Such sciences also do deal with the natural world and have...

Such sciences also do deal with the natural world and have produced knowledge of that world which is “scientific” according to the current understanding of this term, but not only scientific.2 Even in these instances, however, the aim of such traditional sciences has been not to produce knowledge of a particular order of reality in a closed system, and cut off from other orders of reality and domains of knowledge, but a knowledge which relates the domain in question to higher orders of reality as that knowledge itself is related to higher orders of knowledge.3 There is such a thing as traditional science distinct from modern science dealing with the same realms and domains of nature which are treated in the sciences today.

Yet these traditional sciences, although of much importance in understanding the rise of modern science, which in many cases employed their outward content without comprehending or accepting their world view, have a significance wholly other than the modern sciences of nature.4 The traditional sciences of the cosmos make use of the language of symbolism.

They claim to expound a science and not a sentiment or poetic image of the domain which is their concern, but a science which is expounded in the language of symbolism based on the analogy between various levels of existence.

In fact, although there are numerous cosmological sciences, sometimes even several dealing with the same realm and within a single tradition, one can speak of a cosmologia perennis which they reflect in various languages of form and symbol, a cosmologia perennis which, in one sense, is the application and, in another, the complement of the sophia perennis which is concerned essentially with metaphysics.

There is also another type of the “study” of the cosmos in the traditional context which complements the first. That is the contemplation of certain natural forms as reflecting Divine Qualities and the vision of the cosmos in divinis. This perspective is based on the power of forms to be occasions for recollection in the Platonic sense and the essential and of course not substantial identity of natural forms with their paradisal origin.