The world is a silent poem waiting for my mind to render up its promise.– James Cowan . The author, poet, and traveller James Cowan was in pursuit of the…

France, the ancient land of Gaul, holds an unparalleled place in the history of the development and spread of mystical, esoteric, and occult teachings in the West. Southern France is…

We do not believe in progress or in salvation. For the Latin race, which goes to its death, we prepare a final splendour, to dazzle and gentle the barbarians who…

We should be cautious of prophecies that claim we are on a path of infinite political progress or infinite economic growth – or, conversely, headed toward civilisational collapse.  Things are…

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde We’re living through one of the most tumultuous and significant periods in history’s…

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.– William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience If there is…

There was a time when Paul Brunton (1898-1981) needed no introduction. From the 1930s through the 1950s, his eleven books were best-sellers in the field of alternative spirituality. A Search…

The challenge of the Aquarian Age is to “inner-stand” between the two personal and trans-personal forces represented by its rulers Saturn and Uranus.  Many astrologers fall into the personality trap…

One of the enduring signs of the origin of consciousness beyond the limits of our present planet is that of the Persian Faravahar – a winged disk mounted by the…

Recently re-reading St. Augustine’s Confessions, written over sixteen hundred years ago, I was struck by one aspect that had previously eluded me: the authors he refers to are, for the…

The Eurasian idea is an open idea. It is open toward both the past and the future – what will happen in the future depends on how we understand and…

A human life is a story, with a beginning, middle and an end. Like stories, our lives are filled with moments and experiences that shape us into who we ultimately become.…

The Tarot is a path. In Egypt it was called the Books of Life or Books of Thoth and also the Royal Way of Life. The word Tarot was derived…

Some weeks ago I had an odd experience. Like many other people, I have spent the past few months under a voluntary “house arrest,” following the rules the government has…

The study of mystical religious experience was introduced into psychological studies in the late nineteenth century. Curiously, this somewhat novel interest was initially stimulated by researchers of medical psychology who…

The Council of Ferrara-Florence, held from 1438 to 1445 in, not surprisingly, the Italian cities of Ferrara and Florence, had as one of its main objectives the possible reunion of…

Until baptism …fate is true. But afterward the astrologers are no longer correct. – Excerpta ex Theodoto, 78 The New Testament is probably the most widely read book in the world.…

Elie Wiesel, in his sombre memoir Night, describes a poignant incident from his time in a Nazi concentration camp. Amidst unimaginable suffering and despair, an inmate named Akiba Drumer “had…

In a linear world, the external order dictates an artificial way of life to the individual, creating a conformist society and forcing us to relinquish our power to a machine…

In the spring of 1915 the writer and journalist Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, a familiar name in Russian Theosophical circles, gave a series of lectures in Moscow about his recent “search…

Five years on from the death of British author, occultist and poet Kenneth Grant (1924–2011), we are only just now beginning to see the first attempts at assessing the impact…

On 11 February 1944, the 68-year-old Carl Gustav Jung – then the world’s most renowned living psychologist – slipped on some ice and broke his fibula. Ten days later, in…

In the consensus view, magic belongs (if at all) in Disney films and Harry Potter books, and adults who actually believe in it are stuck in infantile or medieval superstition.…

The most enigmatic figure to emerge from the “occult revival” of the early twentieth century was also the most successful, the Austrian “spiritual scientist” Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Although many of…

When we think of wars, revolutions, populist uprisings, outbreaks of mass hysteria and other sudden social and political eruptions – even a popstar’s popularity or the latest fashion trend –…

A question nags at everyone today: are things getting better or worse? The answer depends on the criteria you’re using. In terms of material comfort, it seems clear that life…

American author Gary Lachman has long called London his home, but I caught up with him during a recent visit to Australia. Compact, quiet and stylishly dressed, Lachman’s gentle scholarly…

When the veil descended, men revered what it covered. And as time went on it seemed to hide more and more and was revered still more. Then, when it was…

Recently I returned to London after a week in Spain promoting a new translation of one of my books, and taking part in an International Occulture Conference held in León,…

This article was published in New Dawn 165 (Nov-Dec 2017) I sometimes suspect that we deploy the word ‘Hermetic’ – a term for late ancient Greek-Egyptian mystical texts attributed to…