Mateus Soares de Azevedo

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Mateus Soares de Azevedo (born 1959) is a Brazilian historian of religions and journalist.

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[edit] Biography

Mateus Soares de Azevedo is post-graduated in international relations by the George Washington University and holds a Masters degree in History of religions from the University of São Paulo, with a thesis on the current importance of the Perennial philosophy.

He is the author of five books on the mystical and esoteric dimensions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, and of more than 60 articles and essays dealing with the importance of traditional religion, and spirituality, in the contemporary world, several of them translated into English, French, and Spanish.

His most recent book is Men of a single book: fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity, and modern thought" (Rio de Janeiro, 2008), a critique both of religious and anti-religious fundamentalism; the later represented specially by polemicists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Men of a Single Book is scheduled to be published soon in the United States by World Wisdom Books.

Soares de Azevedo lived in London, England, in the 1980s, where he experienced for the first time the work of the French metaphysician René Guénon. The Crisis of the Modern World, The Reign of Quantity and Symbols of Sacred Science, three of Guénon's classics, transformed his way of seeing reality, as they expound a profound critique of modern materialism and relativism, from a purely metaphysical perspective. In the 1990s he lived in Washington DC, USA, where he was overwhelmed by the message of the German-Swiss metaphysician and guide of souls Frithjof Schuon. Schuon went even further in the critique of modern mentality, and added to Guénon's rigorously theoretical approach, a "practical" alternative to modern scepticism, teaching how to think and to live spiritually in the modern dry and scientific ambiance.

Soares de Azevedo absorbed elements both from Guénon and Schuon in his later works such as A Inteligência da Fé[1] and Iniciación al Islam y al Sufism.[2]

Mateus Soares de Azevedo is the editor of two anthologies published in the United States. The first is Ye Shall Know The Truth: Christianity And The Perennial Philosophy,[3] featuring works by Frithjof Schuon, René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and other perennialists. The other is a collection of the most important essays by the British perennialist author William Stoddart.[4]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

  • Homens de um Livro Só: O Fundamentalismo no Islã, no Cristianismo e no pensamento moderno (Rio de Janeiro: Best Seller/Nova Era, 2008)
  • A Inteligência da Fé: Cristianismo, Islã e Judaísmo (Rio de Janeiro, Nova Era, 2006)[5]
  • Ye shall know the truth: Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy (Bloomington, World Wisdom, 2005)
  • Iniciación al Islam y Sufismo (Ediciones 29, Barcelona, 2004)
  • Mística Islâmica: convergência com a espiritualidade cristã (Vozes, 2001)

[edit] Contributions and prefaces

  • Remembering in a World of Forgetting (by William Stoddart. World Wisdom, 2008)
  • Para Compreender o Islã (by Frithjof Schuon. Rio de Janeiro, 2006)
  • Dossier H - Frithjof Schuon (by P. Laude e J-B Aymard. Lausanne, 2002)
  • Sophia Perennis (by J-M Prats and Esteve Serra. Palma de Mallorca, 2004)
  • O Estudo das Religiões; desafios contemporâneos (by Silas Guerriero. São Paulo, 2003)
  • O Homem no Universo (by Frithjof Schuon. São Paulo, 2001)
  • O Sentido das Raças (by Frithjof Schuon. São Paulo, 2002)
  • O Budismo ao seu alcance (by William Stoddart. Rio de Janeiro, 2004)
  • Sabedoria Tradicional & Superstições Modernas" (by Martin Lings. São Paulo, 1998)
  • Ensaios sobre a Destruição da Tradição Cristã (by Rama P. Coomaraswamy. São Paulo, 1990)

[edit] Articles

[edit] See also

Biography portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ "A Inteligência da Fé", Rio de Janeiro, 2006.
  2. ^ "Iniciación al Islam y al Sufism", Barcelona, 2004.
  3. ^ Ye Shall Know The Truth: Christianity and The Perennial Philosophy catalog information at the publisher's website.
  4. ^ Remembering in a World of Forgetting: Thoughts on Tradition and Postmodernism at the publisher's website.
  5. ^ Excerpts available at Leia trechos de 2 lançamentos da Nova Era (in Portuguese), Folha de São Paulo.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mateus_Soares_de_Azevedo"
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