Temenos Academy Newsletter Upcoming Events 2026

[Temenos Academy]

NEWSLETTER Upcoming Events 2026 Peace is Possible: Book Launch & Talk SATISH KUMAR Monday 11 May 2026 At present the world is in turmoil. Iran, Ukraine and Palestine are in particular facing catastrophic crises. According to the life-long peace activist Satish Kumar, these wars are unnecessary and the use of armed forces should be to prevent wars not wage wars. Marking the launch of his latest book Peace is Possible (Bloomsbury, 2026) Satish Kumar will speak about peace among nations, and how peace is not only urgently needed but also how it is possible. Satish will suggest that peace is more than an absence of war but instead a way of living in harmony with each and all. He calls for us to make peace with ourselves, with nature and with all the peoples of the world. This year, in his 90th birthday celebration, Satish is reminding the world that peace is not just a distant dream but that peace is achievable here and now. Satish Kumar is an activist and internationally renowned speaker on ecological issues. Born in India, he has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate and pacifist. He walked 8,000 miles from India to America for peace. Now living in England, Kumar is founder and honorary president of Schumacher College, Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy. Venue & Admission 18 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2A 3ED Event begins 6.30pm £10 General admission Free for Temenos Academy Members/Full-time students with ID Book HERE The Merrie: Adventures in Christian Mythopoetics DR MARTIN SHAW Friday 29 May 2026 In the chair Dr Mark Vernon Modern Christianity often seems to forget the contemplative, mythic and imaginative practices that arise from the life of Christ. That it's a faith that is both initiatory and joyous in tone. In his Merrie lecture, Shaw focuses on story, ecology, liturgy and rites of passage - what he calls ancient technologies - as a way of deepening into the Christian adventure. Dr Martin Shaw is a New York Times bestselling author, mythologist and teacher. Currently at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge, he created the Oral Tradition and Living Myth courses at Stanford University. A fellow of the Temenos Academy, Iain McGilchrist describes Shaw as "our greatest living storyteller." For more on his work go to: https://drmartinshaw.com/ Venue & Admission The Art Workers’ Guild, WC1NH 3AT Doors open 6.10pm, Lecture begins 6.30pm £10 General admission Free for Temenos Academy Members/Full-time students with ID Book HERE The Sixth John Michell Symposium Mystery of Measure & Spirit of Place Saturday 27 June 2026, 10am – 5pm Speakers SCOTT OLSEN - Plato and the Mystery of Phi JOHN MARTINEAU - Five Coincidences (poetry performance) ADAM TETLOW - John Neal’s Restoration of Ancient Measure CHRISTINE RHONE - Spirit of Place: Chris Street & Palden Jenkins ADAM HUNT - Glastonbury: A Sacred Landscape JEFF SAWARD - Caerdroia: The Journal of Mazes & Labyrinths Venue & Admission The Art Workers’ Guild, WC1NH 3AT Doors open 9.45am, Event begins 10am £50 General admission £35 for Temenos Academy Members/Full-time students with ID Book HERE Lecture Tonight Symbol & Style: Kathleen Raine’s Neoplatonic Aesthetics DR JENNY MESSENGER Monday 23 March 2026 This talk explores how Neoplatonism shaped both the intellectual commitments and literary style of Kathleen Raine. Raine understood consciousness as the ground of reality and regarded ancient symbolic discourse—drawn from Platonic and Neoplatonic texts, the Corpus Hermeticum, and other esoteric traditions—as a living inheritance capable of expanding human perception. Her poetry, criticism and autobiographies reveal a mode of writing in which inner and outer worlds interpenetrate, and where literature becomes a vehicle for transforming consciousness. This talk focuses on her autobiographical practice, which adapts ancient allegoresis, including Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs, to interpret her life as a multilayered symbolic text. This approach not only informs Raine’s stylistic choices—rich in myth, metaphor and visionary resonance—but also aims to initiate readers into a way of seeing, grounded in the perennial philosophy she sought to recover. In doing so, Raine offers literary style as a path of philosophical insight. Dr. Jenny Messenger is a UK-based journalist and writer who covers climate change, the environment, housing and business. She is currently working on a short book about the cultural history of the sponge. Her first monograph, Kathleen Raine: Classics and Consciousness, was published by Bloomsbury in July and develops research from her 2019 PhD at the University of St Andrews, Neoplatonism and its Reception in Robert Graves, Jorge Luis Borges, Suzanne Lilar, and Kathleen Raine. The book examines how Graeco-Roman antiquity informs Raine’s conceptions of consciousness and illuminates her distinctive poetic and scholarly vision. Venue & Admission The Warburg Institute, WC1H 0AB Doors open 6.10pm, Lecture begins 6.30pm £10 General admission Free for Temenos Academy Members/Full-time students with ID Book HERE   BECOME A MEMBER You can support the Temenos Academy by becoming a member for £60/year. Members benefits include free admission to our lecture programme, concessionary rates to seminars, study days and online courses, a free copy Temenos Academy Review 28 and Ten Basic Principles that Inspire the Work of Temenos on joining, and complimentary copies of forthcoming Temenos Academy publications as they are issued. To become a member click HERE THE ARCHIVE Our website Archive hosts many audio and video recordings of lectures and the texts of many articles from Temenos Academy Review. New material is added regularly. https://www.temenosacademy.org/videoarchive https://www.temenosacademy.org/audioarchive https://www.temenosacademy.org/essay-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