Temenos Academy Newsletter April 2025
Temenos Academy
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April 2025 Summer Term Lectures
JOHN MATTHEWS Thursday 8 May In the chair Professor Grevel Lindop David Jones was neither comfortable nor at home in the modern world. To him, the period of history through which he lived, particularly the two world wars and the period between them, was a time of darkness and destruction, characterized by loss of religious faith, a failure to recognize the importance of symbol and sign, and an increasing neglect of the sacramental in Modern Art. It was indeed a Wasteland, like that whose outlines he delineated in so much of his writings. It was this that he described, in the opening passage of the Anathemata, as ‘the sagging end and chapter’s close’ – the end of history, particularly as it is defined in the writings of Oswald Spengler, whose work was familiar and important to David throughout this period in his life. In this talk, John Matthews will explore how the time though which David Jones lived impacted his work both as artist and writer. JOHN MATTHEWS is an independent scholar and author living in Oxford. He published his first book in 1980 and has since gone on to publish over a hundred titles on Myth, Folklore, and ancient traditions. A frequent speaker at the Temenos Academy since its inception, he has made a lifetime study of every aspect of the Arthurian legends, from its origins to modern retellings. His Great Book of King Arthur (2023) and Realms of the Round Table (2025) are recognised as presenting a major new dimension to the history of Arthurian literature. Venue
& Admission
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PROFESSOR GREVEL LINDOP Thursday 22 May In the chair Julia Cleave Today, we often think of imagination as something individual and insubstantial – a personal process giving rise to notions from ‘subjective’ sources. But traditionally, imagination is something very different: it is a faculty of vision and comprehension rising from deep springs, and one that deserves nurture and training. Yeats spoke of a ‘singing school’ where the human soul could contemplate ‘monuments of its own magnificence’. He found his own ‘school’ in Indian thought, Theosophy, the Kabbalah, and especially in the art and poetry of William Blake, as well as in Irish legend and tradition. Kathleen Raine in turn, in her studies of Blake and Yeats and her later contact with India, took up this ‘golden string’ enabling her to enrich individual poetic imagination by contact with a universal tradition. This lecture will explore some of these pathways and suggest how ‘the learning of the imagination’ may be valuable in today’s world. GREVEL LINDOP was Professor of Romantic and Early Victorian Studies at Manchester University. He is the author of six collections of poems and has written biographies of Thomas De Quincey and of Charles Williams (the Arthurian poet and Oxford ‘Inkling’). He is currently writing W.B. Yeats: The Mystical Life , for publication by Oxford University Press. He has taught Buddhist meditation in the Samatha tradition for more than forty years and currently chairs the Temenos Academic Board. His website is at www.grevel.co.uk
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A memorial service for Donald Reeves will be held on Tuesday 20 May at 12 noon at St James's, 197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL. Donald Reeves was Rector of the church from 1980-1998. Under his inclusive ministry St James's became a vital centre of spiritual life in London. It was also the setting for talks by some of the world's leading artists, film-directors, musicians, politicians and writers, including Kathleen Raine and others associated with Temenos. The memorial service will be led by Temenos Academy Fellow Dr Rowan Williams. All are welcome to attend.
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 Many of our audio recordings are available as PODCASTS.
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
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