Just published: Mark Sedgwick, “The Tradition of Omar Ali-Shah in Latin America.” In El Esoterismo occidental en Iberoamérica (siglos XVI-XX), ed. Juan Bubello and Marco Pasi (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires: 2025), vol. 2, pp. 89-121.
Available from academia.edu here and at UBA.
This chapter explores the history and character of "the Tradition" of Omar Ali-Shah, a Sufi-inspired movement that became especially prominent in Latin America from the late 1960s. Emerging in Paris under the leadership of Idries Shah and his brother Omar Ali-Shah, the Tradition blended universalist Sufism, Islamic practices such as dhikr, and techniques from Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way. After Omar assumed leadership, the group spread rapidly in Argentina and Brazil, attracting cultural figures and intellectuals, and later expanding into Mexico and Spain.
The Tradition’s teachings emphasized higher consciousness and liberation from conditioning, while its practices combined classic Sufi elements with eclectic borrowings, such as ritualized recitations of the story of Mushkil Gusha. The chapter highlights how narrative and persona—Omar’s embellished biography, fictional teachers, and mythologized origins—played central roles in sustaining the movement’s authority. Today, though diminished, the Tradition remains one of Latin America’s most distinctive Sufi groups, reflecting both the adaptability and the paradoxes of Western Sufism.
