The Matheson Trust is an educational charity based in London dedicated to further and disseminate the study of comparative religion, especially from the point of view of the underlying harmony of the major religious and philosophical traditions of the world.
Registered as a UK charity in 1982, the trust was for years active sponsoring academic research, lectures, film production and publications. As of January 2011 they have launched a new series of paperback publications, the Matheson Monographs, and a public website hosting the Matheson Library. Matheson Trust associates have included, among others, Martin Lings, Charles Le Gai Eaton, William Stoddart and Reza Shah-Kazemi.
Matheson Monographs
Since 2008, The Matheson Trust had been co-producing publications with a number of kindred organisations and established publishers: The Prometheus Trust, Fons Vitae, Archetype UK, but December 2010 saw the launch of an independent series, the "Matheson Monographs", covering "scriptural exegesis, the modalities of spiritual and contemplative life, studies of particular religious traditions, comparative analyses, studies of traditional arts, crafts and cosmological sciences, contemporary scholarly expositions of religious philosophy and metaphysics, translations of both classical and contemporary texts and transcriptions of lectures by, and interviews with, spiritual and scholarly authorities from different religious and philosophical traditions".
As of November 2019, there are more than 700 holdings in the library, a quarter of which are audio recordings.
Audio Library
One of the purported aims of the Matheson Library is to use existing contemporary media technologies to make available resources from ancient traditions, either in the form of recitation of traditional scriptures or in the scholarly transmission of the doctrines and insights pertaining to the different religions. An ongoing hear! project is converting scholarly texts and other texts of interest into MP3 format, and making them available through the Audio section of the library. In April 2012 the Matheson Trust Sacred Audio Collection was launched, a repository of selected liturgical audio recordings from the major religious traditions. This collection includes live recordings from temples and ritual gatherings around the world.
Publications
Christianity & Islam: Essays on Ontology and Archetype, by Samuel Zinner, 2010.
The Living Palm Tree: Parables, Stories, and Teachings from the Kabbalah, by Mario Satz, translated by Juan Acevedo, 2010.
Louis Massignon: The Vow and the Oath, by Patrick Laude, translated by Edin Q. Lohja, 2011.
The Gospel of Thomas: In the Light of Early Jewish, Christian andIslamic Esoteric Trajectories, by Samuel Zinner, 2011.
