Since the dawn of civilization, labyrinths have fascinated humankind. Knossos in Crete, has a distinctive circular maze design with seven rings. Exactly the same design appears mysteriously at different periods in history on stones and artifacts as far apart as India, Norway, Germany, Ireland, England, Arizona, … In English, the term labyrinth is generally synonymous with maze. As a result of the...
Parzival logo Maier files
Teutonic legend. a music drama by Richard Wagner: composed 1877-82; premiere 1882 a male given name: from Old French words meaning “pierce” and “valley” comparable to Percival a knight of King Arthur’s court who sought the Holy Grail a German mythical military division   What lies beneath the noun Parzival? In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach tells us that the Grail is a...
Walpurgisnacht engraving
In the last days of paganism in Germany, the druids’ sacrifices were subject to punishment by death at the hands of the literalist Christians. Nevertheless, at the beginning of springtime the “druids” and the populace sought to regain the peaks of the mountains so that they could make their sacrifices or experience their celebrations at these remote locations, intimidating and chasing off the Christians (usually through the latter’s fear of the devil). The legend of the first Walpurgis Night is […]...
In the story most people think they know, a clockmaker named Geppetto builds a puppet and wishes for a son. The Blue Fairy arrives and grants the wish. The puppet becomes real. That is not quite the story. Geppetto is a craftsman of time. His workshop is filled with clocks. He can measure, construct, and replicate everything the material world contains. He...
The petals don’t radiate outward from a centre the way a child draws a flower. They spiral. Each one turns from the one before it at a precise angle — 137.5 degrees, if you measure. The result is that no two petals ever perfectly overlap, and the space between them follows a ratio that mathematicians call phi: 1 to 1.618. The golden...
La belle dame sans merci
When you think of faeries, what comes to mind? For many, it’s the benevolent wish-granters and environmental champions depicted by Disney and other Hollywood cleansers. However, delve into actual folklore, and you’ll uncover a more sinister and complex world. Far from being the charming creatures of modern tales, faeries have long been feared as beings who kidnap, deceive, and even kill. Here, we explore the darker side of faerie folklore, shedding light on their terrifying nature and their often malevolent […]...
Rolf Diettrich and Gudrun
The attentive reader of the first episodes of Maier files will have noticed that the tale once told by Rolf Dietrich and the history of Otto Maier are filled with powerful themes and images that might provide a clue to the real hidden mystery, among them: the Rose Trail (Troj de Reses), web of woven silk, the knights in the line of...
The rich tapestry of human history is often woven with the delicate threads of symbolism and tradition. One such fascinating journey takes us into the ancestral cult of flowers, exploring the deep meanings associated with these blossoms across various cultures and epochs. Among the myriad flowers that have captured the human imagination, the Mayan Nicte and the Rose stand out as emblematic...
Abraxas
Carl Jung had written extensively on Abraxas. In his 1916 book called The Seven Sermons to the Dead, Jung called Abraxas a God higher than the Christian God and Devil that combines all opposites into one Being. Abraxas was a polymorphous world spirit which permeates — or even encompass — the very fabric of existence. Abraxas is … a thousand-armed polyp, coiled knot of winged serpents … the hermaphrodite of the earliest beginning … the lord of toads and frogs, […]...
Ishtar
It was Rodin who stated that “Man never invented anything new, only discovered things.” Although it’s correct to say that certain symbols have been man-made for a particular purpose, it’s just as correct to argue that everything is somehow inspired by the natural world around us, by the forms of nature, plants, animals, the elements. Even a reaction against the fluid forms...
There are works of art that please, others that instruct, and a rare few that initiate. Among the latter stands Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a piece outwardly shaped like a fairy tale yet inwardly composed with the gravity of an ancient mystery play. For more than two centuries it has been celebrated as music, dismissed as fantasy, embraced as allegory, and examined as...
von Goethe
Socrates sometimes spoke of his daemon, meaning a good spirit who guided him through life. This might seem an alien concept for most of us today. But one can not deny as a matter of historical fact that folks who believed in idealism as a philosophy of life have always tended to trust in spirits, gods and angels. When it comes to the great-weaving cosmic thoughts, the active principles behind the appearances of things, many idealists and romantics have asked […]...

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