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Fez: City of Islam is undoubtedly one of Titus Burckhardt's masterpieces. It conveys a profound understanding of the sacred roots that nourish Islamic culture and civilisation. As a young man in the 1930s, Burckhardt spent some years in Morocco where he became acquainted with several remarkable representatives of the spiritual heritage of the Maghrib. Although he committed much of this experience to writing, it was not until the 1950s that these writings were developed into a book. In Fez: City of Islam, Burckhardt writes of the history of a people and their religion--a history that was often violent, often heroic and sometimes holy. The book relates the teachings, parables and miracles of the saints of many centuries and demonstrates not only the arts and crafts of Islamic civilisation, but also its sciences and administrative skills. Burckhardt's unique black and white photographs from the 1930s are included. In addition 41 new colour illustrations have been specially selected to enhance Burckhardt's originals. Here, text and illustrations come together to provide an insight into the way the life of a people can be transformed at every level by a religious tradition.
A Muslim environmentalist explores the fascinating intersection of environmentalism and Islam. Muslims are compelled by their religion to praise the Creator and to care for their community. But what is not widely known is that there are deep and long-standing connections between Islamic teachings and environmentalism. In this groundbreaking book, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin draws on research, scripture, and interviews with Muslim Americans to trace Islam’s preoccupation with humankind’s collective role as stewards of the Earth. Abdul-Matin points out that the Prophet Muhammad declared “the Earth is a mosque.” Using the concept of Deen, which means “path” or “way” in Arabic, Abdul-Matin offers dozens of examples of how Muslims can follow, and already are following, a Green Deen in four areas: “waste, watts (energy), water, and food.”
Titus Burckhardt was a renowned expert on the art of traditional worlds. This book takes the reader through the history of Christian art, focusing especially upon architecture, iconography, and illumination.
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This small volume brings together a number of Guénon's early articles relating to Sufism (tasawwuf), or Islamic esoterism. A later article, 'Islamic Esoterism', has also been included, since it articulates so well the particularities of initiation in Islam by defining the fundamental elements of tasawwuf: shari'ah, tariqah, haqiqah. The first constitutes the necessary fundamental exoteric basis; the second, the Way and its means; the third, the goal or final result. In the other chapters, Guénon expresses with his usual synthetic clarity what tawhid and faqr are, and gives examples of traditional sciences, relating angelology to the Arabic alphabet, and chirology to the science of letters ...
Since the late nineteenth century, the Theosophical Society has been a central force in the movement now known as the New Age. Just as the Communist Party was considered 'old hat' by peace activists in the '60s, so the Theosophical Society was looked upon by many in the 'spiritual revolution' of those years as cranky, uninteresting, and passé. But the Society, like the Party, was always there, and-despite its relatively few members-always better organized than anybody else. Since then, the Society's influence has certainly not waned. It plays an important role in today's global interfaith movement, and, since the flowering of the New Age in the '70s, has established increasingly intimate ti...
An introduction to the thought of one of the greatest perennialist authors of the twentieth century.
Titus Burckhardt was Swiss and an eminent member of the traditionalist school. He is perhaps best known to the English-speaking public as the author of the following books: Sacred Art in East and West; Siena, City of the Virgin; Moorish Culture in Spain; and Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. A generation ago, he won much acclaim for producing and publishing the first successful, full-scale facsimiles of the Book of Kells and other ancient manuscripts. In more recent years, he acted as a specialist advisor to UNESCO, with particular reference to the preservation of the unique architectural heritage of Fez, which was then in danger. The present volume is a complete collection of Burckhardt's essays, originally published in a variety of German and French journals. They range from modern science in its various forms, through Christianity and Islam, to symbolism and mythology. It is a rich collection. Burckhardt blends an accessible style with a penetrating insight. He interprets the metaphysical, cosmological, and symbolic dimensions of these sacred traditions from the perspective of timeless, spiritual wisdom.
“THE aim of this book is to set forth as simply as possible the Gospel of Buddhism according to the Buddhist scriptures, and to consider the Buddhist systems in relation, on the one hand, to the Brahmanical systems in which they originate, and, on the other hand, to those systems of Christian mysticism which afford the nearest analogies. At the same time the endeavour has been made to illustrate the part which Buddhist thought has played in the whole development of Asiatic culture, and to suggest a part of the significance it may still possess for modern thinkers. “The way of the Buddha is not, indeed, concerned directly with the order of the world, for it calls on higher men to leave th...
Especially since the Renaissance, some in Western Christendom have suspected that the deeper dimension of their tradition has somehow been lost, and have therefore sought to discover, or create, an 'esoteric' or 'initiatic' Christianity. In the middle of the nineteenth century two scholars, Gabriele Rossetti and Eugène Aroux, pointed to certain esoteric meanings in the work of Dante Alighieri, notably The Divine Comedy. Partly based on their scholarship, Guénon in 1925 published The Esoterism of Dante. From the theses of Rosetti and Aroux, Guénon retains only those elements that prove the existence of such hidden meanings; but he also makes clear that esoterism is not 'heresy' and that a ...