Titus Burckhardt was Swiss and an eminent member of the traditionalist school. He is perhaps best known to the English-speaking public as the author of the following books: Sacred Art in East and West; Siena, City of the Virgin; Moorish Culture in Spain; and Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. A generation ago, he won much acclaim for producing and publishing the first successful, full-scale facsimiles of the Book of Kells and other ancient manuscripts. In more recent years, he acted as a specialist advisor to UNESCO, with particular reference to the preservation of the unique architectural heritage of Fez, which was then in danger. The present volume is a complete collection of Burckhardt s essays, originally published in a variety of German and French journals. They range from modern science in its various forms, through Christianity and Islam, to symbolism and mythology. It is a rich collection. Burckhardt blends an accessible style with a penetrating insight. He interprets the metaphysical, cosmological, and symbolic dimensions of these sacred traditions from the perspective of timeless, spiritual wisdom."
Author
Titus Burckhardt (Ibrahim Izz al-Din after his Islamic name), a German Swiss, was born in Florence, Italy in 1908 and died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1984.He devoted all his life to the study and exposition of the different aspects of Wisdom tradition. He was an eminent member of the "Traditionalist School" of twentieth-century authors. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion along with other prominent members of the school. Burckhardt was the scion of a patrician family of Basel. He was the great-nephew of the art-historian Jacob Burckhardt and the son of the sculptor Carl Burckhardt. Titus Burckhardt was a contemporary of Frithjof Schuon – leading exponent of traditionalist thought in the twentieth century – and the two spent their early school days together in Basel around the time of the First World War. This was the beginning of an intimate friendship and harmonious intellectual and spiritual relationship that was to last a lifetime. Burckhardt was, as his grandfather, a connoisseur of Islamic art, architecture and civilisation. He compiled and published work from the Sufi masters: Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), Abd-al-karim Jili (1365–1424) and Muhammad al-Arabi al-Darqawi (1760–1823).
