Richard Smoley

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Biographical Information

"Richard is one of the world's foremost experts on religion and spirituality and has served as chief content editor for Simpatico Networks' religion vertical since its inception. With degrees from Harvard and Oxford, and numerous highly acclaimed books on all religions traditions, he is a frequent speaker and columnist on religious issues, and works closely with academics from throughout the religious studies arena. His most recent books, "Inner Christianity" and "Hidden Wisdom: A guide to the Western Inner Traditions" were lauded by critics nationwide as significant intellectual contributions as well as publishing successes. He specializes in translating complicated spiritual content into everyday language for the average consumer."

According to Wikipedia: "Smoley moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he worked as guest editor for Leonardo, the journal of the International Society for the Arts Sciences and Technology, and subsequently to western Massachusetts, where he served as managing editor for the Anthroposophic Press (later renamed SteinerBooks) in Great Barrington. He briefly taught philosophy on an adjunct basis at Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Massachusetts. In 2005 Smoley began to work as acquisitions editor for Quest Books, the publishing arm of the Theosophical Society in America. In 2008, he became editor of Quest, the journal of the Theosophical Society in America. He continues to hold both positions today. Smoley is a consulting editor to Parabola. He has served as guest editor of Science of Mind magazine, and works as a consultant for the New Century Edition of the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, sponsored by the Swedenborg Foundation in West Chester, Pennsylvania. In 2011 Smoley was elected to the board of directors of the Swedenborg Foundation... Smoley is a frequent contributor to the Australian magazine New Dawn and he is an associate of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, a Los Angeles-based organization devoted to cultural studies. " [1]

Richard writes in 2011:

"For a period extending from the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s, publications such as Co-Evolution Quarterly (a spinoff of The Whole Earth Catalog), New Age Journal, Yoga Journal, were investigating the burgeoning spiritual scene in a way that was both sympathetic and critical: many a hypocritical guru got his comeuppance from these magazines. Jay Kinney, an editor for Co-Evolution Quarterly who was also an underground cartoonist, started an influential journal of the Western spiritual traditions in 1985, called Gnosis. Gnosis took its inspiration from a number of influences, some of them (the psychology of C.G. Jung) comparatively well known, others (Gnosticism, the science fiction of Philip K. Dick) then quite obscure.

"Gnosis, of which I was editor from 1990 to 1999, with Jay Kinney as publisher and editor-in-chief, was a freewheeling and eclectic quarterly whose contributors included witches, Satanists, Gnostic bishops, and Eastern Orthodox priests. It had the great advantage of being under the auspices of the nonprofit Lumen Foundation, an organisation dedicated to little else than publishing Gnosis...

"In intellectual terms, one major influence on New Dawn has clearly been the British writer and philosopher Colin Wilson (see article on page 51), whose persistent investigations into the mind’s unknown capacities – which Wilson calls Faculty X – have inspired countless readers to explore such figures as Crowley, Gurdjieff, and Gregory Rasputin, not to mention the more conventional themes of existentialism and phenomenology. Indeed Wilson started out focusing on mainstream thought in his first book, The Outsider, published in 1956, when he was only twenty-four, but he was fair-minded enough to remain open to alternative views of reality, and covered these sympathetically and brilliantly in later works including The Occult (1969)." [2]

"His latest book is The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe. He is also the author of Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition; Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity; The Essential Nostradamus; Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism; and Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (with Jay Kinney). Smoley is also the former editor of Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. Currently he is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and of Quest Books. His website is www.innerchristianity.com."

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

• New Dawn (magazine) - endorser