Part 14 (2/2)

Translated by Farid Nur ad-Din

Footnotes

1 Editor's Note: First published in La Gnose, No. 4, April, 1911. The Introduction and English translation are by Farid Nur ad-Din.

2 Erik h.e.l.lerstrom, Slakt och Havd, edited by Genealogiska Foreningen (Stockholm: Alfa Boktryckeri, 1964), no. 1, p. 18.

3 Axel Gauffin, Ivan Agueli: Manniskan, Mystikern, Mlaren (Stockholm: Sveriges Allmanna Konstforening, 1940-1941), vol. 1, p. 61.

4 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 73.

5 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 75-76.

6 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 123.

7 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 103.

8 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 143.

9 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 19-20.

10 Kurt Almqvist (ed.), I Tjanst hos det Enda: ur Rene Guenons Verk (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1977), p. 18.

11 Gauffin, Ivan Agueli, vol. 2, p. 94.

12 Almqvist, I Tjanst hos det Enda, pp. 18-19.

13 Paul Chacornac, The Simple Life of Rene Guenon (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004), p. 34.

14 Gauffin, Ivan Agueli, vol. 2, p. 189.

15 Viveca Wessel, Ivan Agueli: Portratt av en Rymd (Stockholm: Forfattarforlaget, 1988), p. 80. In The Simple Life of Rene Guenon, p. 35, Paul Chacornac mistakenly states that the year 1429 AH, given by Guenon in his Introduction toThe Symbolism of the Cross, corresponds to the 1912 AD; whereas, as Wessel points out, 1429 AH corresponds to 1911 AD. This was also noted G. Rocca in his Foreword to ecrits pour La Gnose, (Milan: Arche, 1988), p. xix, n. 13.

16 Almqvist, I Tjanst hos det Enda, p. 18, n. 1.

17 Gauffin, Ivan Agueli, vol. 2, p. 250.

18 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 255.

19 Ibid., vol, 2, p. 287.

20 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 288.

21 Translator's Note: Abdul Hadi is referring to his previously published article ”Pages Dedicated to the Sun”.

22 See the Yi-King, as interpreted by Philastre (vol. 1, p.138; the 6th Koua; Song 150): ”The word destiny signifies the very reason for being of things; to neglect the precise reason for being of things const.i.tutes what one calls 'contravening ones destiny'; also submission to destiny is considered a return. To contravene is not to conform with submission.” (The traditional commentary of the Tsheng) ”Destiny or the celestial mandate, is the true and accurate reason for being of each thing.” (The commentary ent.i.tled ”Primitive sense.”) I further add that in Chinese, Muslims are called ”Hwei-Hwei”, those who return, obeyingly, to their destiny. Muslim tradition states that Allah calls unto Him all things in order that they may come, willingly or unwillingly. Nothing can ignore this call. This is why all things in general are considered to be Muslim. Those beings who go unto Him willingly are called Muslims in the true sense of the word. Those who do not go unto Him-that is to say those who do not follow their destiny but are forced, despite themselves-are the infidels.

23 See La Gnose, 2nd year, No. 2, p.65. [Translator's Note: Abdul Hadi is referring to his article ”Pages Dedicated to the Sun.”]

24 According to Warrain, La Synthese concretet, p. 169.

25 Translator's Note: Abdul Hadi is most likely referring to the Akbariyah Tariqah, which he may have encountered on his journey into South India in 1899. See G. Rocca's Foreword to ecrits pour La Gnose, p. xxiii.

26 Editor's Note: Tartarin is a character from the 1872 novel of the same name by Alphonse Daudet. It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of the town of Tarascon in southern France, whose imaginary heroism and bravery as a hunter lead him to travel to Algiers in search of lions. The word tartarinade has been forged in French to refer to burlesque boastfulness. The attribution of ”satanism” to the Jesuit is no doubt to be taken as a ”shocking” hyperbole, in conformity with aspects of the malamatiyyah spirit extolled by Agueli. It may allude to the increased worldliness of too many representatives of the Society of Jesus in Western history, i.e. a ”satanic” inversion of Jesuit ideals.

27 Translator's Note: Abdul Hadi was a keen reader of the bawdy French Renaissance writer Francois Rabelais, and at one point attempted to translate his works into Arabic. See Gauffin, Ivan Agueli, vol. 2, p.119. [Editor's Note: Agueli's expression ”Saint Rabelais” can be taken as a profound allusion in the form of a joke.]

28 Translator's Note: This sentence was quoted by Frithjof Schuon in his Sufism: Veil and Quintessence(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), p. 88, n. 26. [Editor's Note: It bears adding that Schuon's quoting of Abdul Hadi does not amount to an endors.e.m.e.nt of Abdul Hadi's entire perspective or all of the ideas presented by the Swedish Sufi. Abdul Hadi's references to Buddhists in a latter part of this article is, among other examples, a clear indication of this, when compared with Schuon's profound recognition of the spiritual truths of Buddhism.]

29 Translator's Note: This sentence is quoted on two occasions by Schuon, once in The Transcendent Unity ofReligions (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1984), p. 157, and once in Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, p. 88.

30 Translator's Note: Abdul Hadi harbored a great dislike of Western Orientalists. He was one of the first to comment upon their misapprehension of Ibn 'Arabi, Islam, and Sufism, stating, for example, in 1917: ”Our Orientalists do not know Muhyiddin's true place in Sufism, nor Sufism's place in Islam” (quoted in Gauffin, Ivan Agueli, vol. 2, p. 282).

31 Translator's Note: These sentences were quoted by Frithjof Schuon in his Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, p. 88, n. 26.

32 Translator's Note: Abdul Hadi's fascination with Islam was its very universality, and its ability as a spiritual language to form bonds between different nations and peoples. Indeed the concept of a universal language was what he had been seeking from his earliest youth. In a letter from the Mazas Prison in 1894, the young seeker wrote the following line to a friend: ”You, on your part seek a religion. I, a language” (Gauffin, Ivan Agueli, vol. 1, p. 151).

33 Translator's Note: Frithjof Schuon quotes this and parts of the paragraph above and below in his TheTranscendent Unity, pp. 157-158, n. 1.

34 Translator's Note: Rene Guenon would be inspired by this last sentence in the fourth chapter of his Man and his Becoming According to the Vedanta (London: Luzac & Co, 1945), p. 39.

35 Editor's Note: Literally ”that which can be known”, the ”knowable.”

36 Translator's Note: An optical system that involves both the reflecting and refracting of light, in order to reduce aberration. Life is ordered in accordance with lex talionis, according to a hadith.

37 Editor's Note: In typically ”provocative” fas.h.i.+on, Agueli clearly points to the limits of individualistic and sentimental ”humility,” while alluding to the real ”metaphysical” humility based on the consciousness of our ”naught-iness.”

38 Translator's Note: Although a great admirer of the arts and cultures of China and j.a.pan, Abdul Hadi had a problematic relations.h.i.+p with the Buddhism he encountered on Ceylon. Having originally intended to travel to Tibet and visit a Buddhist monastery, it was during his stay in Ceylon in 1899 that he was drawn into the rivalry between the Buddhist Singhalese majority and the Muslim and Hindu minorities. As a Muslim, he was often hara.s.sed by his Buddhist neighbors, whose wild dog on numerous occasions broke into his home, defiling his sacred texts and attacking his favorite cat Mabruka (see note 45 below). Although Rene Guenon's early antipathy towards Buddhism was mostly rooted in his Hindu sympathies, his initial uncompromising stance may also have been influenced by Abdul Hadi's biases.

39 La Gnose, 2nd Year, No. 2, p.64, and No.3 p.111. [Translator's Note: ”Pages Dedicated to the Sun”.]

40 Here I am not addressing the Ibsenian concept of ”living one's life”. Those who do not dare, who do not restrain their pleasures, are all too unprepared to be addressed with an esoteric concept. Ibsen, Tolstoy, Nietzsche etc. are very respectable as individuals, I do not dispute that, but they are of no traditional value whatsoever. They are moralists with a local influence and hence they fail to gain our interest, as they are like small provincial prophets.

41 Translator's Note: This is quoted by Ananda K.Coomaraswamy in his The Living Thoughts of Gotama the Buddha(London: Ca.s.sell, 1948), p. 36.

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