Showing 107 articles
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 [...]
Flu Pandemics
Author: Florimond KrinsAugust 22, 2016
We have all experienced the flu at least once in our life. And even if the “common” flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people every year around the world, the media still warn us about the danger of flu pandemics such as swine flu (H1N1), which in 2009 killed around 9,000 people. So what is [...]
The Myth of the Cave
Author: Miha KosirAugust 3, 2016
In one of Plato’s most well known works – The Republic – we find a short story known as the Myth of the Cave. Socrates asks his listeners to imagine a world under the ground where people live in chains, facing the end wall of a cave. Because they are chained they can’t move or [...]
Renaissance Art and the Enigmatic Genius of Giorgione
Author: Agostino DominiciJuly 25, 2016
The Royal Academy of Arts has recently put together an excellent exhibition presenting some of the greatest painters of the high Renaissance (c. 1490-1530) in a single show. The main intent of the exhibition was to revisit in particular the enigmatic figure of Giorgione, considered by many to be the founder of Venetian painting of [...]
At the service of philosophy – Manly P. Hall’s life and teachings
Author: Agostino DominiciJune 13, 2016
A few years ago, while browsing on YouTube, I happened to stumble across some old recordings of lectures covering an array of metaphysical and mystical topics. I was quickly taken by the depth and breadth with which the speaker, effortlessly, delivered his talks. Soon I learned that the person behind those words was a very [...]
The Brilliance of the Bard!
Author: Siobhan FarrarJune 10, 2016
It is quite remarkable to consider how many words and phrases in regular use today were first penned by William Shakespeare. The literary critic Bernard Levin picked out a few of them: “If you have ever been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a [...]
Invisible Egypt
Author: Sabine LeitnerMay 17, 2016
In our culture the word ‘invisible’ is often taken to mean ‘non-existent’. But for the ancient Egyptians, the invisible was the cause of the visible and therefore, in a sense, more important. They realised that the form of a person, what they wear and how they appear is only a reflection of something internal which [...]