Legacy or "Tradition"? А. Zadornov

The text below was translated by an automatic translator (DeepL) 

ПРЕДАНИЕ ИЛИ «ТРАДИЦИЯ»?

 А. Задорнов

Throughout its development, theological science, taken in its concrete, lived reality, has always been a kind of response to the challenge of those who question and demand an account of the trust of our Church. But it is no less frequent that Orthodox apologetics has to respond to the challenge of those who identify the fruits of their own unenlightened reasoning with the vision of the Church, who, skillfully using parts of this vision, pass off the resulting counterfeit as a component or even a directly necessary component of the Church's worldview. And if in the first case the positions are clear enough, the deliberate vagueness of the second case generates pernicious temptations and perplexities.

It is to the second case that the subject of this paper is traditionalism in its relation to religious studies. We will define traditionalism later; for now it is necessary to show why we consider its positions dangerous for people seeking to enter (but still on the threshold of) the Church. 

First of all, traditionalism selects (as "heresy" in fact does) those points from various religious doctrines which, if examined inattentively, give the appearance of objective similarity.

Second, traditionalism makes a claim to provide some kind of scientific knowledge, thereby basing itself on a certain type of rationality and theory of argumentation. This is why we have chosen the field of religious studies as the scientific context in which we try to show the failure of traditionalism.

Further, and this is especially important and important today, the Russian version of traditionalism directly and intentionally seeks to appear as "Orthodox traditionalism," as a bearer of the spirit of the Church's tradition. To show the real place of traditionalism and to see the illegitimacy of the claims of its representatives to speak on behalf of the Church are the main goals of this essay; all other issues (such as the political orientation of the traditionalists, etc.) are considered only in connection with and to illustrate the general task.

The fact that the influence of traditionalism even in the midst of the Church has its place, and that it is not limited to the shifting world of intellectual sympathies, can be demonstrated by one testimony: "My worldview has been formed mostly under the influence of René Guénon. Thanks to Guénon I learned to seek and love the Truth, to put it above all and not to be satisfied with anything else." [1]

These words belong to Hieromonk Seraphim Rose; sapienti sat.

* * *

Let us cite a few of the most characteristic quotations related to the concepts of traditionalism in order to find a certain invariant distinguishing the distinctive features of this phenomenon, its origin and actual position. 

The originator of the movement himself, René Guénon, expresses himself succinctly: "Primordial Tradition of the present cycle came from the Hyperborean regions. Later there were several secondary streams of this Primordial Tradition corresponding to different periods of history. At present, the true spirit of Tradition, with all that it comprises, is represented only and exclusively by the people of the East and by none other." [2]

If we transfer this formula to concrete historical realities associated with the cyclicality of civilizations and the change of the type of cultures, we get Evola's definition: "A civilization or society is "traditional" if it is governed by principles that exceed all purely human and individual elements, if the structures of this society have a heavenly origin and, in addition, if they are definitely oriented strictly vertically. On the other side of all historical forms the world of Tradition is characterized by self-identity, by essential constancy." [3] As for the religious rather than social aspect of Tradition, according to the contemporary Russian guenonist, "all traditions, as they approach their own center, overcome confessional differences and almost merge into something unified. Guénon calls it "Primordial Tradition," "Изначальным Преданием." Such Tradition, according to Henon, constitutes the secret essence of all religions. [4]In this way, Tradition turns out to be a certain totality of divinely revealed knowledge that determined the structure of all sacred civilizations. Note that this connection of a purely spiritual phenomenon (which traditionalism attributes itself to) to the specifics of former civilizations and historical communities in general is characteristic of all traditionalism in general and largely explains such a harsh "criticism of the modern world" on its part.

If we imagine the world of tradition as depicted by Guénon or Evola in the form of circles inscribed into each other, then we can consider it on several levels at once as follows: 

1) The core of Tradition, its highest aspect - esoterism, the inner content of tradition, adjoining without any intermediaries to the divine essence of revelation: "Esoteric doctrines and their direct knowledge and realization in reality (which is designated by the term 'initiation, dedication [посвящение]') constitute the core of Tradition, the basis of its true orthodoxy, its divine orthodoxy [божественного Православия] (sic!). On this esoteric level occurs what Christian tradition calls "theosis," " deification," the mysterial transformation of the "earthly" into the "heavenly. Esoterism is closely connected with the direct knowledge of the supernatural and super-natural divine Principles themselves. [5]

2) Exoterism or "the outward-facing sphere of sacred doctrines". This is the circle, which has as its center the core of tradition, "should be the sole and supreme instance of the social order" (ibid.). Moreover, as far as the relationship between esoterism and exoterism is concerned, the former must not contradict or refute the latter in any way; in other words, the existence of Gnostic-like internal and external (profane in perspective) Churches is impossible; we must admit that this principle is one of the strengths of traditionalism and its approach.

3) The caste hierarchy, the social organization of the world of Tradition. This hierarchy is built on the principle of aristocracy, i.e. qualitative differentiation, rather than economic, which is inherent in anti-sacral civilizations: "A social hierarchy based on the differentiation of the inner nature of different types of people is a necessary condition of a truly sacral civilization. Anti-hierarchical tendencies have always gone hand in hand with anti-spiritual, anti-traditional and anti-religious tendencies." [6] The theme of the elite is generally the most characteristic of traditionalism and comes from Pareto's sociology and Nietzsche's poetic innovations. Thus, Guénon says: "As things stand in the West, no one occupies the place peculiar to him according to his inner nature." [7] And Evola adds: "A structure must be formed that runs perpendicularly from top to bottom, in which the leaders will be the sole centers, and the centers of the lower organizations will be like officers among the soldiers. Naturally, such a system requires, first of all, the creation of an elite in which not authority corresponds to position, but rather position to authority, which, in turn, derives from real superiority." [8] We will return to this question when we consider the commitment of traditionalism to right-wing political regimes.

 4) The sphere of sacred art and the sacred sciences, i.e. that area which is in direct contact with the world of cultural artifacts and the consequences of human world-building activities in general. "The disappearance of sacred knowledge (and sacred art) in the modern world, the traditionalists argue, went in parallel with the narrowing of the competence of Religion and the destruction of the sacred background of the social hierarchy." [9] Here one can see the desire to return to the worldview of the Middle Ages, when both scholastic theology and the alchemical practice of "nigredo - albedo - rubedo" - and, most importantly, on an equal footing - could be the key to unlocking God's creation in the mystery of the world. Finding such a key to unlocking the world, according to Henon, serves two purposes: to connect the different levels of reality, bringing them into synthesis, and also to prepare the ground for a kind of higher knowledge, to which it is possible to ascend through the steps of the traditional sciences - astrology, alchemy, sacred geography, etc. "It is perfectly clear," writes Guénon on this subject, "that modern science can in no way serve such purposes. Therefore, all of its varieties are nothing more than "profane sciences," while the traditional sciences, because of their connection with metaphysical principles, really constitute a unified "sacred science"- "a sacred science" [науку сакральную.]" [10]

So we have the following hierarchical system, leading from sacred arts and sciences to the caste hierarchy, from the latter to the sphere of external sacred doctrines, culminating in the esoteric core of Tradition. 

In order to derive a complete definition of tradition from these four elements, it is necessary to take into account the total character of the sacredness of all its aspects: "Outside of Tradition there is nothing real at all, since its essence goes directly back to the Divine Source, and God is the sole and absolute author of reality, its Foundation and its Creator. [11]

Thus, in trying to give a preliminary definition of traditionalism, we can say the following: traditionalism is a theoretical and practical claim to consider the esoteric and exoteric aspects of religion as well as the social order and cultural-scientific forms as a total sacralized reality, outside of which there can be no genuine human existence.

* * * 

Traditionalism as it appears today has a wide variety of expressions on all four of these levels. In addition to Gaennon's direct students - Michel Valsan, Frithjof Schuon, Marco Pallis, Paul Serran, Jean Robin, Jean Tournac, Denis Roman, and others - there is a whole series of intellectuals - philosophers, artists, poets, representatives of "academic science" - imbued with ideas of traditionalism, and not necessarily in a strictly guenonian way. Such as, for example, the "Orthodox traditionalist" Jean Bies or the Islamic fundamentalist Heydar Dzhemal.

However, all of the above authors are those who are direct disciples of Henon or have been influenced by his ideas. And if you look to look at the situation from the inside, "semiotically," then we will have to answer the question of whom the traditionalists themselves enumerate as their predecessors. Here we have one very clear criterion: any figure who insists on the "crisis of the modern world," who is pessimistic about its ultimate fate, and who hates the modern profane civilization of the West, turns out to be a traditionalist. Thus, this includes people who never thought of their resemblance to certain characters in this way. Such is Joseph de Maistre, who long before Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God" for Europe after the French Enlightenment Revolution; Such is Konstantin Leontiev, a Russian follower of the author of St. Petersburg Nights, with his criticism of Dostoevsky's "rosy Christianity"; such is also the enigmatism of French "damned poets" from Lautreamont to Rimbaud; Together with them are the early d'Annunzio and Louis Ferdinand Céline, whose novels are almost a protocol record of the deeds of the "Dark Age," and the thought intensification of Spengler and Heidegger, whose imperative "real philosophy is only possible as a human act" was put into practice by the poet Ezra Pound in Fascist Italy. If we talk about the post-war world, the traditionalists are the writers Yukio Mishima and William Burroughs, the philosophers and postmodern theorists Deleuze and Guattari, and many, many others who share the three traditionalist principles. However, hatred and "revolt against the modern world" (as Evola's work is called) are not the only issues. An essential element of traditionalism turns out to be another phenomenon on which it is necessary to dwell.

In the early eighties Mircea Eliade, who by that time had a solid reputation as a classic of modern religious studies, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. He did not, however, become a prizewinner. The reason for this was not the artistic merits or shortcomings of his truly interesting novels and novellas, but an episode in his pre-war biography. In 1931 Eliade returns from India to Bucharest, where he becomes a doctor of philosophy at the local university. And at the same time the active political activity of the young philosopher begins - he becomes the intellectual head of the Bucharest club "aha", created by N. Ionescu, the ideologist of the "Iron Guard" of Captain Corneliu Zelia Codreanu. Eliade's participation in the development of the ideological program of the Iron Guard (which was a bizarre mixture of "mystical orthodoxy" with archaic "Dacian elements") was not an aberration of the philosopher's political views, or a simple application of his ideas to the sphere of concrete political life. It was a calculated path, a deliberate decision. Proof of this is the fact that Eliade did not abandon his views even when King Mihai dispersed the "Iron Guard" and imprisoned all of its major figures. Eliade, who lectured even behind barbed wire on comparative religion, did not escape the concentration camp. After his imprisonment, when Romania joined the coalition with the Reich, Eliade was sent into honorary exile by the Romanian cultural attaché in London.

This episode is one of many examples of how intellectuals protesting against modern, profane, active civilization either find themselves in collaboration with European right-wing regimes (like Hamsun [Гамсун], Ernst Jünger or Céline), or are actively involved in the fate of these regimes (like Evola, Ezra Pound or Haushofer). It is hard to say what made them associate the "restoration of the social hierarchy" with Mussolini's hysterical [истерическим] "culture-building" or, even worse, with the ideology of the Third Reich. Of course, we can hardly give full credence to the statement of Louis Pauwels, who once said, "Fascism is guenonism plus armored divisions," but there is a certain truth in his words.  The sphere of action is a ambivalent one, which does not allow for the exact realization of concrete ideas as they appear in the minds of their creators. The logic of traditionalist sympathy for right-wing political regimes was attempted several years ago by the famous Italian medievalist writer Umberto Eco in an essay with the symptomatic title "Eternal Fascism. "The term 'fascism' is everywhere," he writes, "because even if one or more aspects of the Italian fascist regime are removed, it still continues to be recognized as fascist. If we remove imperialism from Italian fascism, we get Franco or Salazar... Add the obsession with Celtic mythology and the Holy Grail cult and we have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola." [12]

And then Eco identifies several characteristics of "eternal fascism" (ur - fuzzy), which, in his opinion, allow us to identify it with contemporary traditionalism. First, it is the cult of tradition itself, which is older than fascism itself and strives for a new syncretistic culture that disregards contradictions: "German-Fascist gnosis was nourished from traditionalist, syncretistic, occult sources. The most important theoretical source of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, mixes the Grail with the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," alchemy with the Holy Roman Empire... The very principle of mixing Augustine and Stonehenge is a symptom of Ur-Fascism."[13] 

Other characteristics that, according to Umberto Eco, link traditionalism and totalitarianism are a rejection of modernism and the modern world in general, as well as a suspicion of intellectual activity, intolerance of disagreement and heterogeneity, and an orientation toward the frustrated middle classes. [14]

All of this may be consistent with the political regimes of pre-war Germany and Italy, but does this mean that these characteristics also apply to traditionalism? Aversion to the modern world ("the spirit of 1789" according to Eco) is not necessarily associated with obscurantism [мракобесием] and obscurantism. If we allow ourselves a somewhat playful comparison, we can say that if, according to Kant, "Enlightenment is the state of human maturity," then rejecting it is a return to the young immediacy of the Middle Ages, to that state of infancy, a return to which is impossible without renovatio rnundi. Moreover, European thought of the post-war period knows ironically the characteristic inverse relationship - the spirit of the Enlightenment with its leveling of "freedom, equality and fraternity" and the totalitarian leveling of fascism; we have in mind Adorno-Horkheimer's book The Dialectic of the Enlightenment, which reveals this relationship. Perhaps it was not necessary to elaborate on this topic, but without it one cannot understand many aspects of the doctrines of Henon and Evola or Eliade's attitude to the opposition "sacred/profane" in the modern world. Moreover, the constant accusation that these authors are associated with the dubious political movements of Europe in the early part of our truly "dark age" causes one to mistrust the meaning that modern liberal intellectuals put into the very concept of "ur-fuzzy". After all, it is not totalitarianism that they call for a universal fiscal [фискальной] system of "fighters against fascism": "Ur-fascism can appear in the most innocent forms and forms. It is our duty to reveal its essence and to point out its new forms, every day, in every part of the globe"? [15] Alas, the Orthodox know well what fascism can be seen in by its relentless seekers "in every part of the globe"...

***

"Syncretism," writes Eco in the essay quoted above, "is not simply, as the dictionaries indicate, a combination of differently shaped beliefs and practices. Here the basis of combinability is first and foremost a disregard for contradictions. 16 This disregard is done by traditionalist authors in relation to the field where the concreteness of fact prevails, i.e., first of all, history. Its traditionalist interpretation is, in general, a subject that deserves the attention of a criminologist. The theories of world conspiracies, religious and geopolitical confrontations are distinguished by the fact that they find their manifestation in areas that sometimes simply do not lend themselves to logical evaluation.

Recognition of a single Primordial tradition makes it necessary to consistently see its fragments not only in all traditional cultures and religions, but also in phenomena seemingly directly opposite - Aleister Crowley's "telemism" here is interpreted in terms of the Indian doctrine of "left hand" (or, the same thing, "way of delinquency").

"We are obliged to blend together all that opposes the modern world, 'progress'. No monopoly on truth in our catacombs, declares modern traditionalism. - No theological disputes. No doctrinal debate. "Pistis Sophia, the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospels, Marx's Capital and Guenon's Reign of Quantity are equally true and correct. There should be no factions or sects in our struggle. We are all equally robbed and rejected. We have a common enemy."

But is the existence of a common enemy a sufficient basis for such an optimistic equating of divine revelation and literary sources? Is not the Church thereby, contrary to the claims of the traditionalists themselves, only one of the many ways of "rebelling against the modern world"?

Sometimes traditionalists themselves are aware of this, demanding a fundamental revision of Guenon's doctrine in those points that cannot be regarded as adequate within the framework of classical religious studies. "Indeed," writes one of them, "there are far more similarities than differences between traditions and realities in the general contrast with modern, fully desacralized civilization. This statement is obvious. The only question is, to what extent is such cyclical convergence in the face of a common enemy a consequence of esoteric unity?" [18]

Distortions of this unity are thus not "the result of environmental errors"; they are "rooted in metaphysics. [Искажения этого единства являются тем самым не «результатом погрешностей среды»; а «коренятся в метафизике».] Genon based his scheme on an analysis of Hinduism and Islam, bringing their esoterism to a unifying synthesis as follows. A single metaphysical Tradition, constituting the essence of universal esoterism, is the inner core of all orthodox traditions. For Guenon and his followers--until today! - dogmatic religions and other forms of exoteric traditions are like "outer shells" that hide the unity of content (i.e. "esoterism and initiation") behind the apparent diversity.

In this connection, the question of the relationship between "Orthodox esoterism" (represented, according to traditionalists, by Hesychasm) and the esoterism of other religions is interesting. A. Dugin writes: "The price of recognizing the orthodoxy of other religious forms is the confirmation of their "distorted" nature and interpretation of their dogmas in the spirit and letter of the specific esoterism typical only for Hinduism and Sufism." [19] According to this author, whose approach will be discussed in more detail, the Hindu approach to Christology actually equates Christ with an avatar, which is equivalent to monophysitism. Islam, by virtue of its strict monotheism, adheres to the Nestorian Christological scheme.

Especially interesting and significant in this regard is the statement that "Christianity is counted among the Abrahamic traditions only in the Islamic perspective and in some Judeo-Christian currents. Orthodoxy cannot self-define itself in this way, since it is clearly aware of its inner spiritual nature as a Melchizedek, pre-Arahamic and supra-Arahamic tradition" (ibid). The uniqueness of Christianity is thereby not only associated with the fact of God's incarnation, but is also confirmed by the presence of an entirely different "esoteric core" in contrast to Judaism and Islam. Nevertheless, the recognition of the existence of this very hidden center in various religions keeps in force the same basic traditionalist thesis about the ramification of a single Primordial sacredness. On this, traditionalism cannot find an authentic answer to the existence of the dilemma of the development of this sacredness - either it is fragmented due to purely external, historical and cultural reasons, or there are serious metaphysical divergences. If it accepts the latter thesis, then claims of preserving the esoteric core in absolutely all authentic traditions immediately become unimportant and far-fetched. In the case when the usual perspective of "fragmentation of the One Center" is preserved for this circle of authors, the traditionalists themselves come to what can be called syncretism following Eco, or "ecumenism the other way around.". If in "classical" ecumenism the basis of convergence is proclaimed to be the minimum of their common positions (recognition of the One God, for example), in our case, on the contrary, this basis is the maximum of common esoteric "properties" inherent in each religion. In this way, the traditionalists are a mirror image of their opponents in the worldview.

The question of the relationship between traditionalist statements and what is commonly understood as "academic" or "classical" science (in our case, religious studies) is complicated. Indeed, what is to be considered authentically scientific: the dull, flatly positivistic pages of Lang's The Making of Religion and the imaginary pluralism of James' The Variety of Religious Experience or the cold statement of the decadent state of the modern world and the call for the return of the "golden age of gods and heroes" of Guénon and Evola? Of course, the inertia of purely rational knowledge favors the former.

Strictly speaking, traditionalism in this first sense gave to academic science very few names. Eliade, Schuon, partly Corbin and Dumezil. The rest are either theorists a la Guenon, or authors of completely useless "historiosophic" fantasies like M. Michel Serrano. Thus, the question should be posed differently: what elements of traditionalism were close to the scientific worldview of these authors and why did they have to reinterpret them in a strictly scientific form? To recap briefly, the perspective of the study of religion at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gradually shifted away from the positivist clichés of Frazer and even Weber toward the comparativism of Bronislaw Malinowski or the logic of myth of Levi-Bruhl and Cassirer. The accumulation of abundant ethnographic material (collected by Malinowski, Mauss, Fers and others) and changes in the intellectual atmosphere of the European university world contributed to this: after Durkheim (the teacher, by the way, not only of Mauss, but also of Lévi-Strauss! ) and the works of the diffusionists Bastian, Ratzel or Frobenius, it was no longer possible to consider archaic cults and cultures as barbaric and excluding any semblance of logic - in contrast to the world of traditional cultures of the Mediterranean and the East.

Thus, the task of breaking through the Eurocentric dominance in religious studies had been accomplished long before the first traditionalist writings on the subject. In the pre-war period, when traditionalist religious studies proper began to take shape, the "historical particularism" of Boas and Kreber and the completely worthless evolutionism of Tylor were replaced by the Ilinski school, the school of functionalism in its classical variant. In the latter (thanks to the Redcliffe-Brown studies conducted on the Australian material) the so-called "needs theory" prevailed, the satisfaction of which is the stimulus for human activity. Satisfaction of these needs is the "function" of society, the set of which constitutes the structure. The notion of structure largely replaced the concept of culture and became a new subject of research in ethnography, social anthropology, and religious studies itself. Later, the famous Africanist Evans-Pritchard defines the essence of the structural method as the description of facts not in their "natural state," but subordinated in advance to sociological theory. Anything from value exchange (Fers) to rebellion "guarding the equilibrium of the social structure" can contribute to the maintenance of social structure. (Marx Gluckman).

What place does traditionalism occupy in this panorama of religious methodology? The British anthropologist Lucy Mayr in her time defined the development of the study of religion in the first half of our century as a movement from an understanding of religion as a system of beliefs (Fraser-Taylor perspective) through religion as a social fact (Durkheim-Malinovsky) to religion as ritualized magic (E. Litch, D. Goody, R. Horton).20 Taking this scheme into account, we can say that traditionalism begins where modern academic science ends. Indeed, it is the questions of initiation, ritual-magical transition ("rites of passage" in Van Gennep's terms) and other parts of the "esoteric core" of religions that are, as we have seen, central to traditionalism. So is the latter a kind of continuation of academic science, moving on where it stops?

To answer this question, let us consider some of the attitudes of the "classics of traditionalism. 

* * * 

As has been repeatedly noted, it is very difficult to single out any parts of Henon's purely philosophical doctrine. A Russian translator of traditionalist authors who has encountered this problem, Yu. Stefanov writes: "Guénon himself not only did not consider himself a philosopher, but denied philosophy the right to legitimate existence, calling it a product of the "anti-traditional spirit", and took every opportunity to discredit it " [21] The same words apply to Guénon's treatment of classical religious studies. Therefore, we will analyze one particular example from the "case of Henon," trying to show with its help the method of traditionalism's treatment of historical material. .

It is about Henon's dualism or, to be more precise, about his cosmic opposition of the sacral and the profane, the traditional and the anti-traditional, the modern and the archaic. The origins of this dualism are rooted in Hindu metaphysics and the perspective of cosmic cycles, the "kalpa", which are the manifestation of the "universal possibility". Each kalpa consists of subsections, manvantaras. If we imagine the latter as a circle, then each of the four segments ("yuga") of this circle shows the degradational course of manifestationalism from "pure heaven [чистoro небьтия]" (maximum spirituality) to "manifested being" (descent into matter). 

The movement of manvantara from krit yuga to kali yuga is accompanied by a gradual " densification" of the sphere of purely spiritual, the transition from a state of balance between sacred and profane to the gradual predominance and even domination of the latter in the "dark age" in which human history currently resides. 

Here a very important question emerges: is the binary opposition "sacred/secular" connected precisely with the course of history and is the violation of its relationship connected precisely with the eschatological perspective? If so, it is tempting to see here an analogy with Hellenic philosophy of history.

However, in Greek mythology, far from traditionalism, there is no concept reminiscent of the Indian "kalpa" and no concept of periodicity. "Time arises at the contacts between heaven and earth; time is an irregular sequence of divine events; outside such events time is only an earthly duration subject to any division," writes E. Golovin, a "traditionalist poet, "22. That is why the Indo-Indian "yugas" and Hesiod's "four ages" can be correlated only in a very vague symbolism. Moreover, the Pythagorean hepad numbers have no connection with time in the usual sense (according to the "Theologomena of Arithmetic" of Jamblichus). The concept of Hesiod can hardly be considered traditionalist in the guenonian sense also because it was interpreted very freely by many Greek philosophers.

And this concept is not at all applicable in the perspective of the Christian understanding of history. Of course, humanity's spiritual regression has its progressive force, increasing toward the end of time. But the very opposition between light and darkness, the very dualism of heavenly and earthly city (outside the Manichean panorama, of course) is made clear, for example, in the First Epistle of St. John the Evangelist: "Ye love not the world, neither the things of the world. But if anyone loves the world, there is no love of the Father in him..." (I Jo 2:15).

The famous Russian patrologist N. I. Sagarda in his commentary on this apostolic epistle notes that "in the concept of κόσμος (and not in the auliA/to it) one must seek a clarification of why in one case it is the object of unspeakable divine love, while in another case all human love for it is forbidden" [23]. In general, the term κόσμος is used in four different senses in this apostolic letter. In the most general sense "it is the totality of all created things, the world as an orderly and orderly whole" (ib.) - beyond any ethical definition. It is precisely the Logos-created world (J o 1:10). In a narrower sense, κόσμος is the whole sphere of human activity, "the earth itself, on which we live, together with the order and structure of earthly life." [24] By narrowing this notion even further, we get the cosmos as the totality of persons for whom revelation is intended, in concordance with the following gospel passages: "81TCH ποιείς, φανέρω σον σ ε αυτόν τ® κόσμο?" (I o V III, 12) or "έγώ είμι φ®ς του κόσμου" (I o VIII, 12).

Finally, only the fourth meaning of the word is used in the sense used in this place in the apostolic letter. This cosmos has nothing in common with the world in the first case; moreover, it is like a real anti-world: "it is the world of the will, which has fallen away from God. Its father is the devil, whose being is the negation of everything that is real and true in God - light, love and life. " [25] The essential characteristics of this anticosmos are σχοτία (I o 1:5) as the opposite of divine light, μίσευΐ / hatred (I o VII, 7) as the antithesis of love and, as the result of all, θάνατος (I o V, 24). That which is fundamentally dual and incomparable-the world of humanity and the world of sin-has been subjected to a mixture which has absorbed them and subjugated the former to the latter. As the same Sagarda writes admirably about this: "Mankind in itself has introduced the anticosmos and with it must share its fate. But some part of the cosmos-humanity has, through faith in Christ, freed itself from the chains of a god-hating anticosmos... Thus in the very realm of anti-cosmos the foundation of the kingdom of God has been laid." [26] Importantly for our theme, the sons of light themselves do not come from elsewhere, but continue to emerge from among the former children of darkness.

In this point is all the superiority of orthodox cosmology compared to the rigid-total dualism of Henon and his followers. The latter do not allow any possibility for the "clots of cosmic midnight" [сгустков космической полночи] and other "children of Kali Yuga" to join the side of light, impersonal predestination, not even Manichean, but Hindu, deprives people of the right to choose between light and darkness.Divine love knows no such hopelessness; two cosmoses, both ordinary and with the prefix "anti", coexist in human history precisely for the expression of human freedom in response to God's love. The anti-cosmos must destroy itself, no matter how much it seeks to take over the human world; even if at times it succeeds in doing so (the "iron/dark age" according to Guénon), this does not mean that it will last forever.

The opposition of these two worlds, the ability to distinguish between them, is emphasized by St. Justin (Popovich): "By its love of sin the world is so merged with evil that evil and the world sound as synonyms. And thus, love of the world creates love of sin and evil," but it is opposed by "love, which is found in all that is divine, immortal, eternal, in goodness, truth, righteousness, love, wisdom. It is a special, different world, which is entirely established on all that is divine, immortal, true, righteous, wise, and eternal." [27]

Thus, on the part of the Orthodox worldview, Henon's main thesis of religion about the parallel, non-overlapping existence of the sacred and profane worlds collapses. The world is not left to perish by impersonal cosmic forces, as it is believed by Henon and his immediate disciples. There is Someone in the present cosmos who facilitates the return of the sons of light from the realm of the anti-world. As Rilke wrote about it:

We are falling. The fall is inevitable,

But someone holds our fall in his endless tenderness

Our fall in tender hands.

The imperative of St. of the Apostle John: "Μ ή СХЩКаТЕ τον κόσμον, μηδετα έν τϋ3 κόσμω" (I o II, 16), applied to the postulates of religion, gives the direct opposite to those of Henon: in the sphere of religious analysis it is impossible to proceed from dualistic notions and, still less, to apply them to those religious systems which do not know such complete dualism and assume not the staticity of the actual state of this world, but the possibility of its dynamic change in an eschatological perspective.

* * * 

Of all traditionalists Julius Evola can be least of all classified as a historian of religion. The reason for this is not so much (or not only) his engagement with the political regime of Mussolini, but also his own ideological evolution of the "black baron" - from the nihilism and dadaism of youth, through the manifestationalism of adulthood - to the position of "man among the ruins" of his late period of work.

What lies at the heart of Evola's attitude toward religious doctrines in general and Christianity in particular? The most general premise here is the assertion that the realm of the "sacred" and the "divine" is self-sufficient and that religion only usurps it unnecessarily: "The sacred and the divine are objects of faith: this truth has been imposed on Europe in recent centuries. Our truth is different: it is better to know that you know nothing than to believe." [28] In the most unexpected way, Evola turns from a proud figure of a “metaphysician” and “kshatriya” into the same ... positivist:  "We remain faithful to the idea that in the "metaphysical" sphere it is possible to have as positive, direct, methodical, experimental knowledge as the experimental knowledge of science in the physical field." [29]

This seemingly unexpected turn has its own intellectual precedent. We are referring to that stage of Nietzsche's philosophical development, when he broke away from the Wagnerian romanticism of "the birth of tragedy," but had not yet arrived at the "superhumanity" of the Zarathustra. Such works as The Human, Too Human, and Gay Science, with their provocative reference to Lamarck and Darwin, were, for him, a logical progression. Without recourse to positivism, neither Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality, nor Evola's "Ride the Tiger" is understandable.

According to Evola's own ideas, his reference to the "Nordic tradition" (wittily parodied by Umberto Eco in Foucault's Pendulum) was also not arbitrary from a purely factual point of view. For him, there was a specific historical period when the project of the restoration of the "sacred empire" was closest to its realization - the period of the domination of the Hohenstaufen Empire over Rome. It was characterized by the following elements: the law of order, the recognition of the supernatural, the principle of universality. Evola recognizes remnants of these elements in Catholicism, but "what attracts us to Catholicism takes us further, beyond it, to the concepts of the great pre-Christian tradition, which present a more perfect, more definite and more complete totality of these values." [30]

Let us consider two specific examples of the application of Evola's theoretical positions in the field of comparative religion: the metaphysics of sex in various religious traditions and the Tantric doctrine. In the first case, Evola considers examples that are well known from such works of orthodox authors as Vysheslavtsev's "Ethics of the Transformed Eros" and Troitsky's "Philosophy of Christian Marriage". But where, for example, in Vysheslavtsev [31] there is an incomplete, distorted anticipation of Christian love, Evola sees only degradation of the original unity: "Referring to the androgynous myth, we first of all pointed to the metaphysical original meaning of eros as an impulse to restore the unity of being in its brokenness, "dual" state... In the metaphysics of procreation and "survival in genera" we discerned the degeneration of the original sense of eros, at the same time immanent to eros. In other words, even if lousy, but still the will to existence and immortality... The key to understanding all this was given to us by the myth of Poros and Pena [Поросе и Пении] - it has long ago revealed the structure of an infinite, mortal-immortal, incurable force feeding the entire cycle of births and deaths under the sign of bios - the wounded will of incompleteness to wholeness". [32]

Further chapters of Evola's work - such as "Apparitions of Ascent in Profane Love," "Gods and Goddesses, Men and Women," "Sacralization and Awakening" and especially "Gender in the World of Initiation and Magic" - leave an extremely vague sense of total arbitrariness in the examples chosen from various religious practices and the equally unnecessary conclusions designed to justify Evola's a priori theoretical positions (just what, as we recall, U. Eco reproached traditionalism for). The impression remains that it is not the material of study that moves the researcher, but on the contrary, the conclusions made in advance force Evola to choose only what fits his concept from the really extensive material collected.

Let us now consider another example, interesting all the more because it is connected with the religious practice of Evola himself. We are talking about Tantra, which Evola understands "as a kind of synthesis of all the basic elements of the Hindu tradition, although it has a very special coloring and corresponds to a certain cyclical period, understood in terms of the metaphysics of history. 33 What is interesting is the etymology that Evola derives. The notion of "tantra" (actually "treatise"), derived from the root "tan" (continue, develop) is "that which has been accomplished." Tantrism is thus an "extension" and "final explanation" of the traditional teachings of the Vedas, Brahmans, Upanishads and Puranas. Evola's reference to a "certain cyclical period" is also important: it is the Kali Yuga. Humanity of the "dark age", according to Tantra, can find knowledge, doctrines and rituals for effective achievement of the superhuman level not in the Vedas, but precisely in Tantra. "Thus," Evola notes, "it has been argued that only Tantric techniques based on merging with Shakti (shakti-sadhana) are adequate and effective in the modern world" (ib.).

Generally speaking, Evola formulated his position on tradition and esoterism in general in the work "The Yoga of Power," and this position differs in many aspects from other directions of traditionalism and, first of all, from the line of René Guénon. He almost directly accused the latter of a kind of "traditionalist pharisaism," because "even in nominally traditional civilization a kind of compromise arises between the theoretical teaching of previous cycles and the practical degradation of the cults themselves and the human environment that adheres to these cults." [34] Thus, exactly in the Iron Age epoch the original sacral essence of esoterism, in Evola's opinion, removes its esoteric shell and appears in its true form, not always adequately perceived (as in the case of Tantra) by its adepts.

Now we can point to the following aspects of Evola's thought, which are, in a sense, the summation: 

- As in the "case of Guenon," we encounter here the original dualism of the world of the modern (profane) and the world of the traditional (sacred), the boundary between which lies not in the area of metaphysical doctrines, but in the predominance of the esoteric core over the exoteric shell; 

- At the same time, in the specific historical situation of the "dark age" the most successful form of spiritual realization is, according to Evola, radical initiatory practices - be it the phenomenon of "malamatya" of Sufi orders, sectarian хлыстовство or tantrism;

- The case of Evola particularly emphasizes the fact that, according to the Hindu tradition, a person can realize his spiritual dignity only through volitional self-determination. There are two ways of such realization, which depend on the personal qualities of the individual. The first is the "deva-yana," the "path of the gods," the path inward, where spiritual freedom is embodied in the attainment of the higher self, in becoming a "superhuman." On the contrary, the outward path (to a social group, a nation, a race, a family) - "pitra-yana" or "the way of the ancestors" - implies overcoming the limitations of the individual "through identification with a new collective being, with the community in which he dissolves and for the sake of which he lives and dies." [35]

All these religious studies efforts of Evola denounce what we have already mentioned - his a prioriism in the conclusions, the desire to "fit" the historical material to his own worldview etc. Moreover, if Guenon remained (at least in his texts) still an "academic" historian, claiming objectivity, then Evola himself does not strive for this at all.

* * * 

Among the classics of traditionalism there is only one author who is a religious scholar par excellence, and while Genon and Evola used this field only to confirm their postulates, Mircea Eliade chose the path of academism consciously. He himself remained an Orthodox believer all his life, and thus has a direct bearing on our topic.

Eliade has two themes that constantly worry him and are reflected not only in scientific works, but also in works of fiction. These are the themes of time and myth. The first of these is worth mentioning, taking the novels and stories of the Romanian traditionalist as an example. In academic circles the very existence of these novels and stories arouses surprise: why would such a serious author, an acknowledged specialist in the comparative study of the history of religion, want to put his thoughts into such an unusual form for a thinker of this kind? Explained by the desire to "distract", they suspect some kind of literary hoax, while completely overlooking the fact that there are no "ideas" in this work - the only Idea that can be there is aimed at living, not assimilation.

According to Eliade, the notions of "living" and "passage" should speak of the initiatory character of this kind of literature, the purpose of which is incompatible with the explanations of literary scholars about the "aims of the author" or his concern for the "aesthetic enjoyment" of the reader (as if this was ever a concern of the real writer). 

By the way, the history of Russian thought knows something similar - we are talking about the novels and stories of Alexey Losev, whose meaning is seen by some as imitation of Dostoevsky or a kind of a break from more serious themes of the ancient cosmos and the mythology of Cretan Zeus, in the extreme case - as interpretation of his own ideas in an artistically expressive form. Is it worth commenting on the futility of such explanations?

The theme of time, its overcoming - the main and perhaps the only one in all the story lines of Eliade's works - from the "Serampore Nights" to the novels and stories of the "Romanian cycle". The leap in time, the return of time, the passage of time - all these images betray the writer's anxious interest in the possibility of reaching the moment when "time no longer exists," when one escapes from the wheel of "eternal return." In the fact that the latter is seen by Eliade as an unequivocally negative phenomenon, it is impossible not to see the truly Christian intentions of his thought - in this regard it is enough to recall the finale of The Myth of the Eternal Return. Time is the inexorable absorption of the world and of man himself, its overcoming is the heroic destiny of the human race: "Time" is "black" because it is irrational, cruel, unmerciful. Living in time, under the power of time, is a man subject to a number of sufferings.

Thickening, "thickening" of time is a sign of strengthening of the negative beginning contained in it, seizing the human end of time: "According to the same Indian philosophy, humanity has long lived in the age of kaliyuga, i.e. in the "dark age", when all kinds of spiritual abuses and crimes are possible; in the age of the complete fall of metaphysics - the last stage of a certain concluding cycle. And it is not at all coincidental that in the title of this cosmic xxx the concepts of time, darkness and the Great Goddess..." [37]

The only people who managed to preserve in the "dark age" a direct connection with the sacred world, who actively interact with it through initiatory practices and archaic rituals, are the people of "primitive societies." We should look for what Eliade, following Durkheim and by analogy with his "social fact," would call the "basic religious fact. 

The observation of these basic actions, following from the religious consciousness of primitive tribes, allows Eliade to state the presence of sacral archetypes in human nature itself. Man is first of all a religious being, his appeal to the world of the sacred is his essence. He cannot forget this in any "dark age"; this desire for the sacred can be stifled or suppressed, but in this case it comes to the surface of human activity in literature, art, music, sometimes manifesting itself in an extremely ugly or shocking form (remember, for example, the reaction of French "religious" critics to Lautréamont).

This is why Eliade does not seek to completely deny any positive religious basis in the West, but always wishes to find under the ashes of modern European profanism the foundation of sacred knowledge, which, of course, makes him a much more appealing author than Guenon or, even more so, Evola. 

A similar role of finding elements of the sacred in the modern world is also intended to be played by Eliade's understanding of myth. Let us recall that such an understanding was formed in an era when Levi-Bruhl's concept of primitive consciousness was still valid in the religious studies milieu. The "pra-logicality" of this consciousness is characterized, as we know, by the fact that the cause-and-effect relations necessary for logical thinking were replaced by partisanship or "complicity" established between the collective and the mystical sense of the thing. 

French structuralism (let us emphasize - only after Eliade) exploded this flat understanding of mythological thinking. First of all, Lévi-Strauss distinguished between the "meaning" and the "essence" of myth.

The first is that past events that took place at a certain point in time exist outside of time. The essence of myth is not the style, not the form of narration, not the syntax, but the story it tells; myth is language, but this language operates at the highest level. In this sense, Lévi-Strauss is close to Losev, for whom "myth is a given miraculous personal history in words." 

What are the relations between myth and history, mythological thinking and the language of its expression for M. Eliade? First of all, "myth recounts a sacred history, tells us about an event that took place in the venerable times of 'the beginning of all beginnings'... It is always the story of a 'creation,' we are told how something happened, and in myth we are at the origins of the existence of this 'something." [38] And further, it is particularly important that "myth as a whole describes various, sometimes dramatic, powerful manifestations of the sacred in this world... It is as a result of the intervention of supernatural beings that man became what he is -- mortal, separated into two sexes, possessing a culture" (ibid.).

Lévi-Strauss can serve as a link in an interesting connection between Eliade's interpretation of myth and the study of fairy tale plots in Russian science. The fact is that a direct disciple of Lévi-Strauss (and thus, to a certain extent, a structuralist himself), the famous anthropologist Edmund Leach, criticized Eliade in the New York Review of Books in 1966. Leach's main subject was social structure and the possibility of applying mathematical models to study it (as demonstrated by the example of the Kachins in Political Systems of Highland Burma /1 9 5 4 /). Leach challenges the model of society as an integrated system striving for equilibrium and insists on dynamism, contradictions, and differences between the ideal norm and real practice. In Rethinking o f the Anthropology (1961), he emphasizes the limitations of the comparative approach and advocates the study of general laws, the use of symbols and formal models. In other words, by addressing the same field as Eliade, moreover by using the same themes of basic symbols and archetypes, Leach seeks to create a kind of surrogate of "positivist structuralism," for which "Eliade presents facts that cannot be empirically verified or are refuted; he often refers to obsolete or unreliable information, while 'speaking like a prophet from the heights'". [39] 

In many respects, the criticism to which the structuralist L'ich subjected the traditionalist Eliade is parallel to the claims that L'vi-Strauss himself made against the Russian scholar of the world of folklore, V. Y. Propp, and his book "The Historical Roots of the Magic Tale" (1946). In his review of it (S . Levi-Strauss. La structure et la forme / / Cahiers de I'Institut de Science economique applxquee - Serie M No. 7, 1960), Levi-Strauss approximates Propp's position to formalism. But if the latter is understood as "systematic, i.e., looking through the whole rather than through a single element, as well as sharply limiting the object of consideration, " [40] then the accusation misses the mark. This is what Propp notes when he writes: "Formal study cannot be detached from historical study and oppose them. On the contrary: formal study, a precise, systematic description of the material under study is the first condition, prerequisite of historical study and at the same time the first step of historical study." [41]

An interesting phenomenon: not understood in his worldview in the West (which was also the basis of scientific misunderstanding), Eliade is gaining recognition in Russia, both scientifically and philosophically. He is the only traditionalist author who, being Orthodox in his personal confessional choice, can prove useful for Orthodox apologetics in its dialogue with outsiders, helping the latter to understand that "only on the condition that one believes in the existence of God does one acquire freedom, and at the same time the certainty that all historical tragedies have a transhistorical meaning - even if this meaning is not always intelligible to man in his present state".[42]

* * * 

Having examined some of the premises and aspects of traditionalism, and having analyzed the worldviews of its three most important authors, we must now relate all of this to the Orthodox understanding of the problems posed by Guénon's followers.

The issue of cosmic dualism has already been discussed in the "case" of Guénon himself. Let us only add that this dualism is not just a minor aspect of traditionalism, but its main component. Without it, there would be no opposition "sacred/profane" and no opposition of the traditional society to the modern world.

Let us say unequivocally: traditionalism is outside the walls of the Church. It cannot add anything to our Tradition, to our authentic sacred patristic tradition. By analogy with Protestantism, we can only point out what is NOT in traditionalism. And what it does not have, first of all, is freedom of the human person. The world in Tradition's perception is totally predetermined and subordinated to impersonal elements of history and cosmos. Man in this arrangement can only be their obedient executor, and his entire dignity consists in amor fati. Like all Nietzscheans, the traditionalists do not want to leave it to the Creator to turn his hand to men not only in the "age of gods and heroes," but also in the truly dark age of the Kali Yuga". Hatred of the "modern world" remains at the base of this passion, giving no positive answer to the question of the ways of salvation even in a world so godless in its outward form. 

In a sense, traditionalism can be useful in propaedeutic purposes, as a guide in the world of modern culture and its phenomena which cannot be put into the usual scheme "sacred/profane". However, this also testifies to the weakness of today's apologetics in this question, since it has always taken upon itself this task of "guiding" through the world of traces of human activity.*  

* This is, in fact, what any culture is, which in this sense (in opposition to Spengler) does not differ from civilization. The fact that culture is only an artifact was aptly stated by Florensky, who called books "rows of materialized thoughts" and not thoughts themselves.

To make use of the services of "outsiders," to poke blindly through the modern sea of culture, in which "there are crap, and there are none" (Pp 103:23), in search of the remains of the sacred norms of reality, justifying such wandering by the need for "the churching of culture" (what kind of culture?), is unworthy of authentic church theology, which can repeat after Chrysostom the saint:  "I have no need to use their irrationality to defend myself, nor do I want to confirm truths with lies." [43] Traditionalism is so detailed in its analysis of the spiritual state of the "modern world," so subtle in its analysis of all its ugly and pathological phenomena precisely because it is flesh from the flesh of this world, that only in it can it find its place, parasitizing on its sins and burying its (and therefore its own) dead.

In its attempts to impose itself on the Church, contemporary Russian traditionalism simply bursts open doors, because where but in the Church can there be genuine traditionalism of Holy Scripture and rebellion against not only the modern, but also the world since the fall, in which everything is of lust, flesh, and worldly pride (1 Jn 2:16)? 

But it is in the Church that we have hope in Him who said: "He who believes in Me has eternal life" (H o 6:47). This hope removes the fear of the terrors of the "modern world" and serves as our authentic tradition of life in the Church.

Notes

1 Дамаскин (Христенсен), иером. Н е от мира сего. Жизнь и учение иеромонаха Серафима (Роуза) Платннского. М ., 1995. С. 61.

2 Рене Генон. Кризис современного мира. М ., 1991. С. 29.

3 Юлиус Эвола. Оседлать тигра / / Элементы. № 3 ,1 9 9 3 . С. 3.

4 Конец Света. Эсхатология и традиция. М ., 1997. С. 345.

5 Милый Ангел. Эзотерическое ревю. Т . 1. М ., 1991. С. 2.

6 Ibid. С. 3.

7 Рене Генон. Кризис современного мира. М ., 1991. С. 70.

8 Ю лиус Эвола. Языческий империализм. М ., 1994. С. 39.

9 Милый Ангел. Эзотерическое ревю. Т . 1. М ., 1991. С. 3.

10 Реие Геиои. Кризис современного мира. М ., 1991. С. 53.

11 Милый Ангел. Эзотерическое ревю. Т . 1. М ., 1991. С. 2.

12 Умберто Эко. Пять эссе на темы этики. С П б., 1998. С. 39.

13 Ibid. С. 40.

14 Ibid. С. 41— 42.

Ibid. С. 46.

Ibid. С. 39.

Дугин А . Тамплиеры пролетариата. М ., 1997. С. 43.

Конец Света. Эсхатология и традиция. М ., 1997. С. 346.

Ibid. С. 347.

15

16

17

18

19

20 См.: Lucy Маіг. An Introduction to Social Anthropology. Clarendon press. Oxford, 1965.

21 Стефанов Ю .Н . Рене Генон и философия традиционализма / /

Вопросы философии, № 4, 1991. С. 31.

22 Конец Света. Эсхатология и традиция. М ., 1997. С. 331.

23 Сагарда Н. Первое Соборное Послание св. апостола и евангелиста Иоанна Богослова. Исагогико-экзегетическое исследование. Полтава, 1903. С. 398.

24 Ibid. С. 399.

25 Ibid. С. 400.

26 Ibid. С. 401.

27 Архимандрит Иустин (Попович). Толкование на первое соборное Послание Св. Апостола Иоанна Богослова. М ., 1998. С. 47.

28 Юлиус Эвола. Языческий империализм. М ., 1994. С. 99.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid. С. 141.

31 In general, Vysheslavtse is the Christian antithesis of Evola, all the more so if we consider his similar focus on the Eastern tradition (cf. his work "The Heart in Indian and Christian Mysticism"),

32 Юлиус Эвола. М етаФизика пола. М ., 1994. С. 114.

33 Ю лиус Эвола. Йога могущества / / Конец Света. Эсхатология и традиция. М ., 1997. С. 110.

34 Конец Света. Эсхатология и традиция. М ., 1997. С. 108.

35 Дугин А . Тамплиеры пролетариата. М ., 1997. С. И.

36 М .Элиаде. Миф о воссоединении / / М .Элиаде. Азиатская

алхимия. М ., 1998. С. 2 8 6 .

37 Ibid.

38 См.: Мирча Элиаде. Аспекты мифа. М ., 1995. С. 16, а также

М.Элиаде. Космос и история. М ., 1987. С. 23, 25.

39 М .Элиаде. Космос и история. М ., 1987. С. 24.

40 Почепцов Г.Г. История русской семиотики. М ., 1998. С. 248

41 М .Элиаде. Аспекты мифа. М ., 1995. С. 193.

42 М .Элиаде. Миф о вечном возвращении. С П б., 1998. С. 246.

43 Св. Иоаии Златоуст. Толковаиие на св. Матфея евангелиста. Творения. Т . VII. С П б., 1901. С. 10.