The Center’s Gnoseologies Series led by Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani has played a prominent role in the Transcendence and Transformation (T&T) Initiative at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR). Launched in September 2021, the T&T initiative affirms the existence of the sacred, different levels of reality, seen and unseen, and different modes of access to them.  

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Over the years, the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) has encouraged student-led reading groups that center around a topic, author, or text. Groups meet twice monthly throughout the academic year. Reading groups have included, The Divine Feminism and Its Discontents, Animism, Orientalism and Religion, and Modern Psychedelic Spirituality in Historical Context. The 2023-24 academic year will host the continuation of the Plant Consciousness Reading Group and will be adding Psychedelics, Sacred, Subversive: A Reading and Learning Group Exploring the Altering of Religion. Last year, Plant Consciousness drew a particularly robust and enthusiastic gathering. The CSWR spoke with co-founders of the group, Natalia Schwien and Rachael Petersen.... Read more about Plant Consciousness Reading Group: A Conversation with Co-founders Rachael Petersen and Natalia Schwien

Professor Charles Stang, CSWR Director delivered a lecture entitled, “Apophasis and Angelology: Henry Corbin’s Neoplatonism” at the 2023 Eranos conference in Switzerland. 

“This is not merely a minor chapter in the history of ideas, but rather a case study in how Neoplatonism has come to serve as a perennial source, or resource, for the reification of modern thought. … Throughout his work [Corbin] champions the Platonic tradition, over against what he perceives to be the deadening influence of Aristotelianism, Sunni orthodoxy, and modern materialism, secularism, and historicism. For Corbin, Plato – or Aflatûn as he is known in Arabic – is the sage whose name stands for what is most worth preserving in the philosophical tradition, especially when wed to the prophetology of the Abrahamic traditions, or ‘peoples of the book.’” 

... Read more about Video: Eranos Conference 2023, "Ideas and Influences on Eros"

On April 27, 2023, The Center for the Study of World Religions co-hosted this discussion with panelists Sam S. B. Shonkoff, Taube Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. Melila Hellner-Eshed, professor of Jewish mysticism in the Department of Jewish Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, author and affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary.

... Read more about Video: Are Psychedelics Theologically Significant for Judaism?