Temenos Academy Newsletter November 2024

[Temenos Academy]

NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2024 We are delighted to announce that His Majesty King Charles III has renewed his patronage of the Temenos Academy. We are most grateful for the continued support of His Majesty.   EVENING LECTURES The Eleusinian Mysteries – Film Screening with Q&A JULES CASHFORD Wednesday 6 November In the chair Dr Mark Vernon The Eleusinian Mysteries took place in Ancient Greece beside the sea in Eleusis, 14 miles from Athens. They lasted for over 2,000 years – from 1500 BCE to 393 CE – until they were proscribed by the Christian Emperor Theodosius. Later the temples were sacked by the Goths. Yet much was saved – in the writings, images and sculptures of many philosophers, artists and poets – and so the memory of the Mysteries was never lost. The Mysteries explored the story of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and the death and rebirth of her daughter, Persephone, whose other name was Kore, which means ‘shoot.’ The relationship between the ‘Mother of Corn’ and her child, who dies as the seed and is reborn as the new shoot, was also understood as disclosing the possibility of a shared reality with the life, death and rebirth of human beings. This film follows the art and rituals which brought the participants to their final vision – which was experienced as a radical change in consciousness. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s director JULES CASHFORD has a background in Philosophy, Classics and Literature, and now writes on Mythology. She trained as a Jungian Analyst with the Association of Jungian Analysts in London. Her books include The Moon: Symbol of Transformation, The Mysteries of Osiris, The Myth of the Goddess (co-authored with Anne Baring), a translation of The Homeric Hymns, and the retelling of Parzival for younger readers. She has made four films with Kingfisher Art Productions: The Eleusinian Mysteries, Gaia in Ancient Greece, The Return of Gaia in our time , and The Mystic Lamb by Jan van Eyck. She is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy. Venue & Timing The October Gallery 24 Old Gloucester Street London, WC1N 3AL Nearest Underground – Holborn Doors open 6.10pm, Film begins 6.40pm Admission £10 or £5 for members of Temenos Academy/Concessions FREE for full-time students with ID card E temenos...@myfastmail.com T 07513 883 335 Silent Music: Poetry, Paradox, and Prayer in the Carmelite Tradition DR CATHERINE COLDSTREAM Monday 18 November In the chair Julia Cleave Among the many memorable metaphors for the divine offered by St John of the Cross (1542-1591) in his Spiritual Canticle, that of ‘silent music’ is probably the most paradoxical and the most compelling. Koan-like in its apparent impenetrability, it could be said to ‘tease us out of thought as doth eternity’. In this talk Catherine Coldstream will be drawing on the riches of Carmelite spirituality and the wider eremitic traditions of which they are a part, from the Philokalia to Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation, while illustrating her points with anecdote and reflection on her own experience. Insisting that the ascetic life need not be devoid of beauty, nor resistant to the worlds of the imagination, this is a talk that enlists music, literature, and creativity in the service of ultimate truth, while acknowledging the inscrutability of God’s purposes and the ultimate irresistibility of vocation. CATHERINE COLDSTREAM is a writer, musician, and former contemplative nun with degrees from Oxford, UEA, and London Goldsmiths. She is the author of poems, interlinked personal essays, and of Cloistered: My Years as a Nun (Chatto & Windus, 2024) an account of her twelve years as a ‘hermit in community’. She is currently editing William Coldstream Remembered: Portraits of a Painter (Sansom & Company, 2025) – an anthology of essays about her father – while working on a new memoir evoking an eccentric London childhood. An associate editor of MONK arts magazine, she has taught viola and piano peripatetically, theology in schools, and is in demand both as interviewer and speaker. Perennial obsessions include music and humanity’s relationship with the transcendent through faith and the arts. Venue & Timing Brunswick Group 18 Lincoln’s Inn Fields London, WC2A 3ED Nearest Underground – Holborn Doors open 6.10pm, Lecture begins 6.30pm Admission £10 or £5 for members of Temenos Academy/Concessions FREE for full-time students with ID card E temenos...@myfastmail.com T 07513 883 335   THE ARCHIVE Our website Archive hosts many audio and video recordings of lectures, digital versions of all thirteen issues of the journal TEMENOS, and the texts of seventy articles from Temenos Academy Review. New material is added regularly. https://temenosacademy.org/main-lecture-archive https://temenosacademy.org/temenos-journal-archive https://temenosacademy.org/temenos-academy-review-archive Many of our audio recordings are available as PODCASTS. PAYPAL GIVING FUND UK The Temenos Academy is registered with PayPal Giving Fund UK. When using PayPal if you choose you may also make a donation in support of the Temenos Academy. Thank you FURTHER INFORMATION EMAIL temenos...@myfastmail.com TELEPHONE 07513 883 335 PRIVACY POLICY https://temenosacademy.org/privacy-policy