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Book Review by Harry Oldmeadow of "Frithjof Schuon: Messenger of The
Book Review Frithjof Schuon: Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy by Michael Oren Fitzgerald (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2010). Review by Harry Oldmeadow Source: Crossing Religious Frontiers (Studies in Comparative Religion series), edited by Harry Oldmeadow (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2010) © World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com An issue of Studies in Comparative Religion dedicated to the theme “Crossing Religious Frontiers” could hardly find a more apposite subject than the life and work of Frithjof Schuon. Indeed, two of Schuon’s essays feature in this very issue. His work first appeared in the Anglophone world with the publication in 1953 of The Transcendent Unity of Religions, a book which articulated the metaphysical basis of the inner or essential unity of the world’s great religious traditions. This remarkable work was followed, over the next half-century, by more than thirty books in which Schuon provided a peerless exegesis of immutable metaphysical and cosmological principles, and an explication of their applications and ramifications in the boundless world of Tradition. These works, written in crystalline prose, stand as a beacon for those lost in the spiritual wastelands of modernity. Many years ago, in introducing one of Schuon’s books, Seyyed Hossein Nasr wrote: “His authoritative tone, clarity of expression, and an ‘alchemy’ which transmutes human language to enable it to present the profoundest truths, make of it a unique expression of the sophia perennis”.1 Quite so. Now we have to hand a biography of this frontier-crosser extraordinaire. For many readers of this journal, Schuon—metaphysician, poet, artist, spiritual master— requires no introduction. -
"The Debate About 'Orientalism'" by Harry Oldmeadow
From the World Wisdom online library: www.worldwisdom.com/public/library/default.aspx 1. The Debate about “Orientalism” The West’s Encounter with the East since Antiquity—What do we mean by “Orientalism”?—Edward Said and the Critics of Orientalism—Alternative Perspectives—The Traditionalist Outlook The value, efficacy, strength, apparent veracity of a written statement about the Orient therefore relies very little, and cannot instrumentally depend, on the Orient as such. On the contrary, the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its hav ing excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as “the Orient” ... that Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient, and this sense is directly indebted to various Western techniques of representation. (Edward Said)1 Western culture will be in danger of a decline into a sterilizing provincialism if it despises or neglects the dialogue with other cultures ... the West is forced (one might also say: condemned) to this encounter and confrontation with the cultural value of “the others” ... One day the West will have to know and to understand the existential situations and the cultural universes of the non-Western peoples; moreover, the West will come to value them as integral with the history of the human spirit and will no longer regard them as immature episodes or as aberrations from an exemplary History of man—a History conceived, of course, only as that of Western man. (Mircea Eliade)2 The West’s Encounter with the East since Antiquity In the early 19th century Hegel remarked that “Without being known too well, [India] has existed for millennia in the imagination of the Europeans as a wonderland. -
Twilight, Eclipse -- How Vampires Have Become Modern Day Gothic Buddhas
Twilight, Eclipse -- How vampires have become modern day gothic Buddhas. 5 July 2010 (PhysOrg.com) -- With the third instalment of the as a source of escapism because it's now also a wildly successful vampire franchise Twilight, a platform for spirituality." University of Western Sydney expert says the series and the rise in vampirism highlights the Professor Possamai says vampires have been growing phenomenon of new spiritualities based popular figures since the 19th century, and have on popular culture. reflected the concerns and aspirations of the time. Associate Professor Adam Possamai is the author "For example, the author Polidori's vampire of the book "Sociology of Religion for Generation X embodied forbidden types of intimacy, Baudellaire's and Y", and coined the term "hyper-real" religions poems express the experience of loneliness with to describe new faiths that draw on religion, the advent of industrialisation, and Bela Lugosi's philosophy and popular culture to create their own Dracula show the issues of being a social outcast beliefs. during the American depression," he says. Associate Professor Possamai says the growing "But vampires went through a radical number of "vampires", who drink blood or drain transformation in the 1970s when they started to "psychic energy" for sustenance, are an example arouse a longing for personal transformation, and of how hyper-real religions often have more the success of Twilight has only further heightened relevance to the self than traditional mass their appeal as models for personal transformation." religions. "People are becoming inspired by the "Vampires are no longer lonely creatures hiding in characteristics of the vampire, and see them as a the underground of our cities; they live with us in source of fulfilling their potential and inner the daylight in our towns and suburbs, and we had abilities," Professor Possamai says. -
Australian Religion Studies Review
AUSTRALIAN RELIGION STUDIES REVIEW Volume 16, No.2, Spring 2003 Australian Religion Studies Review Australian Religion Studies REVIEW Editors ARSR: Kathleen McPhillips, Adam Possamai Book Review editor: Jay Johnston Chair ofPublications: currently vacant Editorial Board: Alan Black, Edith Cowan University; Gary Bouma, Monash University; Robert Crotty, University of South Australia; Douglas Ezzy, University of Tasmania; Majella Franzmann, University of New England; Peta Goldburg, Australian Catholic University; Julia Howell, Griffith University; Phillip Hugues, Christian Research Association and Edith Cowan University; Lynne Hume, University of Queensland; Marion Maddox, Victoria University (Wellington); Harry Oldmeadow, La Trobe University (Bendigo); Paul Rule, La Trobe University. Concerning manuscripts for ARS REVIEW: The Editor, ARS REVIEW, Dr Adam Possamai, School of Applied Human and Social Sciences, UWS, Bankstown Campus, Penrith South DC NSW 1797. Email: [email protected] Concerning book reviews: The Book Review Editor, Jay Johnston. School of Humanities, UWS, Blacktown Campus, Penrith South DC NSW 1797. Email: [email protected] Concerning REVIEW advertising and enclosures, and back issues ARS REVIEW: Dr Kathleen McPhillips, School of Humanities, UWS, Blacktown Campus, Penrith South DC NSW 1797. Email: [email protected] Concerning purchase of AASR books: Rainbow Book Agency, 303 Arthur St, Fairfield VIC 3078. Concerning manuscripts for AASR publication: Dr Kathleen McPhillips, School of Humanities, UWS, Blacktown Campus, Penrith South DC NSW 1797. Email: [email protected] Concerning membership, subscriptions: Carole Cusack, Secretary AASR, Department of Religious Studies, Sydney University, NSW, 2006. Email: [email protected] The Australian Religion Studies REVIEW is published twice a year (Autumn and Spring) by the Australian Association for the Study of Religions. -
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ANTHEM PRESS INFORMATION SHEET Religion and the State A Comparative Sociology Edited by Jack Barbalet, Adam Possamai and Bryan S. Turner Pub Date: December 2011 Category: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Binding: Hardback Sociology of Religion Price: £60 / $99 BISAC code: SOC039000 ISBN: 9780857287984 BIC code: HRAM2 Extent: 296 pages Rights Held: World Size: 229 x 152mm; 9 x 6 Illustrations: 18+ tables and graphs This title is also available as an ebook Description Explores key issues in the modern tensions between state and religions by exploring a number of case studies from around the world. ‘Edited by three sociologists and comprised of essays from a distinguished group of social scientists, ‘Religion and the State’ considers the uniquely modern frictions between politics, economics, and traditional faiths. Far from a simplistic exploration of secularisation … The tensions of religious liberty and religious conviction are familiar, yet the authors of this volume consistently urge us to stop seeing the secular and the religious as distinct realms. … A giant step toward greater sophistication is found through evidence provided here.’ —Gerardo Marti, ‘LSE Review of Books’ blog With a clear statement of the theoretical issues in the debates about secularization and post-secularism, Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology considers a number of major case studies – from China, Europe, Singapore and South Asia – in order to understand the rise of public religions in the modern state. By distinguishing between political secularization – the separation of state and religion – and social secularization – the transformation of the everyday practice of religion – this volume offers an integrating framework within which to analyze these different societies. -
Popular and Lived Religions
Popular and lived religions Adam Possamai University of Western Sydney, Australia abstract This article discusses the sociological understanding of popular religion by first exploring the theories of Gramsci. It then critiques this approach by arguing that the social construction of popular reli - gion in contrast to institutionalized religion is not as clear cut in our late modern, multi-faith and global world as it was in the early modern period. Through the use of new internet methodologies (e.g. Ngram Viewer), it is argued that if spirituality reflects the democratization process of mysticism, popular religion, on the contrary, represents its gentrification. keywords hyper-real religions ◆ lived religion ◆ mysticism ◆ popular religions ◆ spirituality Introduction In its worst possible interpretation, popular religion popular religion (e.g. syncretic aspects of Catholicism can make reference to the ‘vulgar’, the ‘superstitious’, with nature religion or animism) tends to be more the ‘hopelessly irrational’, the ‘socially retrograde’ and practised in villages and among illiterate peoples. the ‘idiotic’ (Berlinerblau, 2001). Popular religion However, this does not stop urbanites from tapping often reflects the lived and unstructured religion of into popular religion and seeking the help of, for subordinated groups and is a term which has devel - example, a spiritual healer who will perform alterna - oped mainly in contrast to institutionalized, estab - tive rituals to the ones performed within institutional - lished and/or official religion which has a rationalized, ized religion. Another context is that of a colonized codified and written-down theology. It also refers to country in which the official religion is the one the religion of the people when they subvert the cod - brought by the new dominant ethnic group, and pop - ified official religion of the elite group by, for example, ular religion is the one practised by the dominated changing the official liturgy of the established religion ethnic group (see below). -
Losing Faith in the Classification and Evaluation of Research a Meta-Metrics Approach to Research on Religion in Australia
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES’ REVIEW Losing faith in the classification and evaluation of research A meta-metrics approach to research on religion in Australia Adam Possamai & Gary Long Western Sydney University This article uses a meta-metrics approach to research the research in Religion and Religious Studies (Field of Research (FoR) Code 2204) in Australia. Comparing and contrasting various results from the data provided by the Australian Research Council (ARC) on its Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) process, as well as global rankings data, the findings point to a reported drop of quality of research in this field. In this article we argue that this loss of quality could be due to the way this FoR Code is constructed and we call for its revision. This research also points to a considerable disparity between peer review disciplines such as FoR Code 2204 and citation disciplines. Keywords: ERA, religion, metrics, citations, FoR Codes Religion and Religious Studies and is one of the 157 FoR Introduction codes used to classify research activities in Australia and New Zealand. It is a code that includes a topic of research (religion This article is a response to the call from Wilsdon et al. as researched by, for example, anthropologists and historians) (2015) recommending more research on research. To enact and a specific discipline (religious studies including, in this this, it re-appropriates the metrics system in a meta-metric classification, theology). approach to shed light on the work that academics are The use of metrics for research is not a new process. Rennet undertaking in Australia in the field of religion and religious al. -
The New Sociology of Religion
Entry The New Sociology of Religion Roberto Cipriani Department of Education Sciences, Roma Tre University, via del Castro Pretorio 20, 00185 Rome, Italy; [email protected] Definition: The new sociology of religion differs from the classical and mainstream sociology, which was in force until the end of the last century, in that it no longer considers religion only as an independent variable, but places it together with other dependent variables, so that it becomes possible to investigate new themes, especially those that do not consider religious involvement— from atheism to the phenomenon of ‘nones’ (non-believers and non-practicing), from spirituality to forms of para-religions and quasi-religions and the varied set of multiple religions. Keywords: sociology; religion; secularization 1. Introduction: From Secularisation to Nones After the start given by the classical authors (in particular Durkheim and Weber, but also Simmel and W. James) to the scientific approach aimed at the knowledge of the religious fact, subsequent scholars have ventured, firstly, into the examination of religious practice (in the 1950s and 1960s) and then into the vexata quaestio of secularisation [1,2], a topic that has held sway for several decades, until the end of the last century and the Citation: Cipriani, R. The New beginning of the new millennium (the peak of interest was recorded between the second Sociology of Religion. Encyclopedia part of the sixties and the first part of the seventies). Subsequently, but particularly since 2021, 1, 822–830. https://doi.org/ the 1980s, the discourse on the post-secular or post-secularisation has developed [3–5]. -
Book Reviews
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Volume 29 | Issue 1 Article 14 1-1-2010 Book Reviews Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies Recommended Citation (2010). Sotillos, S. B. (2010). [Review of the book Christian gnosis: From St. Paul to Meister Eckhart, by Wolfgang Smith]. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 29(1), 135–136. Sotillos, S. B. (2010). [Review of the book Hinduism and its spiritual masters, by William Stoddart]. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 29(1), 136–138. Sotillos, S. B. (2010). [Review of the book Frithjof Schuon and the perennial philosophy, by Harry Oldmeadow]. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 29(1), 138–142.. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 29 (1). Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts- transpersonalstudies/vol29/iss1/14 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Book Reviews Christian Gnosis: From St. Paul to Meister Eckhart is something divine, something that belongs, not to a by Wolfgang Smith (Sophia Perennis, 2008). $19.95, man, but to God himself.” ISBN 978-1-59731-092-5 Readers can also note that nondualism is an essential theme presented throughout the entire work Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos and can be found in every authentic sapiential tradition. Although nondualism is often associated with the esoteric “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key or “inner” dimensions of religion, it is correspondingly of gnosis: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that inseparable from exoterism or its “outer” dimensions: “in were entering in ye hindered.” – Luke 11:52 fact, the first finds its consummation in the second.” In Dr. -
A Sage for the Times
The Matheson Trust A Sage for the Times The Role and the Oeuvre of Frithjof Schuon Harry Oldmeadow Published in Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies (Washington DC), 4:2, Winter. If Guénon was the master expositor of metaphysical doctrines and Coomaraswamy the peerless scholar and connoisseur of Oriental art who began his exposition of metaphysics through recourse to the language of artistic forms, Schuon seems like the cosmic intellect itself impregnated by the energy of divine grace surveying the whole of the reality surrounding man and elucidating all the concerns of human existence in the light of sacred knowledge. Seyyed Hossein Nasr1 A Personal Note In the mid-70s I was idly meandering through an Australian weekly magazine which, amongst other things, carried reviews of recently published books from various fields. My eye caught a review of The Sword of Gnosis, an anthology of writings on "Metaphysics, Cosmology, Tradition, Symbolism", edited by Jacob Needleman. The review was sufficiently arresting for me to seek out a copy of the book. It was with growing excitement that I first encountered the writings of several figures whose work I would come to know well over the years ahead—René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, amongst others. But the effect of Schuon's essays was quite mesmeric: here, in the exposition of traditional doctrines and principles, was a clarity, a radiance and a depth which seemed to me, as indeed it still does, to be of a more or less miraculous order. Nasr has written of the appearance of Guénon's first book (Introduction générale à l'étude des doctrines des hindoues, 1921), It was like a sudden burst of lightning, an abrupt intrusion into the modern world of a body of knowledge and a perspective utterly alien to the prevalent climate and world view and completely opposed to all that characterizes the modern mentality.2 This, precisely, is how Schuon's essays struck me. -
Timothy M. E. Scott, Phd Lat I See Myself As a Scholar of Religion, With
Timothy M. E. Scott, PhD LaT I see myself as a scholar of religion, with a broader knowledge of the areas informed by this, in particular philosophy, symbolism, literature and art. A passionate teacher with experience and success at both secondary and tertiary levels, I seek to develop the student’s knowledge, understanding and critical ability. As an author I am interested in the deepest meaning of religion and religious thought. I am committed to promoting good writing through my teaching, editing and mentoring. I am available for these roles in a freelance capacity (timothyscott.com.au/editing). From June 2007 to December 2010 I was employed as the editor-in-chief of Eye of the Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom (EoH), a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in the field of traditional philosophy and religious studies (visit EoH). My editorial work within the PRS program was augmented with lecturing, tutoring, marking, and the examination of Honours and postgraduate theses. To my role as an editor I bring a wide range of interests in the field of religious studies as well as my experience as a proof-reader and copy-editor. I believe that to be a good editor is to engage in an open, honest and respectful relationship. Prior to my position at La Trobe I taught Religious Studies (Yr. 7 - A-level) at Oxford High School, specializing in A-Level Theology, achieving outstanding examination results: seven out of my GCSE cohort received commendations for being in the top ten students for GCSE Religious Studies in the UK in 2006; my last year of AS-level students received an unprecedented 100% A grades, and three of my A2-level students were accepted into Oxbridge courses in the field of Religious Studies/Theology. -
A Revisionist Perspective on Secularisation: Alternative Spiritualities, Globalised Consumer Culture, and Public Spheres1 Adam Possamai
A Revisionist Perspective on Secularisation: Alternative spiritualities, globalised consumer culture, and public spheres1 Adam Possamai The term New Age is highly problematic. During 1996-1997, I interviewed 35 Melboumians who would 'commonly' be described as New Agers. My method of selecting people for interview was via a 'network sampling', i.e. I selected my participants while networking in the milieu; however I did not restrict myself to only one network and I have tried to comprehend the different perspectives and practices of my interviewees to avoid study of this spirituality from a single vantage point. I found my participants involved in many spiritual practices, however each individual tends to specialise in one specific type of activity, such as astrology, automatic writing, Buddhism, channelling, crystals manipulation, feminist spirituality, meditation, naturopathy, . numerology, palmistry, Reiki, spiritualism, Tantrism, tarot cards, or urban shamanism. This list actually understates the diversity of practice. Seventy-one percent of the participants negatively criticised New Age, and nine percent, even if positive towards it, did not consider themselves as New Agers. Some negative comments were: It's like a train labelled New Age and everybody's jumping on it. And it started off very good, a very good term. But now there's a lot of people out trying to make big money on it for all the wrong reasons. And the other thing I find most irritating about the New Age movement is how gullible people are. So I guess I'm a bit of a, you know I'm not your typical New Age, totally immersed in it sort of person ..