Our friends at Sacred Web have just released a new issue, packed with interesting articles. Here is their announcement:

Volume 27 of Sacred Web is now available through www.sacredweb.com. Please follow this link for abstracts, links to download free contents and more information.

This volume contains the following articles:

Editorial:
On Freedom and Necessity
by M. Ali Lakhani

A Qur’anic Response to ‘An Inconvenient Truth’
by Reza Shah-Kazemi

Majma’ an-Nurayn: Fatimah in the Esoteric Shi’ite Tradition
by ‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney

The Metaphysics of the Common Word:
A Dialogue of Eckhartian and Isma’ili Gnosis
Part Two: Intellectual and Emanative Reality
by Khalil Andani

Were René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon Biased against Love?
by Charles Upton

On Traditionalism, Vedanta and Hinduism
by Renaud Fabbri

Barzakh, the Opened Field
by Tom Cheetham

Special Section on Poetry: A Selection of Poems
by Charles Upton, Barry McDonald, Iain T. Benson, and M. Ali Lakhani

In Memoriam: Algis Uždavinys (1962-2010) and his Antipodean Sojourn
by Harry Oldmeadow

Book Reviews

Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World
By HRH The Prince of Wales, with Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly
Reviewed by M. Ali Lakhani

Allah: A Christian Response
By Miroslav Volf
Reviewed by M. Ali Lakhani

Sufism and the Way of Blame: Hidden Sources of a Sacred Psychology
By Yannis Toussulis,
Foreword by Robert Abdul Hayy Darr
Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

Letters to the Editor

Confessions of a Lutheran Perennialist
by Larry Rinehart

A Question on Schuon
by Charles Upton

Sacred Web is a journal that presents traditional wisdom from all faith traditions and explores the relevance of this wisdom to issues of the modern world. You may click here to go directly to this issue’s page.

We are grateful to have in our audio library one new lecture by Archbishop Rowan Williams: “The Finality of Jesus Christ,” elucidating the doctrine of the finality and uniqueness of Christ in a way that shows its potential of divine compassion and understanding within our contemporary interfaith societies.

We are also happy to announce the addition to our audio library of one of the first events sponsored by the trust: the third Martin Lings centenary lecture, delivered by Reza Shah-Kazemi in London in November 2009. “Martin Lings: The Sanctity of Sincerity” is at once a moving testimony and an objective explication of the discreet yet powerful impact of Shaykh Abu Bakr Siraj al-Din, of his unpublished spiritual guidance and of his published works.

In a very illuminating exchange of articles between Gavin D’Costa and John Hick, the notion of “religious pluralism” is probed and found to be misguided, pointing instead, and rigorously, towards the need for a really transcendental understanding at the basis of interfaith approaches. These three valuable texts are now available from our Comparative Religion section, with the addition of another article by Gavin D’Costa, with thanks to the author.

In our Audio library we have a new lecture by Archbishop Rowan Williams, an examination of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity based on the insights of St John of the Cross.

And finally, in our Judaism section, the prominent Jewish scholar Edward Kessler, from the Woolf Institute, shares with us a recent and candid article on the need to carefully reappraise the virtues of Abraham if we are to have real positive engagement between Jews, Christians and Muslims.

With the addition of ten new poems in MP3 format, we have now made available from our audio page all currently extant recordings of Martin Lings reading his own poems. This collection includes all but one of those published in his Collected Poems (available from Archetype). All the poems are free to listen to online or download.

Our Audio Library has been recently enriched with the addition of a lecture by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, on “The Image of Humanity in the Philokalia”, delivered at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in 2010. We plan to be adding other selected talks and sermons by the Archbishop over the oncoming weeks, with thanks to his Press Office.

We are also gratefully making public a double talk on “The Vision of God in the Hebrew Scriptures”, recorded in London in May 2011, delivered jointly by Margaret Barker, and by Jonathan Gorsky of Heythrop College.

Finally, we have some newly uploaded poems by Martin Lings, read by himself, including some of his alliterative poems, like “Midsummer” and “Autumn”.

From now on it is possible to make donations online to support the work of The Matheson trust. Following the link to Charity Choice in our donations page will take you to a secure server where a few standard steps let you donate directly to further our projects. We shall be glad to give detailed information to potential donors who want to sponsor particular projects, be they related to website development, our growing Monographs collection or related events.

We would also like to encourage our current subscribers to spread the word and invite anyone interested to subscribe to our mailing list. It is as easy and unobtrusive as adding an email address to the little box on the right. No spam email, no commercial offers, only our fortnightly or monthly updates with information about our ongoing activities, especially in relation to our online library.

Our library keeps growing slowly and steadily, and we encourage you to have a look at some of our recent additions:

In the Audio section we have three new poems by Martin Lings, read by himself, including “The Legend of Seyis and Halcyon”.

In the Far Eastern section of our Library, you will now find a beautiful edition of The Book of Tea, a well-known seminal work by Okakura Kakuzo.

The Editorial Board of Dilatato Corde, the International, multi-lingual journal of DIMMID (Monastic Interreligious Dialogue), recently granted us permission to share through our library some of their articles. The first fruit if this exchange is an article by Rev Michael Ipgrave: “The God Who Provokes Us All to Holiness”. Available through our Christianity section.

We are pleased to announce that our growing online library is now searchable (courtesy of Google), thus providing an invaluable research tool to all those interested in our selection of documents and texts.

You will find a new small search box on top of our Library menu, which allows you to do a basic search, and also to take advantage of Google advanced search conventions: you can search complete phrases, use wildcards and various search operators as required.

Other recent updates to our site include small but significant additions to the About Us section, including a dedicated page for donations, and some new content for our Links and Christianity pages.

The fourth title in our Monographs series is now available:

The Gospel of Thomas
by Samuel Zinner,
with the subtitle:
In the Light of Early Jewish, Christian and Islamic Esoteric Trajectories.

This is a new translation of the short collection of Christic aphorisms found among the Gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi in 1945, with attention to Greek and Coptic sources. The translation itself is preceded by the bulk of the book, where light is shed on the many threads that converged to produce works as the Gospel in question, and on the intricate relation between Judaism and early Christianity, especially between their respective esoterisms. This book is full of fresh and at times unexpected insights on the nature of early Christian and Kabbalistic cosmologies, including several sections on the little known Ebionite community and faith.

An excerpt of the book can be downloaded from our Publications page, and it can be ordered from booksellers worldwide, both through the internet and through wholesale and retail bookshops.

We are happy to announce the publication of our first three Monographs: they include some translations and some original English works, ranging from the deep philological analysis to the lighthearted and lyrical Jewish parable.

Louis Massignon: The Vow and the Oath
by Patrick Laude, translated by Edin Q. Lohja.

The Living Palm Tree: Parables, Stories, and Teachings from the Kabbalah
by Mario Satz, translated by Juan Acevedo.

Christianity & Islam:
Essays on Ontology and Archetype
by Samuel Zinner.

Details and excerpts of the books can be found in our Publications page. They can be ordered from booksellers worldwide, both through the internet and through wholesale and retail bookshops.