Primordial Traditions Wins Literary Award
New Zealand writers Norman Maclean and Gwendolyn Toynton were each awarded $10,000 for literary excellence at tonight’s Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust Unpublished Manuscript and Book Awards, at Auckland’s Hopetoun Alpha venue. The awards, run in association with the New Zealand Society of Authors, are in their sixth year and recognise excellence in writing in the mind, body, spirit genre. Trustee Adonia Wylie says the category is continuously growing and each year the awards receive more and more support from New Zealanders.
“This year we received almost 100 entries in the awards and many were of the highest calibre, which emphasises that being named a winner is a truly amazing achievement.”
Gwendolyn Toynton of Christchurch won the $10,000 award in the Book category for her work Primordial Traditions Compendium 2009, which describes a system of spiritual thought and metaphysical truths.
Gwendolyn says her book features articles on Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism, Tantra, Alchemy, Philosophy and the Occult. The Primordial Tradition attempts to establish common factors amongst the different traditions, with the goal of producing a superior level of wisdom.
This year’s awards were presented by Auckland Mayor Honourable John Banks and well known writer and journalist Steve Braunias.
Judges for the 2009 awards included owner of Pathfinder Bookshop Jennifer Eddington, New Zealand author Richard Webster, Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust trustee and published author Adonia Wylie and author and editor Stephen Stratford. The Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust was set up following the death of Auckland businessman Ashton Wylie in 1999 with the mandate of having human relationships as its focus, and its main intent being to promote more loving relationships. The Trust’s Book and Unpublished Manuscript Awards were established in 2004, in association with the New Zealand Society of Authors, to encourage the expansion of the mind, body and spirit literature genre in New Zealand.
Magic and the Supernatural
Monday 15th March - Wednesday 17th March 2010 Salzburg, Austria.
Bewitched. I Dream of Jeannie. The Exorcist. Charmed. Buffy. Dr. Who. Dracula. Dark Shadows. Twilight and The Twilight Zone. Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton. Dresden Files. Harry Potter. The fascination and appeal of magic and supernatural entities pervades societies and cultures. The continuing appeal of these characters is a testimony to how they shape our daydreams and our nightmares, as well as how we yearn for something that is more or beyond what we can see-touch-taste-feel. Children still avoid stepping on cracks, lovers pluck petals from
a daisy, cards are dealt and tea leaves read.
A belief in magic as a means of influencing the world seems to have been common in all cultures. Some of these beliefs crossed over into nascent religions, influencing rites and religious celebrations. Over time, religiously-based supernatural events (miracles) acquired their own flavour, separating themselves from standard magic. Some modern religions such as the Neopaganisms embrace connections to magic, while others retain only echoes of their distant origins.
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project seeks to examine issues surrounding the role and use of magic in a wide variety of societies and cultures over the course of human history. People with access to magic or knowledge of the supernatural will also be examined.