The Betrayal of Tradition is an anthology of essays which excavate the deepest roots of the spiritual crisis of modernity. It is controlled by several large themes: the loss of traditional metaphysical and cosmological principles which have been replaced by the pseudo-mythologies of modernity; the erosion of traditional religious and social forms; the triumph of a profane and materialistic scientism. Some of the essays are primarily concerned with an exposition of traditional principles which are contrasted with the prevailing ideas, assumptions and values of modernity, while others focus on particular problems and issues which are of immediate and urgent concern to thoughtful people everywhere—the desacralisation of work, the global ecological crisis and the destruction of indigenous cultures, for example. All of the essays in the anthology are informed by the sense, that the most pressing problems in the contemporary world are, in one way or another, related to "the betrayal of tradition", which is to say the loss of a living understanding of those principles and values which governed the traditional civilizations of both East and West.

The distinctive nature of the anthology is to be found in the range of writers who consider the most urgent problems of modernity from a variety of perspectives. Behind the apparent diversity of these perspectives, readers will discern an inner unity deriving from the unanimous conviction that modern civilization has lost its spiritual bearings and that a return to the timeless truths of tradition is a necessary condition for any recovery. The contributors to the anthology include not only eminent traditionalists such as Ananda Coomaraswamy , Titus Burckhardt , and Frithjof Schuon but many well-known contemporary scholars and commentators such as Robert Aitken , Karen Armstrong , and Mary Midgley .