The Unanimous Tradition

Book excerpt: A collection of essays by Joseph Epes Brown, Titus Burckhardt, Rama P. Coomaraswamy, Gai Eaton, Isaline B. Horner, Toshiko Izutsu, Martin Lings, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Lord Northbourne, Marco Pallis, Whitall N. Perry, Leo Schaya, Frithjof Schuon, Philip Sherrard, William Stoddart, Elemire Zolla. Their subjects range over the religious doctrines of East and West and the societies which derived from them, including especially their sacred art and their sciences. In addition, and no less importantly, they demonstrate that the whole of that view of the world and of the nature of things common to all religions is, for mankind, the normal view -- properly referred to as the traditional point of view -- and that this view is absolutely opposed to and cannot be reconciled with the fundamentally profane beliefs and ideals which have dominated European thought since the Renaissance, resulting in the destruction of Western Christianity.