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 human migration, migration) of the world's religions. In general the comparative study ...

, 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

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

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

Perennialist The perennial philosophy (), also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a school of thought in philosophy and spirituality that posits that the recurrence of common themes across world religions illuminates universal truths about ...

works, most notably ''Understanding Islam'' by

Frithjof Schuon Frithjof Schuon ( ; ; 18 June 1907 – 5 May 1998) was a Swiss philosopher and spiritual leader, belonging to the Traditionalist School of Perennial philosophy, Perennialism. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphys ...

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, Su ...

. 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 Shak ...

Charles Le Gai Eaton Charles le Gai Eaton (also known as Hasan le Gai Eaton or Hassan Abdul Hakeem; 1 January 1921 – 2010) was a British diplomat, writer, historian, and an Islamic scholar. He is perhaps best known for his 1985 book, ''Islam and the Destiny of M ...

William Stoddart William Smith Stoddart (25 June 1925 – 9 November 2023) was a Scottish-Canadian physician, author and spiritual traveller, who wrote several books on the Perennial Philosophy and on comparative religion. Biography William Smith Stoddart was b ...

and

Reza Shah-Kazemi Reza Shah-Kazemi (born 1 June 1960) 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 Isma ...

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 Primus inter pares, ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the bishop of the diocese of Canterbury. The first archbishop ...

Rowan Williams Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet, who served as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of W ...

, 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. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, a ...

, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, James Cutsinger,

Gavin D'Costa Gavin D'Costa (born in 1958) is the Emeritus Professor of Catholic theology, Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol. His academic career at Bristol began in 1993. D'Costa was appointed a visiting professor of Interfaith dialogue, Inter- ...

Seyyed Hossein Nasr Seyyed Hossein Nasr (born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian Americans, Iranian-American academic, philosophy, philosopher, theology, theologian, and Ulama, Islamic scholar. He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. ...

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 a 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, ''The World's R ...

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

(Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad),

The Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths The Woolf Institute is an academic institute in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1998 by Edward Kessler MBE and Martin Forward, and now located in central Cambridge on the Westminster College Site, it is dedicated to the study of interfaith relat ...

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 Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

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 under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

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