Aries – Journal for the Study

of Western Esotericism (2020) 1–26

ARIES
brill.com/arie

Traditionalism in Brazil
Sufism, Ta’i Chi, and Olavo de Carvalho

Mark Sedgwick
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
mjrs@cas.au.dk

Abstract

The Traditionalist movement that derives from the French esoteric philosopher René
Guénon is known to have been influential in Europe and North America, especially
through the activities of religious groups, usually of Sufi origin, and also through the
growing impact of the political version of Traditionalism first developed by the Italian
esoteric philosopher Julius Evola. This article looks at Traditionalism beyond Europe
and North America, taking the important case of Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s,
where one of the main Traditionalist Sufi groups, the US-based Maryamiyya, became
established, and where two local groups developed, one of which focused exclusively
on doctrine, and one of which turned not to Sufism but to T’ai chi and Brazilian indige-
nous religion. The article also considers a new and important political philosopher,
Olavo de Carvalho, who emerged from the Brazilian Traditionalist milieu. Carvalho
applied Guénon to political issues rather as Evola had, but unlike Evola combined Tra-
ditionalism with Roman Catholicism, a development also found in Argentina during
the early twentieth century. During the 2010s, Carvalho’s radical rightist philosophy
became widely known in Brazil, where his admirers included the president, Jair Bol-
sonaro.

Keywords

Brazil – René Guénon – Olavo de Carvalho – Traditionalism – Maryamiyya – Sufism –

T’ai chi – Radical Right – ideology
2 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

1 Introduction

The Traditionalist movement that owes its origin to the French esoteric philos-
opher and Sufi René Guénon (ʿAbd al-Wahid Yahya, 1886–1951) has had a global
impact on both religion and politics, with the religious aspect owing most to
the Swiss Traditionalist Sufi Frithjof Schuon (ʿIsa Nur al-Din Ahmad, 1907–
1998), who established a Traditionalist ṭarīqa (Sufi order), the Maryamiyya, and
the political aspect owing most to the Italian esoteric philosopher Julius Evola
(1898–1974). What has recently been most visible is the political impact of Tra-
ditionalism, as Guénon was among the inspirations of the controversial Amer-
ican political activist and campaign manager Steve Bannon (born 1953), and
Guénon and Evola were among the inspirations of the controversial Russian
political philosopher and activist Alexander Dugin (born 1962). The contro-
versial Brazilian political philosopher, Olavo de Carvalho (born 1947), is little
known outside Brazil, but is well known inside Brazil, where his relationship
with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (in office from 2019) has drawn much
attention.
Although Traditionalism has major political implications and applications,
it is primarily religious and philosophical in origin. Likewise, the Brazilian Tra-
ditionalist milieu from which Carvalho emerged was primarily religious and
philosophical. This article starts by examining that milieu during the 1980s
and 1990s, when Schuon’s Maryamiyya became established, as it did in many
other countries, and when two local Traditionalist groups also developed. One,
the Instituto René Guénon de Estudos Tradicionais (René Guénon Institute of
Traditional Studies), focused exclusively on doctrine. The other, the Academia
Kan-Non (Kan-Non Academy), turned not to Sufism but to T’ai chi, and also
to Brazilian indigenous religion. Having examined these three Traditionalist
groups, in two of which Carvalho took a leading role, the article then moves
on to Carvalho’s later group and philosophy, seeking to place this in terms of
Traditionalism and in terms of Brazilian and South American circumstances.
The article concludes that Brazilian Traditionalism resembles Traditional-
ism in Europe and North America in certain ways: the presence of the Marya-
miyya and an interest in indigenous religion. The Instituto René Guénon de
Estudos Tradicionais and the Academia Kan-Non, however, combine the local
and the regional in distinctive ways, as does the political philosophy of Car-
valho.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 3

2 The Early Reception of Traditionalism in South America

The reception of Traditionalism in South America, which is discussed in detail

elsewhere, started in Argentina and Brazil during the 1920s. In Argentina,
Guénon was read in two distinct circles: among novelists and right-wing Cath-
olic Nacionalistas (nationalists). In Brazil, in contrast, he was first read in the
esoteric and spiritual sense that was the norm in Europe and North America.
The Argentinian novelists who read Guénon, including most importantly
Leopoldo Marechal (1900–1970), were connected to French literary milieus,
and were interested in Guénon’s work on esotericism and symbolism,1 much
as were some novelists in France at the same time.2 The Nacionalistas, includ-
ing most importantly the priest and activist Julio Meinvielle (1905–1973), read
authors connected to the French Catholic Right and Action Française, and were
most interested in Guénon’s condemnation of modernity and his vision of a
harmonious and hierarchical society in which temporal power was subject to
spiritual authority.3 This is, as we will see, much how Carvalho later came to
read Guénon.
In Brazil, Guénon was first read by Fernando Guedes Galvão (1900/01–1984),
neither a novelist nor a nationalist, but the son of a prosperous coffee grower
in Amparo, São Paulo, who travelled to Paris just after the First World War,
met Guénon, and later joined Schuon’s Maryamiyya. Unlike Sufi orders in the
Muslim world, the Maryamiyya was a secret organization, which presents dif-
ficulties for the researcher. An attempt was made to establish the Maryamiyya
in Brazil, but this does not seem to have been very successful, as there are no
traces of any activities save for the publication of translations of Guénon and
Schuon by Galvão himself.4 This early reception of Guénon resembled the eso-
teric and Sufi reception of Traditionalism in Europe and North America, save
in its relative lack of success.

3 Michel Veber and the Traditionalist T’ai Chi

Brazil’s first real Traditionalist group was the Academia Kan-Non, named after
Kannon, the Japanese name of the bodhisattva (one whose essence is perfect
knowledge) Guānyīn, sometimes seen as a goddess. The Academia Kan-Non

1 Sedgwick, ‘Glocalization’.
2 Accart, Guénon ou le renversement des clartés.
3 Sedgwick, ‘Traditionalism’.
4 Sedgwick, ‘Glocalization’.
4 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

combined Traditionalist doctrine not with Sufism, as was the case with Schuon
and the general norm in Europe and North America, but with T’ai chi ch’üan
(Tàijí quá), the Chinese martial arts practice, a combination found nowhere
else. The Academia Kan-Non was founded and run by Michel Veber (1926–
2003) and his wife Ismenia, both friends of Galvão.5
Michel Veber was the more prominent of the two.6 Nothing is known of his
early years save what he habitually put on exhibition catalogues: that he was
born in France in 1926,7 studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine
Arts) in Paris, and emigrated to Brazil during the 1950s. By 1955 he had an art
gallery in central São Paulo, where in 1957 he held Brazil’s first exhibition of Chi-
nese art, the opening of which was attended by such luminaries as the French
consul and Princess Margarida de Bourbon.8 He also painted himself, in a vari-
ety of styles, including one inspired by Chinese landscape painting.9 At some
point his first gallery closed, and he relocated to an industrial building in the
Vila Olímpia (Itaim Bibi) quarter, then a poor area. In this building he held
occasional exhibitions and operated a business making picture frames, until
this, too, closed, and the building became a T’ai chi studio. Veber seemed to care
little for money; he wore old clothes, sometimes even with holes in them.10
Both Michel and Ismenia Veber taught T’ai chi, which they had both learned
from a T’ai chi master in Brazil, Sieu Su Fon. Sieu Su Fon had himself learned
T’ai chi from Cheng Man-ch’ing (Zhèng Mànqīng) (1902–1975),11 a celebrated
master, originally from Wenzhou in eastern China, some 400 kilometres south
of Shanghai, who fled to Taiwan in 1949, opened a successful school there,
and later another school in New York. Michel Veber attended the Japanese
Buddhist temple in the Diadema district of São Paulo, itself also named in
honour of Kannon, and enjoyed good relations with the Japanese monk who
had founded the temple, Kanjun Nomura (1906–1979).12 Equally, both Michel
and Ismenia acknowledged Guénon and Galvão, Ismenia more explicitly than
Michel.13 Only Michel gave any indication of when his interest in Traditional-

5 Pontual, comment.
6 ‘Veber’ is an alternative French spelling of the originally German surname ‘Weber’.
7 An alternative date of 1921 is also given. Carvalho, ‘Introdução geral’, 11–13.
8 Anonymous, ‘Exposião de Pintura Chinesa’, 50. The gallery was at Avenida Brigadeiro Luís
Antônio 1303.
9 My personal observation based on a number of paintings. The painting in Chinese style is
in a private collection in São Paulo.
10 Kehl, interview.
11 Veber, Fundamentos, 76.
12 Kehl, Labirinto, 172.
13 Veber, preface to Fundamentos, np.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 5

ism had started, describing himself in 1983 as having been studying the work of
Guénon for two decades,14 i.e. since the early 1960s, after his arrival in Brazil.
Ismenia had been teaching T’ai chi since at least 1969,15 the year in which
she published Fundamentos de Wu Chu: Tai Chi Chuen (Fundamentals of wǔshù
[martial arts]: T’ai chi). This book describes the history and practice of T’ai chi,
and is not explicitly Traditionalist, save for a mention of Guénon and Galvão in
its preface.16 Its understanding of T’ai chi as an ancient tradition is, however,
implicitly Traditionalist. Michel was teaching T’ai chi in São Paulo in 1971,17
perhaps already at the Academia Kan-Non in Vila Olímpia, probably already
married to Ismenia.

3.1 Veber and Carvalho

In 1980, Michel Veber was invited to deliver a lecture on Guénon and Tradition-
alism at the Escola Júpiter (Jupiter School) in São Paulo.18 The Escola Júpiter
had been founded some years before by a group of astrologers, including Car-
valho, then a freelance journalist and writer on astrology. Carvalho had become
interested in astrology in the late 1970s when an Argentinian astrologer and
psychiatrist living and working in São Paulo, Juan Alfredo César Müller (1927–
1990), had asked him to edit a book of his (as Spanish, not Portuguese, was
César’s first language). When César later taught a course on astrology at the
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo in 1978, Carvalho assisted him.19
Carvalho then became interested in Traditionalism in 1977, after he was given
a copy of a collection of essays by Traditionalist authors, Jacob Needleman’s
The Sword of Gnosis.20 He especially appreciated Clé spirituelle de l’ astrologie
musulmane d’après Mohyddin Ibn Arabi (The Spiritual key of Muslim Astrol-
ogy following Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi) by the Maryami Traditionalist Titus Bur-
ckhardt (Ibrahim Izz al-Din, 1908–1984), the first Traditionalist book that he
lent, at about this time, to a junior teacher at the Escola Júpiter, José Kehl

14 Note in Veber, Comentários.

15 This is the date of the original preface to her Fundamentos. The location given is Águas de
São Pedro, a small town in the state of São Paulo.
16 Veber, Fundamentos.
17 This was the year in which he started to teach a young Brazilian who now identifies online
as Astrólogo Duck, Prof. Tai Chi. Duck, Comment. This blog post also has some excellent
photographs.
18 Carvalho, ‘Introdução geral’, 11.
19 For the meeting, Tórtora, ‘Acerto de contas’. For the course, Carvalho, ‘Astrologia com
inteligência’, 67.
20 Needleman, Sword of Gnosis, 129.
6 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

(born 1954).21 Carvalho and others at the Escola Júpiter liked the lecture so
much that Veber was invited to give a series of lectures in 1981, which he
did, based around Guénon’s shortest book, La Métaphysique orientale (Orien-
tal Metaphysics), which Carvalho translated into Portuguese.22 In an article
published in the New Age magazine Planeta in August, Carvalho described
Veber as ‘my professor’, and discussed Guénon’s life and work at length, stress-
ing Guénon’s personal connection to authentic Hindu and Islamic teachings,
and mentioning also Schuon and Guénon’s biographer Paul Sérant. He also
wrote that Veber had studied under the personal guidance of Guénon.23 No
other source reports Veber claiming this, which would hardly have been pos-
sible, as when Guénon left France for Egypt in 1930, Veber had been only four
years old.
Carvalho founded an Instituto de Estudos Tradicionais (Institute for Tradi-
tional Studies),24 and in 1982 published the first known Traditionalist article
to appear in a major Brazilian newspaper, Jornal da Tarde: ‘Moralidade sem
Deus?’ (Morality without God?). This starts with a discussion of the classic
question of the validity of purely secular morality, arguing that morality must
be based in religion. The article accepts that the diversity of human social
and ethical practice as revealed by anthropology raises the problem of cultural
relativism, and then advances the Traditionalist conception of the “perennial
philosophy” to resolve this.25 The idea of a perennial philosophy is an old one,
given new life by the Traditionalists, and is that all human religions share a
single, ancient core, called a “philosophy” in the Renaissance rather than mod-
ern sense of the word, a complement to religion rather than an alternative to
it.

3.2 The Academia Kan-Non

As it happened, it was not at Carvalho’s Instituto de Estudos Tradicionais at
the Escola Júpiter that the first real Brazilian Traditionalist group developed,
but at the Academia Kan-Non, with both members of the Escola Júpiter and
the Academia Kan-Non attending, though with occasional tensions between

21 Kehl, Labirinto, p. 71.

22 As René Guénon, A Metafísica Oriental, trad. Olavo de Carvalho (sp: Escola Jupiter, 1981).
Carvalho, ‘Introdução geral’, 11; Kehl, Labirinto, 49–52.
23 Carvalho, ‘Homem e sua Lanterna’, 14–15.
24 Veber, Comentários, copyright page.
25 Carvalho, ‘Moralidade sem Deus?’ reprinted in Carvalho, Fronteiras da Tradição, 71–83. It
was not possible to check the reprint against the original, as Jornal da Tarde ceased pub-
lication in 2012, and so has no accessible archive.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 7

Veber and Carvalho.26 The Academia Kan-Non combined practice and doc-
trine, the practice being the T’ai Chi, taught by Ismenia and Michel during the
week, and the doctrine being taught by Michel during Saturday afternoon lec-
tures. Participants later remembered the spartan conditions there, including
flying cockroaches. After each T’ai Chi session, Veber lit candles and incense at
a small altar dedicated to Kannon, and chanted the Japanese Buddhist mantra
‘Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō Kannon Bosatsu’ (Glory to the Dharma of the Lotus
Sutra [as expounded by] Kannon bodhisattva). The T’ai Chi class, aligned in
rows behind Veber, followed this ceremony. Occasionally, he took his followers
to the Japanese Buddhist temple in the Diadema district.27 Veber, then, seems
to have been following the Traditionalist principle that esoteric practice should
be within an orthodox exoteric framework.
Michel Veber’s explanation of Traditionalism, as expressed in the lectures
he gave in 1981, started with an introduction and then developed three main
topics: ‘Metaphysics in the history of philosophy in the West’, ‘the lesser mys-
teries’, and ‘initiation and metaphysical realization’. The first of these started in
standard Traditionalist terms with the mission of Guénon to ‘reaffirm the Tra-
dition as an uninterrupted and living transmission’ and ‘our’ mission as being
to ‘re-establish relations with all that is fundamentally traditional, to attempt
to constitute a Western elite’.28 This was followed by a less standard history of
metaphysical thought, starting with Parmenides in the sixth century bc and
passing through Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and thus to Guénon’s former as-
sociate, the Neo-Thomist Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain (1882–1973),29
who had at one point been much admired by the Argentinian Nacionalistas.
A historical presentation of this kind is unusual in Traditionalism, precisely
because Traditionalism insists on the transhistorical or even supra-historical
nature of the tradition. It is also unusual because Maritain remained a Catholic,
and—as Veber correctly noted—Guénon considered the Christian faith to be
purely exoteric.30 What mattered for Guénon was the esoteric, which is where
perennial truth was to be found.
Veber’s presentation of what he called the ‘lesser mysteries’, which he glossed
as ‘the indefinite extension of individuality’, was also somewhat unusual, and
perhaps reflected an earlier phase in his own exploration of esotericism. He dis-
cussed supranormal states, the shamanic state, states of the soul, and ‘ancestral

26 Kehl, email.
27 Kehl, Labirinto, 136–137, 175–179.
28 Veber, Comentários, 37–40.
29 Veber, Comentários, 41–44.
30 Veber, Comentários, 41.
8 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

memory’.31 Further work would be required to establish to what extent he was

drawing on Traditionalist sources and to what extent he was drawing on other
sources.
The third part of Veber’s lectures, in contrast, was a classic Traditionalist pre-
sentation of initiation and the need for ‘regular transmission’, understood in
terms of the complementary functions of the exoteric and the esoteric, leading
to ‘metaphysical realization’.32
Veber’s lectures do not make clear what he understood to be the exoteric and
esoteric traditions that he was himself following and was proposing to those
who wished to follow him. His own actions suggest Buddhism as the exoteric
frame for T’ai Chi, understood as an esoteric practice, received through ‘regu-
lar transmission’ from Cheng Man-ch’ing through Sieu Su Fon. In a preface to
a later edition of Ismenia Veber’s Fundamentos de Wu Chu, Michel Veber was
more explicit, placing himself in the line of ‘René Guénon and his successors
Titus Burckhardt, Pierre and Jean Grison, Frithjof Schuon and others’.33 This is
a different and complementary sort of transmission. Burckhardt and Schuon
were major successors to Guénon; the Grison brothers were not, and reference
to them is therefore telling. Pierre Grison wrote on East Asian religion in the
central Traditionalist journal, Études Traditionnelles (Traditional Studies) dur-
ing the 1960s and 1970s, and Jean-Louis Grison wrote there on Central American
indigenous religions during the same period.34 Pierre Grison’s work was of clear
importance to Veber, given his practice of Chinese T’ai Chi and his relations
with a Japanese Buddhist temple. Jean-Louis Grison’s work was also impor-
tant, as Veber’s preface continues programatically: ‘We will reassess primitive
cultures, as did selfless anthropologists and Indianists. It is principally in the
direction of the Amerindians that we will apply our efforts’.35
One of the anthropologists who Veber had in mind was evidently Curt
Nimuendajú (1883–1945), born Kurt Unkel, a German self-taught anthropol-
ogist who worked on Brazilian indigenous peoples, and took the name the
Guarani had given him when he became Brazilian citizen after deciding not
to return to Germany. Kehl, a participant in Veber’s classes, remembers much
attention being paid to the work of Nimuendajú, and also describes visits paid

31 Veber, Comentários, 53–65.

32 Veber, Comentários, 68–88.
33 Veber, Preface, cited in Carvalho, ‘Introdução geral’, 13.
34 Pierre and Jean-Louis were presumably brothers, but nothing is known of their lives, save
that at one point Pierre was in Cambodia, as he referred in an article to making multiple
visits to Angkor Wat. Grison, ‘Remarques’, 271.
35 Veber, Preface, cited in Carvalho, ‘Introdução geral’, 13.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 9

to the Academia Kan-Non by various Amerindians. Kehl and others found

these visitors and their mental world fascinating,36 but they never seem to have
become the source of traditional wisdom that had been hoped for. In a lightly
revised version of his preface published in 1982, Veber changed the order of his
Traditionalist references to put Schuon before the Grison brothers, to delete the
reference to Amerindians, and to insert the statement that Wu Chu could form
the ‘daily application’ of Traditionalist doctrines, and that ‘the seed of a doc-
trinal actualization takes several generations to bloom’.37 Veber’s engagement
with indigenous peoples and traditions in Brazil mirrors Schuon’s engagement
with Native Americans in the USA38 and the engagement with indigenous peo-
ples in the Andes of a number of Peruvians Traditionalist anthropologists,39 but
with a different ending, as Veber and his followers never participated in indige-
nous rites.
There were some thirty to sixty regulars at the Academia Kan-Non,40 most
(but not all) of whom attended the Saturday afternoon classes in Traditionalist
theory as well as the practical T’ai chi sessions. One participant described them
in an interview as ‘artists, musicians, high society’,41 a profile that fits with what
is known of other comparable groups in Brazil and Argentina, and as including
Orthodox Jews and committed Catholics as well as agnostics and Buddhists.42
Participants formed study groups,43 and read Traditionalist books in French,
Spanish, and English as well as in Portuguese,44 as little was then available in
Portuguese translation. Some also studied ancient languages, including San-
skrit and Hebrew.45
In 1984, Michel Veber unexpectedly closed the Academia Kan-Non, com-
plaining privately that members of the Júpiter group were not paying for their
T’ai chi classes, and leaving the teaching of these in the hands of his second wife
Renata (1963–1993), who he had married after separating from Ismenia.46 Soon
after this, the Academia Kan-Non reopened, but without the Júpiter group.
Veber continued teaching T’ai chi until 1999, when his health was failing and

36 Kehl, Labirinto, 92–93, 104–108.

37 Veber, ‘Ciências tradicionais’, np.
38 Sedgwick, Against, 148–150, 171–173.
39 Sedgwick, ‘Glocalization’.
40 Rizek, interview; Kehl, interview. The two interviews gave different estimates of size.
41 Kehl, interview.
42 Kehl, Labirinto, 59.
43 Kehl, Labirinto, 120–121.
44 Rizek, interview.
45 Kehl, Labirinto, 59.
46 Rizek, interview; Kehl, Labirinto, 155.
10 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

he retired to Embu das Artes, a small city adjacent to São Paulo. He died in
2003.47 The work of the Academia Kan-Non has since been carried on by Kehl,
on a smaller scale.48

4 Luiz Pontual and the Instituto René Guénon de Estudos

Tradicionais

One former participant in the Academia Kan-Non, Luiz Pontual (born 1949),
who had discovered the Academy in 1981 after reading a copy of Fundamentos
de Wu Chu, had already left the Academy and founded his own Instituto René
Guénon de Estudos Tradicionais (René Guénon Institute of Traditional Stud-
ies) in 1984. Pontual offered beginners’ and advanced classes, with the num-
bers attending beginners’ classes fluctuating, and some two hundred people
in total completing the advanced classes over the years. Some sought practice
elsewhere,49 but details are not known, and this seems to have been the excep-
tion rather than the rule. The significance of the Institute was in the classes,
and in the translations Pontual published of Traditionalist works: by 2018 he
had published or republished Portuguese translations of every one of Guénon’s
books save La Métaphysique orientale, which is more a lecture than a book and
had anyhow already been translated by Carvalho, and La Grande Triade (The
Great Triad); it is not clear why this book was not translated. Many of these
were translated by Pontual himself or by students of his.50 In addition, Pon-
tual published Evola’s most important book, Rivolta contro il mondo modern
(Revolt against the Modern World), Schuon’s most important book, De l’ unité
transcendante des religions (The Transcendent Unity of Religions), and a book
by a lesser Traditionalist, Rama Coomaraswamy (1929–2006), The Destruction
of the Christian Tradition.51 These translations made Guénon’s work available
to anyone in Brazil who knew where to write, or later email, to order it.
Pontual also developed some political interests, similar to those of the
Argentinian Nacionalistas, publishing in 2004 a short book of his own, Você
ainda acredita em democracia? (Do You Still Believe in Democracy?). This

47 Kehl, interview and email.

48 Kehl, interview.
49 Pontual, interview.
50 Pontual, interview.
51 Julius Evola, Revolta Contra o Mundo Moderno; Frithjof Schuon, A Unidade Transcendente
das Religiões; Rama Coomaraswamy, Ensaios Sobre a Destruição da Tradição Cirstã. All São
Paulo: irget.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 11

presents ‘the democratic illusion’ as a modern ‘negation of natural hierarchy’,52

explains the Hindu doctrine of castes, summarizes some further relevant teach-
ings of Guénon, and comments on 9/11 as a probable conspiracy. It ends by
recommending the study of the work of Guénon as ‘the best possible orien-
tation for the end of time’ (which is how Traditionalists see modernity) and,
for those who are inclined towards religion, ‘the part of the Catholic Church
that remains faithful to its sacred traditions, prior to the Second Vatican Coun-
cil’, or Islam. The footnote to the mention of the Second Vatican Council cites
Coomaraswamy’s The Destruction of the Christian Tradition.53 To complement
this book, Pontual published in 2017 a further short book on Hierarquia e
Democracia (Hierarchy and Democracy), combining two texts by Evola with
one by Guénon.
Pontual later retired and moved from São Paulo to the small provincial city
of Itu, continuing his courses on Traditionalism on-line. His Instituto René
Guénon de Estudos Tradicionais is remarkable for its single-minded focus on
doctrine and the absence of any parallel religious practice, unlike both the
Maryamiyya and the Academia Kan-Non. This is how Traditionalism started
in Paris, as an enquiry into doctrine, but after Guénon moved from Paris to
Cairo in 1930 the emphasis became on practice as much as doctrine, with
practice defined in terms of esoteric initiation within the context of exoteric
orthodoxy,54 the approach taken (at least in principle) by the Maryamiyya and
the Academia Kan-Non. A focus on doctrine without practice, however, is also
found in Argentina, where the academic philosopher Armando Asti Vera (1914–
1972) studied and wrote on Traditionalist doctrine without engaging in any
form of practice other than that of a regular Catholic, an approach that was
later also followed by another academic philosopher, Francisco García Bazán
(born 1940), and a small circle that gathered around him.55
It is always difficult to explain why something did not happen, but one pos-
sible explanation for the lack of esoteric practice at the Instituto René Guénon
de Estudos Tradicionais, as among Argentinian academic philosophers, is the
strength of the Roman Catholic church in Brazil and Argentina at this time.
To become a Sufi it is, in most understandings, including that of the Tra-
ditionalists, necessary to become Muslim. It is easier to become Muslim in
countries where there is already religious pluralism, and where the established
church is not strong. The Catholic Church in South America is well established,

52 Pontual, Você ainda acredita, 16.

53 Pontual, Você ainda acredita, 87.
54 Sedgwick, Against, 74–80.
55 Sedgwick, ‘Glocalization’.
12 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

even though it has recently been losing members to Protestant churches, gen-
erally Pentecostal ones, a phenomenon that is concentrated in the poorer
classes.56

5 Carvalho and the Maryamiyya

Carvalho also kept Brazilian Traditionalism going, in a form similar to the

Academia Kan-Non, though without reference to T’ai Chi. Carvalho evidently
felt that an esoteric practice was still required to accompany the study of Tra-
ditionalist doctrine, and he led his followers into an esoteric organization of
Argentinian origin that was then flourishing in Brazil, informally called A Trad-
ição (The Tradition).57 A Tradição was led by Omar Ali Shah (1922–2005), the
brother of Idries Shah (1924–1996), an English writer on Sufism whose The Sufis,
first published in 1964, was probably the single most-read book on Sufism of the
twentieth century. A Tradição presented itself as a Sufi organization, but in fact
its teachings and practices had little in common with Sufism as practiced in the
Muslim world. The influence of the “Work” of George Gurdjieff (died 1949), an
Armenian-French spiritual teacher, was important.58
Carvalho quickly became disenchanted with A Tradição, coming to see
Omar Ali Shah as a ‘con-man’.59 Others, both in Brazil and Argentina, have
made similar allegations against him. Conflict between Carvalho and the Bra-
zilian leaders of A Tradição became very public, as charges made by Carvalho
led to the investigation of A Tradição by the police on suspicion of currency
offenses. A Tradição had allegedly collected contributions in US dollars and
then sent these abroad, which was at that time illegal, as Brazil (like many other
countries) had imposed strict controls over capital movements and foreign cur-
rency. The Brazilian newspapers also reported allegations that A Tradição was
a “sect”—this was a period of “anti-sect” moral panic—and had brainwashed
its followers to exploit them, as well as encouraging homosexuality and abor-
tion.60 A Tradição denied these charges, and allegedly threatened Carvalho

56 Chesnut, Born Again; Freston, ‘Pentecostalism;’ Loreto Mariz, Coping.

57 Two reliable informants who preferred to remain anonymous reported that Carvalho led
his followers into A Tradição. Carvalho himself told an interviewer that he had joined A
Tradição and found that many of his followers already belonged to it. Teitelbaum, War for
Eternity, 134.
58 Sedgwick, ‘Esoteric Sufism’.
59 Teitelbaum, War for Eternity, 135.
60 Lombardi, ‘Tradição’, 9.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 13

with violence, according to a recording of a telephone call that he passed to

the police.61
By 1985, Carvalho thought he had found a better replacement for A Tradição
in the form of the Maryamiyya. After contacting Marco Pallis (1895–1989),62
an English Traditionalist writer on Buddhism who followed Schuon, Carvalho
and some of his followers entered into correspondence with Martin Lings (Abu
Bakr Siraj al-Din, 1902–2005), the leading follower of Schuon in England and a
Muslim. Lings explained that preparation was necessary before entering the
Maryami ṭarīqa, and suggested that the most appropriate preparation would
be for Carvalho and his followers to ‘enter Islam’.63 This is what they did.64
Carvalho later explained that he had not converted to Islam, as the esoteric
Traditionalist understanding of entering a religion was different from the gen-
eral understanding of converting to a religion, citing Guénon to this effect.65
Guénon indeed stressed that he himself had entered Islam rather than con-
verted to it, and wrote negatively about conversion as a vulgar exoteric phe-
nomenon, and as quite different in his view from what happens when someone
decides for esoteric of initiatic reasons to ‘adopt a traditional form other than
that to which they might be linked by their origin’.66
Once Carvalho and many of his followers had “entered” Islam, Carvalho’s
house became the centre of a small Muslim community of some thirty people,
including his own family.67 Most members of the Maryamiyya in Europe and
North America kept their adoption of Islam secret, and were careful to main-
tain a distance between themselves and “exoteric” Muslims, but Carvalho was

61 Anonymous, ‘Astrólogo diz’, 20.

62 Carvalho, ‘Nota sobre o livro;’ Carvalho, ‘Vingança’.
63 Lings to Carvalho, June 2, 1985. This and other such letters are recognizably in Lings’s hand-
writing and follow his normal style, and there is no reason to believe that they are not
genuine. They were deposited at the Tribunal de Justiça do Estado do São Paulo in 1990 as
evidence in a case brought against Carvalho by a former follower, which Carvalho won.
64 In Lings to Carvalho, September 8, 1985, and in subsequent letters in this correspondence,
Carvalho is addressed as ‘Sidi Muhammad’. The Maryamiyya was always punctilious about
titles, so this form of address clearly shows that Lings considered that Carvalho had
entered Islam. Had Lings made a mistake about this, Carvalho would presumably have
corrected him in his reply, rather than continue a correspondence based on a major mis-
understanding.
65 Carvalho, email, citing Guénon, ‘À propos de conversions’ (1975), 101–103.
66 Guénon, ‘À propos de conversions’ (1967), 104.
67 The community is described by Carvalho’s daughter Heloísa, from whom he was by then
estranged, in Carvalho, ‘“Olavo chegou a ter três esposas” ’. The general tone is very hostile,
and some of the allegations made in this interview are unproven (for example, the alle-
gation that Carvalho had three wives at this time), but other information fits with what is
reported by other sources and with what might be expected under the circumstances.
14 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

only told this later,68 and he and his followers are reported to have practiced
their Islam publicly and scrupulously. As well as a periodic dhikr (Sufi prayer rit-
ual), they did the five ṣalawāt (canonical prayers) together in Carvalho’s house,
and prayed the ṣalāt al-jumʿa (Friday prayer) at what was then São Paulo’s only
mosque.69 Carvalho and a Catholic follower of his, Mateus Soares de Azevedo
(born 1959),70 entered an essay on the Prophet for a competition organized
by the Islamic Centre of Brazil in the administrative and diplomatic capital,
Brasília, and won first prize.71 Carvalho was considering sending one of his
sons, re-named Ahmad, to the Islamic University in Medina, but Lings advised
against this.72 Women wore the ḥijāb (veil), and Carvalho’s eldest daughter
Heloísa, then 16, was married to another follower, aged 18, at the Islamic Centre,
following such Sharia norms as the payment of mahr (dower).73
Carvalho delivered a number of lectures at this time that reflected a very
Islamic Traditionalism, both to his followers and to the public, notably at the
Editora Astrocientia (Astroscience Publishing) in Rio de Janeiro.74 One of these
lectures places astrology within an Islamic context, referring to the understand-
ing of astrology of Ibn ʿArabi and describing it as ‘a good auxiliary instrument
for whoever wants to penetrate the universe of these traditions’,75 but oth-
ers provide a basic explanation of Traditionalism without reference to astrol-
ogy, and the tone often comes close to Islamic proselytization. Carvalho’s Rio
audience, in a country that was still very Catholic, were told that four ‘ortho-
dox’ religions were available for those who wanted to avoid the dangers of
‘grotesque’ pseudo-traditions: Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and
Islam.76 The absence of Roman Catholicism from this list follows Guénon’s
and Schuon’s views, but is not explained, and must have surprised Carvalho’s
audience. Carvalho was not requiring conversion to Islam, however: in recom-

68 Lings to Carvalho, March 4, 1986.

69 Carvalho, ‘“Olavo chegou a ter três esposas”’.
70 Lings refers to ‘Brother Mateus’ in Lings to Carvalho, September 8, 1985, and it is assumed
that there was only one Mateus involved in the small world of Brazilian Traditionalism at
the time.
71 Hababi (president of the Centro Islâmico do Brasil, Brasilia) to Carvalho and Soares de
Azevedo, January 8, 1986.
72 Lings to Carvalho, March 17, 1986.
73 For the ḥijāb, Carvalho, ‘“Olavo chegou a ter três esposas” ’ A copy of the marriage certifi-
cate was published online at Aranda, ‘Olavo de Carvalho criou filhos’. It appears genuine,
and follows standard Islamic models. Dower is, of course, the opposite of dowry.
74 This is where four of the lectures reprinted in Carvalho, Fronteiras da Tradição, were first
given. See 9, 17.
75 Carvalho, Fronteiras da Tradição, 20, 23.
76 Carvalho, Fronteiras da Tradição, 20.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 15

mending Sufism, he noted that some Sufi masters will ‘orient religious people
from other traditions—Christian priests or Buddhist monks’.77 This was the
practice of Schuon, though not of many other Sufi shaykhs.
Some of these lectures were published in 1986 in Fronteiras da tradição (The
Frontiers of Tradition), Carvalho’s first book on a topic other than astrology,
and they give a good idea of his thinking at the time. The main references are,
almost without exception, the major Traditionalist authors.78 Above all, Fron-
teiras da tradição emphasizes the need for an orthodox religion as the exoteric
frame for esoteric practice, and warns against pseudo-initiatic organizations,
referring to A Tradição as an example of these in a footnote.79
In 1985, Carvalho and Azevedo attended a Traditionalist conference in Lima
and met Lings.80 The following year, in 1986, Carvalho led a small group of
Brazilians, including Azevedo, to Bloomington, Indiana, where Schuon then
lived and the Maryamiyya was based. He was appointed Schuon’s muqaddam
(Sufi representative) in Brazil, and advised by Lings on practical matters relat-
ing to the running of the Brazilian Maryamiyya.81 What had been attempted
without much success in the 1940s and 1950s by Galvão now seemed about to
succeed.
Within a few years, however, Carvalho, became disenchanted with the Mar-
yamiyya, as he had formerly become disenchanted with A Tradição, partly (he
told a later interviewer) because he discovered that Schuon had been support-
ing a rival to the leadership of the Brazilian Maryamiyya (probably Azevedo),
and ‘had also endorsed rumours that heretical practices like animal sacrifice
were taking place’.82 It is unclear what was behind these rumours, which were
still circulating in the 2010s, connected by then not to Carvalho himself but to a
ṭarīqa run by his son Tales,83 discussed below. Animal sacrifice exists in Brazil as
one of the standard practices of Candomblé, one of Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian reli-
gions. The socio-economic profile of practitioners of these, however, is totally
different from that of the followers of Carvalho and Veber. Although Brazil-

77 Carvalho, Fronteiras da Tradição, 30.

78 Carvalho, Fronteiras da Tradição, 85–91.
79 Carvalho, Fronteiras da Tradição, especially chapters 1 and 2 (9–30). A Tradição is identi-
fied in note 4, p. 89.
80 Azevedo, ‘With Martin Lings’. Carvalho’s probable presence is deduced from the fact that
Lings had invited him to Lima, that Azevedo says he went with a group of friends from
Brazil, and that Carvalho later cited an unpublished paper given by Huston Smith at the
conference. Carvalho, ‘Elementos tipologia spiritual’, n. 28.
81 Teitelbaum, War for Eternity, 136, 138–139.
82 Teitelbaum, War for Eternity, 175–176.
83 Anonymous informant.
16 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

ians from higher socio-economic groups have occasionally become interested

in Afro-Brazilian religions, rather as Veber became interested in Amerindian
religion, this is unusual, and there are no other indications of a connection
between Carvalho or Veber and Candomblé.
Carvalho’s departure from A Tradição is easy to explain, as he was not alone
in concluding that Omar Ali Shah was a ‘con-man’, and the Sufism of A Tradi-
ção was so far from that found in the Muslim world this was not hard to see for
anyone who read a few books on the topic. His departure from the Maryamiyya,
however, is less easy to explain. It is not without precedent, though, as two Euro-
pean followers of Schuon, the Romanian-French Michel Vâlsan (Mustafa ʿAbd
al-Aziz, 1907–1974) and the Italian ʿAbd al-Wahid Pallavicini (Felice, 1926–2017)
also left the Maryamiyya and established their own groups, Vâlsan stressing
what he saw as Islamic orthodoxy, and Pallavicini establishing good relations
with the Italian Catholic Church.84
After Carvalho left the Maryamiyya, the leading Traditionalist in Brazil
became Azevedo. The subsequent history of the Maryamiyya in Brazil, how-
ever, is obscure,85 and it is not clear to what extent Carvalho’s group survived.

6 Carvalho’s Esoteric Political Philosophy

Carvalho later explained that after reflecting on the miracles of the Italian
monk Padre Pio (Francesco Forgione, 1887–1968) he concluded these mira-
cles ‘reflected divine freedom, not the permanent structures of the spiritual
world, and so transcended in practice all esoteric and initiatory perspectives.
It was then that I decided that, from then on, my only guru would be Our Lord
Jesus Christ in person and not the corresponding “cosmic function” with which
the traditionalists confused Him’.86 This decision may also have reflected the
influence of Stanislavs Ladusãns (1912–1993), a distinguished Brazilian Neo-
Thomist Jesuit philosopher of Latvian origin who agreed with the Traditional-
ists that modernity represented a crisis, but argued (unlike the Traditionalists)
that philosophy could provide an effective response to this crisis by providing
a bridge between the modern technical and human sciences and transcen-
dent (Catholic) truth.87 Ladusāns had worked with Argentinian Traditional-

84 Sedgwick, Against, 133–142.

85 Sedgwick, ‘Glocalization’.
86 Carvalho, ‘Em pleno surto’.
87 Ladusãns, ‘A crítica tridimensional’, 370; Ladusãns, ‘Originalidade Cristã da Filosofia’, 149–
150.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 17

ist philosophers during the 1970s and 1980s,88 and so may have understood
where Carvalho was coming from, but differed from the Traditionalists in that
he saw the crisis of the modern world (which he called ‘mundo atual’ rather
than ‘mundo moderno’, perhaps to distance himself from Guénon) as solv-
able,89 and also in having no known interest in esotericism. Carvalho studied
for three years with Ladusãns at his Conjunto de Pesquisa Filosófica (Philo-
sophical Research Group), attached to the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio
de Janeiro, but left after Ladusãns died in 1993 and the group closed.90 From this
point onwards, Carvalho became an independent philosopher—independent
both in the sense that he worked outside the framework of academia, and in
the sense that his approach to philosophy was very different from that taken
within academia.
Carvalho, as we have seen, had been delivering independent classes and
courses since first assisting César in 1978. Starting in 1998, he delivered more
and more online courses, reaching an ever-wider audience. In 2009, he estab-
lished a Curso Online de Filosofia (cof, Online Philosophy Course), which
gave access to some 500 recorded lectures and which by 2020 had been taken
by some 20,000 paying pupils.91 The cof replaced the small group lectures of
the 1980s, allowing a much larger and much more important group to gather
around Carvalho. Meanwhile, Carvalho’s writing became more and more pop-
ular. His columns were printed in major newspapers, and his O mínimo que você
precisa saber para não ser um idiota (The Least You Need to Know Not to be an
Idiot) of 2013 became a best-seller.92
In 2018, an admirer of Carvalho’s work, Jair Bolsonaro (born 1955) was elected
president of Brazil, and Carvalho found himself in a position of influence.93
In the view of Victor Bruno, Carvalho had contributed to Bolsonaro’s elec-
toral victory as he ‘was the first author to really break the undeclared barrier

88 Ladusãns founded and was president of the Associação Católica Interamericana de Filo-
sofia (Interamerican Catholic Philosophy Association) of which the vice president was
Alberto Caturelli (1927–2016), an Argentinian philosopher inspired by Traditionalism. A
Spanish translation of Ladusãns, ‘Originalidade Cristã da Filosofia’, was published (as
‘Originalidad cristiana de la filosofía’) in an Argentinian journal of which Caturelli was
one of the editors, alongside articles by Caturelli and García Bazán, and Ladusãns, ‘A ver-
dadeira paz’, was published in Oriente-Occidente, a journal edited by García Bazán. For
Caturelli and García Bazán, see Sedgwick, ‘Traditionalism’ and ‘Glocalization’.
89 Ladusãns, ‘A verdadeira paz’, 61.
90 Wink, ‘Olavo de Carvalho’.
91 Wink, ‘Olavo de Carvalho’.
92 Bruno, ‘Philosophy, Mysticism’, 2–3.
93 Bulla, ‘“Já gastei”’.
18 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

against antileftist writers in Brazil’.94 There were of course many reasons for
Bolsonaro’s victory, including shifts in attitudes. It is not clear to what extent
Carvalho’s writing supported these shifts, and to what extent he benefitted from
them.
Carvalho was offered the post of minister of education but refused it, rec-
ommending instead his long-term friend Ricardo Vélez Rodríguez (born 1943),
a conservative philosopher who is not a Traditionalist, and also recommended
Ernesto Araújo (born 1967) for the post of foreign minister. Araújo was a friend
of Carvalho and a career diplomat,95 and shared something of Carvalho’s inter-
est in Traditionalism. Shortly before his appointment as foreign minister
Araújo published an article on ‘Trump e o Ocidente’ (Trump and the West) in
which he noted the importance of Guénon for Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon
(born 1953), and also noted that Trump’s major speech in Warsaw on July 6,
2017 showed Traditionalist perspectives,96 as indeed it did, given the involve-
ment of Bannon. The short list of recommended reading at the end of his article
included not only Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World but also Julius Evola’s
Metaphysics of War.97 His blog, ‘Metapolítica 17’, does not refer to Guénon or
Evola,98 but ‘metapolitics’ is a key concept originating with the French New
Right (also not mentioned by name). As foreign minister, one of Araújo’s more
controversial (if minor) appointments was of Brazil’s leading academic devo-
tee of Evola, the social anthropologist César Ranquetat Jr., as an examiner at
the ministry’s training school, the Rio Branco Institute.99 Araújo, then, is prob-
ably not just an informed reader of the Traditionalists, but also a sympathetic
reader.
Carvalho’s later writings and their impact on the Brazilian Right have been
discussed elsewhere, and are not the topic of this article.100 The question that
this article will ask is how his later philosophy fits with his earlier Traditional-
ism, and how it fits with and with Brazilian and South American circumstances.
It should be noted that Carvalho himself has disavowed his earlier Tradition-
alism, going so far as to describe his earlier books as reflecting ‘more a duty of
obedience’ to Schuon than his own ‘personal thought’, and stressing that his

94 Bruno, ‘Philosophy, Mysticism’, 22.

95 In Bulla, ‘“Já gastei”’. Carvalho said that he had known Vélez Rodríguez for many years,
and Araújo for about a year.
96 Araújo, ‘Trump e o Ocidente’, 347.
97 Araújo, ‘Trump e o Ocidente’, 356.
98 Araújo, ‘Metapolítica 17’.
99 For Ranqeuetat, Sedgwick, ‘Traditionalism’. For the appointment, Anonymous, ‘Admi-
rador de filósofo’.
100 Wink, ‘Olavo de Carvalho’, and Bruno, ‘Philosophy, Mysticism’.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 19

later work should not be understood as ‘a faithful extension of the “traditional

doctrines” of Guénon and Schuon’.101 It is indeed not a faithful extension of
these doctrines, but it still shows the influence of Traditionalism.
After replacing Schuon with Jesus as his guru, Carvalho rethought his Tradi-
tionalism, retaining the basic understanding of the secularization of the West
as leading inevitably to barbarism and building on the Traditionalist analysis
of the interplay between temporal power and spiritual authority,102 but reject-
ing the Traditionalist conviction that the only alternative to barbarism was
through the adoption of “Oriental doctrines”, which, he thought, in practice
meant Islam (at least for Guénon and Schuon). Guénon had rejected Catholi-
cism on the grounds that it was purely exoteric, but Carvalho had come to see
the esoteric-exoteric distinction as one that was true in the case of Islam, but
not universally true. Schuon, as Carvalho pointed out, had taken a different
approach, granting the Catholic sacraments a “virtual” efficacy, but in the end
of the Schuonian model was quite as problematic as Guénon’s since although it
granted Catholicism a role, that role was subject to esoteric supervision, i.e.—
once again—Islamization.103
Carvalho had decided that he did not want to see the Islamization of the
West, but rather the avoidance of barbarism through re-Christianization, a task
that he concluded could be achieved only through the intervention of the US,
as the last bastion of Christianity in the West, or the actions of ‘the admirable
dedication of Eastern and African priests and pastors who, in a paradoxical
turn of history, have returned to try to re-catechize the [same] people who [for-
merly] Christianized them’.104 He also emphasized the importance of resisting
three projects of global dominance: the Islamic, the Eurasian (Dugin), and the
‘Metacapitalist’ (Gramsci).105 The reference to Gramsci mirrors certain streams
of the European Radical Right and the American Alt Right.
Carvalho concluded, then, that the Traditionalist project of Islamizing the
West was a very real one, and a real threat.106 Muslim immigration to Europe,
he argued, would not have been a problem, had not the European political and
intellectual elite not been ‘disarmed’ by ‘the cult of the intellectual superiority
of the East’, a disarmament to which the Traditionalists had made an impor-
tant contribution through ‘a significant number of secret conversions to Islam

101 Carvalho, email.

102 Bruno, ‘Philosophy, Mysticism’, 10–12.
103 Carvalho, ‘As garras da Esfinge’.
104 Carvalho, ‘Influências discretas’.
105 Bruno, ‘Philosophy, Mysticism’, 14–21.
106 Carvalho, ‘As garras da Esfinge’ and ‘Influências discretas’.
20 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

and the enlistment of many intellectuals and leaders—among them the future
king of England—in the scheme of state protection for Islamic expansionism’.
He also blamed the weakening of Catholicism by the Second Vatican Council
(1962–1965) in part on the intervention of Schuon, which he considered to have
exacerbated the split between Pope Paul vi (1897–1978) and Archbishop Mar-
cel Lefebvre (1905–1991) in 1976.107 Carvalho’s assessment of the position of the
future king of England, Prince Charles (born 1948), was not wrong,108 though
he may have overestimated its importance; what evidence he had for his views
of the events of 1976 is unknown. The narrative of the complicity of European
elites in the Islamization of Europe that Carvalho is echoing here is one that
is popular among the Radical Right, traced by some to the “Eurabia” theories
of Bat Yeʿor (born 1933), whose ‘scary diagnosis’ Carvalho seems to endorse.109
This narrative does not normally involve Traditionalism, although the Norwe-
gian Radical Right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik (born 1979), a follower of Bat
Yeʿor, reached a similar conclusion, understanding Traditionalism as a form of
what he called “negationism”, denying the threat posed by Islam or defending
Islam.110
Ideologies resemble medical consultations in that they generally include
two distinct stages, diagnosis and treatment. In these terms, Carvalho has
retained much of the Traditionalist diagnosis. Guénon’s thought was so bril-
liant that it is ‘almost irresistible … [to see it as] a miracle, a divine intervention
in the course of history’.111 Rejecting the treatment proposed (Islamization)
does not mean that there is anything wrong with the diagnosis. ‘Any intelli-
gent Christian, Catholic or not, can take advantage of René Guénon’s teach-
ings without joining the Guénonian project’, so long as they know what that
project is.112 In this Carvalho was saying much what Argentinian Nacionalis-
tas had said during the early and middle of the twentieth century. Meinvielle
seems to have read Guénon in precisely this way, and a younger Argentinian,
Alberto Ezcurra Uriburu (1937–1993), first the leader of the quasi-fascist mass
movement Tacuara and later also a priest, had also emphasized Traditional-
ism’s ‘radical critique of the modern world’ and the ‘treasures that a Catholic
can value’ that are to be found in Traditionalist authors.113

107 Carvalho, ‘Influências discretas’.

108 Prince Charles has often taken positions favourable towards Islam, and this certainly has
something to do with his warm relations with Lings.
109 Carvalho, ‘Para comprender’. For Bat Yeʾor, see Bangstad, ‘Bat Yeʾor’.
110 Breivik, 2083, 44–49.
111 Carvalho, ‘As garras da Esfinge’.
112 Carvalho, ‘As garras da Esfinge’.
113 Ezcurra, ‘La moda del ocultismo’.
traditionalism in brazil | 10.1163/15700593-20201001 21

As well as rejecting the Traditionalist project of Islamizing the West, Car-

valho also rejected the Traditionalist geopolitics of Dugin, arguably the world’s
best-known proponent of Traditionalism, most visibly in a public debate in
2011. Dugin started the debate on the understanding that he was debating
with a Brazilian Traditionalist, and ended up disappointed.114 From the begin-
ning, Carvalho seemed to have no interest in establishing common ground
with Dugin, and focused instead on global politics. Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism
identifies the East (and so Russia) with tradition and the West (especially the
USA) with modernity, and sees the traditional East as exposed to the glob-
alizing project of Western modernity. Carvalho proposed a division between
three globalizing forces—Russian-Chinese, Western financial, and Islamic—
and ‘American nationalism [a]s a powerful Christian resistance to the globalist
ambitions bloc’ of which he considered Dugin a representative.115 Carvalho’s
contributions to the debate were thus full of attacks on Russia (‘a den of corrup-
tion and wickedness as never before seen’)116 and on Dugin himself (a ‘preacher
of war and genocide’ and ‘a helpless and passive ideological slave’ of moder-
nity).117 He later regretted that contemporary Traditionalism has fallen so much
under Russian influence.118 The debate, then, was not really about Traditional-
ism at all.

7 Conclusion

The Maryamiyya was the first Traditionalist group to become established in

Brazil, under Fernando Guedes Galvão, but seems not to have done very well.
It was not until later, under Olavo de Carvalho, that the Maryamiyya grew
stronger, and after Carvalho left it, it mostly vanished from sight. Mateus Soares
de Azevedo does not have the same position that Carvalho once did.
The Maryamiyya, like Traditionalism itself, developed outside Brazil. Michel
Veber was born outside Brazil, but his Academia Kan-Non was a distinctly
Brazilian group. Its interest in indigenous religions parallels developments
inside the Maryamiyya and among Traditionalists in Peru, but its central prac-
tice was T’ai Chi. This is a development without parallel outside Brazil, though
some precedent can be found in the writings of Pierre Grison. Why this should

114 Dugin, Reply 3.

115 Carvalho, Olavo’s Introduction.
116 Carvalho, Olavo’s Introduction.
117 Carvalho, Reply 4.
118 Teitelbaum, War for Eternity, 256.
22 10.1163/15700593-20201001 | sedgwick

happen is unclear; it may have something to do with the fact that the practice
of T’ai Chi was compatible with a Catholic identity, since it is only relatively
recently that Catholicism has started to lose its dominant position in Brazil.
The other local Traditionalist group, the Instituto René Guénon de Estudos
Tradicionais of Luiz Pontual, focused on Traditionalist doctrine and did not
have any parallel practice, unlike both the Maryamiyya and the Academia Kan-
Non. This is unusual globally, but less unusual regionally, as a focus on doctrine
without practice is also found at about the same time in Argentina, in a milieu
linked to the academic study of philosophy.
The Brazilian Traditionalist milieu was the early home of Olavo de Carvalho,
who passed from the non-Traditionalist Escola Júpiter to the Traditionalist
Academia Kan-Non, and then via the non-Traditionalist group A Tradição to
the Traditionalist Maryamiyya, which he also left, finally taking Jesus as his
direct master and establishing his own, Catholic, philosophical group. At this
stage, the use that Carvalho made of Guénon resembled the use that Evola had
once made, save that Evola was anti-Catholic, which Carvalho was not. In com-
bining Traditionalism and Catholicism, Carvalho was following a path already
trodden, under somewhat different circumstances, by Argentinian political
Traditionalist between the 1920s and 1980s.
Brazilian Traditionalism, then, resembles Traditionalism in Europe and
North America in some ways, notably the presence of the Maryamiyya and an
interest in indigenous religion. The T’ai Chi of the Academia Kan-Non is not
found elsewhere, however, and the purely doctrinal focus of the Instituto René
Guénon de Estudos Tradicionais is found only in Argentina. Argentina is also
the home of the Catholic political Traditionalism that Carvalho’s later philoso-
phy in some ways resembles. Brazilian Traditionalism, then, is simultaneously
global, regional, and local.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, Georg Wink, Juan Bubello, and
Paulo Pinto for their comments on a draft of this article.

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