King Charles III has often been accused of heresy. As the Prince of Wales, his early support of environmental activism and his (tenuous) involvement in the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset marked him out as a dissenter who might break from the ways of previous monarchs. Even more controversial were his views on religion.
Back in 1994, Charles suggested that when king, he might become Defender of Faith, instead of Defender of The Faith, the title given to him as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. There was a storm of criticism, and some years after, he clarified what he meant: he would keep the royal title while also protecting other faiths. His openness to those faiths — especially Islam — did lead many to question his commitment to the Church. On the surface, at least, he seems to veer towards syncretism or even a covert form of secularism; an appeal to a multicultural Britain no longer willing to assert Christianity as the one true faith.
But the story is more complex. Charles — who might just be Britain’s modern-day philosopher king — has long been affiliated with Perennialism, a school of thought which holds that there is one universal truth which is present, to varying degrees, within all traditional religions. As the patron of the Temenos Academy, an educational charity dedicated to the study of Perennialism, Charles has done more to cultivate this philosophy than any other modern thinker. Unconventional as that philosophy might sound, it is one fit for a hereditary monarch: its purpose being not to subvert tradition, but to revive it.
Charles has expressed particular sympathy with the Traditionalist School, a branch of Perennialism. Led by the French philosopher René Guénon, the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon, and the Ceylonese philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy, the Traditionalists emerged in the 19th century in reaction to the materialist ideologies of the Enlightenment. Its proponents believed that modernity had left humanity bereft of its spiritual dimension, and thought that this could be remedied by the metaphysical teachings contained within traditional religions.
For Guénon, pre-modern civilisations had oriented themselves “vertically” towards transcendence, with every aspect of life, from politics to art, corresponding to the order of the cosmos and the nature of God. But with the proliferation of “profane philosophy”, the dimensions of existence had become purely horizontal, extending only to things of this world. The result is what he famously called “The Reign of Quantity”, in which all human activity is rationalistic and utilitarian, focused on material progress rather than man’s ascension toward the divine.
Charles, who has himself invoked the concept of The Reign of Quantity, also seems to lament a world which no longer reaches for God. He has devoted himself not only to the reconsecration of nature, as is evident in his environmentalism, but also the reconsecration of art. In promoting the mastery of traditional crafts through the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts, he echoes Guénon’s view that creativity should not be a mode of mere self-expression, but a vessel of transcendence. The students at his school “can experience the beauty of the order of nature — a spiritual, sacred beauty, connecting the whole of creation”.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe