Mourning day remembering the crucifixion of Jesus. In the second year of pandemic. COVID-19 is far from over. We are at a crossroads, some argue. Their path will take us to a better world, they argue. The so-called free world is facing a critical decision: Are civil rights and freedom negotiable or not? High time …
I have been silent for a while for various reasons, so I’ll start again sharing my Lenten “promise” again this year here. This is a special year, it might be the last lent for me, for us, for my father, for my son. Who knows, we are in gods hand now. We are a family …
I have been silent for a while for various reasons, so I’ll start again sharing my Lenten “promise” this year here. Lenten promises should take us “out of our comfort zone” and should sharpen our heart. No meat, no alcohol, no cheese, no sweets, which is easy, cutting down on twitter is about as far …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Dante is not just any poet. With his epic poem “Commedia”, in English “Divine Comedy” he created an Italian cultural Monument, a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise full of symbols, archetypes, historical and allegorical references. The article wants to revisit the work of Poet Dante Alighieri from a Jungian view in the light of …
As a photographer, your eye is your lens. A Jungian understands, there are more than five senses. This essay gives a basic understanding, why excellent pictures (paintings or photographs) succeed.
Some say Sufism, or Tasawwuf as it is known in the Muslim world, is Islamic mysticism; others say it is the primordial mystical tradition, much older than Islam, using Islam as a structural frame as Gnostics usually did. In this article, we will use Jungian concepts, Sufi poetry, and myths to explore the relationship of female Archetypes and the Sufi path.
Perhaps Sufism is best defined as a universal path to union with God through self reflection – in Jungian terms individuation…
A recurring thought in books about Jesus is the thought that every time created its own Jesus. Jesus, like the virgin birth, the crucifix and resurrection, is a major symbol in the Jungian sense of the word, an abstract archetype one can fill with our own multiple meanings recognized in very culture, even non-christian. Now if we look for the many faces of Jesus, we may get access to him as a person,scholarly (theologically), from contemporary views, from other main religions, from sworn enemies of any religion and from the father of symbols – C.G. Jung.
The historical Jesus almost gets buried under his construction, even the catholic church rarely refers to him as real historic person in recent writings. Sometimes it seems that Jesus in the Gospel was also such a creation realizing the striking similarity of New Testament symbols with the Egyptian pantheon and myths. Those faces is what this article is all about. The best I have read in that regard about Jesus is from C.G. Jung, so lets start with him. Warning, this is just an essay but a rather lengthy one.
Goddesses (and Gods) have been worshipped throughout history. Already the earliest advanced civilizations had a rich set religious female spiritual and temporal archetypes which permeated every aspect of society. I want to invite the reader to follow with me the trail of Goddesses from the first advanced cultures until today’s global culture, from Babylon to …
This essay wants to explore the current interpretation of peace and hero myth, which symbolizes a personality formation which occurs only through struggle, suffering, and sacrifice…
Now, what is art anyway? To me art works are symbolic patterns, which have connotations that are unclear or hidden. They may have interferences with the Zeitgeist and references to the past…
I followed the footsteps of the Templars and the heretic Cathars. This essay will focus on their similarity with early Christian and Jewish Gnostic thoughts, in which C.G. Jung was very interested. Where did the Cathars came from and what were there beliefs? What was the mystic and symbolic importance of Mary Magdalene, who is still worshiped prominently there in Catholic Churches?
Arguably no other notable figure in history was as wrong as Freud was about every important thing he had to say. He was a favorite of the avantgarde from the begin of last century until its sixties, but while the theories of his contemporary colleagues, C.G. Jung, Adler and Wilhelm Reich aged well, little of …
Let’s say this is not an essay, but a fictional story. I was very pleased, that good friend of mine, who happens to be a catholic monk and Jungian psychoanalyst, accepted to be the god-father of my son. Since he lives somewhat remote on the country side – you guessed it, his home is a …
This essay is about Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942), female archetype of the Queen (in exile), or Russian Jewish Wise Woman connected with the two leading pioneers of the first hour – C. G. Jung and Sigmund Freud. I like to make the case, that she could have completed a triad in the theoretical development of psychoanalysis …
The history of time reflects culture – interconnecting temporal powers, religion and science. For millenniums priest were gatekeeper of time and calendar(s). Now scientists have taken over. Today we are able to contemplate beyond the creation of time, even beyond the big bang. I got the idea to this essay after I read a book, …
Akhenaten (Echnaton) is the most mysterious and interesting of all the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. In the following essay I will try to interpret what little is known about the androgynous pharaoh, who brought down the Egypt empire with his daring cultural and religious revolution, the enigmatic chief queen Nefertiti (Neferneferuaten), and his overpowering mother Tiye.
A scholarly fashion claims that only by coincidence Christ and not the Egyptian Isis or the Persian Mithras gained the upper hand as a world religion. There is some truth in it, but also an utter disregard of the attractiveness of Christianity at that time. This article will explore this question from a historical thesis, …
This article explores the psychological underpinnings of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” from a Jungian view. Carl Jung left a great deal of ambiguity surrounding his work. He understood, as long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity and everybody must accept his or her “Shadow” during the individuation process. Ambiguity between good an evil, and a failed individuation is …
Jung has been often (rightfully) seen of being a contemporary Gnostic. However, the interpretations which Jung places on Gnosticism and the texts which Jung refers to on alchemy, were often Kabbalistic, so much so that one would be more justified in calling the Jung of the Mysterium Coniunctionis or Kabbalistic in contemporary disguise. One of the most serious and arguably criticisms against …
Recently I attended a catholic retreat in a Benedictine mountain monastery. The theme was: The wolf in us. We discussed the archetypes and myths of the wolf, a topic I had explored in great length before, their archetypes here and here. The point was raised, that the wolf represents greed, one of the seven deadly sins. What …
This is an extension of the last post: the archetype of the wolf. I am a hobby astronomer and fond of its older sister Astrology. So lets look to the Wolf from that perspective. The wolf is inherently pagan and shamanic, that means American Indian, Chinese, Egyptians, Babylonians should have big stakes in in its Astronomy …
In a few weeks, there is Whitsun, and I will make one of my occasional trips to the monastery. The rock monastery St. George is a development center of the Benedictine order in the Austrian Inn valley. From the monastery to the St. George mountain (Karwendel) on foot takes approximately one hour. The religious exercise will be lead by a Benedictine monk, who happens …
fallenAngel’s Fear is an obvious wordplay which crossed my mind after a blog reader pointed out that Bateson’s book Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred might be of relevance to me. The title created immediately multiple associations and images, so I became curious and got the book. Bateson presents from a anthropologist view concepts and topology of structure- determined recursion – in a …
Maybe it’s because I am an “unchurched”, humanist religious person, but todays anti-religious tracts and rants do bore me. However, a new book of the primatologist Frans de Waal, raised hope for new insights: The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. He made accidentally an interesting point – the reciprocal imago dei (God’s imago modelled after human) of todays …
When I lived in California I listened often to the KFOG radio commentator Wes (“Scoop”) Nisker who happened to be also a comedian: “If you don’t like the news … go out and make some of your own”, was his frequent catchphrase. Comedians are often called jester, fool, trickster and clown. Very recently many European ( foolish) fools call an Italian comedian a clown. Because he …
Reblogged via China in Transition #2: Weber believed that a move towards rational-legal authority was inevitable. I rarely repost, but this photo cries out for it. I love her visual (always) but reject the added Wikipedia thesis. The picture even contradicts the thesis – there is no enlightenment nor positive rationalization. We entered a new … Continue reading
We’ve all heard the phrase “the banality of evil”, coined by the political theorist Hannah Arendt. Her 1951 masterwork, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” about the parallels between Hitler’s Third Reich and Stalinist Russia, made her an intellectual celebrity. In her book, she argued that totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone’s life as … Continue reading
The four shades of love – derived from the different Greek words for love: agápe, éros, philía, and storgē.
Storge (στοργή) means “affection” in ancient and modern Greek. It is natural love. Philia (φιλία) is “conscious” love, a feeling of friendship. Agape (ἀγάπη) means love in a “spiritual” sense and ” unconditional love”. Eros (érōs) is “physical” passionate love, with sensual desire a withoutcontrol of the consciousness… Continue reading
Originally posted on The Renaissance Mathematicus:
In my last post I commented on the priority disputes that Galileo carried out with other users of the telescope in the early years of telescopic astronomy. Some of his most vitriolic comments were launched from the pages of his polemical pamphlet The Assayer against the Franconian astronomer Simon…
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
stOttilien 
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