"'Tradition' as understood by followers of Guénon, for all their insistence on 'revealed' knowledge and the metaphysical order, seem unconnected to the living source itself and highly suspicious of those very inner worlds from which it ultimately derives. That inner world both Blake and Jung affirm and both appreciated the value of the alchemical symbolism and the alchemical 'work' of self transformation ... I find what is missing from the work of Guénon and his followers in the writings of Henry Corbin...whose term 'imaginal' describes the order to which Blake's Prophetic Books belong - as it does Jung's world of psyche and its archetypes. Corbin understands that sacred tradition is itself without meaning outside that context... Corbin thus harmonizes what one might call the Protestant vision of Blake and Jung, their insistence on discovering the truth 'within the human breast,' and the recognition of a tradition of sacred knowledge embodied in every civilization and all mythologies".Kathleen Raine, Golgonooza: City of Imagination. Last Studies in William Blake, Lindisfarne Press, Hudson, N.Y., 1991, 4.
William Blake. Jacob's Ladder. Watercolor, c. 1800. British Museum. From wikimedia.
There is a fundamental difference, which may lead to the greatest misconceptions, if not understood: Guenon made initiatic science, which is something different from the studies of Corbin...("Jung's world of psyche and its archetypes" is a parody of Mundus Imaginalis)
ReplyDeleteI mean that what is absent in Corbin's (excellent) studies is the spirit of Tradition, intended not intellectually or philosophically, but in the most real sense of the word, which is designated with the word Egregoros.
That is the case of Guenon's books: a link with a living Egregoros...
In vino veritas