Harry Oldmeadow

Harry Oldmeadow was born in Melbourne in 1947. His parents were Christian missionaries in India, where he spent nine years of his childhood and developed an early interest in the civilizations of the East. He studied history, politics and literature at the Australian National University, and after further studies at the University of Sydney he worked as a history tutor at La Trobe University in Melbourne. In 1971 a Commonwealth Overseas Research Scholarship led to further studies at Oxford University, followed by extensive travel in Europe and North Africa.

In 1980 he enrolled for a Masters degree in Religious Studies at the University of Sydney where he completed a dissertation on the work of Frithjof Schuon and the other principal traditionalist writers. This study was awarded the University of Sydney Medal for excellence in research, and was eventually published by the Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies under the title Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy (Colombo, 2000), a winner of the 13th Book of the Season Award in the area of “Religions”. Under the auspices of this Institute, Harry delivered the Inaugural Ananda Coomaraswamy Memorial Lecture, in Colombo, on “The Religious Tradition of the Australian Aborigines”.

He was the Coordinator of Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University, Bendigo. Over the last decade he has published extensively in such journals as Sacred Web (Vancouver), Sophia (Washington DC), and Asian Philosophy (Nottingham,UK). In late 2001, he was a key speaker at a large inter-faith gathering in Sydney, organised by the Australian Centre for Sufism; the theme of the meeting was the need for inter-religious understanding in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Oldmeadow lives with his wife and younger son on a small property outside Bendigo.

Harry Oldmeadow’s most recent book as an author for World Wisdom is Black Elk, Lakota Visionary: The Oglala Holy Man and Sioux Tradition (2018). As an editor, his most recent World Wisdom book represents a substantial contribution to a new edition of Frithjof Schuon’s book The Eye of the Heart: A New Translation with Selected Letters (2021). To the volume, Harry Oldmeadow contributed, among other things, the “Editor’s Preface” and extensive “Editor’s Notes” that explain and annotate various key terms, references, etc., to enhance a reader’s full understanding.

Dr. Oldmeadow has also written what is, to date, the definitive study in English on the thought of the great Perennialist writer, Frithjof Schuon, titled Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy. He has also written an important study of twentieth century Western encounters with Eastern religions, Journeys East as well as a follow-up book,   Light From the East . He edited The Betrayal of Tradition, and contributed the essay “The Firmament Sheweth His Handiwork: Re-awakening a Religious Sense of the Natural Order” to the anthology Seeing God Everywhere . The World Wisdom title on Swami Abhishiktananda, A Christian Pilgrim in India , was also written by Oldmeadow.