New Dawn : The World's Most Unusual Magazine
The website for New Dawn Magazine
By RICHARD SMOLEY — While most people in the Western world are aware of astrology, comparatively few know that other cultures have other systems of astrology. There are Chinese and Tibetan horoscopes, with their cycles of twelve signs going through years rather than months, so that the key to your character is the year, not [...]
By VICTORIA LEPAGE— The recent death of ex-President Soeharto of Indonesia at the age of 86 has reminded me that I was present in Jakarta in 1967 during the bloodbath in which the Communist Party was decimated and General Soeharto rose to political power, along with the minority modernist Muslim party that supported him. At [...]
BY GWENDOLYN TOYNTON— In August 2008 Bun Rany, the wife of the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, led Buddhist monks and soldiers to the site of the historic Hindu temple Preah Vihear to call upon their ancestors to protect the temple. The site of this temple is located on disputed land, perched atop a cliff [...]
By HIS DIVINE GRACE KIRTANANANDA SWAMI BHAKTIPADA (1937-2011)— Perhaps the three most influential and adored personalities in recorded human history are Lord Krishna, Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Mohammed. Even today thousands of pilgrims travel to Jerusalem in Israel, Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and Vrindaban in India to remember and venerate these great souls. Does [...]
By VICTORIA LEPAGE — Sufism belongs in spirit to the modern age. It has an affinity with it; it is in tune with secularism, with the modern thirst for objective knowledge. Yet the Sufi tradition is immensely old. In some quarters a belief still persists that it is a mystical offshoot of Islam, but most [...]
By REG LITTLE — In a changing and unpredictable world, no classical text is more rewarding, or more challenging, than the ancient Chinese I Ching or Book of Changes. This classic presents itself as a book of divination and invites dismissal on such grounds amongst educated Western circles, including even the great British sinologist and [...]
By NITIN KUMAR — It is unfortunate that Buddhism’s most enduring (and universal) contribution to the world has been insufficiently translated as compassion. The original Sanskrit word is karuna, which holds within itself traces of the fragment ‘ru’, meaning to weep. While the Oxford dictionary describes compassion as pity bordering on the merciful, karuna is [...]
BY HERBIE BRENNAN — Authors note that fictional characters have a tendency to take on a life of their own. But few readers realise just how literally they mean it. A friend of mine, engaged in writing a romantic novel, called me in a panic just a year ago to complain that two of her [...]
By PETER ALEXANDER — In the West and the Near East the game of Chess is regarded as a war game, and its adepts as masters of strategy. In Japan, however, among the Samurai, this game was perceived as vulgar, a diversion for traders and merchants. The Samurai had a very different idea of conflict [...]
Lost Civilisations & Ancient Mysteries . INSIDE: Written in Stone Did the First Australians Have Contact With Ancient Egyptians? By Steve Strong The Lost City of Angkor Wat & the Mysteries of a Great … [Read More...]
