The Matheson Trust is an educational charity based in London dedicated to further and disseminate the study of

comparative religion Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes and impacts (including migration) of the world's religions. In general the comparative study of religion yie ...

, especially from the point of view of the underlying harmony of the major religious and philosophical traditions of the world.

History

The Matheson Trust was established in London in 1974 by

Donald Macleod Matheson Donald Macleod Matheson (occasionally only MacLeod Matheson) CBE (1896–1979) was Secretary to the National Trust from 1934 to 1945. Active within the Traditionalist School as a translator and author, he founded The Matheson Trust for the study ...

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(1896-1979), who in addition to his work as a civil servant was active as a translator of

Perennialist The perennial philosophy ( la, philosophia perennis), also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical trut ...

works, most notably ''Understanding Islam'' by

Frithjof Schuon Frithjof Schuon (, , ; 18 June 1907 – 5 May 1998) was a Swiss metaphysician of German descent, belonging to the Perennialist or Traditionalist School of thought. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spiritual ...

and ''An Introduction to Sufi Doctrine'' by

Titus Burckhardt Titus Burckhardt (24 October 1908 – 15 January 1984) was a Swiss writer and a leading member of the Perennialist or Traditionalist School. He was the author of numerous works on metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, esoterism, alchemy, Sufism ...

. Registered as a UK charity in 1982, the trust was for years active sponsoring academic research, lectures, film production and publications. In January 2011 a new series of paperback publications was launched, the Matheson Monographs, and a public website went online hosting the Matheson Library. Matheson Trust associates have included, among others,

Martin Lings Martin Lings (24 January 1909 – 12 May 2005), also known as Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn, was an English writer, Islamic scholar, and philosopher. A student of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon and an authority on the work of William Sh ...

, Charles Le Gai Eaton, William Stoddart and

Reza Shah-Kazemi Reza Shah-Kazemi (b. 1 June 1960 ᴄᴇ) is an author who specializes in comparative mysticism, Islamic Studies, Sufism and Shi'ism. He is the founding editor of the ''Islamic World Report'' and currently a research associate at the Institute of ...

Matheson Monographs

Since 2008, The Matheson Trust had been co-producing publications with a number of kindred organisations and established publishers: The Prometheus Trust, Fons Vitae (KY), Archetype UK, but December 2010 saw the launch of an independent series, the "Matheson Monographs", covering "scriptural exegesis, the modalities of spiritual and contemplative life, studies of particular religious traditions, comparative analyses, studies of traditional arts, crafts and cosmological sciences, contemporary scholarly expositions of religious philosophy and metaphysics, translations of both classical and contemporary texts and transcriptions of lectures by, and interviews with, spiritual and scholarly authorities from different religious and philosophical traditions".

Matheson Library

In March 2011 the Matheson Trust website was launched, hosting an online library of free selected books and articles, almost exclusively in English, including authors and sources as varied as Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...

Rowan Williams Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bish ...

, the Berzin archives,

Charles, Prince of Wales Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. He was the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales and, at age 73, became the oldest person to ...

, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,

James Cutsinger James Sherman Cutsinger (May 4, 1953 – February 19, 2020) was an author, editor, and professor of religious studies (emeritus) at the University of South Carolina, whose works focused primarily on comparative religion, the modern Traditionalist ...

Gavin D'Costa Gavin D'Costa (born 1958) is the Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol, Great Britain. He is Head of the Theology & Religious studies Department (2002 – 2006, 2018–20), and has lectured at Bristol since 1993. Biogr ...

Seyyed Hossein Nasr Seyyed Hossein Nasr (; fa, سید حسین نصر, born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian philosopher and University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. Born in Tehran, Nasr completed his education in Iran and the United St ...

Harry Oldmeadow Kenneth "Harry" Oldmeadow (born 1947) is an Australian academic, author, editor and educator whose works focus on religion, tradition, traditionalist writers and philosophy. Life and career Oldmeadow was born in Melbourne in 1947. His parents ...

, the journal Sacred Web,

Huston Smith Huston Cummings Smith (May 31, 1919 – December 30, 2016) was an influential scholar of religious studies in the United States, He authored at least thirteen books on world's religions and philosophy, and his book about comparative religion, ' ...

Timothy Winter Abdal Hakim Murad (born: Timothy John Winter; 15 May 1960) is an English academic, theologian and Islamic scholar who is a proponent of Islamic neo-traditionalism. His work includes publications on Islamic theology, modernity, and Anglo-Muslim ...

(Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad), The Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths and others. Documents are free to browse and download, most in

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

format, with a few articles in HTML. As of December 2021, there are approximately 750 holdings in the library, a quarter of which are audio recordings.

Audio Library

One of the purported aims of the Matheson Library is to use existing contemporary media technologies to make available resources from ancient traditions, either in the form of recitation of traditional scriptures or in the scholarly transmission of the doctrines and insights pertaining to the different religions. An ongoing ''hear!'' project is converting scholarly texts and other texts of interest into

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

format, and making them available through the Audio section of the library. In April 2012 the ''Matheson Trust Sacred Audio Collection'' was launched, a repository of selected liturgical audio recordings from the major religious traditions. This collection includes live recordings from temples and ritual gatherings around the world.

Publications

*''Christianity & Islam: Essays on Ontology and Archetype'', by Samuel Zinner, 2010. *''The Living Palm Tree: Parables, Stories, and Teachings from the Kabbalah'', by Mario Satz, translated by Juan Acevedo, 2010. *''Louis Massignon: The Vow and the Oath'', by Patrick Laude, translated by Edin Q. Lohja, 2011. *''The Gospel of Thomas: In the Light of Early Jewish, Christian and Islamic Esoteric Trajectories'', by Samuel Zinner, 2011. *''Sacred Royalty: From The Pharaoh to The Most Christian King'', by

Jean Hani Jean Hani (1917-2012) was a French philosopher and Traditionalist author, and a professor of Greek civilization and literature at the University of Amiens. Life and Works Very little is known about Jean Hani's personal life other than his year ...

, translated by Gustavo Polit, 2011. *''Ascent to Heaven in Islamic and Jewish Mysticism'', by Algis Uždavinys, 2011. *''Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism'', by Algis Uždavinys, 2011. *''Enduring Utterance: Collected Talks'', by Martin Lings, 2015. *''Primordial Meditation'', by Frithjof Schuon, translated by Angela Schwartz and Gillian Harris, 2015. *''Weighing the Word'', by Peter Samsel, 2016. *''Breaking the Spell of the New Atheism in the Light of Perennial Wisdom'', by Gustavo Polit, 2017. *''The Queen and the Avatar'', by Dominique Wohlschlag, 2017. *''The Great War of the Dark Age: Keys to the Mahabharata'', by Dominique Wohlschlag, 2019. *''Imam ‘Ali From Concise History to Timeless Mystery'', by Reza Shah-Kazemi, 2019.

Notes

External links

*
Ten Thousand FilmsGai Eaton’s website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Matheson Trust Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom Discipline-oriented digital libraries Educational charities based in the United Kingdom Religious charities based in the United Kingdom Religious studies Traditionalist School British digital libraries