This is the first English translation of one of Rene' Guenon's most important works, and constitutes a major contribution to the field of traditional studies. What is owed to Guenon for having outlined so clearly the cause of the spiritual crisis of the modern world, and for having offered remedies that are uncompromising in their application, is realised more and more by each generation of his readers. For Guenon presents an approach to religion that satisfies at once the highest level of intellectual rigour and the deepest level of religious practice, in the context of a perennial wisdom that acknowledges the integral 'way' of each revealed religion as a path to the totality of Truth - as the rays of the Sun can be traced to their luminous source. The great triad is centred on Taoism while being characteristically rich in illuminating cross-references to other traditions, for the ternary in question - Heaven, Hearth and Man - is an inescapable feature of all spirituality. Seldom can the multiple levels of significance of a single symbol have been expounded in such profound and meaningful detail so as to reveal that, when properly assimilated, the triad symbol possesses the possibility of functioning as an initiatory means of support for inner realisation.