>>662112
I'll paste my post from the toll houses thread where I spoke against perennialism.
I am referring to the teachings of Guénon, Schuon, Burckhardt, Pallis, Valsan and Coomaraswamy. I will not address Evola, since, unlike the others, he had a strong antichristian prejudice and this is obviously unnaceptable.
-The idea of Primordial/perennial tradition
The main claim of perennialism/guenonian traditionalism is that there is a core spiritual tradition from the beginning of humanity and that all religions are adaptation of it, created by inspired prophets to preserve truth in different ways to different people and cultures in history. Basically google Sanatana Dharma in Hinduism and that's where it is from.
This implies that all religions are equally true and equivalent.
The only thing we can accept as Christians is that existed a certain primordial knowledge of God, but it was lost in idolatry and superstition after the Babel tower. Certain wise men like Socrates or Zoroaster were able to learn a certain amount of truth, but this can never be equal to the religion revealed from God.
Christianity is above other religions, the nice things in other religions are at best incomplete fragments or prefigurations of Christian truths written by their wise men.
-The content of this perennial religion
Basically Advaita Vedanta, the most abstract and less pagan of hindu doctrines.
This imply, for example, that Shiva and Krishna are equally acceptable as forms and interpretation of the same divine as Christ is. That politheism is just a way of seeing divine energies, different but not less true than monotheism.
The final goal of man is to reach union into the divine in an impersonal way: to become a drop of water into the ocean.
God as a personal being with a will is accepted but as a lesser truth, God in itself is pure Being outside of being.
-Esotericism/Essotericism
This part about the impersonal absolute is usually part of the most advanced and reserved systems, as opposed to the devotion for God, intended for average people.
Since Sufi muslims and Hindus, among others, show traces of this distinction the perennialists try desperately to project it upon christianity.
Since Christian theology obviously do not teach these things they are lead to believe Christianity was esoteric but turned into a mass religion and there are some unknown groups inside it still teaching the esoteric doctrine to those who are qualified.
Among these groups the authors of the Graal cycle, the knights templar, Rosicrucians and freemasons. Unfortunately all these group are dead or were corrupted (like the freemasons).
This would imply Christ had a secret teachings that was unwritten; the revelation would thus split in two different doctrines and so would the hierarchy because it follows that an esoteric initatic hierarchy must exist, separated from that of bishops.
-Hermeneutics
They constantly try to read Christianity in light of other traditions.
They do not read Christian scriptures or the saints in light of Christianity itself but they project hindu or muslim ideas on it.
For example the esoteric/essoteric split is from the muslims, it is unknown in Christianity but they project it.
-The fruits of perennialism
Since they believed all religions are equally true and equivalent, and since Christianity has no more initiatic esoteric groups to be used to reach union into the Absolute, the perennialists left Christianity, all of them.
The great majority of them became sufi muslims.
I don't need to explain why this is wrong.
-Sacraments
Ever since the imaginary moment when Christianity turned essoteric the sacraments have no value. To the perennialist they were once initatic rituals but now they no longer give initiation into the mysteries.
Not all of them agree on this, the main issue is that they constantly minimize and ignore the core of Christianity because they are too interested into molding it to fit with their Hindu/Sufi theories.
The death and resurrection of Christ is not really that important to them, only the fact that Christianity is compatible with the doctrines of Sanatana Dharma and sufi mysticism.