Description
An eminent Swiss metaphysician and scholar of oriental languages, Titus Burckhardt (1908-1984) devoted his life to the timeless and universal wisdom present in Sufism, Vedanta, Taoism, Platonism and the other great esoteric and sapiential traditions. His book Sacred Art in East and West appeared in German and in French. Its scope is wide, covering Hindu, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist and Far-Eastern sacred art, and the author succeeds in a remarkable way in conveying the distinctive qualities characteristic of each, while at the same time emphasizing their unity of principle. Every sacred art is deeply rooted in the religion in which it originates, and it plays an indispensable part in preserving the character and continuity of the sacred civilization connected with that religion. This, however, does not imply that everything that could be called “religious art” is in fact sacred art properly so called, which is identifiable as such by its style and its methods rather than by its models.
