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...
acht - eight
All numbers have meanings, and different meanings within different cultures. But there is one number that seems to cross cultures, transcending religious and ethnic boundaries with its underlying meaning of immortality: Eight – 8 – . To the Egyptians, number eight was the most magical of numbers and meant ‘balance’ and ‘cosmic order’. According to Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, the authors...
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 of nature is usually inspired by a desire to offer an alternative. Occasionally the revelation of a natural […]...
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...
Sleeping Beauty
Meister Eckhart (the thirtheenth-century German mystic) once said, “if you fight your death, you’ll feel the demons tearing away your life, but, if you have the right attitude to death, you will be able to see that the devils are really angels setting your spirit free. In the ancient belief systems, the being who guides the human spirit through the underworld and...
Contradictions and paradox
When it is exclaimed that contradictions may very well be true, numerous analytic philosophers will screw up their face into an appearance of discomfort, and say ‘But I just don’t see what it could be for a contradiction to be true’. They could mean numerous things by this. ‘See’ might just mean ‘understand’, by which case they might be complaining that traditional two-valued semantics leaves no room, as it were, for something to be both true and false. Such a […]...
Skull cup
In Sanskrit, skull cups are known as kapala, and they are generally formed from the oval section of the upper cranium. They served as libation vessels for large numbers of deities, which were mostly wrathful. However, they are also seen with gods such as Padmasambhava (India), who holds the skull cup, which is described as holding an ocean of nectar that floats...
Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus, circa 360 BC. The Demiurge as the entity who “fashioned and shaped” the material world. The Demiurge is the craftsman. The term demiourgos or craftsman is itself surprising – one might expect such a character to be rather grandly titled Nous or Logos. At Athens, the craftsman...
It was in 1926, in the thick of transformative ferment of the interbellum, that an anonymous volume—issued in a luxury edition of three hundred copies by a small Paris publishing firm known mostly for artistic reprints—rocked the Parisian occult underworld. Its title was Le Mystère des cathédrales (The Mystery of the Cathedrals). The author, “Fulcanelli,” claimed that the great secret of alchemy, the queen of Western occult sciences, was plainly displayed on the walls of Paris’s own cathedral, Notre-Dame-de-Paris. Surrealism […]...
King Arthur's sword
Trying to understand one of the many hidden histories and layers within Maier files is trying to understand the Grail quest and its influence on many even nowadays. The Arthurian legends are an obvious start. The fabulous stories of King Arthur and the Grail are currently so well known that they extensively researched and remarked upon by many different authors and researchers....
Gundestrup
Occult knowledge and ancient wisdom. What was Parsifal seeking in Wolfram Eschenbach’s poem that was referred to as “the Grail”? A stone ? The Lapsis exillis? It is also said that a pagan astrologer read the mystery of the Grail in the stars: ” Flegetanis, the heathen saw with his own eyes in the constellations things He was shy to talk about,...
Harvest traditions have roots in Eleusis. The foundation of the Mysteries of Eleusis was the story of Demeter and Persephone. In this tale, Hades fell in love with Persephone and kidnapped her from the fields where she played, taking her back to his kingdom in the underworld. When Demeter discovered her child missing, she searched everywhere on Earth for her. When at last she received word that Hades was keeping her child, Demeter refused to let anything on Earth grow. […]...
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