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 pass. 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 ties with the global elites. And its various spinoffs, such as Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Summit Lighthouse, and Benjamin Crme's continuing attempt to lead a 'World Teacher Maitreya' onto the global stage-just as the Society tried to do in the last century with Krishnamurti-continue to send waves through the sea of 'alternative' spiritualities. Gunon shows how our popular ideas of karma and reincarnation actually owe more to Theosophy than to Hinduism or Buddhism, provides a clear picture of the charlatanry that was sometimes a part of the Society's modus operandi, and gives the early history of the Society's bid for political power, particularly its role as an agent of British imperialism in India. It is fitting that this work should finally appear in English just at this moment, when the influence of pseudo-esoteric spiritualities on global politics is probably greater than ever before in Western history.

To spare readers extended research into obscure back issues of French journals long out of print, Miscellanea gathers together for Anglophone readers various articles by Ren Gunon, and by 'Palingenius', his pseudonym during the time of La Gnose, a journal he founded in 1909. These articles have been divided into three categories: Metaphysics and Cosmology, Traditional Arts and Sciences, and Some Modern Errors. From the first chapter of part one, 'The Demiurge', which we believe is the first text he ever submitted for publication (in 1909, at the age of twenty-three) to 'Profane Science in Light of Traditional Doctrines', of April-May 1950, more than forty years elapsed. The breadth of the topics covered can be seen from a sampling of chapter titles: Monotheism and Angelology; Spirit and Intellect; Silence and Solitude; The Empiricism of the Ancients; Gnosis and the Spiritist Schools; The Origins of Mormonism, On the Production of Numbers; Initiation and the Crafts; and The Arts and their Traditional Conception. In the latter two key chapters, the author explains how initiation became necessary in the measure that humanity receded from the 'primordial state', presenting the reasons for the degeneration of the arts and crafts due to the 'fall' or descending trajectory of the present cycle; but he also points out the possibility of an initiation into the 'lesser mysteries' based upon the craft of building which still exists validly in the West.

Studies in Hinduism consists of articles published posthumously, to which has been added Ren Gunon's separate study, Eastern Metaphysics, the text of a lecture delivered at the Sorbonne. In this work Gunon completes his presentation of Hindu metaphysics, which he considered the most primordial and comprehensive body of spiritual teaching possessed by the human race, one capable of throwing light upon and illuminating the essence of every other Tradition. Of special interest are three chapters on various aspects of tantra-a doctrine profoundly misunderstood in the contemporary West-which Hindu authorities consider the spirituality most appropriate to the Kali Yuga, as well as a chapter on the sanatana dharma, the Hindu concept closest to the ancient and medieval Christian idea of the philosophia perennis, which led St Augustine to declare that Christianity has always existed, but only came to be so called after the coming of Christ. Included are extensive reviews of books on Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore, Mircea Eliade, Paul Brunton, and others, as well as 40 pages of reviews of books and articles by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Leading Indian thinkers have called Gunon the most authentic expositor of Hindu metaphysics in any Western language.