EVENT

Hakim Omar Khayya’m and Edward FitzGerald

Paradise E’Now or The Smile of the Spirit


Saturday 24th May 2025
14:00–17:00 BST
The October Gallery, London

With Charles Mugleston

 

How to Book

Cost: £12 + £1.72 registration fee.

Entry by ticket from Eventbrite

Enquiries: Michael Cohen at london@beshara.org

Description

 

A special Birthday Celebration with music, exploring, experiencing & soulfully enjoying the universally loved multimillion selling Mystical Masterpiece the noetic poetic Ruba’iya’t of Hakim Omar Khayya’m translated & adapted by the Anglo-Irish genius Edward FitzGerald of Woodbridge, Suffolk into “English Music” in 1859.

Verse XI of the Ruba’iya’t (first edition):

“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”

Bulent Rauf interpreted this verse thus:
“The Bread is the body of Knowledge. The Verse is the Praise of Beauty. The Wine is its intoxication and Thou art Thou. Beneath a bough is in this world, already here, it is Paradise – if one has the predilection and the necessary intention to progress towards and Be no other than that which is unqualified Sheer Beauty – the Jamâl.” (from “Union and Ibn Arabi”)

I am The One who is sitting with you, delighting in your company”, extract from Hadith 101 of The Mishkat al-anwar of Ibn ‘Arabi. Published by Anqa.

Charles Mugleston was born in Ipswich, Suffolk in 1954. He has been active in the areas of care, theatre, poetry, spirituality and currently conducts all forms of funeral services throughout East Anglia. From reading A Christmas Carol for the Friends at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1985; playing Fagin in Lionel Barts Oliver twice; giving lectures on and recitals of Edward FitzGerald’s Ruba’iya’t of Omar Khayya’m around the country since 2009; contributed research to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of The Christian Church (Third Edition); has read his own poetry at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2022 and had it published in the Temenos Academy Review 2020 and Vala Issues 4 & 5, The Journal of The Blake Society.

The October Gallery
24 Old Gloucester Street
London
WC1N 3AL

Refreshments provided

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