Perennialism (also known as Traditionalism and Sophia Perennis) compares traditional religions to paths up a mountain. At the foot of the mountain, the paths are separated by many miles. They converge with altitude, and eventually they meet at the summit. The lower divergent understandings of the tradition are exoteric. The higher, convergent understandings are esoteric. The higher the esoteric understanding, the more one understands the depths of one’s own tradition and its transcendent unity with the others.

I was raised Unitarian-Universalist, so this one summit with universally valid paths to it from diverse points of departure resonates. It harmonizes with both U’s of my childhood brainwashing and with the tolerance gospel it preached. But Perennialism provides a depth, seriousness and respect for religiosity that I felt was lacking among the UUs I’ve known, and leftists in general, including religious leftists.

But Perennialism also had some ideas that I found hard to accept. One, I believe, was an artifact of Islam, which claimed that no new traditions were possible after Mohammad. According to Guenon and Schuon, Mohammad was the last prophet who founded what was necessarily the last valid tradition, an idea I reject for multiple reasons. Another is an eschatology of the Fall, which accounts for why no new traditions are possible. Another is that only strict enduring adherence to a traditional religion is a path to esoteric realization. And I dislike the authoritarian politics that normally follow from these beliefs.

Today I realized that what I reject is Perennialism’s exoteric doctrine. The eschatology, historiosophy and practical prescriptions are not essential or even necessary extensions to the esoteric doctrine, and I do not find them to have the same overwhelming persuasive force. I do not reject any of them entirely, and I might find them more persuasive later. But from where I stand, these ideas seem like a connecting belt across converging but as-yet-unconverged exoteric paths, not to be confused with the convergence at the crown.