INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE ORIENTAL DOCTRINES
while pointing ceaselessly to the perennial wisdom found in past cultures ranging from the Shamanistic to the Indian and Chinese, the Hellenic and Judaic, the Christian and Islamic, and including also Alchemy, Hermeticism, and other esoteric currents, they direct the reader also to the deepest level of religious praxis, emphasizing the need for affiliation with a revealed tradition even while acknowledging the final identity of all spiritual paths as they approach the summit of spiritual realization. This extraordinary French metaphysician 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. Little known in the English speaking world, 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. 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.
