Unity in the Contemporary World
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Beshara Magazine provides a platform for intelligent and thought-provoking material embodying a unifying perspective. Its concern is not with one particular field of activity, but with unitative ideas and initiatives as they arise in many different areas of contemporary thought – for example, within the spiritual traditions, the sciences, the arts, economics and finance, as well as in our developing understanding of the environment and the fundamentals of well-being.

Our aim is to present just one or two articles each month, allowing the content to grow into a substantial collection over time. As such, we hark back to the original root of the word ‘magazine’, which derives from the Arabic term for a storehouse or treasury (makhzan, pl. makhāzin), as well as to its 19th century English usage as “a storehouse for information” or “a portable receptacle for valuable things”.

The word Beshara is originally Aramaic, and its meaning can be rendered as “good news”; thus it indicates the very positive and valuable effect that any movement towards a more inclusive and harmonious perspective represents.

This short interview with the editor, Jane Clark, gives more information about the background and intentions behind the magazine.

Personnel
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Jane Clark (Editor) is a teacher and independent researcher who has lived in Oxford for the last 35 years. She has a long-standing interest in the correlation between the wisdom of the spiritual traditions and contemporary thought. Originally trained in the sciences, she attended courses at the Beshara School in the late 70s and has remained involved ever since. From 1987–1991, she was the editor of the first incarnation of Beshara Magazine, and from 1992–94 worked as a founder editor of The Journal of Conciousness Studies. In 1998–2000, she took a Master’s degree at the University of Oxford to study the Islamic mystical tradition – in particular the works of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi – in more depth. Consequently, she has given many lectures, published many papers and conducted many courses both in the UK and abroad, for organisations such as the Oxford University Department of Continuous Education; Temenos Academy; The British Council; the Ibn ʿArabi Society and various branches of Beshara.  For her ‘day job’ she works as a support tutor at University of Oxford, a profession she took up after she was widowed in 2003. She has one daughter, Anne.

Peter Huitson (Assistant Editor) grew up in South Croydon. As a child he was fascinated by the precision and patterns of numbers and the beauty and wildness of the natural world. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, then for 25 years he worked implementing information systems worldwide that supported companies in maintaining complex industrial plant. In his forties he plunged into an extended mid-life crisis. As this unfolded, he was reinvented through poetry and psychological and spiritual growth. He divided his working life between working as a play therapist in an inner London primary school and providing practical advice and support to those struggling with debt and welfare benefit problems. In his leisure time he built furniture with a focus on finding creative ways to marry beauty, warmth and function using native hardwoods. In more recent years, he has been initiated in the Inayati Sufi Order founded by Hazrat Inayat Khan; has worked extensively with dreams as a vehicle for spiritual growth and trained as a Spiritual Guide who helps others cultivate seeds of potential which lie dormant within.

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Charlotte Maberly (Assistant Editor) has worked in interdisciplinary food education since 2012. She founded the UK’s first MSc Gastronomy at St Margaret’s University, Edinburgh; has worked with educational bodies across the UK and Europe, and for several years ran her own company, Food Connects, creating events and experiences designed to engage people with nature and place through food. Her approach comes from the understanding that, as a universal human need, food can provide an immediately meaningful tool for learning about almost any topic. For the same reason, it also elegantly communicates our interconnectedness with each other and the wider world. Charlotte is currently producing the FoodScape; a podcast exploring how food shapes the people and place where she lives in southern Scotland.

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Phoebe Ryrko (Picture Editor) studied Fine Art Painting at Bath College of Higher Education and gained a masters in Lighting Design at Edinburgh Napier University.  She was raised as a Catholic in an intentional spiritual community founded by her parents and grandparents (her grandmother is the Catholic theologian Rosemary Haughton). Lothlorien is now run by the Rokpa Trust. Phoebe lived in Poland for many years where she worked as an interior designer, running  her own business as well as raising her family. In Krakow she experienced a spiritual awakening and this led to many explorations into paths for the realisation of God in her life – including the practice of Qi Gong and now working with her teacher Noah Samarkand who enfolds his realisations as a Buddhist Monk with the lover’s path of the Sufis’. Her partner Aaron Cass introduced her to the beauty of Ibn Arabi’s exposition of the principles of the unity of being and this has added another rich and profound view into the unfolding wisdom. Her creative work as an artist (www.phoeberyrko.co.uk) has become a devotional practice since she engaged fully with being an artist in 2020.  For her, painting is an active exploration into the means by which the hidden interior can be felt through gestures made in paint. Phoebe is the mother of three daughters and lives with Aaron in Edinburgh.

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Personnel and Publisher

Jane Clark (Editor) is a teacher and independent researcher who has lived in Oxford for the last 35 years. She has a long-standing interest in the correlation between the wisdom of the spiritual traditions and contemporary thought. Originally trained in the sciences, she attended courses at the Beshara School in the late 70s and has remained involved ever since. From 1987–1991, she was the editor of the first incarnation of Beshara Magazine, and from 1992–94 worked as a founder editor of The Journal of Conciousness Studies. In 1998–2000, she took a Master’s degree at the University of Oxford to study the Islamic mystical tradition – in particular the works of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi – in more depth. Consequently, between 2000 and 2024, she was a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society.

Jane has given many lectures, published many papers and conducted many courses both in the UK and abroad, for organisations such as the Oxford University Department of Continuous Education; Temenos Academy; The British Council; the Ibn ʿArabi Society and various branches of Beshara. She has co-edited two books: The New Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science with Willis Harman (IONS, 1991), and The Kiss: The Beshara Talks of Dom Sylvester Houédard with Charles Verey (Beshara Publications, 2024). For her ‘day job’ she works as a support tutor at University of Oxford, a profession she took up after she was widowed in 2003. She has one daughter, Anne.

Peter Huitson (Assistant Editor) grew up in South Croydon. As a child he was fascinated by the precision and patterns of numbers and the beauty and wildness of the natural world. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge. Over subsequent years, he has realised that the most important lesson from this time was that he is more drawn to the treasure concealed in the disregarded rather than the glitter of society’s prizes.

For 25 years he worked implementing information systems worldwide that supported companies in maintaining complex industrial plant. In his forties he plunged into an extended mid-life crisis. As this unfolded, he was reinvented through poetry and psychological and spiritual growth. He divided his working life between working as a play therapist in an inner London primary school and providing practical advice and support to those struggling with debt and welfare benefit problems. In his leisure time he built furniture with a focus on finding creative ways to marry beauty, warmth and function using native hardwoods.

In more recent years, he has been initiated in the Inayati Sufi Order founded by Hazrat Inayat Khan; has worked extensively with dreams as a vehicle for spiritual growth and trained as a Spiritual Guide who helps others cultivate seeds of potential which lie dormant within.

Peter is drawn to collecting and bringing together seemingly disparate points of view to build a richer and more coherent expression of underlying reality. He loves playing with words to discover fruitful ways to give others a taste of whatever he has understood.

Charlotte Maberly (Assistant Editor) has worked in interdisciplinary food education since 2012. She founded the UK’s first MSc Gastronomy at St Margaret’s University, Edinburgh; has worked with educational bodies across the UK and Europe, and for several years ran her own company, Food Connects, creating events and experiences designed to engage people with nature and place through food.

Charlotte is currently producing the FoodScape; a podcast exploring how food shapes the people and place where she lives in southern Scotland.

Phoebe Ryrko (Picture Editor) studied Fine Art Painting at Bath College of Higher Education and gained a masters in Lighting Design at Edinburgh Napier University.  She was raised as a Catholic in an intentional spiritual community founded by her parents and grandparents (her grandmother is the Catholic theologian Rosemary Haughton). Lothlorien is now run by the Rokpa Trust.

Phoebe lived in Poland for many years where she worked as an interior designer, running  her own business as well as raising her family. In Krakow she experienced a spiritual awakening and this led to many explorations into paths for the realisation of God in her life – including the practice of Qi Gong and now working with her teacher Noah Samarkand (www.harmonyoftheway.co.uk) who enfolds his realisations as a Buddhist Monk with the lover’s path of the Sufis’. Her partner Aaron Cass introduced her to the beauty of Ibn Arabi’s exposition of the principles of the unity of being, as well as The Beshara Trust and Chisholme Institute, and this has added another rich and profound view into the unfolding wisdom.

Her creative work as an artist (www.phoeberyrko.co.uk) has become a devotional practice since she engaged fully with being an artist in 2020.  For her, painting is an active exploration into the means by which the hidden interior can be felt through gestures made in paint. It is also an act of love for the manifest world that is one and the same as its maker. Phoebe is the mother of three daughters and lives with Aaron in Edinburgh.

Proofreaders: Lynne Hector, Janice McAllister

Layout & Design: Robert Cathomas

Editorial Advisory Board: Richard Gault, Hina Khalid, Elizabeth Roberts, Rosemary Rule, Barbara Vellacott, Nick Yiangou
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Publisher

Beshara Magazine is an independent, non-profit publication which is published by the Beshara Trust, a UK-based educational charity (Reg. nos. 296769 England & Wales, SC039933 Scotland). It is supported entirely by donations and all editorial work is undertaken on a voluntary basis. Any donations received through the website go towards editorial expenses and support of the web-site.