The Cathars - Cover for New Edition

This is the cover for the new edition of The Cathars, due out in March. Spot the difference between this and the original cover!

Folie À Deux - Now Available to Buy or Rent

Folie À Deux, the feature film I co-wrote, directed and produced, is now available to buy or rent here HERE. Happy New Year!

Facebook Page Launched

I've set up a Facebook page for my books: https://www.facebook.com/sean.martin.author

I will continue to blog here, but posts may end up on FB as well. 

Tarkovsky and Zen - A Talk in Edinburgh this Saturday

I'll be presenting a paper on Tarkovsky and Eastern Spirituality and Aesthetics this Saturday in Edinburgh. The talk is part of a conference on representations of spirituality in art. All welcome. £3 entry fee,  0930 for 1000, although my talk is on after lunch. More details are on the poster below, and a full running order can be be found below that.

Representing Spiritualities and Cosmologies in Art

Saturday 7 December 2013

From ancient times, ideas and beliefs about spirituality and cosmology have been mediated

through the arts. This one-day conference explores how artists from different cultures working

in various media have approached the problem of how to represent the world of the spirit.

PROGRAMME:

9.30am-10am: Registration

10 Representing the Otherworld

Dr Louise S. Milne

10.30 The supernatural seascape of Orkney and Shetland

Erin Catriona Farley

11 COFFEE

11.30 Colouring the Divine in Celtic, Insular and Late Anglo-Saxon Art

Dr Heather Pulliam

12 Photographs and death in Athens

Dr Ariadne Xenou

12.35pm: LUNCH

1.30 From Breath to Dance: Music and Movement as Languages of Experience in an American

Sufi

Dr Neil Douglas-Klotz

2.10 A World in a Drop of Water: Representations of Eastern Spirituality in the work of Andrei

Tarkovsky

Sean Martin

2.50-3.45pm: The alchemical imagery of dew

& alchemical films

Richard Ashrowan

4pm: ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

4.30pm-5.30pm: RECEPTION / REFRESHMENTS

Celtic and Scottish Studies, the University of Edinburgh, 27 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8

9LD / Registration: 9.30am-10am / Conference: 10am-5.30pm / Cost: £3

Jointly organised by the Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace, (EICSP,

Scottish Charity, SC038996), and the Traditional Cosmology Society

Booking recommended as there is limited space:

Contact: Neill Walker: mesp2013@hotmail.co.uk

Louise Milne: louise.milne@ed.ac.uk

The Cathars - New Edition, New Subtitle?

I'm mulling over the possibility of changing the subtitle of The Cathars for its first UK paperback edition, due in March 2014. I've never liked 'The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages' - it's some odd form of success to get wiped out in a crusade.

So I'm wondering if 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Heresy of the Middle Ages' or something like that would be better?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

"It's..."

Well, having seen a few reunions that I'd never thought would happen - the Velvet Undergound and the Doors, to name but two - I never thought this would happen. It's bound to be very silly and I hope I can get a ticket.

The German Indiana Jones, Himmler and the Cathar Grail

I am appearing in a Channel 5 documentary tomorrow night, 20 November, at 2100. The Nazi Quest for the Holy Grail details the various attempts the Nazis made to find the Aryan master race, Atlantis, etc, and also the Holy Grail, which is where I come in, discussing Otto Rahn and the Cathars.