Whitall Perry

Whitall Nicholson Perry (January 19, 1920 – November 18, 2005) was an American author and scholar of comparative religions. Born in Belmont, Massachusetts, he was a member of the Perennialist School, which drew heavily from the ideas of René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon. Perry's most significant work is "A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom," published in 1971. This monumental compilation, spanning over 1,100 pages, gathers thousands of quotations from various religious and esoteric traditions, enriched with commentaries that frequently reference the writings of Guénon, Coomaraswamy, and Schuon. Perry's intellectual journey began with an interest in Plato and Hindu Vedanta. He traveled to the East before settling in Cairo in 1946 with his wife. In Cairo, he formed close connections with the French metaphysician René Guénon, which led him to join the tariqa of Frithjof Schuon. After Guénon's death in 1952, Perry relocated to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he became a close associate of Schuon. When Schuon moved to the United States in 1980, Perry and his wife followed, eventually settling in Bloomington, Indiana, where he passed away in 2005. In addition to "A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom," Perry authored "Gurdjieff in the Light of Tradition" (1978), "The Widening Breach: Evolutionism in the Mirror of Cosmology" (1995), and "Challenges to a Secular Society" (1996), a collection of essays addressing various contemporary philosophical and spiritual issues. He also contributed numerous articles to "Studies in Comparative Religion."