Lapis Magazine

Archive for 'Editor's Letter'

Spring 2009 Editor’s Letter from Ralph White

As the global economy reels and most people have no choice but to cut down on their acquisition of unnecessary items, the time has come to ponder the simple life.

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Spring 2008 Letter from Ralph White

Welcome to the first fully multimedia issue of Lapis.
The magazine has gone through various incarnations over the last twelve years. First, it was published in a paper format, winning Utne Reader’s Alternative Press Award. Then it migrated online to a format in which individual articles appeared as we acquired them. Now, Lapis returns with streaming [...]

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Summer 2006 Letter from Ralph White

Lapis announces upcoming online interviews, and joins with the Open Center to co-sponsor a conference on the western esoteric tradition, to be held in the Czech Republic and in Weimar, Germany.
An Esoteric Quest in Central Europe
After a quiet period here at Lapis online, things are starting to quicken in pace. We are delighted to [...]

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April 2005 Letter from Ralph White

Lapis Magazine has gone through a couple of incarnations as both print and online publication and is now about to enter a new phase of its work. On April 29th and 30th the brand new Lapis Institute for Society, Ecology and Culture, a fresh branch of The New York Open Center, will present a conference [...]

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November 2004 Letter from Ralph White

Viewers of Bill Moyers‚ PBS program Now may have seen Kevin Phillips, author of American Dynasty, express his concern that the mainstream media has done so little to probe the links between George W. Bush and the Dominionist Movement, the extreme right wing branch of fundamentalist Christianity. Phillips also made a rather oblique but intriguing [...]

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July 2004 Letter from Ralph White

These feel like deep and disturbing times. America faces a profound political choice and a chasm of international violence, enduring economic inequality, and environmental degeneration beckons if the wrong one is made.
It certainly feels that the more enlightened forces live mostly in the Democratic Party these days, as the Republicans slide deeper into the [...]

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May 2004 Letter from Ralph White

The shadow of a war of civilizations casts its dark form across our inner vision as we gaze into the future.
A nightmare world of constant war, ethnic hatreds and threats to democracy at home and abroad beckons if we are foolish enough to follow our current direction. The moral emptiness at the heart of [...]

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March 2004 Letter from Ralph White

At last, the Lapis site is ready to move to a new level.
As regular readers will have noticed, we now have the beginnings of the Lapis archives on line. Currently only one or two articles in each archive category are available but more will be appearing at the rate of roughly ten pieces a week. [...]

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2001 Inaugural Letter for Lapis Online from Ralph White

Ralph White launches Lapis Online in 2001.
The Open Center's award winning magazine has returned in a new incarnation as an on-line publication. Instead of the old paper format in which we produced fifteen articles every four months, we are now publishing a new article every week.
Lapis has always expressed the aspect of the Open Center that [...]

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1995 Inaugural Letter for Lapis 1 from Ralph White

Ralph White explores the need for a magazine such as Lapis on the occasion of its premier issue.
Why a magazine called Lapis? For many people, the association will be with the azure stone, the lapis lazuli, but for others there will be an echo of an old wisdom tradition – the lapis philosophicus, the philosopher's [...]