About
About Rose & Sword
Rose & Sword is an independent editorial project publishing long-form essays on tantra, masculinity, spirituality, community and the cultural questions that surround them.
The purpose is not to defend institutions or to prosecute them. It is to look carefully at what people believe, practise and experience, including the tensions between devotion and autonomy, discipline and control, belonging and freedom.
An insider’s perspective
An insider’s perspective
Much of the writing begins from direct experience rather than distant commentary. That does not mean accepting every claim made by a spiritual organisation, nor assuming that every accusation explains the whole of a community.
Rose & Sword is interested in difficult distinctions: between commitment and coercion, guidance and domination, unconventional practice and genuine harm.
The author
About Kieran Dowling
Kieran Dowling is a writer and teacher whose work explores tantra, masculinity, spiritual practice and life inside intentional communities.
He has followed the tantric path for seventeen years and has more than a decade of teaching experience. His work draws on lived experience, long-form research, interviews and direct engagement with the subjects he writes about.
He has taught and led workshops in London, Jamaica, Copenhagen, Bucharest, Helsinki and St Petersburg.
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New essays on tantra, masculinity, spiritual life and the questions polite culture often avoids.
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