On the surface, it’s hard to explain the astonishing success of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Many critics have pointed to its stale cliffhanger plot, its wan characterisation, and even to the flaws in its research. And yet it has sold […]
Richard Smoley
Christianity: The Ultimate Secret
Today there is an unprecedented thirst for the innermost secrets of Christianity. The quest for these lost teachings drives the plots of best-sellers like The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail; it is discussed in major newsmagazines; and it is the […]
Judas: The Greatest Disciple?
At the climax of Dante’s Inferno, the narrator and his guide, Vergil, make their way to the deepest part of hell in the centre of the Earth. Embedded there is the fallen Lucifer, a hideous, three-headed figure with batlike wings. Each […]
The Gnostics: An Interview with Tobias Churton
Tobias Churton is one of today’s most lively and spirited investigators of that underground stream of the Western tradition known as Gnosticism. He first became interested in the Gnostics while reading for a degree in theology at the University of […]
Awakening Our True Potential
Man is born an unfinished creature. He cannot walk or talk or feed himself. Long years of care are required to bring him to even the most minimal levels of self-sufficiency. And yet even after the typical person has reached […]
The Death & Rebirth of the Self
Ancient myths exercise such great allure that one cannot help wondering what meanings lie behind them. The great psychologist C.G. Jung suggested these myths were projections of the collective unconscious, a universal level of the mind that expresses itself in […]
A Way to Live: The Path of Self-Knowledge
For all the scarcity in the world, one thing we never seem to be lacking is advice. We’re constantly deluged with exhortations of one sort or another – for diet, exercise, health, wealth, happiness, spiritual illumination. Of course these pieces […]
What Do the Lost Gospels Have to Teach?
Over the last century, a number of previously lost and unknown texts have come to light and illumined the origins of the main religions of the West. The most famous include the Nag Hammadi library, unearthed in Egypt in 1945, […]
Rescuing the Bible from Literalism
“The world,” wrote the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “is the totality of facts, not of things.” So it is, but facts take many forms. The hard-edged events of ordinary reality are only one form, and not always the most important. This […]