Traditional Forms

Persian depiction of the Divan (دیوان)
By Jean-Étienne Liotard

Traditional Forms |
Saturday – May 9, 2026

Forms in their essential and traditional way have a certain and often subtle charm to them that only qualified people can sense, but even less qualified people tend to be able to pick up on this, even if they can only sense something in the abstract, here "abstract" refers to the noise that moderns would be able to conceive of in this connection. Take the traditional couch, the Divan: would the Divan be complete without Opium, read "Are Imagination Enhancers Good?", or indeed the man or woman sitting on it in the traditional way? Of course not, and these small details matter, because nothing exists within a vacuum, in some kind of compartmentalized isolation, away from the right context, read "Hierarchies" and "The Problem of Borders". The Divan would also not fit, even close to its traditional form, outside the right context, because a person without proper qualification would simply fail to "recreate" the context necessary to access the wisdom of the Divan; so, a home void of essentials would simply not dress the Divan and vice versa, the Divan would not dress such a home because they are essentially incompatible. Now, moderns may argue that the Divan in a new context could become "redefined" and "re-imagined", read "The Efficacy of Ideas" and that the Divan in this way could act as a kind of bridge between one culture and another, between one world and another, but this assumes, of course, a kind of completeness when it comes to the quantitative approximation of the essential, but the fact is, read "The End of History", that in quantifying the essential everything that makes the Divan, in this example, essentially the Divan is lost, and whatever the moderns now use as a couch is simply another couch; it may be that this new and re-imagined couch is somewhat reminiscent of the distant, that which is too remote to ever reach its full potential in this iteration yet that is still close enough to be sensed by those who know, read "Knowledge". In this sense, it would be quite right to understand the "modern Divan" in the context of utopia, read "Ideological Indoctrination", because it would indeed require a utopia for the Divan to manifest itself essentially as the Divan in this new and modified context, something that indeed is quite impossible, but nonetheless something in keeping with the hubris of modernity.

    The example of the Divan is actually quite right, but this applies to every other traditional form as well, and it would be just as right to assert that the human body in its traditional form is perfect, but again only perfect within the right context, and this is how one must understand the futility and weakness of the human body in the context of deviation, read "Modern Civilization". So, if the human body in its traditional form is perfect, would it not be right to expect the human body, as well as the Divan, to degenerate during these times of great upheaval and deviation, read "Disintegration"? Yes, but with some qualification, because these things do not occur in a fashion similar to a linear regression for there are periods in which there are short revivals of the traditional and the primordial forms, and really even when they reach a state close to perfection, read "Hyperborea"; I should add that close to perfection in an arithmetic sense is essentially only possible in the realm of theory, that is to say within the confines of complete quantification, by for instance taking the limit to infinity (or as it happens quite often zero or some other defined constant within some given interval).

    On the point of complete quantification, it should also be understood that mediocrity is what necessarily has to occur in these bastard recreations of the traditional forms, because what has been lost is essential knowledge: knowledge that may seem like tiny and petty little details to most modern men, but details that nonetheless makes the difference between the infinite (the unknown) and the finite further extended and reinvented in a mathematical and mechanical manner; these are qualitatively opposed, for the one is qualified and the other is unqualified, truly unsigned, read "Who or What is God?". Of course, even the most beastly of men could, if they put effort into it, understand these matters on a somewhat sub/infra-intuitive and subtle level, a level not quite intuitive yet superior and beyond the sensible and corporeal order, the immediately available. Essentially, a traditional form would be impossible outside the right traditional context because it lacks the essential light, and any attempt to recreate this will only result in a kind of extension, or an increased resolution, but the image of the Divan in high definition is still no less an image, read "My Views on Photography and the Camera Obscura". I should also add that men who are born in a completely solidified state may actually quite unable to sense even this, and in all truth they may actually be fooled by an image, as their world is more akin to the image than their own sight; an example of this is the increased and growing rate of nearsightedness (myopia) among the young. How can a man expect to see without the two of his eyes, let alone his third eye? Think again here of educated fools, read "The Case For Education", because these people are truly ignorant and foolish, to the point where they are now unable to trust their senses, yet they will go on to argue in favor of these senses, again these senses that they are unable to trust.

    Lastly, when it comes to this regression, although not linear, you can notice it everywhere, read "Directing Films", even among quite recent inventions. It is this sense that everything is getting worse that truly permeates the world, and this is exactly what I am referring to here, read "Politicians" and "Disease Control!", because things are getting worse, and while you may think that things are getting worse slowly, the rate is actually accelerating and as this happens you will lose sight of your reference points which is why you may start to feel that things are actually slowing down, because they will rob you of the past and with the past any kind of knowledge, even if this knowledge is subpart and quite problematic and deviant in itself; this means that your own form, even though this is a form of individualism, will become unable to sense itself and they you are truly lost, read "Mediation".

Reginald Drax – May 9, 2026.