history, many of whom were convinced that the ‘end is nigh’ and that the world was on the brink of disaster, but if Guénon had lived into the twenty-first century he would have been even more convinced that what he described elsewhere as ‘the reign of quantity’ has attained unimaginable proportions.

Ironically, despite the huge gulf between the Satya and Kali yugas there is nothing particular ‘abnormal’ about the character of the modern world and what is happening around us is simply a fulfilment of that which has been known (and expected) for millennia. Whilst this may sound a little vague, the continuing degeneration of modernity is not an imprecise process but something that

must necessarily correspond with the development of certain possibilities that have lain within the potentiality of the present cycle ever since its origin, and however low the rank of these possibilities in the hierarchy of the whole, they like the others were bound to manifest themselves at their appointed time. In this connection, it might be said that what, according to tradition, characterizes the ultimate phase of a cycle is the realization of all that has been neglected or rejected during the preceding phases; and indeed, this is exactly the case with modern civilization, which lives as it were only by that for which previous civilizations had no use. (pp.18-19)

The present era, therefore, is characterised by a fundamental worthlessness that is nonetheless fulfilling an important objective. One cannot replace an old suit if there is no way of telling how much wear and tear it has endured over the course of time, so this is why it is crucial to recognise the signs of decay.

Anticipated or not, Guénon is not seeking to justify the existence of the modern world and thus an

inevitable ill is nonetheless an ill, and even if good is to come out of evil, this does not change the evil character of the evil itself: we use the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here only to make ourselves clear and without any specifically ‘moral’ intention. Partial disorders cannot but exist, since they are necessary elements in the total order, but a period of disorder is in itself nevertheless comparable to a monstrosity, which, though the consequence of certain natural laws, is still a deviation and an error, or to a cataclysm, which, though resulting from the normal course of events, is nevertheless a subversion and an anomaly when viewed in itself. (p.19)

Needless to say, there will also be severe consequences for those who are actively helping to facilitate this process.