Author: Mark Vernon

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Inner Life, available via podcast feeds. Saint Francis was born into a world in a panic. The stabilities of the feudal world had collapsed with the rise of mercantilism. The gap between rich and poor was unsustainable and a new underclass was tearing apart the… Continue reading The saint who ripped reality and rose like a sun. Francis and the apocalyptic fears of chaotic times

An audio version of this conversation is at my podcast, Inner Life, available via podcast feeds. The conviction that the natural world is obedient, adhering to laws, is a widespread assumption of modern science. But where did this idea originate and what beliefs does it imply? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake… Continue reading Does nature really obey laws? A dialogue with Rupert Sheldrake

William Blake opens the third part of his epic poem, Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion, with an astonishing remark. “He never can be a friend of the Human Race who is the Preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion.” The declaration is shocking because today, two hundred years since he first printed these… Continue reading “Enemies of the Human Race” William Blake on the disaster of atheism

An audio version of this conversation is at my podcast, Inner Life, available via podcast feeds. There is undoubtedly a new spirit of interest in Christianity abroad in the presumed secular world. Some increases in church-going are even showing up in the stats. But what can be made of the curiosity? Is it straightforwardly to… Continue reading Merely Christianity? Discerning the Spirit of a Revival

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Dante’s Divine Comedy, available via podcast feeds. Dante encounters seven popes in the Divine Comedy, five in hell, one in purgatory and one in paradise – that last being Saint Peter. His condemnation of individual popes and, I think, the papacy is extraordinarily strong and… Continue reading Pimps, remorse and blood. Dante’s Divine Comedy and the critique of the Papacy

“Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book?” William Blake asked in a letter. His answer is that this text, along with some others, is not a work of history or record, theological analysis or moral teaching, but inspiration. He continues: “Is it not because they [he has all inspired texts… Continue reading History, record, teaching, creed? How to read the Bible, according to William Blake

There is a pivotal moment early in the movie Conclave, the drama about the election of a new pope. The man in charge of the arcane procedures behind the Vatican’s sealed doors, Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes), preaches a sermon. The prelate says he will speak from the heart. The scarlet-clad princes of the… Continue reading Pope Francis and the Greatest Sin. Uncertainty and the discovery of God

An audio version of this talks is at my podcast, Inner Life, available via podcast feeds. Ibn ‘Arabi is arguably the greatest philosopher in the Islamic world, though controversial; Seal of the Mohammedan Saints, as he is known, alongside Shaykh al-Akbar, he is becoming more important again, especially against a backdrop of fundamentalism. Born into… Continue reading The Unity of Being – and the very great things that Ibn ‘Arabi makes of it!

New post on my Substack, A Golden String. I am now beginning in earnest to promote my new book, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, out in June/Sept (UK/US). Do have a read! And/or do consider pre-ordering! (Thanks: it really helps early sales and so bookshop notice.) “The best overall study of… Continue reading Jesus is the only God. And so am I and so are you. William Blake’s mystical Christianity

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Inner Life, available via podcast feeds. The extraordinary spread of Islam after 632 – from Central Asia to North Africa in a century – reached Europe in the eighth century, generating issues that still matter to this day. Not ones of religion, though, but of… Continue reading Andalusia and machine anxiety. How the Iberian philosophers can help us now