PROTASIS: The Cosmic Goddess

An extract from the editorial for issue 32, due out November 2015, on the cosmic goddess

I believe that the modern goddess image is not primarily a figure to be worshipped, but a symbol that embodies a vision of the entire cosmos that is deeply, desperately needed in this age. In turning our hearts to the goddess, we are turning towards a sacred cosmos, in which each object and event is intimately connected to an interwoven Whole. This interwovenness, or interconnectedness, or ‘interbeing’ as Zen Master Tich Nat Hanh styles it, is a vision of life that in past ages was felt and known ‘in the blood’ without needing to be articulated. Continue reading “PROTASIS: The Cosmic Goddess”

Urthona now has a Facebook page

You can now follow Urthona on Facebook. This page, which is the editor’s personal page, will contain short topical reflections about art, life and everything, as well as news of the magazine.

Please note: the views expressed will be the editor’s personal views and not necessarily those of the magazine or its editorial team.

Click on the link at top right of our home page. Enjoy, and follow us if you wish to….

The imaginative stimulus of ignorance….

I have this alchemical symbol on my wall so I can see it when I meditate. I must admit this is more inspiring to me than most Buddha images would be. I have no idea what it means but that is part of the attraction. I am reminded of that old romantic idea that landscapes are more meaningful when half hidden by mist, something about giving space for the imagination to play in the gap of the unknown.

Of course poetry is often like this. When reading Geoffrey Hill, for example, rarely do I fully apprehend a definite meaning, but each of his lines is wonderfully evocative and pregnant with possible meanings….

“To mourn is to mourn; the ancient words suffice, / Latin or English, worn channels for the rain / charged and electric….”

This poem, from Without Title, is called – ‘To John Constable: In Absentia’, but who knows what relationship it has with Constable’s life…. and who care – wonderful, weighted words about grief and the need for rituals of mourning…. the doctrines of, presumably, the Latin Mass, or the Anglican Book of Common Prayer are not the point, it is the way the sound of the words falls charged into the soul….

Just posted new essay on Buddhism and the rebirth of a culture of beauty.

The face I had before the world was made: Why art, Buddhism and beauty go hand in hand – a major new essay which sets out the values behind Urthona journal of Buddhism and the Arts, a journey in the company of James Hillman, Sangharakshita and W. B. Yeats by Urthona editor, Ratnagarbha.

The first book to be written from a Western perspective on the subject of Buddhism and the arts was Art and Meditation, by the well known German devotee of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Govinda, and originally published in 1936. In this he says:

Art and meditation are creative states of the human mind. Both are nourished by the same source, but it may seem that they are moving in different directions: art towards the realm of sense-impressions, meditation towards the overcoming of forms and sense-impressions. But the difference pertains only to accidentals, not to the essentials.1

Read the rest of the essay on our Culture and Society pages:

What the Silence Meant – Poems and Music that Celebrate Stillness and Listening

The cover of Meg Hutchinson's new album 'Beyond That'. Available from www.meghutchinson.com — The cover of Meg Hutchinson’s new album ‘Beyond That’. Available from http://www.meghutchinson.com

Simon Millward looks at a new book of poems ‘in conversation’ with the late, great American poet William Stafford, and the music of Meg Hutchinson. Both of these artists show a strong feeling for silence and the value of listening…

In the last issue of Urthona there was an article entitled ‘Hearing the wilderness listen’, taken from an essay written by Manjusvara that looked closely at William Stafford’s poem ‘Travelling through the dark’. It is strange how things can interconnect unexpectedly. I read this article again at a time when I had become increasingly interested in the albums of an American folk singer songwriter Meg Hutchinson. On her website I discovered that she also loved poetry, quoting William Stafford, Mary Oliver, Yeats and Frost among her influences, as well as Greg Brown and Joni Mitchell on the music side.Continue reading “What the Silence Meant – Poems and Music that Celebrate Stillness and Listening”

Discipleship – an idea worth ressurecting?

The dictionary says that a disciple is ‘the follower of the doctrines of a teacher or school of thought’. But this doesn’t really convey the experiential flavour of that ancient institution. In days gone by, when you took up a trade or a course of study in guild, church or university, you were apprenticed to a master. You followed their teaching in craft, curriculum or philosophy closely. No doubt you were aware that as a human being they were far from perfect, but you knew that your future success in life depended on learning as much from the master as possible in a very broad sense. This aspect of education and human development is something we have largely lost in the modern world. In the Buddhist movement I am part of we are taking some steps to reinstate this ancient tradition, in ways that suit these times. I think we have a long way to go. Not everyone likes the idea. This may be because the second, religious, meaning of the word ‘a follower of Christ’ has been widely used by analogy in our times to apply to the often gullible devotees of eastern or new age gurus. This usage tends to imply a complete self surrender to the teacher on the part of the disciple. The result is that the more ‘secular’ meaning, of being a follower of someone’s teaching, which only implies a reasonable human respect for the teacher, has been drowned in the colourful, melodramatic history of religious and esoteric cults over the last hundred years or so. Think of the Golden Dawn, Madam Blavatsky, Rajneesh – all had their so called disciples – but how much did these followers really learn?Continue reading “Discipleship – an idea worth ressurecting?”

Cantos for a Post Modern age: Mark Tredinnick

Just posted to our literature pages: a review of Mark Tredinnick’s, Bluewren Cantos (Pitt Street Poetry) by Colin Pink

Colin Pink says:

“Tredinnick’s poetry combines the personal, the spiritual and the natural worlds into one intricate web of meaning. There’s a richness to his work that resonates from bringing these perspectives together. One might say, rubbing them together creates the friction that ignites these poems into a pure and memorable flame.:

Read the full review here: TREDINNICK REVIEW

Geoffrey Hill: Broken Hierarchies (collected poems 1952-2012)

Any would-be reviewer of this large volume is in danger of falling into abashed silence. What can one say about the life’s work of the person who is without doubt England’s greatest living poet, the only authentic carrier of the torch lit by Pound and Eliot? I imagine that those who first held the collected poems of Yeats in their hands must have felt the same way. As Yeats was the brilliant last, late flowering of the entire Romantic tradition in poetry, the same might be said of Hill as regards the hieratic high modernism of Pound and Eliot. Continue reading “Geoffrey Hill: Broken Hierarchies (collected poems 1952-2012)”

Editor’s Blog – thoughts on art, life and everything

In memory and celebration: Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney died on August 30th this year at the age of 74 after a short illness – he had taken a fall outside a Dublin restaurant. Physically he had been weaker since a stroke in 2006, but his last collection Human Chain (2010) showed no dimmunition in his powers of sensitivity and reflection. It was described by Ruth Pardell, poet and judge of the Forward Prize, as ‘a collection of painful, honest and delicately weighted poems… a wonderful and humane achievement’ (Human Chain was the first of his collections to win that prize – perhaps the only major poetry award he had not so far received.)

His previous collection District and Circle (2006) likewise contained several intensely moving poems with an elegiac mood. It was characteristic of the man, loved by so many – poets, writers and millions of others around the world – to have been preparing us, and himself, for his expected departure, with down to earth images of both mortality and on going life.Continue reading “Editor’s Blog – thoughts on art, life and everything”

Editor’s Blog – notes from an English village

A summer evening in Granchester

There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come–

Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless, unrueing…

Thomas Hardy, ‘In Tenebris’

Granchester Meadows - a grey and cheerless dusk which Hardy would have appreciated. — Granchester Meadows – a grey and cheerless dusk which Hardy would have appreciated.

It is cooler now and the meadows have lost the smouldering Tuscan gleam they had last week. As if to reinforce the changed mood the farmers have been around and mowed flat the long grasses and the dry thistles that baffled even the tough lips of the Redpoll herd. No doubt this will lead to fresher and sweeter leaves to eat for the cattle as the summer days shorten to Autumn. For the moment however, it is a somewhat dreary sight. Last night at dusk there was a grey wash over the sky as I walked out into the meadows. It was one of those summer evenings which are nonchalantly non-descript – the air was warm and thick with the sweet peppery smell of newly mowed hay, and a few a slightly darker rags of cloud banded the uniform grey above.Continue reading “Editor’s Blog – notes from an English village”