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Dr. Mark Sedgwick on Traditionalism, Sufism, and Esotericism · The Occult Rejects

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  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen.
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  Speaker 2: What's going to happen?
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  Speaker 1: What? I welcome back to the Occult Rejects. Today we're
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  Speaker 1: joined by doctor Mark Sedgwick, Professor of Arab and Islamic
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  Speaker 1: Studies at Ahrus University, the scholar whose work has become
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  Speaker 1: essential for anyone trying to understand the deeper intellectual history
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  Speaker 1: of traditionalism, Sufism, Islam, and Western esotericism. He is the
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  Speaker 1: author of Against the Modern World, Western Sufism from the
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  Speaker 1: Abbasids to the New Age, and Traditionalism The Radical Project
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  Speaker 1: for Restoring Sacred Order, works that trace how anti modern,
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  Speaker 1: perennialist and esoteric ideas develop, cross cultural boundaries and continue
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  Speaker 1: to shape both religious thought and the modern spiritual imagination.
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  Speaker 1: This is a conversation I've really been looking forward to
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  Speaker 1: because we're going to get into not just history of
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  Speaker 1: these ideas, but why they still matter. Now, before I
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  Speaker 1: introduce the guest, also want to remind people about the website.
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  Speaker 1: If you're into reading, we have tons of information by
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  Speaker 1: multiple contributors, and we got t shirts up on the
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  Speaker 1: site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all
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  Speaker 1: based on the eyeball All right, Now, let me introduce
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  Speaker 1: the guest doctor Mark Sedwick. Please introduce yourself and letting
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  Speaker 1: people know anything you'd like to advertise or plug.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, as you say, of my academic career.
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  Speaker 2: I've written a number of books, and the ones which
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  Speaker 2: are probably the most interesting for certainly for the people
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  Speaker 2: here are the three that you have mentioned. And it
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  Speaker 2: took me slightly by surprise. I'm trying to say historian.
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  Speaker 2: I was not that interested originally in Islam or things
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  Speaker 2: in the Islamic world, but I was living in Cairo,
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  Speaker 2: I encountered these phenomena. I started working on them, and
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  Speaker 2: I found that people were interested in what I was writing,
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  Speaker 2: so that encouraged me to do more. And that's what
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  Speaker 2: I've been doing out the last thirty years now thirty forty.
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  Speaker 1: That is great, that's a long long time. Good for you,
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  Speaker 1: I guess before we get into before we get into
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  Speaker 1: the big themes, for the listeners who may be new
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  Speaker 1: to your work, how would you describe the thread that
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  Speaker 1: connects your research on Islam, Sufism, traditionalism, and ESO terrorism.
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  Speaker 2: It all started off with Sufism, that's what That's what
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  Speaker 2: I encountered in Egypt, and that's what I did my
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  Speaker 2: PhD thesis on and part of that thesis dealt with
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  Speaker 2: a traditionalist Sufi order in Italy, and that was one
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  Speaker 2: chapter and that then I found people so interested in it.
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  Speaker 2: I was interested in it myself. But that then developed
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  Speaker 2: into my first book on the topic, Against the Modern World.
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  Speaker 2: And then because that helped the Sufism in the Western
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  Speaker 2: people were interested in Sulfism in the West. People started
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  Speaker 2: asking me not just about the traditionalist Sufis, but about
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  Speaker 2: other Western Surfism and that led to over the years
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  Speaker 2: to this second book you mentioned on Western Sufism. So
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  Speaker 2: then the third book you mentioned that goes back to
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  Speaker 2: the Traditionalism book, to the first tradition of the book
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  Speaker 2: against One World, but it reflects the fact that one
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  Speaker 2: of the criticisms that people made of the first book
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  Speaker 2: was that it was more about the people than the ideas,
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  Speaker 2: and that I thought was actually a valid criticism. So
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  Speaker 2: I decided that we needed to give more emphasis to
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  Speaker 2: the ideas. And that book also represented the fact that
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  Speaker 2: twenty years almost have passed since the first book. And
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  Speaker 2: at the end of the first book I wrote in
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  Speaker 2: the conclusion, I wrote, well, that was a movement that
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  Speaker 2: had its time and that time seems to have gone,
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  Speaker 2: and that was the most wrong thing I have ever written,
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  Speaker 2: I think, because it really hadn't gone, and the political
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  Speaker 2: manifestations of traditionalism became more and more important until I
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  Speaker 2: was getting a phone call from the New York Times,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, then I thought, Okay, this definitely doesn't
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  Speaker 2: seem to have ended. So I thought we needed an
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  Speaker 2: update as well as a bit more emphasis on the
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  Speaker 2: political aspects of them.
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  Speaker 1: What made you so looking into the group in Italy?
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  Speaker 1: Sea again you said you mentioned you focused on like
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  Speaker 1: a kind of a Sufism in Italy.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, because the the you know, Sufism is something
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  Speaker 2: which is originates in the Middle East, in the in
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  Speaker 2: the Muslim world, and I was was most of my
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  Speaker 2: PhD was about a particular group of Sufie orders in
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  Speaker 2: the Moslim world. And I just happened to be chatting
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  Speaker 2: in those days. I smoked cigarette, I fraid, and I
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  Speaker 2: was chatting over a cigarette with an Italian scholar and I,
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  Speaker 2: you know, standard academic conversation, So what are you working on?
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  Speaker 2: And then she's so I tell her and then she says, oh,
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  Speaker 2: we have one of those in Milan, And I thought,
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  Speaker 2: this is completely crazy. I was in In those days
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  Speaker 2: you could get reasonably cheap flights from Cairo to Milan.
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  Speaker 2: She said, that was welcome to stay. So off on, No,
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  Speaker 2: he's in there. It was there, it was real, it
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  Speaker 2: was a real pair off. That was.
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  Speaker 1: When you first began studying these subjects, what drew you
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  Speaker 1: into this world of traditionalism, sufism and intellectual anti modernism
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  Speaker 1: In the first place.
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  Speaker 2: I think I had. I mean, I moved. I moved
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  Speaker 2: to Egypt before I began my PhD. But you know,
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  Speaker 2: I'd always been interested in different civilizations and in different
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  Speaker 2: ways of looking at life, different ways of living life,
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  Speaker 2: which is one of the reasons why why I went
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  Speaker 2: to Cairo in the first place. And if you've grown
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  Speaker 2: up in the West, so I has, especially in Europe.
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  Speaker 2: Europe is not very religious nowadays, and that whole aspect
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  Speaker 2: of life really is is absent from from most people's awareness.
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  Speaker 2: And when when you go to a place like Cara,
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  Speaker 2: one of the first things you realize is that this
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  Speaker 2: isn't the global norm, because religion and the unseen and
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  Speaker 2: all that sort of thing is very very present in
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  Speaker 2: everybody's lives in the country like Egypt. So so I
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  Speaker 2: started looking, you know, this this new aspect of life.
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  Speaker 2: How did it work? That's that's how I got into
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  Speaker 2: the whole filing. And of course, you know social connections
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  Speaker 2: as well. I mean, some of the people I worked
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  Speaker 2: with turned out to the soulfis and that's one of
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  Speaker 2: the reasons why I learned about it, you know, sort
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  Speaker 2: of casual conversations of work doing something else.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, that's awesome, that's interesting. The next question I have
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  Speaker 1: is really it's for me and for the listeners too,
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  Speaker 1: because it is something that I would like a deeper
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  Speaker 1: understanding of. For people who hear the word traditionalism immediately
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  Speaker 1: think it's just being like conservative over old fashioned. How
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  Speaker 1: do you define traditionalism in the more precise intellectual sense
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  Speaker 1: if you can, I.
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  Speaker 2: Mean, that's a big problem. And the way that I
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  Speaker 2: try to define it is firstly by reference to the
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  Speaker 2: French esotericist who launched the whole thing in his writing
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  Speaker 2: and Connections and so forth, Rene Guinot. And then I
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  Speaker 2: refer to one particular conception of his, which was the
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  Speaker 2: idea of what he called the primordial tradition, and traditionalism
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  Speaker 2: refer to not just tradition in general, it refers to
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  Speaker 2: what Gino meant by the phrase the primordial tradition. What
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  Speaker 2: he meant by that phrase was that which is primordial,
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  Speaker 2: which is has been part of humanity since the very
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  Speaker 2: beginning of humanity. The knowledge has been that has been,
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  Speaker 2: that has been part of humanity, and a particular variety
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  Speaker 2: of knowledge. Because he made this distinction between the exoteric
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  Speaker 2: and the esoteric, and what we see if we look
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  Speaker 2: around the place today is that at one level, the
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  Speaker 2: Buddhist disagree with the Catholics, and the Catholics disagree with
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  Speaker 2: the Muslim. That is what going to call the exoteric level.
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  Speaker 2: The other level, what he called the esoteric level, is
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  Speaker 2: the far more fundamental level and the far more important level,
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  Speaker 2: where in his understanding, really everybody was still in agreement
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  Speaker 2: today and that is so entic knowledge, understanding practice. That
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  Speaker 2: is what he meant by the primary or tradition. So
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  Speaker 2: that's traditionalism.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for that. That's definitely more than I had. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I thought, so. I appreciate that we did have somebody
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  Speaker 1: though symbolic studies. Mario he came on and he's a
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  Speaker 1: huge fan of that Grenide and he touched touched on
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  Speaker 1: perennialism and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean we needed we need a sort of
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  Speaker 2: a user warning here, because once you start reading game
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  Speaker 2: ar it can change your life.
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  Speaker 1: Basically said that to you.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well don't. I mean, I've interviewed so many people
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  Speaker 2: who saying I finished the book at five thirty in
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  Speaker 2: the morning, and nothing has been the same.
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  Speaker 1: So I got to read this.
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  Speaker 2: The other thing I have to say before everybody rushes
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  Speaker 2: off and advise his work is that it is not
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  Speaker 2: easy reading, and I should think most people don't get
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  Speaker 2: past page five.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, well, okay, that's good to know. I think
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  Speaker 1: maybe you'll probably like mention him again now, But like,
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  Speaker 1: who are the indispensable figures for understanding traditionalism at its roots?
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  Speaker 1: If someone had to understand the genealogy of the movement,
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  Speaker 1: where do they begin.
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  Speaker 2: To Yeah, well, I mean apart from the beginning of
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  Speaker 2: a lot of my books. The original sources are of course,
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  Speaker 2: again on in the US. For a sort of lighter
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  Speaker 2: and more approachable understanding, there's always Houston Smith's book on
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  Speaker 2: World Religions, which has sold an awful of copies over
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  Speaker 2: the years. Uh, and that has that that, especially the
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  Speaker 2: later editions are informed by Geno's understanding of the the
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  Speaker 2: way of the way that in the esoteric, all these
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  Speaker 2: traditions connect to the same thing, that they're that they're
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  Speaker 2: all different paths to the same end. That's that's something
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  Speaker 2: one could read, I mean, for for another another very
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  Speaker 2: popular interpretation is a Swiss guy called Fritchuan who wrote
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  Speaker 2: a book on the transcendent unity of religions. But he's
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  Speaker 2: he's got the he's got Geno's idea of unity, but
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  Speaker 2: he takes it in a somewhat different direction because gen
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  Speaker 2: was interested in the esoteric, not very much in the exoteric.
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  Speaker 2: Unsure is happier with the exoteric than gain awards. That is,
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  Speaker 2: if you want the religious sides of it, the spiritual
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  Speaker 2: esoteric side of it. If you are interested in the
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  Speaker 2: political side, then you have to go to Alexander Dugin
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  Speaker 2: in Russia, who has is often seen as a Russian nationalist,
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  Speaker 2: which he is sort of, But he started off life
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  Speaker 2: as a traditionalist and he's still he's still a traditionalist Miners.
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  Speaker 2: There's an interview with him done by Tucker Carlson. I
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  Speaker 2: don't know whether people like Carlson or not, but there's
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  Speaker 2: a good interview that's interesting.
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  Speaker 1: How much of traditionalism is really about metaphysics and sacred order,
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  Speaker 1: and how much is also a reaction against modernity as
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  Speaker 1: a lived historical condition.
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  Speaker 2: All three of those. It is metaphor again or sometimes
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  Speaker 2: described himself as a metaphysician. So it's certainly it's certainly
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  Speaker 2: about metaphysics. It's also about a reaction to modernity, because
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  Speaker 2: part of the fundamental idea is in an analysis of modernity,
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  Speaker 2: which says, okay, on the one hand, what really matters
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  Speaker 2: is this primordial tradition and where do we find it?
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  Speaker 2: We do not find this in modernity. What is special
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  Speaker 2: about modernity? It has lost contact with that primordial tradition,
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  Speaker 2: It has become material and completely bunches. So what do
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  Speaker 2: we do instead? Well, And this is the third the
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  Speaker 2: third way, the third point you mentioned. It's not just
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  Speaker 2: about thinking about these things. It's not just about reading texts.
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  Speaker 2: We actually need to engage with a living and authentic
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  Speaker 2: survival of the primordial tradition. And there aren't that many
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  Speaker 2: of those. A lot of the esoteric or cult organizations
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  Speaker 2: that are around today said, oh, fake, they are not traditional,
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  Speaker 2: they are to be avoided. We should look for one
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  Speaker 2: which is authentic, and found one, and that was Sufism.
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  Speaker 2: Other followers, again are have looked at other practices and
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  Speaker 2: sort of decided that they're okay. Some have looked at Freemasonry,
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  Speaker 2: some have looks of Buddhism. There are a couple of
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  Speaker 2: people a bit more than that who think that Orthodox
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  Speaker 2: Eastern Orthodox Christianity is still somewhere where you can find
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  Speaker 2: the primordial hysteric truth. There are even a couple of
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  Speaker 2: people who think they can find primordially esoteric truth within
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  Speaker 2: Catholic Christianity. It's just Protestantism where nobody can find it.
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  Speaker 1: That is interesting. That almost kind of leads into the
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  Speaker 1: next question that I actually have for you. Well, one
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  Speaker 1: of the things that I think makes you work so
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  Speaker 1: interesting is that these ideas don't stay confined to one
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  Speaker 1: religion in one culture. How did traditionalists and perennialists' ideas
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  Speaker 1: move across Islamic, European and esoteric circles.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean it starts workin or search for the
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  Speaker 2: esoteric truth. And he's you know, he's a French intellectual
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  Speaker 2: at the time of the last century, so he's in
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  Speaker 2: a very anti Catholic world and he takes he engages
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  Speaker 2: with Catholicism briefly, and he engages, actually engages with everything
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  Speaker 2: else that's going in Paris in the eighteen nineties, and
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: there's an awful lot going on in Paris in the
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  Speaker 2: eighteen nineties. But then finally he narrows down what he's
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  Speaker 2: interested in, and he spends a lot of time reading
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  Speaker 2: the Vadantists, and he comes to the conclusion of a
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  Speaker 2: textual the Vedanta's is where is where it is? But
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  Speaker 2: what you're going to do? Can you become a Hindu? Difficult?
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  Speaker 2: There are problems of cost apart from anything else. So
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  Speaker 2: what can you do as a European? Well, there there is,
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  Speaker 2: there is, There is Sulfism, and of course that's in Islam.
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  Speaker 2: And he goes to Caro and then stories begin circulating
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  Speaker 2: in Paris that he's converted to Islam, to which her response,
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  Speaker 2: I haven't converted to Islam. If you understand the primordial tradition,
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  Speaker 2: you cannot convert to anything because at the most fundamental level,
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  Speaker 2: we're all the same. So from that perfective you can,
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  Speaker 2: you can. You can take the esoteric core of anything
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  Speaker 2: and accept Protestantism, which nobody has ever suggested has an
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  Speaker 2: esoteric core. Uh, you can you can take the esoteric
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  Speaker 2: corp in Islam and Hinduism, in almost anything you like.
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  Speaker 2: And that is how the the idea fits in to
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: almost any religious tradition you care to mention.
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  Speaker 1: Thank have you ever heard of, as a random question,
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  Speaker 1: was in power Off you're into Pink Floyd. Wasn't Pink
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  Speaker 1: Floyd actually highly influenced by Sufism? Not that I know, Oh,
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  Speaker 1: I thought that they actually were. Thought I read that if.
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  Speaker 2: You if you yeah, I mean you've got you have
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  Speaker 2: got connections there. And this isn't traditional surface and this
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: is no versio surface. Because you've got a guy called
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Ian Dallas who is a BBC screenwriter in London in
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  Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, and he's incredibly trendy and he knows
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  Speaker 2: all these musicians and he becomes a Sofie and sets
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  Speaker 2: up a Sufi commune in London, and some of his
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  Speaker 2: musicians get interested in this, and there's a song about
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  Speaker 2: Leila that we know. I think, yeah, well, okay, that
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  Speaker 2: isn't really about Sulphism, but he managed to transmit that
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  Speaker 2: particular story which is very much part of the least
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  Speaker 2: and culture of our culture. So it's responsible for the
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: at least for the title of that particular song. The
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  Speaker 2: trouble is that a lot of the musicians who he
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  Speaker 2: worked with tried to produce Sufi traditional music and this
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  Speaker 2: did not work that well. There was in California in
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  Speaker 2: the seventies, I think there was something called the Sufi
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  Speaker 2: Choir and that got quite popular, and in fact, nowadays
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: with the world music scene and so forth, we have
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  Speaker 2: something called the Festival of Sacred Music, which is a
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  Speaker 2: really big event every year and was started all years ago,
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  Speaker 2: started by a Moroccan Sufi called Fasskali, who had got
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  Speaker 2: interested in Sufism through reading in On whilst he was
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  Speaker 2: a gendent in Paris. So there's a certain of Sufi.
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  Speaker 2: There is a Sufi traditionalist agenda behind this first Festival
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  Speaker 2: of Sacred Music, which is deals with traditional music. And
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  Speaker 2: if we want, if we want the most important traditionalist musician,
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  Speaker 2: we should probably turn to John Tavana, who is quite
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: well known for his very early piece he wrote with
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  Speaker 2: Men which I cannot remember something about the lamb, but
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  Speaker 2: that's actually a pre traditionalist piece. He then he then
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  Speaker 2: went on and experience. I mean, he's very much classical musician,
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  Speaker 2: not being at all, but he experimented with various ideas
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  Speaker 2: of traditional music and orthodox liturgical music, Buddhist music, and
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  Speaker 2: he did a whole load of things. But as I say,
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  Speaker 2: he's more in the classical side, so not painful. But
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  Speaker 2: I may be wrong, perhaps something that I need to
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  Speaker 2: look into it.
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  Speaker 1: Oh story, quite right. I think it might have been
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  Speaker 1: like some sort of like offshoot of Sufism or some
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: weird I thought I saw that word in this somewhere,
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  Speaker 1: So I could be wrong though too. I do have
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: a question in the chat somebody, I think this is
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  Speaker 1: back before when you were saying that maybe certain things
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  Speaker 1: are wrong or fake. They said, explain fake? Do you
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  Speaker 1: mean in their particular practices fake or not traditional, et cetera.
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  Speaker 2: Not traditional in that they firstly that they couldn't trace
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  Speaker 2: their origins back convincingly through the centuries, and secondly that
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  Speaker 2: they reflect to modern that there were too many modern
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: ideas in that If you excuse me a second, I say,
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  Speaker 2: I'm disappearing into the sun, so I'm gonna draw a
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  Speaker 2: cuts and slightly, okay, that's me more visible again. So
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  Speaker 2: that that was That was the two points. And I
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  Speaker 2: had had wrote a book on theosophy, which she called
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  Speaker 2: history of a pseudo religion, and that was his attack.
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  Speaker 1: Do you see uh, this idea, This is just a
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  Speaker 1: question that I have on my own just right now
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  Speaker 1: thinking about it. Do you see the influence of this
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  Speaker 1: like in certain like esoteric orders or other traditions. Do
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  Speaker 1: you see like maybe their influence in art or some
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  Speaker 1: things like ideas?
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  Speaker 2: I mean certainly influence on art. I have sitting on
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  Speaker 2: my desk the Penguin Dictionary of Symbolism, which is very
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: I am told. That's why sitting on my desk, which
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: is which is very gain on influence. So if you're
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: interested in symbolism, there's a good chance to find your
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: way to get on. If you are interested in relationships
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: between religions, you can well find your way together. So
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: there are all sorts of people who are interested in
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: one way or another, and very often take very often
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: people sail up until five thirty of the morning or
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: whatever it was, reading guinner, and then they go off
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: and look at various possibilities. And then sometimes they stick
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: with whatever it is they have found and put their
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: collection Againa's books on the bottom shelf of their bookshelves,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: because you know it's it's it's told them what to
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: look for and they think they found and that, for example,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: is important in Orthodox Christianity in the West. Was one
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: of the most famous American Orthodox monks was a guy
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: called Seraphim Rose, and he's a prime example that he
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: started off with Gainer and then wound up as the
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: most the most influential American Orthodox of the twentieth century.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: People tend not to find their way into what one
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: might call the Western Hermetic tradition. There is one exception
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: to that that I know of, which was an Argentinian
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: guy who wound up in Barcelona in just after Franco's death,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: when everybody was you know, this is amazing. We can
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: read whatever we like. Now, we can do whatever we like.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Tell us all about this stuff we haven't been allowed
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: to hear about for years, and he set up a
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: center for the study of sympolism. But he also set
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: up a sort of traditionalist inspired esoteric practice drawing on
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: what he called the Western Hermetic tradition. But there's only
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: the one case of that.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you. A lot of people in a cult and
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: alternative religious spaces talk about perennial truth, primordialisdom, or hidden
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: nudity among religions. What do you usually what do they
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: usually get wrong about perennialism. From a scholarly perspective, you think.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Well, they're different understandings of perennialism. There's the two most
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: popular nowadays are the traditionalist understanding. Because what you're what
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: I was calling before, the primordial tradition can also be
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: called the perennial philosophy or the perennial religion. So traditionalism
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: is a form of perennialism, and sometimes it can be
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: identified with calling it perennialist traditionalism. So that's one version
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: that's out there today. The other version is probably closest
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: to that, which was there's a book by oldest Huxley,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: now a very old book which was simply called The
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Perennial Philosophy, and that is that is based on huxleyl
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: for most of his life was interested in spiritual and
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: religious phenomena, just observing how much the different religions have
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: in common when you go down to the most fundamental level.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: So it's a collect it's largely a collection of quotations
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: of pieces from loads of different religious traditions, and the
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: difference between the Huxleyan approach, and I think that's probably
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: the most popular approach nowadays, even if it's not necessarily
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: to connect with the difference in the Huxley and approach
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: and the traditionalist approach is that Huxley doesn't worry about provenance. Again,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: I was like a high end picture dealer and he
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: wants to know the provenance before he's going to sell it.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: The the so this is you know, the point about
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: authentic uninterrupted transmission, which leads him to exclude so much
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: whereas Huxley wasn't really concerned about this, And as far
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: as Huxley is concerned, you know here he is read it.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing. It's beautiful, it's it's useful, it's
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's a little deep in your understanding
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: and appreciations, and you know that's that's what we really
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: want to see. So well, those are the two major
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: varieties of perennialism around today. What's wrong with them? Well,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: it depends who you ask. I mean, the people who
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: are devoted to one religious tradition are often very reluctant
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: to find truth in another religious tradition. If you're you know,
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: if you're a proper Catholic Catholic Church. Is it. That's it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: You don't need to go anywhere else. They've got it
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: all if you. If you ask scholars, they begin to
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: get a bit suspicious of you know, just because two
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: things look the same does not mean to say that
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: they are the same. And a lot of the whole
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: scholarly apparatus is designed to pick things apart and find
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: out whether they really are the same. One and then
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: this one gets us into questions of transmission of ideas
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: and in the history of thoughts and so forth. It
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: also gets us into the question of the human religious experience,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: because you know, Hunsley says, read it. It's the same
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: experience that answers your question. And there's there's two schools
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: of thought amongst amongst scholars. Well this one of them
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: is that, yeah, this human religious experiences is super important
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: and it's what drives the whole thing. And then the
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: other the other viewer says, yeah, sure, possibly, but I
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: cannot participate in your experience. Your experience is unknowable to me.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: So therefore, you know, if we're taking a rigorous approach,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: we cannot do anything with people's religious experiences. Then there
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: are a couple of people that say, yeah, we can try,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: let's try a let's try doing a brain scan And
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: there were some colleagues of mine who had the project
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: where they put somebody in a brain scanner and made
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: them do a wish list of Father Christmas, and then
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: they made them recite the Lord's Prayer and hey, the
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: brain waves were different. Interesting. I'm not sure where that
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: gets ust. You really might have guessed that the brainwaves
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: were a different fact.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: In fact, mm oh no, I mean it is interesting
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: though I was actually recording stuff on brain waves and
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: gamma beta. They don't know the stuff in my own Yeah,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I find all that stuff interesting. I think there's a
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: connection within all that stuff in our body.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: And I mean clearly clearly the there is, clearly there is.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: But you know, do we a present have the tools
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: to find out what it is? That's not my area,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: that's not my speciality, and not the cognitive scientists think
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: it's an outsider is that we still we do not
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: yet have the tools we need together that sort of thing.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I have a question in the chat. Does
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Sufiism deal with timelines questions or timeline with timelines? Do
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: they deal with like other ideas of maybe multiple timelines
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: or I guess string theory type stuff. That's what I'm
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: trying to get out of that question.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, string theorists type stuff is a modern issue
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: that classic Sufie thought really cannot help us very much with.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: But although there is some you know, there's some interesting
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: modern work, recent work on these questions, not particularly from
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: a surfie perspective, but there is some really interesting stuff
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: sort of religious spiritual spectrum Sufie's classic Suphis, so not
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: not getting on the traditionalist classic Sufis are were very
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: interested in what we call metaphysics and philosophy, and therefore
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: the whole question of beginnings and the classic philosophical question
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: of is the world eternal? And what is the relation
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: between this world and other worlds? The world of ideas?
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: And so that interested a lot of medieval philosophers. It
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: interested therefore some some Christian medieval philosophers. It really interested
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of the h looks.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: So, I don't know what happened. Also on my internet
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: went out, so yeah, yeah, all of a sudden, I
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: just said, Oop, something went wrong, and I was like, wow,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: I've never seen that happen before.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Perhaps I said the wrong.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Thing, did it do it to you too? Or I
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: just disappeared.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: You're just just switched. Sorry the A button which says
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: stream this to your audience.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you could have if you wanted to. I
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: don't know. If you have, you too.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Lost the audience.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Oh no, no, we're still alive on my end. All right,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: all right, sorry about that.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Continue as I was saying before I vanished or you
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: vanished or whatever. These these philosophical questions of is the
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: world in terminal? And how does this world relate to
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: other worlds? And so forth, which interested the philosophers, also
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: interested the more philosophically minded Sufis, I mean Sufism. There
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: was so much of it. Important to remember that most
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: of the Sufis who have ever lived never learned to
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: read or write. They were just ordinary people peasants, farmers,
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: water carriers, whatever. But there were also an awful, very
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: well educated toard Sufi thinkers, writers, et c.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: When I think you kind of touched on this like
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit, that it does happen when spiritual ideas
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: move from one culture cultural world into another, they often
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: change in the process. In your view, what happens to
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Islam or Sufism when they are absorbed into Western esoteric
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: or mystical frameworks.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: All sorts of things can happen. I mean, I think
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: that the starting point for that happens has I have
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: my understanding of Islam, and you have your understanding of Islam,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: and perhaps it doesn't matter. And I have my understanding
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: today and I had a slightly different understanding last year.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: So you know, all religious ideas are constantly changing from
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: person to person, and whether you know, whether we're moving
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: from from culture culture or not. When Islam meets Western culture,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: it's it's doing something that it's that it's done many
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: times before. It once one time it met Persian culture,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: and a few centuries later it met Indonesian culture, and
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: in an early period it met it met late antique culture,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: and hence hence the Greek philosophy ideas that come. So
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: one of the things that happens immediately is that the
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: the body of Islamic understandings is faced with new questions
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: and it has to try and answer these new questions.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: And you know, one of the one of the more
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: recent examples of this act not in the West at all,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: but in the Muslim world in the last century when
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: people suddenly got really interested in questions of in communism, socialism,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: and the whole question of social justice. And so people
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: started saying, so, what does Islam have to say about
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: social justice? And this is a question obviously that have
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: never been asked in the time of the prophet, because
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: how you say social justice in the Arabic of his century,
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: it's impossible. Concept didn't even exist. So one thing that
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: happens is that new questions are asked, which produce new answers,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: which produces a new understanding and a new new theology
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and new forms. The other thing that can happen is
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: that people take inspiration from aspects of Islam. And we
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: were actually talking before this live stream, this live stream Celtic.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: We were talking about Alister Crowley's time in Egypt and
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: it's not my subject, but I've read some really interesting
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: stuff on this, and yeah, I mean, clearly he was
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: inspired in various ways by what he founded Mislam. Now
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: that's quite different from Islam. Answering new questions because what
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Crowley ended up with was inspired by all sorts of things,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: not just by Islam, and was something new in its
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: own right.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Do you think Western esoteric circles have tended
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: to romanticize upheism and misunderstanding.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: Who? Certainly people have romanticized it and misunderstood it, because
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: I didn't. That's the first part of the question.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Do you think Western esoteric circles have.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think so. I mean I think that
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Westerners as a whole. First, the first thing that happens
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: centuries ago is that Westerners discover Sophie texts when they
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: start getting access to them, and also when Westerners learned
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: to read Persian and Arabic managers like that, and then
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: there's a long discussion for two three CenTra what is this?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: And people are disagreeing over those centuries, so by definition
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: they can't all have been right. So there's there's been
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: this issue of misunderstanding right from the beginning. And one
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: of the answers what Ginnon would say about that is
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: you say, you can't understand this sort of thing just
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: by reading texts. You have to go and train under
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: a Sufi masters otherwise you're never going to understand it.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: And a lot of Sufis will get that response as well.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: But Sufism, it's not an intellectual ideas. It's not like
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: reading kirkuko. It's it's something you do. It's a spirit
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: it's essentially it's a spiritual practice. The next question of
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: the related question of do people romanticize it? Oh, my goodness, yes, uh.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: And if we if we go back to the nineteenth century,
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: one of the most popular texts was the English version
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: adaptation of the Rubaiyat of omar Ka. And it's not
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: very much right nowadays, but when you go back, it was.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: It was a publishing sensation in ways that we think
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: of and the ways that I aast thought were characteristic
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: of today, they're illustrated. There are collector's editions, there's an
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: O Marcham calendar. Then there are oh Marcham clubs established
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: in various cities across the across the West. And how
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: how are people reading it? Well, there's a lot of
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: discussion about that, but they're certainly romanticizing it. There's a
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: fundamental discussion of whether it's even a Sufi text in
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: the first place, but yeah, there is there is a
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: lot of romanticizing goment. There is also beyond that, there
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: is a fundamental problem and fundamental argument with some people say, okay,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: it's all the same. I'm a perennialist. Sulfism is perennialist too,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: And there are a lot of people who say, you know, Sulfism,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: it's like mysticism. It's above and beyond all religions. You
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: can be a Sufi without Muslim And there are loads
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: of people around the West today who are Sulfis without
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: being Muslims, and what they understand by Sufism is really perennialism.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: And you know, there's there's there's nothing wrong with being
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: a non Muslim Sufi in the worst today. They're great people,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: you know, I've spent time with them. It is a
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: it's a spiritual practice that gives people a lot. It
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: just isn't the same as the Sufism at one phone's
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: in the att least. So I'm not sure whether that's
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: romanticizing it, but it's it's understanding. It is something that
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: we modern Westerners would really like to exist, even if
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: it doesn't really exist.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming you spend time around both. Did you notice
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: even like a difference in like type of personality or
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: air of the people, the way they even were with
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: their tradition or their practice.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean you know, one of the one of
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: the one of the most popular versions of non Islamic
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Sufism in the West today is something called the Dancers
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: of Universal Peace, which is which was started off in
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: San Francisco in the Summer of Love. And there's an
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: amazing video of all these guys in which park in
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: San Francisco doing doing their Sufia stuff, and it's it's
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: absolute classic of the period. And some of the some
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: of the people who had still doing these dancers. So
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: I'm an old hippie and some of them really are
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: old hippies. And if they're not old hippies, they they
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: they tend to be the tend to be female, they
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: tend to have a certain mountain common I'm not sure
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: quite how to describe it, but anyhow, that's one, you know,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: it's one group of people. It's it's you know, it's
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the sort of person who you'd expect to meet at
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: a course on angels or or some sort of practice
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: with crystals or something. It's a bit new age new agent,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: whereas you know, I mean you going to the Middle East,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: going to an Arab country and a Sufi can be
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: h a very stern teacher of exoteric Islam as well
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: as a as a practitioner of Sufism. If if he's
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: if he's practitioner Sufism, he probably isn't that stern in
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: real life, because if you're a spiritual guide, you know,
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: you have to be realistic, you have to respond to
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: people's natures and positions and selves, and so you can't
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: be that stern. But he certainly it's westernized, he'll look
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: pretty stern.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you. That's kind of what I thought I was
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: going to hear For listeners interested in the overlap between
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: esotericism and Islam. Where are they? Where are some real
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: good points places that maybe you can mention?
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the first question is what we mean
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: by terroritism? And we have gain also understanding esoterrorism, you know,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: the primordial perennial basis of everything. Uh, and we also
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: have we have we have understandings of esotericism that come
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: from the European history of religions. And uh, you know,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: is esotericism different for all from occultism? Is occultism the
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: types of type of esotericism. Is esotericism a type of
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: occultism that that's a very interesting discussion, but it tends
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: not to come to a clear conclusion. And then we
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: also have an Islamic understanding of esotericism, because this pair
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: of exoteric and esoteric translates directly into Arabic into esoteric terminology.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: So we have a an aspect of Islam. We have something
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: which is found within Islam that Muslims themselves will identify
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: as esoteric. I'll say, for example, if we're interested in symbolism,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: we when we do a particular reading of the Quran,
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: we might say, okay, this is an esoteric reading of
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: the Qoran. There there are also, you know, there's there's
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: a lot of dispute within Islam at present, probably always
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: ask been, and a lot of people will say, now
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: this this esoteric stuff. It's it's absolutely not okay, it's
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: not real Islam. It's it's something that's coming to Islam
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: from from outside. We should we should forget the whole thing.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there there is within Islam something that self
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: identifies as esoteric, and in any terms is esoteric.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: It is interesting that happens a lot where well, I
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: guess it's quite obvious. I mean, even with the Bible people,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: there's some people who take it at face value and know,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the people who think it's very esoteric in the both
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: arguments the other one's wrong.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: For Uh, do you think there's any places that you
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: have seen I guess where you think maybe connections are
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: being made and it's not.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Correct, connections been more than more.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I guess with kind of like Sufiism and like in
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Western esoteric. I guess like in the West.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well sure, I mean that's you know, within within
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Western Sofasm. I mean there's there's a lot going on there,
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: which is how man shoul write a whole book on it? Uh?
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: And now, everybody, if you want, if you want to
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: sell Sufism, if you want to show Sufism to modern Westerners,
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: you have to re end up. You have to say
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: it in a language that'll understand. I mean, you can't
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: just speak Arabic the whole time. And you also have
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: to use technology that that people understand. And there is
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a danger in this because once you
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: start talking about auras for example, yeah, you know you
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: can get your message across that way. But does the
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: idea of auras actually exist in Sulfism as found in
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: the Muslim world. You can you can look at a
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: particular Western Sufi teaching and compare it to the sort
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: of average teaching that you would find in the master
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: world and say well, this is you know, this is
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: this clearly doesn't this clearly comes from somewhere else. So
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: you know, you can have you know, I can't talking
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: about different ages in a way that is clearly borrowing
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: from Rabowski. But you know, you can't really say this
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: is wrong. I mean, if you go to if you
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: go to contemporary Cairo, where you've got people who have
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: had university education. I mean I used the teachers in America,
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: the American investing current, you know, so they had to
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: say that people had precisely the same education as they
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: would have had in the good university of the US.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: When you're talking to that sort of person, even if
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: you're in Cairo, it's not going to be the same
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: as if you're talking to a group of illiterate peasants
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: in the village where they have six water buffaloes. So
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: you're always going to have to reinterpret, and of course
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: these reinterpretations then find their way back again. So you've
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: got guys. I mean I mentioned in I Fan who
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: came from from British India and ended up making his
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: career in Europe and establishing groups in Europe, and some
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: of those groups have now found their way back to
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: the Indian sub continent. There there are, there are in
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: nity groups in Pakistan. Uh are they right? They're wrong?
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Not my okay fact, not my job as a scholar
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: say that. But of course you know some things work
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: better and some things anyone who you are so even
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: you know, even a wrong practice can still be an
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: effective practice. Except here, Gain has been listening to this
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: conversation in his grade pops up and says, no, that
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: is wrong. Some practices can be actively harmful.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: That actually had another question then he said harmful? Uh
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: do you think do you think that in the modern
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: world is the modern world producing producing seekers again because
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: people are awakening to something timeless, because the modern project
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: itself feels increasingly hollow.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: Absolutely correct. When I was writing my last book and
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: I was talking about the tradition is critical modernity, I
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: wanted in each chapter I try and place the discussion
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: within its wider context to make it successful. So I'm
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: sitting there looking for people who are celebrating modernity and
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: people who are criticizing modernity or finding modernity to be empty.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: And it was really easy to find people who are
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: criticizing modernity and saying it is empty. The difficult thing
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: was to find serious thinkers who were celebrating modernity. And
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: I ended up with York and have a Mass who
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: just died and that was about that. So yeah, I mean, cly,
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: the finding modernity hollow is part of modernity. And when
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: one finds modernity hollow, what does one do other than
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: getting depressed, Well, one goes and looks for something surviving,
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: that has meaning, something that has meaning, which is probably
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: going to be non modern because if one does a
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: very radical critique of modernity, if it's modern, don't want it.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: So you know, that's that's what sends people looking for
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: sorts of things, including selfism.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, I appreciate that after all your
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: years of researching these ideas. Do you think the lasting
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: power of traditionalism comes from the truth of its critique,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: the beauty of its metaphysics, or the spiritual empty as
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: many people feel in modern life.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: All of the above. It, I mean, the critique is
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: convincing when people find emptiness, and you know that's that's
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: that's how it works for so many people. You know
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: you you feel, you find the emptiness, you feel the emptiness,
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: and if we can do an online poll. But I
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: have a guess that you know, many of the people
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: who are who are listening to this I have at
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: some point themselves in their lives found found modernity to
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: be empty. And uh so when you read the tradition
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: is critique of this, it can be very satisfying because
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: you know, okay, stage one, modernity is empty. Hmmm, why
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: what's the pro them answer? It has lost the primordial tradition. Okay, yeah,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: that explains everything. So what is this primordial tradition? Well,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: here it is, and what you will find. What you
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: can find is the accumulated spiritual richness of humanity. That
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: that's that's what Huxley put in his book on the
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Primordial tradition. So it is the beauty as well. I
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: mean it's that that beauty is there to be found
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: and people do find.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you. A couple other questions before we wrap it up.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: If someone finished this conversation wanting to study these I
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: guess the stuff more and responsibly, where would you tell
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: them to begin. I'm assuming you'll include your own books
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: in this.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would I mean that's you know that that
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: is in some ways what the well, the most recentable
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: traditionalism is designed to be. It's an introduction for people
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: that don't know now because the when I said I
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: don't know anything, I mean people I think specifically about traditionalists,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: not people at all. When when because traditionalism today takes
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: also these political forms, one has to be a weird
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: bit careful because you know you're you're introducing I was introducing,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: I am introducing people to ideas that can be a
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: bit dangerous in the wrong hands, which is of course
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: part of the whole logic behind eso terroicism from the
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: very beginning, because one of the aspects of esoterroism is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: you know, these ideas are a bit dangerous, they're not
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: for everyone, and according to that you approlishing have written book.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: But that that is, that is it's designed for an introduction,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: and that is I think the introduction that I would
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: recommend it also because it introduces all the van authors
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: and gives little summaries of what they what they think,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: that you know, can serve as a as a reading
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: list to go into these issues.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Other things to go down the rabbit hole with. Yeah,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I like that all right. Uh, What is one thing
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: you hope readers and listeners taken away from your work
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: that they would never get from the internet summaries or
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: surface level discussions.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: Access to those who are really going into this stuff
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: in an enormous detail, because you know, they're a bit
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: hard to read without an introduction of some sort. Also,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: what I do as a scholar that the average traditionalist
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: writer does not do is I place things in their
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: intellectual and historical context. The average traditionalist writer has a
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: habit of saying, Okay, guys, listen, I have the truth.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: Here's the truth, and that some people like that, but
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: some people find that a bit difficult to swallow. I say,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: amongst the various understandings that have emerged over the last
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: one hundred years or in the sixteenth century or whatever,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: is this one and this is how it fits with
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: the other one. And I think it depends on your temperament.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: But for me, for example, I mean, I like to
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: see an idea in its context. I can I can
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: take it more seriously, I can understand that I can
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: use it better in its context. So that's that's the
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: other thing that I do. As well as providing an introduction,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: I provide a contextualization.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Nice and last one. If you had to leave people
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: with one thought on why traditionalism still matters in the
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: twenty first century, what would it.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: Be Because the perennial tradition is perennial.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, good enough?
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: Although I mean I say that, I can't I say that,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: I can't say that entirely with a straight face as
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: as a scholar, because you know, everything's constructed. There's no
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: such thing as no such thing that's true. But the other,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: the other, the other reason why it's important is that
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: is that many people believe that it's Many people found
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: it pretty convincing.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, is there anything that you would like to say
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: about any of your books or anything before we wrap
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: it up or leave us with anything else that we
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: didn't mention.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: I'm a always delighted to hear from readers. I have
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: a blog which you'll find if you google traditionalists log
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: and it's it aimed really at at other researchers, people
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: with an interest in this, but it's it's where I've
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: put interesting things I find on this subject and it
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: has a number of readers. So that's the place you
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: can go as well. But probably the most recent book
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: is the.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Great. Thank you very much for coming on. That was
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: really good. I got a lot of my questions. Thank
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: you very much. I know like you kind of just
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: promoted that. Is there any do you want to remind
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: people of the books that you have, just again real
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: quick and promote those on this subject.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: On this subject, if you're interested in traditionalism, it's a
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: book which is just called Traditionalism, which is published in
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: the US by Oxford University of Press. So it's a
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: tiny bit expensive, not too expensive. If you happen to
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: be in Europe. It's published by Pelican and even have
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: a nice cheap paperback then. So that's the nast recent one,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: the original one which has actually over the years it
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: has been the most popular in spiritual translations and sorts
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: of languages, including Russian and Persian and Turkish, and is
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: against the modern world. And the sort of intermediate book
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: that we mentioned at the beginning, which is about the
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: bigger phenomenon of selfism in the West, of the Western
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: understanding of Sulfism and then in the earlier centuries, and
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: then about the attempt to set up sofie organizations in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: the West in our own time. Really that one is
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: simplical Western, so I hope you enjoy all of them.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you so much again, doctor Mark Cedric. I
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: really appreciated that I had a great discussion with you,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: and I was really glad I got you on. Thank
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: you of course. Of course, of course I may even
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: have you on again in the future for a little
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: bit more specifics on other things. But thank all the
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: listeners too, with the questions. I appreciate the questions. That's
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: why I go live, so I can try to do
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, I guess that's that's the end
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: of another Recult rejects. Thank you again very much, Mark,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and for everybody in the chat and everybody listening until
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: the next one. Everybody be well later, all right,