RENE GUENON TRADITIONAL FORMS AND COSMIC CYCLES ‘Translator Henry D. Fohr Editor Samuel D. Fohr SOPHIA PERENNIS HILLSDALE NYCONTENTS Editorial Note xu Foreword xvi PARTI Some Remarks on the Doctrine of Cosmic Cycles 1 Reviews 8 PART I Atlantis and Hyperborea 15 ‘The Place of the Atlantean Tradition in the Manvantara 23 ‘A Few Remarks on the Name Adam 29 Kabbalah 33 Kabbalah and The Science of Numbers 38 La Kabbale juive of Paul Vulliaud «7 The Siphra di-Tzeniutha 64 Reviews 68 Part iv The Hermetic Tradition 73 Hermes 79 Hermes’ Tomb 86 Reviews. 93 List of Original Sources 109 Index un1 SOME REMARKS ON THE DOCTRINE OF COSMIC CYCLES We HAVE OPTEN BEEN ASKED, regarding allusions we have been led to make here and there to the Hindu doctrine of cosmic cycles and its equivalents in other traditions, whether we might give, if not a complete explanation, at least an overview sufficient to reveal its broad outlines. In truth, this seems an almost impossible task, not ‘only because the question is very complex in itself, but especially ‘owing to the extreme difficulty of expressing these things in a Euro- pean language and in a way that is intelligibe to the present-day ‘Western mentality, which has had no practice whatsoever with this, kind of thinking. All that is really possible, in our opinion, isto try to clarify a few points with remarks such as those that follow, which can only raise suggestions about the meaning of the doctrine in «question rather than to really explain it, In the most general sense of the term, a cycle must be considered as representing the process of development of some state of mani- festation, or, in the case of minor cycles, of one of the more or less restricted and specialized modalities of that state. Moreover, in vir- tue of the law of correspondence which links all things in universal Existence, there is necessarily and always a certain analogy, either among different cycles of the same order or among the principal cycles and their secondary divisions. This is what allows us to use cone and the same mode of expression when speaking about them, although this must often be understood only symbolically, for the very essence of all symbolism is precisely founded on the analogies