/lit/ - Literature

>>23219109
It is true that the word “philosophy” can, in itself, be understood in quite a legitimate sense, and one which without doubt originally belonged to it, especially if it be true that Pythagoras himself was the first to use it: etymologically it denotes nothing more than “ love of wisdom ” ; it implies then, first of all, an initial disposition required for the attainment of wisdom, and, by a quite natural extension of this meaning, the quest which is born from this same disposition and which must lead to knowledge. It is therefore only a preliminary and preparatory stage, a movement, as It were, towards wisdom or a degree corresponding to an inferior state of wisdom.

>>22933311
>There is no one bett-

Why is it valuable? Does he explain it in any of his books? The more I look into this, the harder it is for me to make head or tails of it. If Atman really is Brahman then whether you become aware of it or not seems pretty pointless.
>"Enlightenment is valuable because it brings an end to suffering."
But if you are Brahman suffering is irrelevant and doesn't matter.
>"Enlightenment is valuable because it brings you supreme bliss and peace."
But if you are Brahman, you are already beyond these petty joys.
>"Enlightenment is valuable because it prevents the destruction of the subtle body/soul/what have you."
But if you are already Brahman, you don't need any of these things. You are beyond them.
>"Enlightenment grants you supreme wisdom and awareness."
You already have those, because you are Brahman.
So, the Atman is Brahman situation seems to lead to the following:
- There is nothing to gain from enlightenment because you are already perfect and complete.
- There is nothing to lose from dying unenlightened because you are already the immortal Source of all things.
- There is nothing to lose from living unenlightened because the divine Source is indifferent with respect to all conditioned things, states, feelings and actions; neither suffering nor bliss can impair the status and dignity of Brahman.
Why, then, is enlightenment valuable, desirable, important or necessary? I keep oscillating between on the one hand feeling peace, when I reflect on how Atman is Brahman, always and forever, meaning that I am already complete, already the Source, the supreme divinity. And feeling anguish and suffering on the other hand, when I reflect on how I am not enlightened, how I am stuck in ignorance, how I am not pursuing the final liberation which I should be pursuing. This seems a bit incoherent and strange to me because, as I said, even if I am not enlightened, being already Brahman, I am the supreme, divine, intellectual principle that is beyond ignorance and cannot be obscured by ignorance even while in the midst of it, so I shouldn’t feel concerned about being unenlightened, that kind of worry seems to be baseless. That’s the kind of paradoxical situation I am looking for clarification with.
Does Guenon explain this issue in any of his books?

>>21789548
no one is filtered by you, you're just a fraud

I see that he was a freemason. Why? What was his opinion on Freemasonry? Weren't traditionalists supposed to be against Freemasonry?

I wanna make text mining of /lit/. What to do research about?

"Be that as it may, one has the general impression that, in the present state of things, there is no longer any stability; but while there are some who sense the danger and try to react to it, most of our contemporaries are quite at ease amid this confusion, in which they see a kind of exteriorized image of their own mentality. Indeed there is an exact correspondence between a world where everything seems to be in a state of mere 'becoming', leaving no place for the changeless and the permanent, and the state of mind of men who find all reality in this 'becoming', thus implicitly denying true knowledge as well as the object of that knowledge, namely transcendent and universal principles. One can go even further and say that it amounts to the negation of all real knowledge whatsoever, even of a relative order, since, as we have shown above, the relative is unintelligible and impossible without the absolute, the contingent without the necessary, change without the unchanging, and multiplicity without unity; 'relativism' is self-contradictory, for, in seeking to reduce everything to change, one logically arrives at a denial of the very existence of change; this was fundamentally the meaning of the famous arguments of Zeno of Elea."

"We must also state that our demonstration, which avails against all reincarnationist theories, whatever form they may take, applies equally and for the same reason to certain ideas of a more philosophical allure, such as Nietzsche’s notion of an ‘eternal return’—in a word, to everything that presumes any kind of repetition in the universe."

In Islamic esoterism it is said that one who presents himself at a certain 'gate', without having reached it by a normal and legitimate way, sees it shut in his face and is obliged to turn back, but not as a mere profane person, for he can never be such again, but as a saher (a sorcerer or a magician working in the domain of subtle possibilities of an inferior order).* It would be impossible to put the position more clearly; it is a question of the 'infernal' way trying to oppose the 'celestial' way, and actually achieving the outward appearances of opposition, although such appearances can only be illusory; and, as was pointed out earlier when speaking of the false spirituality in which some beings, who are engaged in a sort of 'inverted realization', lose themselves, this way can only end at last in the total 'disintegration' of the conscious being and in its final dissolution.**

* The last degree of the 'counter-initiatic' hierarchy is occupied by what are called the 'saints of Satan' (awliyā' al-shaytān) who are in a sense the inverse of the true saints (awliyā' al-shaytān), thus manifesting the most complete expression possible of 'inverted spirituality'.

** A finality so conclusive of course represents only an exceptional case, which is that of the awliyā' al-slhaytān; the fate of those who have gone less far in the same direction is only that of being abandoned on a road that leads nowhere, to which they may be confined for the indefinity of an 'aeon' or cycle.

from The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times by René Guénon

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Where should I start with Guenon?

>>21386183
Agreed.

So what's the deal with Evola, Guenon, et al? I tried reading their texts during a speed binge and they seemed needlessly mystical, esoteric, and inaccessible.

It seems to me that the paths of "magic" or "tradition" they're describing are basically rigpa/satori/christ-consciousness/insert your own special snowflake term for transcendental unity here, obfuscated in purposefully obtuse and flowery language. They seem to be conflating spiritual intelligence with worldly intelligence, and seem to imply that to be at X spiritual level, you need to be at a corresponding Y worldly level. It seem obvious when you read something like "Zen at War" that a zen 'master' can achieve unity with the One, the Godhead, however you'd like to describe it, while still viewing the world through his own worldly lens, tainted by the viewpoints of his own culture and traditions.

What do you guys think about Guénon's critique of the modern world?

Is there still a Traditionalism/Esotericism discord server?

>Islam is such a buzzkill, tho
>even as Sufism
>is that really the best there is at the end of the esoteric journey?
>I think I'll just stick to fiction like Zanoni

Sanāthana Dharma does not date from a certain moment in time nor does it depend on a founder. Being eternal it is also universal nor does it have territorial limitations. All beings who are born and who are to be born belong to it. No one escapes this rule, even if they do not recognize it. The fact that fire burns does not depend on whether we believe it or not. If we recognize this truth, so much the better for us; if we do not accept it, so much the worse for us. In any case, the rule is that, unchanging, universal and eternal. This is the Sanāthana Dharma. (Question:) If everyone is Hindū, why is there the restriction of the caste system? (Answer:) I only said that everyone is Hindū and therefore has the right to seek a teacher in our religion. I did not say that such guidance should be the same for everyone. Unlimited are the varieties of temperaments, habits, environments, hereditary ties, prenatal tendencies, etc., so there cannot be expected to be one homogeneous method for everyone. Therefore there are two parts of Dharma: the universal part (Sāmānya Dharma) and the particular part (Viśeṣa Dharma). To the first belongs all mankind. To the second, those who belong to a particular caste. However, both find their guidance in the caste system" (Dialogues with the Guru, Chennai 2014, p. 14)14.

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Many other traditions accord with all that has been discussed about the 'supreme country'. There is notably another name for it that is probably even older than Paradesha. This name is Tula, which the Greeks called Thule, a name which we have already understood to be apparently the true equivalent of 'isle of the four Masters'. The name has, however, been given to many different regions, so that even today it is still to be found as far afield as Russia and Central America. No doubt each of these regions constituted the seat of a spiritual power in some era more or less long past, and which was an emanation of the power of the primordial Tula. It is known that the Mexican Tula owes its origin to the Toltecs who came, it is said, from Aztlan, the 'land in the middle of the water', which is evidently Atlantis. They brought the name Tula from their country of origin and gave it to a centre which consequently must have replaced, to a certain extent, that of the lost continent.1 On the other hand, the Atlantean Tula must be distinguished from the Hyperborean Tula, which latter represents the first and supreme centre for the entire current Manvantara and is the archetypal 'sacred Isle', situated, as we have seen, in a literally polar location. All the other 'sacred isles', although everywhere bearing names of equivalent meaning, are still only images of the original. This even applies to the spiritual centre of Atlantean tradition, which only governed a secondary historical cycle, subordinate to the Manvantara.

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>Thus the sedentary peoples create the plastic arts (architecture, sculpture, painting), the arts consisting of forms developed in space; the nomads create the phonetic arts (music, poetry), the arts consisting of forms unfolded in time; for, let us say it again, all art is in its origin essentially symbolical and ritual, and only through a late degeneration, indeed a very recent degeneration, has it lost its sacred character so as to become at last the purely profane 'recreation' to which it has been reduced among our contemporaries.

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>The truth is that there is really no "profane realm" that could in any way be opposed to a "sacred realm"; there is only a "profane point of view", which is really none other than the point of view of ignorance.

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... when there's so much space between his eyes and mouth?

PBUH

>we can understand the real meaning of the word Nirvana, to which so many wrong interpretations have been given. This word literally signifies extinction of the breath or of agitation, therefore the state of a being no longer subject to any agitation, ever free from form. At least in the West, it is a very widespread error to believe that when there is no more form, there is nothing, whereas in reality it is form that is nothing and the formless that is everything.
>We started as a server dedicated to Guénon but we expanded our interests to an understanding of eastern traditions based more on primary sources.
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THIS IS A REPOST, THE ORIGINAL POST WAS NOT MINE AND THE INVITE LINK IS NOT WORKING.

I WAS ON THIS SERVER BUT I GOT KICKED OUT, DOES ANYONE HAVE A VALID INVITE LINK?

>That being the case, the self-styled 'exact' sciences of the moderns, to the extent that they make use of statistics and go so far as to extract from them predictions for the future {relying always on the supposed identicality of the facts taken into account, whether past or future), are really no more than mere 'conjectural' sciences, to use an expression freely employed by the promoters of a kind of modern astrology dubbed 'scientific'; and in employing this term they admit more freely than many other people what their astrology really consists in, for it certainly has only the vaguest and most remote connection, perhaps no more than that of a common terminology, with the true traditional astrology of the ancients, which is today as completely lost as all other knowledge of the same order.

Is there any book which claims to present Astrology from a traditional point of view?

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