The Great Triad (Works) - Hardcover

Guenon, Rene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0900588403 ISBN 13: 9780900588402

Publisher: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 2004

Synopsis

The classical Triad of the Chinese tradition is Heaven-Man-Earth. René Guénon places this ternary in the context of universal metaphysics by identifying Heaven with Essence and Earth with Substance, the mediator between them being Man, whose cosmic function is to embody spirit (Heaven) while simultaneously spiritualizing matter (Earth). Exploring Chinese cosmology further, Guénon sheds light on such archetypal polarities as Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang, Solve et Coagula, Celestial and Terrestrial Numbers, the Square and the Compass, the Double Spiral, and the Being and the Environment, while pointing to their synthetic unity in terms of ternaries, such as the Three Worlds, Triple Time, Spiritus, Anima, and Corpus, Sulfur, Mercury and Salt, and God, Man, and Nature. Perhaps more completely than in any other work, Guénon demonstrates in The Great Triad how any integral tradition is both a mirror reflecting universal themes found in all other intact traditions and an entire conceptual cosmos unto itself, unique and incomparable.

About this title

About the Author

Rene Guenon, the extraordinary French metaphysician of whom Jacob Needleman wrote in The Sword of Gnosis that `no other modern writer has so effectively communicated the absoluteness of truth,' is gradually being recognized by deeper thinkers as one of the few who have truly penetrated the cloying veil of the modern age. As an expositor of pure metaphysics and its application to the science of symbols, Guenon is without peer; and his extraordinarily prescient critique of the modern world is attracting more and more attention among cultural commentators. Little known in the English-speaking world till the recent appearance of his Collected Works in translation, Guenon has nevertheless long been recognized as a veritable criterion of truth by a vanguard of remarkable writers who evince that rare combination: intellectuality and spirituality. After a lonely childhood, often interrupted by ill health, Guenon navigated the seductive half-truths of occultism toward a deeper, unified vision offering a way out from the confusion and fragmentation of our time. Regarded by leading scholars as the first truly authentic interpreter of many Eastern doctrines in the West, Guenon never tired, in face of the seemingly inexorable process of dissolution in the twentieth century, of pointing to the transcendent unity of all religious faiths and the abiding Truth that contains them all.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sophia Perennis et Universalis
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0900588403
• ISBN 13: 9780900588402
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 180