Online Lectures

Thomas Taylor: The English Platonist by Adina Bezerita

Thomas Taylor (1758 – 1835) was an English translator of the complete works of Plato, Aristotle and the Orphic fragments. Born in London, he was devotedly self-taught in the study of classics. After working as a bank clerk, he was appointed Secretary of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, the precursor of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), in which capacity he made friends with wealthy patrons who sponsored his many translations.

Taylor’s translations inspired Blake, Shelley, Wordsworth, possibly Coleridge, and Yeats. In American editions they were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Thomas Moore Johnson (founder of The Platonist journal), William Torrey Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, and G. R. S. Mead, secretary to Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society.

In a series of three lectures, we will discuss Thomas Taylor’s influence on a wide range of movements including Idealism, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and into modernity, as we will revisit some of his most illustrious writings.

This event is being held in association with The Fintry Trust.

Saturdays: 11 January, 15 February, 8 March 2025
17.00 – 18.15 (London Time)

The Metaphysical Roots of America by Ronnie Pontiac

New research allows a fresh look at John Winthrop the Younger (1606-1676), alchemist and Rosicrucian enthusiast, who helped establish the state of Connecticut (1636). His father, John Wintrop (1588-1649) was the first governor and a leading figure in the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628–1691). The Younger openly practiced alchemy and astrology while living with his father. We’ll consider the pietist Rosicrucian communities that immigrated to America from Germany: a president of Yale who advocated adding Kabbalah studies to college curriculum, and a Civil War general who translated the Parisian magus Eliphas Levi for The Platonist journal, published on the frontier at the time of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1881).

Saturday, 18 January 2025
17.00 – 18.30 (London Time)

The Platonic Hieros Gamos of the Demiurgic Father and the Khoratic Mother by Danielle A. Layne

From within the Platonic tradition to 'become like God' (Tht. 176b) has often been associated with, at best, the possibility of Demiurgic mimesis or, in less optimistic tenors, the seeming demand that philosophers escape or 'flee' from the sensible, embodied world. This latter option, nevertheless, seems contradictory to the spirit of Plato's Timaeus insofar as the 'sensible living thing' is explicitly divinized, i.e. this world is already divine, already like the Intelligible Living Being insofar as it is both the product and progeny of a Demiurgic Father as well as a Khoratic Mother. Consequently, it is the contention of this talk to explore this divine coupling or hieros gamos which unites seemingly opposing principles, i.e. knowledge and ignorance, reason and madness, the divine masculine and feminine powers constitutive of the soul's theosis.

This event is being held in association with The Fintry Trust.

Saturday, 1 February 2025

17.00 – 18.15 (London Time)