Frithjof Schuon examines the criteria for changing the liturgy – by wishing to preserve its primitive simplicity or by ridding it of redundant accretions from past ages. Schuon explains the possible dangers of trying to return to the origin while ignoring the flowering of the sacred within the tradition over time for “it possesses the intrinsic value of a tangible crystallization of the supernatural.” He points out that the error of today is in seeing in the liturgy something that can be invented and that it must be conformed to “our times.” He also considers the importance of language in the liturgy and what makes one language more sacred than another as well of the error of vulgarization and pedantry.

Marco Pallis’s review of the book The Vatican Oracle by Father Brocard Sewell becomes an article in its own right as it looks closely at the causes and effects of the innovations proposed in the Catholic Church in the light of the author’s thoughtful concerns. Pallis uses these concerns to examine the relationship of the western and eastern church and what its disunity means, the differing attitude by the eastern and western churches towards the liturgy, the hierarchy, contemplation and brotherhood, the modern world and the abuse of nature.

Ananda Coomaraswamy relates a variety of myths concerning Khwaja Khadir in both Indian and Persian stories which he traces back to the more ancient traditions from the Koran; the Elijah, Alexander, St. George and Gilgamesh legend; and to Sumeria and the Rig Vedas. “Khizr [i.e. Khadir] is at home in both worlds, the dark and the light, but above all master of the flowing River of Life in the Land of Darkness: he is at once the guardian and genius of vegetation and of the Water of Life, and corresponds to Soma and Gandharva in Vedic mythology, and in many respects to Varuna himself.”

In this lecture Seyyed Hossein Nasr shows how Islam portrays man as both being of the very best stature and the very lowest of the low – a situation which demands that man is perennially, albeit often unconsciously, searching for his lost self. In normal traditional society the quest for one’s true self is contained and accommodated within that society in a revealed religion and the mystical path within it. Nasr traces the role of Sufism as one such mystical path that reunites man with his true self in any age and any place. Further, one who is able to realize the inner truths of religion as such may be able to understand other paths and religions profoundly, as long as one is able “to go from the phenomena to the noumena, from the form to the essence wherein resides the truths of all religions and where alone a religion can be really understood and accepted.”

I.R.Y.C (Joscelyn) Godwin affords us a glimpse of the traditional world of music in this introduction to the Institutione Musicae of Boethius in which there are described three different types of musicians: the theorist, composer and performer and the hierarchical roles they play. Irwin contrasts this with modern day music in which the theorist has disappeared and the performer is now given pride of place with the audience making up the third element. As a result, contemplativity, which is the true end of music, has all but disappeared. However, all is not lost as the mechanical production of music allows us to become familiar with great works and in hearing them repeatedly opens a door onto the spiritual realm.

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.

With ironic humor, Whitall N. Perry traces the career and teachings of Gopi Krishna as set out in this book. Having received an exemplary traditional upbringing, Gopi Krishna later espoused Modernism and rationality and set about using yoga as a biological tool to achieve the “bliss of unembodied existence”. However, things went awry when he awakened the solar nerve by mistake.... Perry concludes that “not even the ‘imprimatur’ of an authority like Spiegelberg [who wrote the introduction to the book] can get this man into the company of the saints, which in any case would be irrelevant if not incongruous to a deist concerned with biological evolution rather than traditional orthodoxy.”