Archive

In the beautiful woods of Newtown, Connecticut, a new elementary school is about to open. Pleasing to the eye and soul, this new school replaces the Sandy Hook Elementary School in which, on December 14, 2012, twenty young children and six adults were shot and killed […]

Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, with Peggy Bagley, “Spiritual Laws: The Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah”

An interview with Keith Buzzell

Looking back, I see my five years in India as the high-point of my diplomatic life, and my most memorable time in India as the four days in January of 1971 before Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s official visit to India. […]

That a book on the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt has been favorably reviewed by the New Yorker is surely a sign of a significant cultural shift, but if you take the time to read this extraordinary book you will quickly see why. […]

Two strangers, vehicles of the miraculous

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

Naming Rumpelstiltskin, and the path to self-knowledge

“The greatest responsibility of all: the transmission of the mystery.” —Basarab Nicolescu

An Interview with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from November 4, 2006 until November 1, 2015.

In contrast to our modern situation, traditional and indigenous peoples had extensive spiritually and communally based warrior medicine, practices and lineages. […]

In the Middle Ages people were well aware of the inexhaustible power that arises simply from sitting still. After that time, knowledge of the purifying power of stillness and its practice was, in the West, largely lost.

A Sufi master on finding balance in an unstable world

Anonymous / African

Retold by Nartana Premachandra

Shamanic memories from an Indian visionary

These are challenging times for all of us. We at Parabola are offering a free PDF of our “The Search for Meaning” issue from Spring 2017 to anyone who would like one, and we hope you will find comfort in its pages. Click here to access your free PDF. You can also purchase a print…

Bön monks flee the invaders of Tibet

What we need is right at hand

Understanding mercy as a force from on High

King Salomon seeks paradise with the help of an eagle

Story editor Betsy Cornwell explores our current issue, “Ways of Healing,” in PARABOLA Magazine’s podcast. Learn more about this issue or become a subscriber at parabola.org. This episode also includes Kenneth Lawrence’s retelling of the Japanese tale “Kiyotsune.” Please consider supporting this podcast and Parabola Magazine by purchasing a back issue or becoming a subscriber. This…

If you dream of finding a great Teacher, a Master, the operative advice is, “get real.” Great teachers may appear once in a hundred years. …

Frederick Law Olmsted’s village in the woods

“GURDJIEFF RECONSIDERED: The Life, the Teachings, The Legacy” by Roger Lipsey. Reviewed by Jeff Zaleski

The filmmaker writes about forgiveness and acceptance

The Descent offers a chance to look clearly at tired habits of thought and action. A woman may finally admit to an addiction or see how some long-denied pattern of action has failed her time and again. The Return offers a chance for something to be born or recovered. A woman may reclaim a talent…

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way

Lucifer is the most compelling character in Milton’s Paradise Lost. He is the most dazzling angel. In Hebrew his name means “to shine” or “to bear light.” In Latin it means “morning star.” […]

Brian first studied the history of photography and Black & White printing in 1985 with Teacher and Mentor William Abranowicz at Parsons New York City. …

learning mindfulness and connection from a dog named George Lucas

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is the foundational and earliest text on yoga. Dating from about the fifth century BCE, it reflects an oral tradition in existence long before.

How the goddess of creation became the goddess of death

A hopeful report from the 2021 Parliament of the World’s Religions

The secret prices of love

The nature of wisdom is necessarily esoteric, because it subsists on a level which both transcends and is internal to, anything we can directly observe. …

America’s children are being robbed of their childhood. It’s as simple as that.

For the last five or so years, as readers may know, I’ve been the poetry Editor at Parabola magazine, while also fulfilling various other duties as a Senior Editor. […]

The first issue of Stopinder: A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time appeared in the year 2000. […]

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares editorial director Tracy Cochran’s “Fusterlandia” and Elizabeth Napp’s “An Education in Peace,” as well as some wise words on leadership from Octavia Butler, in this episode of Parabola Magazine’s free monthly podcast.

Tsunemasa, Attributed to Zeami Motokiyo / Japanese Noh. Retold by Kenneth E. Lawrence, translated by Edward Kai Lawrence. Art by Kumiko Lawrence

Oxford skyline. Photo by David Iliff During the hectic middle decades of the twentieth century, from the end of the Great Depression through World War II and into the 1950s, a small circle of intellectuals gathered on a weekly basis in and around Oxford University to drink, smoke, quip, cavil, read…

A conversation with former prisoner and Buddhist practitioner Edwin Paragas

Searching for her place in God’s house

By being born, we all find ourselves on a journey of some kind.

The fiery path from light to light

A transformative discovery lights the way

Despite a growing awareness of the Divine Feminine, women remain ineligible to head many major religious groups and institutions […]

Four role models for all who seek the sacred

cultivation of the integrity and soundness of body, mind, soul, and spirit in the ancient Mediterranean world

A conversation with intuitive and healer Laura Day Ivisited Laura Day in her apartment in Tribeca in lower Manhattan to talk about intuition. Since her early twenties, Day has been internationally famous for her uncanny ability to know things immediately, without the aid of research or reasoning, accurately seeing the outcome of even arcane events….

THE STILLNESS OF THE LIVING FOREST: A Year of Listening and Learning by John Harvey. Reviewed by Jan Cheripko

Reaching an understanding that no storm can shake

The photo project “Icon and Mirror” by Pola Rader analyzes the Orthodox woman and her social role in feminist context.

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. […]

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head […]

The soul, like the moon,
is new, and always new again. …

JFK, Ram Dass, and the mystery of Being

What makes the Wizard of Oz an iconic American tale that has entered into the language? Some expressions are so well known they need no further explanation, as for example “You’re not in Kansas anymore”.

ilustraciones de Jean Zaleski Era un lluvioso y helado atardecer de diciembre en Manhattan unos días antes de Navidad. Esperaba bajo una llovizna persistente el autobús de la Sexta Avenida para que nos llevara a mi y a mis cuatro hijos desde Greenwich hacia el norte de la ciudad hasta nuestro…

Ever since human beings discovered that we live in an expanding, evolutionary universe with billions of other galaxies, it has become increasingly fashionable to suggest that human existence is essentially meaningless …

Four steps to take on the road of life

Elie Wiesel died Saturday, July 2, 2016 at his home in Manhattan. The Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner was 87. In May of 1985, we interviewed Elie Wiesel for our “Exile” Issue.

Memorable encounters with an extraordinary being

Life lessons from William Segal

A great teacher meets his ultimate challenge

Why God is a verb, not a noun

I follow two rules. The first is that my presence is invisible and silent. The film belongs to the storytellers. The second is to do as much research as possible, trust the material, and never film re-creations.

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Margaret Delaney’s “The Anonymous Ones” and “Gastronomy in Ancient China” by Donald Haper in the latest episode of our free monthly podcast.

In the old days, no one ever stole. Those who were well off always shared what they had. […]

Many things in the Philokalia are said about “passions.” This word has not quite the same meaning as it has in ordinary language […]

A Dutch Village, ‘Guernica’, and the power of remembering

Photograph by Lee van Laer Human  beings are peculiar creatures. We can think; and it sets us apart from other creatures, who can think some (consider the honeybee) but not much. Thinking, over the last 10,000 or so years (a rough estimate,) mankind has occupied himself, in the disciplines of science…

Transforming repetition into renewal

Meeting death with dignity

A powerful remembrance of war and peace

Dr. Joseph K. Dixon, A Native American sends smoke signals in Montana, June 1909, National Geographic Creative. The sacred pipe of the Native Americans is a potent symbol of relationship. Through it the human breath sends to all the six directions the purifying smoke that connects the person to the divine and…

A conversation with Kabbalah expert Rabbi Dr. Raphael Shuchat

The Sufi master on meeting the inner and outer challenges of our time

When we least expect it, someone may walk up to us on the street and hand us a golden ticket.

The Very Rev. James Parks Morton (1930-2020). Photo: stjohndivine.org Parabola regrets the passing of James Parks Morton. He served for many years on the Board of the Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition, which publishes the magazine, and so was a great friend to us as well as to the…

Many people may be surprised to learn that the surface of our brain is actually dark and that this darkness has consequences for our experience of consciousness and transformation itself, including our ultimate transformation at death. It also has consequences for the most subtle form of light we know, the light we associate with religious…

Learning to love winter’s night

Story editor Betsy Cornwell and Parabola intern Surnaí Molloy read excerpts from the Summer 2021 issue, Young & Old, in this episode of our free podcast.

A Trappist monk’s sojourn at Thomas Merton’s hermitage

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Ursula K. Le Guin’s “A Parabola Bestiary: Bear” and Eleanor O’Hanlon’s “Remarkable Beings” in this episode of Parabola magazine’s free monthly podcast

From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind

Anonymous / Haida
Retold by Leslie Hebert

Fire Creates. Fire Cooks. Fire Kills. Fire also kisses. It kisses death from life and life from death.

The gift of fear and awe from a beast cold as the earth

How the Golden Rule can be the Golden Path

Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves….” As he lay dying, the Buddha gave this advice to his beloved cousin and disciple Ananda. I thought of it as I stood in a security line in the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, just after a male security guard gestured for me to…

Chatting with America’s favorite saint

The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi: Illustrated Edition by William C. Chittick. Foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

Finding life between sand and sea

I was determined not to let dialysis take over my life. But it already had. […]

A human, an orangutan, a heart-to-heart communion

With a gaze of majestic power, the master electrified me with a glimpse of his cosmic consciousness.

Kneading bread, baking a soul

A conversation with wildlife educator Steve Karlin