Bøger udgivet af The Matheson Trust

This collection of mystical poetry by the most famous 14th-century Kashmiri saint, 'Mother Lalla', witnessing the depths of her metaphysical vision and her spiritual realisation. These verses, which have been memorised and treasured for centuries by both Hindus and Muslims, are here rendered into English verse by the American poet and contemplative Barry McDonald. Lalla's poems, at once sober and ecstatic, combine metaphysical doctrine with imagery drawn from everyday life, transmitting a purified and ennobled vision of the world where the physical and metaphysical are mutually reflected in each other. This alchemy, transmitted in part through her verses, allows readers from all religious traditions, across the centuries and beyond cultural boundaries, to appreciate the great depth of her realization and to benefit from it.

This book presents the worldview and the metaphysics of the Sophia Perennis, the Perennial Wisdom at the heart of all faiths, bringing out their depth and their current relevance as an alternative to the new atheist views from a comparative traditional standpoint, shedding light on the timeless value of all the great religions of the world.After characterising scientism and the modernist worldview from a traditional perspective, the book explains in some detail the spiritual and properly intellectual foundations of the unanimous views of traditional civilizations, including the principles of traditional politics, arts and other domains.It is generally considered in our time that reality extends no further than the "natural world", and that science alone can give us reliable knowledge of it. This is the view of the New Atheists, and in fact it is also the belief of modern man. Above all modern man believes that we cannot have certain knowledge beyond what the scientific method reveals. The possibility of knowledge of an entirely different and superior order all but vanished from the consciousness of Western man after the so-called Enlightenment.The perennial wisdom does not deny any scientific knowledge insofar as it really is knowledge and not ad hoc conjecture or mere hypothesis, but it offers an incomparably more profound view of the nature of reality and of the human being. Above all, the perennial wisdom illumines the essential nature of intelligence and thus points to the true source of certitude.This book offers a much needed insight into the worldview of the Sophia Perennis, and it is a timely reminder of its depth and its urgent relevance to our times.Though many works have been published to refute the excesses and exaggerations of the New Atheism clique, this is the first one to do so starting from a strictly metaphysical and esoteric perspective, as is usual with the authors of the Perennial School, including luminaries such as Frithjof Schuon, René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and others. In doing so, it is able to elucidate directly and with greater clarity all the problematic theological points and contentions implicit in the modernist misunderstanding of religion.

In-depth exploration of the life and thought of Louis Massignon (1883-1962), a very influential French Islamic scholar and Christian mystic. This is a translation of an original French by an expert on Massignon's life and works, revised and augmented.

An examination of the similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam, especially in the areas of ontology, philosophy and metaphysics. The integration of the heritages of Plato and Aristotle in the Church and in Islam is explored deftly and densely. This book invites adherents of Christianity and Islam to understand more deeply their own respective traditions and on this basis to understand and respect 'the other'. Several chapters are devoted to a comparison between both Sunnite Sufi and Shi'ite Gnostic esoteric traditions, especially in the area of Qur'anic exegesis. This book will be equally challenging and rewarding for the serious reader.

A new translation from Coptic and Greek texts, and an in-depth study of The Gospel of Thomas, integrating philological expertise with historical synthesis, tracing and reconstructing the threads of ancient Jewish esoteric ideas stretching across the millennia in Kabbalah, Jewish-Christian (Ebionite) texts, as well as in Islamic Sufi and Shi'ite gnostic traditions. Zinner's work injects fresh and invigorating ideas into Thomas scholarship and delivers an important contribution to the field of Jewish Studies.