EDITORIAL NOTE

 
     The past century has witnessed an erosion of earlier cultural values as well as a blurring of the distinctive characteristics of the world’s traditional civilizations, giving rise to philosophic and moral relativism, multiculturalism, and dangerous fundamentalist reactions. As early as the 1920s, the French metaphysician René Guénon (1886-1951) had diagnosed these tendencies and presented what he believed to be the only possible reconciliation of the legitimate, although apparently conflicting, demands of outward religious forms, ‘exoterisms’, with their essential core, ‘esoterism’. His works are characterized by a foundational critique of the modern world coupled with a call for intellectual reform; a renewed examination of metaphysics, the traditional sciences, and symbolism, with special reference to the ultimate unanimity of all spiritual traditions; and finally, a call to the work of spiritual realization. Despite their wide influence, translation of Guénon’s works into English has so far been piecemeal. The Sophia Perennis edition is intended to fill the urgent need to present them in a more authoritative and systematic form. [...]
 
     In the middle of the nineteenth century two scholars, Gabriele Rossetti and Eugène Aroux, pointed to a deeper level of meaning in Dante’s work, notably in The Divine Comedy. Although their views were radically opposed on religious and social matters, they shared the view that it was this deeper meaning that had made Dante appear to be both a heretic and a revolutionary. From their theses, which he reviews in the present book, Guénon retains only those elements that place beyond doubt the existence of such a hidden meaning – or rather, hidden meanings – in the writings of the great Florentine; but he also makes clear that esoterism is not the same as ‘heresy’ and that a doctrine reserved for an elite can be superimposed on the teaching given to the faithful without thereby standing