Mar 30-Apr 1, 2007
Eastern spiritual paths have been the rage for decades, but profound esoteric traditions permeate the history of Western culture. Together we will bring the Western esoteric tradition alive in all its color and vitality.
We will begin with the old Celtic culture of Britain and Ireland that shaped the Arthurian and Grail traditions, then shift to the “more powerful philosophy” first articulated in15th-century Florence. The lover of wisdom, musician, and healer Marsilio Ficino and the phenomenal linguist and original Christian cabalist Pico della Mirandola guided the Platonic Academy, seeding a hermetic and neo-platonic philosophy that profoundly influenced many of the most creative figures of the Renaissance from the Medici Court to Elizabethan England.
Then we will shift our gaze to the alchemical world of Renaissance Bohemia, where the magus John Dee and alchemists Michael Maier and Heinrich Khunrath brought magic and science together in the winding cobbled streets and spires of Prague and Cesky Krumlov. Simultaneously, many of the leading poets and writers in Elizabethan England, like Philip Sidney and Walter Raleigh, embraced the occult philosophy and wove an esoteric and Celtic mythology around the Virgin Queen. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment in the early 17th Century proclaimed the spiritual reform of the world, while dark counter forces massed to crush this beautiful awakening. The workshop will use lecture, discussion, meditation, illustrations, and humor, we’ll explore this half-forgotten wisdom, whose many mysteries remain acutely relevant to the contemporary world.
We will finish by examining the contribution of Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, spiritual teacher, and educator, whose penetrating and brilliant work can be seen as a modern worldview consistent with the deepest esoteric mysteries of the West and of world culture.
Ralph White is co-founder of the New York Open Center and editor of the award-winning LapisMagazine.org. Born in Wales, he is a life-long world traveler whose story of adventure in the remote mountains of Eastern Tibet was recently published in Tibet: True Stories. He has organized a series of highly regarded international conferences in Bohemia, Florence, and Britain on the Western Esoteric Tradition. He has also taught at New York University and is a writer on contemporary holistic issues for a wide variety of magazines. If you don’t know anything about any of this, come, and you will know. We are honored to welcome the return of our esteemed colleague.