Edinburgh Branch of the Theosophical Society in Scotland
AUTUMN/ WINTER PROGRAMME September - December 2025
VENUE: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre, 25 Palmerston Place EH12.
Talk: 7.30 - 8.50pm in the Sanctuary Room (Tea/coffee in Cafe from 7.00pm)
Admission: £5 Members / £7 Non-members. ALL WELCOME
https://www.arthurconandoylecentre.com/whats_on/
PLEASE NOTE PAYMENT IS BY CASH
20 NOV Discussion Evening.
The past month has included Thursday evening talks on applying the core principles of Theosophy in the modern world; the astrology of the rising sign and the purpose of the higher self; transfer of esoteric knowledge from Europe to the Americas in 1693; the science of imagination.
This evening is a chance to bring your thoughts and questions on any of these topics to share with other people.
27 NOV Wisdom of the Elders: Restoring Balance Through Indigenous Knowledge
Natasha Rocha will share a report from the Indigenous Elders Gathering held in Colombia in September, offering insights, teachings, and reflections from a sacred circle of wisdom keepers in dialogue on restoring harmony with the Earth and one another. The gathering will explore ancestral teachings, spiritual practices, and living wisdom that guide us toward balance, unity, and conscious leadership in these transformative times. This session is an opportunity to carry the voices of the elders forward, honouring their guidance and sharing their wisdom with the wider community.
4 DEC Music and the Question of Expression. Prof. Edward Campbell
Music is often described, for example in the school curriculum in Scotland, as an expressive art. This seemingly obvious designation in fact begs the questions of whether music actually is above all else an expressive art and what might we mean in making this claim. In his book On the Musically Beautiful (1854) the influential German music critic Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904) rejected expression as an inherent quality within music and composer Igor Stravinsky stated provocatively in his autobiography from 1935 that he considered music ‘by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, or psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc…. Expression has never been an inherent property of music’. With this in mind, we can ask: If music is an expressive art, what exactly does it express and how does it do so? Who exactly is expressing her/him/themselves in a piece of music? Is it the composer, the performer, the listener… all of them together? In my talk I’ll discuss some of the main aesthetic positions that have been articulated around the question of expression, illustrated with musical examples which I hope you’ll enjoy, whether or not they turn out to be expressive of anything at all.
Edward Campbell is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Aberdeen. He has published widely on aspects of contemporary music and aesthetics, including historical, analytical and aesthetic approaches to musical modernism, as well as the music and writings of Pierre Boulez. He is the author of Boulez, Music and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Music after Deleuze (Bloomsbury, 2013), contributing co-editor and translator of Pierre Boulez Studies (CUP, 2016) and The Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia (CUP, 2021) and the editor of Boulez in Context (CUP, 2025).
11 DEC. CHRISTMAS SOCIAL – ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY
PROGRAMME RESTARTS JANUARY 2026
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