Authors
Benedicta Ward
Benedicta Ward is a sister of the community of Sisters of the Love of God, based in Oxford, England. She is Reader in the History of Christian Spirituality at the University of Oxford and an honorary lecturer at Harris Manchester College. She has written a number of books on early monasticism and on the Middle Ages and is one of the world’s most knowledgeable writers on the legacy of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
Benedicta Ward contributed a fascinating foreword to the book In the Heart of the Desert, Revised: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers byRead More
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware
The Most Reverend Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (1934 – 2022) of Diokleia was an auxiliary bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Great Britain. He was a leading author and translator of Orthodox texts. He studied Classics and Theology at Magdalene University, Oxford, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1966. He held a lecturer position at Oxford in Eastern Orthodox Studies for 35 years. His best known works include The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way, and his translation of the Philokalia with G. E. Palmer and Philip Sherrard.Metropolitan Kallistos has contributed the following to World Wisdom’s books: UL REMOVED
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Ian Watson
Ian Watson lectured in religious studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He translated and edited many of René Guénon’s articles, was joint editor of Religious Traditions and a contributor to Studies in Comparative Religion. His article, “Hindu Cosmology and Modern Science,” appears in Light From The East: Modern Western Encounters with Eastern Traditions .
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Lauren Waukau-Villagomez
Lauren Waukau-Villagomez is an educator and author of works on the oral traditions and storytelling of the North American tribes. She was born and raised on the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, and is a member of the Bear Clan. She is co-author of the book Teaching Native America Across the Curriculum, and has researched and written on various subjects within the domain of education, particularly having to do with multi-cultural and Native American literature, tradition, and oral learning. Dr. She currently teaches at the Teacher Education Department at the College of Menominee Nation. Dr. Waukau-Villagomez currently works in the Teacher Education Department at the College of Menominee Nation. Dr. Lauren Waukau-Villagomez contributed the “Foreword” to The Man Who Dreamed of Elk-Dogs: & Other Stories from the Tipi (2012) by Paul Goble.
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Susunaga Weeraperuma
Susunaga Weeraperuma was born in Sri Lanka and currently resides in France. He qualified as a librarian and worked in the British Library and the South Australian Parliamentary Library. Retiring early from his profession, Weeraperuma now devotes his time to spiritual practices, hatha yoga, gardening, and the writing of books. The most important of Weeraperuma’s works include: Major Religions of India, Bliss of Reality, Homage to Yogaswami, and Divine Messengers of Our Time. He is also the author of the The Essential Swami Ramdas .
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Simon Weightman
Simon Weightman was former head of the Department for the Study of Religion and Senior Lecturer in Hindi in the South Asia Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, retiring in 2002. In 1959 he matriculated at the University of Oxford, studying Arabic, Latin and Greek. He graduated in 1961 in Persian, along with Turkish. From 1961-63 Weightman served as Wolfson Research Fellow at the British Institute of Persian Studies, based in Teheran, Iran. In 1963 he joined the staff of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he also acquired Hindi and Sanskrit. Simon Weightman contributed the essay “Spiritual Progression in Books One and Two of the Mathnawī” to the volume The Philosophy of Ecstasy: Rumi and the Sufi Tradition.
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Simone Weil
Simone Weil was born in Paris in 1909 to secular Jews parents. In 1936, she went to Spain to provide humanitarian support to the Republican troops in the Spanish Civil War. She had her first spiritual experience at the Solesmes Monastery when hearing Gregorian chant – in her own words – “Christ himself came down and He took me.” Since her death, in 1943, she has come to be known as a major spiritual thinker of the twentieth century. Her contributions can be found in the World Wisdom anthology, Pray Without Ceasing .
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Deborah Weiss-Dutilh
Deborah Weiss-Dutilh was born in Los Angeles, California. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in French from the University of California, and a teaching credential in English. Her studies led her to the Sorbonne and to Pau, France, near the Pyrénées, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Studies in psychotherapy, with a keen interest in the link between psychology, spirituality, and philosophy sparked her friendship with Jean Biès and their subsequent collaboration. She has translated Returning to the Essential: The Selected Writings of Jean Bies .
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Albert White Hat Sr.
Albert White Hat, Sr. (1938-2013), a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, was a Sicangu (Rosebud) Lakota educator, author, linguist, tribal leader, and respected elder. Nationally respected for his work on Lakota (Sioux) language and oral tradition, Mr. White Hat wrote the important book Writing and Reading the Lakota Language (1999, University of Utah Press). He also provided Lakota translations for many Hollywood movies, including Dances with Wolves, and appeared on the Ken Burns documentary series The West. Albert White Hat, Sr. was much in demand over several continents as a speaker. He died in South Dakota on June 11, 2013 at the age of 74.
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Alan Williams
Alan Williams is Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester. He is the author of several books on Zoroastrian and Islamic literature in Iranian languages and is one of the few scholars of ancient Iranian languages who also works on Classical Persian texts of the medieval period. He also translates modern Persian poetry. Prof. Williams contributed the essay “Open Heart Surgery: The Poetic Operation of Love in Rūmī’s Mathnawī” to the volume The Philosophy of Ecstasy: Rumi and the Sufi Tradition.
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Raymond Wilson
Dr. Raymond Wilson is a Professor of History at Fort Hays State University, Kansas, where he lives with his wife. He is the author of Ohiyesa: Charles Eastman, Santee Sioux, and the editor of Natives Americans in the Twentieth Century and Indian Lives: Essays on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Native American Leaders.Dr. Wilson wrote the foreword to The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa).
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T.J. Winter
T. J. Winter is the Sheikh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Divinity School, University of Cambridge, and the Director of the Muslim Academic Trust. He studied for many years in the Middle East and has published several translations of Arabic texts, especially several by the great Sufi thinker Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî.T. J. Winter’s essay “The Poverty of Fanaticism” appears as the epilogue to the book Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars.
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William Wroth
William Wroth is a researcher, editor, writer, and curator who specializes in the Hispanic and Native American traditional arts and cultures of the Southwest and Mexico.Dr. Wroth is senior editor for a new series of editions by World Wisdom of the works of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. The first in this series is a new edition of one of Coomaraswamy’s most far-ranging books, Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought?. Wroth’s careful attention to details has resulted in a new edition that is more accessible than ever to readers, with some new notes from the author himself, all of the passages in foreign languages now translated, a new editor’s preface, and a new introduction by Roger Lipsey.
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John C. H. Wu
Wu Ching-hsiung, also known as John C. H. Wu, was an author, lawyer, juristic philosopher, educator, and prominent Catholic layman. He was president of the Special High Court at Shanghai, vice chairman of the Legislative Yuan’s constitution drafting committee, founder of the T’ien Hsia Monthly, translator of the Psalms and the New Testament into Chinese, and served as Chinese minister to the Holy See (1947-48). Wu authored and translated numerous books and articles on many subjects including Religion, Philosophy and Law.World Wisdom is pleased to be able to offer readers a new edition of John C. H. Wu’s The Golden Age of Zen , which includes a wonderful introduction by Thomas Merton and a new foreword by Kenneth Kraft .
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