Showing 101 articles
The Danger of ‘Historical Illiteracy’
Author: Sabine LeitnerApril 30, 2017
Studies in several countries have highlighted that there is growing ignorance and lack of interest amongst young people about even basic historic facts of fairly recent national history. Americans of all ages fail to answer simple questions like “Who won the Civil War” and “Who did we gain independence from?” One of the most frequent [...]
A Revolution for the Future
Author: Pierre PoulainApril 17, 2017
It will not surprise anyone if we say that the world we are living in has become “global”. Although this globalization was initiated at the political and economic levels at the end of the second world war, it became subject to a huge acceleration at the end of the 20th century, first with the development [...]
Nikola Tesla, forgotten inventor.
Author: Florimond KrinsApril 17, 2017
Nikola Tesla was probably one of the greatest minds of the 19th and 20th centuries, yet his name is rarely associated with one of his many inventions, AC electric power. When we mention the discovery of electricity, or how we came to use it in our modern civilisation, we think first of Thomas Edison, Michael [...]
The constitution of the human being in the Western tradition
Author: Agostino DominiciFebruary 7, 2017
From time immemorial, human beings have asked themselves the question ‘who am I?’ And philosophers, theologians and metaphysicians have all come up with different answers. The classification of the various human ‘constituents’, from one system of thought to another might have changed, but the underlying principles in question have remained the same. Thus, even though [...]
Utopia at The Bauhaus
Author: Siobhan FarrarJanuary 27, 2017
Four hundred years ago in 1516, Thomas More wrote his extraordinary piece of work ‘Utopia’. More derived the word Utopia from the Greek words ‘ou’ & ‘topos’, which together translate as ‘nowhere’. Rather than being a blueprint for a fantasy future society, Utopia is aimed much more at our faculty of imagination – it encourages [...]
Hilma Af Klint: Painting the Unseen
Author: Siobhan FarrarNovember 12, 2016
Earlier this year the Serpentine Gallery held an exhibition described by the Telegraph as “a sense of unfathomable mystery”. Hilma Af Klint, a Swedish born female painter who began producing work in the early 1900s, is beginning to be recognised as the first artist ever to have produced a piece of ‘abstract art’. Prior to [...]
The need for a vision of the future
Author: Sabine LeitnerNovember 12, 2016
I recently read a review of the book “Eden 2.0: Climate Change and the Search for a 21st Century Myth”. The central argument of the book is that humanity needs to find – rather fast – a myth that would enable us to transcend our differences and inspire us to follow a radically new course. [...]
John Dee – Magician, Mathematician and Angelologist
Author: Julian ScottNovember 12, 2016
Earlier this year a remarkable exhibition was shown at the Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park, London: Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee. Born in 1527, of Welsh ancestry, John Dee was one of Tudor England’s most extraordinary and enigmatic figures. A brilliant mathematician, he was offered the chair of mathematics [...]
Philosophy in ancient Egypt
Author: Julian ScottSeptember 7, 2016
It is a commonly held view that ‘the Egyptians had no philosophy’ and that philosophy began with the ancient Greeks. However, some of the major Greek philosophers, including Thales, Pythagoras and Plato, recognised their huge debt to the sages of Egypt for their knowledge and ideas. Plato, for example, spent 13 years studying with the [...]
Urban Wildlife
Author: Miha KosirSeptember 7, 2016
At the beginning of the 19th century three out of four Britons lived in the countryside, where they worked the land. By the end of the 19th century three out of four lived in the city. This was a result of the industrial revolution, which marks a turning point in history. The speed of urbanisation [...]
Archetypal Astrology: re-enchanting the cosmos
Author: Agostino DominiciSeptember 7, 2016
In the last 50 years astrology has started to gain a level of intellectual respectability which would have been unthinkable before. This has been thanks to the recent contributions of many brilliant and open-minded thinkers who have come to embrace the teachings of this ancient discipline. A long time has passed since Voltaire defined astrology [...]
Initiation and Shamanism
Author: Istvan OrbanAugust 22, 2016
According to Mircea Eliade, the philosopher and historian of religion, shamanism is a technique of religious ecstasy. The word shaman is probably derived from the Tungusic root saman, which means ‘knowing’. What does the shaman know? Basically, shamans are priests, medicine men, singers, dancers, drummers, and they have many other skills as well; but what [...]