When Nikki and I wrote The Book of Baphomet we were both intent on exploring (amongst other things) the idea of the imminence of spirit. That’s why the book opens with a re-telling of the story of creation based on the latest scientific ideas. This account, rendered in prose poetry style, was for us the modem mythology of Baphomet; the story of how physics gives rise to chemistry, chemistry to biology and biology to awareness. Where the divine is situated not in an ex nihilo alien dimension, but right here, right now.

The scientific story of creation, as far as we know it in the early 21st century, is truly mind-boggling. A tale easily as vast, complex and dramatic as anything in the narratives of religion. Moreover this scientific story, like Baphomet, is forever incomplete and ramifying as new discoveries, in and through the world, are made.

Space is big.

We can easily retell the scientific story in a way that meets our human need to recognise the sacred, the awesome. “We all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality” in the words of the great Carl Sagan (Peace Be Upon Him).

The Seven Secular Sermons are, for me, the most beautiful way I’ve yet encountered of poetically expressing the awesome truth of reality as science currently describes it. I’ve mentioned the project on this blog before and am enjoying immensely the emergence of each poem (or song, or meditation…the text could be these and many more things) as they are published here.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to interview Daniel Böttger, the author of the Sermons. At Daniel’s request Nikki Wyrd and I have made this recording of the First Sermon. Find yourself a nice bit of planet to hang out on, and have a listen.

“This meditation’s rhyming verse
describes a paradigm
of us inside this universe,
adrift in space and time.”

Enjoy!

JV