This Course is the fruit of my 50 year long journey in the pursuit of what people often call’ The Ageless Wisdom’ or the ‘Inner tradition’. There are of course many traditions ofWisdom, varying in technique and emphasis : Mysticism, Gnosticism, Transcendentalismetc. This programme of lectures and workshops identifies four principal streams of ‘MysteryWisdom’ including some of the most important Western ones ( which are less talked about and less known than the Eastern ones) and attempts to share a practically orientated summation of what I have been able to integrate from them. Others have blazed the trail for me...

When I was about age 17 the mother of one of my school friends lent me a book aboutKabbalah and a book by Carl Jung. These books set me on a search to find an authenticway to what I would now call ‘The Path to Self-Knowledge and inner development’ althoughthe phrase might sound a bit grandiose to contemporary ears. Jung speaks of psychological‘Individuation’, a process which ,although he largely described it in secular scientific terms, he nonetheless saw as analogous to what the ancient Alchemists called ‘Initiation’. In 1983 Iwrote my Masters’ Thesis on Goethe, focussing on his Alchemical approach to the study ofColour. Rudolf Steiner’s approach to Goethe’s writings and the challenge of how to come toa modern understanding of Alchemy has been crucial to my work. For some years I was a university lecturer with a research focus on Romanticism ,Modernism and Esoteric influences on Avante Garde Art. 

The Alchemists spoke of Self-Development as ‘The Great Art’ : this is the idea that one’s own life and what one creates of it is the greatest Art of all. ‘Self -Transformation’, thishighest of all arts of course ideally involves the practice of many ‘lesser’ arts. The best wayto experience ‘Mystery Wisdom’ is not through purely academic study but through a study ofmyths, artworks , meditation and active imagination practices. Part of this course willtherefore be to involve the participant in a meditative and /or a creative exercise of theirchoice. The process is more important than the product. 

From the age of ten I knew I wanted to be an artist, to paint and to draw, especially human faces and figure compositions . The result of this is that many years later I became aprofessional portrait painter, in the course of my work I therefore met many interestingsitters, most notably Nelson Mandela, who sat for me twice. My abiding search tounderstand contrasting World-views and world Mythologies was the source of inspiration formy 28 square metre canvas ‘T’Kama-Adamastor’ for the Witwatersrand University Archive. Ihave lectured on art and exhibited my art in many countries. 

I am also very interested in growth patterns in natural forms, in trying to grasp the archetypal ‘gestures’ of how forms are built up in nature and in how one can co-create with the intelligence of nature around us. This led me to curate three major exhibitions on Water, on Air and on Plants. I have always seen the pursuit of ‘Self- understanding’ on the path of Self-development as synonymous with the attempt to transcend the merely personal level of artistic expression.