This book, one of the most important by René Guénon, studies a symbol that, in its various forms, is found almost everywhere and from the most remote times; the fact that it is common to almost all traditions seems to indicate its direct linkage with the great primordial tradition. It is not, therefore, a symbol belonging exclusively to the Christian tradition, a tradition that even seems to have lost sight of the symbolic character of the Cross and consider it only as a sign of a historical event. But, as the author says, both points of view, symbolic and historical, are not mutually exclusive, but the second is in a sense a consequence of the first: Christ died on the cross, it was because of the symbolic value that the cross possesses in itself, without diminishing at all its historical significance.