Blaxland de Lange, Simon

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Blaxland de Lange, Simon

PERSONAL:

Education: Keele University (graduated). Hobbies and other interests: Music, gardening.

ADDRESSES:

Home—East Grinstead, England.

CAREER:

Writer, educator, biographer, therapist, musician, and translator. Philpots Manor School (a Rudolf Steiner special-needs school), Sussex, England, chairman of the college and chairman of management. Pericles (a training, work, and therapy company for people with special needs and psychological problems), cofounder. Humanities Research Group, cofounder, 1997; School of Spiritual Science, Humanities Section, British group, cofounder, 1998. Provides educational services and training for children and adults with special needs. Works as a music therapist and educator.

MEMBER:

Council for Anthroposophical Health and Social Care (member of executive committee), Mythopoeic Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Kilby Research Grant, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, 2006, and Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies, 2007, both for Owen Barfield: Romanticism Come of Age.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) Jorgen Smit, How to Transform Thinking, Feeling and Willing: Practical Exercises for the Training of Thinking, Feeling, Willing, Imagination, Composure, Intuition, Positivity and Wonder, Hawthorn Press (Stroud, Gloucestershire, England), 1989.

(Translator, with Paulamaria Blaxland de Lange) Daniel Udo de Haes, The Young Child: Creative Living with Two- to Four-Year- Olds, Floris (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1986.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, Eternal Individuality: Towards a Karmic Biography of Novalis, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1992.

(Translator) Jorgen Smit, Personal & Social Transformation: How to Develop Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity in Everyday Life, Hawthorn Press (Stroud, Gloucestershire, England), 1992.

(Translator) Jorgen Smit, Lighting Fires: Deepening Education through Medication, Hawthorn Press (Stroud, Gloucestershire, England), 1992, Anthroposophic Press, Lindisfarne Books (Hudson, NY), 2000.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, The East in the Light of the West: Two Eastern Streams of the Twentieth Century in the Light of Christian Esotericism, Part 1: Agni Yoga, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1993.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, Prophecy of the Russian Epic: How the Holy Mountains Released the Mighty Russian Heroes from their Rocky Caves, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1993.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Spiritual Origins of Eastern Europe and the Future Mysteries of the Holy Grail, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1993.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Twelve Holy Nights and the Spiritual Hierarchies, 2nd edition, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1993, reissued, 2004.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation Leading to an Experience of the Christ, Being an Esoteric Study of the Festivals, revised second edition, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1995.

(Translator) Hans Muller-Wiedemann, Karl Konig: A Central European Biography of the Twentieth Century, edited by Friedwart Bock, Camphill (Whitby, England), 1996.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Encounter with Evil and Its Overcoming through Spiritual Science, with Essays on "The Foundation Stone," Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1999.

(Translator) Baruch Luke Urieli and Hans Muller-Wiedemann, Learning to Experience the Etheric World: Empathy, the After-Image, and a New Social Ethic, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 1999.

Owen Barfield: Romanticism Come of Age (biography), Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 2006.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 2006.

(Translator) Sergei O. Prokofieff, What Is Anthroposophy?, Temple Lodge Publishing (London, England), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Simon Blaxland de Lange is an author, musician, and biographer. As a translator, he concentrates on works in Russian and German, and is noted as a translator of the works of philosophical and anthroposophical writer Sergei O. Prokofieff. He is also the translator of other anthroposophical writers, such as Jorgen Smit, Baruch Luke Urieli, and Hans Muller-Wiedemann. Blaxland de Lange is deeply involved in the field of social services, working with adults and young people with special needs and psychological impairments. A musical therapist and educator, Blaxland de Lange is a member of several schools and training programs for special-needs individuals, including the Philpots Manor School, an organization that operates under the concepts of philosopher Rudolph Steiner, and Pericles, a training and work organization cofounded by Blaxland de Lange. Other Pericles-related organizations he has cofounded include Pericles Translations and Research and the Pericles Theatre Company.

In Owen Barfield: Romanticism Come of Age, Blaxland de Lange offers a biography of an important literary figure of the twentieth century. A writer, philosopher, poet, lawyer, and critic, Barfield was a member of the legendary Oxford literary circle the Inklings, a group that included luminaries such as C.S. Lewis, the creator of Narnia; Charles Williams, a prolific novelist; and J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of Middle Earth and the author of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Blaxland de Lange was himself a student of Barfield's for more than thirty years, first meeting him in 1979. Barfield cooperated with Blaxland de Lang in the writing of this biographical work, offering access to his collection of papers and manuscripts before his death in 1997. "The fruit of this collaboration is a book that penetrates deeply into the life and thought of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century," noted a writer on the Temple Lodge Publishing Web site. Barfield was a close friend of C.S. Lewis, and in the biography, Blaxland de Lange carefully examines the association between the two writers and the influence that Barfield had on Lewis's work and thought. He also looks at the influence that other writers and philosophers had on Barfield himself, including Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and anthroposophy founder Rudolph Steiner. Within the pages of the biography, Blaxland de Lange offers Barfield the opportunity to speak for himself and provide a biographical segment in his own words. Barfield also comments on his life in America, his status as a teacher, and his career as a lawyer and a writer.