JEREMY NAYDLER, PH.D., holds a doctorate in theology and religious studies, and is a philosopher, cultural historian and gardener who lives and works in Oxford, England. He has long been interested in the history of consciousness and sees the study of past cultures - which were more open to the world of spirit than our own, predominantly secular, culture - as relevant both to understanding our situation today and to finding pathways into the future. His longstanding concern about the impact of electronic technologies on our inner life and on our relationship to nature has found expression in his books In the Shadow of the Machine and The Struggle for a Human Future (Temple Lodge, 2018 & 2020) and in numerous articles contributed to magazines such as New View, Self and Society and Resurgence, and his love of gardening is celebrated in his book of poems Soul Gardening (Godstow Press, 2006), and his essay In Defence of the Flower Garden (Abzu Press, 2011).
Description
Acknowledgments - Introduction: A Tension Unresolved - Chapter 1: The Garden in Antiquity - Chapter 2: The Garden in the Middle Ages - Chapter 3: From the Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century - Chapter 4: The Gardener as Artist - Chapter 5: Gardening as a Sacred Art - Illustration Sources - Bibliography - Notes - Index
Reviews
The main thrust of this profound and inspiring volume is to remind us that gardens are essentially sacred spaces in which we may work together with Nature in order that we may help her - and ourselves in the process - express more fully the divine presence hidden within the heart of her outward beauty. (Resurgence)