Ren Gunon (later also Sheikh ‘Abd al-Wahid Yahya, name given to him upon his embracement of Islam) (Blois, France November 15, 1886 - Cairo, Egypt January 7, 1951) was a French-born author. The most appropriate label of his ‘specialisation’, if ever one could exist, is that of metaphysics, particularly applied to the study of Traditions. Labels such as philosopher, thinker etc. were flatly disowned by Gu驩non himself, who humbly described himself as a mere “exposer of Traditional data”. Thus the aspects of his work dealing with history of religions, social criticism, etc. should be interpreted as a by-products of the real Traditional function with which he was invested: to provide the modern man with the means to understand the Traditional societies. Contrary to popular opinion, Gunon was not the founder of any school of thought.

Born in Blois, France into a Catholic household, Gunon excelled as a youth in mathematics and philosophy. Dissatisfied with the status quo of modern society, he moved to Paris in 1907 and became deeply involved in a series of underground cultural movements, including occultism, Gnosticism, and a Shivaite branch of Hinduism. At the same time, he exposed himself to Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. He was at this time critical of Buddhism as a “Hindu heresy”, but later accepted its validity when evidence of its essential orthodoxy was presented to him by Ananda Coomaraswamy.

Gu驩non began writing in the 1920s, after World War I, the war which was believed to end all wars. Western civilisation was overwhelmed with a sense of relief and euphoria. Gunon, seeing this as delusion, criticised the society of his day as being disorganized and reckless. “It is as if an organism with its head cut off were to go on living,” he wrote in 1924. Gunon’s main criticism of despiritualized Western culture was its self-proud lack of recognition of a greater power which maintained a higher order than that of man.

Shortly after beginning his writing career, Gu驩non studied Sufism, despite a growing anti-religion prejudice in the country. Gunon believed in a universal objective spiritual truth, which could be expressed in the terms of valid religions such as Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Gunon also believed that if this truth was presented properly, even the anti-religious intellectuals of his day would accept it. He wrote Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines in 1921 in an attempt to begin expressing this truth.

Gu驩non left Paris in 1930 and moved to Cairo, Egypt, where he would remain for the rest of his life, living as a Sufi. Having offended the Paris intellectuals whom he considered his peers, especially with two books denouncing occultism, he feared being attacked by his enemies through magic or spiritual energy, and lived primarily incognito.

Gunon had been a Sufi Muslim since 1912, having been given the name Abd al-Wahid Yahya. Gunon championed the validity of other religions as vehicles of the one same Truth, though designed for the acceptance of different cultures. Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam were among those with which he concerned himself most, in terms of rectifying their values as distortions of (but ultimately soundly based upon) the Universal Truth.

Gu驩non wrote a compendium of universal spiritual symbols, Fundamental Symbols: The Universal Language of Sacred Science, which was published in 1962. It attempted to illustrate common meanings and interpretations of images, concepts, and symbolisms among major religions, again tying them all back into the truth explained by Hinduism.

He had a great influence on Julius Evola.

Gunon did not believe in purely personal exposition and did not write or contribute to a biography.

More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Guenon