Temenos Academy

The Temenos Academy,[1] or Temenos Academy of Integral Studies,[2] is an educational charity in London which aims to offer education in philosophy and the arts in the light of the sacred traditions of East and West.

The academy's origins began in 1980 when the Temenos journal was launched by Kathleen Raine, Keith Critchlow, Brian Keeble and Philip Sherrard to publish creative work which acknowledged spirituality as a prime need for humanity. Ten years later the academy was founded to extend the project through lectures and study groups. It was accommodated initially in the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture in Regent's Park. Since the closure of the institute, the academy now holds meetings in different venues in London.

The Prince of Wales is patron of the academy. He said:

The work of Temenos could not be more important. Its commitment to fostering a wider awareness of the great spiritual traditions we have inherited from the past is not a distraction from the concerns of every-day life. These traditions, which form the basis of mankind's most civilised values and have been handed down to us over many centuries, are not just part of our inner religious life. They have an intensely practical relevance to the creation of real beauty in the arts, to an architecture which brings harmony and inspiration to people's lives and to the development within the individual of a sense of balance which is, to my mind, the hallmark of a civilised person.

— HRH The Prince of Wales[3]

Also, the work of the Temenos Academy addresses the importance of the teaching of what may be defined as the Perennial Philosophy which underpins every civilisation and every religion. In accordance with Kathleen Raine's message:

The Temenos Academy is an association dedicated to the teaching and dissemination of the perennial wisdom, which has been the ground of every civilisation.

Whereas in Shelley's words, 'the deep truth is imageless', the Arts (from architecture, painting, music and poetry, to the songs and dances of the villages and the designs of textiles and pottery), have within every civilisation been the flowering of a vision of the Sacred, embodied in some tradition of spiritual teaching. The arts of the imagination flourish therefore in the Temenos - the precinct of that sacred centre, be that centre temple, synagogue, church, mosque, or the invisible sanctuary within the heart. Since knowledge is universal we seek to learn from all traditions. Within western civilisation, Temenos follows the Platonic and Plotinian tradition from its pre-Socratic origins to the present day.

Our purpose is to study the learning of the Imagination, both in the arts and also in such metaphysical teachings as are likewise the expression of traditional spiritual knowledge. We reject the premises of secular materialism, widespread at the present time, which deny the very ground of meaning and value. W.B. Yeats wrote of the soul:

Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence

Therefore we look also for contemporary expressions in the arts and other modes of thought which are rooted in that unageing spiritual reality.