GUÉNON now turns his attention to the chasm between East and West. Given that he eventually ‘reverted’ to Islam and adopted the name ‘Abd al-Wāḥid Yaḥyá,’ it is clear that the Frenchman attributes more value to the religions of the Orient, something that is also borne out by his lifelong fascination with Hinduism.

Three years prior to having written the work under consideration, Guénon had published Orient et Occident (1924) and had therefore dealt with the complex relations between the two geographical spheres in some depth. Nonetheless, he was still determined to prove that the opposition between them could be overcome:

It is true that there have always been many and varied civilisations, each of which has developed in a manner natural to it and in conformity with the aptitudes of this or that people or race; but distinction does not mean opposition, and there can be equivalence of a sort between civilisations with very different forms, so long as they are all based on the same fundamental principles — of which they only represent applications varying in accordance with varied circumstances. This is the case with all civilisations that can be called normal or traditional, which comes to the same thing; there is no essential opposition between them, and such divergences as may exist are merely outward and superficial. (p.21)

Conversely, when a civilisation declines to the extent that it can no longer be recognised on the basis of its former metaphysical attributes then it becomes impossible to contain opposition. After all, if the general rule of thumb is no longer apparent and a civilisation cannot be judged by its more Traditional hallmarks then it begins to stand outside the parameters of identification.

This is not to suggest that East and West cannot be distinguished in terms of their differing religious and cultural factors, but whilst Europe and North America have become increasingly entwined in the modern age Guénon suggests that the East adopts more than one form. However, this does not alter the fact that

these civilisations have certain common features, such as characterise what we have called a traditional civilisation, and that these features are lacking in that of the West. That this is so is due to the fact that all the Eastern civilisations are alike traditional in character. (p.22)

There is little doubt that Guénon, who died in 1951, would be too impressed with the character of modern Japan or India, but of course he was already aware that the pernicious values of the West were in the process of becoming something of a global virus. In 1927, of course, the distinguishing features between the countries of the East were far less apparent – at least in terms of having retained a more Traditional character than that of the West – but the author knew that the Near East was an ‘intermediate’ zone in which Western values had already been planted. The foundation of the Israeli State, of course, something that took place just three years before Guénon’s death, was a clear indication that the West was in the process of establishing similarly-themed colonies across the geopolitical divide.

It has been established, therefore, that opposition between East and West only arises once a civilisation lacks the transcendent features that once bound it to its counterpart. The West’s eagerness to foment a warlike ‘clash of civilisations’ from the 1990s onwards, particularly through the ideas of Samuel P. Huntingdon (1927-2008), being a case in point.

In the past, at least up until the Medieval period, the character of the West

was much more akin, in its more important features, to what is still the Eastern mentality than to what it has itself become in modern times; Western civilisation was then comparable to the civilisations of the East in the same way as these are comparable to one another. During recent centuries there has occurred a great change that is far more serious than any of the deviations that may have occurred previously in periods of decadence, for it has proceeded to the point of an absolute reversal of the trend of human activity; and this change had its origin only in the West. (p.23)

Even in the 1920s, the term ‘Western mentality’ had already become synonymous with that of a ‘modern mentality’ and the result is that the expression ‘Eastern mentality’ has come to denote something altogether more Traditional. In addition, Guénon even goes so far as to say that the latter term can be applied to those sections of humanity that have retained their ‘normal’ state. A new opposition has therefore led to fresh alliances and the Frenchman certainly demonstrated this to good effect when he left Paris in 1930, became a Muslim and settled in Cairo. His adoption of non-Western modes of religion and culture was thus outweighed by their more sacral and transcendent significance. The author did not migrate to the East because it represents the actual source of Tradition, but merely because that same Tradition was rapidly disappearing from the environs of his native West.

Like his more radical protégé, Julius Evola, Guénon believed that

the primordial tradition of the present cycle comes from the hyperborean region; at a later time there were several secondary currents corresponding to different periods, and one of the most important of these, at least among those whose traces are still discernible, undoubtedly flowed from West to East. (pp.23-24)

Nonetheless, now we find ourselves in the modern world Guénon is adamant that the East has become the last remaining bastion of Traditional values and has no ‘authentic representatives’ in the West at all. Evola, of course, disagreed with this analysis and believed that the Occident still retains a few surviving remnants of the Primordial and that its hidden guardians must remain in place. This idea will be discussed later on in the series.

As far as restoring the so-called ‘Western Tradition’ is concerned, Guénon suggests that the

only real interest afforded by these ideas is to show that there are people whose minds have ceased to be content with modern negation, and who, feeling the need for something that our own period cannot offer, see the possibility of an escape from the present crisis only in one way: through a return to tradition in one form or another. Unfortunately, such ‘traditionalism’ is not the same as the real traditional outlook, for it may be no more than a tendency, a more or less vague aspiration presupposing no real knowledge; and it is unfortunately true that, in the mental confusion of our times, this aspiration usually gives rise to fantastic and imaginary conceptions devoid of any serious foundation (p.24)

Whilst it is perhaps ironic that the French author is usually credited with being the father of Traditionalism itself, most notably by contemporary writers such as Mark Sedgwick (see Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century), at the time Guénon’s work was published Evola was preparing the release of his 1928 Imperialismo Pagano in an attempt to combine the authoritarian Fascism of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) with Roman hierarchy and aspects of Western esotericism. It is this latter current that Guénon had relegated to the realms of fantasy and, despite the fact that he was already thirty years of age, it is certainly the case that Evola’s work is often attributed to the comparative naivety of youth. Indeed, Guénon even accused his counterparts of inventing ‘pseudo-traditions’ that have no real basis in fact, arguing that such theories are little different to those of the Theosophists that he had so ardently critiqued elsewhere.

Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World, which was published seven years after Guénon’s own work, discussed the gradual degeneration of the Hyperborean race at some length and his French counterpart did not set out to disprove the existence of these ancient civilisations. However, although he accepts that the Celts represent a fusion between the peoples of Hyperborea and a catastrophic Atlantean race he downplays the significance of such mythology in the modern age and argues that it must

not be forgotten that the real ‘Atlantean’ form disappeared thousands of years ago, together with the civilization to which it belonged and whose destruction can have come about only as the result of a perversion that may have been comparable in some respects to the one that confronts us today — with the important difference however that mankind had not yet entered upon the Kali-Yuga, Also, it should be remembered that the Atlantean tradition corresponded only to a secondary period in our cycle, and it would thus be a great mistake to seek to identify it with the primordial tradition out of which all the others have issued and which alone endures from the beginning to the end. (p.25)

Evola was more than prepared to accept that the Atlantean civilisation was inferior to that of the Hyperborean and this was faithfully reflected in Revolt Against the Modern World, but Guénon was nonetheless seeking to address a popular belief among the occultists of the time and to emphasise that one cannot base Tradition on a civilisation that had already experienced its own particular form of decline.

To be fair to Evola, the kind of mythological revivalism that Guénon was so opposed to was echoed by the Italian philosopher’s later dismissal of ‘neo-paganism’. Guénon detected a similar fallacy in what he described as ‘Celtism,’ contending that modern reconstructionists were trying to breathe life into something that was dead and forgotten. As he explains:

It is only by establishing contact with still living traditions that what is capable of being revived can be made to live again; and this, as we have so often pointed out, is one of the greatest services that the East can render the West. We do not deny that a certain Celtic spirit has survived and can still manifest itself under various forms, as it has done at different times in the past; but when anyone tells us that there still exist spiritual centres where the Druid tradition is preserved in its entirety, we require them to show proof, and until they do so we consider it very doubtful, if not altogether incredible. (p.26)

Furthermore, the fact that Celtic myths and legends were so readily incorporated within Christianity led Guénon to insist that Christianity itself – and, most notably, Catholicism – still bears the remnants of ‘a traditional spirit’ and that any Traditionalist who fails to take this into account is

inevitably doomed to failure; it is self-evident that one can build only upon something that has a real existence, and that where there is lack of continuity, any reconstruction must be artificial and cannot endure. If it be objected that Christianity itself, in our time, is no longer understood in its profound meaning, we should reply that it has at least kept in its very form all that is needed to provide the foundation of which we have been speaking. (p.27)

That Evola devoted so much time to exposing the shortcomings of Christianity as a prospective vehicle for Tradition in the modern age was no doubt an attempt to respond to Guénon’s assertions, at least in part, although he did admire the religion’s warrior ethos.

Guénon believed that many facets of Traditionalism had been retained during the Middle Ages and that it is possible to use this as a basis for their reapplication. He was not alone in this belief, of course, and medievalism in general had become increasingly popular during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. From his perspective, this task should be undertaken by an ‘intellectual elite’ that is prepared to actively co-operate with the East on the understanding that most people are incapable of realising what is actually at stake.

Guénon is of the opinion that those seeking to restore Tradition in the West are inevitably hampered by their opposition to the East:

It must be added that even those who wish to base themselves on Christianity are sometimes govern-ed by this feeling: they seem set above all on finding points of opposition, which are really quite imaginary; and it is for this reason that we have encountered the absurd opinion that if the same things are found, expressed in almost identical form, in both Christianity and the Eastern doctrines, they nevertheless do not have the same meaning in the two cases, and have even contrary meanings! (p.28)

Very little has changed, it seems, and there are many Christians in the twenty-first century who deliberately seek to antagonise or victimise their Eastern counterparts on the supposition that they represent a threat to their own particular values. In reality, many of the values concerned are not particular at all and a Christian and a Muslim – to use the worst example of this antagonistic tendency – may be said to have far more in common with one another than they do with the architects of the modern world. Such people, for Guénon, offer a rather ‘superficial’ view of Christianity and fail to comprehend the underlying factors that could lead to a more Traditional synthesis.

Much of the confusion arises from the discordance between Tradition with a capital ‘T’ and tradition with a small ‘t,’ the former indicating the perennial timelessness that underlies all forms of spirituality and the latter denoting nothing more than a series of national, local or religious customs. Clearly, that a man wears a mitre, a kippah or a turban is considerably less important than the more fundamental aspects that unite all three:

Be this as it may, if the West should somehow return to its tradition, its opposition to the East would thereby be resolved and cease to exist, as it has its roots only in the Western deviation and is in reality nothing other than the opposition between the traditional and anti-traditional outlooks. Therefore, contrary to the views we have described above, one of the first results of a return to tradition would be to make an understanding with the East immediately feasible, such as is possible between all civilizations that possess comparable or equivalent elements — and only between such, since these elements form the only ground on which an effective understanding can be based. (pp.29-30)

Rather than adopt liberal thinking and work towards the destructive syncretism and ecumenicalism that we see around us today, the advocates of which are attempting to create a one-world religion by establishing a tepid affinity between the outer garments of each spiritual form, Guénon is seeking a more ‘fundamental unity’ that can only be truly comprehended by an intellectual elite. In theory, therefore, as the opposition between East and West begins to dissipate in the face of a more transcendent understanding of metaphysical reality this positive attitude will be transmitted by intellectuals to other spheres of human existence. It would be far less easy for an imperialistic government like the United States to declare war on its Islamic counterparts in pursuit of material gain, perhaps, or for a minority of Muslim terrorists to respond by demonising the entirety of Christendom.

The author is also eager to point out that expressing opposition to the modern world, something epitomised by the Occidental belief in technological and scientific progress, does not make one a traitor to one’s own kind:

To be resolutely ‘anti-modern is not to be in any way ‘anti-Western’; on the contrary, it only means making an effort to save the West from its own confusion. In any case, no Easterner who is faithful to his own tradition would view matters differently, and it is certain that there are far fewer opponents of the West as such — an attitude that makes no sense — than of the West insofar as it has become identified with modern civilization. (p.31)

Those who speak of ‘defending’ the West, Guénon tells us, often seem unaware that the West itself is the prime agent of destruction and thus a stepping-stone towards global catastrophe. Ninety-four years after The Crisis of the Modern World was first published, the situation has worsened considerably and yet there are still American ‘exceptionalists’ and European ‘nationalists’ who steadfastly refuse to admit that the West – which, in reality, is little more than a glorified trading bloc – is chiefly responsible for having wrecked and ravished the world over the course of the last two millennia. As Guénon explains, the

true East has no thought of attacking or dominating anybody, and asks no more than to be left in independence and tranquillity — surely a not unreasonable demand. Actually, the truth is that the West really is in great need of defence, but only against itself and its own tendencies, which, if they are pushed to their conclusion, will lead inevitably to its ruin and destruction; it is therefore ‘reform’ of the West that is called for, and if this reform were what it should be — that is to say, a restoration of tradition — it would entail as a natural consequence an understanding with the East. (pp.31-32)

Perhaps if the Frenchman’s words had been heeded a century or so ago, the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’ would never have risen to such dramatic heights.