“Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality” (T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton). “By this radiance, my child, I swear, by this bright orb which sees and hears us now, that from this being which you now behold, and which rules the world, you have your origin, child of the Sun!” …
This essay explores Books 6-7 of The Republic and explains Plato’s theory of the forms through his famous analogies of the sun, the divided line, and the cave. Plato’s theory of forms is an extension of the older Pythagorean view that the visible world is grounded in an unseen world of number. One villager, for …
Shamanism is a primordial form of religion found in many tribal cultures. The term “shaman” is said to be derived from the Manchu-Tungus word “šaman” meaning “one who knows.”[1] Specifically, the shaman is one who knows the world of spirit and the techniques by which to travel and operate within it. Published in 1951, Mircea …