The works of the only master metaphysician of the Western world René Guénon (1886–1951) were not understood even at the time he wrote them. As he accurately predicted, the ongoing degeneration of human intelligence means that even fewer persons have a chance of understanding what he wrote about now. There are signs that a wilful subversion of ‘traditionalism’ is taking place to an even more degraded level than that which was taking place when Guénon inspired the Perennialist movement of a century ago now.

Left: René Guénon (1925)

René Guénon himself said that there is a difference between tradition and ‘traditionalist’, and he would not describe himself as that. He never even described himself as a Perennialist as such, though his works inspired the movement. His purpose was to be on the side of tradition, that is, to defend it with all the (considerable) intellectual means at his disposal as all tradition—which is a word cognate with initiation—was being vigorously eroded at the time, erosion that has only continued today, and that has even accelerated. Confusion is always the favourite means of the counter-initiatic movement, so today we naturally have a form of ‘perennialism’ that is ascribed to a political movement, something that could not be further from the intentions of either Guénon or ourselves to propagate. Those opposed to tradition and real spirituality will not hesitate to make use of this and will deliberately blur the difference.[1]

René Guénon and Schuon

Of these strange hybrid tendencies within the obfuscating, anti-spiritual movement, which include the popularisation of such unlikely bedfellows as Frithjof Schuon and Carl Jung, we can clearly see a trait that usually only afflicts those who have made a very superficial study of René Guénon’s works. And this is to assume that Guénon, or even us, or anyone else coming from a metaphysical point of view, is actually interested in some kind of social (or even political) reform. Guénon, when very young, thought there might be some very small chance of an intellectual élite averting the coming catastrophe by influencing the West in some subtle way and bringing about a return to a traditional, regular order. This is made clear in the first book he ever wrote, An Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, and then later in The Crisis of the Modern World. He was aware however, even then, of the near impossibility of this. He soon realised that such a return would never take place, and by the time he wrote The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times in 1946 he was only writing for a very few people in a future time (our time now) that might be helped by knowing the truth.

At this advanced stage of the Kali Yuga, any thoughts of social change or reform are deluded fantasy.[2] What is worse is that the person who has such thoughts clearly has no idea of what has taken place in our world even since 2020. They cannot see what is right in front of their eyes, let alone any metaphysical principle. Let us state clearly that it was never the concern of esotericism to change anything in the exoteric domain, by definition.

René Guénon always said that his reasons for writing social criticism at all were because we always have to start from the physical and individual realm, and so we need to understand the conditions that we must work under when esotericism is nowhere in any way supported. That is the same reason why we have written some explanation about the new world order—the actual one we all experience not the fantasy ‘conspiracy theory’ version—in Nu Hermetica—Initiation and Metaphysical Reality (2021) and after that in Way of Knowledge in the Reign of Antichrist (2022). Only those of a very restricted mentality would read any of what we wrote during the lockdown years and think that we were, or are concerned with ‘changing the world’ or society at large.

It is true, often enough, that sometimes people will say they ‘read’ things but all they do is react with their own thoughts, and because they are more interested in their own thoughts than anything else, however puerile, they create a sort of narrative of their own invention and wrap it around the text they were supposedly reading. They then launch what they think is a criticism, but they have recreated the ideas in the mud of their own minds and then criticised that, their own private fantasy.[3]

While Frithjof Schuon is described as a metaphysician, it is clear from some of his remarks about René Guénon that he did not understand metaphysics in the way that Guénon meant the word and, as with the Carl Jung, whom Guénon described as a direct agent of the Antichrist, his mind was strictly limited to reason.[4] This is nothing compared to the degradation that has subsequently taken place, for we have seen professional psychics lately describing what they do as ‘metaphysics’! In fact, in today’s world whenever the limits of vulgarity seem to have been reached, someone always comes along to exceed those limits.

Finally, the confusion about metaphysics is so persistent that we will briefly repeat here what we mean by the term:

Metaphysics is meant here in the etymological sense of the word, which is to say, ‘beyond the physical’, and so nothing to do with the chemical state of the body or brain, or the psychological domain. Metaphysics refers to the infinite, unlimited universal doctrine that can only be known metaphysically. As it depends from a supra-human source, it can never be a branch of philosophy or some other science. Indeed, philosophy and the other modern theoretical sciences were originally derived from metaphysics and not vice versa.[5]

Notes

1. For a recent example, see the ‘scholarly’ Foreword to a book by Swami Sarvapriyananda, Fullness and Emptiness: Vedanta and Buddhism. See our article, ‘Pervasive Influence of Buddhism on Occultism and Neo-Hinduism’ here.

2. We are in the final phase of the last Dark Age on earth in an entire Cosmic Cycle, although those who speak and write within the Neo-Hinduism movement either never mention it or even lie about it.

3. In the Hindu doctrine there are two words for this. One, viparyaya, means ‘false knowledge’ (or superimposition) and the other, avidya, means ignorance or ‘no knowledge at all’, which provides the whole field for the delusionary modifications of the false knowledge.

4. Schuon made the—very personal—remarks in his book René Guénon: Some Observations [Sophia Perennis], proving his total misunderstanding of Guénon’s metaphysical point of view.

5. ‘Concerning Metaphysics’, Metamorphosis—Hermetic Science and Yoga Power [Ordo Astri]. See the book here.

© Oliver St. John 2026

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