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A Note on Contributors
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales
His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (The Dalai Lama)
H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad
George Adams
Aziuddin Ahmad
Michael S. Allen
Nuno Marques de Almeida
Khalil Andani
David Applebaum
Mateus Soares de Azevedo
Karen Armstrong
Osman Bakar
Laleh Bakhtiar
Brooks Barber
Lynn C. Bauman
Iain T. Benson
Deborah and Jonathan Bell
Richard Berquist
Mahmoud Bina
Rodney Blackhirst
Robert Bolton
Mark Bonadio
Jean Borella
Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
Steven D. Boyer
Michael Bradburn-Ruster
Magnus Bradshaw
Victor Bruno
Titus Burckhardt
Raul Burneo
Yves Cadoux
Stratford Caldecott
Justin Cancelliere
John Carey
Hujjat al-Islam Sheikh ‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney
Fatima Jane Casewit
Tom Cheetham
Naima Chikhaoui
William C. Chittick
Emma Clark
Philip Connaughton
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)
Rama P. Coomaraswamy
Robert Dickson Crane
James S. Cutsinger
Maria Massi Dakake
Paul Davies
Wynand de Beer
Julian Droogan
Waleed El-Ansary
Renaud Fabbri
Adib Faiz
Joseph Fitzgerald
Michael Oren Fitzgerald
Andrew Frisardi
Marty Glass
Emily Victoria Hanlon
Virginia Gray Henry
John Ahmed Herlihy
Stephen Hirtenstein
Veena R. Howard
Alice Hunsberger
Thomas Garrett Isham
Nigel Jackson
Imad Jafar
Brian Fletcher Johnson
Fr. Silouan Justiniano
Ibrahim Kalin
Karim H. Karim
Siham Karami
Brian Keeble
Abdullah Khademi
Atif Khalil
Shahram Khodaverdian
Michelle R. Kimball
Jerome Klotz
Fatos Kopliku
D. Scott Korn
M. Ali Lakhani
James Larking
Patrick Laude
“Elie Lemoine”
Leonard Lewisohn
Roger Lipsey
Joseph Lumbard
Richard McCombs
Barry McDonald
Stephenie Madany
Sarah Magalhães
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić
Zachary Markwith
Alberto Martin
Jean-Louis Michon
Peter Milward
Alvin Moore, Jr.
Peter Moore
James Winston Morris
Sachiko Murata
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Ian Richard Netton
Noraini M. Noor
Kenneth Oldmeadow
Marilyn Prever
John Paraskevopoulos
Ángel Pascual-Rodrigo
Gauthier Pierozak
Gustavo Polit
Alberto Vasconcellos Queiroz
William W. Quinn
Robert R. Reilly
Kevin Richtscheid
Larry Rinehart
Patrick Ringgenberg
Marek Rostkowski
Rebecca Rozelle-Stone
Mohammed Rustom
Amir Sabzevary
Peter Samsel
Donald H. Sanborn
Catherine Schuon
Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998)
Timothy Scott
José Segura
Darius Sepehri
Reza Shah-Kazemi
Shiraz Sheikh
Rana Shieh
Lalita Sinha
Ian Skelly
Huston Smith
Wolfgang Smith
Margaret Somerville
Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
P.S. Sri
Diana Steigerwald
William Stoddart
Lucian W. Stone, Jr.
Rick Tucker
Sir John Tavener
Jennifer Doane Upton
Charles Upton
Algis Uždavinys
Deon Valodia
Brian M. Welter
Syed A.H. Zaidi
Philip Zaleski
Mehrdad Mahmoudi Zarandi
Alireza K. Ziarani
George Adams
George Adams earned his MA and Ph.D. in History of Religions from Fordham University in New York. Dr. Adams has taught Religion and Philosophy at Susquehanna University and Lycoming College. In addition to various journal publications, Dr. Adams is the author of The Deathbed Sutra of the Buddha and The Structure and Meaning of Badarayana’s Brahma Sutras.
Aziuddin Ahmad
Aziuddin Ahmad (now retired) was professor at a public university, distinguished fellow at a university business school, and rector & professor at a private university college. Before entering academia, he was for over 20 years working in the banking and financial services sector in both private and public corporations. His undergraduate education was in electrical & electronics engineering, doctoral degree in reactor neutron physics. His passion is in understanding the quantum conception of man, and the meaning of man gifted existence with the Breath of the Merciful.
Michael S. Allen
Michael S. Allen is Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia.
Nuno Marques de Almeida
Nuno Marques de Almeida has contributed as assistant editor in the Portuguese perennialist/traditionalist blog Sabedoria Perene. He worked as a civil engineer in the construction industry and is presently an Assistant Professor in the University of Lisbon.
Khalil Andani
Khalil Andani is a Chartered Accountant (CA) and graduated with Bachelors of Math (BMath) and Masters of Accounting (MAcc) degrees from the University of Waterloo in 2008. He is a contemporary Isma'ili Muslim thinker whose areas of focus include theology, philosophy, metaphysics, and hermeneutics (ta'wil)—on which he also writes and delivers presentations. Through his literary and intellectual activities, Khalil seeks to revitalize the Shi'a Muslim intellectual tradition of philosophy and esoteric thought and unveil the common ground between Islam and other faiths. He also studies the writings of the Perennialist school in light of comparative metaphysics and theology, focusing on how such knowledge can inform and enrich the dialogue, discernment and practice of faith in the modern age. He can be contacted at kandani@gmail.com. Questions and feedback are greatly appreciated.
David Applebaum
Acclaimed author of many books including Everyday Spirits and The Stop, David Applebaum is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, The College at New Paltz. He is the series editor for the SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions, and is also the editor of the journal Parabola.
Mateus Soares de Azevedo
Mateus Soares de Azevedo is a Brazilian writer and journalist who authored eight books, published in Brazil, the US, Spain, and Latin America. Among them, Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy (2006) and Men of a Single Book: Fundamentalism in Islam and Christianity (2010), which won the "Comparative Religion" category of the "USA Best Books 2011". He has a Master's degree in the History of Religions by the University of São Paulo, and is a post graduate in International Relations from George Washington University. He is the author of some one hundred articles and essays on perennial philosophy and on comparative mysticism. He translated and published in Portuguese several books by the perennialist masters Frithjof Schuon, William Stoddart, and Martin Lings. He is a sought-after public speaker and has lectured at major universities and institutions in Brazil and abroad. He lives with his wife and two children in the city of São Paulo.
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong, a former nun, studied at Oxford, and has taught at the Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and Teachers in London. A renowned author of many acclaimed works (including A History of God, which was on the New York Times best-seller list for over a year, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, Jerusalem: One City, Two Faiths, and Holy War: The Crusades and their impact on Today’s World, and various anthologies including Tongues of Fire: An Anthology of Religious Experience), she is also a much sought-after speaker. She has participated (along with Dr. Nasr) in the television series, Genesis, hosted by Bill Moyers. Her recent book is titled Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Osman Bakar
Osman Bakar, who earned a doctorate in Islamic philosophy from Temple University, Philadelphia is currently Chair Professor at Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Centre of Islamic Studies (SOASCIS) at the University of Brunei Darussalam. He was formerly Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) of University of Malaya, Malaysia Chair of Southeast Asian Islam at the Prince Talal al-Waleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, Washington DC and Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO), International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, Malaysia (IAIS). An Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Malaya, he was also the founder of the University’s Center for Civilizational Dialogue (1996). Dr. Bakar is an author of 18 books and more than 300 articles on various aspects of Islamic thought and civilization, particularly Islamic science and philosophy and Islam in Southeast Asia. He was a member of the Council of 100 Leaders of the West-Islamic World Initiative for Dialogue founded by the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland. He has been named several times among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. In 1994 he was made a Dato’ by HH the Sultan of Pahang and in 2000 he was a Datukship by the Malaysian King.
Laleh Bakhtiar
Laleh Bakhtiar has a BA in History from Chatham College, Pittsburgh, PA, MA in Philosophy, MA in Counseling Psychology and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and is also a Clinical Psychotherapist licensed in the State of Illinois. She is co-author of A Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture and author of SUFI Expressions of the Mystic Quest as well as three volumes of God’s Will Be Done, a book on Moral Healing. Through the works on psychology, she has become the leading authority on Avicenna's Psychology and the Sufi origins of the Enneagram. She is Director of the Institute of Traditional Psychology and Resident Scholar at Kazi Publications.
Brooks Barber
Brooks Barber, from Dallas, Texas, is currently in graduate studies at The George Washington University in Washington, DC as an M.A. candidate under Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. He is completing a Master’s thesis on the via negativa (apohatic theology) from the master-works of Meister Eckhart, Ibn al-‘Arabi, and Shankara. Brooks comes from an anabaptist background, and he now uses the Sophia perennis to engage all sacred Traditions.
Lynn C. Bauman
Lynn C. Bauman was born into a strict Anabaptist tradition, and was introduced to traditional metaphysics and Islamic philosophy while teaching and studying at the University of Tehran under Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Later he continued his studies in philosophy and hermeneutics, receiving an M.A. degree from UCLA and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Arlington where his focus was on the hermeneutics of mystical discourse. He has taught comparative religion, ascetical theology, spirituality and hermeneutics at various academic institutions throughout North America. He is the author of texts on spirituality, and serves as lecturer, teacher and retreat master. He is based in Texas.
Iain T. Benson
Iain T. Benson is a lawyer in British Columbia, and the Executive Director of the Centre for Cultural Renewal in Ottawa, Canada. The Centre’s principal aim is to explain the importance of religions to culture and of culture to religions.
Deborah and Jonathan Bell
Deborah and Jonathan Bell have traveled, lived and worked much of their lives in the Far and Middle East, and in Morocco and Bangladesh. Their appreciation of the sacred and beautiful in these traditional worlds they owe greatly to the writings of the Traditionalists which they feel has enabled them to be at home in the Spirit everywhere..
Richard Berquist
Richard Berquist is a retired professor of philosophy from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Berquist grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and attended what was then the College of St. Thomas. He graduated from there in 1954. He went on to obtain a license in philosophy from the University of Laval, and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, having completed a doctoral thesis on the natural law theory of Giorgio del Vecchio. Dr. Berquist has taught at Marquette University, at St. John’s University on Long Island, and, since 1965, at what is now the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. He retired from teaching in the Spring of 2001, but remains intellectually active. He is currently working on a translation of and commentary on St. Thomas’ Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle.
Mahmoud Bina
Mahmoud Bina received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Göttingen, Germany, in 1969. Dissatisfied with the emptiness of modern philosophy, he took an interest in the writings of the perennialist author Frithjof Schuon, in whom he found his lifelong source of inspiration. He later moved to Switzerland and studied mathematics at the University of Lausanne, where he completed a master’s degree program in 1973. After a teaching career at the University of Lausanne, he accepted a faculty position at Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, in 1977, a position that he held until his retirement in 2006. In addition to teaching a wide range of courses in mathematics, he taught a number of courses on the history and philosophy of science. His forthcoming Philosophy of Science in the Light of the Perennial Wisdom, co-authored by Alireza K. Ziarani, will be published by World Wisdom in November 2020.
Rodney Blackhirst
Rodney Blackhirst teaches Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia, specializing in the monotheist traditions and the medieval order. He has a wide range of interests in art, religion, philosophy and especially cosmological sciences such as astrology and alchemy.
Robert Bolton
Robert Bolton was educated in the sciences, and developed a strong interest in Traditional metaphysics, obtaining from Exeter University the degrees of M.Phil and Ph.D, with a special interest in the areas of free will, and personal identity and the soul. He is the author of three books, The Order of the Ages: World History in the Light of a Universal Cosmogony; Person, Soul and Identity; and The Logic of Spiritual Values.
Mark Bonadio
Mark Bonadio is an independent writer and poet who has studied the writings of Frithjof Schuon and other perennialists for the past 20 years.
Jean Borella
Jean Borella, a French religious philosopher, has written extensively on theology, religious ideas and symbolism. His key writings have been compiled, edited and translated by G. John Champoux under the title, The Secret of the Christian Way: A Contemplative Ascent through the Writings of Jean Borella.
Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
Rev. Bourgeault is Director of the Contemplative Society, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, and an adjunct faculty member at Vancouver School of Theology. A well-known conference and retreat leader, she is the author of many articles and audiotapes on the Christian contemplative tradition, and has been a regular contributor to Gnosis, Parabola, Common Boundary, and other journals of the Western spiritual traditions. Her first book, Love is Stronger than Death, was published by Bell Tower in October 1999.
Steven D. Boyer
Assistant professor of theology at Eastern University, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Carolina in 1983; a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1989, where he received the Division Award in Theology; and a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1996. He began teaching at Eastern University in 1998, where he primarily teaches courses in Bible and modern theology. Dr. Boyer has authored a review essay commending and critiquing Terence Nichol’s That All May Be One: Hierarchy and Participation in the Church, which was published in 1997.
Michael Bradburn-Ruster
Michael Bradburn-Ruster has published poetry, fiction, translations, and scholarly works in international journals including Able Muse, Sacred Web, Janus Head, Cincinnati Review, Bitter Oleander, Antiphon (UK), Allegro, Prick of the Spindle, Grey Sparrow Journal, Eastown Fiction, Damazine (Syria), and Blue Lake Review. He is a frequent contributor to Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria) and Dappled Things. Since receiving his doctorate from UC Berkeley, he has taught literature, philosophy, comparative religions and mythology in California, Oregon, and Arizona. His book The Angel or the Beast (University Press of the South, 1998) explores the interplay of philosophy, mysticism, theology and literature in the Spanish Renaissance. His recent collection of poems, The Shadow of Gabriel’s Wing, was published in 2021.
Magnus Bradshaw
Magnus Bradshaw has an academic background in Religious Studies and teaches the subject at High School level in London. His interests include Sufism in the West, eschatology and the writings of Frithjof Schuon.
Victor Bruno
Victor Bruno is a writer, translator, and researcher based in Brazil. He is the author of A Imagem Estilhaçada. His writings, mainly on philosophy of art, symbolism, and contemporary cultural matters, have appeared in outlets such as Voegelin View, The Remnant, MUBI’s Notebook, The Political Science Review, Interpretation, and numerous academic and popular publications around the world.
Titus Burckhardt
Titus Burckhardt, from a distinguished Basle family, is the great-nephew of the art historian Jacob Burckhardt. He is the author of several books on cultural themes, including Mirror of the Intellect (State University of New York Press, 1987) and Chartres and the Birth of the Cathedral (World Wisdom Books, Bloomington, Indiana, 1995).
Raul Burneo
Raul Burneo holds a doctorate in Spanish from Georgetown University. Currently, he teaches in universities in Lima, Peru, where he lives. He has published two collections of poems, and an anthology and critical study of the work of the Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma.
Yves Cadoux
Yves Cadoux, author and poet, earned a degree in linguistics from Brigham Young University. For some fifty‐years he has delved into religion, mysticism, and esoterism. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Stratford Caldecott
Stratford Caldecott is a director of the Center for Faith & Culture at Plater College in Oxford, and of the Chesterton Institute. He is also a publisher of Christian academic books with the Edinburgh firm T&T Clark, and writes for a variety of Catholic magazines and journals, including the international review ‘Communio’. He is the publisher of the journal “Second Spring”.
Justin Cancelliere
Justin Cancelliere is a student of religion and philosophy, with a special interest in the Islamic and Platonic-Aristotelian traditions.
John Carey
John Carey is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy and editor of the Temenos Academy Review. A graduate of Harvard University, he subse‑quently taught as lecturer and associate professor in its Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures. Since 1995 he has been a lecturer in the Department of Early and Medieval Irish, University College Cork, Ireland.
Hujjat al-Islam Sheikh ‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney
Hujjat al-Islam Sheikh ‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney (born Seth Carney) died at the age of 28 on July 8, 2007. He was a Lecturer in Near East and Asian Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He earned an MA and Ph.D. from the University of London School of Oriental and Asian Studies. His dissertation dealt with the ghulah tradition amongst early Twelver Shi’ites. He converted to Islam as a teenager and entered the Shia Islamic clergy in London in 2001. He had achieved the highest rank of any United States-born member of the ulama. In the last years of his life he was developing a theology of unity emphasizing multiple paths to God. This led him to embrace Ismailism and Sufism as well as Twelver Shi’ism and to a strong appreciation of Christian, Sikh, and Buddhist mysticism.
Fatima Jane Casewit
Fatima Jane Casewit obtained an M.Phil in education from the University of Manchester and works at a girls' education project in Morocco (Morocco Education for Girls) as an information and advocacy specialist. A wife and mother, she has lived in the Muslim world for over 20 years after completing a degree in Chinese language and literature at the University of Durham (UK). She has spent a good part of her life studying tradition and metaphysics and has translated AbdulWahed Radhu’s book “Caravane Tibetaine” into English under the title, “Tibetan Caravans”.
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales
His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, is actively interested in traditional thought and its applications to the problems of the modern world. Through various foundations and charities, including The Prince’s Trust (established in 1976), Prince Charles has promoted improvement in the fields of ecology, agriculture, architecture, and the arts, and is an advocate of pluralism and the respect for sacred traditions. He is the patron of the Temenos Academy, which is dedicated to the “perennial philosophy”.
Tom Cheetham
Tom Cheetham is the author of three books on the implications of Henry Corbin’s work for contemporary spirituality: The World Turned Inside Out, Green Man–Earth Angel, and After Prophecy—[the Corbin Trilogy, as it is known, was reviewed in Sacred Web 23]. Cheetham is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy and was Associate Professor and Director of Environmental Studies at Wilson College in Pennsylvania. He maintains a blog at http://tomcheetham.blogspot.com
Naima Chikhaoui
Naima Chikhaoui holds a doctorate degree in cultural and social anthropology and teaches at the “Institut des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine National”, attached to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Rabat. She is also trained as a clinical psychologist. Her special interests include the mystical dimensions of Islam and Arabo-Muslim culture and the spiritual lives of Moroccan women. She has published many articles on women and the sacred space of Islam.
William C. Chittick
William C. Chittick is a renowned translator and expositor of Islamic mystical texts and poetry. He was born in Connecticut, finished his BA at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and completed a Ph.D. in Persian literature at Tehran University in 1974. He taught comparative religion in the humanities department at Tehran's Aryamehr Technical University and left Iran just before the revolution in 1979. For three years he was assistant editor at the Encyclopaedia Iranica, and from 1983 he has taught religious studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he is currently a professor in the Department of Comparative Studies. He is the author of many books on Islam, including Vision of Islam (co-authored with Sachiko Murata) (1994), Sufism: A Short Introduction (2000), and The Heart of Islamic Philosophy: The Quest for Self-Knowledge in the Teachings of Afdal al-Dîn Kâshânî (2001), as well as several works on Rumi and Ibn al-‘Arabi (Professor Chittick is an Honorary Member of the Ibn al-‘Arabi Socity), including The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (1983), The Sufi path of knowledge: Ibn al-`Arabi's metaphysics of imagination (1989), The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-`Arabî's Cosmology (1998), and Me and Rumi: The Autobiography of Shems i-Tabrizi (2004) (for which he was honored with the World Prize for Book of the Year in Iran in 2005).
Emma Clark
Emma Clark is a teacher and researcher at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts. A designer of gardens and an authority on Islamic gardens, her writings include the illustrated monograph, ‘Underneath Which Rivers Flow—The Symbolism of the Islamic Garden’, and the ‘The Art of the Islamic Garden’, an introduction to the design, symbolism and making of an Islamic garden.
Philip Connaughton
Philip Connaughton has been teaching Art and Design in Northern Ireland for over 20 years. He now devotes most of his time to his main interests: the study of religions, philosophy, metaphysics and music.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)
Born in Ceylon of a Tamil father (Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy) and an English mother, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy received his early formal education in England, studying botany and geology at London University. After graduating with a doctoral degree in mineralogy, Coomaraswamy moved 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. In India, he formed close ties with the Tagore family and was influential in the literary renaissance and the independence movement. 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.
Rama P. Coomaraswamy
Rama P. Coomaraswamy, son of the renowned perennialist writer Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, received his early education in India in an orthodox Hindu setting. Graduating from Harvard University with a major in Geology, he went on to Medical School, graduating in 1959. He spent 8 years in post graduate training and then some 30 years as a Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon, holding the position of Assistant Professor of Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as well as Chief of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Stamford Hospital. For five years he was Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the St. Thomas Aquinas (Lefebrist) Seminary. He has published extensively both in the fields of medicine and theology. His works include, The Destruction of the Christian Tradition (1972) and The Invocation of the Name of Jesus (1999). His website is available here.
Robert Dickson Crane
Robert Dickson Crane was the principal Foreign Policy Adviser to Richard Nixon (1962-1967), and in 1969 became the Deputy Director (for Planning) of the National Security Council. In 1977 he was the Principal Economic and Budget Adviser to the Finance Minister in the Emirate of Bahrain, and in 1981 was appointed by Ronald Reagan as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. Dr. Crane founded the Harvard International Law Review and was the first president of the Harvard International Law Society. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books and over 50 professional articles on comparative legal systems, global strategy, and information management. He is currently University Professor and Director Designate of the Center for Holistic Education, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, Qatar Foundation. From January, 2012 to January 2014 he was Director of its Center for the Study of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies, focused on the origins, state of the art, and future potentials of the Arab Spring. A Muslim convert, Dr. Crane has held positions in many Muslim associations, including Director of Da’wa at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C. and was the Founding President of the American Muslim Bar Association.
James S. Cutsinger
James S. Cutsinger (Ph.D., Harvard) is Professor of Theology and Religious Thought at the University of South Carolina. A widely recognized authority on the Sophia Perennis and the traditionalist school of comparative religious thought, he is best known for his work on Frithjof Schuon. Professor Cutsinger serves as secretary to the Foundation for Traditional Studies, and he is currently editing the Essential Works of Frithjof Schuon. In addition to numerous articles, he has authored two books: The Form of Transformed Vision: Coleridge and the Knowledge of God and Advice to the Serious Seeker: Meditations on the Teaching of Frithjof Schuon. He is also editor of Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East and Reclaiming the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox in Dialogue. His website is available here.
Maria Massi Dakake
Maria Massi Dakake holds a B.A. in Government from Cornell University (1990) and an M.A. (1998) and Ph.D. (2000) in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where she teaches courses on Islam and other Near Eastern religious traditions, as well as courses on women in religion, and is one of the founding faculty members of the interdisciplinary Islamic Studies Program recently established at George Mason. Her research interests lie in the fields of Islamic theology, philosophy and mysticism, with a particular interest in Shi`ite and Sufi traditions and in women’s issues. She has published articles and presented papers on early Shi`ism, Islamic philosophy and Sufism. She most recently completed a book entitled, The Charismatic Community: Shi`ite Identity in Early Islam and is working on an edited volume on women and Sufism.
Paul Davies
Paul Davies is the author of Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition (1998) and The Ideal Real: Beckett's Fiction and Imagination (1994), and has contributed to numerous books and journals including Temenos. Presently on the faculty of Humanities at the University of Ulster in Ireland, his work has sought to bring the perspectives of esoteric education into the study of culture.
Wynand de Beer
Wynand de Beer is a South African who taught in Cape Town until he moved to Ireland, where he completed his Master’s dissertation on the philosophy of Eriugena. This was followed by doctoral research in Hellenic philosophy and evolutionary theory, on which his book From Logos to Bios (Angelico, 2018) is based. His book Reality: From Metaphysics to Metapolitics was published in 2019.
Julian Droogan
Julian Droogan is a lecturer, researcher and tutor employed on an “ad hoc” basis in the department of studies in religion at the University of Sydney.
Waleed El-Ansary
Waleed El-Ansary is the Helal, Hisham and Laila Edris El-Swedey University Chair in Islamic Studies at Xavier University. He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic and Religious Studies from George Washington University and M.A. in Economics from the University of Maryland. His latest publication is “The Need for a New Economic Paradigm: Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Islamic Economics” in Voices of Three Generations: Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Renaud Fabbri
Renaud Fabbri is the director of the Perennialist website religioperennis.org. He received a M.A. in Philosophy from La Sorbonne IV (Paris, France) and a M.A. in Comparative Religion from Miami University (Ohio, USA). Born in France, he is currently living in the US.
Adib Faiz
Adib Faiz graduated with a double major in English and History with a first class in History from the University of Adelaide. In 2014, he was awarded the Mares-Eaden prize for Shakespeare and Early Modern Literary Studies for his article, ‘The Fool and The Father: Father Time as an approach to Feste’. His honours thesis was entitled ‘As in Heaven, So in Earth: The Gothic Cathedral and the Challenges of the High Middle Ages’. In addition, he has presented a paper entitled ‘Of Mosques and Men: Reconstructing Tunku’s Model for Malaysian Muslims’. He has wideranging interests, including religious history, the Middle Ages, sacred art and architecture, philosophy, and literature. He has a great love of Perennialist scholarship, particularly the works of Frithjof Schuon, Dr. Martin Lings, Titus Burckhardt, and the talks of Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Joseph Fitzgerald
Joseph A. Fitzgerald studied Comparative Religion at Indiana University, where he also earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. He is a professional editor whose publications include The Way and The Mountain: Tibet, Buddhism, and Tradition, Honen the Buddhist Saint: Essential Writings and Official Biography, and Of the Land and the Spirit: The Essential Lord Northbourne on Ecology and Religion. He lives with his wife and daughter in Bloomington, Indiana.
Michael Oren Fitzgerald
Michael Oren Fitzgerald holds a BA, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and a JD, cum laude, from Indiana University. He has written and edited many publications on American Indian spirituality, and has taught Religious Traditions of the North American Indians in Indiana University. Mr. Fitzgerald has been an adopted member of the Thomas Yellowtail family and the Crow tribe since 1972. He is also the editor of World Wisdom Book's 2003 publication Indian Spirit.
Andrew Frisardi
Andrew Frisardi is an American writer, translator, and editor. Born in Boston, he grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts, and earned degrees from Boston University and Syracuse University. Frisardi’s poems, translations, and essays and reviews have appeared in numerous print and online venues, including the Atlantic Monthly, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, New Criterion, New Republic, New Yorker; as well as various anthologies. In 2004 he was awarded the Academy of American Poets Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award book prize for The Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti. Frisardi is a translator and independent scholar of Dante, and is a member of the Dante Society of America. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013 for his work on a new annotated translation of Dante’s Convivio. He is a member of and occasional lecturer at Temenos Academy.
H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad
H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad was educated at Harrow School, received his BA (Summa Cum Laude) from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He served as Cultural Secretary and Adviser for Tribal Affairs to the late H.M. King Hussein, and currently serves as Personal Envoy and Special Adviser to H.M. King Abdullah II. He is also (part-time) Associate Professor of Islamic Philosophy at Aal al-Bayt University in Jordan, and the author of a number of books and articles including The Tribes of Jordan at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century.
Marty Glass
Marty Glass, author, poet, and spiritual pilgrim, is a self-styled "veteran of the Sixties" who found his way through various cultural and counter-cultural influences, to a spiritual path influenced by the Vedantic tradition. He studied English at Columbia, where he twice won the University's prestigious Poetry Prize. His books include Eastern Light in Western Eyes: A Portrait of the Practice of Devotion, YUGA: An Anatomy of our Fate, and The Sandstone Papers: On the Crisis of Contemporary Life.
Emily Victoria Hanlon
Emily Victoria Hanlon is a studying for her doctorate in Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, where the focus of her research is contemporary Sufism and gender. She holds two master’s degrees, one from the University of Toronto and the second from San Francisco State University, where she completed a master’s thesis titled ‘Existential Meaning in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bhagavad-Gita’. She teaches humanities, religion and philosophy classes in Oakland, California.
His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (The Dalai Lama)
His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, is both the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. Following the invasion of Tibet by the communist-inspired Chinese Army in 1959 and the impending threat on his life, he escaped into exile and has since resided in Dharmsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-exile. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and an author of numerous books and essays, including Kindness, Clarity and Insight (1984), A Human Approach to World Peace (1984), and Ocean of Wisdom (1989).
Virginia Gray Henry
Virginia Gray Henry lectures and writes on the spirituality of the world's sacred traditions and has published in this field for many years. Founder and trustee of the Islamic Texts Society and former director of Quinta Essentia Publications, she currently directs Fons Vitae Press and is a consulting editor for Parabola.
John Ahmed Herlihy
Born in Massachusetts and educated at Boston University and Columbia University in New York City, John Ahmed Herlihy became Muslim nearly 25 years ago while teaching English at a university in the Middle East. He has written a number of books including In Search of the Truth dealing with his conversion to Islam and Veils and Keys, in which he explores the possibility of pursuing a life of spirituality in a thoroughly materialist and anti-spiritual world. His new book is entitled Near and Distant Horizons: An Inquiry into the Sources of Traditional Knowledge. He lives in the sultanate of Oman.
Stephen Hirtenstein
Stephen Hirtenstein is Editor of the Journal, Senior Research Fellow of MIAS and director of Anqa Publishing. He has worked on the MIAS archiving project cataloguing the manuscripts of Ibn ʿArabi since 2001. He is an editor on Encyclopaedia Islamica (Institute of Ismaili Studies, London), and teaches Sufism and Sufi poetry at the University of Oxford. He has recently published The Alchemy of Human Happiness (2018), a translation and edition of Ch. 167 of the Futuhat, and is working on a new edition and translation of Ibn ʿArabi’s prayers and a translation of Ibn ‘Arabi’s book on the Divine Names.
Veena R. Howard
Veena R. Howard, is Associate Professor of Asian Religious Traditions in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Fresno. She is also the coordinator of Peace and Conflict Studies Program. She teaches and researches Asian religious traditions, Gandhi’s philosophy, animal ethics, and gender issues in Indian philosophy. She has received many awards and accolades including a Provost’s Promising New faculty award. Her publications include the books, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender (ed.), (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019); Dharma, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Sikh Traditions of India (ed.) (IB Tauris, 2017); and Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action (SUNY Press, 2013), as well as “Oxford Bibliography Article: Mohandas K. Gandhi” (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Alice Hunsberger
Alice Hunsberger received her doctorate in Middle East Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 1992, specializing in Persian and Arabic literatures. She has taught Islamic subjects and history of science in various universities in Iran and the USA, including Arya Mehr University of Technology in Isfahan, Iran, and Hunter College, The City University of New York. Dr. Hunsberger is the author of Nasir Khusraw, The Ruby of Badakhshan: A Portrait of the Persian Poet, Traveller and Scholar (London, 2000), and has contributed many papers to academic conferences and journals. Dr. Hunsberger is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at The Institute of Ismaili Studies where she is preparing an English translation of Nasir Khusraw's Divan.
Thomas Garrett Isham
Thomas Garrett Isham is the author of Geography of the Soul: The Enneagram in Christian Perspective (J. D. Holmes Publishing Group, 2000). He is a licensed lay preacher in the Episcopal Church, Diocese of Western Michigan, and was a newspaper writer and editor for more than three decades.
Nigel Jackson
Nigel Jackson was born in the North of England in 1963 and was educated at a grammar school in Cheshire: he is an artist and illustrator whose special focus of long-standing interest lies in the traditional symbology, sacred aesthetics and spiritual world-view of the High Middle Ages. His illustrations are inspired by the way of the artifex as a creative-initiatic discipline combining contemplation and action. After wandering through the pseudo-esoteric wastelands of occultism he encountered the metaphysical teachings of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon and became formally filiated within the orthodox religious life of Catholic Christianity. He writes about aspects of symbolism, esoterism and Tradition. He is a frequent contributor to Sacred Web, and his art is often on the cover of the journal.
Imad Jafar
Imad Jafar is a Pakistani undergraduate student at New York University, majoring in Art History and minoring in the Study of Religion. Having just begun his third year at college, his primary areas of interest are Christianity and Christian art, Islamic mysticism, Mahayana Buddhism, and the study of traditional symbolism, iconography, and mythology.
Brian Fletcher Johnson
Brian Fletcher Johnson holds three Master’s degrees, in Philosophy, Islamic Studies and Humanities. He is currently studying Persian literature at University of California, Berkeley and his translations of Rumi’s poetry have been published by International Journal of Persian Literature.
Fr. Silouan Justiniano
Fr. Silouan Justiniano obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and later a Master of Fine Arts degree in New York. In 1997 he embraced Eastern Orthodoxy. Drawn to monastic life, in 2002 Fr. Silouan was tonsured a monk and in 2006 he was ordained to the priesthood. He is part of the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross (ROCOR) in Long Island, NY. His obediences in the monastery consist of serving the daily cycle of services and painting icons. It was in the monastery where, through the blessing and guidance of his spiritual father, Fr. Silouan learned icon painting—in particular through researching the medieval egg-tempera techniques. Throughout the years before discovering icon painting, Fr. Silouan experimented with various styles of figuration and abstraction, searching for a visual language to communicate the Sacred in art, but grew disillusioned with the art world’s fragmentary theories and the cult of novelty. The yearning for a way of visually manifesting the Sacred, a way of expressing the transcendent in the immanent, through painting as symbol, was ultimately fulfilled in his encounter with the Icon.
Ibrahim Kalin
Ibrahim Kalin is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross where he teaches courses on Islam, Islamic philosophy and theology, Sufism, Islam and the West, and Islam in the modern world. He is a recipient of the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences (CTNS) Science and Religion Course Program Award, 2002. His publications include articles on Islamic philosophy, Islamic science, and Western perceptions of Islam, and he has translated a number of Islamic philosophical texts from Arabic into English.
Karim H. Karim
Karim H. Karim is Associate Director of Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa. He has a doctorate in communication studies (McGill University), and his earlier academic training was in Islamic studies (Columbia University, McGill University, and Institute of Ismaili Studies). His book, Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence won the 2001 Robinson Prize, and he is currently editing Diasporic Mediascapes: Alternative Spaces of Globalisation?, to be published by Routledge.
Siham Karami
Siham Karami is a poet, essayist, and author of To Love the River (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her work has appeared widely in journals, including The Orison Anthology, Smartish Pace, Tiferet Journal, Presence, and Able Muse. She recently won third place in the Beulah Rose poetry contest. Her longtime study of the Quran and its architecture and structural details draws from a wide range of interests to form a cohesive yet universal vision, ultimately to be published in book form.
Brian Keeble
Brian Keeble, poet, publisher, and philosopher, is the founder of Golgonooza Press and a co-founder of the Temenos and Temenos Academy. His most recent volume of poems, Far From the Dawn (Golgonooza Press, 2014) is reviewed by M. Ali Lakhani in the Summer 2015 volume of Temenos Academy Review (forthcoming). A selection of his essays, published under the title Daily Bread: Art and Work in the Reign of Quantity (Angelico Press, 2015) is edited and introduced by Andrew Frisardi.
Abdullah Khademi
Abdullah Khademi is an independent scholar who studies spirituality in the contemporary world.
Atif Khalil
Atif Khalil is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. He specializes in Islamic theology and metaphysics.
Shahram Khodaverdian
Shahram Khodaverdian is currently a Research Associate at the Centre for Iranian and Islamic Studies, Tehran, and also works as the coordinating editor of the Encyclopaedia Islamica, a projected 16‐volume publication of Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden.
Michelle R. Kimball
Michelle R. Kimball studied at the University of Shiraz and Tehran, and UC Santa Cruz. She later attended UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara for graduate studies. She compiled and edited Muslim Women Throughout the World: A Bibliography with Barbara von Schlegell; edited Quranic and Sunnah Foundations of the Muridiyyah Sufi Order of Mamadou Touré; and has written articles on Sufism (on Rumi and Suhrawardi) and women in Islam. She currently resides in Southeast Asia with her husband and three children, and is completing a book on Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba of Senegal.
Jerome Klotz
Jerome Klotz is an ordained Lutheran minister serving a small rural parish in southwestern Minnesota, where he lives with his beloved wife and five children. He is also currently a PhD candidate through the University of Nottingham. His dissertation is on the philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Fatos Kopliku
Fatos Kopliku, originally from Albania, holds an MAT in Education from American University (Washington, DC), a MS in Genetics from University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA), and a BS in Molecular Biol‐ ogy and Genetics from Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey). Before teaching science in public schools in Washington, DC, for several years he conducted research in The Natural History Museum (London, UK), Brigham Young University (Provo, UT) and University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI. He has a book (in press) in Albanian, Kurora mbi Krye te Perunjur (The Crown Over the Bowed Head), and a number of articles on science, folklore, and religion.
D. Scott Korn
D. Scott Korn has a B.A. degree in Theology and an M.A. degree in Religious Education from Loyola University of Chicago. He also has an M.A. degree in the History of Religions from Northwestern University. Scott studied for four years in India at Banares Hindu University in Varanasi and earned a Ph.D. degree in Philosophy. He taught for four years in the religion and philosophy departments of Rutgers University and for a year in the prison system in Ohio. He has published material on Hindu spirituality, Nietzschean spirituality, Human Rights and Hinduism, and two articles for the National Council of Geocosmic Research (NCGR) on world-view analysis, with emphasis on scientism, transpersonal psychology, and perennialism.
M. Ali Lakhani
M. Ali Lakhani read Law at Cambridge, and has practiced trial advocacy in Canada for over 35 years, at all levels including the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1998, Mr. Lakhani founded Sacred Web, which he also edits. He is the editor of the anthology, The Sacred Foundations of Justice in Islam (World Wisdom, 2006), containing his prize-winning essay on 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, 'The Metaphysics of Human Governance: Imam 'Ali, Truth and Justice', and is the author of an anthology of essays, The Timeless Relevance of Traditional Wisdom (World Wisdom, 2010). His paper on Politics and the Sacred, is to be published by Oxford University Press in a forthcoming book of essays, provisionally titled Islamic Science, Political Philosophy and Economics: An Integrative Approach for the Physical and Social Sciences.
James Larking
James Larking emigrated to Australia in 1994 after leaving the Merchant Navy, where he was a employed for twelve years. After enrolling at Latrobe University, Bendigo, he studied Traditionalist religious thought under Dr. Kenneth (Harry) Oldmeadow and Dr. Rodney Blackhirst, among others. He completed a BA with Honours in 2000, writing his thesis on “Jihad, the Greater and Lesser Holy War of Islam.” He is now engaged in an MA by researching in the areas of Islam (to which he converted in 1999), Hinduism and the Native American traditions. He is also studying Sanskrit. His main areas of study are in sacrificial ritual and conceptions of death in these traditions.
Patrick Laude
Patrick Laude was born in France and took a graduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne while studying at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He came to the US in the early eighties and obtained his doctorate in 1985 from Indiana University. He joined Georgetown University in 1991. He is currently Professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, where he has been teaching since 2006. He is editor-in-chief of the inter-religious journal Religions-Adyan published by the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue. Dr. Laude’s scholarly work is primarily focused on comparative mysticism, the symbolic imagination in religion and literature, and Western interpretations of Islam and Eastern traditions. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on these subjects.
“Elie Lemoine”
“Elie Lemoine” is the pseudonym of a Cistercian Trappist monk, a lay brother (OCSO). As a young man, he worked in a French commercial house, and was caught up in Indo-China in the events of World War II, returning to France thereafter. He became greatly influenced by Eastern religions, particularly through the writings of Rene Guenon. He later became a monk and entered the Trappist order at La Grande Trappe Abbey. His book, Doctrine de la Non-Dualite et Christianisme, published under the anonymous name of “A Monk of the West”, is a result of a life-long reflection on the subject, and is greatly influenced by the writings of Guenon. “Elie Lemoine” also worked as an editor of the distinguished traditionalist journal, Etudes Traditionelles.
Leonard Lewisohn
Leonard Lewisohn is the author of Beyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Mahmud Shabistari (London: Curzon Press 1995), and The Wisdom of Sufism (Oxford: Oneworld 2001). He is the editor of the three volume anthology, The Heritage of Sufism (Oxford: Oneworld Publications 1999), and (with Christopher Shackle) of The Art of Spiritual Flight: Farid al-Din ‘Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition (London: I.B. Tauris and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2007). His articles have appeared in numerous journals, including the Encyclopædia of Islam, the Encyclopædia of Philosophy, the Encyclopædia of Religion, Encyclopædia Iranica, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and Temenos. His essay on Imam ‘Ali, titled ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib’s Ethics of Mercy in the Mirror of the Persian Sufi Tradition, was published in the anthology, The Sacred Foundations of Justice in Islam (ed. Lakhani, published by World Wisdom, 2006). He was Research Associate in Esotericism in Islam at the Institute of Ismaili Studies (London) from 1999–2005. Since 2004 he has been Lecturer in Persian and Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Classical Persian and Sufi Literature at the University of Exeter in England. He is the editor of the forthcoming journal, Mawlana Rumi Review, and of the forthcoming book, The Philosophy of Ecstasy: Rumi and the Sufi Tradition (to be published through the Rumi Institute).
Roger Lipsey
Roger Lipsey, Ph.D. (art history), entered the area of Traditional studies through his work as an editor and biographer of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (see the trilogy published by Princeton in the Bollingen Series, 1977). His book, Have You Been to Delphi? Tales of the Ancient Oracle for Modern Minds, published by SUNY.
Joseph Lumbard
Joseph Lumbard is the founder of The Islamic Research Institute and is currently Professor of Islamic Studies in the Arabic Studies Department of The American University in Cairo. He is a specialist in Sufism and Islamic Philosophy, and has had numerous articles published in journals of traditionalism, comparative religion, and philosophy. In the wake of September 11, 2001, Dr. Lumbard founded the Islamic Research Institute (IRI) to provide a forum in which Muslim scholars are able to contextualize issues pertaining to Islam and apply the traditional teachings of Islam to the exigencies of modern life.
Richard McCombs
Richard McCombs is a specialist in Greek philosophy who has studied science and Latin. He received his Ph.D. from Fordham University in Philosophy, graduating magna cum laude in 1999. He received both a B.A. and B.S. from the University of South Carolina in 1990, magna cum laude. He has been a professor at Rose Hill College in South Carolina and is currently a professor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Barry McDonald
Barry McDonald is a spiritual seeker whose poetry was influenced by the traditionalist writings of Frithjof Schuon. He is a published poet and has edited Every Branch in Me: Essays on The Meaning of Man, Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred and, with Patrick Laude, Music of the Sky, an Anthology of Sacred Poetry. These publications are available from World Wisdom Books, of which McDonald is the Managing Editor. His book of translations of the poems of Lalla is forthcoming.
Stephanie Madany
Stephenie Madany recently obtained her B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Lethbridge.
Sarah Magalhães
Sarah Magalhães was born in Brazil. After becoming a graduate in Performing Arts and in Portuguese language and literature, she lived in France, where she came into contact with the Perennialist authors who kindled in her the interest for traditional art. In 2008 she moved to India and devoted her life to the study of Indian civilization and philosophy. Since that time, she has been practicing in Indian classical dance under the guidance of her Guru, Dr. Sucheta Chapekar, a renowned Bharat Natyam exponent. She has completed a Diploma in Nritya Shastra at Nalanda Dance Research Centre in Mumbai and a Master in Philosophy at Pune University. In search of the authenticity of this sacred art, she has travelled all over India, exploring ancient temples where she performs spontaneously for those who are present, mostly simple people who would never have the opportunity to witness classical dance. She is currently a research scholar at Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, writing a thesis titled “The Sacred Dance of Ancient India and its relevance to Hindu Iconography.” For her video‐performances in ancient temples of India see: vimeo.com/apsarah
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić, the first elected President of International Forum Bosnia (an NGO promoting an intellectual-based pluralism in Bosnia and Herzegovina), was Vice Premier of the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991/1992. He is the author of several books, notably, The Denial of Bosnia (Penn State University Press, 2000), an indictment of the partition of Bosnia, formalized in 1995 by the Dayton Accord, and Sarajevo Essays: Politics, Ideology and Tradition (SUNY, 2003), which anatomizes the Bosnian genocide in terms of the larger conflict between tradition and modernity.
Zachary Markwith
Zachary Markwith is a doctoral student in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California Berkeley. He earned an M.A. in Hinduism and Islam from the George Washington University. His interests include Islam, Shi’ism, Sufism, and the Perennial Philosophy.
Alberto Martin
Alberto Martin practiced as a general surgeon in Toronto, Canada, during which time he took several courses in philosophy at the University of Toronto. Philosophy, particularly Greek (The pre-Socratics, Plato, Medieval, etc.), has been a dominating interest for him since a very early age. He has also been engaged for a long time with the writings of the traditionalists, in particular Frithjof Schuon, and latterly, Hindu, philosophy, in particular, the non-duality doctrine known as Advaita Vedanta. A few of Alberto Martin's articles—dealing with the overlap between philosophy and medicine—have been published, most recently Sleeping, Dreaming, Awakening (Sophia, 2008). He is also the author of a book of poetry (2007), and a work in Spanish, Por el Camino de Santiago (2003), a sustained reflection on the spiritual path (the "inner journey") from the perspective of perennialism or traditionalism. At present he lives in Northern Spain with his wife.
Jean-Louis Michon
Jean-Louis Michon is a traditionalist French scholar who specializes in Islam in North Africa, Islamic art, and Sufism. His works include Le Soufi marrocain Ahmad Ibn ‘Ajiba and L’Autobiographie (Fahrasa) du Soufi marrocain Ahmad Ibn ‘Ajiba (1747-1809). For 8 years he was the Chief Technical Advisor to the Moroccan government on Unesco/UNDP projects for the preservation of the cultural heritage.
Peter Milward
Peter Milward was born in London in 1925, studied at Wimbledon College, entered the Society of Jesus before studying philosophy and English literature at Oxford, and moved to Japan in 1954, where he studied Japanese, then theology at St. Mary's college, Tokyo (faculty of theology, Sophia University). He was ordained priest 1960, and began teaching in the department of English Literature, Sophia University in 1962. He is a renowned authority on Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and has published many books, particularly on Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Religious Background) and Hopkins (A Commentary on the Sonnets of G. M. Hopkins).
Alvin Moore, Jr.
A director of the Foundation for Traditional Studies in the USA, Alvin Moore, Jr. is a resident of New Mexico. He is a leading traditionalist author and translator. His writings have appeared in the traditionalist journal, Sophia.
Peter Moore
Peter Moore has a doctorate in medieval studies from UCLA, and teaches humanities and writing at the University of California at Irvine, in Southern California.
James Winston Morris
James Winston Morris, Professor at Boston College, has taught Islamic studies over four decades at the Universities of Exeter, Princeton, Oberlin, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in Paris and London. He lectures widely on Islamic philosophy and theology, Sufism, the Islamic humanities (poetry and visual arts), the Qur’an and hadith, and esoteric Shiism. His forthcoming books include Openings: From the Qur’an to the Islamic Humanities; Approaching Ibn ‘Arabi: Foundations, Contexts, Interpretations; and ‘Servants of the All-Merciful’: Ibn ‘Arabi on Spiritual Practice and Realization.
Sachiko Murata
Sachiko Murata, wrote her M.A. thesis on the topic of temporary marriage and its social relevance at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Tehran, after having obtained a Ph.D. at that university in Persian literature. While in Iran, she studied the Islamic sapiential tradition with such notable authorities as Toshiko Izutsu and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and translated a classic text on Islamic theoretical jurisprudence into Japanese. In collaboration with her husband, the eminent scholar William C. Chittick, she co-authored one of the best primers to Islamic sapiental thought, Vision of Islam (Paragon House, 1994). Among her notable publications are The Tao of Islam (SUNY, 1992). She is currently Professor of Religious Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born in Iran in 1933, studied physics and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and geology and geophysics at Harvard, obtaining a Ph.D from Harvard in the history of science and philosophy, with emphasis on Islamic science. He is an eminent Islamicist and a leading authority on Islamic philosophy, science and Sufism. He has taught science and philosophy at Tehran University, has occupied the first Aga Khan Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University at Beirut, was the first Chancellor of Aryamehr University, and was the founding president of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, which published the traditionalist journal, Sophia Perennis. After moving to the USA from Iran, Nasr taught at Temple University, and was a visiting lecturer at Harvard and Chicago. Currently, he is the University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. He has lectured extensively worldwide, and in 1981 was the first Muslim invited by Edinburgh University to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology, subsequently published as Knowledge and the Sacred (Crossroad, 1981). He is the author of numerous books and articles on Islamic science, philosophy and mysticism, and on issues of Tradition and modernity. Nasr is also the president of the Foundation for Traditional Studies in the USA, which publishes the journal, Sophia. The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001) was published in the series The Library of Living Philosophers, and Beacon of Knowledge, Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr was published in 2003 to commemorate his scholarship.
Ian Richard Netton
Ian Richard Netton (BA, PhD, FRHistS, FRSA) was born in Singapore of English parents in 1948. He studied for his BA in Arabic at SOAS (University of London), graduating in 1972, and his PhD at the University of Exeter (Arabic and Islamic Studies, 1976), specializing in mediaeval Islamic Philosophy. From 1977 to 1995 he taught at Exeter University where he was Head of the Department for a total of 71/2 years and, latterly, Reader in Arab and Islamic Civilization and Thought. In September 1995 he became the University of Leeds first Professor of Arabic Studies. He is in his second term of office as Head of the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Leeds, and he is also Director of that University's Centre for Medieval Studies. He is the author of numerous books and articles in the fields of Islamic philosophy and theology, Sufism, medieval Arab travelers, Arabic and Islamic bibliography, Comparative textuality and semiotics, and general Islamic Studies. Professor Netton's most recent book is Sufi Ritual: The Parallel Universe, (Richmond: Curzon 2000). He is currently editing the Islam volume for the Curzon Encyclopedias of Religion Series, and writing a monograph on modern Islam.
Noraini M. Noor
Noraini M. Noor is professor at the Department of Psychology, Ibn Haldun University,Turkey. Prior to the present position, she served at several universities in Malaysia, the longest stint being with the Interna‐ tional Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur.A social/health psychologist by training, her areas of research include women’s work and family roles, work‐family conflict, work stress, race relations, religion and peacebuilding. In the last few years, she has started researching the Islamic tradition’s perspective of the nature of Man and how this differs from what is commonly understood in modern psychology. Currently, this is her major research interest.
Kenneth Oldmeadow
Currently the Coordinator of philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia, Kenneth (Harry) Oldmeadow earned an M.A. from Sydney in religious studies, for which he wrote a thesis titled "Frithjof Schuon, the Perennial Philosophy and Meaning of Tradition". He obtained a Ph.D. from La Trobe in cinema studies. He is author of numerous publications in the fields of literature and religious studies, including his forthcoming book on Tradition, from which the article in Sacred Web 1 is excerpted.
Marilyn Prever
Marilyn Prever writes on a variety of scientific and religious topics. Her works appear in Canticle, The Hebrew Catholic, Ethics & Medics, and Farrago; her reviews also appear on the web sites of the Radicle Academy and the Radius Foundation. She lives in New England with her husband, children, and grand children.
John Paraskevopoulos
John Paraskevopoulos is currently Assistant Director of the Register of the National Estate, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra. He attended the University of Melbourne where he obtained an honours degree in philosophy prior to receiving initiate ordination ('tokudo') in the Pure Land tradition of Mahayana Buddhism in Kyoto in 1994.
Ángel Pascual-Rodrigo
Ángel Pascual-Rodrigo is a Spanish artist, born in Aragon in 1951. He has dedicated his life to conceptual and traditional painting continuously for more than 50 years, displaying his work in 125 individual exhibits, and hundreds of collective exhibits of various kinds. His works are also displayed in museums as well as in public and private collections around the world. Parallel to painting, he has dedicated himself to the study of sacred traditions from the perspective of their transcendent unity. In 2000 he wrote a book entitled The Ages of an Era (Las Edades de Una Era), a structural analysis of twenty centuries of the Christian era. His website is at www.angelpascualrodrigo.com
Gauthier Pierozak
Gauthier Pierozak was born in France where he obtained a degree in mechanical engineering with emphasis on mathematics. He came to the US in 1998 and currently lives in Oklahoma. He is the author of numerous articles about esotericism, with particular emphasis on the symbolism of the Heart. He co-edited Recueil by René Guénon (Rose-Cross Books, Toronto, 2013) and Fragments Doctrinaux by René Guénon (Rose-Cross Books, Toronto, 2013), and he directs the website www.regnabit.com and www.index-rene-guenon.org. His main areas of study are currently the metaphysical aspects of the Infinite and the metaphysical dimension in the Bestiary of Christ.
Gustavo Polit
Gustavo Polit has translated several of the works of Frithjof Schuon, and also translated and wrote the Introduction to the book Emir Abd el-Kader, Hero and Saint of Islam, by Ahmed Bouyerdene, as well as the book Sacred Royalty, From the Pharaoh to the Most Christian King, by Jean Hani.
Alberto Vasconcellos Queiroz
Alberto Vasconcellos Queiroz is a Brazilian public manager who for several decades has been a keen student of the Sophia Perennis as expounded by Frithjof Schuon, René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and others. He has translated into Portuguese several works by Schuon, as well books by William Stoddart. He is also the editor of a Portuguese website on the work of Schuon (www.fschuon.net).
William W. Quinn
Introduced to the writings of the Coomaraswamy and Guénon while studying under the late Mircea Eliade, Quinn received an M.A. and a Ph.D. for religious studies from Chicago. The text of his M.A. thesis has been revised and published under the title "Ananda K. Coomaraswamy on the Philosophia Perennis" (Re-Vision 2, No. 2, 1979), and the text of his Ph.D. thesis formed the basis for his recent book, The Only Tradition (SUNY, 1977). Quinn practices law in Phoenix, Arizona.
Robert R. Reilly
Robert R. Reilly is the music critic for Crisis magazine. He received his B.A. in English from Georgetown University in 1968, and an M.A. in political Science from the Claremont Graduate School. He served in the U.S. Army from 1968-70, where he commanded a tank platoon. After working for many years at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where he served as National Director and President, he also served in the Reagan Administration as Program Director for the U.S. Information Agency and as Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison. He has written for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and several music magazines. He is the author of Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music (Morley Books, 2002).
Kevin Richtscheid
Kevin Richtscheid holds a BA in the Humanities from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has developed a deep interest in Tradition and Perennialism in recent years, and continues his studies independently, while hoping to engage in more formal learning in the future. His studies are oriented towards language, esoterism, and the continuing dialogue between the Divine and the human.
Larry Rinehart
Larry Rinehart is a retired chemist who was led back to traditional religious faith by the good offices of the philosophia perennis, which he continues to contemplate in conjunction with Christian scripture and theology.
Patrick Ringgenberg
Patrick Ringgenberg was born and lives in Switzerland. In 1997, he obtained a degree in cinema and video studies at Ecole Superieure d’Art Visuel in Geneva. He is currently a Lecturer at Université Populaire de Lausanne, and teaches courses in Islamic, Byzantine, and Medieval art, as well as Far Eastern painting. He is also a cultural guide in Iran and Uzbekistan, and is writing various books on Persian painting, Christian art, Chinese landscape painting, the Iranian world, and the Middle Ages.
Marek Rostkowski
Marek Rostkowski (b. 1980) obtained MA in Political Science at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn (Poland). He is the editor-inchief of Reakcjonista. Pismo Tradycjonalistycznej Prawicy (“Reactionist. The Journal of Traditionalistic Right”), which is dedicated to traditional studies and counter-revolutionary thought, as well as the author and translator of texts on this subject.
Rebecca Rozelle-Stone
Rebecca Rozelle-Stone is a doctoral student at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, writing her dissertation on Simone Weil’s notion of attention. Her interests are primarily in religion, ethical theory, feminine experience, and the philosophy of education. She has presented papers on thinkers such as Simone Weil, Jean-Luc Marion, Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, and Jane Addams at various conferences, including the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) and the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP). She is currently translating Joel Janiaud’s Simone Weil: l’attention et l’action into English.
Mohammed Rustom
Mohammed Rustom is currently at the University of Toronto, writing his doctoral dissertation on Mulla Sadra's commentary on the Surat al-fatiha. A number of his articles in the fields of Sufism and Islamic philosophy have appeared in scholarly journals.
Amir Sabzevary
Amir Sabzevary holds two Master’s degrees, one from San Francisco State University in Philosophy and Humanities, and the other is in Religious Studies from Sacramento State University. In addition, Dr. Sabzevary holds a PhD from California Institute of Integral Studies and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti, entitled Choiceless Awareness: Psychological Freedom in the Philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Dr. Sabzevary has taught Religion and Philosophy for over thirty years at a variety of colleges and universities in the Bay Area, and is currently the Chair of Philosophy and Humanities at Laney College in Oakland, CA.
Peter Samsel
Peter Samsel holds a doctorate in theoretical physics, is the editor of A Treasury of Sufi Wisdom: The Path of Unity (World Wisdom, forthcoming), a contributing author to the volume Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East (World Wisdom) and is the author of articles and review essays in Sophia, Parabola and Sacred Web on traditional metaphysics, cosmology, science and art.
Donald H. Sanborn
Donald H. Sanborn taught Philosophy and General Humanities for 32 years in the City Colleges of Chicago, a multi-campus urban community college system. At his retirement in May 2000, Sanborn was Associate Professor and Chair of the Humanities Department at Harold Washington College, formerly known as Loop College, in downtown Chicago. He served there 24 years, after eight years at Wilbur Wright College on Chicago’s northwest side. Early in his career, Prof. Sanborn also taught Philosophy of Education part-time at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana. He has B. A. and M. A. degrees in his fields from the University of Chicago.
Catherine Schuon
The daughter of a Swiss diplomat, was married to the late Frithjof Schuon from 1949 until his death in 1998.
Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998)
Born in Switzerland of German parents, Schuon received his early education in French and German. From his youth, Schuon devoted himself to search for metaphysical truth, studying the classics of Western philosophy and the sacred literatures of the East. Moving to France, Schuon became influenced by the writings of René Guénon, which confirmed his own intellectual intuitions. A student of Arabic and Islam, Schuon travelled several times to North Africa, where he met Guénon and the Algerian Sufi Shaykh Ahmad al-‘Alawi. Imprisoned by the Germans in the Second World War, he was eventually released and granted asylum by Switzerland, which became his home until 1980, when he emigrated to the USA. Metaphysician, poet and painter, Schuon’s writings have been compared to those of Plato and Shankaracharya. A sampling of his oeuvre is available in The Essential Writings of Frithjof Schuon (Amity House, 1986), edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Of his first publication in English, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (1953), T.S. Elliot remarked, "I have met with no more impressive work on the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion".
Timothy Scott
Timothy Scott a BA (Humanities) at La Trobe University, Bendigo in 1997 with majors in Literature, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Studies in Western Traditions. After moving to Düsseldorf, Germany, in 2000, he continued doctoral study through La Trobe, Bendigo, and was awarded his doctorate in 2004 for his thesis, Symbolism of the Ark (Fons Vitae, forthcoming). He moved to the UK in 2003, and taught Religious Studies at Oxford High School. Upon his return to Australia in 2007, he took up a position to establish and edit a new journal called Eye of the Heart for the Philosophy and Religious Studies Program in Bendigo.
José Segura
José Segura, a poet and a novelist, holds a Ph.D. with a specialty in traditional interpretation of Spanish Medieval and Renaissance texts. He is equally dedicated to applying the principles of the Philosophia Perennis to biblical Christianity and the arts. He has recently taught literature at the University of Central Florida, and is currently working on the recovery of the traditional language (gramatica) present in the Greek New Testament. He lives in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Darius Sepehri
Darius Sepehri was born in Iran to a family from Shiraz, and moved to Australia early. He has retained an abiding passion for Persianate culture and poetry, and is currently investigating symbolism in Hafez of Shiraz and the reception of Hafez in the West. He has studied philosophy, art history, and comparative religion at tertiary level. Currently he is researching and writing a doctoral thesis on the influence of Eastern and Islamic philosophy on Italian Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola.
Reza Shah-Kazemi
Reza Shah-Kazemi is at present a Research Fellow at The Institute of Ismaili Studies where he is preparing a new, annotated translation of Nahj al-Balagha, the discourses of Imam ‘Ali. Founding editor of the Islamic World Report, he studied International Relations and Politics at Sussex and Exeter Universities before obtaining his PhD in Comparative Religion from the University of Kent in 1994. Formerly a Consultant to the Institute for Policy Research in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, Dr. Shah-Kazemi has authored and translated several works, including Paths of Transcendence: Shankara, Ibn Arabi and Meister Eckhart on Transcendent Spiritual Realization (World Wisdom Books, 2006), Doctrines of Shi‘i Islam (I. B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2001), Avicenna: Prince of Physicians (Hood Hood, 1997) and Crisis in Chechnya (Islamic World Report, 1995). He has edited a number of collective volumes including Algeria: Revolution Revisited (Islamic World Report, 1997) and published numerous articles and reviews in academic journals. Dr Shah-Kazemi and Emma Clark are the co-editors of World Wisdom Books’ anthology titled The Essential Martin Lings.
Shiraz Sheikh
Shiraz Sheikh is a doctoral candidate at York University’s Department of History in Toronto, Canada, completing final requirements towards a PhD in Islamic Intellectual History, with a focus on knowledge and learning in the early Ottoman period. His dissertation topic is on the life and works of Molla Şemseddin Fenari (d. 1430), the first Şeyhül-İslam of the Ottoman state. Currently, he lectures on Islamic Civilization at York University’s Department of History, and the University of Waterloo’s Department of Culture and Language Studies.
Rana Shieh
Rana Shieh is an Iranian musician, musicologist and scholar of Islamic thought. She received her early education in Iran where she underwent training under some of Iran’s foremost musical masters and teachers of Islamic and Persian thought and culture. She then spent more than seven years in Italy studying music and musicology of both Eastern and Western traditional music, as well as Islamic philosophy and Sufism. She also received a master’s degree in musicology from the University of Padua. She has given numerous concerts of both classical Persian and medieval European music in both Iran and many European countries. Currently she is pursuing graduate studies in Islam at The George Washington University and doing research on the philosophy of music and Islamic philosophy and art under the direction of Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Lalita Sinha
Lalita Sinha is an award-winning scholar of literary translation and mystical traditions of the world. Her book on the politics and dynamics of literary translation, The Other Salina: A. Samad Said’s Masterpiece in Translation (2006), has been highly commended by Malaysian National Laureates and by the Malaysian Council of Publishers of Academic Books. Another of her books, Unveiling the Garden of Love: Mystical Symbolism in Layla Majnun & Gitagovinda (World Wisdom, Bloomington, USA) is an exposition of the mystico-poetic expressions of Sufism and Bhaktism. Lalita is also the editor of several academic books. Her most recent is (as editor and contributer) Exploring Space: Current Trends in Language, Literature & Translation published by Cambridge Scholarly Publishers (2008). Her essays have also appeared in international journals and won awards, including the USM Hall of Fame Award, 2006. Currently she has retired from USM, and is actively involved in contract research for academic projects, training workshops on postgraduate studies and on literary translation, academic consultation as well as public lectures and publications on literature and mysticism.
Ian Skelly
Ian Skelly is a broadcaster with the BBC. He presents programmes on the BBC’s national station dedicated to classical music, Radio 3. He is also Chairman of the Temenos Academy in London.
Huston Smith
Huston Smith is Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University. For fifteen years he was Professor of Philosophy at M.I.T. and for a decade before that he taught at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently he has served as Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Holder of twelve honorary degrees, Smith's fourteen books include The World's Religions which has sold over 2 ½ million copies, and Why Religion Matters which won the Wilbur Award for the best book on religion published in 2001. In 1996 Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS Special, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, to his life and work. His film documentaries on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won International awards, and The Journal of Ethnomusicology lauded his discovery of Tibetan multiphonic chanting as "an important landmark in the study of music." His latest book is titled The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition.
Wolfgang Smith
Wolfgang Smith graduated at age 18 from Cornell University with a B.A. in mathematics, physics, and philosophy. Two years later he took an M.S. in theoretical physics at Purdue University. After receiving a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University, Dr. Smith held professorial positions at M.I.T., U.C.L.A., and Oregon State University until his retirement in 1992. He has published extensively on mathematical topics relating to algebraic and differential topology. From the start, however, Smith has evinced a dominant interest in metaphysics and theology. Early in life he acquired a taste for Plato and the Neoplatonists, and sojourned in India to gain acquaintance with the Vedantic tradition. Later he devoted himself to the study of theology, and began his career as a Catholic metaphysical author. Besides contributing numerous articles to scholarly journals, including Sacred Web, Dr. Smith has authored three books: Cosmos and Transcendence (1984), Teilhardism and the New Religion (1988), and The Quantum Enigma (1995).
Margaret Somerville
Margaret Somerville is Samuel Gale Professor of Law, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, and the Founding Director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, Montreal. Her books include The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human Spirit and Death Talk: The Case against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. In April 2004, she became the first recipient of the "Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science" awarded by the Director General of UNESCO on the recommendation of an international jury and, in connection with the prize, has just undertaken an academic lecture tour of Iranian universities.
Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a practicing psychotherapist who has worked for years in the field of mental health and social services. His focus is on comparative religion and the intersection between spirituality and psychology. His works include Paths That Lead to the Same Summit: An Annotated Guide to World Spirituality, Dismantling Freud: Fake Therapy and the Psychoanalytic Worldview (previously published as Psychology Without Spirit: The Freudian Quandary), and Behaviorism: The Quandary of a Psychology without a Soul. He edited the issue on “Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy” for Studies in Comparative Religion, and his articles have appeared in numerous journals and magazines including Sacred Web, Sophia, Parabola, Resurgence, and the Temenos Academy Review. He lives on the Central Coast of California.
P.S. Sri
P.S. Sri, Professor of English Literature, is currently on the faculty of the Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario. His research is wide-ranging and includes East-West Literary and Philosophical ideo-synthesis, Post-colonial and Multi-cultural Commonwealth Literature, Arabic and Persian Literature as well as Sanskrit and Tamil Literature. He is the author of T.S.Eliot, Vedanta and Buddhism (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1985) and of numerous articles on Yeats, Eliot, Forster, Rumi, Sanskrit myth, and Tamil literature and folklore. He has received many international awards for his work in literature.
Diana Steigerwald
Diana Steigerwald, who specializes in the history of Islamic thought, graduated with from the Universities of Montreal and McGill (M.A. and PhD in Islamic Studies). She is the author of books on the 12th century Muslim theologian and historian, al-Shahrastani, and on different themes of Muslim ethics. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at California State University (Long Beach).
William Stoddart
William Stoddart was born in Carstairs, Scotland, spent most of his working life in London, England, and now lives in Windsor, Ontario. He has made a life-long study of the great religious traditions of the world, and in this connection has travelled widely in Europe, North Africa, Turkey, India, and Ceylon. For many years he was assistant editor of the British journal Studies in Comparative Religion. Dr. Stoddart is the author of Outline of Hinduism, Outline of Buddhism, and Sufism: the Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam. He has translated, from French or German, several of the books of Frithjof Schuon and Titus Burckhardt.
Lucian W. Stone, Jr.
Lucian W. Stone, Jr. is currently a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where he is researching and writing a dissertation on the Persian Sufi poet Farid al-Din 'Attar. He co-edited, The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Library of Living Philosophers Vol. XXVIII, Ed. Lewis E. Hahn, Randall Auxier, and Lucian W. Stone, Jr. (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 2001), in which he also contributed a chapter.
Rick Tucker
Rick Tucker, a student of Philosophy at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas is also a student of Christian Perennialism. Currently he is pursing a course of study that will take him to George Washington University where he hopes to continue his work in Traditional Philosophy and Metaphysics under Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. His passion for this subject comes out of his own deep concern for and dedication to the Christian path as one faithful expression of the world’s great Sacred and Metaphysical traditions.
Sir John Tavener
Sir John Tavener was born in 1944 and gained prominence as an avant-garde composer in the 1960s and 1970s, until a period of contemplation and relative silence led to his entering the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1977, where he steeped himself in Orthodox Liturgy and Chant. He is the composer of several major works of sacred music, including The Veil of the Temple (2003), The Lamb, Song for Athena and The Protecting Veil. Latterly, beyond Orthodoxy and under the influence of the writings of Frithjof Schuon, Tavener's continuing and prolific output has incorporated Hindu, Sufi, Jewish and North American Indian ideas. The composer's Testament, the Music of Silence, was published in 1999. Sir John received his Knighthood in the Millenium Honours List.
Jennifer Doane Upton
Jennifer Doane Upton, author and scholar of Christian mysticism, was guided by Alvin Moore to embrace patristic Christianity in its Greek Orthodox form. One of the fruits of this relationship was her book Dark Way to Paradise: Dante's Inferno in Light of the Spiritual Path (Sophia Perennis, 2005), an exegesis of the Inferno according to Schuon, Burckhardt, Lings, Guenon and the Church fathers. She lives with her husband, Charles Upton, in Lexington, Kentucky.
Charles Upton
Charles Upton is a poet and metaphysician who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the author of several books, published by Sophia Perennis, including, inter alia, Knowings, in the Arts of Metaphysics, Cosmology and the Spiritual Path; Reflections of Tasawwuf: Essays, Poems and Narrative on Sufi Themes; Who Is the Earth? How to See God in the Natural World; Findings in Metaphysic, Path and Lore, With a Response to the Traditionalist/Perennialist School; and The Science of the Greater Jihad: Essays in Principial Psychology.
Algis Uždavinys
Algis Uždavinys is a research fellow at the Institute of Culture, Philosophy, and Arts, and also Lecturer at the Academy of Arts in his native Lithuania. He is a published scholar in English, French, and Lithuanian. He has translated the works of Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Plotinus into Russian and Lithuanian. Dr. Uždavinys’ work is regularly featured in journals such as Sophia and Sacred Web. He is the editor of The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy (World Wisdom, 2004).
Deon Valodia
Deon Valodia of Cape Town is a self-taught layman. He was guided to the 'Perennial Philosophy' in 1990 initially through the writings of Martin Lings. This led to privileged meetings with Dr. Lings and Catherine Schuon later in South Africa. He is the editor of the on-line document: 'A Glossary of Terms used by Frithjof Schuon'.
Brian M. Welter
Brian M. Welter studied theology in Canada and South Africa. Hisbook reviews focus on metaphysics and religion. He currently works
for the British Council in Taipei.
Syed A.H. Zaidi
Syed A.H. Zaidi holds a B.A. in International Relations from Hobart College (2012) and an M.A. in Islamic Studies from The George Washington University (2015). With research interests in the field of Islamic philosophy and its relationship to other early medieval philosophical schools, he is currently writing a study on the influence of al-Kindi and the Ikhwan as-Safa’ upon the thought of Isaac Israeli, the founder of Jewish Neoplatonism.
Philip Zaleski
Philip Zaleski is a research associate at Smith College in Northampton, MA. He is the author of numerous books on religion and culture, most recently The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Inklings, co-authored with his wife Carol Zaleski, and forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Mehrdad Mahmoudi Zarandi
Mehrdad Mahmoudi Zarandi, professor of mathematics and physics, was born in 1963 in Kerman, Iran. From an early age, he had a keen
interest in science and mathematics, which led to his earning a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from the Isfahan University of Technology. For his graduate studies, he came to the United States, and he holds both Master of Science and Doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. After completing his studies, he continued to work at Caltech as a research scientist in bioengineering and aeronautics. In addition to his technical research and publications, he has enjoyed a wide range of teaching experiences with undergraduates in mathematics, chemistry, physics and the history and philosophy of science. His first book, Science and the Myth of Progress deals with the principles that underlie the ongoing faith-science debate.
Alireza K. Ziarani
Alireza K. Ziarani studied at Tehran Polytechnic, Iran, where he completed an undergraduate degree program in 1995. As a young man in search of truth, he was drawn to Professor Bina’s philosophy of science classes, which exercised a profound and enduring influence on his life. In 1996, he moved to Canada to study mathematics at McGill University, and later engineering at the University of Toronto where he completed a Ph.D. degree program in electrical and computer engineering in 2002. His academic career brought him to the United States, where he was a professor at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, before he left for the private sector in 2009. Alongside his professional activities, he maintains an active interest in the perennial philosophy and writes from a universalist perspective.