glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

the primordial substance of man, his original purity, his heart inasmuch as it is the
support of the Word which delivers. [UI, The Prophet]
The Virgin is the prototype of the perfect soul; she incarnates the universal soul in her
purity, her receptivity towards God, her fecundity and her beauty, attributes which are at
origin of all the angelic and human virtues, and even of every possible positive quality,
as, for example, the purity of snow or the incorruptibility and luminosity of crystal. [CI,
The Spiritual Virtues According to St. Francis of Assisi]
Religious life is a complex system that includes the whole of man and thus engages the
soul, leaving nothing outside; this system is presented to us as an indispensable condition
of salvation, outside of which there is nothing that could save us, although other systems,
just as demanding and exclusive, coexist beside it. This being so, there must necessarily
be a level where these systems as such lose much of their importance, and where by way
of compensation the essential elements they have in common are affirmed, elements
which, whether we like it or not, give the systems all their value; and we do not hesitate
to define this as the domain of Mary, the Virgin Mother who, according to a symbolism
common to Christianity and Islam, has suckled her children – the Prophets and the sages
– from the beginning and outside of time . . . Mother of all the Prophets and matrix of all
the sacred forms, she has her place of honor in Islam even while belonging a priori to
Christianity;* for this reason she represents a kind of link between these two religions,
which have in common the purpose of universalizing the monotheism of Israel. The
Virgin Mary is not only the personification of a particular mode of sanctity as such: she is
not one particular color or one particular perfume, she is colorless light and pure air. In
her essence she is identified with that merciful Infinitude which, preceding all forms,
overflows upon them all, embraces them all and reintegrates them all . . .
The Virgin Mother personifies supraformal Wisdom; it is from her milk that all the
Prophets have drunk. In this respect she is greater than the Child, who here represents
formal wisdom, hence the particular revelation.^ Next to the adult Jesus, on the contrary,
Mary is not the formless and primordial essence, but his feminine prolongation, the
shakti: she is, then, not the Logos under its feminine and maternal aspect, but the virginal
and passive complement of the masculine and active Logos, its mirror, made of purity
and mercy.
(* Mary is Virgin, Mother, Spouse: Beauty, Goodness, Love; their sum being Beatitude.
Mary is Virgin in relation to Joseph, Man; Mother in relation to Jesus, God-Man; Spouse
in relation to the Holy Spirit, God. Joseph personifies humanity; Mary incarnates either
the Spirit considered in its feminine aspect or the feminine complement of the Spirit.)
(^ It could also be said that the Child is the formal and determinative Intellect which
drinks the milk of the formless and indeterminate Intellect. It is thus that a crystal absorbs
the undifferentiated light which it is called upon to polarize through its own form; a
perfect form because it is a divine reflection, but a form nonetheless. On the one hand,
Christ is the rigorous center, and the Virgin the gentle ray which prolongs it; on the other,
the Mother is the ray which infuses itself into the circle represented by the Child;
limitlessness infuses itself into perfection.) [CI, Alternations in Semitic Monotheism]
Virtue: Virtue in itself is the worship that attaches us to God and attracts us to Him,
while radiating around us. [EPW, The Virtues in the Way]
154