Eye of the Heart - Contributors

The Baptistry of San Giovanni, Florence

The heart is a sanctuary at the Centre of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye. This is the Eye of Wakantanka by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him. (Black Elk)

Contributors

Tom Bree
Tom Bree is a geometer/artist, musician, teacher and writer. He studied geometry at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, London, under Professor Keith Critchlow and Paul Marchant. Tom teaches for the Prince’s School in the UK and abroad, as well as his own teaching projects. He lives in the City of Wells in Somerset with his wife Helen who is a stained glass conservator.

Edward P. Butler
Edward P. Butler received his doctorate in Philosophy in 2004 from the New School for Social Research, New York City, for his dissertation, ‘The Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus.’ His subsequent publications have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Dionysius, Méthexis, and Diotima. His research concerns Platonism, individuation, and the relationship between ontology and theology, including the hermeneutics of myth.

Mihnea Capruta
Mihnea Capruta was awarded his Master of Arts from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania for his thesis on ‘The Feminine Aspect of the Principle in the Christian Iconography.’ He has published articles on metaphysics, symbolism and spiritual realisation in Romanian and international journals. Many of his paper appear in the perennialist journal, Oriens. Journal of Traditional Studies (www.regnabit.com).

Fr Michael Casey OCSO
Fr. Michael Casey is a Cistercian monk and prior of Tarrawarra Abbey, Australia. He is the author of many books including Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer and Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina. He acts as a retreat master and is a much sort after speaker around the world.

Graeme Castleman
Congratulations to Mr Graeme Castleman for winning the graduate category of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Prize with his essay, ‘The Primordial in the Symbols and Theology of Baptism.’

Graeme Castleman is a doctoral candidate at La Trobe University, Bendigo (Australia). His doctoral thesis explores the question of creatio ex nihilo in the Christian tradition. He has published in Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies (‘Cosmogony and Salvation: The Christian Rejection of Uncreated Matter,’ 2003) and Eye of the Heart (‘Golgotha, Athens, Jerusalem: Patristic intimations of the religio perennis,’ 2008). His paper, ‘The Primordial in the symbols and theology of Baptism’ is the winner of the Graduate category of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Prize. A substantially condensed and revised version of this paper is to feature in the Fons Vitae volume, Water & Its Spiritual Significance,2009.

David Catherine
David Catherine lives in South Africa where he is a student of the Academy of Self Knowledge (ASK), founded by Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri. He is qualified as a student facilitator and has served at ASK in areas of administration, editing and proof-reading. Before this, David worked for six years as assistant to Dr Nevil Quinn in areas of Integrated Catchment Management, riparian rehabilitation, and environmental education. His primary interest is in Natural Order considered as Theophany, with related interests in Ecopsychology and Integrated Ecology.

Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)
Born in Ceylon, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy studied botany and geology at London University, graduating with a doctoral degree in mineralogy. Coomaraswamy lived between Ceylon, India and England, during which time he studied the traditional arts and crafts of Ceylon, and founded the Ceylon Social Reform Society, aimed at reviving traditional values and expressions in Ceylonese culture and countering the negative effects of British colonialism. Moving to the USA, he became Curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Scholar, linguist, social thinker and prolific writer, Coomaraswamy has claim to be one of the intellectual giants of the modern era and is one of the foremost exponents (along with Rene Guénon and Frithjof Schuon) of Traditional metaphysics this century.

Samuel D. Fohr
Samuel D. Fohr is a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford. He received his doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Michigan and has taught courses in both Western and Eastern Philosophy. He is the author of Cinderella’s Gold Slipper: Spiritual Symbolism in the Grimms’ Tales and Adam and Eve: The Spiritual Symbolism of Genesis and Exodus, (both through Sophia Perennis) and editor of more than a dozen volumes of The Collected Works of René Guénon.

Andrew C. Itter
Andrew C. Itter is Head of Religious Education at Girton Grammar School, Bendigo, Australia. Prior to this he taught at Trinity College, University of Melbourne. He has published on the theology and mysticism of Clement of Alexandria and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Andrew won the D. M. Myers University medal for La Trobe University’s best Humanities and Social Science thesis for his Honours work on Dionysius the Areopagite and was awarded his doctorate from La Trobe in 2004. His is the author of Esoteric Teaching in the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, Brill, 2009.

K. S. Kannan
K. S. Kannan is a Sanskrit professor teaching in a college affiliated to Bangalore University. He is an ardent admirer of Ananda Coomaraswamy. He was invited by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts to deliver talks on Coomaraswamy at the Indian Institute of World Culture, Bangalore.

Klaus Klostermaier
Klaus Klostermaier is an internationally renowned scholar of Hinduism and Indian history and culture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and was Head of the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba, Canada, from 1986 to 1997, and Director of Academic Affairs at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies from 1997-1998. He is the author of numerous publications on Hinduism.

Patrick Laude
Patrick Laude is a professor at Georgetown University, currently at their School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He is the author of Singing the Way. He has also edited Pray without Ceasing: An Anthology of the Way of Invocation in World Religions and Music of the Sky: An Anthology of Spiritual Poetry. His writings have been published in the US and Europe in numerous journals.

Pierre Lory
Pierre Lory is the Director of the French Institute for the Near East in Damascus. Before this he was the Director of Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne, where he holds the Chair of Islamic Mysticism (the position formerly held by Henri Corbin). He became Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Civilization at the University of Bordeaux in 1981, and Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne, in 1991. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Asian Journal, Studia Islamica, the Bulletin of the Annals Islamologiques Critique, the Journal of the History of Religions and the Journal of the History of Sufism. Pierre has published extensively on Islamic mysticism. His most recent book is Min ta’rîkh al-hirmisiyya wa-al-sûfiyya fî al-Islâm (On the History of Hermetism and Sufism in Islam), translated by Lwiis Saliba, Jbeil, Editions Byblion, 2005.

Harry Oldmeadow
Harry Oldmeadow is the Coordinator of Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia. His parents were Christian missionaries in India, where he spent nine years of his childhood and developed an early interest in the civilizations of the East. His Masters thesis, "Frithjof Schuon, the Perennial Philosophy and Meaning of Tradition," was awarded the University of Sydney Medal for excellence in research, and was eventually published by the Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies under the title Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy, Colombo, 2000. Harry is the is author of numerous publications in the fields of literature and religious studies. He has published extensively in such journals as Sacred Web, Vancouver, Sophia, Washington DC, and Asian Philosophy, Nottingham, UK. His most recent book is Mediations: Essays on Religious Pluralism & the Perennial Philosophy, Sophia Perennis, 2008.

Emily Pott
Congratulations to Dr Emily Pott for winning the open category of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Prize with her essay,'The Zaqqūm Tree.' To read Dr Pott's essay click here.

Emily Pott tutors at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London. She gained her Bachelor of Arts with a major in Politics from The University of California at Berkeley in 1983. In 1999 and 2000 Emily worked at the Islamic Museum and Library in Al Haram al Sharif, Jerusalem, where she rescued, sorted and catalogued ceramic tiles dating from the 16th to 20th centuries originally used for the exterior decoration of the Dome of the Rock. In 2007 she was awarded her doctorate from the The University of Wales, through the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, for her thesis, ‘The Dome of the Rock: Recognition of a Symbol.’ Emily hopes soon to find time to return to the workshop to continue her work with glazes and explore traditional forms in ceramics.

Frithjof Schuon
Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) is best known as the foremost spokesman of the “Traditionalist” or “Perennialist” school and as a philosopher in the metaphysical current of Shankara and Plato. He wrote more than two dozen books on metaphysical, spiritual, artistic, and ethnic themes and was a regular contributor to journals on comparative religion in both Europe and America.

Timothy Scott
Timothy Scott is the editor Eye of the Heart and also tutors in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Program at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia. His research focuses on the universal language of traditional symbolism with a particular focus on biblical symbolism and the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. His doctoral thesis, entitled Symbolism of the Ark, was awarded by La Trobe University in 2004 and is to be published by Fons Vitae, Kentucky, USA. He lived and taught Religious Studies in Düsseldorf, Germany, and Oxford, UK. He has worked as a copy-editor and proof-reader helping in the preparation of the works of Ananda Coomaraswamy for World Wisdom Books, USA. He is a regular contributor to the journals Sacred Web, Vancouver, and Sophia, Washington DC.

Phillip Serradell
Phillip Serradell is a former baker from Portland, Oregon with deep interests in traditional studies and organic farming. He now lives with his family in Northern California.

Adrian Snodgrass
Adrian Snodgrass is Adjunct Professor with the Centre for Cultural Research, Australia. He is an internationally renowned authority in Buddhist studies and Buddhist art. He also researches in the area of hermeneutical philosophy and its application to knowledge production and cross-cultural understanding. He is editor of The Architectural Theory Review and Architectural Theory and the author of The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Studies in the Stellar and Temporal Symbolism of Traditional Buildings 2Vols, and The Symbolism of the Stupa.

Roger Sworder
Roger Sworder graduated Master of Arts from the University of Oxford, taking his degree in the study of Classical Philosophy and History in the original languages. He undertook doctoral studies at the Australian National University with a thesis on Plato’s theory of knowledge. For the past thirty-five years Roger has taught Greek Mythology, Greek Philosophy, Enlightenment and Romantic thought and the Philosophy of Work and Art for the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at La Trobe University in Bendigo. His is the author of Mining, Metallurgy and the Meaning of Life and Homer on Immortality: the Journey of Odysseus as a Path to Perfection.

Charles Upton
Charles Upton was born in 1948 and grew up in Marin County, California. With Lew Welch as a mentor he published two volumes of poetry, Panic Grass and Time Raid, which qualify him for inclusion with the Beats. In the late 1980’s, he joined a traditional Sufi order and has since published numerous books about Sufism, comparative religion and metaphysics according to the Traditionalist School. He is principally published through Sophia Perennis (www.sophiaperennis.com).

Algis Uždavinys
Algis Uždavinys is a Research Associate at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia. Prior to taking up this position he was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Culture, Philosophy, and Arts, Lithuania, and also a Lecturer at the Academy of Arts, Lithuania. He is a member of The International Society for Neoplatonic Studies and The Lithuanian Artists’ Association. He has published extensively in English, French, and Lithuanian, and also translated the works of Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Plotinus into Russian and Lithuanian. He is a regular contributor to journals such as Sacred Web, Vancouver, and Sophia, Washington DC. Algis is the author of numerous books on the noeoplatonic tradition. His latest book is The Heart of Plotinus, World Wisdom, USA, 2009.

Angela Voss
Angela Voss lecturers in Religious Studies at the University of Kent where she currently directs the Masters programme and convenes the Bachelor of Arts module in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination. Her main research interests lie in the art, philosophy, cosmology and magical practices of the Renaissance and Western esoteric traditions. Angela was awarded her doctorate by City University, London at City, for her thesis on the astrological music therapy of the 15th century Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino. She is herself a musician who has masterminded three recordings, Thomas Lupo, Consort Music; Secrets of the Heavens (a re-creation of Ficino’s astrological hymn-singing) and Images of Melancholy (John Dowland’s Lachrimae with readings from the Corpus Hermeticum).

Eye of the Heart is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the exploration of the great philosophical and religious traditions. It addresses the inner meaning of philosophy and religion through elucidations of metaphysical, cosmological, and soteriological principles, and through a penetration of the forms preserved in each religious tradition.

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