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412 results

Grappling with the T-word
By Robert Thorson | Edited by Russell C. Powell The scholarly literature on transcendentalism is full of good descriptions, but not of good definitions. In The Transcendentalists and Their World, Robert Gross consciously left the movement undefined...
A dictionary with magnifying glass

Lydia Maria Child and the Eclectic Church of the Future
By Leigh E. Schmidt | Edited by Gosia E. Sklodowska As a nineteenth-century social reformer and writer, New Englander Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) covered a lot of ground: woman’s equality, abolition, prison reform, historical fiction, children’s...
Lydia Maria Child

Maṇḍala
Buddhism provides many tools to aid the practitioner negotiating the relationship between self and world. The Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition of Tantra emphasizes the power of ritual to make such connections in the process of advancing toward enlightenment...
Muted colored mandala from fourteenth century

Thoreau's Dream Mountain
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is often remembered today as a naturalist and nature writer. But he had a wider, and weirder, understanding of nature than did many of his, or our, contemporary naturalists. He once reported hearing a voice on the vibrating...

Charles M. Stang

Emerald green artwork

Rudolf Steiner at 100: Anthroposophy in Dialogue
In December 2025, as the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) campus was emptying out for the winter holiday, two hundred people gathered in person in Swartz Hall, along with hundreds more online, to mark the centennial of the death of spiritual teacher Rudolf...

Dan McKanan

Rudolf Steiner

A Life Between Worlds

“Human beings stand with one foot in the embodied, finite world, and one foot in what has come to be called the imaginal…the realm just beyond this one, more fluid and permeable.”

Cynthia Bourgeault

Asian Religions in America
Originally distributed as a free pamphlet, Be Here Now (1971) went on to sell over two million copies and become a countercultural spiritual classic.[ 1] Illustrated with mandalas, labyrinths, serpents, and bodhisattvas, the book describes the author’s...
Colorful abstract image with mandala off to the side

Letter from the Director

"It has been another incredible year here at 42 Francis Avenue. This is my penultimate year as the Center’s Faculty Director, and so I am looking back on eight years and ahead to one more."

Charles M. Stang

CSWR Director Charles Stang

Babalu Visits and Shocks
The kariocha initiation in Lucumí, which creates a new priest/ess, is a long process that begins with a seven-day ritual conducted by a team of olorishas (priest/esses). During this time the new iyawo (person being initiated) is cloistered in a small area...
Hand drumming

Gopi Krishna’s Kundalini Rising
Gopi Krishna (1903–1984) was a South Asian author who gained international recognition in 1967 with his book Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man. This was Krishna’s second book out of a total of seventeen, all of which stemmed from an extraordinary...
Vishnu With Shridevi And Garuda. Close up View centre of mandala is Vishnu as para or Supreme deity, painted white as described in Panchratra Samhita. He is accompanied by his mount Garuda and consort Sridevi