This event is part of the Church of St John the Evangelist’s annual “Festival of Spirituality” which is put on every year at the time of the annual Edinburgh Arts Festival.    It involves a month-long art exhibition that will run from 6 – 29 August and includes works by Graham Barbour, Rai Barbour, Jean Bell, Joe Boyle, Rachel Cowan, Alan Dawson, Richard Demarco, Frank Docherty, Frank J. Docherty, Andrew Fitzpatrick, Ronnie Ford, Robert Gould, Charles Hynes, Martin Kane, Peter MacKenna, Joe McLaughlin, Jack McLean, Craig McMaster, Don McNeil, Shahin Memishi, Paul Murray, Boyd McNicol, Terry Ann Newman, Avril Paton, Valentine Petrov, Paul Raine, Jim Rankin, Paul Reeves, Yvonne Smith, Leo Stevenson, Ally Thompson, George Wyllie, and others.   Each artist has agreed to create a work on the theme of the sacred especially for this event.  In addition, a four-day long event from 24-27 August with a variety of speakers, panel sessions and music will also fall under the rubric of “Finding the Sacred in the 21^st Century.”

In some circles in the contemporary world the word ‘sacred’ is apparently problematic, usually because it is thought to entail something having to do with religion.  However, the ‘sacred’ has little or nothing to do with dogma or doctrine.  As human beings we are continually involved in the process of trying to locate our finite selves within infinitude.  The process of finding the sacred simply means to be in the process of attempting to gather up the fragments, to bind together the finite with the infinite, so both form one great whole; thus, finding the sacred is a process that touches everyone, whether believer or atheist.

It must be said that the sacred indeed seems to be difficult to locate in the space/time of the early 21^st century.  The main reason the sacred is so hard to see or feel has everything to do with the fact that most of us live in an environment that is continuously bombarded with images generated by the media.  Even if we do not watch television, we are still subjected to advertisements in magazines and newspapers, on billboards, on the walls we pass while walking, on public transportation, on the radio, and lately, even when we go to the theatre to watch a film.  These images do nothing to connect us with the sacred; rather, they actively function to dis-connect us from it.   Unlike many of the events on offer at a cultural endeavour like the Edinburgh Arts Festival, it is hoped that this event will actively and explicitly function to help people re-connect with the sacred.  All of the talks, images, poetry and music presented will be geared toward forging a connection with what poet Adrienne Rich referred to as “the rockshelf furthering all that is.”  

An event like this requires the dedication and energy of more than one person.  Andy Green, Director of Kempock Digital has agreed to be the business manager for the event and a member of the Advisory Board which is also comprised of John Blue (business manager of the Glasgow Phoenix Choir), Jack McLean (columnist for The Herald and Scotsman on Sunday), Cordelia Oliver (author and art critic), Avril Paton, and Peter Searle (theatre consultant).  George Wyllie (artist and sculptor) is an ex officio advisor.  Finally, it should be said that this entire event is being done on the proverbial shoestring.  To date (May 2005) we have secured no outside funding.  Kempock Digital, a small giclée printing company run by Andy Green and Karen-Claire Voss, with the indefatigable help of Tom Niven, has funded everything so far.   People have remarked that we must be mad, and perhaps we are, but we remain convinced that it is divine madness, that an event like this is sorely needed.  Indeed, the enthusiasm with which the project has been greeted by the artists, scholars, and musicians who have agreed to participate, attests to that.   

Finding the Sacred in the 21^st Century Art Exhibition

Each of the participating artists has agreed to create a work on the theme of the sacred especially for this event.  This exhibition will include works by

The exhibition will run from 6–29 August.

This event marks what may well be an unprecedented occurrence.    It must be noted again that each and every artist has created his/her work keeping in mind the rubric of ‘the sacred’.  That in itself is remarkable, but going even further, the art exhibition itself represents what is probably an unheralded gathering of the cream of the art world on the Scottish West Coast. The speakers have also kept the rubric of ‘the sacred’ in mind.  In each case, what they are presenting is something which they believe is vitally significant.  The musicians are on board as well.  They too are committed to going deep inside themselves, and bringing out what is best, most genuine, and finest.  Finally, the fact that this event puts artists, scholars, and musicians in connection with one another demonstrates the transdisciplinary nature of the event, because under ordinary circumstances, artists, scholars and musicians, though they have much in common, are often not able to communicate with each other.  We look forward to seeing what properties emerge from all of this. 

Please consider what I have written here as an invitation to you, to enter into what we have all worked to create and to bring some of yourself to it. 

From the very beginning, it has been my hope that this event will function to help raise consciousness, that it will be something that will go a long way toward healing the wound that festers at the heart of 21^st century humanity.  You see, I believe that it is imperative for ourselves and for the sake of the planet that we take seriously the fact that Reality is dynamic, multivalent and multi-levelled—after all, contemporary physics tells us that this is so.  Ultimately, I hope this event will function to remind each of us to celebrate our humanness in a way that will take us closer to what is, to that “rockshelf furthering all that is.”

                                                                   Karen-Claire Voss

                                                                   1 July 2005

 We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the artists for the considerable thought, time, and effort they have put into this project.  It is such effort that is turning the germ of an idea into a really significant, even, transformative, event.

 

Wednesday, Aug 24

Session 1: 10:30-11:30 Introduction and Welcome – Karen-Claire Voss

Session 2: 12:00 – 1:00 Karen-Claire Voss, “Rediscovering the Sacred in the 21^st Century II”

In this lecture Karen-Claire Voss sets forth a definition of the sacred that takes us beyond the usual religious categories into the realm of what has been called the ‘transreligious,‘ and goes on to explore the reasons for the contemporary dis-connection from the sacred.   

 

 

 

Currently an independent scholar, Karen Claire Voss is Past-President of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region and taught Religious Studies and Women’s Studies at San Jose State University from 1985-1991.  In Istanbul she has taught at Boğaziçi University and Fatih University, where she was Assistant Professor of American Culture & Literature 2003-2004.   Translator of Romanian physicist Basarab Nicolescu’s Manifesto, (SUNY, 2002) and his Poetical Theorems, Karen-Claire currently divides her time between Istanbul and Scotland.  Her areas of research include mysticism, alchemy, esotericism, and contemporary culture.

 

 

Session 3: 2:00-3:00 Alastair McIntosh, "Perceiving the 'Holiness' of People."

 

"In his essay, 'Real People in a Real Place', the Hebridean writer, Iain Crichton Smith, wrote the following, which is the theme on which Alastair McIntosh will deliver this lecture: "Sometimes when I walk the streets of Glasgow I see old women passing by, bowed down with shopping bags, and I ask myself, 'What force made this woman what she is? What is her history?' It is the holiness of the person we have lost, the holiness of life itself, the inexplicable mystery and wonder of it, its strangeness, its tenderness."

 

 

Alastair McIntosh is a Fellow of Scotland's Centre for Human Ecology, best known as a pioneer of land reform and for helping to stop the proposed Harris superquarry. He is author of Soil and Soul: People Versus Corporate Power (Aurum Press), described by Starhawk as "inspirational," by the Bishop of Liverpool as "life-changing," by George Monbiot as "world-changing," and by Thom Yorke of Radiohead as "truly mental." Personally, he likes the latter description best!

 

 

 

Session 4:  3:30 – 4:30 Alastair Hulbert, Europe — in Search of Meaning

Images and some music. A meditation on the meaning of maps, from the mediaeval mappae mundi to the photographs of earth from space. A look in the mirror of cartography at the self-understanding of Christendom—Europe—the West, and the direction this civilisation is taking. What compass bearings are there for the terra incognita of high tech virtual reality to match the north—south axis of the 16^th century atlases of Antwerp and Amsterdam? The cartoons of Selçuk?

 

 

Alastair Hulbert is Warden of Scottish Churches House, the ecumenical conference centre in Dunblane. He lived for over twenty years on the continent of Europe, learning to love and hate France as much as he loves and hates his own country, and enjoying the rich worlds of Prague, Geneva and Brussels. In 2002 he published a book called The Gift Half Understood:  Essays on a European Journey. 

Evening:  7:30-10:00 pm Traditional Scots and Burns songs in a classical style: Performed by Quodlibet (admission:  £9)

 

Thursday, August 25

Session 1:  10:30-11:30 David Lorimer, The Ecospiritual Wisdom of Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov)

The Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov, 1864-1944) left a huge legacy of writings, music, songs and dance movements (paneurhythmy). His work is at the meeting point of mystical Christianity and the Greek wisdom traditions, also drawing on the historical impulse of the Bogomils in 10^th century Bulgaria. Based on the three fundamental principles of Love, Wisdom and Truth, his vision is universal and heralds what he called a ‘Culture of Love’. His followers still camp in the Seven Lakes region of the Rila Mountains every summer in order to be close to Nature. Every day, live musicians play the music for the paneurhythmy, which translates the timeless principles into gestures on the basis of a profound correspondence between idea, music and action. This lecture will present the work of Beinsa Douno and its relevance to our times.

David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a writer, lecturer and editor who is programme director of the Scientific and Medical Network.  Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of ten books, most recently Thinking beyond the Brain and Science, Consciousness and Ultimate Reality. He is Vice-President of the Swedenborg Society and the Horizon Foundation  (The International Association for Near-Death Studies UK), and Chair of Wrekin Trust and the University for Spirit Forum (Wrekin is a charity concerned with adult education) and of the All Hallows House Foundation, concerned with holistic health. He has a long-standing interest in the perennial wisdom and has translated and edited books about the Bulgarian sage Peter Deunov. He is also a member of the International Futures Forum and editor of its digest, Omnipedia - Thinking for Tomorrow. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales—Radical Prince—was published in 2003 and the abridged paperback came out in October 2004.

Session 2 12:00 – 1:00 Murdo MacDonald, “Christian Art in Scotland from the Pictish Era to the Celtic Revival”

Christian art in Scotland has a distinguished history, whether one looks to the great cross slabs of the Picts and the manuscripts of Iona, or to the revival of Christian imagery engendered by David Wilkie and William Dyce in the nineteenth century. In this presentation I will attempt give some indication of this rich heritage.

 

Murdo Macdonald is Professor of History of Scottish Art at the University of Dundee. His recent publications include “Ossian and Art: Scotland into Europe via Rome”in H. Gaskill, ed., (2004), “The Reception of Ossian in Europe and Patrick Geddes's Generalism: from Edinburgh's Old Town to Paris's Universal Exhibition”, in F. Fowle and B. Thomson, eds., Patrick Geddes: the French Connection (2004).  He is the author of Scottish Art in Thames and Hudson's World of Art series and was editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1990-1994.

 

Session 3: 2:00-3:00 Richard Roberts, “’Ceaseless till then, O Sacred Shame, Our wills inspire!’: Sacred Scotland and the Recovery of the Divine Feminine”

In the closing lines of his poem, “Hymn to Sophia: The Wisdom of God”, the greatest Scottish poet of the twentieth-century, Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) displays a tenderness not often associated with a lifetime of uncompromising, adamantine and Anglophobic individualism. MacDiarmid’s verses inspire Richard Roberts to explore the reasons why Scotland, as sacred land, exerts such wide fascination in a globalised world where local particular and global universal are now in acute conflict. This leads him to pose the questions. What should be the ‘true function of culture’ under such conditions? What would the implications be of as it were discerning the “Kali” in Caledonia—and of inviting Bridgit/Sophia/Gaia back into the consciousness of Britain and Europe – and of the Earth?

 

 

Richard H. Roberts is a former Professor of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies of Lancaster University and Honorary Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Stirling. His authored, edited and co-edited books include: Hope and its Hieroglyph: A Critical Decipherment of Ernst Bloch's 'Principle of Hope' (1990); A Theology on Its Way: Essays on Karl Barth (1992); The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences (1993); Religion and the Transformations of Capitalism: Comparative Responses (1995); Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World (1998); Time and Value (Oxford: Blackwells, 1998). Professor Roberts’ latest book Religion, Theology and the Human Sciences was published by the Cambridge University Press in November 2001 and described by Archbishop Rowan Williams in the Times Literary Supplement as: ‘...a highly original, difficult, exasperating and important collection.... passionate and painfully honest thinking.’

Session 4:   3:30-4:30 Andrew Green, The Orphic Lyre—in Harmony with the Cosmos

It must be banned, this artificial music which injures souls and draws them into feelings snivelling, impure, and sensual, and even a Bacchic frenzy and madness. (Clement of Alexandria).

And this Orpheus first led men into dwelling together and was a most beautiful harmonizer, in that he brought bestial and solitary men into a civilized society: (St. Thomas Aquinas). 

In natural magic nothing is more effective than the hymns of Orpheus, if there be applied to them a suitable music, and disposition of soul, and the other circumstances known to the wise: (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola).

 

 

 

Andrew Green retired as a Research Associate from Kodak Limited in 1997.  Both scientist and inventor, he has published widely on photographic science, and holds twenty-three patents in areas ranging from engineering, through chemistry, physics and mathematics, to computer science and artificial intelligence.  He is a photographer, printer, guitarist, historian, and for thirty years has followed Pythagoras.

Evening: 7:30-10:00 “Leading Out the Gold”: An Evening of Alchemical Music (admission:  £9)

Featuring a multimedia presentation, this will be composed of music featuring Flauti Animati Scotica, a recorder quartet comprised of  four recorder players, Andrew Bayly, Ed Friday, Eileen Silcocks (also viol) and Katie Wilkie, joined, for this project directed by Eileen Silcocks, by Robert Lay on viol, a member of the Baroque group, Banquet of Musick.  During the course of the evening, and integrated with the whole presentation, will be a rare performance of John Dowland’s “Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares…” and “Semper Dowland semper dolens.” The program will also include recorded excerpts from Atalanta Fugiens and modern works by Alistair MacDonald, while original photographs by Duncan Oxland are displayed.  Throughout, alchemical images, courtesy of Adam MacLean, will be projected. Produced by Andrew Green, Dr Alistair MacDonald, Director, Electroacoustic Music Studios, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Adam McLean, The Alchemy Website, and Karen-Claire Voss.

 

Friday, August 26

Session 1:  10:30-11:30 Lizanne Henderson, ‘Ridiculous Utopias’: Mapping the Supernatural in Seventeenth Century Scotland

In 1691, the Episcopalian minister Robert Kirk, from Aberfoyle, wrote a treatise entitled The Secret Common-Wealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. The intention of the manuscript was to argue that fairies and related supernatural phenomena were a reality and that to disbelieve in them was to doubt the existence of God. Kirk reasoned that just as Europeans had recently become familiar with the Americas so in time the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural would one day be breeched; “[the] inhabitants of America, the bone of our bone, yet their first discovery was lookt on as a fayrie tale, and the reporters hooted at as inventers of ridiculous Utopias”. He observed that the invention of the diving bell had enabled human kind to enter the underwater medium of the fishes. Eventually, he thought, folk would discover how to access fairyland. Stimulated by the intelligentsia of the Royal Society of London, Kirk, and others, were moved to investigate new frontiers, namely the scientific basis of folk belief and the paranormal. While Kirk’s interest was mainly in the fairies, Martin Martin from Skye investigated Second Sight. Other writers were interested in the efficacy of prophecy, the reality of witches, and the presumed actual power possessed by charmers. Between the publication of George Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World Discovered (1685) and Theophilus Insulanus A Treatise on the Second Sight (1763), there appeared a spate of Scottish literature on the supernatural and popular belief. This paper attempts to investigate the penetration of new frontiers in pursuit of long entrenched beliefs and assumptions that were ancient, archaic and deeply embedded in the Scottish psyche.

Dr. Lizanne Henderson is Head of History at the University of Glasgow Crichton  Campus (Dumfries). B.A. Double Honours in History and Fine Art, from the University of Guelph, Ontario, M.A. in Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, and a PhD (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow). She is co-author, with Edward J. Cowan, of Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (Tuckwell Press, 2001), and has published articles on the Scottish Witch-Hunts and on the Scottish ballads. She is currently editing ‘Fantastical Imaginations’: The Supernatural in Scottish Culture (Tuckwell Press, forthcoming 2006). She has lectured on Scottish history and folklore in Europe, Canada, America, and Australia, is a seasoned lecturer aboard expedition ships, Editorial Assistant of the distinguished journal Folklore, a committee member of The Folklore Society (London) and the Crichton Tourism Research Centre

 

Session 2:  12:00 – 1:00 Tessa Ransford, The Transformative Way

A poetic journey through seven valleys, vales, veils, ways of being, in search, love, knowledge, detachment, unity, amazement and annihilation, cycles of experience at ever deeper or higher levels, inspired by the named valleys in the Sufi allegory, Farid ud-Din Attar’s (c. 1120-c. 1220), The Conference of the Birds. 

 

 

 

 

Tessa Ransford is current president of Scottish PEN, founder and former director of the Scottish Poetry Library, initiator of the Callum Macdonald Memorial annual Award for pamphlet poetry, recent Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the Centre for Human Ecology. She has published fourteen books of poetry, pamphlets and translations, and contributed to many magazines and anthologies. www.wisdomfield.com

 

 

 

Session 3: 2:00 – 3:00 Karen Ralls, Music and the Celtic Otherworld:  Embodiment of the Sacred  

Many cultures throughout history have made reference to a spiritual dimension of music, and Scotland and Ireland are no exception.  Part of a universal, philosophical concept of an enlivened Cosmos, and long considered an essential component of both pagan and Christian 'paradise(s)', music from the Celtic sources show a rich and varied tradition. Ranging from the 'fairy music' of the sidhe  to the healing power of music in saints' lives, the 'effects' of music—often healing and transforming, but sometimes mysterious or even dangerous—are now being further researched by scientists. From ancient times, and from Plato's day to our own, music and humans have shared a special legacy.  What will your Quest reveal?

 

 

 

 

Dr Karen Ralls, FSA Scot., medieval historian and Celtic scholar, was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Deputy Curator of the Rosslyn Chapel museum exhibition for six years prior to moving to Oxford in 2001, where she is now based.  Partly derived from seminal research at the School of Scottish Studies (Univ. of Edinburgh) in the 1990s,  her first book , Music and the Celtic Otherworld, addressed key themes about the sacred in relation to music, sound, and vibration;  so,  in her lecture today, Dr Ralls will report on further research findings about this subject, including important new information from science and medicine and the connection to Rosslyn Chapel. Dr Ralls lectures worldwide, conducts specialist research, and has appeared on documentaries for the History, Discovery, and National Geographic Channels involving her books, which also include The Templars and the Grail, The Quest for the Celtic Key, and Indigenous Religious Music. For more information, please see her award-winning website www.ancientquest.com

 

Session 4:   3:30-4:30 Gordon Strachan,  Chartres: Sacred Geometry, Sacred Space

In this lecture, Gordon Strachan will explore the magnificent structure of Chartres Cathedral, and examine some of the influences on the medieval master builders.  Using Chartres Cathedral as a starting point, Dr Strachan will suggest that the origins of the Gothic style may lie in Islamic architecture. He will go on to consider how the experience of a particular architectural space affects us, and how sacred geometry works.

 

 

Gordon Strachan is a Church of Scotland minister who has exhibited, performed and lectured for many years on the Festival Fringe. He is exhibiting new paintings at the Christian Community 21 Napier Road from 29th August-3rd September. Copies of his recently acclaimed book on Chartres Cathedral will be on sale in the vestibule of St. John’s.

Evening: 7:30-10:00 Frank O’Hagan’s Hapax – a truly fabulous blues band!  (admission:  £9)

 

Saturday, August 27

Session 1: 10:30-11:30 Alexander Broadie, Finite and Infinite:  Our Dual Nature

This lecture will explore human nature with particular reference to the question of its finitude and its infinity, and with reference also to the way in which we human beings, in virtue of our dual nature, are damaged by, but can also protect ourselves from, dangerous aspects of modern life.

Alexander Broadie is from Edinburgh. He was educated at the Royal High School and at the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. From 1990-93 he held the prize lectureship in Scottish Studies at the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1994 delivered the Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at Aberdeen University. After four years as a personal professor at Glasgow University he was appointed to the University's chair of Logic and Rhetoric, a chair once occupied by Adam Smith. Professor Broadie is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His principal area of research, and the subject of a dozen of his books, is the history of Scottish philosophy from the twelfth century to the twentieth, with particular attention to the medieval thinker John Duns Scotus, and to the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers David Hume and Thomas Reid.

 

 

 

Session 2:   12:00-1:00 Wrap-up and Overview   

Session 3:   2:00-4:00 Pilgrimage to George Wyllie’s Stones of Scotland

 

Evening: 7:30-10:00 The Glasgow Phoenix Choir (admission:  £10)

The Glasgow Phoenix Choir rose out of the ashes of the world-famous Glasgow Orpheus Choir when that choir disbanded in 1951 after 50 years of choral excellence. Eighty-three members of the Orpheus who wished to continue as choristers founded the Phoenix and thus continued the excellent traditions for which its predecessor was deservedly known. Since then the Phoenix has been at the forefront of choral music in Scotland and beyond and—like the Orpheus—remains the best choir in the world.

Karen-Claire Voss studied at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne.  Past President of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region, she taught Religious Studies and Women’s Studies at San Jose State University from 1985-1991.  She works closely with Romanian physicist and philosopher Basarab Nicolescu in the field of transdisciplinarity, and is translator of his Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity, (SUNY, 2002) and his Poetical Theorems.  Author of numerous scholarly and popular articles, her collection of short stories Istanbul? Yes, Istanbul. is due for release shortly.  Karen-Claire currently divides her time between Istanbul, where she has taught at Boğaziçi University and Fatih University, and Scotland.  Her areas of research include mysticism, alchemy, esotericism, and contemporary culture. Work in progress includes two books:  Spiritual Alchemy:  A Way of Being in the World and Feminine Gnosis:  An Other Way of Knowing.