Contributors

• Graeme Castleman
• David Catherine
• Ananda Coomaraswamy
• Pierre Lory
• Harry Oldmeadow
• Timothy Scott
• Algis Uždavinys

Graeme Castleman
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. His first paper, 'Cosmogony and Salvation: The Christian Rejection of Uncreated Matter' appeared in Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies (2003). Graeme is particularly interested in the writings of the Church Fathers.

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 professor at Harvard and 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.

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 A Christian Pilgrim in India:The Spiritual Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda (World Wisdom Books, USA).

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 (U.K.). 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).

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 editor of The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy (World Wisdom, USA, 2004). He is currently working on The Egyptian Book of the Dead and Neoplatonic Philosophy (forthcoming).