Our Mission
The Temenos Academy exists to affirm the sacred dimension of nature, life and the arts. Our aim is to promote the wisdom and beauty of the world’s spiritual traditions in order to offer a vital counterbalance to the prevailing materialistic values and assumptions of our age. Through our various courses and events we seek to learn from, and not merely about, some of the profoundest thinkers the world has known.
Each year the Academy hosts a series of lectures, courses and study days. These range from large public events to small study groups. It also promotes the Temenos Academy Young Scholars (for people aged 18-35) and offers a two-year course – the Foundation Course in the Perennial Philosophy. The perennial philosophy is an expression of the wisdom that is common to the world’s major religious and spiritual traditions. It runs like a golden thread through history and offers each generation contact with the values that nourish all civilizations.
We are an educational charity, established in 1991, and over the years we have offered courses on the sacred geometry of gothic cathedrals, the poetry of William Blake, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, Plotinus’ Enneads and a wide range of other topics. Past speakers and contributors have included John Tavener, Kathleen Raine, Mark Rylance, Vandana Shiva, Wendell Berry, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the 14th Dalai Lama and King Charles III - patron of the Temenos Academy. Our activities are based mainly in London and are open to all.
‘The Temenos Academy was founded to help those who ask the most important questions: Who am I, from where did I come, and where am I going? The journey of the soul is one where those who have recognized the path can help those who, by asking, seek the path. In short Truth, Goodness and Beauty, the values of Temenos (as they are of Plato, and with dialectical variations those of all traditional teachings) are the necessary integral values which can liberate us all.’
- Keith Critchlow, late President Emeritus of the Temenos Academy
Ten basic principles that inspire the work of Temenos
Acknowledgement of Divinity.
Love of Wisdom, as the essential basis of civilisation.
Spiritual vision as the life-breath of civilisation.
Maintenance of the revered traditions of mankind.
Understanding of tradition as continual renewal.
The provision of teaching by the best teachers available in their disciplines and of publications which set the highest standard in both content and design.
Mindfulness that the purpose of teaching is to enable students to apply in their own lives that which they learn.
To make Temenos known to all those who may benefit from its work.
Reminding ourselves and those we teach to look to goodness, truth and beauty in all things.
Governance of the Temenos Academy itself in the light of the above principles.
Our Story
The Academy developed from the journal Temenos, edited by Professor Keith Critchlow (architect and geometer; d. 2020), Brian Keeble (publisher and writer), Kathleen Raine (poet and literary scholar; d. 2003) and Philip Sherrard (theologian and Hellenist; d. 1995). The initial journal had a run of 13 issues between 1981 and 1992. The Temenos Academy itself was founded in 1991, under the patronage of HRH The Prince of Wales.
Meet the Team
-
Ian Skelly
Chair of the Council
-
Dr Daniel Samuel
Administrator and Member of the Academic Board
-
Professor Grevel Lindop
Member of Council and Chair of the Academic Board
-
Professor John Carey
Editor of Temenos Academy Review, Member of Council and Academic Board
-
Emma Clark
Member of the Council and Academic Board, Foundation Course Registrar
-
Dr Valentin Gerlier
Member of the Academic Board
-
Dr Jeremy Naydler
Member of the Academic Board
-
Hilary Davies
Member of Council and Academic Board
-
Professor Kim Samuel
Member of Council
-
Vinod Tailor MBE
Member of the Council
-
Dr Joseph Milne
Member of the Academic Board
-
Julia Cleave
Member of Council and Academic Board
-
Dr Mark Vernon
Member of the Academic Board
Temenos Academy Fellows
Fellowship is the highest honour that the Temenos Academy can confer. Individuals are chosen as Fellows because their lives and achievements exemplify, in varying ways, the values which Temenos exists to uphold.
Dr Kathleen Raine
Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) was a poet of the natural world, the soul’s experience and the mystery of life; a literary critic, who in her major work Blake and Tradition added enormously to our knowledge of the sources that inspired William Blake’s unique writings.
She was also an educator of great vision who, at the age of 82 dedicated the rest of her life to establishing Temenos – an Academy for education in the light of the Spirit
Thetis Blacker Scholarship
The Temenos Academy has established an award in memory of the artist Thetis Blacker, to further the study of the art of batik. The award is administered by the Temenos Academy in association with the Batik Guild, a UK-based non-profit organization, which exists to encourage a wider appreciation and understanding of batik as a centuries-old craft which continues to meet the needs of creative artists working today.