Welcome to the digital version of Sacred Web.
Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition and Modernity was published in print bi-annually for 25 years from 1998 through 2023. As the journal’s name suggests, its central focus is to place the Sacred at the heart of its consideration of the issues of the modern world. It therefore seeks to identify universal traditional metaphysical principles and to apply them to the contingent circumstances of modernity.
The 50 volumes of the print journal cover teachings from all the major faith and wisdom traditions, and doctrines and methods of the sacred sciences (scientia sacra), the religio perennis, the philosophia perennis, and traditional metaphysics, and all aspects of the Sacred, including descriptions of spiritual practices, traditional societies and cultures, and their aesthetic principles and milieux of expression. The journal views modernity from the lens of the Sacred and thereby provides a critique of the false premises of modernism. This enables the journal to address a wide range of contemporary issues, such as the climate crisis, scientism, the human cost of technology, and the erosion of principles and values in society – in short, the reasons for the 'malaise of modernity' from a traditional perspective, and their remedying through the rediscovery of the Sacred.
Despite its modest print run, Sacred Web quickly developed a loyal and engaged following from a broad and diverse readership internationally, as well as from leading scholars and writers in diverse fields. Its contributors have included His Royal Majesty King Charles III (writing then as the Prince of Wales, he also introduced both the Sacred Web Conferences), His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and well-known authors like Huston Smith, Karen Armstrong and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, among others.
This newsletter is to invite you to the digital launch of Sacred Web. We have begun by making available a small selection of essays on the theme of the environment and renewal, a fitting theme for the revival of the journal.
M. Ali Lakhani
While the new digital journal's aims remain the same as for its former print version, we hope to eventually provide its online readers with the full content of the entire print archive as an intellectual resource, and to add new content and journals over time, in more accessible and technologically diverse ways, including through audio and video formats. We also hope to add new features over time to bring together a community of seekers, teachers, and people of good conscience engaged in fostering the sacred web of life that is both our spiritual heritage and our ethical responsibility to sustain.
To access all features of the online journal and be notified of new content, readers are encouraged to sign up here.
Pax et bonum.
M. Ali Lakhani (Founder and Editor)