The Perennial Philosophy

[A Cup Of Tea]

That is a wonderful picture! So, Do Europeans generally have a more understanding frame of mind toward this issue than Americans?

This is one of the most touchy subjects I have difficulty bringing up among my Christian friends. Some of them still actually believe it can be prayed away... I'll eventually open a new thread asking people advice as to how to approach it.

Tad

I have no idea! I doubt it's as clean cut as that, but Europe is more fractured then the US so I'm guessing there is more variety...including the 'ye-shall-burn-forever' type.

I'm not pretending we don't have prejudice here, just want to point that out.

 

[Thomas]

I haven't seen anything but facts on the subject from you, what are your feelings?

About the religio perennis?

Big question. Well, I'm obviously a traditionalist, but the 'Trads' (as the spokespersons of the Perennial Philosophy are often called) showed me there's more to 'Religion' that its outer forms, and there's more to 'Tradition' than just knowing stuff ... a given Tradition transmits the spiritual substance of its teaching as well as the material letter, that's why the Trads insist the only way is in and through a Traditional Religion, the contemporary forms are vestigial, if not void of content.

I had looked into other Traditions (Soto Zen, mainly), but Christianity was the one that 'spoke' to me. That and Hermeticism and the neoplatonic Tradition, but those in the light of the Christian revelation.

People think of 'Tradition' as a glacier. I see it as a spring.

Whilst I find Schuon's writings luminous, and Guénon's critique of modernity and insight into metaphysics (generally) without equal, it was while reading The Veil of the Temple by Marco Pallis, a tibetan Buddhist, that I had my 'epiphany'.

So it was because of the Perennial Tradition that I went back to the Church. It was they who showed me where to look, and how to read.