Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic

Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic PDF

Author: Peter Kingsley

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

More specifically, he traces for the first time a line of transmission from Empedocles and the early Pythagoreans down to southern Egypt, and from there into the world of Islam. "Highly polemical new book ... The thesis is argued with immense learning." "Times Higher Education Supplement".

Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic

Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic PDF

Author: Peter Kingsley

Publisher:

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781383005592

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This study brings to light new evidence about ancient Pythagoreanism and its influence on Plato, as it reconstructs the esoteric transmission of Pythagorean ideas from ancient Greece, to the alchemists and magicians of Egypt, to the world of Islam.

Parmenides and Empedocles

Parmenides and Empedocles PDF

Author: Parmenides,

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2011-03-01

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 1725229609

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Parmenides and Empedocles, along with Heraclitus the most important of the pre-Socratic philosophers, were at the same time among the greatest poets of the ancient world. But their work is rarely treated and still more rarely translated in its original form--as poetry. The complete extant fragments of Parmenides and Empedocles are collected here for the first time in a translation responsive to the original verse texts. Parmenides' philosophical fragments are here given as the poetic remains of the thinker from Elea in Southern Italy whom Socrates wondered at and Plato held in awe. What emerges from the poetry is at once an uncompromising vision of absolute Being and a compassionate understanding of the human cosmos: It is the body grows to Mind. All men desire the same thing, apprehend the same The plenum is thought, and thought preponderates. The poetry of Empedocles--reincarnationist, naturalist, cosmologist, religious leader, physiologist, and a metaphysician--is presented here in the personal idiom of the fifth-century Sicilian who has been called the last of the Greek shamans: I have already been A bush and a bird A boy and a girl A mute fish in the sea.

Magic and Mystery in Tibet

Magic and Mystery in Tibet PDF

Author: Madame Alexandra David-Neel

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-04-27

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0486119440

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A practicing Buddhist and Oriental linguist recounts supernatural events she witnessed in Tibet during the 1920s. Intelligent and witty, she describes the fantastic effects of meditation and shamanic magic — levitation, telepathy, more. 32 photographs.

Magic, Mystery, and Science

Magic, Mystery, and Science PDF

Author: Dan Burton

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780253216564

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"[P.D. Ouspensky's] yearning for a transcendent, timeless reality—one that cancels out physical disintegration and death—figures into science at some fundamental level. Einstein found solace in his theory of relativity, which suggested to him that events are ever-present in the space-time continuum. When his friend Michele Besso passed on shortly before his own death, he wrote: 'For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'" —from Magic, Mystery, and Science The triumph of science would appear to have routed all other explanations of reality. No longer does astrology or alchemy or magic have the power to explain the world to us. Yet at one time each of these systems of belief, like religion, helped shed light on what was dark to our understanding. Nor have the occult arts disappeared. We humans have a need for mystery and a sense of the infinite. Magic, Mystery, and Science presents the occult as a "third stream" of belief, as important to the shaping of Western civilization as Greek rationalism or Judeo-Christianity. The occult seeks explanations in a world that is living and intelligent—quite unlike the one supposed by science. By taking these beliefs seriously, while keeping an eye on science, this book aims to capture some of the power of the occult. Readers will discover that the occult has a long history that reaches back to Babylonia and ancient Egypt. It proceeds alongside, and frequently mingles with, religion and science. From the Egyptian Book of the Dead to New Age beliefs, from Plato to Adolf Hitler, occult ways of knowing have been used—and hideously abused—to explain a world that still tempts us with the knowledge of its dark secrets.

REALITY (New 2020 Edition)

REALITY (New 2020 Edition) PDF

Author: Peter Kingsley

Publisher: Catafalque Press

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 9781999638429

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

REALITY introduces us to the extraordinary mystical tradition that lies right at the roots of western philosophy, science and civilization.

Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism

Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism PDF

Author: Walter Burkert

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1972

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 9780674539181

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

For this first English edition of his distinguished study of Pythagoreanism, Weisheit und Wissenschajt: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos, und Platon, Walter Burkert has carefully revised text and notes, taking account of additional literature on the subject which appeared between 1962 and 1969. By a thorough critical sifting of all the available evidence, the author lays a new foundation for the understanding of ancient Pythagoreanism and in particular of the relationship within it of "lore" and "science." He shows that in the twilight zone when the Greeks were discovering the rational interpretation of the world and quantitative natural science, Pythagoras represented not the origin of the new, but the survival or revival of ancient, pre-scientific lore or wisdom, based on superhuman authority and expressed in ritual obligation.

Archytas of Tarentum

Archytas of Tarentum PDF

Author: Carl Huffman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-05-23

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 9781139444071

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Archytas of Tarentum is one of the three most important philosophers in the Pythagorean tradition, a prominent mathematician, who gave the first solution to the famous problem of doubling the cube, an important music theorist, and the leader of a powerful Greek city-state. He is famous for sending a trireme to rescue Plato from the clutches of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius II, in 361 BC. This 2005 study was the first extensive enquiry into Archytas' work in any language. It contains original texts, English translations and a commentary for all the fragments of his writings and for all testimonia concerning his life and work. In addition there are introductory essays on Archytas' life and writings, his philosophy, and the question of authenticity. Carl A. Huffman presents an interpretation of Archytas' significance both for the Pythagorean tradition and also for fourth-century Greek thought, including the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

Without the Least Tremor

Without the Least Tremor PDF

Author: M. Ross Romero, SJ

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2016-03-31

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1438460198

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A reading of the death of Socrates as a self-sacrifice, with implications for ideas about suffering, wisdom, and the soul’s relationship to the body. In Without the Least Tremor, M. Ross Romero considers the death of Socrates as a sacrificial act rather than an execution, and analyzes the implications of such an understanding for the meaning of the Phaedo. Plato’s recounting of Socrates’s death fits many of the conventions of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual. Among these are the bath, the procession, Socrates’s appearance as a bull, the libation, the offering of a rooster to Asclepius, the treatment of Socrates’s body and corpse, and Phaedo’s memorialization of Socrates. Yet in a powerful moment, Socrates’s death deviates from a sacrifice as he drinks the pharmakon “without the least tremor.” Developing the themes of suffering and wisdom as they connect to this scene, Romero demonstrates how the embodied Socrates is setting forth an eikôn of the death of the philosopher. Drawing on comparisons with tragedy and comedy, he argues that Socrates’s death is more fittingly described as self-sacrifice than merely an execution or suicide. After considering the implications of these themes for the soul’s immortality and its relationship to the body, the book concludes with an exploration of the place of sacrifice within ethical life.