Reviews for Sopatros the Rhetor: Studies in the Text of the Diairesis Zetematon

The average rating for Sopatros the Rhetor: Studies in the Text of the Diairesis Zetematon based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-18 00:00:00 Philip Squires A series of essays, not necessarily intended to be read as a book, Guenon's Studies in Freemasonry and the Compagnonnage looks at material often neglected in the English-speaking world. From stonemasons marks and the French trade guild the Compagnonnage, through Catholic intellectual Joseph de Maistre's activities in Freemasonry, to the Rite of the Elu Cohen, this is a strange, fascinating, if a somewhat disjointed book authored by one of the more important French esoteric thinkers of the last century.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-29 00:00:00 Dallas Pennington This work is far from an easy read. There isn't much of a reason to read it if one intends on rushing through it. I mostly read it one chapter a day, sometimes two, and then digest. Guénon's prose is fairly typical of the French writing style and thus you must be able to tolerate long run on sentences to enjoy reading the work without it feeling like too much of a chore. The translation is very good and leaves nothing to be desired. Guénon pulls from a vast range of traditions, has a very impressive grasp of how they fit together and his analysis is astounding. It's even more so when one thinks about him writing this in 1945 and how "prophetic" his insight has proved itself to be when reading it through the "lenses" of today's world. His critique of "scientism" is spot on and his predictions concerning this "scientistic" philosophy have worked themselves out to this day in the very ways he describes. I found these chapters especially interesting since it felt like I was reading a modern critic here and now in 2015. I emphatically recommend this work.