Jean Biès

The author of more than twenty books of philosophy, comparative religion, poetry and travel, Jean Biès is former professor of Greek Literature and the University of Pau, France. A Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and recipient of the High Prize of the Society of French Poets, since 1962 he and his wife have lived in a country home “Saint Michel la Grange” at the foot of the Pyrennees. Among his many writings he contributed to the book, Ye Shall Know the Truth.

Rodney Blackhirst

Rodney Blackhist lives in Bendigo, Australia, where he has lectured in Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University for the past decade. He has diverse interests in philosophy, cosmology and religion. He specializes in the Greek tradition and the monotheistic faiths. His doctorate re-examined the mystical foundations of Plato's dialogue, Timaeus. Dr. Blackhirst is a regular contributor to journals such as Sacred Web.

Titus Burckhardt

Titus Burckhardt, a German Swiss, was born in Florence in 1908 and died in Lausanne in 1984. He devoted all his life to the study and exposition of the different aspects of Wisdom and Tradition.

In the age of modern science and technocracy, Burckhardt was one of the most remarkable exponents of universal truth, in the realm of metaphysics as well as in the realm of cosmology and of traditional art. In a world of existentialism, psychoanalysis, and sociology, he was a major voice of the philosophia perennis, that "wisdom uncreate" that is expressed in Platonism, Vedanta, Sufism, Taoism, and other authentic esoteric or sapiential teachings.
His work is also the focus of The Essential Titus Burckhardt edited by William Stoddart. 

Ananda K.
Coomaraswamy

Born in 1877 in Ceylon, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was a multi-talented researcher, scientist, linguist, expert on culture and art, philosopher, museum curator, and author. He was the first well-known author of the modern era to expound the importance of traditional arts, culture, and thought as more than simply relics of a bygone past. Dr. Coomaraswamy has often been credited with reintroducing the concept of the "Perennial Philosophy" to a West dazed by the endless multiplicity of the modern world.

Rama P. Coomaraswamy

Dr. Rama P. Coomaraswamy (1929-2002), son of the renowned perennialist writer Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, was in his own right an important writer on traditionalist topics, especially regarding Christianity and the influx of modernistic ideas and practices in this ancient apostolic tradition.

Dr. Coomaraswamy wrote what to our knowledge is the most detailed study of the modern changes to the Catholic rites and doctrines. This unrelenting analysis of the errors of modern insertions into Catholic tradition was originally published in 1972 but recently updated in a new edition in The Destruction of the Christian Tradition: Updated and Revised.

James Cutsinger

James S. Cutsinger is Professor of Theology and Religious Thought at the University of South Carolina.

A widely recognized authority on the Sophia Perennis and the Traditionalist school of comparative religious thought, he is best known for his work on the philosopher Frithjof Schuon. Professor Cutsinger serves as secretary to the Foundation for Traditional Studies, and he is currently editing the Collected Works of Frithjof Schuon.

The recipient of numerous teaching awards, he was honored in 1999 as a Michael J. Mungo University Teacher of the Year.

Professor of Yoga and traditionalist author, he is the author of a translation of the Karika of Gaudapada and of other books about the Hindu Tradition.

Michael Fitzgerald has written and edited many publications on American Indian spirituality, including Yellowtail: Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief.  He has taught university classes on religious traditions of North American Indians and has attended sacred rites of the Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Bannock and Apache tribes. Fitzgerald is an adopted son of the late Thomas Yellowtail, one of the most honored American Indian spiritual leaders of the last century, and is an adopted member of the Crow tribe.

Michael Fitzgerald edited the 2001 collection of selected writings of the great American Indian author Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) , Light on the Indian World. He is also the editor of World Wisdom's bestselling publication Indian Spirit (2003) and co-edited Christian Spirit (2004) , The Sermon of All Creation (2005) , The Spirit of Indian Women (2005) and The Universal Spirit of Islam: From the Koran and Hadith with his wife Judith

Éric Geoffroy is an Islamicist and Arabist at the Université Marc Bloch in Strasbourg. He specializes in Sufism and sainthood within Islam, as well as in issues of spirituality in the modern world (e.g., globalization, ecology, etc.). Geoffroy has contributed numerous articles to the Encyclopaedia of Islam (by Brill Academic Publishers) and translations and books under his own name such as Initiation au Soufisme and Ibn ‘Ata’Allah—La sagesse des maîtres soufis

René Guénon was a writer of extraordinary power and insight—in the early decades of the 20th century, it was Guénon who reintroduced the importance and necessity of integral metaphysics to thinkers in the West, and who delivered scathing indictments of the pomp and hollowness of much of modernism. Traditionalists and Perennialists everywhere tend to view Guénon's writings as having had a profound and critical influence on their thinking. He died in 1951.

Traditionalist Author, he is the author of numerous books and articles about the Celtic tradition and Christianity and a regular contributor of religioperennis.org and Vincit Omnia Veritas.

Ibrahim Kalin

Ibrahim Kalin is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross where he teaches courses on Islam, Islamic philosophy and theology, Sufism, Islam and the West, and Islam in the modern world. He is a recipient of the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences (CTNS) Science and Religion Course Program Award, 2002. His publications include articles on Islamic philosophy, Islamic science, and Western perceptions of Islam, and he has translated a number of Islamic philosophical texts from Arabic into English.

M. Ali Lakhani graduated from Cambridge University before moving to Vancouver where he has practiced as a trial lawyer for 25 years. In 1998, he founded the traditionalist journal, Sacred Web, with the aim of identifying the first principles of traditional metaphysics and promoting their application to the contingent circumstances of modernity. The bi-annual journal has included contributions by many leading traditionalists. In the words of Professor Nasr, "Along with Sophia, Sacred Web is the most important journal in the English language devoted to the study of tradition."

Patrick Laude

Patrick Laude is a writer, editor, professor, and researcher in the fields of language, literature, symbolism, and mysticism. He came to the US from his native France in the early eighties and obtained a Ph.D. in French literature in 1985. He is the author of numerous articles and several books dealing with the relationship between mysticism, symbolism and literature, as well as important spiritual figures such as Jeanne Guyon, Simone Weil, Louis Massignon and Frithjof Schuon. His works include Approches du Quiétisme (Tübingen, 1992), Massignon intérieur (L'Age d'Homme, Paris-Lausanne, 2001), The Way of Poetry (Oneonta Philosophy Studies, New York, 2001). He is also the co-editor of Dossier H Frithjof Schuon (L'Age d'Homme, Paris-Lausanne, 2001), and the co-author –with Jean-Baptiste Aymard—of Frithjof Schuon. Life and Teachings (SUNY Press, 2004). He is currently Professor of French at Georgetown University.

Martin Lings

Martin Lings was an author, editor, translator, and specialist in Islamic art and esoterism. From 1970-74 he was Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books at the British Museum (in 1973 his Department became part of the British Library) where he had been in special charge of the Qur’an manuscripts, amongst other treasures, since 1955. His authoritative biography of the Prophet Muhammad, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, has become a classic and is widely read in both East and West as an unbiased, clear, and profound source on the prophet of Islam.

Romanian Traditionalist author.

Barry McDonald's authoritative voice on the world's religions has been formed by a combination of academic study and first hand contact with various sacred traditions throughout the world. He received his undergraduate education at Goddard College and his graduate degree at Indiana University. The six months that he spent in the Middle East in 1973 began a series of life long contacts with authentic representatives of most of the world's great religions, including travels to the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, Europe and the American West. Thomas Yellowtail, the venerable Crow medicine man and Sun Dance chief, adopted McDonald into the Crow tribe.

He is a published poet and has edited Every Branch in Me: Essays on the Meaning of Man, in the Perennial Philosophy series and is in the process of editing, with Patrick Laude, Music of the Sky: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2003 in the Treasures of the World's Religions Series. His writing style combines the lyrical beauty of a poet, the penetrating metaphysical understanding of a scholar, and the personal insights of a spiritual seeker.

Jean-Louis Michon is a traditionalist French scholar who specializes in Islam in North Africa, Islamic art, and Sufism. His works include Le Soufi marrocain Ahmad Ibn 'Ajiba and L'Autobiographie (Fahrasa) du Soufi marrocain Ahmad Ibn 'Ajiba (1747-1809). He has written numerous articles appearing in several languages.

French Buddhist Scholar and philosopher, specialist of Chögyam Trungpa.

Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies, Professor of Islamic Studies, director of Graduate Studies and director of research at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in the University of Exetere (UK), he is the author of mumerous books about Islam and Sufism including The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn 'Arabi’s ‘Meccan Illuminations' 

Harry Oldmeadow is co-ordinator of Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University in Australia and author of the acclaimed raditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy (2000), an authoritative introduction tTo the perspective of Perennialism. He is a frequent contributor to the journals Sophia and Sacred Web.

Traditionalist author, editor of Images of Primordial and Mystic Beauty.

Frithjof Schuon is best known as the foremost spokesman of the religio perennis and as a philosopher in the metaphysical current of Shankara and Plato. Over the past 50 years, he has written more than 20 books on metaphysical, spiritual and ethnic themes as well as having been a regular contributor to journals on comparative religion in both Europe and America. Schuon's writings have been consistently featured and reviewed in a wide range of scholarly and philosophical publications around the world, respected by both scholars and spiritual authorities.

Schuon was born in 1907 in Basle, Switzerland, of German parents. As a youth, he went to Paris, where he studied for a few years before undertaking a number of trips to North Africa, the Near East and India in order to contact spiritual authorities and witness traditional cultures. Following World War II, he accepted an invitation to travel to the American West, where he lived for several months among the Plains Indians, in whom he has always had a deep interest. Having received his education in France, Schuon has written all his major works in French, which began to appear in English translation in 1953. Of his first book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (London, Faber & Faber) T.S. Eliot wrote: "I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion."

The traditionalist or "perennialist" perspective began to be enunciated in the West at the beginning of the twentieth century by the French philosopher Rene Guenon and by the Orientalist and Harvard professor Ananda Coomaraswamy. Fundamentally, this doctrine is the Sanatana Dharma--the "eternal religion"--of Hindu Vedantists. It was formulated in the West, in particular, by Plato, by Meister Eckhart in the Christian world, and is also to be found in Islam with Sufism. Every religion has, besides its literal meaning, an esoteric dimension, which is essential, primordial and universal. This intellectual universality is one of the hallmarks of Schuon's works, and it gives rise to many fascinating insights into not only the various spiritual traditions, but also history, science and art.

The dominant theme or principle of Schuon's writings was foreshadowed in his early encounter with a Black marabout who had accompanied some members of his Senegalese village to Switzerland in order to demonstrate their culture. When the young Schuon talked with him, the venerable old man drew a circle with radii on the ground and explained: "God is in the center, all paths lead to Him."

"He feeds my soul ... as does no other living religious writer."--Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions

Timothy Scott is a graduate of the B.A. (Hons) Humanities course, La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia, by whom he was awarded his doctorate degree for his thesis, Symbolism of the Ark. His work has appeared in several traditionalist journals and in the World Wisdom anthology, The Betrayal of Tradition (2004) and the University of Sydney anthology, Esotericism and the Control of Knowledge (2004). He also writes on art and literature. Dr. Scott is a keen hiker and world traveler. He currently lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and family, where he teaches religious studies at Oxford High School (Girls Day School Trust).

Reza Shah-Kazemi is a Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. He is the author of Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi, and Meister Eckhart. Professor Shah-Kazemi has also contributed to Paths to the Heart as well as Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars. 

Huston Smith

Huston Smith is Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University. For fifteen years he was Professor of Philosophy at M.I.T. and for a decade before that he taught at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently he has served as Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Holder of twelve honorary degrees, Smith’s fourteen books include The World’s Religions which has sold over 2 ? million copies, and Why Religion Matters which won the Wilbur Award for the best book on religion published in 2001. In 1996 Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS Special, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, to his life and work. His film documentaries on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won International. awards, and The Journal of Ethnomusicology lauded his discovery of Tibetan multiphonic chanting as “an important landmark in the study of music."

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

Photographer, specialized in Sacred Art. He has realized religioperennis.org section of Photos on Sacred Art.

William Stoddart

William Stoddart was born at Carstairs in Scotland in 1925. He studied modern languages, and later medicine, at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dublin. For many years he was assistant editor of the British journal Studies in Comparative Religion. He spent most of his working life in London, England, and retired to Windsor, Ontario, in 1982.

He has made a life-long study of the great religious traditions of the world, and in this connection has traveled widely: in Europe, North Africa, Turkey, India, and Ceylon. His books include: Sufism: the Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam (1976; editions in seven languages), Outline of Hinduism (1993), and Outline of Buddhism (1998).

Charles Upton

Charles Upton was born in 1948 and grew up in Marin County, California. He attended Catholic schools through high school during which time he met Lew Welch who became his mentor and helped him publish two volumes of poetry: Panic Grass and Time Raid. Although he is much younger than most of the Beat poets, these two volumes qualify him for inclusion with the Beats. After the publication of his poems, Charles Upton became involved with the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees and New Age dream networking. In the late 1980s, he joined a traditional Sufi order and has since published books about Sufism comparative religion and metaphysics according to the Traditionalist School.

Deon Valodia

Editor of the Glossary of Terms used by Frithjof Schuon

Thomas Yellowtail

Born in 1903, Medicine Man and Sundance Chief Thomas Yellowtail was a pivotal figure in Crow tribal life and one of the most admired American Indian spiritual leaders of the last century. As a youth he lived in the presence of old warriors, hunters, and medicine men who knew the freedom and sacred ways of pre-reservation life. As the principal figure in the Crow-Shoshone Sun Dance religion during the last half of the 20th century, he has perpetuated the spiritual traditions of his Crow tribe as one of the last living links to the pre-reservation days.