Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Iranian philosopher, theologian and Islamic scholar. He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University.
Frithjof Schuon was a Swiss metaphysician of German descent, belonging to the Perennialist or Traditionalist School of thought. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spirituality, religion, anthropology and art, which have been translated into English and many other languages. He was also a painter and a poet.
Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic and scholar, writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founding member of the Temenos Academy.
The Traditionalist or Perennialist School is a group of 20th- and 21st-century thinkers who believe in the existence of a perennial wisdom or perennial philosophy, primordial and universal truths which form the source for, and are shared by, all the major world religions.
Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia that proposes that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship. Proponents of spiritual ecology assert a need for contemporary nature conservation work to include spiritual elements and for contemporary religion and spirituality to include awareness of and engagement in ecological issues.
Hossein Mohyeddin Ghomshei better known as Elahi Ghomshei, is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, author, and lecturer on literature, art, and mysticism.
Martin Lings, also known as Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn, was an English writer, Islamic scholar, and philosopher. A student of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon and an authority on the work of William Shakespeare, he is best known as the author of Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, first published in 1983 and still in print.
Henry Corbin was a French philosopher, theologian, and Iranologist, professor of Islamic studies at the École pratique des hautes études. He was influential in extending the modern study of traditional Islamic philosophy from early falsafa to later and "mystical" figures such as Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi, and Mulla Sadra Shirazi. With works such as Histoire de la philosophie islamique (1964), he challenged the common European view that philosophy in the Islamic world declined after Averroes and Avicenna.
World Wisdom is an independent American publishing company established in 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana. World Wisdom publishes religious and philosophical texts, including the work of authors such as Frithjof Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Joseph Epes Brown, Charles Eastman, Paul Goble, Swami Ramdas, Samdhong Rinpoche, William Stoddart, and Martin Lings.
Brian Keeble is a British author and editor. He is the founder of Golgonooza Press and a co-founder of the Temenos and Temenos Academy.
M. Ali Lakhani, is a writer, lawyer, and editor whose works focus on metaphysics and the perennial principles found in the wisdom traditions of the world.
Keith Barry Critchlow was a British artist, lecturer, author, Sacred Geometer, professor of architecture, and a co-founder of the Temenos Academy in the UK.
Philip Owen Arnould Sherrard was a British author and translator. His work includes translations of Modern Greek poets, and books on Modern Greek literature and culture, metaphysics, theology, art and aesthetics. In England he was influential in making major Greek poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries known. Sherrard was a practising Eastern Orthodox Christian and was responsible, along with Kallistos Ware and G. E. H. Palmer, for the first full translation of the Philokalia into English. He also wrote prolifically on theological and philosophical themes, describing what he believed to be a social and spiritual crisis occurring in the developed world, specifically modern attitudes towards the biophysical environment from a Christian and perennialist perspective.
The Matheson Trust is an educational charity based in London dedicated to further and disseminate the study of comparative religion, especially from the point of view of the underlying harmony of the major religious and philosophical traditions of the world.
The Temenos Academy Review is a journal published in London by the Temenos Academy since 1998. As per the academy, "The Review comprises a mixture of papers given at the Academy and new work, including poetry, art, and reviews." Its predecessor, Temenos, was published from 1981 to 1992 and inspired The Prince of Wales to sponsor the creation of the Temenos Academy in 1990.
Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi was an author of books on the Toledano Tradition of Kabbalah, a teacher of the discipline, with a worldwide following, and a founding member of the Kabbalah Society.
Knowledge and the Sacred is a 1981 book by the Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr. It was originally presented as his Gifford Lectures, which he delivered in 1981. The book is an exposition of perennial philosophy and has been described as a summa of the traditional perspective. It reflects Nasr's desire to revive what he refers to as the sacred quality of knowledge as opposed to knowledge based on sense perception and reason.
In perennial philosophy, scientia sacra or sacred science is a form of spiritual knowledge that lies at the heart of both divine revelations and traditional sciences, embodying the very essence of every sacred tradition. It recognizes sources of knowledge beyond those accepted by modern epistemology, such as divine revelations and intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition is believed to allow access to an innate knowledge of God, which is to be reawakened through the use of human intellect. The principles and doctrines of scientia sacra are derived from reason, revelation, and intellectual intuition, with the conviction that these sources of knowledge can be reconciled in a hierarchical order, and applied in the human quest to understand different orders of reality. Its objective is to show how the transmitted, intellectual, and physical sciences are related and unified within the framework of metaphysics, as traditionally defined.
Resacralization of nature is a term used in environmental philosophy to describe the process of restoring the sacred quality of nature. The primary assumption is that nature has a sanctified aspect that has become lost in modern times as a result of the secularization of contemporary worldviews. These secular worldviews are said to be directly responsible for the spiritual crisis in "modern man", which has ultimately resulted in the current environmental degradation. This perspective emphasizes the significance of changing human perceptions of nature through the incorporation of various religious principles and values that connect nature with the divine. The Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr first conceptualized the theme of resacralization of nature in contemporary language, which was later expounded upon by a number of theologians and philosophers including Alister McGrath, Sallie McFague and Rosemary Radford Ruether.
In traditionalist philosophy, resacralization of knowledge is the reverse of the process of secularization of knowledge. The central premise is that knowledge is intimately connected to its perceived divine source—God or the Ultimate Reality—which has been severed in the modern era. The process of resacralization of knowledge seeks to reinstate the role of intellect—the divine faculty believed to exist in every human being—above and beyond that of reason, as well as to revive the role of traditional metaphysics in acquiring knowledge—especially knowledge of God—by drawing on sacred traditions and sacred science that uphold divine revelations and the spiritual or gnostic teachings of all revealed religions. It aims to restore the primordial connection between God and humanity, which is believed to have been lost. To accomplish this, it relies on the framework of tawhid, which is developed into a comprehensive metaphysical perspective emphasizing the transcendent unity of all phenomena. Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr elaborated on the process of resacralization of knowledge in his book Knowledge and the Sacred, which was presented as Gifford Lectures in 1981.
