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I am very pleased to receive word of my acceptance on the programme of the Eighth Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (Cork 2022). I will discussing the l'Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers. ESSWE8 is the 8th Biannual Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism …
An ancient Gaelic tale found in the unpublished notebooks of Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912)
ANNOUNCEMENT: Very pleased at receiving word of my selection to join the Global Learning Partnership network in 2020. I will be spending a month in Rwanda and Uganda this summer. In partnership with Redearth Education Uganda and Inspire Educate and Empower Rwanda (IEE), I will be training local educators through professional learning reflecting local context.
With three distinct gold globes, the minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque dominates the Marrakesh horizon. Legend tells that one day during the month of Ramadan, the wife of Youcoub El Mansour (c. 1160- 1199) ate three small grapes. In penance, she melted down all her jewellery and moulded them into these three great gold spheres. …
During the summer of 1914, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869-1916) was stabbed in the stomach by a 33-year-old peasant woman named Chionya Guseva, outside his home in Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk guberniya (now Tyumen Oblast), Siberia. A former prostitute, Guseva purportedly screamed 'I have killed the Antichrist!'. Rasputin, near dead, was chased …
Continue reading "In Rasputin’s hand: Images of the Mad Monk"
The text below was published in the broadsheet 'Journal des débats' on November 6, 1803. "M. de Saint-Martin, who had founded in Germany a religious sect known as the Martinists, has just died at Aunay, near Paris, at the home of Senator Lenoir-Laroche. He had acquired some celebrity for his bizarre opinions, his attachment to …
At the start of the New Year, I had the pleasure of attending a traditional fire ritual known as 'The Burning of the Clavie'. The burning is an ancient Scottish custom still observed in the village of Burghead, a fishing village on the Moray Firth. The clavie is a collection of casks split in two, …
The ‘Othering’ phenomena is something that is clearly reproduced, reinforced, and experienced by people all around the world, regardless of their race, language, gender, class, nationality, or religion. In classrooms made up of truly diverse groups of children, what are the challenges faced by RE teachers and how do they tackle the ‘Othering’ impulse? With …
Continue reading "Teaching RE to Refugees: Hot-pants and Headscarves – The Dialectics of Identity."
Abstract: In the following paper I intend to illustrate the inherent importance of Plato’s 'Allegory of the Cave' in the Western Esoteric Tradition. Plato's Allegory has for centuries been read as representing the idea of a process in increased hermeneutical understanding; as a turn towards to the Sun, to the alchemical 'unus mundus', as it were - in other words, …
Continue reading "The Many Sacred Veils: Language, Text and Esotericism in Initiation"
'And did those feet in ancient time'..... A photographic essay from a recent trip to Jerusalem, Israel. These pictures were taken days before the escalating Israeli-Palestinian tensions turned into violence that killed six people: three Palestinians in street clashes in Jerusalem and three Israelis in a stabbing attack at a West Bank settlement. Three Palestinians …
