Richard Smoley

Richard Smoley is an author and philosopher focusing on the world’s mystical and esoteric teachings, particularly those of Western civilization.

Smoley was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1956. He attended the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, and took a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in classics at Harvard University in 1978. Smoley went on to Oxford University, where in 1980, he received a second bachelor’s degree from the Honour School of Literae Humaniores (in philosophy and classical literature). He received his M.A. from Oxford in 1985.

While Smoley was at Oxford, he came in contact with a small group that was studying the Kabbalah, co-founded by the British Kabbalist and author Warren Kenton (Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi). Here Smoley was first introduced to many of the ideas he has discussed in his writings. Smoley subsequently started Kabbalah groups along similar lines in San Francisco, New York, and Knoxville, Tennessee.

Smoley moved to San Francisco in 1980. In 1982 he began working for California Farmer magazine, the state’s leading agricultural publication, and became managing editor in 1983. Smoley helped broaden the magazine’s coverage to include controversial topics such as organic farming, and the California Farmer helped bring organic farming into the agricultural mainstream. Smoley left California Farmer in 1988.

In the 1980s and 1990s Smoley continued his spiritual investigations, working with Tibetan Buddhism, the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, and A Course in Miracles. He was also a member of the board of directors of the now-defunct San Francisco Miracles Foundation, an organization sponsoring the work of A Course in Miracles.

In 1986, Smoley started writing for a new magazine called Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions, founded in San Francisco by Jay Kinney. After four years of writing for Gnosis and a brief stint as managing editor, he came on board as editor in November 1990. In his eight years as editor of Gnosis, the magazine published issues on subjects as diverse as Gnosticism, Freemasonry, G.I. Gurdjieff, the spirituality of Russia, and psychedelics in spirituality. Smoley’s interest in the Kabbalah influenced the magazine’s coverage of that tradition. In 1998 Gnosis won Utne Reader’s award for best spiritual coverage. In 1999, largely for financial reasons, Gnosis ceased publication.

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