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Luvah

Luvah Journal volume four

The first three volumes suggested that Luvah would be a journal with issues, so year 1, issue 3, etc., but then online. The previous issues where published somewhat as a journal, for example in one PDF with a cover and all. Luvah Journal volume 4 is ‘just’ a page on the website with links to the articles in PDF and html (no longer Epub unfortunately). A bit like I also said about issue 1/3, Luvah does not seem very much Traditionalistic. There is academia, philosophy and poetry. Nonethess there are, like in the previous issues, interesting articles. The article about William Blake was less interesting than it seemed initially, but the article about feminism and “queer theories” in Judaism is something you do not hear a whole lot about. Keith Doubt wonders if ‘reading e’ is the same as reading a book. His article is too psychological for me and he seems to largely miss a big development in digital reading, but he does raise a few interesting questions. For the rest you can read poetry, prose, a book review and another few texts.
Click on the cover to go to the Luvah website.

Luvah Journal 1/1 and 1/3

I read volumes 1/1 and 1/3 so short after eachother that I decided to make a combined review. I am glad that I (accidentally) first read volume 1/2. Volume 1/1 seems more Platonic and 1/3 more focussed on poetry than on Traditionalism. Volume 1/2 certainly is the more interesting of the three that are now available. Not that the other two do not contain interesting articles though. Farasha Euker’s opening article is a nice ‘against the modern world’ piece of writing and 1/3 contains an interesting text on Iamblichus (and, less interestingly, Ostad Elahi) also by Euker. I am not much for philosophy, especially not on the academic level, but Euker makes Iamblichus worth looking at. Both volumes futher mostly have texts about elements of writers and poets which sometimes leads to nice ideas, but which are mostly not much of my interest. Also again the last part is filled with poetry and prose.
“Luvah” remains a laudable initiative, but now that I read three volumes, I guess I would have preferred more focus on Traditionalism, religion, mythology, that sort of things. But of course something different never hurts and since the journal is free, there is no harm done when only a part of the volumes are interesting.

Luvah Journal 1/2

“Luvah” is a new Traditionalistic journal, but there is a big difference between Luvah and its sisters Sophia and Sacred Web: Luvah is not hard and expensive to get, but free to read online or to download. There are authors that have also published in the other journals that I mentioned, so Luvah is very likely supposed to be a more low-threshold publication from the same corner. There does seem to be another difference though. I have the idea that Luvah is less “hardline” (as I jokingly call it) Traditionalistic as the other publications. It was just chance that I read issue 2 first by the way. When I heard of Luvah issue 2 was already available. I downloaded both issues, put them on my tablet and when I wanted to start to read it, I could only find issue 2. Now that I finished that, I noticed that issue 3 is also available, so it is going to be something to keep up with Luvah. It being an online publication does not make it an easier read or an effortless and thin journal. What you get are 170 pages filled with six essays and 70 pages of poetry and prose (the amount of the latter also makes Luvah different from the other publications). I am mostly interested in the articles myself. They are about ecology, “Śri Ramakrishna and Muhyi al-Din ibn ‘Arabi” (a nice article of Zachary Markwith whom we have run into before), “The Dervish, Death, and Qur’anic Hermeneutics” (of the editor Farasha Euker), “Buddhist Mind, Western Literature”, “A More Poetical Character Than Satan” and … Arthur C. Clarke? Yes indeed, even this sci-fi writer is seriously treated in a Traditionalistic publication and the man actually had something to say too. The last part is filled with poems and texts about poems and poetry. Luvah makes a nice addition to the available Traditionalistic publications and being more easily available, I hope it will attract a larger audience. Click on the cover to download your own copy. Now that it seems that I will be reading more digital material, I replaced my tablet by an ereader, but reading on that device would be more easier if Luvah was also made available as ebook since scaling a PDF and paging though it is not all that easy on my ereader…