glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

Ellipsism (Oriental): Which consists . . . in isolating an idea from its often necessary
context, and then in overemphasizing it to the point of giving it a quasi-absolute
character; and to the point of ruining, logically speaking, the idea in question, whose
overall intention is nevertheless plausible. [SVQ, Paradoxes of an Esoterism]
Emanation: We understand the term “emanation” in the Platonic sense: the starting point
remains transcendent, hence unaffected, whereas in deist or naturalist emanationism the
cause pertains to the same ontological order as the effect. [RHC, On Intelligence]
“Emanation” is strictly discontinuous because of the transcendence and immutability of
the divine Substance, for any continuity would affect the Creator by way of the creation,
quod absit. [LAW, Maya]
Empirical “I”: The empirical “I” is nothing but a shifting tissue of images and
tendencies; when the ego of an individual eight years old is compared with the ego of the
same individual at eighty years of age one may well ask oneself where the real “I” is.
And if a man could live for a thousand years, what would remain of that which was his
“I” in the first century of his life? [TB, The Question of Illusion]
We live at the same time in the body, the head and the heart, so that we may sometimes
ask ourselves where the genuine ‘I’ is situated; in fact, the ego, properly speaking, the
empirical ‘I’, has its sensory seat in the brain, but it gravitates towards the body and tends
to identify itself with it, while the heart is symbolically the seat of the Self, of which we
may be conscious or ignorant, but which is our true existential, intellectual, and so
universal center. [GDW, The Ternary Aspect of the Human Microcosm]
Epiclesius: The word “epiclesius” . . . means an invocation (epiklesis) of the Holy Spirit,
more specifically in connection with the Eucharistic prayers. [No book reference, The
Enigma of the Epiclesius]
Error: The fact that errors exist does not in itself amount to a proof that the intelligence
suffers from an inevitable fallibility, for error does not derive from intelligence as such.
On the contrary, error is a privative phenomenon causing the activity of the intelligence
to deviate through the intervention of an element of passion or blindness, without
however being able to invalidate the nature of the cognitive faculty itself. [LT, The
Contradiction of Relativism]
To give to partial truths an absolute significance is the very definition of error. [GDW,
Vicissitudes of Different Spiritual Temperaments]
Esoterism: The word “esoterism” suggests in the first place an idea of complementarity,
of a “half” as it were: esoterism is the complement of exoterism, it is the “spirit” which
completes the “letter”. Where there is a truth of Revelation, hence of formal and
theological truth, there must also be a truth of intellection, hence of non-formal and
metaphysical truth; not legalistic or obligatory truth, but truth that stems from the nature
of things, and which is also vocational since not every man grasps this nature.
But in fact this second truth exists independently of the first; hence it is not, in its
intrinsic reality, a complement or a half; it is so only extrinsically and as it were
“accidentally”. This means that the word “esoterism” designates not only the total truth
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