Category: Middle Ages
-
Saint Constantine the Great
the greatest miracle of Christianity was succeeding in asserting itself among the European peoples, even taking account the decadence into which numerous traditions of these peoples had plunged. Medieval civilisation would be inconceivable, without phenomena such as the appearance of the great Knightly orders, Thomism, a certain mysticism of a high level (e.g., Meister Eckhart)
-
The Seven Sacred Liberal Arts
It is no coincidence that the Sacred Liberal Arts are Seven in number: this is the number of the mysteries, the steps towards union with God, and the rays of Creation, as well as the visible planets, the notes in the musical scale, and the steps or levels of the Kabbalah. There are also seven…
-
Haunted by the Emperor
Europe is haunted by the shadow of the Emperor. One senses his absence just as vividly as in former times one sensed his presence. Because the emptiness of the wound speaks, that which we miss knows how to make us sense it. ~ Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot At the apex of everything, as…
-
The Metalogikon
The Medieval period represents, for Western man, a kind of germinal gestation of the Spirit in the form of an actualized Christian civilization, one which was fully in accord with Tradition, as far as it was able to go. We know this because, for the neo-pagans, it is too “Christian” & for the neo-Christians, it…
-
Western Social Order – Part 3
In the Philobiblon, Richard de Bury (Bishop of Durham) justifies his love of books in a Christian framework by pointing out that Plato is said to have paid 10000 dinars for a rare scroll of Philolaus. Philolaus‘ work was most likely a transmission of the teachings of Pythagoras, who had gone to Tyre and to…
-
The Apples of the Hesperides – Hercules’ Eleventh Labor
With the ancients, we affirm that no man consciously would will Evil. Which is why it is the duty of every man of Order to subdue himself, that when he creates, he may create according to the whole Eye of Light, perceiving the Logos not through a glass darkly, but almost face-to-face.
-
Hercules’ Seventh Triumph
As I have argued, Hercules has decisively “come into his own”: he has achieved the unstated goal of the classical polis, which was to become an Aristotelian unequal. He is not yet equal to gods, but he no longer lives under mortal law, because he has suffered its stroke, and lived (which is the only…
-
The Trivium & Mystery
Cologero’s translations have provided this gem, from de Giorgio: “We could also call it “intuition” although no psychological quality is given to this term: the psyche in fact is below the spirit, the intellect, the heart—these three terms denoting, under three aspects, the same type of integrative activity of the divine. The spirit expresses the…
-
Never the Twain Shall Meet
I chose to write on The Dark Cloud of Unknowing to illustrate something that is true that has been discussed here (that East & West are not divergent in Tradition). The author was an anonymous Englishman during the 14th century; ergo, a quintessential “Western” mystic on an isolated island in the West. It is unknown…