We are delighted to be able to share a filmed interview with the late Professor Keith Critchlow,
President Emeritus of the Temenos Academy,
made to mark the 70th birthday of HRH The former Prince of Wales in November 2018.
The film can be viewed here:
Professor Critchlow wrote about the philosophy underlying the film:
The authenticity and trustworthiness of all genuine human traditions can be seen to exhibit four levels of Truth or subtle understanding.
The Pythagoreans called this the ‘Tetraktys’. Plato throughout his dialogues describes the four ‘Manias’ or Inspirations. Thus:
The Musical: inspired by the Muses,
The Telestic: inspired by Bacchus,
The Prophetic: inspired by Apollo, finally
The Amatory (Loving Kindness) inspired by Venus and Athena.
For the sacred Semitic tradition of the ‘Kabbalah’ there are four Worlds:
Emanational, Creation, Formation and Action.
(see the contemporary works of Z’ev Ben Shimon Halevi)
For Christianity we have the four ‘Gospels’ of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
In Buddhism we learn of the four Noble Truths.
Each tradition has its own version of the four-fold levels of Reality.
In the special tradition of Geometric truth we have the four stages of a point, a line, a plane and a solid. This is the art of the ‘Ever True’.
Professor Keith Critchlow, September 2019
RADIO 4 LAST WORD PROGRAMME features Professor Keith Critchlow HERE
Professor Keith Critchlow, 16th March 1933 – 8th April 2020 OBITUARY HERE
[Photo credit: Prof Keith Critchlow: Constructing the Golden Spiral (see p 13, Arts & Crafts of the Islamic Lands, P.S.T.A)]
