Frithjof Schuon Archive
A Resource on Frithjof Schuon’s Life and Teachings
This site is the most comprehensive repository of information pertaining to the life and work of Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998); materials include published articles, personal correspondence, private papers, poems, photographs, and works of art.
Frithjof Schuon is the preeminent spokesman of a school of thought that focuses on the expression and explanation of the Perennial Philosophy. This philosophy expresses the timeless metaphysical truths underlying the diverse religions; its written sources include the revealed Scriptures as well as the writings of the great spiritual masters. Because these truths are permanent and universal, the point of view may thus be called “Perennialist.” The Perennial Philosophy is an important perspective that can inform the study of Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Art, Literature, and many related areas.
Schuon was a philosopher in the tradition of Plato, Shankara, and Eckhart, and he wrote over two dozen books on religion, metaphysics, sacred art, and the spiritual path. Describing Schuon’s first book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot wrote, “I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion”, and world-renowned religion scholar Huston Smith said of Schuon, “The man is a living wonder; intellectually apropos religion, equally in depth and breadth, the paragon of our time”. Schuon’s books have been translated into over a dozen languages and are respected by academic and religious authorities alike. Schuon’s writings remain unequaled in setting forth the principles of perennialist thought as well as their applications on the spiritual, aesthetic, and other related levels.
Besides his accomplishments as an author, Frithjof Schuon was also a gifted artist and poet. His art and his poetry flowed naturally from his awareness of God’s Presence in creation. Catalogue notes from a museum display of Schuon’s art explain that “springing as they do from his rich and unique personality, Schuon’s paintings…have a rare value, not only as regards artistic merit but above all because of their gift for manifesting the human soul at its noblest and most beautiful—hence, as a vehicle for Truth.” The sense of the sacred figures as much in Schuon’s art and poetry as in his philosophical writings.
The story of Schuon’s life presented in these pages demonstrates how his own intellect, personality, and actions reflected the elevated metaphysics, spiritual insights, and artistic creations that comprised his body of work.
This online resource brings together, through a survey of his many-faceted dimensions, Frithjof Schuon’s important contributions to the manifestations of the timeless Truth.
Featured Books
Das Weltrad 1, 2
The German sense poems of Frithjof Schuon form a metaphysical and spiritual whole that unites the essential teachings of this master in a form that is both accessible and immediate.
Featured Poems
Adastra and Stella Maris: Poems by Frithjof Schuon-Unto Itself
Each poem is a world unto itself.
Adastra and Stella Maris: Poems by Frithjof Schuon-Poetry
The wheel of time rolls on and brings me poems,
Adastra and Stella Maris: Poems by Frithjof Schuon-Narcissus – Euterpe
Poems of youth: all too often they are
Featured Articles
Foreword to “The Eye of the Heart”
Professor Huston Smith wrote the “Foreword” to the 1997 edition of Frithjof Schuon’s “The Eye of the Heart.” In it, Smith states unequivocally that he considers Schuon to be “the most important religious thinker of our century.” He explains this by pointing to Schuon’s solution to the thorniest issue facing those who believe in absolute Truth: Must there be only one valid Truth embodied in one religious tradition, thus excluding all others, or can there be another way in which absolute Truth can take on relative shadings, and still remain the Truth? Although Smith gives only brief attention to the specific contents of the book, he does summarize his thoughts with this: “Again in this book, as everywhere in Schuon’s writing, one is struck by the hierarchical, vertical character of his thinking — his depiction of an absolute and transcendent Reality that deploys itself through All-Possibility and ultimately returns to Itself through human beings ‘made in the image of God.'”
Book Review of “Dimensions of Islam”
Martin Lings reviews this book by Frithjof Schuon which is a complement to Understanding Islam and which explains in depth some of the problems that Christianity sees in Islam in the sanctity of the Prophet, for example, or the belittling of the human. Schuon explains that to be truly human and thus sanctified is to fit the divine mould which is Origin, Archetype, Norm and Goal. In Sufism this is expressed in a quaternary of divine Names: The First, the Last, the Outward and the Inward. Lings points out that these, “form the basis of this book, whose every chapter flows, as it were, along one or more of these dimensions.” Chapters under review include those on Jesus, Mary, the Archangels and the Five Divine Presences.
The Foreword to “Prayer Fashions Man”
In his “Foreword” to Prayer Fashions Man, Philip Zaleski highlights the central importance of prayer in Schuon’s message, and calls the book “a landmark compendium of writings on prayer.” Regarding the previously unpublished materials in the book, Zaleski notes that in them “we hear Schuon speaking in a new key, more personal and tender, although hardly less authoritative” than in his other, metaphysical, books.