The Lindisfarne Association

Several years ago we made a new friend. Pir Zia Inayat-Khan had been reading the writings of William Irwin Thompson, the oracular cultural historian, and invited him to visit. This was in 2007, at the very beginning of Seven Pillars’ life, and it quickly became evident that our work descends from a long lineage of individuals and groups dedicated to the realization of a new planetary culture.

Seven Pillars Update & News

Spring has sprung, and with the energy and inspiration of rebirth that accompanies this time of year, we have been very happily up to our eyebrows in exciting new projects! As we wrote about in our 2011 Year-End Review, everything we do from this point forward will focus on the “seven pillars” – The Journey of Life, Universe Story, Cloud of Witnesses, Unity of Being, The Cry, What May Be and The Pledge.

Reimagining the Arts in a Material(ist) World

Do we live actually in a dualistic world, a world of matter and spirit,  mind and body? To treat matter as separate already makes it so. Matter,  as we know it, is the matter of materialism (egotism, dualism). Yet it really didn’t come into being until Descartes divided the world into res cogitans and res extensa,  thinking things—minds—thought of as spiritual, and extended things—bodies—thought of as mechanical.

The Odor of the Gods

Smell is the oldest, most magical sense. In ‘In Search of Past Time,’  Proust tells how, returning home for a visit one cold winter’s day, his mother offered him a cup of lime blossom tea with some plump little cakes, called “madeleines,” molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. At first, he declined, but then, for no particular reason, he accepted. As the lime-tea-soaked crumbs touched his palate, a strange emotion overcame him. The world stopped, and an exquisite, transcendent pleasure, like the effect of love, filling him with joy, suffused his senses.

Pillars of Sophia Benefit Concert (2)