Showing posts with label Enlightenment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enlightenment. Show all posts
Monday, July 7, 2014
The Serpent Power by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe) (1918)
Source. Sir John George Woodroffe (1865–1936), also known by his pseudonym Arthur Avalon, was a British Orientalist whose work helped to unleash in the West a deep and wide interest in Hindu philosophy and Yogic practices. Some context (Wikipedia).
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Monday, September 20, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Humanism as Magical Summons
If one wishes to take a glimpse of western secular humanism's magical/theological origins, this document should be required reading. A translation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man.
There is a heredity line which connects the invocation of a value such as Crimes against Humanity or an institution like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and this document, an express plea to the angels, made at a time when it is literal fact that Muslims, Jews and Christians share the same God.
Heretical, tortuously syncretic, preposterously optimistic, nevertheless, this is an inspired and bamboozling text in which Renaissance Humanism gradually, urbanely, quixotically takes the symbolic upper hand in the struggle with religion and myth.
There is a heredity line which connects the invocation of a value such as Crimes against Humanity or an institution like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and this document, an express plea to the angels, made at a time when it is literal fact that Muslims, Jews and Christians share the same God.
Heretical, tortuously syncretic, preposterously optimistic, nevertheless, this is an inspired and bamboozling text in which Renaissance Humanism gradually, urbanely, quixotically takes the symbolic upper hand in the struggle with religion and myth.
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