Goethe and C.G. Jung “Faust I”, the Germans’ favorite drama is about a scholar who wants the impossible, who wants to know what keeps the world together at heart. Goethe’s Faust failed on this worldly question, which ultimately leads either straight to Augustine’s heaven or Dante’s hell. Therfore Faust needed and accepted diabolical assistance. But … Continue reading
Last weekend I checked in for a three-day time-out at my local monastery to prepare for Christmas. The countdown to Christmas is on and for many, the Advent season is one of the most beautiful in the year. But! Have we ever realized, that this story with Mary and Joseph and birth of the Messiah … Continue reading
The Monk is back. Two of the most famous paintings from Germany’s Romantic period are back on display at a central Berlin museum after a two-year restoration. I recently visited that exibition and appreciated the famed landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. The making of a perfect piece of art has always been a purification process … Continue reading
Last fall, I travelled all over Al-Andalus in the footsteps of philosophers, poets, warriors and great mystics Sufi’s like Ibn-Arabi. If you are interested in philosophy, science history and intercultural transmission of knowledge, Al- Andalus is your place and I invite you to read further. Al-Andalus represents a singular, tragic and wonderful moment of cultural … Continue reading
This blog, humbly following G.G. Jung, was viewed more than 110,000 times in 2015, close to 10.000 visitors a month, coming from 179 countries. Thanks for dropping by. This year begins in Europe with lies, fear and hate, and the future looks dim. On New years Eve, downright evil has happened, the wars spilled to … Continue reading
Who were the Gnostics? Christian commentators described them as dualists who pitted ‘divine spark or ‘light’ against the of the material world. Christianity painted many Gnostics as heretics for claiming to be Christ’s true followers while denying his singular divinity. Its claim of a world as a mistake and shadow of the Christian creation myth … Continue reading
I just came back again from the haunted and magic Languedoc-Roussillon, where I followed the footsteps of the Esclarmonde de Foix and the heretic Cathars. This essay will focus on Esclarmonde de Foix. Cathars, Catharism and its connection to the holy grail seen through the eyes of Otto Rahn, a shady self proclaimed archaeologist, who … Continue reading
