The central gesture
This book — one of Guénon's most profound — is dedicated “to the venerated memory of Esh-Sheikh Abder-Rahman Elish El-Kebir,” the Sufi master of Cairo who had oriented Guénon. This is to say that the book, under its appearance of a geometrical treatise, is a spiritual book.
The point of departure: the cross is not, for Guénon, a specifically Christian or sentimental symbol. It is a universal symbol — one finds it in all the traditions — and its signification is metaphysical. The cross figures the Universal Man: what Sufism names al-Insān al-Kāmil, the Perfect Man, the one who has realised within himself the totality of the states of existence.
How? Through its two axes. The vertical axis of the cross figures the hierarchy of the states of being — from the densest to the most subtle, from earth to Heaven. The horizontal axis figures the expansion within a single state — the extent of one same degree of existence. And the central point, there where the two axes cross, is the place of the Universal Man: the one who, holding himself at the centre, embraces at once the whole vertical and the whole horizontal. The cross is, literally, the map of total spiritual realisation.
The key concepts (made accessible)
- The multiplicity of the states of being — The foundation of the whole book (and which Guénon would develop in The Multiple States of the Being, the following year). Being does not have a single mode of existence — the corporeal existence we know. It has an infinity of them, tiered in a hierarchy. The human state is only one degree among innumerable degrees.
- The Universal Man (al-Insān al-Kāmil) — A central concept, borrowed from the Sufism of Ibn ʿArabī and of al-Jīlī. The Universal Man is not an exceptional individual: it is the archetype of realised humanity — the being who has totalised within himself all the states, and who therefore occupies the centre of the cross. The Prophet, in the Sufi tradition, is its perfect incarnation; but every being who attains total realisation rejoins this archetype.
- The vertical axis — It links all the degrees of existence, from the lowest to the highest. It is the axis of transcendence: to rise along the vertical is to pass from one state of being to a higher state. The vertical is the “celestial ray” that traverses all the worlds.
- The horizontal axis — It figures the extension within a single state of being. All the possibilities of one same degree of existence unfold upon the horizontal. It is the axis of amplitude, not of height.
- The directions of space — Guénon shows that the six directions (up/down, front/back, right/left) issuing from a centre are not a mere convenience: they are the very structure of manifestation. The centre from which they radiate — the seventh “point” — is the symbol of the Principle.
- The three guṇas — A resumption of Hindu cosmology (the Sāṃkhya). Every manifested thing results from the combination of three fundamental qualities: sattva (the ascending, luminous tendency), rajas (the expansive, ardent tendency), tamas (the descending, dark tendency). Guénon links them to the axes of the cross: sattva corresponds to the ascending sense of the vertical, tamas to the descending sense, rajas to the horizontal expansion.
- The union of the complementaries — The cross resolves the oppositions by revealing them as complementarities. What we perceive as contraries (up/down, active/passive, heaven/earth) are in reality the two poles of one same reality. At the centre of the cross, the contraries do not annul one another: they are reconciled. It is the central function of the Universal Man — to be the place where the oppositions of the world are resolved.
- The tree of the middle — The vertical of the cross is also the Tree of Life (or the Axis mundi, the axis of the world). All the traditions know this central tree: the tree of Paradise, the ash Yggdrasil, the cosmic pillar. It links the worlds; to climb the tree is to rise along the vertical, from state to state.
- The symbolism of weaving — An admirable image that Guénon develops: the world is woven like a fabric. The warp (the vertical threads, stretched once for all) figures the immutable principles, the states of being; the weft (the horizontal threads, which pass and re-pass) figures the unfolding within each state. Every phenomenon situates itself at the intersection of a warp thread and a weft thread — exactly as at the crossing of the two axes of the cross.
- The ontology of the Burning Bush — A famous chapter. The name God gives Himself to Moses — “I am That I am” (Exodus III, 14) — is, for Guénon, the purest metaphysical statement there is: pure Being, which depends on nothing, which is absolutely. The Bush that burns without being consumed figures this Being that manifests itself without ever exhausting itself.
The architecture of the work
The book comprises nineteen brief and dense chapters, which go from pure metaphysical doctrine (ch. I-III) to the most technical geometrical developments (ch. XI-XIX). One can divide it into three movements:
The doctrinal foundation (chapters I-III)
The multiplicity of the states of being, The Universal Man, The metaphysical symbolism of the Cross. It is here that the whole doctrine is laid; a hurried reader can keep to these three chapters.
The symbolic developments (chapters IV-X)
The directions of space, The Hindu theory of the three guṇas, The union of the complementaries, The resolution of the oppositions, War and peace, The tree of the middle, The swastika. Each symbol is there linked to the cross.
The geometrical representations (chapters XI-XIX)
The most technical part: Guénon there translates the doctrine into precise geometrical figures (degrees of existence, states of being, coordinates, rotation, continuity). It is the part where his formation as a mathematician fully unfolds — demanding, but of a remarkable coherence. One also finds there the beautiful chapter on the symbolism of weaving and the one on the Burning Bush.
A few voices
“The cross is a symbol that, under diverse forms, is found almost everywhere, and that from the most remote epochs: it is therefore very far from belonging properly to Christianity.” The Symbolism of the Cross, foreword
“The Universal Man is the total synthesis of all the states of being, realised in the plenitude of the Supreme Identity.” The Symbolism of the Cross, ch. II
To read it
Do not begin the discovery of Guénon with this book. It is a demanding work — the most technical of the five presented here, along with The Multiple States of the Being. It supposes that one has already read East and West and The Crisis of the Modern World, and ideally Man and His Becoming according to the Vedānta.
A reading advice: read first, attentively, the three first chapters — they give the whole doctrine. The geometrical part (XI-XIX) can be approached afterward, slowly, or reserved for a second reading. The chapter on weaving (XIV) and the one on the Burning Bush (XVII) are accessible summits, which can be read in isolation.
Resonances
- The doctrine is prolonged in The Multiple States of the Being (1932)
- The Universal Man (al-Insān al-Kāmil) — a major concept of Sufism: see Ibn ʿArabī and al-Jīlī
- The Axis mundi and the Tree of Life — a resonance with the symbolism of the Metaphysics module